Donald Trump doesn’t hold press conferences, he stages press events. And he doesn’t want you there if he can’t control you.
Shortly after lunch on Wednesday, I checked my email and was told Trump was going to hold a press conference at his Bedminster golf resort in New Jersey on Thursday. I had until five p.m. to request credentials. I immediately did so. Before the deadline to request credentials had expired I received, in damn near record time, a notice (highlighted in red no-less) that my request had been denied.
Trump hasn’t the temerity nor the ability to handle reality. Despite his campaign’s heralding of Trump’s willingness to speak with so-called hostile media, Trump hasn’t the courage to accept a challenge to answer tough questions. Trump has no answers to real questions and is afraid he’s going to be in prison after the end of the November general election or shortly thereafter.
With that said, and with Trump being as despicable and demented as he is, there is no guarantee he won’t win another trip to the White House. Much like a spoiled child who walks into a room to destroy a Lego village built by others, Trump got halfway through the act during his last administration before being dragged out of the room. He now wants back in to finish the job.
To prevent this wanton destruction at the hands of a blathering idiot, Democrats must show unity in Chicago at their convention. If they can, then it may well be akin to the teacher grabbing the spoiled kid before he’s able to re-enter the classroom and stomp the Lego village into garbage.
When the Democrats show unity they are hard to stop. At the 1996 Democratic Convention in Chicago Al Gore danced his version of the Macarena in front of thousands at the United Center. It was cringe-worthy to watch, but the whole arena danced with him. The Democrats won that year. This is not a call for the Democrats to re-introduce the Macarena in Chicago this year, but a reminder that all isn’t necessarily what it appears to be. The Democrats looked silly in 1996 (well, let’s be honest they often look silly) but they looked silly together. In 2016 the Democrats came out of their convention in Philadelphia with a serious mind and seriously fractured. The so-called Bernie Bros said they either wouldn’t vote at all for president or would vote for Donald Trump as they were angry with the party for choosing Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. Then, during her floor speech, Clinton appealed to Republicans to join the Democrats – noting that if they really supported the Republican Party, they’d vote Democrat. That further alienated the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.
Democrats must show unity in Chicago at their convention. If they can, then it may well be akin to the teacher grabbing the spoiled kid before he’s able to re-enter the classroom and stomp the Lego village into garbage.
The Democrats looked silly, but not unified and Clinton lost.
The Macarena got everybody dancing together. That’s, metaphorically, where the party needs to be after next week. The Democrats, right now are still on a sugar rush since Vice President Kamala Harris took over as the presidential candidate nearly a month ago. Of course, she’s been the recipient of unintentional gifts from Trump and his VP candidate JD Vance in the last few weeks, including, but not limited to rantings about abortion and drag queens. At the same time, the Trump rallies seem stale and he looks, more and more, like a delusional dilettante with the demeanor of a dawdling dweeb on downers.
Then there’s that Trump interview.
Trump’s appearance this week with Elon Musk on “X” – formerly known as Twitter – did neither one of the two men any good outside of their own cults. The beginning was filled with glitches. Trump slurred his way through the interview as if he had a bad lisp. Both men talked about nuclear bombs in an eerily flippant manner (I guess they’ve got bunkers built just in case). But, even more frightening was how frank and candid they both were about their disdain for unions and the working man.
The United Auto Workers union on Tuesday filed federal labor charges against former President Trump and Musk for threatening to intimidate workers who go on strike following Trump’s Monday interview. The pair discussed a potential role for Musk in Trump’s administration should he get elected. Trump called Musk “the cutter,” and praised Musk for his anti-union stances.
“I look at what you do, you walk in and you just say, ‘You want to quit?’ They go on strike – I won’t mention the name of the company – but they go on strike, and you say, ‘That’s okay, you’re all gone. You’re all gone. Every one of you is gone,” Trump said.
Musk laughed and said “yeah.”
UAW president Shawn Fain, a harsh Trump critic, previously called him a “scab.” He also singled out Tesla, the largest non-union American automaker, as a target for union organizing efforts.
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For those Republicans who can still think independently, there has been talk of Nikki Haley joining the ticket, replacing Vance, or replacing Trump. Either seems like a pipe dream considering Trump controls all of the levers in the GOP – and he recently doubled down on Vance. Trump also won’t leave the race of his own accord because the presidency still affords Trump the best chance of remaining free from shackles, wearing an orange Department of Corrections uniform and spending his days staring at blank walls.
So, that brings us back to Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democrats. She is the beneficiary of Trump's missteps, but there are plenty of people who are still unsure of her ability to do the job. While the Democratic base is juiced by the energy her campaign has thus far generated, it remains to be seen if she can convince undecided voters in about six states that she’s the leader the country needs. I have no idea why anyone would still be on the fence, even if the Democrats were to nominate a potato for president to run against Trump. But these voters do exist and it seems tragic and yet somewhat comical that Harris could overwhelmingly win the popular vote, yet somehow struggle in the Electoral College. That’s a different story, however.
What I did tune into this week was a statement by an undecided voter in Michigan. He is Black, 60-years-old and lives in a suburb of Detroit with many Arab-Americans. “They don’t like Harris or the Democrats and may not vote,” he explained. “But I asked them this; If you’re going out with your significant other for the night and your choices for babysitter are Harris or Trump, or Walz and Vance, who would you pick? Man, for most of them, it’s not even close.”
There you have it: The babysitter factor.
The Democrats argue that this election is about saving democracy and the Harris/Walz ticket respects the Constitution while the convicted felon Trump/eyeliner ticket, sorry JD “Shapeshifter” Vance ticket, is the authoritarian ticket; a wannabe King with his untalented court jester by his side. Maybe, it’s about something simpler. After all, we’ve heard the political rhetoric before. Every presidential race in recent memory has evoked those metaphors. They’re as tiresome as watching Trump and Elon Musk engage in a public tongue bath while telling us nuclear bombs aren’t that bad. They’re as boring as a Trump rally. They’re as loathsome as Vance’s fictional upbringing and as irritating as Trump and Vance screaming about woke culture – which is also very tiresome.
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So, who are we as a nation?
Arguing politics doesn’t work and there are plenty of people who are numb to national politics. Former White House Speaker Tip O’Neil said “all politics is local,” and my own grandfather, a circuit court judge, said all politics boils down to a backyard barbecue. With that in mind, maybe to reach the undecided voter in key states, you ask a very simple question. Who would you trust to watch your children for a night?
We certainly don’t need to hear any more of Trump’s lies. He does not have anything new to say, and what he says is nothing more than verbal diarrhea. Take for example this gem released by the Trump campaign that blames Harris for inflation that doesn’t exist and for which she isn’t responsible:
It has been 24 days and Kamala Harris continues to duck and hide from the media—no interviews and no press conferences since she announced. Since Kamala is not doing any press, she can’t explain why crippling inflation rates have resulted in a 20% increase in prices since she took office. Her campaign is hiding Kamala in the basement because they know she owns every single disastrous policy record of the Biden-Harris administration. Voters are often faced with the question, ‘Are you better off now than you were four years ago?’ The answer is clearly NO. Instead, Kamala should be asked, ‘Are you proud of the disaster you have created for every American family?’ Judging by her silence, her answer is a resounding YES.
Of course, we could clean this all up if Trump held an actual news conference and not a staged event attended by sheep in a pen. And yes, I’m well aware that Harris hasn’t held a press conference. As a reporter, I welcome it and want her to hold one. But, if you’re in the Harris campaign, you have to ask yourself why would you? As long as Donald Trump keeps eating his own tail, you might as well let him.
After all, nobody wants him to be a babysitter.
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