Buckle Up...

Beware of the desperate declarations we’ll hear from Trump as the country turns its attention away from him and toward the DNC

Last week was both exhilarating and exhausting. On Tuesday, a dream of mine was realized with the publication of my first book, Shameless. I was lucky enough to do a few events with the very luminaries whose insight and expertise helped me better understand the long arc of Republican dysfunction, as portrayed in the book. On Wednesday I sat down and discussed it with the great Jen Psaki and Crooked Media’s Shaniqua McClendon, in Washington D.C. 

On Thursday, I got to chat about it with the legendary Al Franken in NYC.

Even preparing to take live questions from some of the smartest people in Democratic politics couldn’t distract me from the extraordinary momentum continuing to build throughout the nation for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz, nor did it shelter me from the desperate, impotent rage atop the Trump-Vance ticket. 

Trump’s need to command national attention is not being satiated by the new reality confronting him, leading to a succession of ludicrous appearances that would be comical if they weren’t so…weird. With each day that has passed since Vice President Harris secured the nomination, and each poll that has revealed her and Coach Walz’s rising numbers, it has become evident that seemingly desperate times have called on a desperate man to release all filters and publicly lose his goddamn mind.

With eyes and cameras now turned toward the DNC in Chicago, as more and more polls reveal that even red-leaning battleground states are moving toward the Harris Walz ticket, Trump is feeding his craziest wolf and letting that poor beast howl at every opportunity. 

To be clear: Trump has always been a terrible presidential candidate. He has never shown the American public a shred of empathy, humility, or interest in adhering to facts. But at least in his prior campaigns, when he was well buoyed by non-stop free media attention and favorable ratings, he was cogent enough to string together a few sentences. That capacity appears beyond his reach at the moment, perhaps exacerbated by stress of looming accountability for his criminal behavior. Or perhaps he’s just gotten too old. 

No doubt; the building excitement and attention for Harris and Walz has placed Trump in a talons-out reactive pose, and he is lashing out across all platforms accessible to him. Following his disastrous press conference at Mar-a-Lago, then his slurred scat session with Elon Musk, his campaign made the shockingly bad decision to hold a press conference on the ECONOMY at a venue familiar to the common man and those struggling most: Trump’s golf course, in Bedminster, New Jersey. 

On Thursday, he stood beside a table of prompts (strategically placed to keep a desperate, flailing man on script), which included boxes of cereal, eggs, milk, and rotting breakfast meats in the hot sun. Turns out placing him next to Cheerios is not the best way to rein him in. He unfortunately allowed us into the workings of his mind, dropping a bizarre aside about how he was “going to take some of them back to my cottage and have a lot of fun.” Um. OK. 

He did what Donald Trump does so marvelously: he spent ninety minutes using any opportunity to bash his able opponent, invent numbers and percentages, and promise to unleash fire and brimstone. He made now-expected racist comments surrounding immigration, leaned way into a tangent issuing a warning about windmills killing birds, and threw out multiple curious claims about Harris, including that she was a Comrade (Russia, I hope you’re not listening…I’m the real Comrade, ain’t I Vladimir?), that her policies are adjacent to those of Margaret Thatcher, and that voting for her would insure that, “You’re all going to be thrown into a communist system. You will be thrown into a system where everybody gets health care.” The horror.

He also used the Bedminster rally to propose “I’m immune from everything they charge me with.” But there’s no question that his looming September 18 sentencing is part of what’s giving Trump the spins, a reality I discussed this week on “The Legal Breakdown” with ‪@GlennKirschner2‬

At a later ill-advised rally, he waxed lyrical about electronics, closing with the crowd-stirring observation that “electronics is peanuts.” 

For anybody left questioning whether or not he has a solid grasp on reality, he eliminated all doubt with his assessment that he’s “a much better looking person” than Vice-President Harris (a comment made while he was melting down over her presence on the cover of Time).

Those were just a handful of hits made over the course of one week. And doesn’t even cover his creepy, moronic decision to post an AI-generated image of Taylor Swift endorsing him, and another of Harris addressing the DNC, depicted as a Soviet communist leader. 

If that’s what we saw last week, what kind of garbage will emerge in the coming week, let alone the coming 77 days? 

We’re at the close of Day One of the Democratic National Convention. We’re waiting to celebrate Joe Biden tonight. Some of the strongest political voices and celebrities in our country will be speaking about hope. The party will be revealed as united; looking toward the promise of a brighter future. Tim Walz will charm the masses by being a human being. A number of Republicans for Harris will speak, because they care about democracy. 

(Speaking of which, I sat down last week with ‪@bulwarkmedia‬'s Tim Miller to discuss Kamala outmaneuvering Trump on his own agenda:)

This week, we will be treated to the vision of two president/vice-president dream teams (Biden-Harris and Harris-Walz) who treat each other with deep respect and affection, the likes of which was completely absent from the RNC. The political phenomenon of passing the torch in order to save our democracy will be highlighted and heralded. If the past few hours are anything to judge by, the cheers will be mighty, the vibes will be strong, and Kamala Harris will be the beating heart of it all. Those, I presume, are the headlines and stories that will be blocking the sun for even Trump’s most outlandish comments. 

Democracy? Joy? Diversity? Not much attention cast on him? That amounts to Trump’s definition of hell. 

Trump thrives amid fear and chaos almost as much as he thrives on cameras being trained exclusively on his face, even when the vision is a literal mugshot. If last week was a preview of how the former president handles the anticipated celebration and tightly organized week ahead…Trump could become a frightening liability. He’s already unhinged enough to be deemed dangerous. I’d rather not imagine what kind of antics he’ll attempt to pull as his crowds continue dwindling, he continues being weird, and the Democrats continue ignoring him. 

Let’s keep our eyes looking forward to November, and finish him off together at the ballot box. Stay tuned for updates from this week of unity and celebration in Chicago.  

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In case you missed it last week, be sure to catch: 

Rep. Jamie Raskin’s latest “Class,” which addresses the rightwing fallacy that America is a white Christian nation where the Bible is supreme and superior to the Constitution:

My interview with US Senate candidate in Missouri, Lucas Kunce, about the wildly unpopular Republican Senator Josh Hawley’s refusal to debate him: https://briantylercohen.com/podcast/

Finally, if you haven’t yet purchased it yet, you can get a copy of my book here, or your nearest independent bookseller: https://www.harpercollins.com/pages/shameless