Trump's Primetime Speech Wasn't Just a Warning, But a Lesson

His performance might have been a snooze, but it should serve a wake up call to step up the fight to save democracy

It’s not worth rehashing Trump’s primetime speech, a jumble of reheated conspiracy theories so far from newsworthy that multiple networks declined to air the event live. (Worth flagging, though, that Trump went off on those networks for doing so, musing in real time that they should lose their broadcast licenses.)

The point of the whole charade was, of course, to create a pretext for Trump to eventually declare (read: invent) extraordinary powers granting himself control over our elections ahead of midterms. He likely views this move as a necessary first step to ultimately shoehorn through sweeping changes that Republicans have thus far been unsuccessful at implementing. Every Big Lie starts as a little one.

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Please order my new book, The Day After, here. And if you live in Los Angeles, grab tickets to my final live show with Pod Save America’s Jon Lovett on Saturday, July 18 here.

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Rather than trying to turn the tide (by, you know, governing), Trump is opting to rig the rules the game. On the one hand, it’s a damning indictment of our politics that we’ve gotten to this point. On the other hand, it’s a pathetic act of cowardice that betrays the president’s abject weakness. That’s not to say we shouldn’t take him seriously; if nothing else, the speech showed that Trump will stop at nothing to wield power, even power that he doesn’t have, to get what he wants.

What we saw last night should be a blinking red light for Democrats to continue to fight this anti-democratic MAGA movement on every front. But it should also serve as a lesson for Democrats to recognize the opponent we’re contending with. Trump will stop at nothing to win. We have to see this mentality, take it seriously, and mirror it— not for self-enrichment or vanity projects, but to deliver for Americans. Enough blind deference to our norms and traditions and institutions. Enough symbolic victories and messaging votes. It’s time to wield power like we mean it. It’s time to wield power to secure meaningful, lasting wins. It’s time to wield power like democracy is at risk, because it is.

My new book, The Day After: How To Wield Power in a Post-Trump World, which demands that Democrats finally wield power in office, is out now, and it is meant to serve as a blueprint for how to do exactly that. It’s a roadmap so that we enter 2028 with a plan to not just win power, but keep it. I’m humbly asking you to buy this book, ask your communities online to do the same, and use what you learn from it in the fight for democracy. Because the midterms might still be just over the horizon, but the fight for the future of the republic is already underway.