Listen To This Story

There’s a scene at the end of the classic film Singin’ in the Rain in which the villainess Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) gets her comeuppance bigly. 

After the screening of her new “talkie” musical film with her screen partner Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly), in which her voice was dubbed by the uncredited Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds), the wowed audience clamors for a speech and a song. 

The studio head knows that, in real life, Lamont’s high, nasal voice sounds like a dentist’s drill, that she has the diction of a fishmonger, and is tone-deaf to boot. So at first he tries to dissuade her, pleading with her as she demands airtime and threatens all sorts of consequences if she is stopped. 

Then Lockwood, bulb lighting up over his head, has a better idea: Let her talk! And, better yet, let her “sing” — that is, lip-synch — the lyrics while Kathy, concealed behind the curtain, is ordered to do the actual singing. Then Lockwood and buddies gleefully part the curtain mid-song — exposing the truth and the fraud.

Letting the Tone-Deaf Crooner Sing

Far be it from me to lavish undeserved praise on our legacy media — least of all on our broadcast and cable networks, whose corporate masters, desperate to stay out of Donald Trump’s doghouse, have given invertebrates everywhere a bad name. 

It has been noted that, while refusing to preempt their lucrative prime-time programming for certain serious addresses by past presidents, all the networks carried Trump live Wednesday night for what turned out to be a teleprompted, lie-saturated campaign rally from the White House.

But before we conclude this was another example of the media in the tank for Trump, consider the Lockwood bulb. It might just have lit up above the heads of a network or two: Give Trump the airtime, not only at their own expense but — more significantly — at his.

Critics have argued that the president had nothing momentous to say (which is true) and that the networks all knew that in advance (which may also be true) — no declaration of war on Venezuela, no firing of Susie Wiles, no peace plan, no new energy initiative, and certainly no confession of fault of any kind for any of the myriad things that have gone wrong during his second term. 

All he brought was the same tired package of lies and distortions that apparently worked to get him elected in 2024, heaps of blame for Joe Biden and the Democrats, and lame “prosperity just around the corner” promises that would have made Herbert Hoover blush.

So, in essence, the nation was treated to 18 minutes of bullshit, all but yelled at the camera in what seemed to be a “divorced from reality” jet-fueled eruption of anger. Summation: America was “dead” when he took over; now it’s “hot.” No questions, no fact-checking, just pure, unadulterated Trump.

But what if, in the view of at least some networks, that was the point?

Soft MAGAs Are the Key

Trump’s approval ratings continue fitfully to decline — strong disapproval has approached, and may soon exceed, 50 percent. 

And perhaps as significantly, his strong approval is now less than half that, making for what is known as an intensity gap — one that is massive and growing. His economy — recent dodgy inflation numbers notwithstanding — continues to falter. 

His public displays — from near catatonia in response to the fainting of his Oval Office guest to his gratuitous and nauseating comments following reports of the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife — have been increasingly disastrous. 

But Trump has long thrived on chaos and division, and having half the country all but locked in as haters has not much altered his course or, thus far, his fate. 

His political survival won’t be in real jeopardy until his MAGA base begins to desert him in earnest — followed by MAGA/GOP-elected leadership, and perhaps even his media boosters, once they all no longer doubt which way the wind is blowing.

And I’m pretty sure the way that happens is if MAGAs see more of Trump being Trump — the “new” Trump, who has lost the fast off his fastball and the knuckle off his knuckleball. 

Unfortunately, the vast majority of hardcore MAGAs could read Trump’s Reiner post (on which he subsequently doubled down), watch him riff on his old rants Wednesday, or shoot everyone on Fifth Avenue without any loss of faith. 

But MAGA is not quite monolithic, and we’ve seen signs recently that growing economic hardship — met with Trump’s shrill and absurd denial — combined with the almost inhuman level of his cruelty and crudity, are beginning to pry significant numbers of “soft” MAGAs loose from the cult. 

One indicator of this is that Trump’s approval among Republicans has finally started softening. Another is that the percentage of self-identified Republicans who consider themselves “part of the MAGA movement” is shrinking rapidly, now down to just 50 percent.

Trump is losing support for MAGA at a fast clip among self-identified Republicans, according to latest polling. https://t.co/U59cvVOnjg pic.twitter.com/l2saOzW6fW

— Jesse Rodriguez (@JesseRodriguez) December 14, 2025

Stampede?

A key factor to bear in mind is that such dynamics are frequently not linear. Herd behavior goes both ways, and what starts as a trickle can, under the right conditions, end up as a stampede.

Bombs like Wednesday night’s address can help stoke such a stampede. I can well imagine the pained expressions on the faces of a few million soft MAGAs, whose patience was already wearing thin, as Trump abandoned his trademark “charm” and instead manically vented his spleen. 

While post-address polls conducted by CBS and CNN seem to indicate broad approval of the speech, scratch the surface on the polls and we find wildly skewed samples, as if the pollsters had interviewed a roomful of Republicans — reflecting the fact that far more Republicans than Democrats watched the speech and the two networks didn’t bother weighting their samples to present an accurate representation of the electorate.

Trump has, throughout this annus horribilis, proven himself increasingly incapable of delivering the presidential goods, righting the ship, telling a truth, or overcoming his own meanness of spirit and deterioration of faculties. About the only thing he succeeded in doing Wednesday night was staying awake, though his high-speed delivery brought to mind the hopped-up “Puffy” scene in Something About Mary.

Trump can no more carry himself with dignity and carry the load that is the presidency than Lina Lamont could carry a tune — although he doesn’t seem to have realized it yet, and I’d dare any of his lickspittles to break it to him.

The more the country — and especially the MAGAs — see of Trump now, the better. We may never know each network’s reasons for giving Trump the platform to address the nation live in prime time. 

But we can thank them nonetheless.