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New York Times Columnist Taunts 'Impotent' Trump In Takedown Of Election Speech

Longtime New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote a scathing recap of President Donald Trump's conspiratorial speech on election integrity in an opinion piece published Saturday.

"Usually, the president is able to whip up some Poseidon-level winds of conspiracy to blow his critics off course. But, Thursday night, he seemed impotent, raving about nonsense, threatening to punish ABC and NBC for not taking his weird rant live," she wrote, referencing threats from the president to do just that.

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Maureen Dowd, right, had some harsh words about President Donald Trump's latest speech.

Dowd riffed on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's announcement this week about testing troops for testosterone levels, using the news to lob a few zingers Trump's way.

"Trump seemed very low-T in his East Room address," she wrote. "I'm surprised that Pete Hegseth, who says his 'High-T Department of War' will start screening testosterone levels of 'war fighters' age 30 and older, didn't rush over to shoot up the flaccid 80-year-old commander in chief with the elixir of manhood needed, as he put it, to give America 'the leading edge of lethality.'"

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Read Dowd's opinion piece in full here.

The columnist joined a chorus of voices in criticizing the speech, both for its false statements and for Trump's perceived lack of dynamism. The president's former communications director, Caroline Sunshine, called the speech "boring" in an interview Friday.