Donald Trump had a very rough time with his announcement speech on Tuesday. It was a totally boring, low energy speech. When he began losing the crowd, he began attacking his perceived main challenger, the Artist Formerly Know as Kanye West, calling him the n-word.
He said:
My fellow wealthy person, an African-American, Kanye West says he’s running against me. Can you believe that? I thought he liked me, but now he says he’s running against me. I said “that’s not very nice.” They say he’s a billionaire but I suspect not anymore because he’s fallen on some hard times lately. Hard times for old Kanye. It’s too bad. Now that he’s lost all his money for saying some very unkind things about some very powerful people, he is coming for your money. He wants to use zero point energy devices to build super skyscrapers, and he wants you to pay for it. Rappers always have to do everything big, and Kanye is planning on sending you a very big bill for his zero-point energy devices, which are going to cost trillions of dollars, and we can’t afford it. We can’t afford it. People can’t afford gasoline, and this rapper is talking about zero-point devices that are going to cost trillions and trillions of dollars. But his clothes are nice, right? Very cool. My son Barron has a pair of his shoes and these shoes look like a zero-point energy device. I said “what the hell is going on with that?” He told me that’s the style. I said if that’s the style, then that’s the style. I don’t get it, but the style is the style, right? Can’t argue with that. Very cool. The kids love it. It’s a shame about Adidas.
They say the rapper Kanye changed his name to a shortened version; they call him “Ye.” Well, I call him an even shorter word, which in fact only has one letter: “N.” The great rapper, N West. He’s a real beauty. The N stands for a word that is not a very nice word, and I shouldn’t say it, they all told me “Mr. Trump, don’t say the n-word, we have to be very politically correct.” I said I’ll try not to say it, but I will say it only if I have to say it. Well, now I’ve gotta say it, because this is our country we’re talking about and we cannot afford Kanye’s zero-point energy research. The N stands for “nigger,” and I have to tell you, folks, we do not need Mr. N running the White House. He’s very soft on crime.
No, I’m just joking. He didn’t actually say any of that. He didn’t mention Ye at all in the speech, and actually, his recent comments about Ye where he refused to denounce him were some of the most encouraging comments we’ve heard from him.
This speech was not encouraging at all. It was a disaster and a mess.
I opened with that joke to try to add a bit of levity to a very morbid situation.
Just so you understand: this speech was so low energy that Jeb Bush’s Mexican son called it “low energy.” He even added the hashtag #SleepyDonnie.
WOW! What a low energy speech by the Donald.
Time for new leaders! #WEAK #SleepyDonnie
— Jeb Bush, Jr. (@JebBushJr) November 16, 2022
Revenge is a dish best served cold, and Jeb Bush Jr. just served it up on a chilly silver platter. How totally humiliating. It’s humiliating because it’s true. The speech was a total mess.
It was all Republican boilerplate language of the worst sort. There was nothing even remotely fresh, and much of it was just garbled filler words. Aside from the content, Trump’s demeanor was very sleepy. There was nothing remotely inspiring about this, at all. If you compare this to his 2015 announcement speech, it is like night and day. We were walking on sunshine in 2015, and Tuesday night Trump was putting the Moon to sleep.
There were no jokes at all, let alone attacks on his opposition. He barely even attacked the Democrats. Aside from the boilerplate talking points, it was mostly revisionist reminiscing about his time in the White House. He did not call the election fake, and basically did not make any statements that could be considered outrageous or even controversial. There was no “Mexicans are rapists” moment. Trump spoke like a rape survivor.
One bad speech wouldn’t mean anything if it was a normal speech, but this is the announcement speech. This is the most important speech that is supposed to set the tone, and I fear that this is the tone he is running with. Apparently, the DeSantis shills have gotten into his head and he thinks he needs to moderate.
After all this time, Trump is still surrounded with the worst people. Someone told him that the way to take on DeSantis is to “be presidential” by being a boring windbag. This is not going to excite the base, it is not going to do anything good at all. The fact is, if you want a moderate career politician, DeSantis is the superior proposition. DeSantis is a very polished career politician shaped by the Yale and Washington machines. If you want to go back to old-fashioned Bush-style “conservative” swamp politics, DeSantis is your man and Trump will absolutely fail in trying to beat him on those terms.
Overall, we’ve been on a downward trajectory since 2017. Basically as soon as Trump took office, he started moderating, and then he just kept moderating. Of course, his normal personality and demeanor would break through the moderation and he would say hilarious and offensive things, but that has slowed down year over year, as we get more moderation and less of the real Trump.
Trump was not playing to his strengths – not his strengths as a person nor his strengths in this contest. Ron DeSantis is going to be able to flank him on both the left and the right. He can certainly be more hardcore than Trump was in this speech, he can talk about the trannies, the lockdowns, the vaccine (which he can blame Trump for), and flank him from the right, and he can attack him as brash and unpredictable to flank him from the left.
That said, this level of “moderation” seems to have come out of left field, given that Trump’s rallies recently have been pretty high energy. He has been doing funny attacks on Republicans. But something shook him, he’s getting bad advice, and this is the tone he went with. Obviously, he can switch back to a less moderated tone, and presumably he will, but what a massive disappointment for the base.
It’s the first time Trump seemed old.
It’s Really Over
This speech was just the latest disaster in a series of ridiculous disasters. Going along with the midterms was just so dumb. He knew there would be fraud, but he went along with it anyway, and then he was not in a position to claim fraud, because he’d implied the whole thing would be real. There was fraud, and it was used to hoax the idea that the GOP needs Ron DeSantis. He walked straight into a trap, and now he appears to be in a death spiral.
Look: I support Trump because he is obviously the only viable leader for right-wing American politics right now. When people whine about how he hurt their feelings and they will never support him because of that, they just look like complete babies. Unless you have a name of someone better, then Trump is the leader, period. If you can’t accept that, then you’re just an emotional child.
There isn’t really anything Trump could do to change the fact that he’s the best option, because there is no one that even compares. Therefore, I will support him, regardless.
That said: just between you and me: it’s not happening.
It was already more or less impossible for Trump to have won the presidency because of the fraud via mail-in ballots. I would still support him becoming the nominee, because he would be more fun, he would inject real issues, and he would call the fraud out when it happened, causing people to lose even more faith in the system. But at this point, it’s obvious that he isn’t going to be able to win the nomination.
You can go ahead and screenshot this.
I’m not basing it on the speech last night. That was bad, but I said on Monday that DeSantis is going to get the nomination, he’s going to lose due to fraud, and he’s going to accept the loss. It will be a “close race” (totally staged) where we will not get the results for days. The perceived closeness of the election will lead the stupid Republican voters to believe that the election must have been real and that they just lost fairly, which is something all conservatives will accept. DeSantis will go out and say “we fought hard, and we’ll get ’em next time.”
We can all hope I’m wrong, and we should hope I’m wrong. Most likely, I’m not wrong.