The real Trump is back. It could cost him the White House.
Former President Donald Trump is still favored to win the White House, but he doesn’t seem to appreciate that Vice President Kamala Harris is gaining ground.
Don’t call it a comeback. Donald Trump has been this way for years.
Trump had the greatest summer of his political life. His opponent, President Joe Biden, made the virtually unprecedented decision to quit the race. After years of jokes about Republican in-fighting, it was truly the Democratic Party in disarray. Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was happy to shake his hand.
National polls showed that Trump was in the best position of any Republican presidential hopeful in more than two decades. Even some Democrats were worried about a blowout. And to top it all off, Trump finally got the raucous convention coronation he craved. During the lovefest, his two former primary foes, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, urged the party to unite around him.
In the middle of it all, Trump survived an assassination attempt. There was some thinking that despite all the evidence to the contrary, this moment would change the 78-year-old man. It did not.
Less than 100 days before the presidential election, Trump can’t seem to accept the reality that this race has fundamentally changed. His team now appears nervous about defending North Carolina, a state Republicans have carried in all but one election since 1980. And with a series of unforced errors, he is once again showing that for all of his political talent, he has an uncanny ability to inspire an equally breathtaking opposition.
On Wednesday, Trump showed he is who he has always been. At a conference of Black journalists, the former president questioned if Vice President Kamala Harris was truly Black. He didn’t focus on Harris’ litany of progressive positions she has backed away from or try to tie her to an unpopular president. Instead, he harkened back to ugly moments in US history and, frankly, his own.
“He did crap the bed today,” Republican political strategist Scott Jennings said of Trump on CNN last night. “The only question is if he’s going to roll around in it or get up and change the sheets.”
After all, this is the real estate developer whose career practically began by getting sued by the Nixon Justice Department for alleged racial discrimination. Years later, Trump laid the cornerstone for his modern political career by pushing the racist conspiracy that President Obama wasn’t a US citizen. Now, once again, the entirety of that record will be thrown into sharp relief.
Trump is showing that this wasn’t some gaffe. At his rally Wednesday night, his team projected the image of an old B-17 headline that highlighted Harris’ historic 2016 election when she became the first Indian-American senator. The implication is that Harris chooses which race to associate herself with when, in reality, as Semafor’s Dave Weigel pointed out, it’s just an example of how journalists highlight firsts. Harris was the second Black woman to be elected to the Senate. The daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, Harris has spent her life identifying with and drawing from both cultures. And if the old headline wasn’t enough, Trump on Thursday morning posted an old photo of Harris showing her “Indian heritage.”
I previously wrote that Harris’ best hope was that Trump would self-self-immolate in the face of her historic candidacy — much like he had when he attacked other powerful women. I didn’t realize it would happen so quickly.
Trump has hurt himself in other ways.
In selecting Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his vice presidential nominee, Trump violated the one rule of running mates: to do no harm. Now, even the former president hopes that the man he positioned to be his MAGA heir apparent won’t really matter that much.
Trump has survived numerous missteps and scandals that would have doomed other politicians. He insulted holy communion at a gathering of conservative Christians, attacked John McCain after the iconic senator died, feuded with Gold Star families, offered praise for Charlottesville protesters, and mused about unproven cures during a global pandemic. After leaving office, he dined with an avowed white supremacist and antisemite. There’s a reason in the closing days of the 2016 campaign, Trump had to tell himself out loud to “stay” on message.
This is exactly how Trump lost in 2020.
Still, this Teflon nature belies the fact that the constant churn of outrage turned off just enough voters to push him out of office.
The former president has benefited from a relatively disciplined campaign in 2024. The bar was extraordinarily low.
Trump’s first 2016 campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, was accused of assaulting a reporter. Trump’s first 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, faced unflattering headlines over his spending habits that left the incumbent cash-strapped in the heat of reelection.
Trump’s 2024 team spent months emasculating and embarrassing DeSantis, ending his candidacy with a historic rout in the Iowa caucuses. And until Biden dropped out, they had managed to make the president’s age the biggest factor in a contest that featured the first-ever former president to become a convicted felon.
Despite his age, many have hoped that Trump would grow and change, only to learn rather quickly that he will not. Partially by his own doing, Trump’s summer of luck has run out. And if his course doesn’t change, he’ll fall back on hard times.
