Donald Trump has said he won’t stand again in 2028 if he loses the US election. Please don’t threaten us with a good time, Donald! His heart just isn’t in this contest, it seems. Tomorrow he will be addressing an event at the headquarters of the Mosack group in North Carolina. According to the company website, it offers “premium” solutions for plumbing products. Metaphor alert: is his campaign going down the pan?
Trump’s ego may be telling him not to try too hard to win. With six weeks to go, he has never adjusted to the surprise and sheer effort of trying to beat an insurgent Kamala Harris rather than doddery Joe Biden. Losing to a woman, I imagine, would be all the more humiliating if he thought he had thrown himself headlong into the campaign. Not that he would ever admit defeat, only that the election was “rigged”. But being a two-time loser would be deeply unsettling for the world’s biggest narcissist.
Perhaps Trump has been rattled by two threatened assassinations. Anyone would be, frankly. Or it could be his age. According to Axios, the 78-year-old former president would rather be chillaxing at Mar-a-Lago than filling stadiums. He has been holding fewer rallies than in previous campaigns and has been shortening his speeches to stop members of the audience drifting away – as Harris highlighted so woundingly at their presidential debate.
Privately, is Trump feeling lonely? Now that Laura Loomer, the 31-year-old far-right influencer, has been thrown off his plane for being too distracting, Trump has been bringing his fetching, young grand-children to events. “Make America great again,” Carolina, the five-year-old daughter of son Eric, chirped at a rally last weekend. “Vote for grandpa,” her brother Luke, seven, chimed in. Daughter Ivanka has kept her promise to keep her distance from the campaign.
Melania won’t get out of bed on Trump’s behalf forless than $237,500
We now know that Melania won’t get out of bed on Trump’s behalf for less than $237,500. This, it has emerged, is the mind-boggling sum the former first lady received from a mystery donor for delivering her one and only campaign speech at an April meeting of Log Cabin Republicans, a gay conservative group. A more supportive spouse would have turned up free of charge. However, Melania is willing to pop out of her polished shell to flog her new memoir (Melania, $40, published on October 8th). This is “a deeply personal reflective and personal journey for me,” she promises.
Trump hasn’t read it. “Too busy”, he said airily, while telling people to “go out and buy it”. On the publicity blurb, he states, “Melania is my rock and my foundation, and I wouldn’t be the man I am today without her at my side.” But the point is, she isn't at his side. We would never hear the end of it were the second gentleman Doug Emhoff, to treat his wife, the vice-president, so disdainfully. This week Trump has been pumping out a new solo product line to join his NFT trading cards, gold sneakers and bibles – a $100 “Trump” coin made of $31 worth of silver. It is as though he is happier in his old role of huckster rather than politician. But buyers beware. His Trump Media tech stock has fallen from $66 in April to little more than $12 today.
Inside his flat-lining election campaign, senior aides are feuding over who calls the shots, while gossiping about which prominent adviser is allegedly on the leaked Ashley Madison database of would-be adulterers alongside Mark Robinson, the “Black Hitler” porn fetishist and Republican candidate for governor in North Carolina. Robinson’s horrified campaign staff have resigned en masse over his alleged pornographic, sexist, racist and anti-semitic comments, as revealed by CNN, and the Republican governors’ association has cut off his funds.
You can count on it: Robinson will not be joining Trump at the plumbing products rally. Having hailed Robinson as “Martin Luther King Jr on steroids”, Trump is now shunning but not publicly disowning him (unlike the more principled governor of Georgia). That would raise too many awkward questions about Trump’s own behaviour towards porn star Stormy Daniels, former Playmate Karen McDougal and agony aunt E Jean Carroll, whom he sexually assaulted and defamed.
Yet there is all to play for if Trump were to emerge from his torpor. It is possible he will win the election even without over-exerting himself. The national polls remain stuck within the margin of error with Harris leading Trump by 2.7 points, according to the 538 website. White, male voters remain wedded to the former president. A New York Times/Siena poll yesterday caused a ripple of fear among Democrats by showing Trump 2-5 points ahead in the sunbelt states of Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina (where the impact of Robinson’s implosion has yet to be determined).
If Harris loses to a lacklustre, out-of-steam Trump, the media will face a reckoning as well as the Democratic party.
In Harris’s favour, she is marginally ahead in the important midwestern battleground states, including Pennsylvania. She has been enjoying all the momentum in this race, while Trump’s performance remains stuck in the doldrums. According to an NBC poll, her favorability ratings have soared 16 points since July, more than any politician since George W Bush stood with a bullhorn on the ruins of the World Trade Center after 9/11. But she needs another strong burst of enthusiasm to put her over the top with 270 electoral college votes. This is why Harris is trying to taunt Trump into agreeing to a second debate in the traditional, tabloid way by picturing him in a chicken suit.
If Harris loses to a lacklustre, out-of-steam Trump, the media will face a reckoning as well as the Democratic party. Edward Wasserman, a leading commentator on journalism ethics, has suggested, “If Trump returns, thank the White House press corps”. He blames their refusal to report truthfully on Biden’s decline for making Harris “a longshot with the impossible job of spackling together a winning presidential campaign in 15 weeks.”
Yet if Trump loses, the Republican party could be left a smoking ruin, with Maga loudmouths and establishment Republicans fighting over what remains of the spoils. Liz Cheney, the former GOP congresswoman who is now backing Harris, has suggested it might be time for a new party. “There is certainly going to be a big shift, I think, in how our politics work,” she said. “I don’t know what exactly that will look like… Far too much has happened that’s too damaging.” Trump would remain a baleful influence, who would seek to challenge and undermine the results. But after running for three elections in a row, his time would have passed.
