Trump finds himself forced to pay in advance for his campaign rallies after leaving a trail of unpaid bills across the country (Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore).
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This article was originally published on Word In Black.
“Black Vote, Black Power,” a collaboration between Keith Boykin and Word In Black, examines the issues, the candidates, and what’s at stake for Black America in the 2024 presidential election.
Donald Trump is losing it.
Today in New Jersey, Trump tricked reporters into covering a “press conference” that turned out to be a lengthy speech to his supporters at his golf course. Low-energy Trump read from a thick binder that included a string of outrageous lies, including the ridiculous claim that more than 100% of new jobs created in the U.S. are going to migrants.
More than 100%!
After telling 162 lies at his disastrous press conference last week at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s advisers decided to keep him carefully scripted this time, but eventually Trump got bored with his own speech and started going off script to appease his fans. It went on for nearly an hour before he finally took a few softball questions. Will he stop the personal insults against Harris? No. “I think I’m entitled to personal attacks,” Trump said.
There is no reboot with Trump. It didn’t happen after the assassination attempt. It didn’t happen after the convention. And it’s not going to happen now. How many times is the media going to fall for this? It’s like Lucy pulling the football from Charlie Brown again and again and again.
Trump hasn’t changed his tone, adjusted his campaign strategy, or figured out what to do to beat Kamala Harris. He’s tried attacking Harris on her race, her laugh, and even mispronouncing her name, but nothing seems to stick.
That’s because the Trump campaign spent a year planning to run against Joe Biden on crime, immigration, and inflation. But now violent crime is down, border crossings are lower than when Trump left office, inflation just hit a 3-year low, and Biden is no longer his opponent. Oops.
Trump loves to hear himself talk but somehow manages not to say anything substantive or truthful when he speaks to the press. All he’s got is personality and BS. But what do you do when your opponent has more personality than you do and calls you on your BS? That’s why Kamala Harris has got him shook.
The 78-year-old Trump thought he could coast to victory against a slightly older 81-year-old white male opponent only to find himself in the battle of his life against a much younger and more energetic Black woman. Suddenly, the tables have turned, and now 58% of voters say Trump is the one who is too old to be president.
By every metric — voter registration, national polls, swing state polls, fundraising, enthusiasm, media coverage, and even crowd size — Kamala Harris has the momentum and Trump is losing steam. Democrats are even beating Republicans in new voter registrations in North Carolina for the first time all year.
“She’s bringing out people who are not interested in voting for either Trump or Biden,” Republican pollster Frank Luntz told CNBC. It’s barely been a month, but “I haven’t seen anything like this happen in 30 days in my lifetime,” he said. And that’s all before Democrats hold their convention in Chicago next week, where candidates usually get a bounce in their poll numbers.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]These guys are not ready for prime time.[/perfectpullquote]
It’s been a rough four weeks for Trump and his running mate. He’s spent the month lying about Kamala Harris’s crowd sizes, attacking her with personal insults, and now finds himself forced to pay in advance for his campaign rallies after leaving a trail of unpaid bills across the country. Even his interview with Elon Musk was delayed by glitches and marred by Trump’s suspiciously slurred speech, but this time he didn’t berate the host for the technical issues the way he did with the National Association of Black Journalists. I wonder why?
Just today, new video emerged showing Project 2025 co-author Russell Vought explaining that Trump is claiming to distance himself from the group, but the group is “not worried about that” because “he’s been at our organization, he’s raised money for our organization. He’s very supportive of what we do.”
And earlier this week, Trump admitted that he wants to abolish the Department of Education, the same proposal included in the Project 2025 plan that Trump claims to know nothing about.
Meanwhile, after losing the childless cat lady vote, JD Vance is back in hot water for newly revealed comments suggesting that he thinks that women have no purpose in life after menopause except to take care of grandchildren.
These guys are not ready for prime time.
While Kamala Harris is outlining her plans to stop corporate price gouging, build new housing, and cutting prices for seniors on prescription drugs, Republicans are complaining that Trump is losing it.
“He lacks self-control. He lacks discipline,” Republican donor Eric Levine told the New York Times. He’s focused on a “very strange victimhood and grievance,” said Republican strategist Liam Donovan.
Trump’s self-inflicted implosion is good news for Democratic candidates from the presidency on down, but don’t be lulled into complacency by the polls. The race is far from over, and who knows what dirty tricks Republicans have up their sleeves? The electoral college is still stacked against Democrats, and Kamala Harris will need a big voter turnout to win the presidency.
But be ready. If she pulls it off, Trump’s gonna lose it even more.
Keith Boykin is a New York Times–bestselling author, TV and film producer, and former CNN political commentator. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School, Keith served in the White House, cofounded the National Black Justice Coalition, cohosted the BET talk show My Two Cents, and taught at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University in New York. He’s a Lambda Literary Award-winning author and editor of seven books. He lives in Los Angeles.