Trump Toots
It was a loud talk. Some in MAGA shower him with praise for it. All of his critics found plenty to criticize, but so did some in MAGA.
The Trump has sounded loudly, but the brazen tooting of his own trumpet accomplished nothing, except maybe to encourage some of his lagging fans, but even a fair number of those were not impressed, as you’ll read from the MAGA comments and other Republican comments below.
When I watched Donald Trump’s short address to the nation on Wednesday night, I thought it seemed more focused on trying to blame the other guy for our current problems than any speech I’ve ever listened to. It was the familiar blame game and proved only that Biden clearly lives rent-free in Trump’s brain on a daily basis now. Trump blew out some false facts, such as inflation falling, and some shiny hopes for the future that are easy to say, very hard to make happen.
So far, we haven’t seen any of Trump’s economic hopes deliver as promised. True, it’s early to expect much improvement, but everything looks like continual decline to me … like we’re sliding down a muddy slope, slowly descending faster, while the president doesn’t seem to be able to get much traction. Certainly, the majority of Americans see it that way in poll after poll as Republicans weaken in their support and Independents turn against him more and more with each new poll.
It appeared Trump’s speech was a strongly-worded and emphatically delivered composition intended to halt that continual decline in his approval ratings, especially over the economy and “affordability,” a.k.a. “inflation,” and he was trying to assert to his base that he’s on it and winning as usual.
Today’s Daily Doom headlines section presents an array of articles from both the Right and the Left commenting negatively and positively on the speech. Some influential names in the MAGA movement or among conservatives disapproved. So, rather than reiterate all the stuff in the stories below that come from Trump’s usual critics or the equally predictable praise from the MAGA supporters, I want to give an overview of the MAGA/Republican/conservative criticism, as there is no surprise that the usual critics found plenty to criticize. (That would, at this point, include me; but I have always promised from the outset to every subscriber before they subscribe that “I am an equal-opportunity critic of both parties.” I was very critical of #NoMoJoe, particularly of his extremely divisive and personally damaging Covid policies and his obvious dementia as Dem’s kept denying that. Why would I go any easier on a boisterous narcissist whose tariffs are strangling the nation who also appears to have dementia—the kind that makes you an angry, ranting old man?)
Some of the key voices in the MAGA movement have turned on Trump after the president’s address interrupted prime time television with it being slammed as ‘pointless’.
In summary of the points raised against his words by MAGA influencers and/or conservatives commentators …
Matt Walsh, a right-wing political commentator and podcast host, wrote on X: "That was perhaps the most pointless primetime presidential address ever delivered in American history."
Former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger wrote: “Someone come get grandpa he’s yelling again, and we’re concerned.”
“What is happening right now? He’s just screaming into the camera,” Sarah Longwell, founder of conservative-leaning political analysis site The Bulwark, asked.
“That was a big waste of Time,” said host David Brody, commentator for the Christian Broadcasting Network, known for his vocal support of Donald Trump. “Where was the big reveal?… I didn’t even understand what was going on.” “Yeah, it was a miss,” cohost Terrance Bates remarked.
Prior to the speech, their CBN cohost Gina Loudon acknowledged that President Donald Trump was delivering an unexpected address to the nation on Wednesday because he “almost” lost control of the narrative on the affordability crisis ahead of the midterm elections. “It’s a PR thing, right?” After the speech, she agreed with Brody on where was the beef.
A lesser voice, Majestic Glow—with 46,000 followers—wrote on X: “Remember when Joe Biden and his administration would tell us all how great things were, and we all loudly rejected that BS? Trump and his administration are doing the same thing.”
Trump made a lot of noise with some brassy-sounding promises and claims, but “We’re going to repeal and replace Obamacare, and it will be so easy” was a strong-sounding promise, too. Obamacare is still here, and Repubs are still trying to repeal it one tiny section of funding at a time, and they still have nothing to replace it. “We’re going to build a wall, and Mexico is going to pay for it” sounded big and self-assured, too. Mexico did not pay for it. “It will be easy,” the President promised. “Building things is what I do.” It still isn’t finished. “We’re going to take China on in a trade war, and winning it will be easy, so easy,” the president said going into Trump 1.0. Eight years later, we’re still in it, and China seems to be coming out of it better than the US with its trade having improved in other nations enough to more than make up for what it lost in trade with the US. The US cannot say the same for its own trade imbalances.
So, the intensity of Trump’s trumpeting and the top brass he brings to his commands means nothing to me. That is partly because I don’t see a path for tariffs to deliver what he has promised, and I don’t see any evidence that I’m wrong about that … so far. Not a lot of companies are moving their operations here. Most of the few that are have made it clear they will be focusing on AI robots to avoid having to price things higher because of more expensive American labor. Most of the few that said they are have not started to do so yet, either. But most are not moving here. They have either chosen to remain in China and focus on trade outside the US or to move to nations with lower tariffs that have cheaper labor.
A large number of Americans claim they strongly feel that inflation is rising all around them, which the president has claimed is not even happening. Even in this talk, he claimed it is not happening when he said inflation is going down—that all we have is the residual inflation Biden left us, which Trump is still fighting. Who is right?
Trump’s former campaign advisers have claimed that the president has previously made gains in convincing people he has an understanding of improving the economy. But now things have changed.
So say the critics:
ABC News chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Karl declared President Donald Trump’s address to the nation on Wednesday evening the most “defensive” he’s ever seen from a president and a sign of serious self-doubt….
“If the president was addressing a crisis last night, it seemed to be a crisis of confidence in his handling of the economy,” Karl said. “Americans are overwhelmingly unhappy with the state of the economic, and a clear majority in many recent polls are blaming Donald Trump.”
Since one of Trump’s biggest claims in his speech was that he has been bringing down inflation, we’ll take a Deeper Dive this weekend into this week’s inflation report talked about in today’s headlines to see if it truly backs the president up.
For as long the Trumplicans have been denying that tariffs cause inflation, I’ve been focusing relentlessly on the inflation characteristics of tariffs and how the inflation will drag out but would build in the fall; however, we lost statistics in the fall, making that hard to prove, which I somewhat anticipated and suggested you should, too. I’ve dogged inflation because I was certain that this one story would be all it would take to bring down the president and his party if they take inflation in the wrong direction. People get that upset about it. And we can see that take-down happening in the erosion of Trump’s ratings due to this one issue.
So, it will be important to dig into today’s vaguely calming inflation report to see what it’s really made of. With a precursory glance, I have almost zero doubt that it is as deeply flawed as I’ve assured you it would be for the past month; but it will be the facts about the report that matter. The devil will be in the details.
In all, I think Trump’s tooting of his horn convinced only those who are already convinced, and not even all of them. Those who wanted to be convinced will probably be excited by the one-man brass band. I’ve included stories running both ways.