Donald Trump is waning. Not just because he dozes off in the middle of admittedly tedious meetings or rambles even more than he used to (yes, “the weave” is getting a little tangled), but because of the law of diminishing returns. Unlike actual laws passed by Congress, or even the constitution, this is one law he cannot break, evade or undermine. It is a law of nature, and of politics, and it is eroding what little authority he has left.

So it is with his half-hour televised address to the American people. Time was when such an event would command international attention, when the guys in the bar might ask for the volume to be turned up, and when families would gather round to learn what their latest war would mean to them.

Even in his first term, let alone under previous presidents, some chilling intelligence about Chinese government interference in US elections would have caused something of a crisis, a major geopolitical incident, and united Americans in indignation. It was always important, far from routine.

All the television channels would have run it, no question, and any reaction would have been of great consequence. Think of Kennedy in the Cuba missile crisis; Reagan in the Cold War launching the “Star Wars” defence system; the two Bushes commencing their respective Gulf wars; Obama announcing the death of Bin Laden. Two presidents (Nixon and Johnson) effectively quit in such a broadcast. Sensational. Historic. Not so much these days with Trump. Some of the TV networks, who’d gathered that it was another manipulative stunt and not, say, a formal declaration of war on Iran, refused to run the 25 minutes of predictable, unverified and unproven claims, indistinguishable in form and content from any of his self-aggrandising repetitive rally performances.

They were right, of course. The claims were silly. The Chinese do indeed wish to influence US public opinion, and thus the outcome of elections or political decisions to their advantage – they always have and they always will. Of course. So do the Russians. Apparently, the sinister version of this truism is a bit of a Putin talking point, and this is how it might have been implanted in the mind of the president, always searching for ways to delegitimise any election he lost (ie the presidential contest in 2020), or may lose – the midterms in November being imminent.

As for Trump’s revelation that the Chinese Communist Party is in possession of personal details on the US electoral roll, well, such data is publicly available and great big files of it are routinely purchased by market researchers and political organisations. It doesn’t mean you can steal an election with it. There’s no evidence of Chinese involvement in election outcomes in America; and rather more of dedicated Russian attempts to pervert democracy and debate across the world.

But you don’t need me to point such things out, because the news coverage wasn’t “the president has told us something shocking about our nation” but rather “the president is trying to steal an election by softening us up for a later false narrative and he is making things up”. When Trump opens his mouth and says something, then you may be sure the opposite is the case, because it’s been increasingly clear for some time that he is not your favourite president, the smartest man to sit in the Oval Office, or someone who actually does know more than anyone about anything from taxes to women to outdoor pools.

We now expect Trump to twist the truth and resort to any tricks when he’s in a tight spot, and when he loses control of Congress, he will be in a spot tighter than any president before has ever been in, and it’s not even close. Multiple impeachments and a lame duck administration beckons.

More Americans, one can only hope, are learning that Trump cries wolf too easily and is gaslighting them. It is too easy to forget that the biggest attempt to reverse a free and fair election took place after the November 2020 election, culminating in the infamous “stop the count” riots on January 6th, by Trump’s supporters. If Beijing, the Democrats and the “deep state” were able to rob Trump in 2020, why couldn’t they do it in 2016 or 2024? Because they forgot? Changed their minds? Lost the Excel files? Just couldn’t hack it, so to speak? The old adage was that if a lie is big enough people will believe it; Trump has managed to break that by not making any sense at all and because we have heard it all before and it’s all been debunked before. The law of diminishing returns is vicious, and Trump hasn’t yet realised that he cannot repeal it with a meaningless speech or the stroke of a Sharpie.