Our expectations were way too high so it's harder to see how big it was. But let's walk down the logical brick road tonight.
Did you know Trump's speech was aired almost in its entirety on CNN, CSPAN and Fox News? Who watches those networks? Not us. We don't trust the MSM.
So Trump has new eyeballs on him. What was he supposed to do? Come out in loud, aggressive fashion in front of D's who were already brainwashed to believe Trump was a madman?
Instead he comes out calm, collected, thoughtful, nonthreatening in ANY way. This is a marketing tactic called "pattern interruption." People expect to see you perform one way so they already have preset rebuttals for what they THINK you're going to do.
But you come out a completely DIFFERENT way and confuse them...they didn't "game plan" for that. So instead of Trump looking like a raging maniac that the MSM pushed to their sheep, Trump looks shockingly sane.
And guess what? He spoke for a whole hour and hasn't stuttered and stumbled once. No slurred speech. No forgotten thoughts or sentences that started in one way and ended up no where.
This is important...because the people who watch the MSM are used to seeing 2 years of dementia. Now they circle back to Trump for the first time in probably 2 years and hear his voice very differently.
Since CNN was watching, no mention of election fraud. Did Trump sell out? No. He has to keep the cameras rolling. He mentions stolen elections, and the cameras go off, the new people don't hear the rest of Trumps words.
And what's Trump saying? He's saying the SAME THING he said and warned them about on the campaign trail. Back then they thought he was lying...now they know he was always telling the truth.
He just won a larger audience of voters now. But this is only the beginning...
Not to disparage you or OP, you both have good insight. I will push back a little on your 'no cheat would be enough' though.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XyS01Twlcbc
If history shows us anything we know people will accept a huge lie when it's said often enough. We are seeing the culmination of the Earth's history today when we look at advanced propaganda techniques. The rabid TDS leftists are using the V.I. Lenin tactics daily - 'call your enemies what you are and tell the exact opposite of the truth' -- and it's working. Just the other night I was at a friend's discussing the FTX scam and mentioned how it was being used to launder money for Biden. She got super uneasy and started stammering about how trump did the same thing with Russia. No basis in reality. Her comment was like an amalgamation of 8 different fake news stories regarding trump and Russia.
These people are threatened their world view is collapsing but to them any amount of democrat lies and cheating is acceptable because it's been hammered into their head that Trump is an existential threat to humanity itself.