The Emperor Has No Closing

As we enter the final two weeks of the Election, the “October Surprise” could be something some of us have long warned of: Trump just isn’t okay.

The final days of any campaign are the most critical. Undecided voters finally start to pay attention—and then pretty much vote their feelings. Both sides battle to turn out their base, so enthusiasm and disciplined organization are key. Democrats learned the hard way in 2016 that a race that seemed locked up could go south in a matter of weeks or even days.

But in 2024, political observers are shaking their heads this time at what’s going on with Team Trump. 

Recently, he’s backed out of several important, high profile appearances, even before friendly interviewers and audiences. When he has appeared, the audiences have often been carefully selected ahead of time. 

But even when he’s appeared before home crowds, things have gone off the rails. Thirty-nine minute dance party, anyone? Even the Washington Post had to concede in a headline that the episode was “bizarre”—and then reminded voters that Harris has called Trump “unstable” and “questioned his mental acuity.”

When Trump has had to answer actual questions from serious interviewers or undecided voters, he has slipped quickly into rambling, nonsensical responses, all while going full fascist. It’s been quite the slide into chaos and madness.

With a daily bombardment of news, it’s important to sometimes zoom out and gather the complete picture. In today’s piece, we’ll gaze down at the three-ring Trump circus from the trapeze artist level. I’ll discuss Trump’s numerous missed public appearances and the various improbable excuses he and his campaign have provided. I’ll also review some of his specific erratic behavior that suggests advancing dementia. Lastly, I’ll gather together recent commentary from the media that indicates that the election might tip a tad further to Harris in these final weeks.

Missed appearances

If the candidates were being graded on attendance, Trump would get a C minus or worse. It’s now widely reported that he has missed several recent interviews and events, but let’s lay them out for clarity:

• 60 Minutes on CBS (Harris accepted)

• CNN Debate (Harris accepted)

• CNBC News interview with Joe Kernan

• NBC News interview with Christine Romans

• NRA Rally in Georgia for the 2nd Amendment

The first four were each opportunities for Trump to reach voters in the center and convince them that Trump is not all that bad. His unusual absence from them suggests the very opposite. In fact, it’s becoming increasing clear that he bailed on them precisely because they could damage his standing in a very public way before wide audiences.

60 Minutes on CBS

In every election since 1968, the candidates from the two major parties have sat down for interviews with the national news show, 60 Minutes. But Trump, who originally accepted the invitation, backed out of the planned October 7 taping at the last minute. The reasons he gave were revealing, non-credible and based on false claims.

Here’s the revealing part: Trump spokesman Steven Cheung explained in tweet, “They also insisted on doing live fact checking, which is unprecedented.” Of course, fact checking is what news reporters are supposed to do. And what’s truly unprecedented is a major political candidate who needs to be constantly fact checked in real time because of all the lies he spews.

Here’s the non-credible and baseless part: Trump also claimed he wasn’t going on because he needed an “apology” for the way he was treated by Leslie Stahl in a prior interview, claiming that she had said that Hunter Biden’s laptop came from Russia. First, she never said that. And second, an apology? Really? Trump’s feelings and pride were hurt four years ago, so he can’t sit for an interview now? (You may recall, Trump cut that interview short and walked out.) What does that say about his ability to lead the most powerful country on Earth?

CNN Debate

Back in September, two days after being crushed by Harris in their first debate, Trump announced, “THERE WILL BE NO THIRD DEBATE!” (meaning after having debated both Biden and Harris). He delivered this statement via a post on Truth Social, one day after trying to convince the public that Harris wanting another debate was actually a sign that she had lost.

“In the World of Boxing or UFC,” Trump had written, “when a Fighter gets beaten or knocked out, they get up and scream, ‘I DEMAND A REMATCH, I DEMAND A REMATCH!’ Well, it’s no different with a Debate. She was beaten badly last night. Every Poll has us WINNING.” This convinced exactly no one (outside of MAGA) who had actually seen the debate or read or viewed the highlights.

After Harris accepted the CNN debate on its original date and terms, Trump then pivoted, saying it was “just too late” to debate Harris because “voting has already started.”

“She’s done one debate, I’ve done two, it’s too late to do another,” Trump said to attendees at a rally in North Carolina on September 21. “I’d love to, in many ways, but it’s too late, the voting is cast, the voters are out there.”

This is nonsense. Presidential debates regularly take place after early voting has begun. Indeed, the Vice Presidential debate was scheduled and took place after the start of early voting, and Trump had originally agreed to debate Biden on that same scheduled date of October 23. The only logical conclusion is that Trump is a coward who can’t stomach the idea of Harris thumping him again.

CNBC interview

Joe Kernan, who hosts a morning program on CNBC called “Squawk Box,” is a die-hard Trumper. As just one example, Kernan publicly defended Trump against the charge that he had raped E. Jean Carroll by arguing that he had only sexually assaulted her, then noted that half of America doesn’t trust the jury and the verdict. (Pro-tip: If you’re arguing that your guy only sexually assaulted and didn’t rape someone, you’re already losing. And yes, to be clear, Trump raped her. The judge even said so plainly.)

So it was curious to hear that Trump had backed out of a decidedly friendly interview that was set to air on Kernan’s show on Tuesday. 

When asked by Politico, the Trump campaign claimed a scheduling conflict because Trump was set to appear Tuesday afternoon in an interview with Bloomberg News (more on that below), to do a taped interview before a Fox Network town hall of women voters (more on that too, below), and to travel that evening to Atlanta.

But Trump could have easily called into CNBC in the morning. There was no “conflict” with any other planned activity. And as The Daily Beast noted, his campaign had apparently further falsely claimed Trump couldn’t do the CNBC interview on Friday because he would be in Michigan. In fact, Trump appeared in person this morning on Fox & Friends, just blocks away from the CNBC studios. 

The fact is, Trump is struggling to keep pace with the demands of the campaign in these final weeks. At near 80 years old, this is understandable, but it shouldn’t be glossed over.  At his rallies he is decidedly low energy, and when he’s tired of answering questions, he apparently retreats into dance playlist mode.

NBC Interview and NRA Event

Two days after canceling on CNBC, Trump also canceled on NBC’s Christine Romans, who had been scheduled to interview the ex-president on Monday. The interview was scheduled to take place in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania, right in Philadelphia. It isn’t clear if the interview will be rescheduled.

Notably, Romans is a senior business correspondent for the network. So that makes two interviews about Trump’s vision for the economy that he has backed out of this week alone. This retreat from the NBC interview is understandable once you consider how badly his performance went before Bloomberg News on Tuesday (see below).

Trump also bowed out of an event in Georgia sponsored by the NRA. It was a high-profile event scheduled to take place in Savannah, Georgia, and he was the keynote speaker. The NRA explained Trump had canceled on the “Defend the 2nd” event, once again citing a “scheduling conflict.” It really makes you wonder why the Trump campaign hasn’t fired its event scheduler, who seems to keep double booking him, that incompetent!

Before friendly audiences, he’s little better

Trump met privately with Republican backers for dinner back in September at his penthouse in New York. And he was in a terrible mood. Trump has badly lagged Harris in fundraising, and Trump wanted heads to roll. Per reporting by The New York Times, Trump ranted at his big donors for not giving more to his campaign, reminding them that they had benefited immensely from his tax policies and should be grateful to him.

During that same dinner, he referred to Harris as “retarded” and said that Jewish voters who didn’t support him “needed their heads examined.”

Recently, Trump went before an all-women audience put together by Fox. The network had ensured that the audience was packed with his supporters, and the moderator asked softball questions. Still, Trump had difficulty fielding some of these without veering off into weird, creepy or nonsensical.

At one point, Trump proclaimed that he was not only in favor of IVF, but he was in fact the “father” of it—even though he had just learned all about it from Sen. Katie Britt, whom he also described as “fantastically attractive.” None of this is likely to win over women voters, convince them that he is in any way a serious candidate, or demonstrate that he truly values and respects women. 

In fairness, I can’t think of anything that he could say or do at this point to improve his numbers on this point.

And then of course, there was also his gathering of supporters in Oaks, Pennsylvania. It was there that Trump really went rogue, cutting the Q&A off after 30 minutes and instead putting on his favorite playlist, dancing on the stage for 39 minutes while audience members and host Kristi Noem awkwardly went along with it.

“There are people that like for their candidate to look strong and to look like they are in command,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI). “This guy looks like he’s the last guy to leave the karaoke bar.”

Trump withers before real reporters and media

The economy, rather bafflingly, remains Trump’s strongest advantage among surveyed voters, with most still giving him a slight edge on Harris on his ability to handle it. This is likely a residual effect of a century and a half of messaging around how Republicans are more pro-business than the “socialist” Democrats, as well as a hangover from when The Apprentice puffed Trump up to be far more savvy and successful than he really was. The producer of the show recently apologized for this fiction and for having created a “monster.”

The disastrous truth about Trump’s economic message may be sinking in, which is precisely why Trump isn’t talking much about it publicly now. The last time he tried was before an audience organized by Bloomberg News, where the editor in chief John Micklethwait was having none of his nonsense. When Micklethwait noted that the Wall Street Journal found Trump’s policies would swell the national debt by $7 trillion dollars, Trump took aim at that paper.

“What does The Wall Street Journal know? They’ve been wrong about everything, and so have you, by the way,” Trump declared, referring to Bloomberg. “You’ve been wrong all your life on this stuff.”

When asked whether a Trump White House would move to break up Google—a fair question about the limitations of monopoly power his administration would set—Trump rambled instead about (checks notes) the Justice Department coming after Virginia for purging its voter rolls.

“The question is about Google, President Trump,” Micklethwait replied. Trump then ranted about how Google is unfair to him and doesn’t show users any positive stories about him, which is both untrue and failed to answer the original question entirely.

Trump did little better before a studio of undecided Latino voters, which was hosted by Univision. I wrote about his disastrous performance there in yesterday’s piece, so if you want to enjoy your Schadenfriday, take a look at the clips featured in that write-up, especially the ones that show the audience’s negative reactions to Trump’s non-answers and his outright lies about January 6.

The press is starting to pile on with OpEds and negative reporting

It may be too little too late, but in the past fews days the number of negative headlines on Trump have ticked up appreciably. Here are just a few, even from some of the normally most chin-stroking, sane-washing outlets among them:

WaPo: Trump delivers profanity, below-the-belt digs at Catholic charity banquet

NYT: In Rambling Interview, Trump Blames Zelensky, Not Putin, for Ukraine War

The Atlantic: Trump Is Speaking Like Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini

CNN: ‘Stupid...ill-tempered’: McConnell reportedly opens up about Trump in new book

WaPo: Trump drops the pretense, labels Jan. 6 insurrectionists ‘we’

NYT: Trump’s Meandering Speeches Motivate His Critics and Worry His Allies

NYT: A Weary Trump Whips Up Anger in Atlanta

Whether it’s because the press can no longer deny what is right before its eyes, or whether they have at last sensed that Trump is weak and unlikely to be elected (or if he is, unlikely to stay on as president very long), the shift in tone is notable. It is happening even while the media continues to undersell Kamala Harris’s many achievements in recent interviews, including most notably on Fox.

This is a welcome contrast to 2016, when many believe negative headlines around former FBI director James Comey’s reopening of the Hillary Clinton investigation shifted the national sentiment just enough to tip voters on the fence toward Trump in the key swing states. 

At least for now, going into these final weeks, there seems to be a growing drumbeat of negative press assessments of Trump. We won’t know until the polls close whether this will make much difference in the end, but one thing is already clear: Trump’s closing argument is not only landing with a thud, his campaign is actively removing him from view to limit the damage. His handlers simply don’t want voters to see how far he has declined from his former self, and they are hoping now to run out the clock, before the naked truth is revealed for all to see.