Dem
50
GOP
50
Kamala Harris—who, as you may have heard, does not do enough media—took a break from her interviews with Howard Stern and Stephen Colbert, her town hall on Univision and her appearance on The View to agree to do a town hall on CNN on October 23.
This is a de facto acknowledgment that the additional presidential debate CNN had offered to host is not going to happen. In turn, that means there likely will not be another presidential debate. In the interest of fairness, CNN has offered to do a town hall with Donald Trump, as well, on the same night. The general idea is that a group of undecided voters would grill Harris for about an hour, then she would leave, and then the same group would grill Trump for an hour. Though he could always change his mind, of course, Trump said "no." Very much like he said "no" to 60 Minutes' offer to do an interview this week.
The fact that Trump declined the 60 Minutes interview—that he chickened out, if you will—is not stopping him from raging about Kamala Harris' appearance, however. We wrote up the Harris appearance, of course, and we found it rather bland. Certainly, it was nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to presidential-candidate interviews. And yet, Trump is in a RAGE about it. During an appearance in Michigan, he spat:
The other big news is the fraud committed by 60 Minutes and CBS together with the Democrat Party, working together with them, which will go down as the single biggest scandal in broadcast history, I predict. It's a big story, I don't know if you've seen it yet.
Not only did Trump provide no evidence for this claim, he didn't even explain exactly what part of the interview has a burr under his saddle. However, he did promise that if he becomes president again, he's going to see to it that CBS loses its broadcast license. (FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel has already issued a statement saying that isn't going to be happening).
There is simply no question that Donald Trump, right now, is more unhinged than at any other point in his public career. He's seeing bugaboos everywhere, even where nobody else sees them, and he's grossly overreacting, even by his own, already gross, standards. We have two theories as to what's going on. The first is that the inner reality-TV star is coming out. The longer a reality TV show goes on, the more outlandish and gimmicky it has to get, in order to hold on to viewers.
The second theory is that he is losing (or has lost) all mental discipline, and is descending rapidly into madness, Macbeth-style. As much as we don't like to say it, we think this theory is the right one. If we're correct, and he's reelected, god help us all. (Z)