Trump's 2020 obsession
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Why did major networks refuse to air Trump's primetime address and how was it received?
The president of the United States was at the men's World Cup final yesterday in East Rutherford, New Jersey. He did the thing where he tried to photobomb the winning team during their big trophy-hoisting moment again. Based on recent World Cup final viewership numbers, more than a billion people were watching him embarrass himself. The president addressed the nation in primetime late last week, and he'd be lucky if a million people were watching him embarrass himself. NBC and ABC decided not to air it. Ditto over at CNN and MSN Now. Fox took it and CBS took it too, but they did the whole truth sandwich thing where they blast you with facts before and after to cushion the blow of what comes between.
The speech was low energy and kind of confusing.
We had transgender for everybody.
The president's living in the past and trying to drum up concerns about election security in advance of the midterms. It's not worth spending a ton of time on what he said, but on Today Explained from Vox, we're gonna spend a ton of time on why he's saying it.
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Today Explained, Sean Ramos from with David Weigel, who's a national political reporter at Semaphore. David, how did you spend your Thursday night?
Well, taping another podcast, but also paying some attention to the president's speech, which was very hyped by the White House and by Republicans.
And we encourage every American to tune in.
That's what you do when you're trying to get TV time for a national address and you don't have it in hand yet. And under-delivered. There can be different arguments about what was in the speech, but let's say it fell short of what Ohio Senator Bernie Reno said that was going to be the most important presidential address since the JFK addressing the Cuban Missile Crisis.
I mean, primetime address is a big deal. What was so urgent for the president?
The arguments before the speech asking for this time, it was unclear exactly what was in it. And if you wanted to go on a betting market, there are people speculating that he might have some updates on the Iran war. He might have updates. This Marine was suggesting something important about China. What the actual speech was, was a kind of a preamble about how great things are going right now.
What claims did Trump make about foreign interference in the 2020 election and the evidence behind them?
Two years ago, our country was dead. Now we are the hottest country anywhere in the world.
And then the argument, basically, that there have been attempts to interfere in our elections, which we know about foreign attempts to interfere elections are a factor we have known about for years. The factor in 2016, factor in 2020, factor in 2024. He was saying in so many words that as president in 2020, when he lost, that he was not briefed fully on how much China was trying to interfere.
Documents show that during this period, dozens of significant CIA and NSA reports about China's election targeting were kept out of the presidential briefing.
And he wants sort of a roundabout way he got there. He wants to use the full power of the government to force states to change their election laws along the lines he wants. So that election can be manipulated the way he thinks they're manipulated again. I say he thinks because there is a popular idea that's running a 10 year anniversary now that, oh, well, Trump says a lot of things. But the media takes me literally and people should be just taking him seriously. He very literally thinks that every election he's lost was stolen in some way.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
Why did major networks refuse to air Trump's primetime address and how was it received?
0:01–2:56
2
What claims did Trump make about foreign interference in the 2020 election and the evidence behind them?
2:56–12:23
3
How is Trump using allegations about China and voter-roll purchases to justify action?
12:23–18:32
4
What federal actions is the administration taking to influence state election procedures?
18:32–26:47