Usually when someone uses the phrase 'closer than ever', they are implying that an uncertain outcome is more likely to occur than it has been in the past, not t

Usually when someone uses the phrase 'closer than ever', they are implying that an uncertain outcome is more likely to occur than it has been in the past, not that a possible future event is temporally closer (which, as you suggest, would be a trivial statement). We are not 'closer than ever' to nuclear war, for example.