The Softening of Trump
And the division among the Democrats
As a Trumpologist of two decades in good standing, the thing that is most curious to me about this campaign is Trump’s discipline. From whence did it come? Because it has been largely absent from his climb. The word “discipline” does not readily come to mind when discussing Donald. The old Trump, to be sure, would have done a victory lap around the country after witnessing up close the President’s feeble debate performance last month. The old, thumotically-excessive Trump would have been throwing haymakers into the summer wind, braggadocios in pivotal swing states about how he laid the President low with his wicked right cross and hideous vigor. Instead, Trump had been relatively silent, almost humble, but relentlessly on-message, allowing the Democrats ample wiggle room to implode. We are in witnessing, dear reader, the softening of Trump.
The striking divisions within the ranks of the Democrats is something to behold. Although the frenzied momentum to replace Biden on the ticket appears to have stalled, Democrat pollster Stanley Greenberg issued several stinging memos recently saying the quiet part out loud that the President is on track to lose the election. Also this from Jonathan Martin of Politico:
Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, convinced Biden will lose, has been working the phones since June 27 in hopes of finding a way to ease him off the ticket.
One of her colleagues was struck to see her chatting, furtively but openly, with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries last week in a corner of the House Democratic cloakroom in plain sight of a dozen lawmakers.
The extent of Pelosi’s behind-the-scenes role hasn’t been fully revealed and may never be if the former speaker has her way. But I’m told by people familiar with the exchanges that she’s stage-managed phone calls to Jeffries, plotted strategy with the biggest names in Democratic politics and told one former elected official bluntly that Biden’s legacy can’t be destroying their party.
Of course, that was all before the historic events of the weekend.
Indeed. Then there was the assassination attempt last week that reshaped the schematics of the race altogether. Upcoming polls in the next week or so will be the final metric, but I suspect Trump’s lead will have accelerated significantly, camouflaged within a post-Convention bump. Say what you will about Donald, but to have the reptilian political foresight to defiantly thrust a fist out while mouthing the word “fight” immediately following being grazed by a speeding bullet is pretty darn impressive. He might actually gain some support in the hip-hop community for that. Further, calling the bullet “the world’s biggest mosquito” in a call with RFK, Jr. is just — how else does one describe such behavior? — straight up funny. It is almost impossible to conjure a more striking contrast against Biden’s slack-jawed, vacant-eyed performance of several weeks prior.
The softening of Trump is all about the courting of suburban women. I mean, could the bandage on his ear have been any bigger? Trump has always had a problem with suburban, college educated women. Roe v Wade and the E Jean Caroll verdicts were never going to help TrumpWorld. But the nimbleness of his campaign in pivoting towards suburban women should give the Biden team pause. Let’s be honest, having “rapper and influencer” Amber Rose on a low visibility Convention Day is not going to move the needle regarding his African-American voter outreach much. Trump is probably making a gamble can move a fraction of a fraction of the black vote in places like Georgia. While Rose "influences" no one save the gossip pages, inviting her to the party might, perhaps, show that he is not as racist as we all, quite frankly, know him to be. And that, alongside the nimbus of good will surrounding the assassination attempt, might be enough to tempt the women of the suburbs to take a second look. Once again, Trump here is exhibiting a discipline — actually listening to the advisors he employs — that has heretofore been absent in his short political career.
Looking backwards, Trump never thought he was going to win the 2016 election. It was, in fine, a vanity project. It would lead to bigger things, better network deals, higher fees and international name recognition. According to Mary Jordan’s book on Melania, Trump even ordered his private plane fueled up on election night for a trip to his golf courses in Scotland so he wouldn’t have to watch Hillary Clinton bask in her victory. And then, thanks to in-kind campaign donations from Vladimir Putin as well as James Comey’s massive political stupidity, Trump surprised everyone by winning the damn thing. He surprised everyone, once again, when he very nearly cleft the country in twain when he incited an insurrection after losing the 2020 election four years later. Since then, Trump’s singular obsession with regaining his lost power has led him to this newfound sense of discipline.
In the run-up to Trump’s acceptance of the nomination and addressing of the delegates at the Convention on Thursday, we will see a lot of message discipline. And that message, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, is softness. If it is at all possible, the cuddly side to Trump will be accentuated. He may even wear a sherbet-colored tie that evening. Whatever the case, the lead-in to Milwaukee Thursday will be all about “The Unbearable Softness of Trump.” All his hard angles are going to be smoothed out at the Convention into lopping parabolas. Like the politically important rolling hills of Gladwyne, Pennsylvania or Ripon, Wisconsin, so will be Trump. And if all goes according to plan, these looping arcs will continue into his Convention bump. “I’m not supposed to be here,” the former president humbly told the New York Post on Sunday. “I’m supposed to be dead.” Cue the cadenza of violins.
This sort of thing. Trump even threw out his Convention speech, post-assassination attempt. “I threw it out,” Trump confessed, according to the Examiner. “I think it would be very bad if I got up and started going wild about how horrible everybody is, and how corrupt and crooked, even if it’s true. Had this not happened, we had a speech that was pretty well set that was extremely tough. Now, we have a speech that is more unifying.” Charmed, I’m sure.
Which makes President Biden’s decision to ask everyone to turn down the temperature so damned vexing. This quaint, old fashioned desire to calm down the country is actually hamstringing his own campaign prospects. Alerting the public to Trump’s existential threat to democracy is a key rationale of his re-election bid. Biden is already walking back that unforced error. Sunday night was also a perfectly wasted opportunity to speak out about gun control. Perhaps even a Constitutional Amendment on gun control? The assassin was found dead near an AR-15. “The AR-15 — an exceptionally deadly weapon capable of firing several rounds at high rates of speed — and AR-15 style weapons have been used in recent years to kill scores of people and injure hundreds more in mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas; Buffalo, New York; Dayton, Ohio; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Parkland, Florida, and Orlando, Florida,” wrote Marin Cogan on Vox. In an election season, Biden probably would not have found Republican votes, but there is also the court of public opinion at play. We won’t entertain the possibility that the gun conviction of the President’s son might have figured into his political calculations.
Finally, in the leaked phone call to RFK, Jr this morning we get the clearest taste of this kinder, gentler and scrupulously on-message Trump. “Anyway, I would love you to do something and I think it would be so good for you, and so big for you,” Trump pillow talked. In full-on seduction mode, positively cooing when speaking to “Bobby.” Let’s all no longer pretend that he and RFK, Jr. are rivals anymore, shall we? With all this swishy Beltway cocktail chatter about who RFK pulls more votes from, POTUS or Trump? If RFK, Jr was from the beginning a “useful idiot,” seduced by Steve Bannon, calculated to siphon votes away from President Biden, then the “softening” of Donald Trump is not just performative politics, but a brazen and shameless lie.
Which, come to think of it, is very on-brand.
“The New York Times did run an editorial calling Trump unfit to be president in its Sunday print edition—but Kathleen Kingsbury, the opinion editor, explained that this was because the print deadline had fallen before the assassination attempt, and that the piece would not otherwise have been printed when it was. (The editorial had already been published online as part of an ongoing series about Trump; following the shooting, Kingsbury said that ‘we have held off on further online publication for the time being.’) Then, on Monday morning, MSNBC’s flagship panel show, Morning Joe, failed to air. A source told CNN’s Oliver Darcy that it had been preempted in case a guest said something that could be used to bash the show or the network as a whole. MSNBC “emphatically” denied Darcy’s story, saying that it had preempted Morning Joe to prioritize news coverage; The Daily Show said that its schedule change was a result of logistical considerations, while Kingsbury, for her part, stood behind the Times editorial’s actual conclusions about Trump. Still, various media critics saw the decisions as evidence of cowardice, or something like it. (Parker Molloy accused the Times opinion section of ‘Orwellian, obeying-in-advance nonsense.’) These specific criticisms chimed, perhaps, with a selection of broader commentary warning journalists (and others) against shying away from forthright coverage of Trump in the wake of the shooting and the resultant Republican blame game. ‘Nobody seems to have language to say: We abhor, reject, repudiate, and punish all political violence, even as we maintain that Trump remains himself a promoter of such violence, a subverter of American institutions, and the very opposite of everything decent and patriotic in American life,’ David Frum wrote in The Atlantic.” (Jon Allsop/CJR)
“China and the Philippines have agreed to open an emergency hotline between their presidential offices to prevent tensions in the South China Sea from spiraling out of control in a crisis. The agreement will establish crisis communications at the highest level after repeated incidents in disputed areas of the South China Sea, The Associated Press and Philippine news outlet GMA News reported on Tuesday. The Philippines and China both lay claim to strategically important islands and shoals in the South China Sea. While an international court dismissed Beijing’s claims to the territory, this has not stopped China from ramping up its patrols of the contested waters.” (semafor)
“Trump also seems aware that the tragedy in Pennsylvania has engendered goodwill among vast swaths of voters––even his critics. According to a source, major executives in Hollywood and Silicon Valley reached out to Trump over the weekend to express their support. ‘They were sending messages like, ‘That was the bravest thing I’ve ever seen,’’ said a source familiar with the conversations. (After the shooting, Elon Musk and Bill Ackman formally endorsed Trump.) Trump is aware that there is a huge political opening for him after the shooting, sources said. ‘He knows people are giving him another chance. He’s letting people back in,’ said one of the people who spoke with Trump over the weekend. ‘He wants to be loved.’” (Gabriel Sherman/VF)