Two weeks ago, it seemed like failed one-term president Donald Trump was headed for an easy and overwhelming win in the 2024 election.
Then President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and endorsed his Vice President, Kamala Harris.
Since then, USA Today columnist Rex Huppke notes, Trump has been flailing about, trying to regain his momentum, but the more the complains and rages at campaign rallies, the more he slides in the polls.
Vice President Harris, what have you done to this already very unstable man? The cheese has somehow slid farther off his cracker.
Trump is so shook that he backed out of a planned Sept. 10 presidential debate on ABC News, instead demanding a Sept. 4 debate at his network safe space – Fox News – with “a full arena audience.”
What Harris has done is put Trump on the defensive and provide a striking contrast between the two candidates, especially when it comes to the enthusiasm surrounding their respective campaigns.
After he was shot at and lightly wounded, Trump vowed to change, Huppke recalls, and that change lasted all of 24 hours.
Since then, the wheels have come off the GOP’s wagon, and Trump has backslid into a somehow worse version of the Trump whom voters sent packing in 2020. He’s panicked and flailing. Quicker than ever to default to the racism that has always undergirded his worldview.
An unhinged Trump is exactly the sort of candidate his advisers and campaign managers were hoping wouldn’t make an appearance until after the votes had been counted.
Instead, Evil Don is back with a vengeance, and that version of the disgraced ex-president is the same one that drove voters away by the millions in 2020.
What the refocused voters are seeing – what they saw in the Atlanta rally and in the rambling interviews he has been doing – is a man who let an opponent switch up and short-circuit his brain.
Yes, there are indeed 90 days until Election Day on November 5, Huppke concludes, but can Trump rein in his rage and focus on the issues?
But it’s clear that Trump is rattled, and that his usual tricks of hurling insults and invective aren’t working. In fact, the smiling calm of the Harris campaign is making Trump’s cruelty look worse than ever. That’s why the label “weird” has been sticking. For many, it’s all getting a bit tiresome.
And that just makes Trump angrier, and worse.
We have a long way to go until November, folks. But where we stand here and now, Trump looks like he’s broken. Broken and running scared.
Donald Trump has always been terrified of strong, accomplished women. Now Kamala Harris has him jumping the shark at a time when voters want exactly the opposite. Could a Democratic landslide be in the offing?
