The Trump S*@# Storm Has Begun

Don’t expect it to stop

The Donald Trump s*@# storm, 2024 version, has begun. For proof you just have to  look at his accounts on social media. That’s where he delivers his most extreme rhetoric, which his most rabid supporters inhale as if they are consuming some kind of drug. In just the last week, or so, Trump has posted or re-posted unhinged commentary on his election opponent Kamala Harris, her allies, and politics in general. Among them have been:

·         A lewd, reposted meme about Harris, Hillary Clinton and oral sex.

·         A call to prosecute and imprison House members (including me) who served on the committee that probed his followers’ January 6 attack on the Capitol.

·         A photoshopped picture of Hillary Clinton, Hunter Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Bill Gates and others in orange prison jumpsuits.

·         A post of a photo showing himself with Obama with the caption --  “All roads lead to Obama. Retruth if you want public military tribunals.” 

·         Shoutouts to conspiracy theorists who belong to the vast “Q-Anon” community devoted to the notion that Trump will save the US from a “Deep State” dictatorship.  

·         Suggestions that violence could break-out if he loses.

Look at the posts and you’ll see that while Trump is reverting to type – he has always issued  rather deranged social media posts – the scattershot approach indicates that he has yet to establish a central anti-Harris message. This is why you see him including the likes of Clinton, the January 6 committee and Bill Gates in the mix.

Trump and his campaign are struggling because they had spent years preparing to run against President Joe Biden. They believed that they only had to define Biden as a bumbling old man, and the election would be won. With Biden’s decision to drop out, Harris’s elevation, and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz joining her on the ticket, the Trump’s team was sent scrambling.

Meanwhile, Trump is proceeding down his usual path, throwing everything against the wall and hoping something would stick. He calls Walz, who made sanitary supplies available in schools, “Tampon Tim.” He calls Harris a “fascist,” a “communist,” a “Marxist, and “a defective person.” He blames her for a would-be assassin’s attempt on his life.

Trump explained his approach last month saying, “As far as the personal attacks, I’m very angry at her because of what she’s done to the country. I think I’m entitled to personal attacks. I don’t have a lot of respect for her. I don’t have a lot of respect for her intelligence, and I think she’ll be a terrible president. And I think it’s very important that we win…She certainly attacks me personally. She actually called me weird.”

It is true that after Walz began calling Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance “weird” Harris joined in. At a recent fundraiser she said Trump’s “wild lies about my record and some of what he and his running mate are saying, it is just plain weird.” In his typical schoolyard fashion Trump has said of Walz, “He’s a weird guy.” Of Harris he said, “She’s weird in her policy.”

Trump has, himself, become aware of the way that he lurches from theme to theme, and topic to topic. As per usual, he has recently begun explaining that there is a method to his madness.  As he explains it, he is a remarkable, and perhaps unique, public speaker who can weave together a host of odd topics – for example, Hannibal Lecter, sharks, and immigration – and somehow tie them together.  "I do the weave,” he told a rally crowd. “I’ll talk about nine different things, and they all come back brilliantly together. And friends of mine that are like English professors say, ‘It’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen,' but the fake news say, ‘He rambled.’"

To say Trump rambles is like saying Babe Ruth hit home runs. Indeed, his rambling often veers into the realm of pure nonsense. Nevertheless, his followers hear, in his rants, a litany of criticisms and warnings that ring true.  He says America is “a nation in decline” and they agree. He blames Democrats like Harris and Walz and they agree again.

As they fill in the blanks between Trump’s non-sequiturs, true believers become outraged, and it is this outrage that he seeks. Trump knows that at most his base constitutes about 46 percent of the electorate. To win, he must whip this crowd, and some independents, into a frenzy of both anger and fear, which will drive them to the polls. At the same time he must create enough doubt about Harris and Walz to dampen their supporters’ spirit.

Remember, Trump doesn’t need to win the national popular vote to gain the presidency. In fact, all he has to do is work his magic in a handful of so-called swing states, and he can win. So look for the nastiness and the craziness to continue in those battleground states – Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, and Georgia. Don’t expect policy statements or coherence. Expect  more of the  s*@# storm because he thinks it will work.