Politics
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October 9, 2024
He relished the limelight in 2016 and 2020. Now he’s refusing to debate and ducking interviews.
Donald Trump has been working for president for almost a decade. He has by no means received the favored vote as a result of his insurance policies are out of contact with most American voters. However all through his everlasting marketing campaign, the scandal-plagued former president has displayed ample power and aplomb to safe the Republican nomination thrice in a row and to flip sufficient battleground states to win the Electoral School in 2016. He got here near doing so once more in 2020. And he’s again at it this yr.
However one thing may be very totally different about Trump’s 2024 marketing campaign. The perennial candidate, who as soon as seized each important alternative to advertise himself, is working scared this yr.
Make no mistake: Trump remains to be within the information, as main media shops proceed to contort themselves to current the Republican’s reelection bid as one thing akin to a standard marketing campaign. He makes authoritarian pronouncements on his failing Fact Social media platform. He seems at stage-managed marketing campaign occasions, though, as Vice President Kamala Harris has famous, “folks begin leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and tedium.” And he nonetheless participates in what he expects shall be pleasant interviews with MAGA allies.
However this week, Trump canceled what would have been his premier interview look of the autumn marketing campaign—a half-hour section on CBS’s 60 Minutes that promised to afford him equal billing with Harris, the Democratic nominee who confirmed up for a troublesome however honest spherical of questioning. Trump’s absence was duly famous on the opening of the particular version of 60 Minutes, which aired Monday night time. Correspondent Scott Pelley started this system by explaining that the back-to-back look by the candidates on what stays this nation’s high TV information program has been a “custom for greater than half a century,” and that Trump—who spoke enthusiastically, if considerably weirdly, with 60 Minutes in 2016, and a superb deal extra combatively in 2020—had initially agreed to an prolonged dialog with Pelley this yr.
“However, sadly, final week, Trump canceled,” Pelley revealed. Why? “The marketing campaign provided shifting explanations,” stated Pelley. “First, it complained that we’d fact-check the interview. We fact-check each story. Later, Trump stated he wanted an apology for his interview in 2020” with veteran 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl, wherein she interrupted one of many candidate’s extra outrageous makes an attempt to unfold misinformation on nationwide tv.
Present Challenge
So, in the long run, viewers watched Harris doing precisely what we count on of a presidential candidate—and a president. She sat down for a critical interview with a journalist who requested probing questions and demanded frank solutions. In the meantime, Trump hid out after he received caught mendacity about crowd sizes at a Sunday rally in Juneau, Wisconsin, the place he was swarmed by flies.
The previous president was nonetheless beneath cowl on Tuesday, as Harris took extra questions on The View, The Howard Stern Present, and The Late Present With Stephen Colbert. The Republican candidate’s solely deliberate look was a stage-managed “city corridor” occasion with “Trump Transition Staff” members Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard.
Trump shall be again on the highway late within the week for extra rallies—together with a genuinely unexplainable occasion at Calhoun Ranch in Coachella, California, a state that gave him solely 34 % of the vote in 2020 and the place he isn’t anticipated to do any higher this yr. (Lest anybody think about that the previous president is perhaps focusing on a base of supporters in California’s Riverside County, a Desert Solar headline from 2020 places that fantasy to relaxation: “Biden carried each Coachella Valley metropolis within the 2020 election.” Within the metropolis of Coachella itself, the vote was Biden 7,948, Trump 2,008, a 4-to-1 margin for the Democrat.)
Whereas Trump is making ready to maroon himself within the desert, Harris has continued to agitate for a second debate together with her Republican rival—a standard fall occasion for candidates of the 2 main events since 1976.
However Trump has been refusing the invitation. Why? That’s not arduous to determine. The common evaluation from the primary televised conflict between Trump and Harris in September was that she cleaned his clock. “Harris received the controversy—and it wasn’t shut,” declared Politico, whereas USA In the present day defined, “Who received the controversy? Harris’ forceful efficiency rattles a defensive Trump.”
After trouncing Trump on stage in Philadelphia, Harris instantly requested for extra debates. Trump instantly declined.
Since then, Harris has constantly led in polling averages. She now has a nationwide benefit within the Actual Clear Politics survey of latest polls that’s roughly twice the scale of what she had on debate night time.
With that stated, the race stays shut in a lot of battleground states. So Harris is ramping up her policy-focused campaigning—with the launch of a plan for probably the most important growth of Medicare for the reason that program was launched six many years in the past. Along with masking dwelling healthcare prices, Harris desires to increase Medicare to cowl listening to and imaginative and prescient bills, alongside strains beforehand proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). An enthusiastic Sanders, who shall be campaigning for Harris in Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Michigan within the coming days says, “Kamala Harris’s plan to increase Medicare to cowl dwelling well being care is a vital step ahead. Let’s get it carried out.” For her half, Harris shall be explaining the formidable plan at rallies throughout the nation—together with a significant occasion Friday within the senior-rich swing state of Arizona.
And Trump? He’ll be in Coachella, the place the forecast requires temperatures in extra of 100 and heavy Democratic voting.
Common
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