Caroline Sunshine, President Donald Trump’s communications director during his 2024 presidential campaign, ripped the president’s almost 30-minute primetime ramble to the nation where he pushed debunked election conspiracy, calling his speech ‘boring.’
“You know, I look at President Trump, I think the way that he sees himself, which is the producer in chief and he’s about creating great television,” Sunshine told CNN’s Elex Michaelson Friday. “And I think tonight he committed the cardinal sin of TV, which is: Don’t be boring.”
Trump’s speech on Thursday, where he doubled down on claims that the U.S. elections are vulnerable to hacking, was met with some backlash, as some critics claimed he’s trying to preemptively cast doubt on the upcoming midterm election results.
He also announced declassified documents which he claimed show Chinese interference in the 2020 presidential election, but actually show Russians worked against former president Joe Biden’s campaign, and that China wanted Trump defeated.
“Members of the deep state, very, very famous group of people, many cases, in our intelligence agency, worked to actively suppress and downplay information about the extent of China’s sinister election meddling, covering it up from both the president and the American people like nobody thought was possible,” Trump said.
Sunshine said what she would have preferred from the speech on Thursday and what “would have been a great TV moment,” was if Trump opened with, “Good evening to the American people. I’ve just received word that we’ve been victorious in Iran. We’re going home.”
“That would have been a great moment. But instead, there wasn’t really anything in the speech, I think, that created great TV,” Sunshine said.
While she did praise Trump for releasing declassified information about foreign interference, she later said the president made this announcement as “a little bit of a Hail Mary to maybe turn out people before the midterms,” noting how he has not kept some of his campaign promises.
“His brand, his political brand does exceptionally well when he is a political martyr, and he knows that,” Sunshine said. “And when I say producer in chief, I say that because he has an audience in mind, and his brand does well with that audience when he’s a political martyr.”