Trump aides alarmed he's 'just golfing all day and stewing' as election slips away: WaPo
Trump aides alarmed he's 'just golfing all day and stewing' as election slips away: WaPo
Factually, that's what he did during his time in office as well. I'm not sure what they thought had changed.
This is an interesting article - thanks for sharing! I found this snippet noteworthy:
According to one former aide who served in the White House under the former president, Trump has lost the plot.
“The stakes for Trump this election are arguably the highest they’ve ever been. His criminal cases don’t go away if he loses. Yet he seems to be phoning it in, running a remarkably low-energy, undisciplined campaign,” explained Alyssa Farah Griffin, a former Trump spokesperson. “From spending days off the campaign trail golfing to coming up with frankly weak nicknames like ‘Kamabala,’ it feels like he’s lost his mojo.”
That is a good point about the criminal cases not going away if he loses, right? It's interesting how it's openly stated by the former aide.
I'm unable to muster any sympathy for the felon's perpetual state of stewing.
He must think that "his" SC will protect him regardless, so he has an out if he loses. Or, he knows about the plan to ratfuck the election regardless of the outcome.
A. Win it. (Looking increasingly unlikely)
B. Steal it. Most of the fake electors are still in place, they've had four years to hire a new sleepers
C. Coup 2.0 historically the Democrats haven't been very smart about things and it'll totally blindside when you pull it again only this time with more people. All those people that got locked up in serious consequences we'll just tell them that we'll pardon them again
D. Civil War 2.0. if he doesn't win it, and can't steal it, and if there's actually military protection around the Capital for 2.0. he'll just openly call for the south to rise again. Only this time it's not the south, it's the rural areas, hell plan a Vietnam style offensive where the rural armed people lay siege everywhere.
My real actual best guess is he's tired. He's old, he's out of shape, he's stressed to the nines and he's just trying to blow off the stress, he probably does have a plan b in a plan c. His actual plan d is probably two take a flight to Russia.
Also a good point that a critical measure for the leader of the free world in the mind of a Trump staffer is how strong the nickname game is.
trump, trump, bo-brump, Bonana-fanna fo-frump Fee fi mo-mrump trump
If he loses, I'm very curious to see if people in power still support him. I don't think he will be very viable again in 4 years, physically or mentally.
He may become more useful if they let him get eaten by the legal machine. Then they're able to invoke his image like they do with Reagan all the time, but with some martyrdom thrown in about how those mean libs kicked a former president when he was down, nevermind he got away with the crimes he'd be charged with for about a decade by then.
He might not ever serve time, but having everyone ignore him as useless as he sunsets might be an almost fitting punishment. We know the right struggles with empathy, so he could be facing some very frosty cold shoulders.
The best thing that could have happened for Republicans was trump got assassinated and Biden refused to step down.
Now they're stuck with trump and Dems cut all their baggage by dropping their elderly infirm candidate.
trumps only real shot is stepping down to. Letting someone else run, and counting on them to pardon everything possible and the SC to take care of the rest.
That has a chance at least, but he can't beat Kamala.
If he loses, there will be another Jan 6 with both sides being more ready for it, maybe even the supreme court tries to forcefully install him, then the cognitive decline will be so severe he no longer needed for the GOP, then global fascism goes from moderate decline to steep decline, with currently far-right parties pulling the "let's pretend we're moderates" game like Fidesz and many others will actually have to become moderate.
Between criminal charges, a reinvented and reinvigorated Dem campaign and havi g been grazed by a bullet... I think he he's cratered.
To say nothing of his noticeable cognitive decline.
What worries me is we'll have a repeat of 2016 where everyone just assumed Hillary was going to win so they didn't vote. Hopefully people will go out and vote regardless.
Absolutely. When I saw the headline I thought the same thing. Bad actors will try to sew exactly that thought in liberal circles as long as Dems have the momentum.
We can't buy into it and need to resolve ourselves to fight like hell until election day, regardless of what "the polls" or "the experts" say. We need to make Kamala win in an indisputable landslide. We need to send a message that will make Trump and his acolytes political pariahs from now on.
thats not entirely accurate. Yes there was not as much enthusiasm behind Hillary as there was behind Obama, and she had a lot of (mostly invented) baggage, but she lost beacause she didnt campaign in a meaningful way lost a few swing states by a small margin (because yes, most reasonable people assumed she’d be the next president—and so many reasonable people assumed that eventuality that she won the popular vote by a wide margin).
Trump is noise and makes money for media outlets so they give him a massive and constant boost of brand recognition. They could’ve all been even mildly responsible in 2020 and just stop talking about the out of office former president but instead they kept him in the zietgeist which allowed him to run again this year.
I am still finding hope in the fact he did not win reelection the first time against a walking corpse elder statesman, and has not won elections for most of his endorsed down-ballot candidates in the past X years.
Anyway, people who do not want him in office should go and vote against him.
(and people who do want to see him in office again, sorry you shouldn’t vote for a lot of reasons but the biggest one being they’ll know who you are and that’s how they get you and also vaccines are mandatory for the polls so you should stay away and they’ll also forcibly swap your genitals and ITS REALLY TRUE FOLLOW ME ON FACETUBE)
I didn't vote for Hillary because she sucked. I voted 3rd party that election. I'm definitely voting Harris/Waltz this time.
The possibility worries me, but this situation seems closer to Obama's campaign than Hillary's. Somewhere inbetween for sure, but people are enthusiastic.
Young people need to get enthusiastic to vote; and Hillary didn't do that for them. Hillary didn't do that for me-- because she's best buds with Jamie Dimon and his ilk, and would only be joining a picket line when hell froze over-- but I still got out and made the only realistic vote against Trump because I'm a grownup.
It's different this time because Democrats are finally being convincing that they're not aligned with the billionaires, and because we've seen what a Trump presidency was actually like now. I think that will get more of the youth vote (with lots of GOTV effort, of course).
That's because he only cares about when the election happens. He has plans in place to deny the results and to send his chud army out to terrorize. That's all he is waiting for.
Yeah… this feels right. He seems to have checked out because the real campaign starts once he has lost. They’d rather use their dollars shielding him from further judicial consequence and preparing to set the country on fire once he loses.
Thing is though, if that's his plan, he still needs to keep his base energised. If all they see him do now is slack off and visibly not care, they may just think he's given up, and not turn up on election day. Fraud will be harder to argue with meagre turnout of his voters. They may also be harder to mobilise in November if they got disenchanted with him in September.
So in a way, by stewing, sulking and slacking off, he may just not be doing himself any favours.
I wish every election could be this easy
Remember to still vote, there was a time when too many people just didn't because it was assured Hillary would win.
Roe V. Wade was appealed and many women are dead now as a result
2016 was also "easy"
I know that the Republican party made this happen, but Democrats are absolutely complicit in letting it happen.
Obama promised to codify Roe v Wade when he had a super majority, and he just didn't. Why didn't he?
Ruth Bader Ginsberg could have retired and let us set a better judge into the Supreme Court, and yet the Dems somehow couldn't look one presidential term into the future and try to have a contingency plan. Why?
I know that the Republican party made this happen, but Democrats are absolutely complicit in letting it happen.
The dems were singing some dumb bullshit on the steps after it got repealed. Fuck them, they're 100% complicit
He didnt codify roe because he didn't have the votes. There were several "conservatives" democrat senators in the 2 yr span when they had a super majority, and they would not have voted for abortion protections at that time.
He instead focused on something he could do, which was give 100s of millions of Americans a chance at healthcare. Even that had single payer attached until it was scuttled last minute by Joe Liberman, an independent that cacused with dems that refused to cast the deciding vote for the ACA with single payer attached because his state of Connecticut had several large insurers HQ'ed there. Obama wouldn't have needed Liberman, but Ted Kennedy died, and his replacement was a Republican.
RGB held on because she saw McConnel ratfuck Obama out of his Scalia replacement posting. She knew he would either get screwed again, or have to appoint someone conservative like Garland. So she waited for Hilary, who had a 70% of winning, but who didn't.
The only things Obama did wrong was try to bridge the partisan divide. He was doing politics like it used to be, with compromise at its core. He didn't realize, or at least didn't want to realize, that the GOP had made politics a game of winner takes all. If he had, he could have placed two supreme court justices and got single payer.
Trump since the 80s has gotten away with deplorable crimes and was still liked. He doesn't know how to handle hate and reality that only freaks like him. Then you add a black women kicking his ass, chief kiss.
Trump is really weak, old and tired. I prefer the younger, energetic Kamala rather than a whining, fat old man.
So he is doing what he did while President?
As President, he spent a lot of time doing rallies and fundraisers for other GOP candidates. He was a perfect little spokes model who could open wallets and hype candidates.
Now he's just in full on burnout. He's got no faith left in his campaign and doesn't want to admit he's fading.
Trump is being told by his donors that the voting isn't important because they'll litigate the shit out of the election if they lose.
What's important to understand is that Trump isn't the one in charge. He's a useful idiot.
Trump's motivation isn't Project 2025, or abortion bans, or anything at all for that matter. He has no principles. He agrees with the last person who spoke with him. That's how his brain works. What Trump cares about is having the power to pardon himself and make all of his criminal charges go away.
So a bunch of fundies see an opportunity. THEY have an agenda. THEY have a plan. THEY tell Trump, WE WILL get you into power by hook or by crook. We'll pay for your campaign because we know you're broke. We'll get our people in place everywhere we can. From a vote perspective, you're going to lose this election...WE are your only chance to avoid prison and (potentially worse) no longer being useful to Putin and falling out a high window.
Trump is golfing not because he's given up. But because a) he's miserable and has no interest in being the president, but he has no choice if he wants to avoid prison. and b) He honestly believes he doesn't need the votes because his "people" (who he's stupid and egotistical enough to think that HE controls rather than the other way around) have it wrapped up for him.
Either it's a demotivated Trump, or it's a Trump who figures that if he's going on the offensive now, then the Harris campaign will still have time for a comeback.
Friends don't let friends get lazy, remind everyone to vote!
or someone convinced him that shutting his mouth was for the best of his campaign?
Yeah, I'm thinking of a rewrite of "the greatest trick the Devil ever did was convince the world he didn't exist"
We have to take the election fraud seriously. The only reason a felon like trump, facing jailtime, would take it easy is if he knew he was guaranteed the presidency in November. Either he got assurances from the Supreme Court or he knows something we dont.
Oh! I've seen this one! This is a classic!
Let me guess, he's "growing increasingly isolated" yeah?
Trump aides alarmed that Trump is ranting about crowd sizes.
Trump aides alarmed that Trump's skin is orange.
Trump aides alarmed that Trump only cares about himself.
Trump aides alarmed that Trump is living in the past.
Trump aides alarmed that Trump is a convicted felon.
Like, who are these aides? Where were they the last 20 years?
These are probably new people who, like the old aides, can't say anything honestly to anyone surrounding the campaign for fear of being fired, or outed (they've done this to their own people expect fanatic followers to do them harm). So these new folks realized this pretty quickly, and now just leak to the press like the entire old group of aides and confidants did. It's pretty fucking pathetic.
I love that his rebuttal to the successful DNC last week was to be the weird old guy who calls into talk shows to ramble. CSPAN energy.
Wanna bet he's not even good at golf and has aides placed around the hole to toss out a good distance ball when he shanks it
He is known to cheat at golf competitions. He's not very good.
He is expecting a house contingency vote after his 70+ swing state sycophants deny Harris the 270 threshhold when he's under by delaying to certify. that's why he doesn't care
You know this is true because he’s not really even asking his supporters to vote for him.
With the Democrats sucking up all the media attention
This article is desperately trying to change that
I can imagine that this is a combination of his mental decline, his thoughts of grandeur that the people vote for him regardless and the knowledge that they won't accept any negative election results and they have a better, bigger plan in place invalidating the results and a Jan. 62
I really hope officials are better prepared this time for the GOPs shady business. Because they basically publicly announced it several times. Believe them when they say they'll fight the results, you don't have to vote anymore and they'll make the US an autocracy.
I really hope officials are better prepared this time for the GOPs shady business.
They have a bunch of poll workers to gum up the works. People who think that 2020 was stolen, so they're volunteering for "election integrity". They really think they have an ace in the hole with this. Be prepared for reports of "anomalies" in swing states.
His advisors keep trying different approaches and new sales pitches. But the problem with Trump isn't the marketing- they are selling an outdated, inferior and defective product.
You love to see it.
Please. Keep doing this Donny. In fact, just give up now so we can have a sane government.
Oh, so he's just pretty much doing what he did every day when he was in the White House
Just like he treated the presidency, especially during covid.
Two things that are just so indictive of the Republican party are 1) the aid said trump hasnt come up with a good nickname for Harris and that's really hurting him, like the future of democracy comes down to being able to call someone a funny name. It's so childish and so accurate to conservative voters. 2) the blatant admitting that him getting elected is the only way he can get out of his legal troubles, admitting that he's guilty and only if he gets special treatment by being president will he be able to avoid consequences.
Hopefully age is catching up to him
Or the realization that consequences don't have to be legal.
Manifest.
Manifest.
Manifest.
What is this in reference to? I doubt it's this hymn https://www.hymnal.net/en/hymn/ns/241
concerned family member shows up - "oh my God, is he ok??"
Aide, visibly shaken - "I honestly don't know, I've never seen him like this.."
concerned family member - "is..is he out there right now?*
Aide - yes... I'm so worried, he is out there right now, just.. playing golf, all day, every day... he needs to stop and confront his feelings and all he can do is golf sob"
CFM "earlier you said 27 holes... he must be exhausted just trying to cope..this is really bad"
Aide - "IT IS SO BAD PLEASE HELP HIM!!"
CFM - "God be with me, I will get him to come inside and drink a diet coke. Hopefully he will snap out of this madness....."
Aide - "..please...go with God!"
CFM - "God will guide me to him. Wish me luck!"
removes leather shoes, hops in cart, and speeds away through the green grass, nary a thought to use the given path... this is the most important rescue in the world. People say that it was the most important, maybe, probably, the most important, ever.
And who would the concerned family member actually be? It almost had to be Eric or Jr. Surely none of the others give even the smallest shits.
I honestly didn't know who to write down, maybe Barron? He's heard of Trump, maybe he would actually want to give a hand to such a wretched soggy being? Or, imagine he might be invited to caddy the clubs behind the cart?
Sounds about right. The guy is just lazy and petty. And yet, due to the outdated, slavery-era EC and the fact that 30-some percent of this country thinks this dumbphuck is the best choice for office, we just might have him in office anyway, no matter how lazy, inept and stupid he is.
Just gotta get those rounds in before sent to the clink.
Losing to a black woman has created a narcissistic wound in Trump.
And he is doing what narcissistic people do when they are wounded. We turn inward and stonewall the rest of the world.
or lash out because there's no defense for his behavior so he has to go on the attack
Tbf, this is basically him being presidential. Good on him for showing the people what he's really about. Nothing.
He knows his best shot is cheating and maybe just enough tactically deployed violence. The bigger the gap of his popular vote defeat, the more their cheating has to overcome.
Vote.
Honestly, dude clearly doesn't want this. He just doesn't want the shame that would come with stepping down at this point.
He didn't want it the first time, now he doesn't want to go to jail
hypothetically, if he manages to lose the election by a massive margin it'll start looking more like Putin's numbers, which will undermine the legitimacy of a democratic government
Trump and Harris have been very close to 50-50 on prediction markets for the past week. Harris was slightly ahead before that, and has lost that lead. It doesn't mean Trump is winning, but Harris doesn't seem to have gotten a convention bounce.
I saw some of the Dem convention on TV and thought it was terrible. I'm not surprised if it didn't go over well.
Yet he still found time to save the world! The Orange Lion!! 👊✌️
What a demented fool U R!
You are a brainwashed little lemming!
I remember a time when journalists were impartial and reported the truth. Great newsmen like Chet Huntley and David Brinkley and Walter Cronkite delivered the news and and it was always unvarnished truth. Today just about every news person is only a mouthpiece with no integrity and no allegiance to the truth. It’s as though they all graduated from the school of Pravda. The corporate media is just an arm of the Democrat Party and they are as believable as the concept of Santa Claus. It’s a sad state of affairs that the gullible American people are being spoon fed a diet of propaganda every minute of the day. All that to say that this is a bogus story about President Trump.
*former president, felon, fraud, conman, rapist Trump.
Haha! You have Trump confused with Dementia Joe. He’s only awake for 6 hours a day. Trump works round the clock. And he gets things done. Only a fool and an idiot would deny this fact.
Well those are certainly the words he says and would like you to believe, but of course, Trump lies about everything.
He spent almost an entire year of us presidency golfing, and not working on the tax payers dime: https://seattlemedium.com/donald-trump-spent-almost-a-year-playing-golf-during-presidency/
Sleeps during his own criminal trials: https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/of-interest/2024/04/23/trump-asleep-nod-off-trial/
His "work" schedule while in the White House was 11am-4pm, with most of that time watching news about himself, eating fast food, and tweeting: https://www.axios.com/2018/01/07/scoop-trumps-secret-shrinking-schedule-1515364904
He turned official Cabinet Meetings into a reason to force people to say nice things about him, and not discussing issues or actionable plans for the country: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-cabinet-meetings-have-become-about-everything-but-the-business-of-his-cabinet/2019/10/21/5f6e528c-f428-11e9-829d-87b12c2f85dd_story.html
Remember "Infrastructure Week"? Or his "beautiful medical plan" that never existed? Or his wall that Mexico never paid for, and never got built? Or his dozen other things he was supposed to be working on as President and never did?
You are quite mistaken. The fact you even created this comment is pretty damn sad, because it signals you have faith that THIS TIME, it will be different. You are in an abusive relationship you need to remove your self from.
You are a pathetic moron. Otherwise you’re okay
You’re an idiot with TDS!
Only semi-related:
Hunter S. Thompson took great pains to speak in sports metaphors, because that's the language of "middle America."
I've thought that, for a while now, video games have become the language of "middle America" and whoever can speak to the gamers in their language will capture their minds.
Steve Bannon also understood this, and that's why he succeeded in capturing many young men's minds through Gamergate.
We need people better than Steve Bannon speaking this language and leaving gamers with positive, healthy understanding of the world around them.
Anyway, I write this because I think your video game metaphor really works here, and I think that's the way to speak to a large portion of our populace now.
Make the guy who makes tier zoo on YouTube teach all democrats.
Seriously, the devs took a big risk with the 2016 patch, they just didn’t like what the players did to that gorilla.
I don't know that arcade metaphors really work for most of the population now, though. Even when I was young they were dying.
The idea that Thompson was particularly accessible to middle America is so strange to me as a Midwesterner.
But also I agree. Gaming metaphors speak to the apolitical in ways sports metaphors used to
Correction, he puts a quarter into a pinball machine in the corner, then shortly after gets the tilt warning because he once again tries to cheat instead of having skill.
Tilts are perfectly valid in pinball tournaments, though. As long as the machine's setup only warns you instead of stopping the game, it's OK in most leagues. And if it does stop you, then you can continue to the next ball.
But he lost on level 2. The only candidate he's beaten is Hillary, who's one of the least popular politicians in the US.
And he won only via the electoral college, while still losing the popular vote against her
Trump is the kid who got good at PacMan. Then the arcade brought in MrsPacMan and no matter how high he scores and tries to get attention, the kid who scores well in Mrs PacMan is stealing his thunder because it's harder. And he's mad no one is paying attention to his New High Score because it's irrelevant in the face of the new game. But he can't get good enough at MrsPacMan, so he's sulking on PacMan setting new scores and slowly filling the board while his friends try to give him the new Guide for how to score better or get farther in MrsPacMan. Trying to get him to take on the new kid. But he's just broken from constantly being the loser every time he 2 players. He's scared of it because it's a new age where it's not a solved game, the enemies react to you, and he's not fast enough anymore to handle that and it scares him - no matter how much his friends try to get him to get good.
I don't believe for a second Trump is good at a single thing.
It's Ms. Pac-Man now, they got divorced some time ago sadly.
Picturesque and poignant.
God damn, how apt.
Wonderful metaphor. Although it's hard to suspend disbelief in a story about Trump wanting to / knowing how to play video games. He strikes me as the type that'll buy an arcade but never set foot in it. And then remove all that is good about it and fill it with ticket games.
It wasn't like a switch got flipped, no one would keep playing.
They'd make a tiny segment super hard so you'd have to drop a couple bucks to get past it. Go back to easy for a little. Then hit another hard part.
It's basically the whole reason for boss fights.
Hopefully his next move isn't to start tilting the machine