Trump Is Running Scared

Somehow, it was just two weeks ago that Donald Trump headed into the Republican National Convention looking like a juggernaut. That all feels like a long time ago. As his campaign enters its final three months, Trump looks like a man off balance. His polling lead has evaporated, his campaign strategy is obsolete, and he’s flaunting his most offensive tendencies.

“I want to be nice,” Trump said Saturday at a rally in Minnesota. “They all say, I think he’s changed. I think he’s changed since two weeks ago. Something affected him. No, I haven’t changed—maybe I’ve gotten worse, actually.”

Early last month, everything was going Trump’s way. He had led the presidential race against the incumbent, Joe Biden, since fall 2023, and the polls were only getting better for him after Biden’s disastrous performance in the June 27 debate. As good as the national polls looked, the swing-state surveys were even better. Trump had been an underdog in each of his first two campaigns, and had won the first and lost the second. In the third, he was poised to lead wire to wire. As my colleague Tim Alberta reported, the Trump team was dreaming of a landslide.

[David A. Graham: Donald Trump questions whether Kamala Harris is really Black]

And all of that was before Trump survived an assassination attempt. Though the experience was horrifying, it produced an unforgettable image, drew widespread sympathy, and created an aura of invincibility—if not messianism—around him. It also gave him an opportunity to strike a more unifying tone and get out of the muck.

Yet speculation about Trump pivoting to unity was never very believable, as anyone who’s lived through the past decade knows, and he couldn’t even make it through his 90-minute nomination-acceptance speech without falling back into recriminations.

Having built much of his campaign around Biden’s senescence, Trump now faces Vice President Kamala Harris as the presumptive Democratic nominee instead. The former president has seemed unsure of how to most effectively hit Harris and get off the back foot. He’s begun laying the groundwork to beg off a second debate, scheduled for September 10, and Harris has been happy to taunt him for it.

[Tyler Austin Harper: A legendary American photograph]

In her first 10 days as the party’s standard-bearer, Harris has improved nearly every indicator for Democrats. She leads some national polls and has erased or closed the gap with Trump in swing-state surveys.

Crucially, she has made big progress toward fixing the problem of lagging Democratic enthusiasm. Eight in 10 Democrats say they’re satisfied with her as the nominee, more than double Biden’s figure in mid-July. Donors who closed their coffers as Biden faltered have written big checks. Volunteer numbers have surged, and so have voter registrations for Democrats. A burst of excitement was to be expected when Harris replaced Biden, but she’s managed to sustain it beyond just a blip. The data guru Nate Silver, who had been bullish for months on Trump’s chances, declared yesterday that the election is a toss-up.

But you don’t need Silver to tell you that. Just watch how Trump is acting.

Meanwhile, many Republicans spent the past week grumbling about Senator J. D. Vance, Trump’s running mate. Vance’s selection was a signal of Trump’s confidence: The Ohioan is a MAGA hard-liner, meant to consolidate excitement in the Republican base. Instead, he has become a drag on the ticket. Now infamous for insulting “childless cat ladies,” he is the least popular running mate in recent history. Some observers even wondered whether Trump would replace him on the ticket.

[Tim Alberta: Trump is planning for a landslide win]

Instead, Trump outdid him. Appearing at the National Association of Black Journalists conference on Wednesday, Trump insulted the organization, stumbled over explaining what a
“Black job” is, and vowed to pardon January 6 rioters. But the wildest remark came when he questioned whether Harris is actually Black. (She is the daughter of an Indian mother and a Jamaican father.)

“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” Trump said. “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, but when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian, or is she Black?”

Trump’s claim is not, for the record, remotely true: Harris has always talked about both sides of her heritage. Faced with widespread condemnation and warnings from Republicans that he’d gone too far, Trump stuck to the line later on Wednesday and yesterday. Finding himself in a hole, Trump tossed aside his shovel and reached for a jackhammer.

[Adam Serwer: Why Trump can’t banish the weirdos]

Trump making offensive remarks, his campaign in disarray after the RNC, Democrats riding high behind a historic female candidate: It all feels a lot like summer 2016. Everyone knows how that election turned out. Trump is in a much worse place than he was on July 15, but he could still easily win. Harris’s vibe shift could run out of steam, a Trump punch could land, or some new crisis could reshape the race.

Three months, after all, is a long time. Just ask Donald Trump how much can change in two weeks.