Bulwark Takes - Did Trump Just Have a “Biden Moment”?

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

Trump delivered a highly anticipated address on Iran, but instead of clarity, viewers got a confusing, low-energy speech that raised more questions than it answered. JVL and Andrew Egger give their takes on why the speech felt so off, from Trump abandoning his usual rambling to awkwardly sticking to a teleprompter and recycling his own Truth Social posts. They dig into the lack of a clear strategy, the strange war messaging, how the markets reacted so poorly in real time, and why even casual viewers were left asking: what was the point of this? If this speech was supposed to reassure Americans, it may have done the opposite.Read more from JVL's Triad: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/america-lost-iran-won-trump-shat

Hello, everyone. This is JVL here with my Bullwark colleague, Andrew Eger, author of The Morning Shots newsletter. Go to the bulwark.com, sign up for that. Get it in your inbox every morning, faux-free. Last night, the president of the United States spoke for 19 minutes, 21 minutes. He came out. He talked about Iran. He barely insulted our NATO allies. He sort of declared victory. He kind of set a timeline. for the end of operations. But it was some weird shit, wasn't it, Andrew? This is the first time I've ever seen a Trump speech. I mean, usually he pulls from his, you know, phrase bank.

He hits all of his own points and things like that. This was not that. This was, this was, he stuck completely to the prompter. He did not, as far as I could tell, make even a single diversion of more than a couple of seconds. Oh, I disagree. Oh, really? Really.

Maybe, maybe I missed a couple. But, but even the written stuff was strange this time because it was nearly all just stitched together from stuff he has already said on truth social over the couple of days previous, which is not something I've witnessed before. We came back from the dead a year ago, back from the now, the hottest country, everybody says, says we're the hottest country. It's true. It's true they say it.

So here's my question to you. Can you tell me why he gave this speech? Can you tell me what it accomplished, what was new or revised or who the audience was or what the expectations being set were? Because I came away from this and the thing I simply, and I still 12 hours later don't understand is why did he do this? Because I don't think it helped him at all. I think it only hurt him and there was no reason for it. Like, you didn't have to. He's not making any news.

He's not telling anybody anything new or anything they didn't know. He's not actually setting any conditions or walking back any conditions. It's just this big own goal. Is that wrong? No, there's this strange thing. And you've seen it a couple times now in the second Trump administration where something's going very badly. You know, last year it was sort of when the affordability talks. was sort of sneaking up on them and they had finally convinced the president,

and you need to make a bigger deal about all this stuff. They got him out there to do a couple of addresses, sort of along these lines. I think there was one prime time address specifically to talk about that concern. And the thought is, look, he's the man with the magic touch. He's got all this charisma. He has built his entire political career on getting up there and yapping. And plainly all of this kind of mediated messaging that we're doing is not working so well right now. if you go by the polls or anything else.

Let's just get him out there. Let him make his case. He's his own best spokesperson. He's his own best messenger. And I think that what we have seen is the, what we saw last night is the wide chasm, the disconnect between the way that plays out in their minds and what played out on stage. I mean, he was, he was, Trump always walks this line, right? Whenever he is, whenever he is trying to stay on message, whenever he is like, it gets really serious,

that is when he is likeliest to stick to the prompter. But as far as his own sort of abilities as a speaker are concerned, they are not in sort of like engagingly reading off of a prompter or engagingly reading off of a piece of paper. When he does rallies and things like that, when he comes alive is when he's like, I'm going to throw this out and we're just going to yap. And, you know, whatever his strengths, that's one of them

as just his ability to bullshit like on just sort of command. But last night wasn't that for the most part. Last night was mostly sticking to the script and it was wooden and it was all stuff he'd said before. And it was, there was no elimination. I mean, I talked to my, I talked to my parents just randomly. We were scheduled to do a video call last night and we talked right after the speech. And like we hardly ever talk politics like me and my family. But it like kind of came up and my parents were just kind of like, what were we supposed to get out of that?

Like there was no reassurance to us as just sort of like, you know, half paying attention. just Americans, people who have been affected by all of this, who are seeing their own lives get kind of like snarled up. And, and like they tuned in like to hear what the plan was. And they did not come away with anything, really. And, you know, that should worry Donald Trump a lot more than, than, you know, anything I might have to say about it. So let's, I mean, let's do a little figure skating judging on as a piece of speech making.

I suggested that that was reasonably close to Trump having a health event on live television. Where are you on that? I mean, like, his delivery was halting and disjointed and self-contradictory. And he did not look like he had all the mentals or the strongest cognitives last night. Is that, is that fair, unfair, different read? I think it's totally fair. The thing that I'm not sure about is how much of that is like new stuff and how much of that is just sort of like this sustained, at least over the last year or two, his real inability to like read a speech convincingly. And again, like this kind of goes back to the first term is like anytime he's sticking to the words on the page, he is very bad at putting any kind of spirit or life or or or verve into it at all.

He just kind of, I mean, I sympathize because it's kind of like when you do like an ad read on a podcast or whatever, you're kind of like. like where do I put the inflections or whatever? And like he's very much that way when it comes to anything that's just been put. I'm having a snake. Right. That sort of thing. Right. Yeah.

Deep cut for the real heads there. But, but this is the problem, right? Is like, only when he just kind of sets all that stuff aside and just sort of speaks from his own lizard brain, is he compelling as a public speaker. But they don't want him doing that for this because like, who knows what he would say? And yet, the other weird flip side of it is that,

Again, the speech was almost entirely cobbled together from his own prior lizard brain thoughts that he had put out on truth social. So it was like very strange. You know, like he was hitting all the same. Like the, you would think that somebody in like the speech writing process could impose on him to Mr. President, sir, let's not do that bit about how it's going to be everybody else's job to secure the straight of Hormuz. The oil markets are not going to like that in the slightest. Please can we just like just just mouth, gum some, gum some reassuring sound. notes about how we're going to make sure that that's all taken care of and it's going to be fine. And maybe we don't have a plan, but let's not like talk about the fact that that's going to be

somebody else's responsibility. And instead, he just went out there and pretty much word for word made that same point. The countries of the world that do receive oil through the hormones straight must take care of that passage. They must cherish it. They must grab it and cherish it. They can do it easily. We will be helpful. But they should take the lead in particular. the oil that they so desperately depend on. And the oil markets puked today on account of that. Where are you on what a responsible speechwriter would have said all about the idea of saying, look, this isn't going to be as long as World War I or World War II or Vietnam.

So quit your crying with its 35 days. 35. It's not many days. Would you have a speechwriter? Would you have said, sir, please don't. reassure people by saying this will be shorter than World War I. The Great War, the war, the war set the entire century on fire for a hundred years. Pete Hickset said the same, similar thing in his briefing the other day, I mean, he's just sort of like an aside, but he's like, in only a month, we've accomplished and then he just kind of stopped himself.

And he's like, just one month. Like, quit your bellyache in people. Like, this is, we have not yet begun to fight. It's kind of like the vibe of all of this. And it's strange because, like, you can until they are actually aggrieved. You're like, come on. Can't you give us a little credit? Can't you give us a little trust? And it's like, well, no, we can't. You didn't sell us on this war ahead of time. You still haven't sold us on this war. You still haven't asked Congress to do anything about this. Since day one, you yourselves have been saying, don't worry, don't worry, we're in, we're out. You're barely going to notice. It's going to be this little excursion like Donald Trump likes to keep saying, like they are the ones who up until now have been saying, you don't need to worry

your pretty little head. This is barely going to like register in your life at all. And so now that it is plain that it is registering with, you know, energy prices going berserk everywhere, it's amazing to see them kind of say, well, look, like, like, you know, keep your hair on to to a certain degree. I mean, and you ask about the responsible speechwriter thing. Like, I don't, I don't know. It's so hard even to, like, put yourself in a headspace of what, like, what would mean to be a responsible speech writer for this guy? Like, even as I'm sitting here doing analysis, it's hard to just break out of this, like, why aren't you doing, why aren't you lying more effectively, Donald Trump?

Why aren't you doing like the normal thing that you would do under these circumstances? Last question about the mentals. This is entrapment. And so I'm sorry. I believe that you are one of the people who like me watched that meant again, if I'm speaking incorrectly for you, please correct me. When Trump and Biden had their first debate, I believe that you like me were of the opinion while it was happening that Joe Biden was in the process.

of disqualifying himself from the presidency right there, that he was having a health event on national television and that his campaign could not survive it, in that the Democratic Party would obviously have to replace him. Purely on the merits, do you think that Trump's performance last night was categorically better than Joe Biden's debate performance on the same level as Joe Biden's debate performance or worse than Joe Biden's debate performance. Purely on the merits or purely on the aesthetics or because it's hard on on one level. The task was much easier, right?

The task was much easier. All he had to do is stand up there and read off a piece of paper. And in that sense, you compare it, I don't know, to Joe Biden's state of the union, like a couple months before the debate where everybody, I think we kind of found it a little bit reassuring that he could still get up there and summon the fire and everything like that. Donald Trump did not do last night. So in that respect, you could almost call it worse, right? The flip side of that is that when Trump is extemporaneous, he does still seem to have, like, you know, more of an ability to just kind of like riff.

And, I mean, like, that's the part of his brain that's going to die last. Like, honestly, when he's in the nursing home and he's 106 years old and he cannot remember the names of his own, you know, children or anything like that, he will still be able to do like the spiel. It sounds good, right? The voice is weak. This is a game. And it's all the atmospherics of, like, you know, 100. It sounds like a guy who was actually in control of his mentals. Yeah.

And I think, and I think, too, like, I mean, this is a point that Tim, Tim makes all the time. So the listeners have probably heard it by now. But, like, commentators and just sort of like anti-Trump sort of analysts are so snake bit from the first term of doing any discourse that would ever sound like the walls are closing in around Donald Trump, right? Like, ah, you know, I'd like to see old Donnie Trump wiggle out of this jam. And then he does and you look kind of silly. It's like, ah, well, nevertheless, like that old tweet. But he's not in a good place mentally, obviously. He does not have his fastball like he used to.

He's getting older. People are noticing that. And he has plainly just lost control of the world in a way that is increasingly undeniable for any observer, for any onlooker. They knew that going into the speech. They see things kind of like falling apart around them. They were seeing things falling apart around them before this war started. You know, as long ago as last November, when we were getting, you know, electoral results, Democrats were overperforming like crazy because people didn't like Donald Trump and that was the only reason.

I mean, like that was the central, the main reason. And now, you know, we're four or five months along from that. And from that already extraordinarily low baseline for the president, he has now gotten us embroiled in this new sort of all-encompassing economic disaster of a military entanglement abroad. And people like, people know that he did it. People are seeing no benefits from it. They have to take his word for it that there are benefits coming. And maybe there are some, you know, like we've talked plenty about. about the badness of the Iranian regime.

But the point is that they have to take his word. They do not see that at all in their lives. They only see the negatives. And so they hear, oh, the president's going to speak about this. Maybe we ought to tune in. Maybe we haven't been following along with the news, but we've been following along with the rising costs of lots of different things. And they tune in and they see that.

And that's not a guy in control. That's not a guy who is giving them anything to cling on to. That's not a guy who in the way that he carries himself or the way that he looks or that he sounds, it gives them any confidence that he is going to sort of like pull the plane out of this dive, right? And I think that, and again, all of this, like he could, he could land the plane tomorrow and everything could go back to like sort of normal and we'd suffer through like weeks and weeks of unsnarling supply chains in the straight-oformoos and all that. But even if even if that weren't the case, even if he could snap his fingers and Iran like blinked back overnight to the way it was before, that still leaves him in exactly the political plan. that he was in in November, losing contests left and right, with now four or five months less time to fix all those problems that, you know, going into these midterms. So he's, he is in

a catastrophic political situation right this second. And, and he digs it worse and worse every day. Let me run a theory I have by you. I think that last night's address was meaningful in one way, which is that I think we can read it as being that ground troops are now off the table. Let me explain why. Trump did not say anything about ground troops. He left it completely off the table. Like you didn't rule them in, rule them out,

didn't even mention the possibility of them. Didn't say anything about it. I think, as a matter of political calculus, that before this speech, if he had sent the Marines to Carg Island, it would have been deeply unpopular. Having given this speech and not said word one about the possibility of ground troops, if he were to now go in and deploy ground forces, the political consequences would be two or three X worse.

Because he talked to people. He gave a statement about Iran. If he was going to use ground forces, this was the time to tell people. And instead, he really, he was leading people to believe with that speech by not mentioning it and by talking about bombing them to their Stone Age that it was only going to be air. And so I think just as trying to interpret the politics of this, if you assume that he is, I mean, everything he's doing is unpopular right now. But if you assume like the absolute minimal baseline, don't try to fuck up your own political situation. you can't go and do ground forces after asking for time to talk to America about Iran and then not saying them at all. And then five days later, 10 days later, you're dropping paratroopers in or

something. Is that crazy? Because Sam and Marks thought that I was crazy when I tried to make this case yesterday. They were like, no, Trump can do anything he wants at any time. He's a mad dog. And fair. heard and understood. I think if you were asking me to like maybe try to do a synthesis between those two views, what I might say is that I agree with the way that you are analyzing the president's current mental model of this moment. Like if he were planning now to perhaps do ground troops four or five days from now, this was his opportunity to at least sort of soften the American public up on that level.

And instead, you know, I think it does suggest, I totally agree with you that it suggests that instead Trump's current model as well as just sort of put a bunch more bodies like just outside of Iranian territory as a way of hopefully increasing the pressure. Like they're constantly groping toward whatever breaking point they hope must exist for the Iranian regime just over the horizon. That's why, you know, despite the fact that bombardment has not yet achieved these aims, they keep going coming out day after day and saying, today is going to be the biggest day of bombardment yet, because they just think, like, somewhere, somewhere they have to be able to hit that magic moment where suddenly Iran just capitulates and gives them everything that they want.

But, I mean, the one caveat that I would say is totally in agreement with Sam and Mark is that, like, there just are no load-bearing pillars in Trump's mind that persist, right? Like, he could wake up tomorrow and be like, well, maybe I should have said something, but screw it, you know, that's a problem for past Donald Trump and we're going in. And like, it could happen.

It could happen. I don't know. I think your analysis of what the likeliest situation is based on his current mental model is basically accurate. So while he was speaking last night, the futures market for oil did a hockey stick line go up. The futures market for the SMP 500 did hockey stick line go up? did hockey stick line go down. It was amazing to watch. And I did, I mean, again, part of me did think about market manipulation.

And I wondered is, you know, is somebody with an interesting username, you know, Taryn Bump. Is Taryn Bump out there trading or shorting on these things? Who could say? Is he totally immune to market signals now? because as recently as Liberation Day, one year ago to almost like a year and a day ago, right, he was still reasonably sensitive to what the market did. And he would do his tacoing and he would chicken out and then the bond market would resettle.

And do you see any signs that he is still responsive to markets? I mean, he must be thinking about it, which is why he does put out his weird statements like at 7.30 on a Monday morning sometimes because he wants the markets to pop up or something like that. But on the other hand, maybe he doesn't really care. I don't know. What is your read on this? There has been, I have so many different sort of like maybe somewhat even contradictory thoughts about all this. And I've been chewing over it a lot. I wrote in morning shots this week about the sort of increasing brokenness of the taco signal. where basically, you know, the more that markets price in the possibility that a market crash will pull Trump out of something, the more basically all of the market players are incentivized then to sort of hold through the weird economic. Right? Like if Trump says there's going to be this insane policy and everybody sells and then Trump sees that everybody sold and he's like, whoops, I guess I better taco. I guess the markets hated that. I better go a different direction. Then the people who didn't sell are,

the ones who, you know, come out ahead. But if, if traders internalize that lesson and they internalize, well, Trump did the crazy policy and that's going to crash the market and that's going to make Trump back off, so maybe I shouldn't sell. Maybe I should hold. Then the market doesn't crash. Trump doesn't get the signal and the policy never gets pulled out. And then that incentivizes people, oh, wait, maybe I should have sold. So there's this whole strange, you know, paradox in the middle of all that. And I think that has doled the signal for this. I mean, like, we haven't seen anything like Liberation Day was the single most insane economic thing he's done. I think even in, I mean, I would actually need to ask, I'm sure this is something real experts on these two, these, you know,

trade and oil commodities markets could maybe argue about which of the two was actually straightforwardly more of an economic sort of suicide pact. They reacted very quickly, you know, it took one week and basically annihilated the bond market and then he backed off. And today, I mean, the biggest thing that has led me to think that, that, that has led me to think that, that traders don't really know now how to price their own taco model right now is the fact that the markets went so nuts off of this speech, which contained no new news. This speech was, I mean, and this is what I'm writing about for morning shots tomorrow,

so it's a little bit of a preview. But, like, it was all stuff he'd already put on truth social. It was all stuff that, in theory, markets already should have seen and digested. But for some reason, because of the way that they view that form of communication, or that maybe they thought he was just spouting off when he was posting there. But now that it's part of a primetime address, it's like real new U.S. policy in a way that it wasn't before. And so it's more real. But like, Trump was already signaling for days that he has basically washed his hands of the Strait of Hormuz.

And it wasn't until he said that in the speech that the oil markets went berserk. So I genuinely don't know how to model that behavior. It kind of seems to me like they should have known about it before. And I don't know. There's such a like chicken and egg thing when it comes to Trump's behavior and the market's behavior and who's reacting to who. But we are in sort of a weird new sort of post taco world with some of this stuff. It seems to me. Well, everybody go over to the bulwark.com and sign up for Andrew Eggers Morningshots newsletter.

It is fantastic. It's also free. How can you turn down the magical price of free? And we'll be back again, with more great news from this war that's going so well that we're winning like you can't even believe because we're so hot right now as a country. We're even hotter than Hansel. Good luck, America.