Finally Friday Reads: How Low can he Go?

Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again. John Buss @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Orange Caligula woke up to bad reviews this morning for his latest failed production. At least this one didn’t involve ruining the grounds of the White House or bedecking the streets of the District with military parades and tanks. The Shindig in Dallas was a raging failure like everything else he’s done. Also, no one died or was sent to a gulag with this one. It wasn’t unconstitutional, but it was a bit odd.

Let’s check the headlines today.

Andrew Egger of The Bulwark suggests we “Stick a Fork in Him.” Their ‘Morning Shots’ headline was brutal, too. “Out of Gas. Out of Ideas. Out of Time. The Republicans’ window to stave off a blue wave has all but closed.” Couldn’t happen to a nastier group of protohumans.

Ever since Democrats’ major overperformance in last year’s off-year elections, I’ve been saying over and over: time is a finite resource for Donald Trump and his party. If they wanted to stave off disaster in the midterms, they would need to get moving fast to woo back disaffected members of their 2024 coalition. Every day spent failing to achieve that goal was a day wasted.

Now, in the afterglow of this week’s ludicrous, somnambulant GOP midterm convention, I’m about ready to call it. Republicans are out of ideas and out of time. They have no plan to reassemble their base, no bright ideas to reassure Americans that the Trump show has brought anything but chaos and expense to their country, no reason even to hope that material conditions won’t be worse in November than they are today. The midterms are still two months away, but the MAGA GOP is a dead party walking.

Over and over again, the convention hammered home the two central truths of the party’s disastrous plight: Trump is a senile old villain whose necrotizing brain is leaking out of his ears, and Republicans’ electoral chances now rest entirely on convincing the public otherwise.

Nobody was going to tell Trump “no” about anything: If he wanted to natter on for nearly two hours on Wednesday night and then make a (mercifully much shorter) speech Thursday rehashing the same points, he’d get to. Somehow, Trump genuinely seems to think this is the ticket to winning everybody back: All he needs to do is get in front of Americans to make the case himself.

But he had nothing on offer but hours of the same reheated slurry we’ve long since grown accustomed to. There were, of course, the bald-faced lies. “Look at that,” Trump said, looking out over the half-full convention stadium. “The highest rafter, no empty seats.” There were the endless hallucinations about the American Golden Age that exists nowhere but in his own mind. “Our country has never done better,” he said. “We’re taking in trillions, trillions of dollars. There’s never been any country, not even close, that’s come anywhere near.” There were the ridiculous pie-in-the-sky promises, stripped of all pretense: “If we win, it’s $5,000 for every adult. We love our adults. It’s about time we take care of our adults.” Sometimes he was begging. “Pretend I’m on the ballot.” (More on that below.) Other times he was threatening. At one point, he led the crowd in a bizarre repeat-after-me oath in which they pledged they would show up and vote. “You know what happens if you don’t vote?” Trump said. “You go to Hell.”

Meanwhile, out in the real world, things are crashing down around Trump’s ears. Even the softest of softball interviews, like one he did yesterday with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, are now impossible for him to get through without embarrassment. On those $5,000 checks, for instance: “Why not just give the money now?” Ingraham asked. “If you have the money, why not give it now?”

Yes.  We’re being bribed to vote Republican, again.  This is from The New York Times‘ James Poniewozik.

Donald J. Trump has long operated on the principle that there is no problem so big that it cannot be solved by more Donald J. Trump on TV. That apparently applies even when the problem, arguably, is Donald J. Trump.

With the midterms approaching, prices rising and the war in Iran dragging on, the president’s low approval ratings have worried the Republicans running to preserve his congressional majority. Mr. Trump’s answer: a “midterm convention,” a two-night extravaganza by, for and starring himself, live from Dallas.

As in many turbulent TV productions, there were differing impulses behind its creation. It was the pet project of the president, made on the theory that he has a hold on low-propensity voters who will go to the polls only for him. The counterargument is the president’s ratings among other voters, who might go to the polls against candidates who embrace him.

Thus we got Schrödinger’s Convention, made in the paradoxical hope that it would be both watched and not watched. It was carried in its entirety on C-SPAN and in considerable part by conservative outlets including Fox News and Newsmax. It was also up against high-profile N.F.L. games each night, which one could see as a challenge or a blessing. Surely at least some Republicans would have been just as happy if no one watched.

For better or worse, some of us did. What we saw was the culmination of the decades-long trend that has turned conventions from substantive political events into pure long-form TV ads.

There was no convention in this convention. No one was nominated, no ballots cast, no running mates picked. It was pared down to the state signs, novelty costumes — the president shouted out “Mr. Wall,” a supporter wearing a suit of trompe l’oeil bricks — and hour upon hour of speeches.

In good times and bad, Mr. Trump has always been able to produce a spectacle. His 2016 convention had the chaotic energy of his first campaign. In 2020 — well, it was Covid and things were weird, but his media team still assembled a highly produced package. And his renomination in 2024 combined the emotional charge from the recent assassination attempt on him with a pro-wrestling air of belligerence.

But this? This lacked oomph, especially when the guest of his own honor was offstage. There were few celebrity guests, other than the perennial G.O.P. serenader Lee Greenwood (twice) and Jimmy Kimmel’s former “Man Show” compadre Adam Carolla. Arguably the biggest non-Trump speaker of the first night was a Democrat, Senator John Fetterman, who recorded an introduction for his Pennsylvania colleague, Senator Dave McCormick.

The strongest energy onscreen was negative, the speeches more warning than promise, the jeers for Democrats rivaling the cheers for the G.O.P. The praise of the administration’s record was received politely but not as loudly as the scarifying about communism, open borders and gender transition.

Oh, but it gets better. This is from HuffPo. Jennifer Bendery has the story. “Trump’s Weird Convention Just Tied Every GOP Candidate To His Sagging Popularity. Good luck in November!”

Trump was the keynote speaker both nights, but by the second night, even he seemed over it. From the beginning of his meandering, 25-minute speech, which didn’t even start until after 10 p.m. EST, Trump said he didn’t feel much like talking “because I’m getting a little bit tired of politics,” and teased bringing out an opera singer to entertain everyone.

But Trump plodded on, sharing whatever thoughts crossed his mind – boasting about the crowd size, mocking Texas Senate Republican nominee Ken Paxton’s clothes – and occasionally returning to his script to rattle off accomplishments from the past two years. He touted his role in driving up the stock market, his administration banning diversity initiatives in the government and his efforts to prevent the “mutilization” of transgender children.

By the end, after telling the crowd to vote in November in what felt like an afterthought to his remarks, Trump stood on stage soaking up the applause as balloons fell from the ceiling and tenor Christopher Macchio sang “Nessun dorma.”

If the point of this strange event was to pump up Republican voters ahead of the midterms, the real question is what it actually achieved.

Trump forced this convention on his party and made prominent GOP leaders play a central role. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Vice President JD Vance were among those who gave speeches, as were Republican candidates in very competitive races. Reps. Ryan Mackenzie (R-Pa.) and Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) participated, along with Senate candidates like Paxton and Mike Rogers of Michigan.

All of the convention’s participants tied themselves to Trump, and for anyone watching at home, the grand takeaway was that Republicans want to be associated with a president whose approval rating is at a historic low, who has dragged the country into a deeply unpopular war and who has left Americans nationwide struggling to afford the cost of living.

Meanwhile, Trump is still attacking woman reporters. He’s as nasty as every.

This is from Malcolm Ferguson at The New Republic. “Trump Lunges at Female Reporter Asking About Those Supposed $5K Checks, Donald Trump can’t handle even simple questions about his midterm bribe.”  The immaturity and mean are over-the-top. This happened a few days ago.