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 primetime 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.
The New York Times reported last week that his legislative plea, “which Mr. Trump implied was the reason behind the Thursday night speech, appeared to have landed with a whimper among Republicans on Capitol Hill and in campaigns around the country.” NBC News published a related report as this week got underway:
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, didn’t mince words when he was asked Monday whether President Donald Trump’s primetime speech succeeded in its goal of nudging the Republican-controlled Senate to pass his sweeping elections bill, known as the SAVE America Act.
“No,” Cornyn told NBC News. “We don’t have the votes. … I think the president’s getting some supremely bad advice.”
When NBC News asked Republican Sen. Thom Tillis whether Trump’s speech helped the legislation’s prospects, the North Carolinian replied, “Not at all. There’s no way you get this implemented in time for this election. I think people are being led to believe that that’s the case, and that’s just wrong.”
The report comes just days after Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, one of the more consistent GOP critics of the president’s voter-suppression package, wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, explaining in some detail why she would continue to oppose the bill, even after having heard Trump’s pitch. The senator, among other things, called the plan “draconian.”
In other words, over the course of roughly 25 minutes, the president failed to present credible evidence of his conspiracy theories and failed to persuade anyone to support his wildly regressive anti-voting bill, generating a fresh round of questions about the point of this foolish endeavor.
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