Trump’s wild and lewd rhetoric reaches a new extreme
Even by his haywire standards, Donald Trump’s latest rhetoric and behavior is erratic, autocratic and vulgar and hints at four years of unpredictable leadership that may lie ahead if he’s elected president in 15 days.
Vice President Kamala Harris and top Democrats are seizing on the Republican nominee’s bizarre antics to inject new urgency and a sharper focus into her campaign, arguing he “demeans” the presidency and is “deranged.” As Trump cancels one-on-one interviews and piles up odd public appearances, Democrats are suggesting that he is “unstable” and showing cognitive decline, using the same critique he once used against President Joe Biden. The Harris campaign, for example, immediately highlighted the 78-year-old Trump saying on Sunday that he’s “not that close to 80” when calling for cognitive tests.
The former president this weekend described Harris as a “sh*t” vice president, opened a rally with a rambling and explicit story about late golfing legend Arnold Palmer’s anatomy, and justified his previous threat to use the military on enemies “from within” even as House Speaker Mike Johnson insisted in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Trump meant nothing of the sort.
Trump seemed to validate Harris’ message that he is an “unserious man” who poses “extremely serious” consequences if he is returned to the White House as both campaigns chase the last undecided voters in an agonizingly close race that could be decided by tens of thousands of votes in a few swing states.
Yet Trump’s years of trashing expectations of presidential behavior have seemed to offer him a kind of immunity from the ramifications of what would be career-ending actions for most other politicians. The twice-impeached, once-convicted ex-president’s outlandish displays only underscore his anti-establishment authenticity for millions of Americans who adore him.
His alarming behavior may look to some like a candidacy melting down when the pressure is at its most extreme. But the election may be decided by other factors.
With polls deadlocked, Trump’s behavior hasn’t yet disqualified him. And he consistently leads surveys when voters are asked who they most trust to manage high prices for housing and groceries and to handle immigration.
The White House failed to neutralize both those issues politically, paving the way for their potency in the 2024 campaign. Officials repeatedly insisted that rising inflation early in the Biden term was “transitory” and that the economy was healthy even when millions of Americans were hurting. Similarly, administration spokespeople were long reluctant to consider rising numbers of border crossings as a “crisis” even though the asylum system was overwhelmed. Migrant crossings and inflation have both fallen considerably from their peaks, but the political damage may have been done. And Trump’s voters still regard him as a vessel for their frustration with a political and economic system they believe has poorly served them.
