In Aesop’s Fables, a mountain shook and groaned, and brought forth a mouse. This was how Donald Trump’s address to the nation unfolded on Thursday night. After promising “really, really big news”, he appeared to deliver a nothingburger. But it was a dangerous one all the same.
The evidence of foreign interference and voter fraud was so thin that Trump appeared to be reading from a heavily sanitised script. His previous false claims about the so-called 2020 “stolen” election gave way to mere puffed-up rhetoric about Americans being “blatantly lied to” about the security of their “election infrastructure”.
Had he been taken hostage by his own top aides and intelligence chiefs, who refused to let him spout actual fibs in a national address from the White House podium? If so, his power is waning, even within the Oval Office.
Moreover, his speech was delivered in a hoarse, throaty voice reminiscent of Joe Biden’s in his declining years as President, though not as enfeebled. It was an embarrassingly public reminder that Trump is 80 and time waits for no man. The address showed him fading before our eyes.
Trump’s obsession with relitigating the disputes of the past appears increasingly like the bizarre ravings of an old man. If he hasn’t proved the 2020 election was rigged by now – six years on – he never will. The US public has lost interest in the subject and is less inclined to take the President at his word. After all, he keeps insisting he has “won” the Iran war, when it is obvious none of his stated goals have been achieved.
