This column was originally published by TheStatehouseFile.com.
By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com
July 17, 2026
At last, some sense of sanity has been restored.
President Donald Trump addressed the nation on a Thursday night to pound on one of his favorite and most farcical themes—his fantasy that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from him.
His repeated contentions that he didn’t lose to Democrat Joe Biden six years ago always have been ludicrous when they haven’t been delusional. His own attorney general at the time, William Barr, told him there was no evidence of the sort of voter fraud Trump claimed had occurred.
Trump launched more than 60 lawsuits claiming he was cheated. All the courts—including those presided over by Trump-appointed judges—found that his claims were without merit.
Since then, the president has failed to produce a single tangible piece of evidence to support his claims.
That’s because those claims are absurd.
What Trump’s argument—and it’s a considerable stretch to call it an actual argument—amounts to is something only a lunatic could believe. He asserts that the elections of 2016 and 2024—the elections over which Democrats Barack Obama and Joe Biden presided—were fair because Trump won them.
But the election of 2020—the one Trump oversaw—was rigged by the guys who were out of power at the time.
In other words, Trump’s whole case is a confession that he was stupid enough and incompetent enough to let someone steal his lunch while he was the most powerful person on the planet.
Idiotic as this argument is, the president for years managed to persuade folks dumb enough to buy oceanfront property in Nebraska from him if he offered it to them that there was substance to his complaints.
Whoever said there’s one born every minute drastically underestimated the rate at which gullible suckers reproduce.
Now, though, there are signs that the fog is lifting and something resembling clarity is reasserting itself.
Not long ago, Trump’s every hiccup and belch was covered as if it were evidence of the second coming. Cable news networks devoted hours to his utterances, even when they were outright gibberish.
When he went before the nation, though, to bleat once again about 2020, only Fox News carried the speech in its entirety. The others either did not air it or did so only until it became clear that it was going to be another rerun of “Fantasy Island.”
Even Fox showed unusual restraint.
Perhaps because the network had to cough up $787 million in a settlement with Dominion Voting Systems over Fox’s repeated championing of Trump’s false claims of election fraud in 2020, Fox hosts—even Trump confidant Sean Hannity—eschewed endorsing the president’s delusions this time around.
What’s more, outside the political sphere, the president’s fulminations provoked shrugs when they didn’t produce yawns.
There are reasons for that.
One is that Trump’s act, like the man himself, is getting old. People—even those who consider themselves his most fervent supporters—have seen this show before and heard his pitch one, two, three or 12 times too often for it to be as effective as it was 10 years ago.
The other, more important reason is that Trump has misread the moment. He’s playing political games at a time when people—even and maybe especially those who consider themselves his most fervent supporters—are concerned, even frightened about the condition of the country and the world.
He promised to bring prices under control, but inflation continues to rage while wage growth has stagnated. Job creation in the United States has slowed to a trickle.
Trump has tangled us up in a war with Iran that could take years, even decades, to unravel—and likely will leave the world a much more dangerous place in its aftermath.
At a time such as this one, people don’t want stunts. They have little patience for the guy they’ve placed their faith in wasting time on private vendettas when he should be focusing on them and their families.
Right now, they don’t want entertainment and diversions.
They want leadership.
They don’t need a TV reality show host in the Oval Office.
They need a president.
Donald Trump cannot grasp that because he’s been able to deny harsh realities his whole life.
Those who didn’t start out with $400-million inheritances never had that luxury.
That’s why the president’s act now has gone stale.
John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students. The views expressed are those of the author only and should not be attributed to Franklin College. Also, the views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.
