Low-energy Donald Trump threatens to pull out of the ABC debate next month

While this doesn’t matter anymore, traditionally, a presidential candidate is relatively quiet during their opponent’s convention week. Partly out of respect, but partly because a candidate knows they would get drowned out even if they attempted to counterprogram. The thing is, during the Republican National Convention, Democrats got so much attention because there was daily in-fighting (which spilled out in Beltway reporting) over whether Pres. Biden should step down. That got more attention than most of the RNC. Donald Trump was legitimately mad that his thunder was stolen and he had every reason to try to steal Kamala Harris’s thunder last week during the DNC. He couldn’t manage it though, mostly because he’s so low-energy and he would rather golf.

Republican nominee Donald Trump looked cheerful playing golf at his New Jersey club one day earlier this month, then appeared bored in an afternoon news conference and dour during a reception with megadonor Miriam Adelson. He publicly mused about staying home during the Democratic National Convention, letting Vice President Kamala Harris hold the spotlight unchallenged.

Several former aides who have known Trump for years said he always preferred to keep a lighter schedule in August, when his family visited Bedminster and he usually golfed almost every day. But aides did not want a situation where he was watching the convention every night, getting angry, and then just golfing all day and stewing, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private interactions. Trump also had grown annoyed with the news coverage that depicted him as not working as hard as his opponent, one person who talked to him said.

So the campaign launched back-to-back events over the past week, with the goal of counterprogramming the Democratic convention and securing news coverage, as other campaigns have often done, but also as a way to keep Trump busy.

“The stakes for Trump this election are arguably the highest they’ve ever been. His criminal cases don’t go away if he loses. Yet he seems to be phoning it in, running a remarkably low-energy, undisciplined campaign,” said Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former White House spokeswoman who quit after Trump supporters attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. “From spending days off the campaign trail golfing to coming up with frankly weak nicknames like ‘Kamabala,’ it feels like he’s lost his mojo.”

[From WaPo]

There’s some talk online that in 2016 and 2020, Trump also spent August farting around, but he and his campaign geared up after Labor Day. Which is also sort of a political tradition, that sh-t doesn’t get serious for presidential campaigns until Labor Day. That being said, Trump has been exceptionally low-energy throughout the summer. There were two separate spaces of time where Trump was not seen in public for more than ten days – no rallies, no press conferences, nothing. Meanwhile, Trump is once again talking about skipping the ABC debate:

Former president Donald Trump suggested Sunday evening that he might skip a Sept. 10 ABC News debate with Vice President Kamala Harris (D), after agreeing to participate as the GOP presidential nominee earlier this month.

“I watched ABC FAKE NEWS this morning, both lightweight reporter Jonathan Carl’s (K?) ridiculous and biased interview of Tom Cotton (who was fantastic!), and their so-called Panel of Trump Haters, and I ask, why would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network?” Trump asked in a social media post Sunday evening.

The Sept. 10 debate is the only one that both campaigns have officially committed to with a network. Trump’s renewed questioning of the ABC News debate comes as Harris has increased her lead in national polls and is gaining ground in key Midwestern swing states. As of Sunday, The Washington Post polling average has the vice president leading in Wisconsin by three points, in Pennsylvania by two points and in Michigan by less than one point. Trump continues to lead in the Sun Belt states, but Harris has significantly narrowed the gap.

[From WaPo]

Let me put on my amateur political/media analyst cap for a moment: you know how Kamala Harris has been avoiding sit-down interviews with the media since she became the nominee? It’s because she doesn’t trust or need the national media to get her message out. It’s sort of the same thing for Trump – he doesn’t need to do the debate and he knows that his cult members will still support him if he backs out. Somewhere in his lizard brain, he also understands that the debate will not actually help him and that Kamala Harris will likely wipe the floor with him. Now, will the Harris campaign throw a party and call him a coward if he backs out? For sure. So… it’s funny that he’s screwed either way. It will either be: “Low-energy coward backs out of debate” OR “Senile Nazi rants about Hannibal Lector during debate.”

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.