Nearly all accounts report that the GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump has been knocked off-balance by the emergence of Vice President Kamala Harris at the top of the Democratic ticket in 2024.
The wobble is understandable, even inevitable: Trump was clobbering incumbent President Joe Biden in the polls, as Biden faced challenges not just from Republicans but also Democrats uneasy about his age and dismal approval ratings.
Trump himself expressed the turnabout in the election very succinctly in Montana last week when, talking about Harris and tacitly acknowledging his fading poll numbers, the former President said in seemingly bemused frustration: “How the hell did this happen?”
Trump: Kamala Harris, you know, it’s interesting. Nobody really knows her last name. If you ask people, do you know what her last name is? Nobody has any idea what it is. Harris. It’s like Harris. pic.twitter.com/HhSm95auEC
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 10, 2024
But this week Trump is playing a new tune, mainly claiming that the poll numbers showing Harris surging are wrong and that he has never had such a strong position in a campaign before. Trump won the presidency in 2016, lost it in 2020 — though, as he says, he “did much better in 2020, getting many millions more votes than in ’16.”
But “this, 2024,” Trump says, “is thus far my best Campaign.” He predicts he is going to “WIN BIG.”
I’m just begging at this point. @DonaldJTrumpJr + @EricTrump — this is not right. Your father is sick. Don’t let him do this. What are you trying to achieve? This is elder abuse to let him do this. He is a former president! pic.twitter.com/W161b6jFxP
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) August 12, 2024
Congressman Eric Swalwell (D-CA), a vocal Trump antagonist, saw the post in which Trump made those claims and, saying he was practically “begging,” reached out to Trump’s sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, telling them it is “elder abuse” to let Trump continue in this mode.
“This is not right. Your father is sick,” Swalwell wrote. “Don’t let him do this.”
Swalwell asked the Trump sons to intervene on another occasion too, when their father ranted about the crowd sizes of Harris, crowd sizes and ratings being historically one of Trump’s top obsessions.
Eric! Don Jr! Come on. He’s not well. You can’t let a former president do this to himself. pic.twitter.com/2UQOLJFDT1
— Rep. Eric Swalwell (@RepSwalwell) August 11, 2024
“You can’t let a former president do this to himself,” Swalwell told the Trump sons.