Trump's Speech Tonight Won't Be About the Economy or Iran

Today on TAP: It will be about what really concerns him: the 2020 election.

https://prospect.org/2026/07/16/trumps-speech-tonight-wont-be-about-economy-iran/


President Trump speaking at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, July 8, 2026. Credit: Emrah Gurel/AP Photo

President Trump will deliver a speech to the nation tonight, reportedly rehashing the Big Lie that he actually won the 2020 presidential election. Actually, the speech is only nominally directed to the nation. It’s really directed only to the MAGA movement. The nation will not be tuning in, primarily because, by all available evidence, it’s already tuned Trump out. The most recent example of this tuning out is the Washington Post/Ipsos poll released earlier today. It shows the continued downward slide of Trump’s approval rating, to an anemic 37 percent, while disapprovals clock in at 61 percent.

Even more disquieting for the Donald, it shows his support among self-described independents down to 19 percent, while just 52 percent of those who describe themselves as “lean[ing] Republican” say they approve of his presidency; 47 percent of these GOP leaners put themselves in the disapproval column. He’s down within his primary racial base, whites, 54 percent of whom say they disapprove of his presidency. He’s not doing so hot within his favored gender, either, as 59 percent of men disapprove of him as well. Among white men without college degrees—his base of all bases—his approval rating has dipped to 53 percent. And perhaps worst of all, only 15 percent of Americans “strongly approve” of his presidency, down from 19 percent when the Post asked that question in February.

No mystery attends the reasons why Trump’s ratings are circling the drain. A robust 69 percent of Americans disapprove of his handling of what the poll terms “the situation with Iran”; 65 percent disapprove of his handling of the economy; and 59 percent disapprove of his handling of immigration—a figure not likely to be diminished by his insistence that ICE keep shooting into cars that may or may not have possibly resistant undocumented immigrants inside them. Based on the shreds of information coming out of the White House, however, Trump’s speech tonight is not expected to address changes in economic, immigration, or Iran-related policies. It’s become plain for all to see that those are not Trump’s primary concerns, even though they’re clearly primary concerns for the American people. But this won’t be a speech, just as this isn’t a presidency, that’s concerned with the American people.

This will be a speech for those who Trump believes are the only real Americans, that 15 percent of the public who still strongly approve of his doings. Presumably, they share his obsession with his unrecognized, albeit entirely fictitious, victory in the 2020 presidential election, which he’s supposed to take another run at tonight. His goal appears to be stirring up the MAGA base to the point that they will harass and assail Republican senators still unwilling to pass the SAVE America Act, which would give Trump the power to strike millions of Americans—well, millions of Democrats, anyway—from the voter rolls. Republican senators would have to scrap the 60-vote cloture hurdle in order to do that, and even then, it’s not clear they could get to 51 yes votes. So far, that’s a bridge that some Republican senators—enough to keep that from happening—won’t cross. For his part, Trump has made clear that the SAVE America Act is really the only piece of legislation that matters to him, as a Democratic victory in the midterms would unleash investigations, at minimum, of his tsunami of misdeeds.

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