Donald Trump<\/a> hasn’t exactly been shy about the point of the prime-time speech he intends to deliver Thursday night. During an appearance on Newsmax this week, for example, the president peddled familiar, tiresome nonsense<\/a>: “Our elections are crooked, and we’ve got to straighten them out.”<\/p>\n

A day later at an unrelated White House event, he said he didn’t want to go into a lot of detail about what would be included in his address, though he did tell reporters<\/a>“What we’re going to be talking about Thursday is, it doesn’t get bigger, because without free and fair elections, you don’t have a country.”<\/p>\n

The president neglected to mention that Americans already have a country, as well as free and fair elections.<\/p>\n

But while the public waits to hear Trump’s latest conspiratorial pitch, it’s worth appreciating the fact that the format he has chosen has not exactly served him well.<\/p>\n

In recent decades, prime-time presidential addresses are generally reserved for major announcements about pressing matters of great significance. Trump’s prime-time presidential addresses, however, tend to be duds.<\/p>\n

Consider some of the more notable examples.<\/p>\n

April 1, 2026:<\/strong> The president delivered remarks on the war in Iran, though once it was over, no one seemed to have any idea<\/a> what the point of the speech was. He presented no plan. He offered no coherent vision. Trump meandered from dubious point to dubious point and peddled a contradictory message<\/a> about a possible endpoint, leaving many viewers even more concerned about the war. The New York Times’ Helene Cooper summarized<\/a>“Trump has concluded speaking after 19 minutes. … This was a rehash of his Truth Social posts over the past month.”<\/p>\n

The speech had no discernible effect on public attitudes or his approval rating.<\/p>\n

Dec. 17, 2025:<\/strong> Trump delivered a prime-time address, ostensibly to talk about how great the first year of his second term was. What he presented, however, was 18 minutes of combative presidential blame-shifting and excuse-making<\/a>packaged in the unsubtle desperation of a man who didn’t seem to understand why so much of the public failed to appreciate his systemic failures and embarrassments.<\/p>\n

The speech also had no discernible effect on public attitudes or his approval rating.<\/p>\n

March 11, 2020:<\/strong> As the Covid-19 pandemic started to wreak havoc in the United States, Trump delivered a weird Oval Office address in which he flubbed his own policy<\/a>prompting White House officials to spend the rest of the evening clarifying that the president didn’t exactly mean<\/a> what he said.<\/p>\n

The speech also had no discernible effect on public attitudes or his approval rating.<\/p>\n

Jan. 8, 2019:<\/strong> In the middle of a government shutdown he was responsible for, Trump delivered an Oval Office address for no apparent reason<\/a>. Over the course of nine minutes, he presented no plan, offered no material, endorsed no solution and had no facts<\/a>as evidenced by the avalanche<\/a> of falsehoods<\/a> he peddled to the nation. Rachel Maddow asked<\/a> as part of MS NOW’s live coverage, “Why did he just do this? … Why did this just happen?”<\/p>\n

The speech also had no discernible effect on public attitudes or his approval rating.<\/p>\n

Taken together, it’s hard not to wonder if this just isn’t Trump’s best format.<\/p>\n

A member of the president’s team told Axios<\/a> this week that he wants to do prime-time speeches because they “give a sense of importance to what he’s saying.”<\/p>\n

I don’t doubt that this is the idea<\/em> behind the addresses, but as Hearst columnist Philip Bump explained<\/a>Trump and his team apparently haven’t figured out “that he’s dragging the gravitas down rather than it lifting him up.”<\/p>\n

This post updates our related earlier coverage<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n
Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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