Sanewashing his speeches
Aaron Rupar says Trump is rapidly crumbling, with clips that show Trump indeed crumbling.
On Monday night, Trump held what was easily one of his most bizarre campaign events ever — a failed town hall in Oaks, Pennsylvania, that ended with him bobbing and weaving on stage for nearly 40 minutes to a soundtrack that ranged from funereal opera to Guns N’ Roses.
Then, following his Economic Club of Chicago event on Tuesday, Trump traveled down to Atlanta for a low energy rally where he seemed to have trouble stringing together cogent sentences when he wasn’t reading from the teleprompter.
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These rallies may energize his base, but beyond that they mostly end up providing fodder for damaging video clips like the ones above. Trump, however, reliably gets help from a mainstream press that too often sanewashes his speeches for readers and viewers who aren’t watching them live and may not spend a lot of time on social media.
The New York Times, for instance, described Trump as “swaying soberly” during his musical “detour” in Pennsylvania, adding that he’s known “for improvisational departures.” The WSJ’s headline about the event read “Trump’s Pennsylvania Town Hall Ends in Concert,” as though the plan all along was to have Trump behave like a maniac. ABC News’ TV report on the bizarre spectacle was even worse, with a reporter praising the “almost intimate” atmosphere and noting “people were having a good time. It did not seem out of the ordinary.” (It was very much out of the ordinary.)
So the question is whether enough of his fans will notice in time.
They won’t care. A vote for Trump is effectively a vote for President Vance (virtual, if not actual), and that’s ok with the MAGAts.
This has been so much of a problem since 2015! Not calling him out for lies, but using the polite euphemisms often applied to presidential liars. Not pointing out the strangeness of his demeanor, his quirks, etc. Treating his campaign and administration as though it was politics as normal.
Now he’s getting worse, and they still ignore it. Drive Biden off by noting every stumble (and I’m not saying they shouldn’t do that, mind you), but give Trump a pass.
So, November Rain on loop?
There’s an increasingly circulating theory that the plan is to win the election then apply the 25th Amendment as soon as possible and have JD Vance (every IT bro’s favourite) as President and inheritor of MAGA. It might be nonsense, or not. It certainly fits known facts and reasonable opinion based on those.
I’m sure they’d be keen to do just that, but he’d have to be extremely gaga for them to pull it off. MAGA belongs to him and his fans haven’t been keen to accept any substitutes. I have been thinking along similar lines…
Rob, eh I don’t buy it. The Republican Party had plenty of reason to dissallow Trump as a candidate, they could have simply stated that his felony conviction disqualified him under their reading of the US constitution.
If they wanted Vance, they could just have run Vance. The trouble with switching Vance in after the fact is that if they did that he’d have to act as a placeholder president, which would limit any claim to a popular mandate.
I think part of the problem the US has had is that Americans tend to sanewash the Republican party as a whole, but remember Project 2025 was not the “crazy” Republicans, it was the major Republican thinktanks. The Supreme Court isn’t the nutty evangelicals, its highly qualified Catholic jurists.
There has been this hunt for the “sensible’ Republican going on for decades, but maybe at some point we all need to accept that they just aren’t sensible people.