“A lot of this is the president himself,” an adviser to Donald Trump told Axios’s Jonathan Swan, whose July interview with the president was a viral sensation, all at once hilarious for the surreal, sitcom-esque character of the exchange and sad for what it laid bare.
“You can’t heal a patient who doesn’t want to take the diagnosis,” the same adviser said, for a short piece Swan published Friday.
Trump as “patient” has at least three meanings at this juncture, two of them of literal. The president is just two weeks removed from a hospital stay for COVID-19 and arguably suffers from myriad, eminently diagnosable psychological disorders. (And please, spare me the editorial “bias” allegations — we all suffer from at least one diagnosable psychological disorder, so the president is hardly alone.)
Trump as an ailing political “patient” (the figurative sense employed by the aide who spoke to Swan) is nothing new. It’s just that previously, the president’s strategy of pushing the boundaries of divisive rhetoric and demagoguery right up to (and many would argue well beyond) the acceptable limits for a modern democratic society, generally worked, where “worked” means he somehow managed not to alienate so many demographics as to make himself unelectable and avoided pushing the country into widespread, physical conflict with itself.
But now, with just weeks to go before the election, Trump is on the ropes according to polls which may or may not be any more reliable than they proved to be in 2016.
The poll reliability question is really the only one that matters, and although campaign manager Bill Stepien (who tested positive for COVID earlier this month) encourages staff to ignore the polls, multiple sources told Axios’s Swan that “in other private conversations… Stepien can seem darkly pessimistic… liken[ing] the campaign to an airplane flying through turbulence.”
“It’s our job to land the plane,” he reportedly tells staff.
For his part, Stepien told Swan that suggestions he’s pessimistic aren’t accurate. He cites his own, internal “data” which he claims “presents a clear pathway to 270 for the President that provides me more confidence than ever in President Trump’s reelection.”
Campaign officials dispute that, telling Axios they are unable to divine anything like a “clear” strategy, although Swan was able to discern a trio of pathways to reelection that Stepien apparently described to “some colleagues.”
The important thing here isn’t Stepien, though. And this brings us back to where we began. The issue is the candidate, whose rhetoric is becoming increasingly abrasive by the day, even by his own standards which are pretty “high” (if that’s the right word).
“Lock up the Bidens. Lock up Hillary,” the president said, on Friday night in Macon, Georgia. “Lock him up,” the crowd chanted, obediently.
It’s not clear who is prompting who there, but ultimately, Trump called the Biden family “a criminal enterprise” while simultaneously saying “I’m not looking to insult everybody.”
Trump is attempting to turn an unverified New York Post article into a campy sequel to the Hillary Clinton e-mail saga, only this time around, social media (and the public more generally), have exercised what I would just call a healthy level of skepticism.
At the same event, Trump asked the crowd if they’d “every seen” Maxine Waters’s house. “What a beautiful house she lives in,” he said. “I wonder how that happened.” (Nice house you got there. Shame if something happened to it.)
A new survey from Ipsos shows that a third of African Americans are concerned about being assaulted by “armed militias” and/or being arrested at polling places.
Commenting on voter fraud and casting ballots more generally, Trump told supporters in Georgia that police are “on our side.”
“US Marshals are watching,” the president warned. “These are no games people,” he said of the Marshals, just a day after boasting about what some describe as an extrajudicial killing by law enforcement.
Later, Friday evening, Trump said “I shouldn’t joke.” “Running against the worst candidate in the history of presidential politics puts pressure on me,” the president remarked.
“Could you imagine if I lose?… I’m not going to feel so good,” he added. “Maybe I’ll have to leave the country, I don’t know.”
Good salesmanship for why he would leave but it is in essence him admitting he would be on the lam.
Great Britain would be his Elba.
He wouldn’t be welcome in the UK. Most UK people dislike or despise him and it would be electoral kryptonite for Boris for him to be the country.
He has probably already squirreled away funds in Russia so he can pull a Baby Doc Duvalier escape from prosecutors after the election.
As another of Putin’s Puppets did, the former Ukrainian President, he’ll flee to a friendly Dictator who disregards the rule of law, possibly Moscow, Istanbul, Rio, or Manila; whichever ones that don’t have extradition treaties with the U.S.
I have no doubt he will leave the country if he is unable to remain president.
Agreed, the tightening noose of state prosecutions can’t be fended off without Barr and a reason for the supreme court to blasphmemize itself.
Heh – Trump still thinks the cure for all his polling problems is more Trump. I never liked this show, but it really jumped the shark in season 4 – the writers have thrown in everything but the kitchen sink. Reminds me of the old classic “Network” – we’re tired of Trump’s schtick, his act isn’t funny anymore, and he’s about to get cancelled due to poor ratings.
“jumped the shark”, good one!
Trump & family will move to a Dacha on the Black Sea, next to Putin.
Reminds me of all the celebrities that promised to leave the US if Donald became POTUS.
Kind of ironic that POTUS may end up being the one doing the leaving.
Trump won’t end up in a Dacha next to Putin. Putin has been using him for years. He has no respect for people he can manipulate.
If Joe Biden is elected, and if Democrats hold on to their majority in the House and achieve a majority in the Senate, they will be in a position to mount the kind of full-scale investigation they have been prevented from doing while Trump is president.
But will the next administration hold the Trump crew truly accountable for it’s past crimes, such as those uncovered by Mueller, the House impeachment committees and the Senate and the Trump family’s financial dealings?
Some will say yes, because of Trump’s long trail of malfeasance and mis-governance, which also involves top administration figures such as Attorney General William Barr. But the price of such an inquiry would be considerable. It could result in a backlash against Democrats and undermine public confidence in their fairness and sense of proportion.
There are three groups at play:
1. When Trump is voted out of office, a smaller group wants to see that Trump finally faces justice for his serial misconduct and shuffles off to prison.
2. A wearier, larger population looks forward to scrubbing the nation’s memory of these past four years and returning to pre-Trump life.
3. A third sizable group shows unwavering loyalty to Trump.
I would go with the second, larger group.
Instead of appealing to the first group, prosecuting Trump for crimes that would put him in jail and make him a martyr to the extreme right (the third group), it would be better to hit him where it really hurts — his finances.
Make him accountable for tax fraud and confiscate his assets.
It would be like watching Steve Martin shuffling down the hallway in his bathrobe with his pants down around his ankles in the movie “The Jerk”.