Trump's campaign is trying to hide his sad state from voters
His decline is undeniable. They're hoping you don't notice in time.
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MAGA-friendly CNBC host Joe Kernen dropped an interesting nugget right as Squawk Box went to commercial break on Tuesday.
“Well, Trump canceled, and he was going to come on,” Kernen said.
Not only did Trump once love going on CNBC, but Kernen’s revelation comes on the heels of Trump declining or canceling a number of other high-profile opportunities to make a pitch to voters on mainstream TV. Trump refused to debate Kamala Harris a second time, which would’ve aired on CNN. Trump then refused CNN’s offer to host a town hall. And Trump of course also recently backed out of a 60 Minutes interview.
The explanation for all this is not that Trump has suddenly become camera shy. It’s that his campaign undoubtedly realizes his rapidly degrading condition doesn’t play well with audiences beyond the MAGA cult. As a result, they’re retreating to the safer terrain of nonstop rallies and fawning Fox hits.
Losing a step or three
The reason Trump’s campaign isn’t keen to get him in front of swing voters on mainstream platforms was on stark display Tuesday when Trump did a rare event that wasn’t a festival of sycophancy.
By any objective standard, Trump’s Economic Club of Chicago interview was a disaster. He came out of the gates with an asinine proposal for 2,000 percent tariffs on imported cars, then was quickly reduced to insulting the moderator, Bloomberg’s John Micklethwait, when Micklethwait rightly pointed out that his his economic proposals are an inflationary disaster. (Watch below.)
Trump repeatedly refused to answer questions Micklethwait asked him, instead going on self-absorbed rants about how Google is unfair to him or about how he could do a better job as Federal Reserve chairman than Jerome Powell.
By the end of the event, Trump had veered into making an impassioned defense of the big lie and his coup attempt, bragging about his crowd size on January 6 and absurdly claiming the events of that day were just “love and peace.” (Watch below.)
While Trump’s devoted fans might applaud him for starting fights with moderators and trying to own the libs, most everyone else can see that his policies are bad and his presentation is worse. Micklethwait’s pointed questioning helped expose those realities. And that’s why Trump is intent to do everything he can to avoid more settings like that until election day.
The cult loves him just as he is
Trump’s campaign events this week have made clear that something is just off about the guy as he hustles around the country in hopes of becoming the oldest president in history.
On Monday night, Trump held what was easily one of his most bizarre campaign events ever — a failed town hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania, that ended with him bobbing and weaving on stage for nearly 40 minutes to a soundtrack that ranged from funereal opera to Guns N’ Roses. (The below clip gives you the flavor.)
Then, following his Economic Club of Chicago event on Tuesday, Trump traveled down to Atlanta for a low energy rally where he seemed to have trouble stringing together cogent sentences when he wasn’t reading from the teleprompter. (Watch the clip below, for instance.)
At other points, Trump barely seemed able to get words out. (Watch below.)
These rallies may energize his base, but beyond that they mostly end up providing fodder for damaging video clips like the ones above. Trump, however, reliably gets help from a mainstream press that too often sanewashes his speeches for readers and viewers who aren’t watching them live and may not spend a lot of time on social media.
The New York Times, for instance, described Trump as “swaying soberly” during his musical “detour” in Pennsylvania, adding that he’s known “for improvisational departures.” The WSJ’s headline about the event read “Trump’s Pennsylvania Town Hall Ends in Concert,” as though the plan all along was to have Trump behave like a maniac. ABC News’ TV report on the bizarre spectacle was even worse, with a reporter praising the “almost intimate” atmosphere and noting “people were having a good time. It did not seem out of the ordinary.” (It was very much out of the ordinary.)
But it’s harder to spin something that hundreds of thousands or millions of people are watching, like the debate in which Kamala Harris dominated Trump so thoroughly that MAGAs are still spreading conspiracy theories to try to explain it away. And so the Trump campaign is circling the wagons.
Nonstop safe spaces
To the extent Trump is trying to appeal to new voters at all these days, he’s doing things like appearing on Barstool’s Bussin’ with The Boys podcast to try to impress their young (mostly white) male audience.
Even in this setting, Trump’s decline is obvious — see the clip below where he’s hoarse-sounding and unkempt-looking and rambles on and on — but he can at least be sure hosts won’t ask him tough questions or challenge him.
Tellingly, instead of taking CNN up on its town hall offer, Trump opted to do a prerecorded “town hall” with sycophantic Fox News host Harris Faulkner that will air later today. Kamala Harris, meanwhile, is doing a Fox News hit of her own tonight, and she’s also reportedly in negotiations to appear on Joe Rogan’s podcast. She’s out there trying to make a case to voters who aren’t already part of her coalition while Trump ensconces himself in safe spaces.
The difference couldn’t be clearer. Will enough voters notice before it’s too late?
That’s it for today
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Thanks for reading.
I'm getting increasingly concerned and annoyed with the mainstream media's handling of Trump. It just doesn't cut it as honest, decent reporting. It's failing in its responsibilities to the public. Trump is not a normal candidate, his policies are terrible and he's looking increasingly not up to the job. Why not report that?
I look forward to the day when I no longer fearful that the awful man is no longer something I need to worry about and I’m gaining more and more optimism with each appearance of this clown.