Trump wasn't addressing the kind of person who picks holes in rhetoric. Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
We’d almost never heard him so quiet. The pumped-up demagogue of “American carnage”, the all-caps rage-tweeter we meet during the White House’s “executive time”, seemed to be nowhere in evidence when Donald Trump took to the podium in the White House in the small hours of this morning. He was lucid, wan, a little hoarse in the voice.
That was the really weird thing: almost everybody had predicted that this speech, or a version of it, would come. Pretty much everyone, too, would have predicted an incidental violation of the Hatch act, a non-existent attitude to masks and social distancing in the audience, and the presumptuous use of “Hail to the Chief” as walking-on music. All that stuff is what betting pundits would call “priced in”.
But the Trump who took the podium was not what we’d expected. He seemed relaxed. He even opened with a joke: “This is without question the latest news conference I’ve ever had,” he said. He sounded wry — a tone not hitherto identifiable in his register. “We love you!” someone shouted out, and he looked a little bashful. He had said many times the day before that he hadn’t prepared a speech. That is itself is a rhetorical strategy; to seem spontaneous is to seem authentic.
He modestly thanked “the American people” for “their tremendous support” and said in a downbeat way that “millions and millions of people voted for us tonight — and a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people, and we won’t stand for it. We will not stand for it.” That was the payload — or, at least, the foreshadowing of it. Good rhetorical tactic: say what you’re going to say, then say it, then say that you’ve said it.
He was, in effect, teasing the theme of his speech. So far, though, the velvet glove. He sounded a little sad, a little thoughtful. As he repeated the phrase “we won’t stand for it” he unpacked the contraction in his auxiliary verb: “We will not stand for it.” That “not”, standing alone, gets a bit more emphasis; puts a bit more steel and determination into the phrase. But still, it was downbeat: regret rather than anger. Here is the tone of the teacher in the old joke about the inflatable school, telling off the little boy with the pin: “You’ve let me down, you’ve let your classmates down… You’ve let the whole school down.”
All this was an effective approach at the level of tone. The basic argument of his speech — the logos of it — was to make a baseless claim that the election was being stolen, and to protest before the results were even in that it was unfair and that he wouldn’t accept its legitimacy. But had he come out thundering – had he looked personally aggrieved, flushed of face and bombastic – he’d have looked weaker than he did. He’d have made it nakedly about his own ego and his own interests.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeWhat Mr Leith quite simply fails to acknowledge – amid his talk of “rhetoric” – is that vote counting mysteriously stopped in several states when it looked as though Trump were ahead. Turning off the engines of a major election on the excuse of “fatigue” smells like a giant, Democrat rat to many of us and gives ballast to Trump’s insistence that the presidency is being stolen. So prior to “rhetoric” is the question of truth: what, exactly, is going on? It won’t do to claim, with the establishment herd, that Trump is up to his old tricks – for most of the tricks during his term in office were performed by the left, the Democrats and the establishment. Russia investigation? A nothing. Impeachment? Vexatious litigation. The urinating “fille de joie”? A fiction. On the other hand, the Biden family’s involvement in shady Ukrainian business deals? Accurately reported but suppressed. With a history of slant, bias and deep state hostility to Trump as long as your arm, it would be no surprise to learn that the Dems are gerrymandering the vote just as hard as they can. And until and unless the Mr Leiths and the rest of the MSM can acknowledge this, then mistrust and division will just grow and grow.
here here
Fatigue. On the night when the staff had one job. A night that was marked on the calendar years in advance. I covered a few elections in a previous life and do not recall a single case of the staff packing it in for the night with votes left to tally. They might use multiple shifts to keep the process and there were periodic recounts, but never an outright stoppage.
Maybe they were systematically bribed? I wouldn’t put it past the Dems.
Of course fraud is being perpetrated on a wide scale basis. How stupendously convenient for Democratic urban areas to withhold their vote totals until they knew exactly how many it would take to steal the election from Mr. Trump and his voters. These are not understaffed backwaters overwhelmed with counting, but well-staffed areas of the country.
This is simply theft. Of course the media will massage the truth to fit their desire and spin a narrative, but Trump and his voters will not stand for it.
This will not end well. Nor should it, frankly.
Interested to know what sort of ‘end’ you are recommending here when you say ‘Nor should it’? Wanting something to end badly is a rare instinct. Perhaps you meant ‘End badly for X and well for Y’?
There will be many court fights. Fortunately the Supreme Court has several originalists who will guide the court to the right decision on each suit.
“convenience” is not fraud and is not theft. You have no evidence.
But, rest assured, the evidence will be revealed.
The counting just stopped because the Democrats need some time to work out how many votes they have to falsify and stuff into the boxes to steal the election.
Yep, it’s totally rigged, as we more or less expected.
John Kennedy A President I admired, Had Chicago ”Rat F***” with mafia votes in November 1960, unfortunately he & Robert kennedy came down hard on mafia activities ,especially in las vegas, he kept his distance from Frank sinatra,this was mentioned in William manchester book,which swallowed Warren report fiction..
You right wingers understand, your made up worries about almost non existent voter fraud aside, you could have solved this problem yourselves if you had made sure states were all able to count postal votes BEFORE election day, and not after? Going out of your way to make it as hard as possible to vote, trying to stop people from mail in voting (which works fine in every other democracy btw) then trying to cut off votes at the back end without counting them, you are literally creating the problem you are complaining about. You either want all votes to count to get the true reflection of what a population want, or you are a sham. Pick one.
Democrats might have had PTSD after 2016…but Republicans have acquired it after 4 years of constant obstruction: The Russia-Russia-Russia investigation. The Faux-impeachment. The ripping-the-skin-off of Supreme Court Justice Cavanaugh. The Obama/ Biden Administration wiretapping the incoming Trump Administration, Nancy Pelosi ripping up Trump’s speech behind his back…it went on and on and on…there was no let up. I for one became a newly minted Republican under Trump, but let’s see if the party can hold onto me and folks like me. For sure, I will never, ever vote Democrat again. The ‘new PTSD’.
You can’t win against the ‘Fake News’ argument. It’s the magic bullet that never misses.
Mail in votes do not work for the simple reason that there is no check the real voter has voted. They can be 1. harvested, 2. altered or 3. binned, 1+2 are near impossible with in-person votes and 3. is hard to get away with once the vote is in the count. A friend of mine in UK caught a ballot box in the Thames near Abingdon a few days after one of the Thatcher elections. He was after pike and maybe trout. Though the vote slips had gone mushy the box still had its district ID, which he traced to a polling station in Blackbird Leys, and ovewhelmingly leftwing district populated by low wage and benefits claimants. So you can never rule anything out. Hopefully the cops and ultimately SCOTUS will sort out the cluster-copulation that is unfolding in Michigan, Pennsylvania and probably Wisconsin
There’s already a lawsuit about a PA official helping correct at least 50 voters with their ‘mail-in’ ballots
Mail-in voting is massively vulnerable to fraud, and there have been all manner of scams going on in this election, as Project Veritas proved.
That is not what the experts on the subject say. The right wing is justl like Trump – they make statement utterly devoid of veracity
“The experts,” yes…who tell us to not believe our lying eyes. Right.
when to count those votes is up to individual states. You know this, right? Right? And few things here are easier to do than voting. Hard as possible? I can’t even take that seriously.
I’ll pick four; Philly, Atlanta, Detroit and Las Vegas. Each is playing a part in this show and each has a sad history of corruption. This stinks.
Strange to me how a business that needs to operate 24/7/365 can figure out how to staff themselves with a second and third shift, but an election that takes place once every four years think it’s OK to have one crew, shut them down, and leave a bunch of ballots sitting in a dark room for eight hours. What could go wrong?
Sure the ‘rats are trying to steal the election via voter fraud, but can they do so without leaving an evidence trail that investigators and the judiciary can find? i doubt it very much
This is why the use of government issued ID at the polls is needed. Without that you can NEVER be sure there wasn’t voter fraud. To say it doesn’t exist is just wishful thinking.
The problem is who will the investigators be? With their track record would you trust the FBI to investigate the irregularities honestly? I wouldn’t.
The FBI will do nothing. Like the CIA they are part of the Deep State swamp and want Trump gone.
That is a very naive view. The Democrats have a long history of ballot rigging, witness JFK in Illinois in 1960 and LBJ in the Box 13 Scandal. The latter ominously involved the sudden appearance of sufficient hitherto unknown ballot papers to swing the election in favour of LBJ .
In neither case were the perpetrators held to account and this was despite,in the case of the Box 13 Scandal, the clearest evidence of fraud.
This is why the DP is so keen to postal balloting. It is an open invitation to election fraud.
I fear you may be right but the motivation behind not just the GOP and their lawyers but also the few officials who put constitution over party may be too much for the democrats despite their 200 years of practice.
we can put a missile through a keyhole from hundreds of miles out, but cannot handle something as basic as the timely and accurate counting of votes. In previous cycles, it was journalism that undermined its credibility. This time, it was pollsters, now joined by those who run elections systems. Scanners break down, poll watchers physically barred from doing their jobs, voting stopped just because, significant leads evaporating over mystery ballots that invariably favor the same candidate across numerous states. Once more, the public trust is eroded and even if Trump is declared the winner, half the people won’t buy it.
It does look bad that Trump was winning and the counting mysteriously stopped. It needs to be investigated properly and fairly even if there has to be a re-vote.
Revote can’t happen – not in constitution
Recounts can happen
Brilliant analysis. In many ways Trump has a better grasp of rhetoric than even Obama
I’m not sure about that. Obama’s rhetoric was far superior to Trump’s. Of course, it was largely empty rhetoric that sold millions of people down the river, but never mind that.
Had Trump’s rhetoric matched the overall rightness and success of his policies, he would surely have been re-elected with a massive majority.
Did you ever see Obama on one of the occasions his autocue failed? He simply dried up. The man was as fake as his birth certificate.
Obama’s rhetoric was read from a screen and was written by his smart guys. On his own, Barrack couldn’t put two sentences together.
I read one of Obama’s books. He can write. So I’m sure he wrote, or substantially contributed to, many of his speeches. But his book was like his speeches – impressive at the time but later on you think ‘Hang on…’. And then you realise that there was nothing really there.
You think he actually wrote his books? Most pols get ghost writers. I can’t imagine he sat at a laptop and banged it out. Too lazy.
You mean one of Bill Ayres books?
Simply not true as any serious interview with Obama shows. Tell me, where do you get these ideas?
What an utter pile of twaddle….from someone in Manchester, in the UK. Trump’s sole point, as I understand it, is that he was ahead in the count in the States concerned…..and for some ‘bizarre’ reason, the counting was stopped. It doesn’t take an Einstein to figure out what the motivation behind that move could be. A kid in the first grade could work it out. Pity, a ‘journalist’ then tries to dissect his acceptance speech to make it appear as something else. WTF has happened to America?
My wife’s maiden name is ‘Pelosi’ ,an ancestry that can be traced to the mountainous region above Naples, which we’ve visited many times. Pity her namesake in the Senate is such a trechourous piece of garbage, that doing a ‘Mussolini’ on her, would let her off lightly.
Well it shows how perceptions can differ. I thought Trump looked worried for the first time as if he sensed the game was up
I’m no conservative but I thought conservatism used to stand for something….I thought, even if we have different priorities, I understand where they’re coming from: that the constitution is important and should be upheld, that the traditions and history of a country were to be celebrated, that national identity and pride is important.
I don’t recognise these so-called conservatives in thrall to this demagogue, following his every word no matter how much it threatens those very pillars that conservatism used to see as its duty to defend. What is more American than the belief in democracy, in everyone having a voice in electing a leader, in the protections of the constitution enabling the people to wield more power than the President?
The people defending Trump for trying to prevent millions of people from having their votes counted – these people aren’t conservatives. If you’re supporting someone who attempts to prevent American citizens from having their say in a democratic election, you aren’t even proud to be American, at least not in any form I recognise. You’re in thrall to a cult of one man. It’s tragic.
Belief in a democracy is impossible without faith in the way the vote is counted. The American system is not just terrible, to be as bad as it is takes concerted continuous diligent effort.
You don’t need ‘faith’ in the way the vote is counted, there is plenty of objective evidence that it is fair. If you are willing to believe that the vote is illegitimate despite no evidence to that, purely because one man says so, you believe in the power of one man over the American people and you are a cultist.
You make it easy to imagine your response to a bank clerk scrutinizing your wad of Franklins for counterfeits. (“You’re trampling my rights,” etc.)
For you are question-beggaring. Your response to “This shouldn’t continue, it should stop and be investigated because it’s corrupt” is “It doesn’t need to be investigated, because it is not corrupt. Because it is not corrupt, it is good, and should continue.”
Your indignant accusations of cult victims preventing Americans from having their say is premature if the existence of those Americans has not been verified.
Sam, trying to parse a Trump speech for coherence is like sifting a toilet’s contents looking for the ‘recipe’ of the meal that went into it.
That sentence was a exquisite use of the English language. Bravo!!!
Ah, the famously rational, tranquil and dispassionate left wing mind at work! No room for puerile insults here, is there? You’re an example to us all, sir!
He’s the real hero.
The fact is, that there are irregularities and that the ones we know of sofar are all in Biden’s favour, which just made Trump snap.
Most notably the 130.000 all-Biden votes turning up suddenly in Michigan.
If that wasn’t fishy, similarly harvested boxes with more all-Bidden and also all-Trump votes would have turned up too, but haven’t.
There is also an usual discrepancy between Trump votes and Republican Senator votes in the swing states, see zero edge story today.
There are also significant differences between registered voter totals and total votes casted, incidents of people born in the 19th century having voted, Trump’s observers not being granted access and so on.
There is also a story about water marks having secretly been put on the ballot papers to identify fraudulent ones later, we’ll see if that is true and relevant or not.
This system, the execution of that election and it’s coverage, is nothing to be proud of, for anyone.
Hi, can you link to any evidence of any of the above? Thanks!
https://www.americanthinker…
https://issuesinsights.com/…
https://blog.nomorefakenews…
https://m.youtube.com/watch…
https://www.achgut.com/arti…
I’ve deactivated Facebook and Twitter, have stopped watching the BBC, have cancelled my subscription to The Spectator and it now looks like I’ll have to give up on Unherd. Because, in direct contradiction to its name, on the subject of Trump the site is simply one of many sheep following the accepted narrative.
That there have been serious irregularities in the counting of votes in the presidential election is obvious to anyone who has managed to detach themselves from the mainstream media teat. Or was just watching the votes come in on the night. The obstruction of Republican poll-watchers, the dead voting in Phillie, unexplained ‘glitches’ turning Trump votes blue – these bear investigating. (And they are being investigated.) But, sure, let’s frame it as Trump being petulant for daring to use the ‘f’ word.
Sorry, Unherd, but you’re going to have to grow a pair if you want me to stick around.
Yes, Mr Denis, you may be right but the article was about rhetoric and Mr Leith has every right to focus on this issue.
Not every article can deal with every point of view and there are times when a specific point needs to be made without providing nods of acknowledgement to every one of the wider issues, each one of which may be perfectly legitimate
Fair enough, but perhaps you will agree that one of the most famous strokes of sophistry is to focus on a second order issue in order to dodge the most salient. I put it to you that by speaking of Trump’s rhetoric in the current context, Mr Leith is downgrading or even denigrating that salient issue: who actually won? I further submit that if the deep state in alliance with an unprecedentedly biased media have conspired in the subversion of a legally elected administration, they have crossed a line which may well mean the decline of the west. Corruption is a cancer; it erodes trust, makes mock of democracy and turns freedom into a sham. True, Trump himself may be guilty as charged; but without repeating myself, there is plenty of apparent evidence that this is the reverse of the truth.
Correct. The media and Donkeys have turned the US into a low trust society – not that Trump hasn’t contributed as well.
Solid evidence is the boarding up of the central Democratic cities; they know quite well that if Trump is victorious there will be rioting, vandalism, looting, and arson. If Biden wins, there will be peace … for the moment.
Biden supporter here, and I agree with you. Laughably ironic, too, as the rioters, vandals, looters, and arsonists will inevitably come from the too-pure-to-vote crowd that routinely helps hand elections to Republicans.
Out of curiosity, who runs the Deep State? Why would they not want Trump to win? Are lizard-people involved?
Answers: anti-nationalist globalists; because he’s an anti-globalist nationalist; and the only lizard people are in your oh-so rational and tranquil imagination.
It baffles me that “normal” American people, in fact any “normal” person, wouldn’t want to know if the election had been fixed. It doesn’t matter who your “side” are, if there is something illegal going on here then it is unlikely the perpetrators would stop there, and if the democrats are involved then somebody else is pulling their strings so they are deeply compromised because you would think at some point payment for services will be required. Hopefully it turns out to be coincidence, because if it is not there is no going back from such a scandal.
Quite so. Fix an election and you’ve crossed a line – an important moral line which makes all the difference between Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, for the fear of being found out, the thought of further advantage and a growing sense of freedom from all restraint gives headlong momentum to the inner corruption.
That’s how you know a country and its people are circling the southern latitudes of the bowl: when they’re cool with corruption if it’s on their ‘side’. I hear a great flushing sound.
Trump is a beautiful man.
Sam, I’m afraid is simply the Brits Lord Snooty RINO, on a par with Justin Webb and the appalling Jon Sopel( free, fair and impartial ..lying Georgetown pot belly limp crimp in a tax funded linen suit).
Sorry USA….these types are probably our revenge for you sending us Bonnie Grier( who?) and Paul Gambaccini( no, me neither).
Sam won’t have bothered about Bidens family corruption, his appalling dementia and his shouting at clouds in front of three hired cars and his nurse minding his dog…granddaughter…Beau….wife, sister? You know…the thing?
No Sam gives us no semantic critique about Corn poppery , of Nobel Prize nominations, of sorting IS, reining in China and NATO, of not killing any US soldiers in a JVL Benghazi Fast and Furious Scam. No…he’s rude and might not portray good table manners at the Press Club….how outre?
As for those phenomenal ,once in a lifetime rallies?…pah! Populist and racist like his low info rubes and chumps.
They’ll not bother that we burned their ballots and fiddled the count in Dem areas….it’s only democracy and there’s a New Reset coming ..California with Portland Spices.
Sam won’t mind. Maybe a McCain might restore the party to its usual hogtied irrelevance , as the coastal Brownshirts get Soros funding to set up the civil war.
Trump has been cheated, whether his followers will settle up with Antifa and the condescending media liars is up to them.
By then Sam will be safely parsing stuff on frying pigs in duvets….he’s stylish like that, BLM could learn from his tog exposition between a blanket and a duvet
As I say, sorry USA.. from Alastair Cooke and Charles Wheeler to Piers Morgan and Soapy Sam here?…yeek!
Can some politico explain to me why the political class and commentariat in the USA is so shocked and outraged by the idea of candidates claiming victory before it is achieved? What’s the fear? What’s the advantage?
So basically he was saying “We’ll pull through this providing all you Trumpers come over the fence to our way of thinking” Thank the good Lord we don’t have politicians and vomit inducing speeches and ceremonies like this in the UK.
bb
What’s even more amazing is how many readers on this website have wholly swallawed Trump’s baseless conspiracy theories of mail fraud without a shred of evudence. This is the clearest indication yet that Trump’s supporters behave in a cult-like fashion, impervious to reason or ecidence.
There have been countless historical examples of states’ votes being tallied for days before a proper result, or the election not being decided on the first day. It has been known for ages that the majority of mail-in votes would be democrat. It has been very well established that Republicans have worked hard to refuse states the right to count votes early, therefore setting themselves up to claim an early victory.
And yet here we are, with all the lies, sophistry and baseless conspiracy theories that were predicted and expected. It brings a whole new meaning to the word gaslighting. This really is how democracy dies.
Well, when you know the truth, why let the facts bother you?
Surely if your assertion that the ‘uncounted’ votes were legitimate Democrat votes, why stop the counting? Why not have shifts standing by to continue the count? I don’t know what the difficulty is these days in determining ‘identity’ and authenticity of votes. Everyone has a National Insurance number (UK) so presumably everybody in the US over the age of 18 has a Social Security number or tax reference or some other form of ID. Get a computer only to print out those names and you’re good to go surely, whether the person votes in person with their ID or postal. The biggest fraud available then would be in the actual counting room and any forged ballot papers. These could all be cross-checked with the issuing database of Social Security ballots issued…..Am I missing something here, but it doesn’t seem to be a difficult thing to achieve.
Evidence requires that it be looked for and that it is allowed to be found. There was that peculiar thing in MI where a number of people deep into their 100s had requested mail in ballots, received them, and then returned them. For a while people were going through lists of dead people to see how many they could find — reports are in the 100s — and then MI closed down the website that was allowing this evidence to be gathered.
I see the Trumpettes are back on the defensive today!
When the Snowflake-in-Chief whinges about the election being a ‘fraud’ you have to wonder – under whose watch?
The same with the violence on the streets during the summer. Under. Whose. Watch?
Yes, the pedant could say – but these things are not under his control. Just like police brutality. Black on Black violence. Drugs. Gangs. Illegal immigration. Russian influence. Chinese dumping. Mexico paying for/building the (non Wall).
In fact, it’s hard to see what he has done and can do. So why bother being president?
On an impartial note – it’s obvious the Democrats think the same. Which is why they put up a non-entity!
The same with the violence on the streets during the summer. Under. Whose. Watch?
under the watch of Dem mayors and governors, why do you ask? On the occasion that Trump offered help, they rejected it.
“Trump offered help” ha ha. Even he didn’t put it that way!
Some federal agents went in after a federal building was attacked with federal employees inside and the Dem mayor of Portland wet his pants. The same Portland where non-stop mayhem has caused billions in damage.
He claimed this would happen under a Dem president but it happened under a his presidency!!
Hack rhetoric. A steaming pile. In the middle. Of a not-bad. Discussion.
What a load of rubbish. He is a moron and detestable. He now is threatening to stop the ballots being counted. He is evil
Wipe off the spittle and take one of your pills.
Robin, you miss spelled shallots.
Increase your prozac prescription-it will help you cope.
“Evil” would imply a malign intelligence. Trump is more stupidly destructive. He has a purely self-serving agenda. He doesn’t explicitly wage a campaign against democracy, it just suffers collateral damage from his one-man ego circus.
You wrote <<“Evil” would imply a malign intelligence. >> Does it require intelligence to assault women? I think that action can be unintelligently evil.