I listen to him almost every day and when I miss him, I reread his speeches or rewatch his TV appearances, mainly on FOX News. My guess is, Trump doesn’t want to anymore. He doesn’t care about winning this presidential election. Follow me!
Trump, for one thing, has his good days and his bad days. A week ago in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, he looked tired and read his speech in a monotone. By contrast, on Long Island Wednesday night, with a cheering crowd around him, he was inexhaustible, delivering a rambling, hour-and-twenty-five-minute tirade.
No matter how energetic he is, he has chosen, despite pleas from his political advisers, to stick to radical themes – illegal immigrants supposedly protected by Kamala Harris who behead teenagers; a United States that will be irreparable; or an Israel that will no longer exist in two years if his rival is elected.
It’s an excess that his followers love, but which has little resonance among a more moderate electorate, particularly those suburban women voters whose support is sought by both camps. Trump knows this, but makes no effort to tone down his remarks. He’s going to lose these women voters and, in my opinion, he doesn’t care.
HE IS NOT THE SAME MAN ANYMORE
Donald Trump doesn’t have it anymore. Doesn’t have it like he used to. You know, that vigor, that shocking repartee, that way of being ironic with his audience, of exciting them and of drawing from them barbs and mockery that he then turned against his opponents.
He did it during his first primaries to Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. Hillary Clinton had a taste of it; Joe Biden too. Today, he repeatedly attacks “Comrade Kamala,” but that’s all it is: a sickly insult that no longer shocks or amuses anyone.
The Republican candidate was initially driven by a rage to avenge his 2020 defeat at the hands of Joe Biden. Now that the old president has dropped out of the race for reelection, Trump has lost the source of his fury. He has contempt for Harris; that doesn’t justify all the sacrifices of a presidential campaign.
HE’S NOT GETTING ANY YOUNGER
Joe Biden looks his age, and oh, did we talk about it! Donald Trump is barely younger—78—and it seems a little younger every week. He is certainly more dynamic than the Democratic president, but he is a poor reference. I am reading these days At War with OurselvesHR McMaster’s description of his time in the White House as Trump’s national security adviser. He was lazy then; it certainly hasn’t improved six years later.
In October 2017, welcoming Justin Trudeau and Sophie Grégoire to the White House, Donald Trump still enjoyed assuming the presidency. Melania, his wife, never took a liking to it.
Photo AFP
Put yourself in his shoes: Melania, his wife, has always hated politics; his daughter Ivanka and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, so involved in his presidency, want nothing to do with it this time. He himself has found, since 2021, the playful lifestyle that his successful career as a real estate developer allows him, playing golf and pouring out his bile in Truth Social without fear of provoking a diplomatic incident.
Donald Trump has always loved the incessant attention that came with being president. Since leaving the White House, he has returned to the playful lifestyle afforded by his successful career as a real estate developer.
Photo AFP
SURE THERE ARE ALL THE OTHERS
He can’t do a “Forrest Gump” of himself. Remember that scene where, after running for “three years, two months, fourteen days, and sixteen hours,” the young man stopped and told everyone who had followed him to just go home? Trump can’t just turn around and tell his elated supporters, “That’s it!”
Over the next forty-four days, Trump will play the game, but he hopes to lose it. And he will say, rest assured, that the other side cheated, that he was robbed. He will possibly go so far as to warm up his supporters, as he did on January 6, 2021, ordering them to “march down Pennsylvania Avenue” (to the Capitol) to “take back our country.” There will, once again, be a few fanatics who will cause destruction, but every police department in the country has planned for it; it will not go any further.
His ego likes to wallow in the adulation of his admirers. This can continue to happen without him having to exhaust himself in presidential chores. Just a hypothesis.
