Trump campaign

Bishop Butler once observed that probability is “the very guide of life.” This is true. It follows that possibility is cheap, an errant muse. Yes, we must stash away in the back of our mind the admonition that “in this life... we must always distinguish between the Unlikely and the Impossible” (that’s the philosopher R. Psmith, courtesy of P.G. Wodehouse). Nevertheless, we should not run our lives or write our columns on that basis.   “Why Trump won.” That is my assignment. I shall treat it as a declaration, not a question. And even though I write before the returns are in, I can give you the reasons. After all, I have been predicting that Donald Trump would win “in a landslide” at least since July.

I have a confession to make. This year, I practiced electoral abstinence. By that, I mean I mostly tuned out from the election campaign. No posting a spicy GIF every time one of the candidates dodged a question. No clicking refresh on the RealClearPolitics polling average until I could feel the slow onset of carpal tunnel syndrome. It was a serious change of pace. For more than a decade, I was a conservative journalist, and before 2024, I’d covered every election cycle since 2012 (if sitting on my couch in sweatpants watching CNN and writing about it counts as “covering,” which in our current media landscape means yes!). I wrote reaction pieces after each of the Obama-Romney presidential debates. I watched on my TV as the events of January 6, 2021 unfolded five miles up the road.

At just before 2:30 a.m. ET, President-elect Donald Trump took the stage in West Palm Beach to declare victory as the 47th president of the United States. "This will truly be the golden age of America," Trump said. "It will make America great again. There was no other path to victory. We will make you proud of your vote." After thanking his family, his youngest son Barron towering over him and Melania, he went through a litany of shoutouts and thank-yous to his inner circle, including Elon Musk, who he praised as "a genius we must protect" after giving a detailed rundown watching a SpaceX rocket land after a launch; and Dana White, who he invited to the stage to offer thanks to a roster of podcasters including Theo Von and the Nelk Boys.

Republicans and Democrats, who disagree so virulently on so much, at least agree on two things. Both say it is the most consequential election in US history. (They might want to check on 1860.) And both believe the other side’s triumph would be catastrophic. It would have dangerous consequences for decades, they say, and might be impossible to correct. They are half right, perhaps more, and what they are right about is scary. This election is the most consequential since Franklin D. Roosevelt defeated Herbert Hoover amid the Great Depression. That election was consequential because it and the following one, in 1936, locked in the Democratic Party coalition that effectively governed the country for the next seventy-five years.

Elon Musk has often commented that “if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election.” He often adds that, “far from being a threat to democracy, he is the only way to save it.” I believe both statements are essentially true. I say “essentially” because, should Trump lose — or to follow Musk more accurately, should he not be elected, which is not quite the same thing as losing — then there would still be events called elections. Only they wouldn’t be like elections of yore.  According to the Constitution (another thing that would retired should Trump fail to be elected), the qualifications to be president of the United States are pretty minimal.

For the past several months, it’s been well apparent that Donald Trump is winning this election. There are numerous factors that would indicate this. Early vote numbers are distinctly more Republican-leaning than they have been historically. Behind-the-scenes reports among Democrats indicate high levels of buyer’s remorse for picking Kamala Harris — and additional doubts about the failure to pick a higher-quality vice presidential candidate. Harris’s failures in numerous interviews and appearances to answer basic questions with anything convincing and inspirational, resorting instead to repeated talking points and not very good ones at that, have given Americans the impression they are voting for a mystery-box candidate versus the devil they know.

No one with an open mind — you can even scratch the adjective — no sentient sapiens period can have witnessed Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally without a frisson of awe. Even the most tireless Trump supporter must be a little jaded with Trump’s rallies by now. Just as in 2016, they have been building to a crescendo in both size and frequency. And even avid politicos might be forgiven for thinking they had been there, done that.  But Sunday’s rally at Madison Square Garden was something different. Perhaps other rallies were as large. We’re told that the MSG event boasted a capacity crowd of nearly 20,000 with more than 70,000 lined up to view the festivities on screens set up outside.

Can a single podcast episode change the outcome of a presidential election, and consequently, of history? If former president Donald Trump has his way, the answer may be yes. Trump joined Joe Rogan in Texas for just under three hours for a wide-ranging episode of the Joe Rogan Experience, the crown jewel of the podcasting universe; each episode nets millions of views, and its stats in coveted younger demographics are off the charts. If Trump was successful with the interview, he could motivate several thousand possible voters off their couches — and succeed he did.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBMoPUAeLnY&ab_channel=PowerfulJRE Within hours, millions of people had tuned in across YouTube, Spotify and X.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign is in trouble, which means we may be in for one hell of a post-election fireworks show.   If she loses the presidential election, there will be intra-Democratic Party in-fighting unlike anything we’ve seen before. The recriminations will be extraordinary. There will be finger-pointing, backstabbing, excuse-making and an air of panic that will make even the sleazy, widespread gossip-peddling that followed the late Senator John McCain’s defeat in 2008 look tame.   How do we know this will happen? Because it has happened before, albeit on a smaller scale.

One man is in custody after shots were fired at former president’s Donald Trump’s golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida Sunday afternoon. At the time of the shooting, the former president was golfing. The FBI is investigating the incident as an assassination attempt.  The former president's website sent out an "alert from Trump" shortly after the incident that reads: “There were gunshots in my vicinity, but before rumors start spiraling out of control, I wanted you to hear this first: I AM SAFE AND WELL!” Law enforcement sources have identified the would-be shooter as Ryan Wesley Routh. The FBI said in a statement that it “has responded to West Palm Beach Florida and is investigating what appears to be an attempted assassination of former president Trump.

The main takeaway from the ABC News ambus— er, presidential debate last night? That someone should sue the network for creating a hostile workplace environment.  The evening was supposed to offer Kamala Harris and Donald Trump an opportunity expose themselves to the public and explain their positions on various policy matters that are important to the public.   In the event, it was an event in which the immoderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, repeatedly pecked at and corrected, or pretended to correct, one candidate, Donald Trump, while passing over lie after lie after lie emitted by Kamala Harris.  Trump did not say “there were fine people on both sides” at Charlottesville. He did not “incite an insurrection” on January 6.

This is one very strange presidential campaign.  That’s not just because it seems to go on forever. This one seemed to begin shortly after Eisenhower left office. It’s also because there have been two general election campaigns in a row. The first pitted Donald Trump against Joe Biden and ended with Trump’s decisive victory. The clincher was Biden’s humiliating debate performance, which showed the world what his aides, his party and a compliant media had been hiding: the president was suffering serious cognitive decline.  Once voters had peeked behind the curtain, they were convinced Biden could not serve another four years. Indeed, it was questionable whether he was competent to serve now. That question still hovers, unanswered, over the White House.

As Democrats met in Chicago for their party convention, Trump made his latest podcast appearance on Theo Von’s This Past Weekend. The Republican nominee showcased his intention to make the election less about vibes and more about policy, while showing a side of himself that’s not often on display at his rallies or press conferences. One great part of the podcast focuses on Trump’s relationship with his family, which even Hillary Clinton once praised. He talked about his brother Fred, who passed away twenty-five years ago, explaining how his experiences — and advice — are the reasons for why he has never had a “drop of alcohol,” drugs or even a cigarette. “What’s something that you miss about him?” Von asked. “He was wise in a sense,” Trump responded.

The Trump campaign just expanded its circle of senior campaign advisors to welcome five new operatives, including former Trump 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. With roughly eighty days until the election, Trump is attempting to reunite the dream team that got him into the White House back in 2016. Lewandowski will reportedly serve above Trump’s co-campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, amid rumors that they are the most vulnerable on Trump’s campaign.  They "are all veterans of prior Trump campaigns, and their unmatched experience will help President Trump prosecute the case against Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, the most radical ticket in American history,” LaCivita and Wiles said.

The Donald Trump campaign is not an organized effort with which I typically agree or endorse, but their latest statement, put out in response to a position taken by the Commission on Presidential Debates, isn't just on point — it's essential to understanding the reason Americans distrust our government and process. Let's rewind for a second. In 2020, the Commission on Presidential Debates (average age: recently deceased) engaged in one of the most public displays of misinformation, obfuscation and lying that we have ever seen in the context of an election. When then C-SPAN host Steve Scully was caught tweeting blatantly inappropriate question gathering to Anthony Scaramucci days before a debate he was supposed to moderate, the CPD went into full protection mode.