Trump's 2020 obsession
7/20/202626 min
President Trump has a midterm message that Republicans hate and Democrats love.
This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy and Denise Guerra, edited by Amina Al-Sadi, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Sean Rameswaram.
President Donald Trump addresses the nation from the White House on July 16, 2026. Photo by Saul Loeb/Pool/AFP via Getty Images.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSean Rameswaram· Host0:01
The president of the United States was at the Men's World Cup final yesterday in East Rutherford, New Jersey. He did the thing where he tried to photo bomb the winning team during their big trophy hoisting moment again. Based on recent World Cup final viewership numbers, more than a billion people were watching him embarrass himself. The president addressed the nation in primetime late last week, and he'd be lucky if a million people were watching him embarrass himself. NBC and ABC decided not to air it. Ditto over at CNN and MSN Now. Fox took it, and CBS took it, too, but they did the whole truth sandwich thing where they blast you with facts before and after to cushion the blow of what comes between. The speech was low energy and kinda confusing.
Donald Trump· Soundbite0:43
We had transgender for everybody.
Sean Rameswaram· Host0:46
The president's living in the past and trying to drum up concerns about election security in advance of the midterms. It's not worth spending a ton of time on what he said, but on Today Explained from Vox, we're gonna spend a ton of time on why he's saying it.
Speaker 30:58
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