Trump's carny act isn't working anymore
His Folgers Coffee™ Conference showed a candidate in decline.
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Last Thursday, Donald Trump held a “press conference” outside a building in his Bedminster country club in New Jersey, done up with many American flags so as to vaguely resemble the White House.
Trump rambled on astride a tableau of groceries, ranging from brightly toned condiments and a Wheaties™ box (bearing the image of Billie Jean King) to tubs of Folgers Coffee™ (caff and decaf) and packages of sausage and bacon that lay roasting in the midsummer heat.
Trump’s team also assembled a chorus, apparently composed of club visitors, that cheered and jeered during the “news conference” when needed.
Simply put, it was quite a weird scene.
The event was all the more bizarre because Trump hardly referred to (or even acknowledged) the cornucopia of processed food arrayed around him during his typically lengthy and meandering rant before the assembled press corps.
Presumably, the food had been intended to serve as a prop for a “policy” discussion of inflation. Trump, however, spent most of his time in front of the cameras deriding Kamala Harris’s intelligence and appearance, and insisting that he’s “entitled” to “personally attack” her, because, as Trump explained, she unfairly labeled him “weird.” (Watch below.)
What may go down in history as the Folgers Coffee™ Conference exemplified the crosscurrents of a 2024 presidential campaign that appears to be rapidly slipping from Trump’s grasp.
Until recently, the Trump team was realizing great success by focusing the campaign on the supposed frailty of Biden, and thereby distracting attention from the increasingly mendacious, divisive, and often simply incoherent nature of Trump himself.
But over the past several weeks, Trump has confronted a sudden and apparently wholly unanticipated challenge from the nascent Harris campaign, which is now focusing the nation on the fact that Trump is downright weird.
History repeats itself, first as a comedy, second as a farce
Last week’s Folgers Coffee™ Conference curiously echoed an event Trump held in March 2016 — as he was realizing a meteoric victory in the battle for the Republican presidential nomination — that featured a then-novel combination of over-the-top self-promotion and defamatory attacks on his opponents.
After winning a series of primaries, Trump appeared, incongruously, in front of a stack of raw steaks, pallets of water, bottles of wine, and other items, all bearing the Trump brand. He then launched into a marketing campaign for his “brand,” which included a number of products and businesses that were fictional or fraudulent.
Trump placed particular focus on the closed “Trump University,” then the subject of several lawsuits. He said he would never settle the cases and intended to reopen the institution. (Trump later settled the cases and the “school” remains defunct.)
In addition to promoting himself, Trump “humorously” (and viciously) mocked his opponents and other declared enemies.
It was all pretty darn weird; but the press lapped it up and, for the remainder of the campaign, gave Trump all the airtime and attention he wanted for similar performances.
The Trump Steaks Conference was to become the template for Trump’s political strategy during the ensuing decade, a mélange of elaborate (and often patently false) self-promotion blended with equally false and correspondingly vicious attacks on whoever happens to be Trump’s opponent du jour.
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Trump’s strategy, however, took on a darker and more ominous tone after he became president. The sowing of division and demonization of opponents that had been the core of Trump’s campaign strategy became the singular theme of his presidency, and a means of diverting attention from his incompetence and disinterest in governing.
This approach reached its apotheosis at the height of the pandemic. During that period, Trump regularly appeared before the assembled press and offered carny-like marketing pitches for the supposedly brilliant success his team was having in eradicating covid. He mused about unproven medicines, including bleach injections, while mocking and deriding the public health experts whose advice he increasingly defied.
Trump’s performance, however, did not play well with most of the public, which was experiencing chaos and enduring mass death even as Trump was declaring his remarkable success.
By January 2021, when Trump folded up his circus tent and retreated to Mar-a-Lago in the wake of both his election loss and failed coup attempt, it seemed like the act was being retired for good.
But during the ensuing years, while Trump was largely out of the national spotlight, he plotted his reemergence on the national scene with a third presidential campaign based largely on the same act he first unveiled during his 2016 bid. Until late last month, the gambit appeared to be surprisingly successful. Trump’s apparent breakthrough this year, however, was not the result of any tempering of his years of weirdness.
To the contrary, since 2023, Trump’s rhetoric has begun to mirror the paranoid subculture of his most avid fans. His has become ever more mendacious, conspiratorial, and angry, particularly after he was convicted of 34 felony counts. Trump’s now pervasive conspiracism, combined with an obvious cognitive decline, has made his sociopathology all the more open and notorious.
Had the press corps come close to placing the degree of focus on Trump’s decomposition that they had on Biden’s signs of aging over the past several months, Trump’s campaign would long have been facing serious headwinds. But far from making Trump’s apparent mental deterioration the focus of their reporting, journalists have been treating Trump’s enfeebled and enraged state as simply the “norm,” something to be expected, and therefore not worthy of much attention.
For example, when Trump engaged in a rambling interchange on X last week with Elon Musk during which the two bonded over every popular right-wing conspiracy theory floating around the internet, most reporters dismissed the event as a rehash of what one outlet described as Trump’s “familiar talking points.” The fact that the Republican Party’s presidential candidate has become indistinguishable from Alex Jones was treated as old news.
Trump is losing
That brings us to the Folgers Coffee™ Conference, the second such purported “press conference” Trump held this month as part of a desperate effort to reclaim the political initiative.
During the event, the assembled press corps played its assigned role, just as it has during countless such events since 2016. They treated Trump as a “normal” candidate, asking him “normal” questions — respectfully and dutifully — even though he was decomposing in front of them.
But despite the continued willingness of many in the press to continue their familiar roles in the Trump show, it’s becoming clear that something has changed.
The combination of an opponent who’s making Trump’s weirdness a focus of her campaign and the fact that Trump’s mental degeneration is happening in public and on camera has created a new situation he seems unable to cope with.
Eight years ago, Trump standing in front of a pile of raw meat as he lied about his business success and defamed his opponents was novel, exciting, and even fun. But now, his false claims about the extraordinary successes of his presidency and rants about the dystopian failures of the nation under Biden and Harris seem desperate and wholly out of touch with reality. Trump’s appears beleaguered, disoriented, and obviously frustrated that his trademark combination of over-the-the-top self-promotion and vicious defamation is no longer working.
Suddenly, during the summer of 2024, Donald Trump standing in front of a random display of food and performing his act is no longer exciting and fun; instead, it’s just plain weird.
That’s it for today
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Thanks for reading.
It's important to remember that many, perhaps most voters haven't really switched on to politics. I've given up hope of the mainstream press putting Trump under scrutiny but looking at his behaviour over the whole campaign he is clearly more rambly, more extreme in his statements and less disciplined than in 2016. I hold a shy hope that this will be evident when the unengaged voters start paying interest and the attraction of a 'normal' politician who (wonders!) is well under 70 will be decisive...But let's not be complacent. I urge everyone who reads this to think if they know 'weak Democrat' voters and kindly make sure that these people make it to the polls!
It seems highly improbable he makes it to November as he is regularly decompensating. He is severely unwell. I listened to Dr. Bandy Lee on Anthony Davis’s podcast last night. She and many psychiatrists tried to fulfill their “duty to warn” the public about his extreme unfitness and the danger imposed if elected before the 2016 election. They were shut down by the APA and the media.
On an encouraging note, an assembly of psychiatrists are meeting in September to again make their case publicly.
Everyone should take a listen.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-weekend-show/id1612691018?i=1000665818988