Sunday, November 03, 2024

Garbage in, garbage out: Trump’s error-filled week

 

 Garbage in, garbage out: Trump’s error-filled week

The former president’s campaign looks like the New York Yankees in World Series meltdown mode.

 

By Jennifer Rubin

November 3, 2024 at 7:45 a.m. EST

 

The New York Yankees’ disastrous fifth inning in Game 5 of the World Series was the perfect metaphor for Donald Trump’s series of blunders, missed opportunities and mental short-circuits that marked the last full week of the 2024 campaign.

 

When Trump’s hate-fest at Madison Square Garden, including a comedian’s reference to Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage,” touched off a widespread backlash, Trump and his team seized on a feeble distraction from the fallout. He jumped on a convoluted comment by President Joe Biden, willfully misinterpreting it as calling Trump supporters “garbage,” but — as Biden later clarified — referred to the comedian’s “hateful rhetoric.”

 

Although Trump’s constant demonization of opponents as “the enemy from within” and harangues at Jews, women, Democrats, former aides and others make any comparison with the tenor of the Harris campaign ludicrous, the news coverage inevitably turned to focusing on what Biden did or didn’t mean. (Trump’s comments on Thursday imagining guns aimed at Liz Cheney’s face are a reminder that he’s in a contemptible class by himself.)

 

Fortunately, Vice President Kamala Harris swiftly intervened, reminding the media that she is the candidate and this is her campaign. She noted that Biden had “clarified his comments” but declared, “I strongly disagree with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.”

 

Trump, campaigning in Green Bay, Wisconsin, doubled down. Dressing in a high-visibilty vest (its orange hue making his makeup look all the more fluorescent) and climbing into a garbage truck emblazoned with his campaign logo, Trump seemed convinced, would remind people of ... well ... of something noncandidate Biden did not really say.

 

Instead, Trump’s getup just looked ridiculous, and the message was muddled. Was he suggesting he was taking out the garbage — other Americans? Puerto Rico? (Also ridiculous: a garbage truck driving in circles, looking like a malfunctioning radio-operated toy.)

 

It didn’t help that the stunt included a disastrous visual in which Trump faltered and glitched trying to get into the garbage truck:

Coming at a time the media was finally zeroing in on his mental and physical decline, the incident raised fresh questions about Trump’s health and his refusal to release medical records.

 

Still wearing his fluorescent orange vest at a rally in Green Bay, Trump made matters worse. He declared: “I want to protect the women of our country. ... I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not.” Ridicule erupted: The candidate who had already enraged millions of women by bragging about groping on an “Access Hollywood” recording, who was found liable for sexual assault (and who keeps seeing accusations popping up), and who succeeded in getting Roe v. Wade overturned, had revealed once again exactly what he thinks of American women.

 

The New York Times reported the remarks “that he cast as paternal ... only served as reminders to many of his critics of his history of misogynistic statements and a civil court case that found him liable for sexual abuse.”

 

Harris jumped on the comment, posting on X: “Donald Trump thinks he should get to make decisions about what you do with your body.” In addition to a deluge of campaign social media posts and clever ads excoriating the comment, Harris the next day told reporters: “Donald Trump’s remark about women and whether they like it or not. It actually is very offensive to women … and this is just the latest in a series of reveals by the former president of how he thinks about women and their agency.”

 

Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, weighed in as well, “He said, ‘I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not,’” Walz said. “That’s how this guy has lived his life. That’s why he was on the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape, and that’s why he ended up in court.”

 

Aside from his garbage truck episode and doubling down on misogyny, Trump, and Republicans generally, made a number of other face plants. He felt compelled to declare, “I am not Hitler”; the House speaker, campaigning for a GOP candidate in Pennsylvania, got caught promising to repeal the Affordable Care Act; and Trump ally and anti-vax conspiratorialist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed he would be put in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services.

 

Plainly, the Yankees were not the only ones having an embarrassing flurry of errors.

Even the decision of billionaire-owned outlets such as The Post and the Los Angeles Times not to issue endorsements became fodder for Harris. (“It’s the billionaires and Donald Trump Club. That’s who’s in his club,” she told Charlamagne tha God on “The Breakfast Club” radio show, “That’s who he hangs out with, that’s who he cares about.”)

 

As Trump’s dumpster fire campaign implodes, he has already started claiming election fraud in Pennsylvania. A post-election strategy of trying to overturn the results might be the only way he can regain power and avoid prosecution.