I've Never Seen Anyone Burn Through Goodwill Like Donald Trump Has Since the Assassination Attempt
I’ve never seen anyone burn through goodwill the way that Donald Trump has in the month and a half since he survived an assassination. When I saw the image of him with an upraised fist as a sign of defiance, I thought there was no way that Trump could lose.
That’s how I felt after watching the first five minutes of Trump’s debate with Joe Biden. It was everything that I had feared and worse. Biden didn’t just seem unsuited to the job he already had; he seemed incapable of lucidity and coherence.
In that awful moment, it seemed like Trump would coast to a landslide victory in November. It didn’t just seem likely; it seemed inevitable.
All that Trump had to do was not be egregiously terrible.
The bar has been set so low that if Trump were to refrain from launching a series of bizarre, racist, sexist, and personal attacks on Kamala Harris, an impressed press would crow about how presidential he now seemed.
Surviving an assassination attempt was, in Trump’s mind and the minds of his cultists, his defining moment. It proved to them that Trump was the bold alpha male he pretended to be instead of the messy, gossipy little bitch who loved the drama that he actually was.
The assassination attempt gave the GOP priceless iconography depicting a man who wears more make-up than drag queens and whines constantly about how unfair it is that the press under-reports the crowds at his rallies as a renegade defiant in the face of death.
Other than the debate and Biden’s deteriorating mental state, getting shot was the best thing that could have happened to Trump. It was his moment of triumph.
Trump wanted to live in that moment forever, for it to define not just the campaign but his presidency and his political career.
Trump is very publicly apoplectic that the Democrats swapped out a doddering old man for a dynamic and inspirational woman of color because it took the focus off of him, his campaign, and the failed assassination attempt.
The disgraced, twice-impeached ex-president and felon is pissed that the news cycle has sped up to the point that his July 13th brush with death now feels like ancient history. Who can even remember that far back?
Trump is angry that his sacred landslide victory was ripped away from him by a party that has done something super unfair and undoubtedly illegal, like replacing an unpopular old candidate with someone younger and more appealing.
Harris stole Trump’s thunder. She stole his media focus. She ruined his moment of supreme triumph by committing the ultimate sin: getting better ratings than him.
If Trump shut the fuck up and focused on attacking the Biden administration’s policies and whining about inflation, he’d easily triumph over Harris.
In the six weeks since the gunshot heard around the world, Trump has done just about everything wrong.
Just two days after getting shot, Trump picked JD Vance as his Vice Presidential candidate, apparently at the urging of Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr., and the rest of the bro brigade.
Trump had the “smarmy, condescending asshole with an extremely punchable face” demographic wrapped up, yet he chose to further appeal to his base with a dude who, like Trump, has done nothing right and is running the absolute worst campaign possible.
Vance is now notorious for making love to a piece of furniture, being incapable of basic tasks like ordering donuts in a way that doesn’t make people hate you and finding lots of ways to insult women, particularly childless single women.
Trump has run a godawful campaign. He could easily and successfully attack Harris’ policies. Instead, he’s been ugly, personal, barely coherent, and endlessly juvenile. He accused the first woman of color with a good shot of attaining the highest position of power in the world of not being black.
Trump is incapable of not being sexist and racist and an all-around horrible person. He’s incapable of not being a con man chasing every last dollar with lunatic zeal.
All Trump had to do to win easily was act less like himself and more like someone running for president and not a sociopath.
That’s setting the bar too high for him. Trump will be Trump no matter what, even if his awful, hateful personality ends up costing him the White House.
Nathan needs teeth that work, and his dental plan doesn’t cover them, so he started a GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-nathans-journey-to-dental-implants. Give if you can!
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