After the Biden debate debacle (and yes, Trump performed poorly as well, but nobody expected any better), Trump was uncharacteristically quiet. Usually he would waste no time in panning Biden’s performance and in spinning it in the worst possible way (which, unfortunately, wouldn’t be hard). But he kept his mouth shut.
Donald J. Trump has not named a running mate this week. He appears eager to avoid stepping on the controversy swirling around President Biden in the debate’s aftermath.
And WaPo amplified on this yesterday: Trump advisers hope Biden stays in race, as they eye alternate scenarios
Letting Biden be the focus of attention is unusual for Trump, who is more accustomed to dominating the headlines. But he has laid low since the debate, with no public events scheduled this week. A running mate announcement is expected as early as next week, with the Republican National Convention to follow the week after.
So unusual, in fact, that it couldn’t last. And it didn’t: Trump Caught on Video Claiming ‘Broken-Down’ Biden Has Quit: ‘It’s Kamala’
Donald Trump delivered a brutal assessment of Joe Biden’s performance against him in last week’s presidential debate, calling the president a “broken-down pile of crap” teetering on the verge of “quitting the race” in a video provided by a source to The Daily Beast.
“He just quit, you know—he’s quitting the race,” Trump says, sitting in a golf cart. “I got him out of the—and that means we have Kamala.”
(Biden hasn’t quit yet, of course.) Now, the story says the video was leaked, so evidently Trump was speaking in private. The Daily Beast notes that “It was not immediately clear where or when exactly the footage was covertly filmed.” But it goes on to say:
In the video, the former president asks the person holding the camera what they thought of his own debate performance. As he’s told he did “fantastic” and “amazing,” Trump blusters on flatly, “Look at that old, broken down pile of crap.”
Whatever else Trump may be, he knows how the media works, and he knows — especially after the P***Y grabber tape leak — that anything he says will leak. Especially if he says it to a video camera.
There’s a lot to extrapolate here, but I’m just concerned with this one point: Trump, knowing he should keep his mouth shut until the Democrats nominate Biden, couldn’t keep his mouth shut. He just telegraphed his punches — and hardly for the first time. Basic rule of boxing: Don’t telegraph a punch. Basic rule of poker: Don’t show your cards until the betting is over. Both metaphors apply to politics (also to negotiations, which the president has to do a lot).
Trump just told the Democrats that he really wants Biden to be his opponent because he knows how to destroy him. (Despite his boasting, I really think he doesn’t know how to handle Harris. But that’s another story.) And while we already knew that, Trump just made it clear. He can’t keep his mouth shut.
Which brings me to my other point: The people backing Trump, the people who plan to use him (in the worst sense of the word) to lock down power for themselves, have to know they have tied their plans to a man who has a history of a lack of impulse control. On top of which, the Supreme Court just gave him close to carte blanche to turn his impulses into law.
This is the latest episode of a pattern that has repeated itself throughout history, most spectacularly in Nazi-era Germany, when the oligarchs and other autocrats pushed Hitler into power thinking they could control him, only to discover it was the other way around. Hitler’s uncontrolled impulses also cost Germany victory in WWII, such as when he chose to open a second front against Stalin. That’s fortunate for the world; for Germany, not so much. And in the process, tens of millions of people lost their lives.
This doesn’t even factor in Trump’s increasingly obvious (except to the Times) dementia and overall mental and physical deterioration. If the powers behind him think his VP will be better, take note that Trump can pick whomever he wants regardless of what they want, and his base and the convention will have to go along. Trump could well pick someone like Bush’s Quayle, so obviously unqualified that even Bush’s enemies prayed for his continued good health. Trump calculates that a VP choice can’t really help him (he doesn’t think he needs any help), but since he has to have one, he wants someone who can’t harm him, not just politically but personally.
I would love to be a historian a hundred years from now, examining just how this country descended into the abyss. I am not so thrilled to be along for the ride.