Former President Donald Trump held a press conference in Florida today. It’s the first time he’s taken questions since his unique performance at the National Association of Black Journalists on July 31st. I suspect the rationale for doing this was to pressure his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, to conduct a press conference.* For the record, I wish both candidates did more interviews and took more questions. But that’s a subject for another post. What I’m asking today is literally, is Donald Trump okay?
As Steven noted, at the NABJ conference, Donald Trump made a shocking racial allegation about Harris:
“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” the former president said.
“I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t, because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden she made a turn and she went – she became a Black person,” he said at the National Association of Black Journalists convention. “I think somebody should look into that too.”
source: https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/31/politics/donald-trump-kamala-harris-black-nabj/index.html
The former President and his surrogates would double down on this position at a campaign event later that day. This led to a question that was asked of Trump today:
Again, his response to “Kamala Harris father is Jamaican American, and she went to a Historically Black College. How is she only recently deciding to be Black?” was:
“You’ll have to ask her that question, because she’s the one who said it, ah… I didn’t say it, so you’ll have to ask her.”
I understand the theory that any press is good press, but this seems disconcerting, especially since there is footage of him saying that a week ago (just scroll back up this page). His supporters will likely chalk this up to playing with the press. Looking at the broader context of the last few weeks, this answer starts to fit into a concerning pattern.
Trump went into a long story about how he and San Fransico Mayor Willie Brown almost died during a helicopter emergency. He told the story to insinuate that Brown insulted Harris (“he told me terrible things about her”).
This entire story is a complete fabrication. Trump has, to no one’s knowledge ever been in a helicopter with Brown. People believe Trump may have been thinking about a flight he took with California Governor Jerry Brown. While the two men have the same last names, there are several differences between them, starting with one being White and one being Black. But perhaps this is a case where he’s trying to prove he “doesn’t see color.” There also was no emergency landing on that flight. Trump might have crossed wires and tied it to the story of a number of Trump executives dying in a helicopter crash (that he was also not on).
This wasn’t the only case during the press conference where Trump seemed confused. For example, he clearly mistook “barrels of gasoline” for “gallons” when talking about high fuel prices. He also claimed no one was killed on January 6th, after making the death of Ashley Barrett a regular feature of his rally speeches. He also appeared to have no idea what Mifepristone is.
Trump also confused Tim Walz with Ralph Northam during another answer. In fact, it appeared that he had real issues remembering Walz’s name, falling back on phrases like “the gentleman from Minnesota” or “Kamala’s new friend” who he accused of being “heavy into the transgender world, heavy into lots of different worlds having to do with safety”–whatever that means.
There were also the usual Trump “greatest hits” dialed up to 11 including claiming that his January 6th speech (which kicked off the Capitol Riot) had a larger turnout than the Martin Luther King Jr.-led March on Washington (which featured the famed “I Have a Dream” speech). The estimated attendence of the January 6th rally was 53,000 people. The estimated attendance of the March on Washington: 250,000 people. Just a little 5x difference. Trump also claimed, despite never getting more than ~46% of the popular vote that the MAGA base makes up 75% of the country. He also claimed that his campaign is ahead in the polls and Kamala Harris’s numbers are falling rapidly.
If anyone can point to any polls showing this, please share them, and I’ll update the post. From what I have seen Harris has been closing the gap, if not pulling ahead of Trump, in most key states.
Admittedly, some of this can be chalked up to Trump’s usual puffery. However, as people did with Biden this year, compare Trump today to the person who ran in 2020, and you see a person struggling to coherently answer questions and increasingly getting his words and facts confused. At best, you could argue he intentionally lies, but that isn’t a particularly good look, either.
We also have to look at this through the lens of other recent behavior. For example, six days ago Trump pulled out of an already agreed upon debate on ABC and then annouced his own debate on Fox news. Yesterday, at the press conference, Trump reversed course and agreed to do the ABC debate. He claims the Fox debate is still happening and announced another debate on NBC. To date, the Harris campaign has yet to commit to the Fox or NBC debates. From a purely political standpoint, trying to work in more debates and sooner is not necessarily a sign of a strong campaign. In fact, Trump seems to be taking a page from the Biden campaign from earlier this year.
Trump had endorsed multiple candidates running for the same job in numerous primary races in Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, and Washington.
Trump-endorsed candidate Lieutenant Governor Mike Kehoe won the Missouri governor’s race on Tuesday, defeating two other conservative candidates endorsed by the former president. They included Missouri’s secretary of state, Jay Ashcroft, the son of the former Missouri governor and U.S. senator and attorney general John Ashcroft.
He also claimed the Stock Market drop on Monday would start a recession/depression, only to have the market essentially recover on Tuesday.
And speaking of Biden, the former President and his top aids, have been posting what best can be called “fan fiction” on Truth Social and other social networks about President Biden reentering the race:
This is all happening as Trump has been doing far fewer campaign rallys than in past election cycles. And in recent weeks he has been out-hustled by the Harris campaign in terms of live appearances.
Election Day is still three months away, but Trump’s pace of traveling for roughly one rally per week is significantly slower than in 2016, when he held nine rallies during thefirst week of August. The 2020 campaign was impacted by the coronavirus pandemic, but Trump was typically holding at least three rallies a week by September.
“I think Trump is continuing the pace of his campaign that he established six months ago,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist who has worked on presidential campaigns. “And look, it worked for him until a few weeks ago. The pace of one or two events per week worked when he was making this campaign a referendum on Biden.”
It’s unfamiliar territory for Trump, who is used to dominating the headlines and appeared on track to win back the White House in November in a race against Biden.
Given the recent assassination attempt, it’s understandable if the Former President is reluctant to appear in public. Frankly, that would be a completely normal trauma response to what happened and I hope that he’s getting the necessary mental and emotional treatment to help with that. However, that gets back to the overall question I opened with: Is Donald Trump Okay?
This isn’t an attempt to diagnose him. It is just to point out that, at this moment, this is a very different Donald Trump than in 2016 or 2020—which is probably tied to his being the oldest person** ever to stand for election for President.
* – Yesterday Harris did take press questions on the tarmac and announced that they were working on an interview schedule.
** – Yes Joe Biden was older, but as noted above, he has since left the race.
