A Cornered Trump Will Be More Dangerous

Expect him to get much worse

Polls. When they sit within the “margin of error,” (usually four points) I don’t much trust them.  However, the most recent national poll, which shows Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by seven points tells us two meaningful things. First, Harris has momentum. Second, Trump is going to get more dangerous.

With Harris’s momentum, Trump is now a seething and baffled candidate.  As revealed by The Washington Post, many of his closest allies and advisers are pushing for him to get serious about policy and use his rally speeches to paint a contrast – on the issues --  between himself and his opponent.

“The winning formula for President Trump is very plain to see: It’s fewer insults, more insights, and policy contrast,” explained Trump’s former campaign manager Kellyanne Conway. Peter Navarro, once a top Trump adviser told the Post, “When Trump attacks Harris personally rather than on policy, Harris’s support among swing voters rises — particularly among women.”  Even Bill O’Reilly, the former Fox News star, is urging Trump to take a turn toward policy “rather than be vitriolic.”

So far, Trump is ignoring the advice.  Instead of talking about foreign policy or trade, he fires personal insults. In recent speeches and social media posts, he has called Harris a “lunatic” and “stupid.”  He has made fun of her laugh, saying, “That’s the laugh of a person with some big problems.” He has said, “She’s not smart, she’s not intelligent.”  

The real Trump is the one who plays the role of a politician/insult comic. This comes through when he agrees to take a serious tone and just can’t maintain it. This happened recently as he agreed to talk about the economy but couldn’t do it. He told a big crowd,  “Today we’re going to talk about one subject,” he explained to the crowd. “And then we’ll start going back to the other because we sort of love that.”

When CBS News asked him about his attacks on Harris’s intellect he doubled down saying, “I don’t consider that an insult — I consider that a fact… I don’t think she’s a very bright person. I do feel that. I mean, I think that’s right. I think I am a very bright person, and a lot of people say that. I don’t think she’s a very bright person. And you know what? Our country needs a very smart person, and I don’t think she’s a very smart person.”

As a man who rose to fame as an entertainer, Trump does have a sense of what the crowd wants and the impulse to give it to them. In his case, the people come for the spectacle of growls and insults. His supporters loved it when he (falsely) said Harris identifies herself as a black American when convenient. They lap it up when he butchers her name, in an obvious effort to make her into a dangerous other worthy of suspicion.

The real Trump is also a whiner, and he has been whining a great deal about once of his pet subjects – crowd size. Indeed, with Harris drawing huge crowds and doubts rising over his own ability to draw an audience, Trump has insisted that the press has been playing favorites. He has even gone so far as to claim that the Harris campaign used artificial intelligence to create images of a huge crowd when she actually addressed a very small one.            

The AI claim was silly, but it is the kind of thing that will stick in the minds of his followers who will dismiss real evidence in favor of an entertaining accusation. Of course, Trump’s advisers, who want him to expand his support beyond the true believers, think that when he gets silly, he loses voters who haven’t picked a favorite and will, despite their small numbers, determine the outcome.

As the candidate, Trump makes the final call on everything the public will see and hear from him. The evidence suggests that like a cornered animal, Trump will become even more vicious. In the coming weeks, we should expect a tornado of insults, lies, rage, and just plain nastiness. Some of it will be racist. Some of it will be misogynistic. And as he whips his followers into a frenzy, as he did before they attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, all of it will be dangerous.