Trump’s conspiratorial speech fails to move the needle on voter suppression bill
About a month ago, Donald Trump abruptly ended a “Meet the Press” interview when NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked the president whether he had evidence to support his election conspiracy theories. “You’re either crooked or you’re stupid,” the Republican told the host instead of answering the question like an adult who wasn’t making stuff up.
A few days later, Trump returned to the subject at an unrelated White House event, telling reporters, “They rigged the election. … We have things that you won’t believe. When we release the full files, you’re not going to believe how crooked the second, the 2020 election was.”
A month later, the president had an opportunity to back that up in a prime-time address to the nation and a documents dump of declassified materials. It was a predictable debacle in which the Republican recycled already discredited nonsense and failed entirely to substantiate his conspiracy theories.
But there was also a practical consideration to consider: Trump wrapped up his unfortunate remarks with a call to Congress to approve his preferred voter-suppression proposal, which the White House has labeled the SAVE America Act. From the president’s perspective, the case he laid out would not only shore up GOP backing for the anti-voting legislation, but it would also pressure Democrats to support new voting restrictions.
None of this happened. Democrats immediately recognized Trump’s address as an embarrassing dud, and Republicans who were skeptical of the administration’s voter-suppression measure before his speech were just as unmoved after watching his rather pitiful presentation.
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Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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