Trump Campaign Entering Panic Mode

The prospect of a Trump 2.0 presidency keeps EU officials in Brussels busy with contingency planning. Meanwhile in the US, the prospect of a Harris presidency also causes concern, mostly over the way Mr Trump’s and his more ardent followers may respond to another ‘steal’.

Some Republicans have already threatened a civil war should their candidate fail to win the election. “I’m afraid if we lose this one, it’s going to take a civil war to save the country, and it will be saved,” assured Senator George Lang of Ohio when he introduced JD Vance, Mr Trump’s running mate.

After regaling a crowd in Middletown with shouts of ‘fight, fight, fight’ whilst menacingly stirring the air with his fist, mimicking his idol’s gesture after last month’s assassination attempt, Senator Lang said that the “soul of the nation” is at stake. He also expressed joy over the support to the cause of Bikers for Trump – a species of thugs-on-wheels club. The senator has since apologised for his ‘divisive’ words and promised to be more ‘mindful’ going forward.

The man himself also suffered a slip of the tongue late last week as he addressed a crowd at the Turning Point Action’s Believers’ Summit: “Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won’t have to do it any more. Four more years, you know what? It’ll be fixed, it’ll be fine, you won’t have to vote any more, my beautiful Christians.”

Asked to clarify his words on Fox News, Mr Trump expounded at length on the supposedly poor voting habits of Christians. When prodded for an answer, he reiterated that nobody needs “to worry about voting any more” after the upcoming election. Though Mr Trump did say that he would leave the White House after four years, he also wondered out loud why Franklin D Roosevelt was allowed to serve three full terms in office. The 32nd US president died at the start of his fourth term. The 22nd amendment to the US constitution, enacted in 1951, limits presidents to two terms.

War Game

If a triumphant return of Mr Trump to Washington inspires concern far and wide; a possible loss causes downright fear in Washington. It also worries filmmaker Jesse Moss whose docudrama War Game premiered at this years’s Sundance festival and just opened at US cinema’s.

Though entirely fictional, War Game takes the January 6 2020 storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters as the premise and elaborates on what might happen the next time. The film wonders if the sitting president can withstand a massive onslaught of Trump supporters who feel disenfranchised and are seething with anger at the perceived injustice.

It is an established fact that Mr Trump is a sore and ungracious loser who will instantly apportion blame to everyone and everything but himself. Losing to a black woman, quite possibly by a landslide, would likely be too much of a humiliation for Mr Trump to bear.

Already now, Mrs Harris is leading Mr Trump in three crucial ‘battleground states’ by a significant four-point or wider margin. After President Biden ceded the ticket to his vice-president, the Democrats have found their mojo. The addition of Minnesota governor Tim Walz, wildly popular in his home state, has injected a measure of jollity and optimism into the party’s initially moribund campaign.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump seems to have lost or misplaced his own mojo. He has been shoved off the front page and out of the limelight as voters celebrate the fact that they now have something to chose. Moreover, Mrs Harris turned out to be a quite savvy campaigner. Not only did she seize the narrative, she also branded Mr Trump and his vice-presidential sidekick ‘weird’ – a moniker that instantly stuck.

Whilst this time Mr Trump’s election campaign is run by seasoned professionals, the candidate insists on throwing sand into his machine’s gears by the bucketload. He has doubled own on the absurd and misses no opportunity to ‘step in it’.

Dumb & Dumber

During a ‘general news conference’ at Mar-a-Lago, Mr Trump mused at length, and to the astonishment of those present, on Mrs Harris surname: “Kamala Harris. You know it’s interesting nobody really knows her last name.”

An attempt to question Mrs Harris’ ‘blackness’ backfired whilst slandering his opponent has also failed to impress most voters. As Mr Trump desperately tries to frame Mrs Harris, he draws attention to the near perfect fit of his new nickname. Weird Trump has now become an indelible mark that will likely haunt the man for months to come.

Whilst Mr Trump tries to figure out his opponent’s last name, a task to which his intellect may eventually rise, the Harris/Walz ticket is having fun with an upbeat campaign that draws record crowds. Mr Trump who in 2017 memorably inflated the crowd size at his inauguration ceremony, brazenly accused the Harris campaign of deploying artificial intelligence to fake the attendance at rallies. Vanity Fair likened Mr Trumps ramblings to “an internet troll meets old man who thinks his microwave is spying on him.”

In a sign that the failed real estate mogul has entered panic mode, Mr Trump has started to bite the hands that feed him, sending discourteous and offensive text messages to major donors, warning others that a ‘steal’ is underway, and repeatedly calling Mrs Harris a ‘bitch’ in casual conversation.

As the Atlantic noted, Mr Trump is well-known for denying reality whenever he feels unsure, rushing forwards into a fantasy world of his own making and asking his followers to join him in the safety and comfort of this make-believe universe.

However, Mr Trump’s mental agility is second to none when it comes to explaining away his lies and shaping alternative truths. When almost no supporters turned up during his hush-money trial in New York, he helpfully explained that thousands of people had been turned away from the courthouse by the police. A few New Yorkers promptly took out their cameras to show how easy it was to reach the courthouse.

Goebbels Light

Instead of challenging his critics to ‘roll the tape’, as a truthful person would do, Mr Trump tells his followers to just deny the contents tape and the facts it contains and believe his messianic words instead – and most do. Although Mr Trump cannot be accused of reading up on history, his public persona shows disconcerting similarities to that of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi minister for propaganda who proved that by repeating a lie, no matter how outrageous, often enough, it eventually becomes the established truth.

The good news is that eventually Mr Trump will become a footnote to US history, at most signalling a momentary lapse of reason, before descending into well-deserved oblivion. Once soundly defeated and rotundly trashed by US voters, the man has no role left to play, safe as a felon.

In the end, whilst both Europe and Washington must still prepare for any contingency, the pressure to do so has diminished. What first seemed all but inevitable, a Trump win, seems now highly doubtful if not unlikely.

Cover photo: A younger Mr Trump when the going was still fairly good.

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© 2011 Photo by Gage Skidmore.