The Craziest (and Most Dangerous) Closing Argument Ever?

Is Trump's meltdown our October Surprise?

“Mitch McConnell said after the 2020 election that then-President Donald Trump was “stupid as well as being ill-tempered,” a “despicable human being” and a “narcissist,” according to excerpts from a new biography of the Senate Republican leader that will be released this month…. Privately, he said in his oral history that “it’s not just the Democrats who are counting the days” until Trump left office, and that Trump’s behavior “only underscores the good judgment of the American people. They’ve had just enough of the misrepresentations, the outright lies almost on a daily basis, and they fired him.” —AP

Well, Mitch wasn’t wrong. If only he’d had the courage of his convictions…

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There are 18 days (!) until Election Day. Happy Thursday.

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Trump’s Bizarre Endgame

It’s not really an October Suprise, but Trump’s cognitively declining, incoherent, fascisty closing argument already belongs to the Ages.

In less insane political moments, candidates try to put forward their best, most attractive selves in the final weeks of a campaign. One of the enduring urban legends of the 2016 election is that Trump cleaned up his act in the final days of that campaign, posing as a simulacrum of a quasi-normal candidate.

But WTF are we seeing right now? (And I refer to just the last few days.)

• As our friends at 24Sight note, Trump has “turned up the crazy” in the final days of the campaign.

  Official campaign signs bearing a slogan championed by neo-nazis, issuing increasingly violent threats against his perceived enemies, targeting Black and hispanic immigrants with increasingly racist attacks have become the hallmarks of Trump’s close to the 2024 race.

• The Wapo describes it as his “erratic endgame.”

  Donald Trump went online after midnight Tuesday to brag about acing cognitive exams he never released and his cholesterol, then misleadingly called Vice President Kamala Harris’s allergies a “dangerous situation.” By midday he was meandering through an interview in which he would not directly say whether he would allow a peaceful transfer of power after the election and later complained about Fox News having a Harris aide on air. He had spent the previous evening hosting an unusual town hall (“It was amazing!”) that started with long-winded answers to friendly questions and ended with him swaying and bopping to music for 39 minutes.

  With three weeks left until Election Day, Trump is running an unorthodox, freewheeling campaign, directing threats and insults at a wide mix of people and institutions…

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  Let’s take a moment to review what he has done in the last weeks of this campaign:

• Trump launched a blizzard of lies about hurricane recovery efforts, the 2020 election; and “immigrant crime,” including crimes committed by minority groups he says are genetically predisposed to commit crimes.

• Trump threatened to use the military against “the enemy within,” which he explained included Democrats like Adam Schiff and “the Pelosis.” (See: Trump clarifies that his ‘enemy within’ comment was about evil Democrats.”

• Trump threatened to strip CBS of its broadcasting rights over its interview with Kamala Harris.

• Then came his bizarre breakdown at a rally when “Trump got bored with the event, billed as a “town hall,” and just played music for almost 40 minutes, scowling, smirking, and swaying onstage.”

• The next day, Trump turned in an utterly incoherent appearance at the Chicago Economic Club. “You might think you’ve got a pretty good idea of the big guy’s solipsism, his buffoonish overconfidence, his utter inability to engage on matters of policy,” Andrew Egger wrote the morning afterward. “Watch a few answers, and you’ll be forced to conclude: It’s way worse than you thought.”

  

• It didn’t get better. At an all-female forum, Trump referred to a US senator as “fantastically attractive,” and described himself as the “father of IVF,” which managed to combine sexist cringe with laughable bullshit.

• Perhaps most ominously, Trump has now also ramped up his celebration of the January 6 attack on the Capitol as a “day of love, in which "nothing [was] done wrong at all.” And he referred to the rioters as we. “Nothing done wrong. And action was taken, strong action. Ashli Babbitt was killed, nobody was killed (sic).

  "There were no guns down there. We didn’t have guns. The others had guns, but we didn’t have guns.” [Ed. note. There were guns.]

• Then there was Trump’s deranged midnight social media rant about Kamala Harris’s… allergies. (I kid you not.)

• And yesterday, after weeks of dancing and dodging, J.D. Vance went full Election Denialist, saying that no, Donald Trump did not lose the 2020 election. It’s a reminder that this is why Vance is on the ticket instead of Mike Pence: Vance is willing to say and do what Pence refused to do.

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Exit take: Why is this happening? Are we simply watching the real-time decomposition of an aging narcissist? Or is this four-dimensional chess to keep the spotlight on Trump and suck up the political oxygen?

We can’t possibly say.

But one thing seems increasingly clear: Voters will have no excuse. If they elect Trump, they will know what they are getting.

But, what about policy…

Yes, yes, Charlie, my conservative former friends keep telling me, Trump may be a deranged sociopath and odious human being, but what about the policies? By which, they generally mean things like tax cuts, and subsidies, and regulatory jail breaks that will unshackle the nation’s oligarchs from messy compliance issues.

So, let’s talk about policy for a moment and feel free to share this with any of your “free market” buddies. Via the Wapo:

Former president Donald Trump is campaigning on the most significant increase in tariffs in close to a century, preparing an attack on the international trade order that would probably raise prices, hurt the stock market and spark economic feuds with much of the world.

This seems relevant, since it threatens to take us all the way back to the 19th century.

Trump’s trade plans, a staple of his stump speeches, have fluctuated, but he consistently calls for steep duties to discourage imports and promote domestic production. The former president has floated “automatic” tariffs of 10 percent to 20 percent on every U.S. trading partner, 60 percent levies on goods from China, and rates as high as 100, 200 or even 1,000 percent in other circumstances.

These proposals would go far beyond the disruptive trade wars of his first term even if they are only partially implemented. They would wrench the nation out of the system of global interdependence that arose in recent decades, making the U.S. economy much more isolated and autonomous, like it was in the late 19th century. (Trump last week falsely claimed that the United States was never richer than in the 1890s, when it had high trade barriers.)

BONUS: David French lays down the “policy” gauntlet: “Let’s Take the Republican Policy Challenge - The New York Times.”

If you take Trump’s words seriously (and we should take every presidential candidate’s words seriously), his proposed policies mean more inflation, worse debt, greater international instability, incompetent or corrupt appointees, disruptive mass deportations and the deployment of military force against domestic opponents. That is not a formula for peace, prosperity or stability. It’s a formula for precisely the economic and international chaos that Republicans say they want to avoid.

Meanwhile…

Today’s Drudge Report:

“I’m in the middle of responding to the point you’re raising, and I’d like to finish,” Vice President Kamala Harris sternly told Fox News’ Bret Baier today in her first appearance on the Rupert Murdoch-owned outlet as the anchor repeatedly spoke over her.

Jumping into the belly of the beast at the conservative cable newser for the first time in her long career, Harris found herself being pilloried by Baier, especially over illegal immigration and border security. At the same time, having been roasted online by the MAGA base in anticipation of softball questions, “real journalist” (as the VP called him at one point) Baier barely let the VP get a word in during the opening part of the sit-down.

It wasn’t a good look for Fox, and a gift to Harris who got to play tough in Trump’s media backyard and lean into her rival’s mental decline. Raising her voice several times, the VP once again went hard on her default position that Trump is fundamentally “unstable” and dangerous to have back in the Oval Office.

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Harris pleads with GOP to join her: ‘There is a place for you in this campaign’

Vice President Harris on Wednesday pleaded with Republicans to join her team, telling them at a rally in Pennsylvania that there’s a place for them in her quest to defeat GOP nominee and former President Trump.

“No matter your party, no matter who you voted for last time, there is a place for you in this campaign,” Harris said in Washington Crossing, Pa. “The coalition we have built has room for everyone who is ready to turn the page on the chaos and instability of Donald Trump, and I pledge to you to be a president for all Americans.”

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Nota Bene

Peter Wehner in The Atlantic: This Election Is Different

I find this moment particularly painful and disorienting. I have had strong rooting interests in Republican presidential candidates who have won and those who have lost, including some for whom I have great personal admiration and on whose campaigns I worked. But no election prior to the Trump era, regardless of the outcome, ever caused me to question the fundamental decency of America. I have felt that my fellow citizens have made flawed judgements at certain times. Those moments left me disappointed, but no choice they made was remotely inexplicable or morally indefensible.

Your daily dogs

Auggie, Eli and I made an emergency burger run to Culver’s yesterday. Auggie is focused on the prize in the front seat.

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Buddies.