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I think maybe people are starting to get wise to Donald Trump’s old tricks. It used to be that every time the man said something outside the norm of basic human decency that everyone would go racing to cover it on the assumption that it would somehow hurt him and discourage future similar transgressions. But it never seemed to work out the way people expected. Racist or sexist comments or behaviors that would sink any other politician wound up being water off Trump’s back. Far from destroying him, it made his supporters more grateful and loyal. Even felony convictions didn’t stop his march toward the GOP nomination or his persistent polling lead over Joe Biden.
But this past week, things have played out a little differently.
Susan Glasser of the New Yorker noted the standard playbook. Trump somewhat inexplicably agreed to do a Q&A with a panel at the National Association of Black Journalists conference. He arrived late and his campaign ended the planned hour session after a mere 34 minutes. But in that brief span of time, Trump managed to put on a deplorable display of naked racism, highlighted by his false claim that Kamala Harris only recently decided to self-identify as black.
Trump’s efforts, over the past twenty-four hours, to shift the political debate to his own untrue and offensive assertions about the Vice-President’s race may well be a political disaster, but they are not an accident, a flub, or an undisciplined lapse. This, in 2024, is as absurd as subscribing to the credulous spin that Trump’s near-death encounter with a would-be assassin’s bullet had remade him into a unity candidate for the ages. Even Trump couldn’t help mocking this ridiculous line from his advisers…”
“Trump is Trump is Trump. The Harris attacks represent a textbook example of his approach to politics, combining his belief in the strategic power of race-baiting to mobilize his base and his favorite tactic for disrupting a bad news cycle: changing the subject to something even more outrageous. Every minute spent debating Harris’s race—or his own folly in raising it—is a minute not spent on Trump’s own failings: on his advanced age and manifest unfitness for the Presidency; on his legal liabilities and criminal conviction; on his kooky Vice-Presidential nominee and his party’s extreme right-wing agenda.
Commentators as diverse as Marcy Wheeler and Jonathan Last agreed with Glasser that whether Trump’s Q&A was damaging to him or not, it was intentional. It was not a series of gaffes, but one more example of a well-worn strategy to monopolize attention and move other negative stories off the front-page. Last put it his way, “Saying Harris isn’t really black is a gagillion times more effective at getting attention than rolling out some policy paper.”
But the Harris campaign didn’t fall into the trap. All Harris had to say is that it was “the same old show” and “America deserves better.” She didn’t otherwise even acknowledge his antics.
“…it was the same old show: the divisiveness and the disrespect. And let me just say, the American people deserve better. The American people deserve a leader who tells the truth. A leader who does not respond with hostility and anger when confronted with the facts. We deserve a leader who understands that our differences do not divide us – they are an essential source of our strength.”
The pattern repeated itself when J.D. Vance tried to defend his running mate:
“[Harris] is everything to everybody, and she pretends to be somebody different depending on which audience she is in front of. I think it’s totally reasonable for {Trump] to call that out, and that’s all he did,” Vance said.
A spokesperson for Harris’ campaign responded to Vance’s remarks by calling him “the most unpopular Vice Presidential nominee in history.”
Rather than play the victim or wallow in hurt feelings, Harris and her campaign just punch back even harder. I think we’ve gotten past the “Oh my God, he said whut?” phase of Trump’s political career. Now it’s just, “a convicted felon said some shit, he’s a terrible person and everyone hates his VP pick.”
It’s a big improvement and a sign that Trump’s tired act may be nearing its end.
