Addled Lying Monster Trump is the Best Trump You'll Ever See Again

Plus: How Long Will It Take the "Smart Set" to Stop Underestimating Kamala Harris

The Democratic National Convention begins at the beginning of next week. Kamala Harris picked Tim Walz as her running mate at the beginning of last week. So, perhaps this week will provide us with the first relative news lull in a summer that has promised many such respites and delivered none.

Reflecting on where we are and what I am hearing, a few thoughts to start the week:

• The Trump you are seeing now is the best Trump you will ever again see. It may seem hard to believe. After all he is melting down before our eyes. He did an interview last week and was clocked at two lies a minute. He is so flummoxed by the rise and rise and rise of Kamala Harris that has resorted to loony conspiracy theories that the well documented crowds showing up at her rallies have somehow been generated by AI and even crazier arguments that she is not really a black woman. He has spent most of the past couple weeks hiding out in what some Internet wag has called Bunker-a-Lago. And when he does speak publicly he has revealed himself to deeply unwell, sundowning 24 hours a day. But it is only going to get worse from here. During the next 85 days as it becomes clearer and clearer that he is going to lose this election and be confronted by jail time, ignominy and possibly even worse for him, irrelevance, he is going to act out in ways that will make his past ugliness seem statesmanlike. He will become more racist, more misogynist. He will spread more lies. He will increasingly cast doubt on the soundness of the election process and argue once again…but this time with more desperation…that that the 2024 is going to be stolen from him. He will become a greater and greater threat to our institutions and more openly encourage his followers to disrupt voting, vote counting and vote certification. He will take to every medium that will have him with hysteria. He will become even less coherent and much more demented. It will be horrifying to watch because it will not only be the final shrieks of desperation from a creature headed for political extinction but he will have no reason to restrain himself, no reason to respect what few norms he has not already violated. So, bad as he is today, his current pathetic performance is likely to be as good as it gets for America’s worst president, America’s worst presidential candidate and one of the worst Americans in our history.

• Usually the worst times in Washington, DC are the couple of months between an election and the inauguration of a new president. During that period, the worst in the denizens of the capital manifest itself. They are competing for a few key jobs, for a few seats at the table of power, for the influence that will enable them to advance their agendas or get rich or become famous or simply continue their climb up the slippery pole of federal government career success. Unfortunately, that period has started already. It started the moment that Joe Biden stepped out of the 2024 race and the torch was passed to Kamala Harris. (It started even before when the advocates of an “open primary” really meant they wanted their friend, ally, race horse to have a shot at succeeding Biden for all the reasons noted above.) In an instant, all the folks on one side of the ship of state ran to the other side of the boat to gather around a new leader and to position themselves for a new reality. All of a sudden people who had spent years gainsaying the VP were announcing on television and in columns and on the Twitterblogs that they had really been for her all along. They were just keeping it on the downlow don’tchaknow, because well, they didn’t want to disrespect Biden or some other form of baloney sliced so thin that you could see right through it. Now, different people and different cliques of political creatures are aligning themselves into groups seeking to influence the campaign, raise funds, provide policy advice. So long as this helps the VP win, I say, more power to them. We can use all the help we can get in this existential fight to preserve our democracy. But I do want to say one thing. A recurring bit of commentary I hear as I bumble around Washington is about how the struggle within the campaign (which is both inevitable and vastly overstated in terms of its consequences) is between the Biden camp and the Obama camp. People are finally admitting the tensions that existed between Biden and Obama and the resentments that have brewed among some on the Obama side when they felt that team Biden ignored or dissed them when hiring for the administration. While there is a shred of truth to this, it misses a few big glaring points. First, this happens all the time. This is the Beltway Circle of Life (and Death). Next, it is actually being managed extraordinarily well by the Vice President and her inner circle. Most importantly, this is not about a choice between one past reality and another. It is about the creation of something entirely new. While the Harris administration will undoubtedly be full of great talents from Team Biden and Team Obama and even Team Clinton (we’re not dead yet), the vision, the policies, the management style, the culture of the administration and its identity from top to bottom will come from the new president. In other words, we’re watching the creation of something entirely new and please spare me the patronizing bullshit that somehow the identity of the first U.S. administration in history led by a woman will somehow bear the stamp of one or another man-led administration of the past.

• I’m reading a lot about how the “Harris honeymoon” will end.  Apparently, such endings are inevitable. Momentum can’t be sustained. It’s a law, say the pundidiots. Trees don’t grow to the sky. Of course, these are the same people who have underestimated the VP for years, who said America was not ready for a black woman candidate, who said she couldn’t unify the part, who have been sitting on the sidelines slack-jawed watching as what they declared was impossible happened. There are only 85 days to go in this campaign. The energy underlying the Harris campaign could certainly be maintained or grow throughout that period. The stakes are high enough. She and Walz and their campaign team are good enough. The real energy of this campaign is also being generated outside the political consultancies and conventional wisdom factories of DC. It is coming from regular people attending Zoom rallies, waiting in line at live rallies, volunteering in record numbers, donating in record numbers, creating memes, driving the social media conversation. What if this not some news cycle driven phenomenon but was actually a response from the American people who started to rise up and say no, enough of the lies and the threats and the hate of MAGA, enough the alliance between the greedy and the vile and the weird. That’s not our America. That’s not who we are. We are taking back control. We are a movement. We now have a candidate and a ticket that reflects not just who we are but understands our aspirations and wants to advance them.  

I don’t know about you, but I believe that what we’re seeing is not hype nor is it a honeymoon, it is a turning point in history, a popular movement to save the experiment in American democracy and one of those ideal marriages between a leader, a moment and a nation.

(And this is a piece I wrote for the Daily Beast on just that subject.)

But then, you know me. I’m one of the handful of folks who has felt that Kamala Harris has been underestimated for the past four years and who has long argued that if given a true chance she would soar. I’m obviously a crackpot. (Know-betters would always tease me for having a “crush” on Kamala. Which was demeaning and dumb and would never be said about someone who believed in a male candidate. But answer then as now is: Watch and see.)