Politics & Government

A journalist pointed out that Trump's speech revealed what angered him much more than election meddling.

During an episode of The Daily Beast Podcast, executive editor Hugh Dougherty looked back at Trump's Thursday night speech on election security. Trump had touted it as a "primetime" speech earlier in the week, and what left him fuming more than election meddling was how it was snubbed by major television networks like ABC and NBC.

"That's the thing that really angered him," Dougherty said. "He wanted this speech to be on prime time. There's nothing he loves more than being on prime time. There's nothing he loves more than ratings, and he was boycotted. Effectively, he was switched off."

Trump showed that he was enraged by the snub more than anything because "the rest of the speech was, if I'm honest, a bit low T," Dougherty said.

"He was raspy," Dougherty said. "He was not quite slumped, but he was not standing energetically, and he went through a whole lot of grievances."

Dougherty noted that Trump did seem "very sore" about losing a presidential election. "He's very sore about what happened six years ago," Dougherty said. "And he became president again, but he can't get over that. He lost."

By contrast, "the most alive bit of this speech on Thursday night was when he demanded that they face revenge for not showing their speech," Dougherty said, referring to how Trump complained that networks such as ABC and NBC were "part of a plot."

Trump suggested that ABC and NBC should lose their broadcast licenses for not airing his remarks, reporting by The Daily Beast noted, adding that the White House Rapid Response Team even went after members of the press for their coverage afterwards.

President Donald Trump's "fix is in" rhetoric could compel his biggest fans to skip voting, a new analysis contends.

Miles Taylor, chief of staff in the Department of Homeland Security during the president's first term, argued Thursday that Trump's constant pushing on the SAVE America Act is fundamentally flawed.

That's terrible news for GOP candidates on the November ballot who are already looking at an uphill battle, Taylor said.

Trump's approval ratings have collapsed to disastrous levels, recent reports show.

A recent poll shows just 30 percent of Americans approve of his performance—catastrophic territory achievable only when millions of your own supporters have abandoned you. Most damaging: his economic approval ratings hit their worst marks of either his term.

With that in mind, Taylor argued Trump was making a big mistake.

"The real headline is that the president is sabotaging his own side’s turnout in the very act of seeking to meddle in the election," he wrote. "It’s like a burglary that’s backfiring in real time. Trump is trying mightily to break into democracy’s back door but making such a racket with his crowbar that he’s woken up the whole neighborhood."

Pointing to Trump's infamous 2024 claim he would fix elections "so good, you're not gonna have to vote," Taylor argued the president's boast will boost complacency when he should be pushing for his MAGA fans to get off the couch.

Meanwhile, Trump has motivated Democrats.

"Every lever he pulls to 'tilt' the playing field risks convincing his own voters they don’t need to show up at all," he wrote before predicting, "Again, each of these election-rigging maneuvers tells the MAGA base: relax, the fix is in! Unfortunately for the Republican Party, the data shows its voters are getting the message. They’re becoming more indifferent."

He then quipped, "The president wanted to mount the biggest midterm election operation in modern history. Well, congratulations, Mr. President. You did it. Your 'get out the vote' operation is massive. The only catch is that it’s inspiring the opposition, not your own team."