Donald Trump has never lacked confidence, but the extraordinary events of the past month have thrown his presidential campaign into disarray, and he suddenly appears older, more awkward and disorientated.
An assassination attempt, the surprise withdrawal of US President Joe Biden from the race for the White House and his replacement by his younger, energetic Vice President Kamala Harris – all of this seems to be weighing on the candidate who until recently seemed well on course for victory in November.
President Biden’s resignation had a special impact: it removed from office a rival who had largely shielded Trump from critical aspects of his age and weaknesses due to his 81-year-old age, his fragile speech, and his physical frailty.
Now Trump, 78, is the oldest presidential candidate ever. By comparison, he is a 59-year-old former prosecutor who entered history quickly and with great momentum.
Trump is “very angry” as he and his advisers seek a new narrative for his campaign, said Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as Trump’s White House communications director in 2017 before the two fell out.
“He’s scared now, he’s cornered and he’s very angry,” Scaramucci told MSNBC.
Trump’s campaign managers are reportedly keen to get their candidate to focus on issues that resonate with his voting base, such as immigration and inflation.
And although Trump addresses these issues at length in his long and often rambling public appearances, he repeatedly resorts to personal insults, questioning Harris’ intelligence, attacking her ethnic identity and branding her a “communist.”
Republicans like Nikki Haley, who defeated Trump in the primaries but has supported him since, say such attacks do not play well with the undecided voters Trump needs to win.
“Stop whining about them,” Haley said on Fox News, urging Trump to stop focusing on who draws the most people to his campaign rallies.
“The campaign will not win by talking about crowd size,” she said.
But Trump’s long list of complaints has only grown longer – “they’re not nice to me,” he complained recently – as the momentum shifted to Harris and Trump’s lead in the polls in the swing states likely to decide the election in November has been wiped out.
The Harris team sensed this and tried to reinforce the image of Trump as withdrawn, angry and bitter.
“Donald Trump babbles incoherently,” said a mock advertisement for a Trump campaign rally on Thursday, promising “another self-centered rant full of personal grievances.”
Thursday’s event had been announced as a press conference to discuss Trump’s economic agenda.
Trump stood in front of tables full of supermarket goods to illustrate the costs of inflation to households. But first he stuck to his message: with his head bowed, he read out examples of product price increases that were listed in a folder.
But then he kept getting off topic, talking about wind turbines killing birds, going back to the size of crowds and peppering the whole thing with derogatory personal remarks about Harris.
While a politics of resentment could play well with his base, “it is less clear how Trump’s personal attacks against Harris will play with undecided swing voters,” says political scientist Elizabeth Bennion of Indiana University.
“Some observers wondered whether Trump would show restraint in the face of a multi-racial candidate,” Bennion added. “The answer is clearly no.”
