DISORDER(S): Is something wrong with Candidate Trump?

THURSDAY, AUGUST 22, 2024

Insults v.  neighbors and friends: Is "something wrong" with Donald J. Trump? 

It's one of the possible disorders we've been discussing this week. In the land of journalistic euphemism—in the realm of the refusal to speak—could something be "wrong" with this former president?

Regrettably, we'd say the answer is yes. Please consider:

On Tuesday night, former president Barack Obama kept suggesting that we need to see our fellow citizens as our neighbors and friends.

He didn't go quite as far as we ourselves would have liked. But for us, it recalled that instructive passage in My Life, former president Clinton's book.  

We refer to the lengthy passage in which Clinton said that Arkansas' Pentecostals—people who tended not to vote for him—were some of the finest people he has ever known. 

We've often cited that instructive passage here at this site. In last night's convention address, former president Obama was working the same side of town, as he has done in the past:

Barack Obama, convention address:
Kamala and Tim have kept faith with America’s central story: a story that says, “We are all created equal.” All of us endowed with certain inalienable rights. That everyone deserves a chance. That even when we don’t agree with each other, we can find a way to live with each other. That’s Kamala’s vision. That’s Tim’s vision. That’s the Democratic Party’s vision. And our job over the next 11 weeks is to convince as many people as possible to vote for that vision. 

[...]

That’s the America Kamala Harris and Tim Walz believe in: an America where “we, the people” includes everyone. Because that’s the only way this American experiment works. And despite what our politics might suggest, I think most Americans understand that. Democracy isn’t just a bunch of abstract principles and dusty laws in some book somewhere. It’s the values we live by. It’s the way we treat each other, including those who don’t look like us or pray like us or see the world exactly like we do. 

That sense of mutual respect has to be part of our message. Our politics have become so polarized these days that all of us across the political spectrum seem so quick to assume the worst in others unless they agree with us on every single issue. We start thinking that the only way to win is to scold and shame and out-yell the other side. And after a while, regular folks just tune out, or they don’t bother to vote. 

Now that approach may work for the politicians who just want attention and thrive on division, but it won’t work for us. To make progress on the things we care about, the things that really affect people’s lives, we need to remember that we’ve all got our blind spots and contradictions and prejudices. And that if we want to win over those who aren’t yet ready to support our candidates, we need to listen to their concerns and maybe learn something in the process. 

Good God! There's even the chance that We might learn something from Them! That we might learn something from the people who don't vote the way we do!

There was more of that in Obama's speech—a speech in which he cited the (unfortunate) way "we build all manner of walls and fences around ourselves." Obama has always been a Lincoln man. Eventually, he moved on this:

As much as any policy or program, I believe that’s what we yearn for: a return to an America where we work together and look out for each other. A restoration of what Lincoln called, on the eve of civil war, our “bonds of affection.” 

That's what Lincoln said, even on the eve of war. As the war was coming to its end, in the most astounding speech of them all, that president said that we should proceed "with malice toward none."

On Tuesday night, President Obama was working that vein of understanding. Last night, Candidate Walz brought that same concept in:

Candidate Walz, convention address:
Now, I grew up in Butte, Nebraska, a town of 400 people. I had 24 kids in my high school class, and none of them went to Yale. But I’ll tell you what: Growing up in a small town like that, you learn how to take care of each other. That family down the road, they may not think like you do, they may not pray like you do, they may not love like you do—but they’re your neighbors, and you look out for them, and they look out for you.

Everybody belongs, and everybody has a responsibility to contribute...

Your neighbors may not vote the way you do—but everybody belongs. Along with Candidate Walz, Mr. Rogers was in that room last night, asking to be your neighbor and your friend. 

That said, and regrettably, is it possible that "something's wrong" with Donald J. Trump? Dual headline included, here's part of the New York Times' report about his appearance yesterday in Asheboro, North Carolina:

Trump Attacks Harris at N.C. Rally, Asking the Crowd to Back Him Up
In a speech intended to be about national security, Mr. Trump continued personal attacks on Kamala Harris and asked for validation in doing so from the crowd.

After two days of policy-focused addresses with modest crowds, former President Donald J. Trump returned to form on Wednesday with an outdoor speech in North Carolina, where he insisted that he would not give up personal attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris and continued to sow doubts about the integrity of the election in November.

Speaking to thousands of supporters outside a hangar at an aviation museum in Asheboro, N.C., Mr. Trump ridiculed his advisers for pressuring him to focus on policy instead of on personal insults as he mocked President Biden’s physical appearance. He called former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “crazy,” labeled Ms. Harris both “stupid” and a “Marxist or a communist” and said former President Barack Obama was “nasty.”

And as he promised to invest in America’s military, criticized the Biden administration’s foreign policy and vowed that only he could restore world peace, Mr. Trump repeatedly revived his false claims of widespread election fraud in 2020 and spun them forward to November.

As he insisted that he could end the war in Ukraine just by being elected, Mr. Trump portrayed his victory as a foregone conclusion that could be stymied only by electoral fraud.

“When, if, but when—I have to always say ‘if,’ you know, because they cheat,” Mr. Trump said of Democrats. “I would say ‘when’ if they didn’t cheat, but they cheat. That’s the one thing—they’re great at cheating in elections.”

[...]

His speech on Wednesday was billed as being focused on national security. Early on, he acknowledged that he was rejecting his team’s insistence to stick to issues, saying that he felt moved to respond to a litany of criticism made at the Democratic National Convention, including speeches on Tuesday night by Mr. Obama and the former first lady Michelle Obama.

“They always say, ‘Sir, please stick to policy. Don’t get personal,’” Mr. Trump said. “And yet they’re getting personal all night long, these people. Do I still have to stick to policy?”

The crowd responded with a resounding “No.” 

For the record, the candidate has every right to "get personal" in his remarks. Several speakers at the Democratic Convention have indeed "gotten personal" in their characterizations of him.

We'd even say that one or two, understandably but perhaps unhelpfully, may even have "taken the bait" in their convention remarks.

There's no perfect way to conduct a campaign, but there are ways which spill out of bounds. In its own report on the North Carolina event, the Associated Press mentioned something the New York Times didn't.

Politico mentioned it too, in its own report:

During his characteristically meandering speech here—which was intended to focus on national security—Trump repeatedly referred to Harris by one of his recent nicknames for her, “Comrade Kamala,” and said he would require on Inauguration Day the resignations of “every single senior military official who touched the Afghanistan disaster.”

The hopeful is running against "Comrade Kamala." He now says this at every stop—but he says many other things too.

Is it possible that "something's wrong" with this particular candidate? Last week, he offered this bizarre tweet about a jam-packed Harris campaign event:

Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she “A.I.’d” it, and showed a massive “crowd” of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST! She was turned in by a maintenance worker at the airport when he noticed the fake crowd picture, but there was nobody there, later confirmed by the reflection of the mirror like finish on the Vice Presidential Plane. She’s a CHEATER. She had NOBODY waiting, and the “crowd” looked like 10,000 people! Same thing is happening with her fake “crowds” at her speeches. This is the way the Democrats win Elections, by CHEATING - And they’re even worse at the Ballot Box. She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!

"Behold the full lunacy of this message," Jonathan Chait wrote at New York magazine—suggesting, without quite saying, that "something is wrong" with the person who wrote it.

Is it possible that "something's wrong" with Candidate Trump? Beyond that, is it possible that something is wrong—that something is possibly less than perfect—with the way his various statements and behaviors get covered within the upper-end press?

We'd say the answer each time is yes. On the one hand, he offers an array of statements—like the statement about the large crowd which wasn't there—which are transparently crazy in the colloquial sense. 

He also offers an array of statements which suggest that he doesn't know the first thing about basic policy questions—about the way tariffs actually work, to cite one extremely salient recent example which we haven't yet fully discussed.

Beyond that, there's the inflammatory claim he never stops making—the inflammatory claim which did get mentioned in the Times report about the Asheboro rally. 

Was the 2020 election stolen? Will this year's election get stolen again? He makes these inflammatory claims everywhere he goes. This conduct has become so normalized by now that it attracts little attention. 

Yesterday, in North Carolina, he was floating that claim again, even as he invented a new, bogus claim about Candidate Harris:

TRUMP (8/21/24): Remember when Biden sent Kamala to Europe to stop the war in Ukraine? She met with Putin, and then three days later, he attacked. How did she do? Do you think she did a good job? She met with Putin to tell him, "Don’t do it." And three days later, he attacked. That’s when the attack started. 

Did you know that, General [Kellogg]? He should have sent you.

[Retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg was present at the event.]

Look, we are going to fight like hell to win this election. They are going to cheat like hell to win the election because they have no bounds—they have no bounds.

As the Times reported, inflammatory claims about the cheating to come were scattered through yesterday's lengthy remarks. 

The claim about Harris meeting Putin was this disordered person's latest invention. For the CNN fact-check, click here.

Is "something wrong" with Candidate Trump? Might something be wrong in the clinical sense? Tomorrow, we'll make one final pass at that lingering question.

We've recommended pity for Trump—but we'd also recommend full, hard-core reporting about his bizarre behaviors. That would include hard-core reporting about Democratic misstatements—and yes, there have been some of those, even this past Monday night. 

Obama and Walz spoke of neighbors and friends. Candidate Trump, out on the stump, invented the latest bogus claim about the "stupid" "Comrade Kamala," with obvious cheating to come.

Tomorrow: For the last and final time, basic background concerning a clinical type of "disorder"