In monitoring the political landscape throughout July, one would have observed Donald Trump’s rise to a seemingly invincible status, particularly after surviving an attempted murder in Butler, Pennsylvania. However, August appeared to dismantle this strong façade, leaving Trump unexpectedly vulnerable.
This month has been rather difficult for the Republican candidate, who likely did not anticipate Kamala Harris’s exceptional revitalisation of the Democratic campaign. The shake-up in the 2024 election campaign became evident in the chaotic start to Trump’s online discussion with Elon Musk on platform X. The Democrats’ mockery and condescending remarks were constant through the 45-minute delay caused by technological hitches. Musk, acting as a modern version of Johnny Carson, reassured viewers the glitches were a deliberate ploy to corrupt the platform. This dialogue confirmed the alliance between Trump and Musk, publicly marking Trump’s reentry into the Twitter-sphere on platform X.
Just three weeks ago, Trump gave a riveting closing address at the Republican convention in Milwaukee, met with overwhelming praise and a nostalgic evangelical undertone. The failed assassination attempt on Trump on live television shed an extraordinary light on the entire convention.
The striking entrance Harris made into the fray, left Trump struggling to regain the stronghold he once held. Trump, sporting a rectangular gauze patch over the injury caused by a near-fatal bullet, was hailed as the chosen one by the convention delegates. He vowed to his audience to deliver the details of the incident, but said it would be too anguishing to repeat.
With Harris on the rise, Trump found himself once again revisiting his more contentious talking points in his interview with Musk.
Arab-American voters seemed undecided over Kamala Harris while Trump pinpointed Iran as the source of an email hack, insisting that only information accessible to the public was taken.
Despite the evident pain, he was still able to vividly recount the occurrences at Butler to Musk and the audience on Monday night. Even Trump’s staunchest followers might have admitted, in private, that his convention speech was lacking in clarity. He even managed to drone out a lengthy and tedious account of the attempted assassination. However, as the night came to a close with a diminutive regiment of Trump family members on stage and balloons dropping from above, Republicans felt reassured knowing that even with a substandard performance, Trump seemed spirited and assertive compared to his rival, Joe Biden.
It is understandable then, that Trump is struggling to come to terms with the fading of this reality. He is far from being the only one. In the lead-up to the convention, writer and journalist Tim Alberta penned a startling piece about Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, the key figures of Trump’s election campaign, for The Atlantic magazine. The article combined tantalizing gossip with a display of absolute confidence in the campaign.
But the article also highlighted how Biden was used as a foil to magnify Trump’s perceived assets and that the entire strategy hinged on this. The sudden decision by Biden to step back from his candidacy, shattered this illusionary political stage crafted by the Republicans. This left the Trump campaign adrift in a room filled with broken shards of glass, as the country got caught up in the wave of enthusiasm for Harris.
Since then, including his talk on Monday night, everything Trump has publicly commented is an attempt to regain the foothold he once had in Milwaukee. Just last week, he suggested that the rise of Harris as the Democratic nominee might be constitutionally unviable. He echoed this sentiment in his discussion with Musk, calling it a coup against a president of the United States who was not ready to step down but was forced to, one way or another.
In response to this, Musk, seemingly oblivious to the events in Butler, echoed this sentiment by commenting, “Indeed, they effectively took him out to the woodshed and figuratively shot him.”
The notion that the Democrats implemented a calculated internal manoeuvre against the incumbent president is a concept that the recently splintered Republican campaign is likely to expand upon. Accusations from Trump asserting that shots of Harris’s enormous political gatherings are manipulated through artificial intelligence reveal his desperation. With his recent focus on his emerging competitor, dubbed “San Francisco Radical Kamala Harris” across his revitalised X account, it’s gradually beginning to sink in for Trump that the anticipation of a sweeping victory has dissipated.
Current national surveys place Harris in the lead by a small margin of four points, with a 50-46 split amongst voters in the crucial swing states of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. More concerning for Trump, Harris and her vice-president choice, Tim Walz, have ignited a wave of excitement and fundraising in the Democrat stronghold—leading to a considerable surge in enthusiasm. Trump may have been seen by some as more prominent on the election trail when compared to Biden, but he must be taken aback and possibly even apprehensive at the vigorous and coordinated whirlwind of the past three weeks from the Harris campaign. Facing up to this reality could be a challenging task, given the stark age difference with his rival, who at 59, is considerably younger than his 78 years.
Expect further woes to unravel next week at the gathering in Chicago, where a who’s who of Trump’s adversaries, including Barack Obama, the Clintons, and Biden himself, will dominate the headlines and broadcasts during a week of back-to-back Democratic convention evenings.
The Trump camp will no doubt be crafting a new strategy over these very same days, aiming to alter the discourse and somehow pull Harris away from her steadfast motto “we’re not going back” and into the realm of fear and division where Trump has thrived thus far.
This will be no small feat. To evidence the strain, one doesn’t have to delve deep into Trump’s X feed to find his post on the 8th of January 2021—“To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”
Suddenly, Trump’s presence at the next inauguration seems less guaranteed as he struggles through the hardest August yet.