Dem
51
GOP
49
It would appear that we have an answer as to why Donald Trump vanished from the campaign trail. According to insiders, who spoke off the record of course, the former president was deeply depressed by Joe Biden's withdrawal from the race, and from the resulting re-set of a campaign that Trump thought he had already won. "It feels like he's lost his mojo," said one person in Trump's orbit. Of course, this is not incompatible with the thesis that he was badly affected by the assassination attempt.
The problem for Team Trump is that the "bunker campaign" model does not appear to be working, as Trump continues to slip in the polls. And so, the campaign is going to send him out on the road again, for daily or twice-daily campaign events. "Think Trump on steroids," said one insider. It is understandable that the campaign would choose this course. Again, the polling is headed in the wrong direction. And, in 2016, the Trump roadshow got the base worked into a frenzy, while also earning Trump lots and lots of free media coverage.
On the other hand, 2024 is not 2016. Trump gets far less free coverage than he once did, because much of what he does and says is old hat. As to the base, even many of them have grown weary of the same old shtick. They might still vote for him, but he's not packing them in at the rallies anymore. And there aren't too many new converts to be won over to the Trump banner. Meanwhile, maybe because he's older and has lost focus, or maybe because he's more desperate, he's become much more likely to say things that damage him. We'll run through three recent examples that we basically weren't able to get to previously because of the convention.
First up, it's no secret that Trump is fixated on looks, at least when it comes to women. Heck, he used to own the Miss Universe Pageant, which we never watched, but we assume involved Leia Organa representing Alderaan, Saavik representing Vulcan, and Delenn representing Minbar. Last week, speaking of his new opponent, he declared: "I am much better looking than her. I'm a better looking person than Kamala." Our thoughts: (1) it should be "than she (is)" not "than her," (2) Says who? and (3) the presidential election is not a universal beauty pageant.
And Trump didn't stop there. Time magazine recently had a cover with an image of Harris. Here it is:
Trump didn't like it, so he said: "Time magazine doesn't have a picture of her. They have this unbelievable artist drawing her. They took a lot of pictures that didn't work out so they hired a sketch artist." We don't know for sure, but it is our guess that those much-desired suburban women are not going to be impressed with Trump's lack of interest in the issues and his great interest in announcing that he is better looking than Harris is.
And now our second example. The stolen valor stuff not only failed to damage Tim Walz, it also caused many veterans to become angry with the Trump ticket. The lesson the former president took from that was apparently to... find a different way to insult veterans. He was at an event, ostensibly to talk about antisemitism, and he decided to do a little backdoor bragging, talking about how he gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to GOP mega-donor Miriam Adelson. And in his view, Trump added, receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom is actually "better" than receiving the Medal of Honor—i.e., the United States' highest award for military valor.
He was actually making a point here, one that is characteristically self-centered, and one that he presumably thinks is profound. It was not his intent to judge the relative merits of the two awards, but instead to comment on what it takes to receive each of the awards. And we agree, it's much more enjoyable to, say, inherit billions from your husband and then give some small chunk of that to Trump than it is to go through what Medal of Honor recipients have to go through. Nonetheless, it looked like Trump was once again denigrating America's military heroes. And even once it was made clear how his words were being taken, he kept doubling down on his valuable "point." The only thing that kept Trump's campaign staff from committing hara kiri over this was that Fox did not give a single moment of coverage to the whole story.
And now, the third (and most recent) example. Over the weekend, Trump got on his soon-to-drop-below-$20-a-share boutique social media platform and shared a truth from a user who has adopted the name "Machiavelli." The item that Trump shared was a relatively standard right-wing meme, a picture of a flag asserting that the choice is between Trump and communism. The problem here is that Machiavelli's posts are not always so tame. He's also written "Adolf Hitler was right" (curiously, while also being a Holocaust denier). He also added: "Jews have been capitalizing on ni**ers for thousands of years" (our censorship, not his). Machiavelli is a conspiracy theorist, of course, and he also believes that any white person who is not a white nationalist must therefore be a "fa**ot" (again, our censorship, not his).
It is true that Trump cannot pore through every tweet or Truth sent by every person he re-tweets or re-truths. However, the guy's name is Machiavelli, for goodness' sake. And the offensive content is frequent and ubiquitous, one need only do a quick perusal of his account to get a sense of his worldview. It just speaks to a characteristic lack of care and judgment on the part of Trump.
It was pretty evident that Trump's team was trying to keep him under wraps. Well before the assassination attempt/Biden withdrawal, Trump often went days without being seen or heard from. Those moments visible to the public suggest something is wrong with Trump, even more so than in past campaigns. And the campaign's handling of their candidate with kid gloves suggests that the public perception is not wrong. But now they've got little choice but to let the bull loose. They're just going to hold their breath and hope he doesn't do too much damage in the china shop. (V & Z)