Will the Democratic Convention Break Trump?
It comes at a fragile time for the Crazy Old Orange Man.
EVER SINCE DONALD TRUMP chose JD Vance as his running mate and then got a new general election opponent a week later, he hasn’t been the same. Watching Vice President Kamala Harris’s popularity soar, his polling lead vanish, and Vance become a mistake has been destabilizing.
Trump has responded to his campaign freefall by returning to his security blankets of conspiracy and racism. He has also nursed fantasies of Joe Biden returning to the ticket, and claimed that a crowd of thousands attending a Harris rally was fake and produced by artificial intelligence, that his audience on January 6th was larger than the crowd at Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and that “more than . . . 100 percent” of new jobs have gone to migrants.
Though ranting and spreading lies comforts Trump he can’t seem to land a blow on Harris. His “radical left lunatic” label hasn’t stopped her climb. One of his attempts to trash her ended up becoming a story about his memory when he confused two black men.
To get him to stay on message, his campaign made some babysitting plans: Calling them “mini-rallies,” they convinced Trump to give policy speeches. Last week’s “speech” was on the economy.
With his props of assorted groceries—brands, products, and prices he has no familiarity with—against the incongruous backdrop of his expensive New Jersey golf club, Trump claimed Harris is “unbelievable in terms of her badness,” and declared “I think I’m entitled to personal attacks.”
This week will be gutting for Trump, as Democrats gather in Chicago for the convention that has transformed (with Biden stepping aside) from dreaded funeral to celebratory festival.
A-listers, adulation, attention—Harris and her party will draw everything Trump pines for yet cannot have. His nominating speech at the GOP convention was roundly mocked, and Harris’s speech on Thursday is likely to attract a much larger audience.
The vice president will be praised by party stalwarts—Barack and Michelle Obama, and Bill and Hillary Clinton—as well as celebrities like Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Former presidents or vice presidents or first ladies or party nominees—from George W. Bush to Dick Cheney, Dan Quayle, Mike Pence, and Mitt Romney—don’t show up at Trump’s conventions because they refuse to endorse him.
There will be protests in Chicago, and Trump will be cheering them on—but while he’s hoping for 1968, even he knows the vibe will be far closer to 2008.
As Harris supporters plan marathon viewing, many other Americans are likely to tune in, hoping to spot megastars sprinkled among the delegates. There is also the potential for celebrity surprises—what if something explosive happens like Beyoncé or Taylor Swift suddenly sweeping out on stage to sing?
Trump will be paying close attention to every production detail. From lighting to backdrops, and of course pretty faces, Trump obsesses about what makes good television. His entire political persona is aimed at the show.
And Trump’s preoccupation with ratings is well documented. Ramin Setoodeh, author of Apprentice in Wonderland, recorded him, post-presidency, saying that one can be “mean” or “evil” but: “There’s only one thing that matters and that’s ratings. If you don’t have ratings, it doesn’t matter.”
In February 2017, two weeks into his presidency, Trump spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast where he pronounced Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ratings on The New Celebrity Apprentice a “disaster.”
Of course the former California governor had replaced Trump on the show, and Trump could not resist the deadly sin of pride, with a little spite thrown in as well. “I want to just pray for Arnold . . . for those ratings,” he told the bewildered crowd of believers.
SO THE ENERGY AND EXCITEMENT inside Chicago’s United Center and the diverse and perhaps unconventional convention programming will bother Trump—but it’s the ratings that will infuriate him.
And the more Trump decompensates the more he will blame his staff and demand someone fix his campaign. With his polls down Trump recently brought back Corey Lewandowski—an accused groper and batterer whom he fired from his first campaign eight years ago, a lowlife who likes the kind of trouble that involves the police. While the candidate doesn’t take advice, Lewandowski will be a senior adviser, layered over the grownups who have been running Trump’s first ever quasi-professional campaign. Lewandowski prefers unleashed Trump.
In response to being blamed, Trump’s staff is leaking. They are telling the press about their plans to right the ship—the plans that he keeps pissing on—and how his close aide known as the “human printer,” who facilitates his every phone and internet whim, doesn’t feel like she has to answer to the campaign minders who want Trump reined in.
Team Trump is likely hoping their candidate, desperate for a headline, doesn’t fire someone midweek. What he will almost definitely do is tweet (or “Truth”) about how the Democratic convention is fake. Trump has called it “rigged,” as part of his effort to paint the Biden-to-Harris switch as illegitimate—a “coup”—that is likely a pretext for him to dismiss the results should he lose in November.
“Why is she going to the convention? Because it’s a rigged convention, obviously. She got no votes,” he said Saturday.
WHATEVER SHITSTORM TRUMP TRIES to kick up in an effort to reclaim the narrative isn’t likely to go over well with Republicans. He’s not taking lectures from Chris Sununu or Nikki Haley, but even his people—who are supposed to be complimenting him—are losing patience with his tired Vegas act:
Kellyanne Conway said Trump’s “winning formula” involves “fewer insults” and—of course—urged him to focus on policy.
Sen. Lindsey Graham took to Meet The Press on Sunday to once again implore Trump to behave himself. “Donald Trump the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election,” he said.
Megyn Kelly thought his rambling two-hour “interview” performance with Elon Musk was “boring,” and she called his pathetic AI conspiracy “stupid.”
Tomi Lahren told the Fox News audience Trump should cut out “the doom and gloom,” then tweeted that “purposely mispronouncing her name, questioning her race, calling her dumb, making fun of childless women” aren’t going to work against Harris.
None of this will be heeded. A former Trump campaign adviser told Marc Caputo last week that Trump “cannot get past his anger,” and is “unsettled.” This adviser said “he probably needs friends around him on the plane. He needs to just bro-out and relax and get his bearings again.”
But Trump’s rage will escalate these next few days. The Kamalapalooza will be well attended by adoring elites and Hollywood types his MAGA supporters disdain but whose approval Trump craves.
Trump’s going to spend this week watching the cool kids make fun of him, but—worse than that—he won’t be their sole focus. Democrats didn’t love Hillary Clinton in 2016, they weren’t excited by Biden in 2020, and those campaigns were dominated by Trump.
Trump is about to face something he never has in his nine years in politics. The Democrats’ convention will cement that he is no longer the main character.
There probably aren’t any bros who can help him with that.