Donald Trump is three months away from a presidential election that is likely to determine whether he goes to jail for a considerable amount of time. And not even stakes that high are enough to get the Republican nominee to stop publicly raging and ranting about perceived betrayals by allegedly disloyal GOP officials, including Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.
By Jim Geraghty
Speaking at a rally in a Georgia State University arena in Atlanta on Saturday, Trump periodically sounded like he was running for governor against Kemp. Telling the audience that “your numbers in Georgia are very average, your crime numbers, your economic numbers, all of your numbers, you’re very average. You can do a lot better and you’ll do a lot better with a better governor,” Trump said of Kemp, whose approval rating is a robust 63 percent, “He’s a bad guy, he’s a disloyal guy, and he’s a very average governor.” Oh, and Trump referred to Kemp, who’s perhaps an inch shorter than the former president, as “Little Brian, Little Brian Kemp.”
Complaining about Kemp and Raffensperger — the state’s top election official, whom Trump told as he tried to overturn the 2020 election, “I just want to find 11,780 votes” — Trump alleged, “They don’t want the vote to be honest, in my opinion. They want us to lose, that’s actually my opinion.”
Trump is laying the groundwork for another election conspiracy theory and another set of excuses if he loses the state of Georgia in November. (Trump was beating President Biden in this state consistently; Vice President Harris is neck-and-neck with Trump in the Peach State.)
Maybe it’s a sign Trump is panicked because switching out Biden for Harris couldn’t have gone much better for the Democrats. (Notice you can find a lot of Republicans insisting that Harris’s becoming the nominee without winning a single primary or caucus is undemocratic, but you can’t find many Democrats making that objection. As former Oakland Raiders owner Al Davis once said, “Just win, baby.”)
But more likely, Saturday night was just the seemingly billionth example that at any given moment, Trump cannot prioritize anything, not even his own long-term interests, above his sense of grievance. Kemp and Raffensperger refused to help Trump game the 2020 election results, therefore they’re the enemy — regardless of how useful their support could be for 2024 in a state that could have a big influence on Trump’s fortunes.
The more intensely someone tells Trump not to stick a fork in an electric socket, the more Trump lunges to jab it in there, just to prove he can.
A minuscule portion of blame goes on the news media, as reporters are drawn to conflict, and “Trump vs. other Republicans” is always a storyline that excites them. Trump spoke about other issues during his 90-minute address in Atlanta — the border and crime, albeit in typical Trump hyperbole: “If Kamala wins, it will be crime, chaos and death all across our country.” But none of them could spark as much coverage or attention as the Republican presidential nominee denouncing the Republican governor of a key swing state.
But it is fair to wonder whether Trump’s heart is in his check-the-box statements about the policies he intends to enact. No, what gets Trump’s blood flowing is his endless sense of victimhood, his perpetual whining that all his problems are the result of shadowy forces conspiring against him, and his stubborn insistence on re-litigating the 2020 election, even when that is light-years away from the top priorities of the voters he needs to win.
Voters consistently list the economy as their top priority, the latest jobs numbers are disappointing, and the markets are sliding. Overseas, tensions between Israel and its enemies are at their worst in decades. (Trump never got around to mentioning Israel in his Atlanta remarks.) About the only silver lining in Trump’s Saturday appearance is that he didn’t take the opportunity to repeat, of Harris, “I didn’t know she was Black.”
We may well look back and conclude that the apex of the Trump campaign was about 20 minutes into his convention speech, before Trump decided to wing it and segue into thoughts about the Green Bay Packers and his now trademark reference to “the late, great, Hannibal Lecter.” The GOP convention feels like a decade ago, and Trump’s survival of an assassination attempt feels like a lifetime ago.
Trump had a fairly easy path to victory against Biden, and beating Harris is still very much within the realm of possibility. But he just doesn’t seem interested in staying focused and putting in the work. Great pick, Republicans.
