He’s Jumped the Shark

A television analogy helps explain what’s happening in Trumpland and how the ex-president has lost the narrative.

Photo courtesy of ABC

Toward the end of the fifth year of the popular TV series Happy Days, the writers had The Fonz put on water skis and jump over a live shark. Everyone watching at the time had the same question: What the hell are they doing?

Jumping the shark became a cautionary metaphor for when a show goes awry and is desperate for new ideas and ratings. And since Trump is fundamentally a television personality, and we are all living through his twisted reality show, it is notable that, in desperation over his flagging candidacy and polls showing him trailing Vice President Kamala Harris, the writer, producer and chief protagonist of Unhappy Days has now jumped the shark, too.

In today’s piece, I’ll discuss three recent examples that demonstrate this phenomenon and signal that the draw of Trump’s show may be near its end. These examples are about as different as they can be, but they all point to the same conclusion: Trump’s sway over the American public is fading.

A chestnut of a blood libel conspiracy that could fall flat

During the recent presidential debate, the ex-president amplified a gutter internet rumor about Haitian immigrants eating the dogs and cats of Springfield, Ohio. Even after being fact-checked live during the debate and later by reporters, Trump and Vance continued to double down on this sick and false claim. 

Trump refused to condemn bomb threats called in on Springfield buildings during the aftermath of his statements, making clear that he was perfectly okay with the chaos that he himself had created.

And on Sunday Vance gave a disasterclass of an interview when he admitted to “creating stories” in an effort to draw the media’s attention to the problem of immigration while CNN’s Dana Bash brutally fact-checked him.

The confession was telling. Per Vance, the whole point of the made-up stories was to frighten enough voters (and therefore the media) into focusing on the immigrant question, even if that means demonizing an entire community of innocent residents, who by the way are there entirely legally. The Trump campaign will do whatever it takes to get the country talking about immigrants instead of Trump’s many crimes, his record on abortion, his poor debate performance, his declining mental acuity, and poll after bad poll.

Further, it is clear they intend to leverage the MAGA mob and a statistically predictable number of crazies to do their dirty work. But this kind of stochastic terror is hardly new ground for Trump. 

He did it when he came down the escalator and called Mexicans drug dealers and rapists—rhetoric that fueled hate and led to the El Paso Wal-Mart massacre. 

He did it again when he targeted the AAPI community during Covid by labeling it the “China Virus,” causing a sixfold increase in anti-AAPI hate crimes in America, followed by a deadly shooting spree in Atlanta at a Korean-owned spa.

Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric was always destined for the final, lowest kind of take: blood libel.

We have to rewind over a thousand years to understand this canard. The blood libel conspiracy during medieval times falsely alleged that Jews were reenacting the crucifixion of Christ and required human blood for the making of matzo bread. Baseless but dangerous claims against Jews in England ultimately alleged they had actually killed a child as part of ritual sacrifice. This rumor spread and was amplified by politicians of the times, leading to widespread violence, mass executions and pogroms.

Trump and Vance’s false claims have led to a modern day version of this, where scary “others” are devouring the beloved family members, in this case pets, of the local residents. And it has had its intended effect. Schools and hospitals in Springfield are now closed due to threats of mass shootings and bombings. Immigrants are afraid to go outside and are keeping their children at home. Vehicles of Haitian immigrants have been vandalized and hit with acid. Meanwhile, Trump and the GOP continue their call for “mass deportations,” even of legal immigrants, in what is essentially a call for ethnic cleansing.

Trump is now planning an appearance in Springfield to drive home his false narrative, but this could backfire. To put it in television terms, the attention Trump hopes to draw has been overshadowed by the reckless stunt he pulled in an attempt to juice his ratings.

Trump has jumped the shark.

It is worth noting that Trump’s initial statement was initially met with derisive laughter and disbelief, not just from the left but from most of the center of the country. As Aaron Blake of the Washington Post noted, a poll of voters showed that independents disbelieved the claim by a factor of two to one, and five times as many independents are sure that it’s false as those who believe it’s true.

And according to a recent Data for Progress poll, huge majorities of voters of all persuasions believe that Trump’s statements about immigrants eating pets is a weird thing to say.

Trump’s ploy might well result in the worst of all outcomes for him and his campaign: the American public collectively shaking their heads at him with contempt over his racist targeting of a whole community and entirely unmoved by his upping the ante.

Collective yawn

As evidence that Trump has overplayed his hand in what we hope is his final season, it appears there was a second attempted assassination, this time by someone who was caught by authorities with an AK-47 a few hundred yards down the golf course where Trump was playing on Sunday. The only shots fired were by the Secret Service.

(To those on the right questioning how the would-be assailant could have possibly known where to find Trump, it was at his golf course. That’s where he always is.)

Note that the second would-be assassin is, like the first, also a white male. He is not an immigrant, a Haitian or a drag queen. He’s a gun enthusiast who voted for Trump in 2016 but soured on him by 2020, and whose social media indicates he is a vaccine conspiracy theorist while supporting a Haley/Ramaswamy GOP ticket. Not exactly a stable individual.

The first time Trump was shot at, there was a collective gasp from the public and an outpouring of condemnation of political violence. This time feels different. Once again, the perpetrator, however unstable is a statistically predictable outgrowth of the very toxic political environment that Trump himself created. Like his second indictment, this second attempt feels like more of the same, with Trump himself to blame for much of it. 

It didn’t help that Trump squandered whatever political capital he might have had from the first attempt by brandishing his absurd ear bandage, later taken up as a symbol of fealty by the MAGA faithful because they’re not at all in a cult.

A second attempt on Trump’s life is therefore hardly shocking to anyone who understands the kinds of chaotic forces Trump himself has unleashed. It seems only Donald Trump could manage to make us all numb to the idea of two attempts on a candidate’s life in this election season. If we were in the writers’ room, the notion quickly would be shot down as an overreach. 

In my best Miranda Priestly voice, “Another Trump assassin? Groundbreaking.”

Swift vengeance

One final indication that Trump has overreached and overplayed his hand: that Taylor Swift thing.

Right after that disastrous debate for Trump ended, the coup de grâce came from pop megastar Taylor Swift, who posted on her Instagram to her 284 million fans that she had watched the debate, done her research and would be voting for Harris/Walz. She encouraged folks to register to vote and do their own research into the election.

That endorsement led to some 400,000 visits to vote.gov and what appears to be a big surge in voter registration nationally. As Tom Bonier of TargetSmart observed, there was a “400% or 500% increase” in voter registration, meaning somewhere between 9,000-10,000 people per hour. “It’s really unlike anything I’ve seen,” Bonier said. 

In a race where key battleground states may be won by a few thousand votes, this spike in voter registration among Swifties was terrible news for Trump. That’s apparently why he then went and did the worst possible thing in response. Over the weekend, an enraged Trump tweeted in all caps, “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!” 

If you know anything about Swift’s fan base, this declaration of war was a terrible idea. It will only force more Swift fans to direct action and even greater involvement in the election, because nothing gets them riled up like their idol being attacked.

Perhaps in the back of his mind Trump intended to sow terror again by turning his MAGA faithful against Swift. After all, her concerts in Vienna were canceled due to actual planned terrorist attacks—something her fans are still in keen pain over. But if Trump believes creating online hate and stirring up further threats against Swift will cause her or her fans to back down, he has badly miscalculated.

Once again, in his desperation, he has gone a step too far. 

Upping the juice, circling the drain

The constant sideshow created by the extreme MAGA right, including Trump, has a built-in self-destruct mechanism, and we are close to witnessing it in action. Extremist rhetoric can only continue to garner attention and ever more donations if it keeps outdoing itself. That’s why the language has become so dark, apocalyptic and wild. It’s akin to chasing a high—one that demands ever more of the drug to fuel it. Trump is on this train and doesn’t know how to get off.

Eventually, two things will happen. First, the drug simply won’t produce the same effect, no matter how much Trump pumps in or how outrageous his rhetoric becomes. Second, and at that point, those who are frankly exhausted by the drama and the antics will simply shake their heads in disbelief and impatience, while those caught in the whirlpool will continue to be pulled down. We are quite close to that point.

This is what turning the page of the Trump era feels like.

Trump once boasted he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in broad daylight and that his people would still love him. But as a TV star, he understands intuitively that the greatest possible sin is losing your audience. 

How frantic he must be these days, then, knowing that the magic he once had is fading, that he’s crossed an invisible line with many voters, and that his “been there, done that” production is resulting in a ratings nosedive, where he loses more of the American public with each passing day.