During the nine years Donald Trump has been running for president, his political superpower has been his feral talent for seizing media attention and knocking opponents off-stride with insults, falsehoods and demagoguery.
Until this year, it usually worked.
But over the last five weeks, as Kamala Harris launched her late-starting presidential campaign, Trump has been the one who appeared off-balance, seemingly unprepared to run against anyone younger than President Biden.
So as Democrats gathered in Chicago, Trump went back to his old playbook to regroup. He abandoned the already-frayed tradition of taking a break during the other party’s convention — what’s one more norm to break? — and set out on a cross-country tour aiming to cut the surging Harris down to size.
But Trump’s attempt to grab back the spotlight — his most frenetic week of campaigning in months — didn’t work.
Harris’ convention ratings were higher than his. Even worse, Harris’ rally crowds were bigger than his. Worst of all, his old nemesis Barack Obama made fun of him over it.
Trump was seething even before the week started, when Time magazine put a formal portrait of Harris on its cover.
“I’m a better-looking person than Kamala,” he complained.
He was still seething when the week ended, when Martha MacCallum of Fox News had the temerity to note that Harris was “having some success” at attracting young and minority voters.
“No, she’s not having success,” Trump snapped. “I’m having success.”
For those who missed it — because, after all, it didn’t get much media coverage — here’s a brief diary of Donald Trump’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Convention Week:/
Monday: York, Pa. — Trump speaks to an audience of about 150 at a small factory and questions Harris’ origins: “I wonder if they knew where she comes from,” he muses. That evening, he watches Biden’s speech at the convention. “[I] was amazed at his ANGER at being humiliated by the Democrats,” he writes in a social media post. “I was happy to have played a part in his demise.”
Tuesday: Howell, Mich. — Trump falsely accuses Harris and other Democrats of using violence to push Biden out of office. “That was a coup,” he claims. “It was a vicious, violent overthrow of a president of the United States.” (“I think he has a problem,” Biden responds.)
That evening, Trump watches former President Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as they ridicule his obsession with crowd size. “Very nasty,” Trump says.
Wednesday: Asheboro, N.C. — At a rally, Trump charges that the FBI is faking crime statistics and the Labor Department is faking job statistics. (The numbers are often fallible, but there is no evidence that they are faked.)
And he returns to talking about the Obamas’ speeches. He acts out a mock dialogue with his campaign aides, who want him to cut back on insulting his opponents. “Do I still have to stick to policy?” he whines in a little-boy voice.
That evening, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school football coach, accepts the Democrats’ nomination for vice president and is celebrated by former players. “A total lightweight,” Trump scoffs. “They call him ‘Coach.’ He’s a semi-coach.”
Thursday: Sierra Vista, Ariz. — Trump starts the day on “Fox & Friends” talking about one of his favorite subjects: Crime in California, which he blames on Harris’ tenure as district attorney in San Francisco more than a decade ago.
“Everything she touched turned bad,” he said. “You can barely go into California anymore. … It’s got nothing. Drugs all over the place. You go into Los Angeles, you can’t walk down the streets.”
That evening, he watches Harris accept the presidential nomination and generates a string of furious social media posts.
“WORST SPEECH EVER,” he types.
“IS SHE TALKING ABOUT ME?” (She was.)
“SAY GOODBYE TO THE U.S.A.!”
If the Democratic convention won the race for the ratings, hate-watcher Trump may have been a small part of the problem.
Friday: Glendale, Ariz. — The Democratic convention is over, and Trump finally gets some good news: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspends his independent presidential campaign and endorses him. “A great guy,” Trump says, although Kennedy once denounced him as “a terrible human being.” It isn’t clear whether Kennedy’s endorsement will move many voters into Trump’s camp.
Trump was all over the map, both geographically and figuratively. He didn’t focus on a single, core message to appeal to swing voters who aren’t sure they really want a second Trump term.
Still, Trump can claim one solid accomplishment for the week.
He appears to have settled on a new nickname for Harris: “Comrade Kamala.”
Nicknames are a tell for Trump — a brand for his main line of attack. He struggled for months to find one for Harris, with misfires from “Laffin’ Kamala” to the inscrutable “Kamabla.”
“Comrade Kamala,” of course, reflects his argument than Harris is not just too liberal for most voters, but — in his absurdly inaccurate charge — “a radical left Marxist.”
Any real Marxist will tell you Harris doesn’t come close. Real Marxists believe the government should own major industries; Harris does not. Harris doesn’t even support Bernie Sanders-style “single-payer” health insurance, as she briefly did during her 2019 campaign.
But when Trump was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, almost any charge of communist leanings was enough to doom a politician. Back then, it was called McCarthyism, after the Wisconsin Republican senator who wielded groundless accusations as recklessly as Trump.
Will the same technique work half a century later? That may depend on whether Harris continues tempering her policies to make her liberal agenda sound like simple common sense, as she did in her acceptance speech. The test will unroll over the next 10 weeks.
But as the week ended, she appeared to have found her stride — and Trump was the one struggling to keep up.