Trump’s shadow, Milei’s shift and a high-impact bid to break out of isolation

Javier Milei spent an hour cutting down a speech that officials had expected to hear at the Casa Rosada. He deleted entire paragraphs, shortened others and read the final version quietly before ordering the recording to begin. Fifteen minutes and 30 seconds later, ministers embraced him, while the most enthusiastic applauded a performance they saw as less aggressive and more presidential.

“Now it’s done, this is going to be a very strong blow. Javier has turned the table,” one official said after the cameras went off. The speech, broadcast nationally at 9 p.m. on Thursday, pushed every other issue on the government’s agenda into the background.

The focus became Argentina’s sovereignty claim over the Malvinas Islands and the government’s decision to pursue legal and economic sanctions against oil companies involved in extracting petroleum there. Milei also paired the move with plans to build an Integrated Naval Base in Tierra del Fuego and submit a National Sovereignty Defence Bill to Congress.

The impact reached beyond traditional media, which gave the address prominent coverage, and the official broadcast’s 30-point rating. The Malvinas issue also gave La Libertad Avanza a renewed opening on social media, a space where it had steadily lost prominence after the surge of its first and even second year in government.

Consultancy Ad Hoc recorded 245,000 mentions containing “Malvinas” or “Falklands” on Friday alone, while mentions of the libertarian leader exceeded 400,000. The balance remained more negative than positive, but improved by nine points compared with August and by 21 points compared with the exposure generated when the flag appeared at the football World Cup. Most significant for the government, Ad Hoc found that support for the sovereignty claim crossed the usual divide between the libertarian and Kirchnerist camps.

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Now it’s done, this is going to be a very strong blow. Javier has turned the table.