I covered the presidential campaign (briefly) for the late-lamented Village Voice in 2016. The first thing I did was log onto Donald Trump’s campaign website. You want to know what was there? A banner reading “Trump for President,” and below that, a list of the next two or three rallies Trump was holding, each with a big “Tickets” button where you could sign up to attend the rally.
That was it. No “white papers” on issues, no recent quotes from the candidate, no links to interviews he had given to local news outlets, not even any video from the rallies he had already held.
It bears noting that it worked. Trump won his race against Hillary Clinton, who had over three dozen well-studied published policy papers on her website. Going into the month of the election, Trump held 43 rallies in the five weeks before election day on Nov. 8. On Saturday, Nov. 5, 2016, he held rallies in Florida, North Carolina, Nevada and Colorado. The next day, he held rallies in Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Virginia. On Monday, Nov. 7, the day before Election Day, Trump’s rallies were in Sarasota, Florida; Raleigh, North Carolina; Scranton, Pennsylvania; Manchester, New Hampshire; and Grand Rapids, Michigan. That’s a lot of rallies and an almost inhuman amount of flying.
During the month of September in 2016, Trump held 21 rallies. Three times that month, he doubled up and held two rallies on the same day, two of those in the same state and the third in two states fairly close together. In October, he held 44 rallies, holding multiple rallies on 16 of those days.
So far this month, Donald Trump has held seven rallies. One of those was held on Thursday of last week in Nassau County, New York, a state he lost by 23 points in 2020 and 22 points in 2016. The rally started at 7 p.m. Can you guess what Trump was doing earlier that day, before he spoke at his rally?
Playing golf.
The next day, Friday, back at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, Trump gave an interview to Sinclair Broadcasting Group, a conservative network of independent television stations around the country. You want to know what else Trump did that day?
He played golf.
Here is a list of the rallies Trump has held since the summer, compared with a list of the rallies he held during his winning election campaign in 2016:
June 2016: 14
June 2024: 6
July 2016: 10
July 2024: 4
August 2016: 26
August 2024: 7
September 2016: 21
September 2024: 7
Trump’s website lists six rallies scheduled for this week, between Sept. 23 and 28.
During the interview last Friday, Sinclair Broadcasting’s Sharyl Attkisson asked Trump if he planned to run for president again in 2028 if he doesn’t win this year, Trump made news when he answered, “No, I don't. No, I don't. I think that that will be, that will be it. I don't see that at all. I think that hopefully we're gonna be successful.”
I don’t know about you, but that sounds like the answer of a man who misses the golf course.
Trump is now trailing Kamala Harris in most national polls. Battleground state polls are all over the place, with multiple polls last week showing Harris ahead of Trump in most states. In one poll, she was even slightly ahead in North Carolina, where the self-inflicted wounds of Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson have begun to drag down the Republican ticket, including the man at the top. On Monday, in the Times-Siena poll, which has consistently put up numbers more favorable to Trump than practically every other poll, Trump led in Georgia and Arizona, with a narrow lead in North Carolina. NBC News published a poll on Sunday that showed Harris with a 16-point gain in favorability since she began her campaign. Harris is ahead of Trump nationally by an astonishing 21 points among women, while most battleground state polls show Trump with a single-digit lead among men.
Speaking of self-inflicted wounds, on Friday, Trump put up a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, that you really have to see to believe:
WOMEN ARE POORER THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO, ARE LESS HEALTHY THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO, ARE LESS SAFE ON THE STREETS THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO, ARE MORE DEPRESSED AND UNHAPPY THAN THEY WERE FOUR YEARS AGO, AND ARE LESS OPTIMISTIC AND CONFIDENT IN THE FUTURE THAN THEY…
— Donald J. Trump Posts From His Truth Social (@TrumpDailyPosts) September 21, 2024
So that’s where we stand on the doorstep of October, going into the final month of the campaign. Donald Trump continues to insist that Democrats are murdering babies just out of the womb and that legal Haitian immigrants in Ohio are kidnapping and eating the pets of their neighbors, two of the most outrageous lies ever told in an American presidential campaign. But don’t worry, he still has 42 days to generate a few more whoppers — even from the golf course — before this one is in the books.
