Donald Trump amplified a vulgar joke about Vice President Kamala Harris performing a sex act. He falsely accused her of a staging a coup to secure the Democratic nomination and faulted her without evidence for a security lapse that enabled a rogue gunman to try to assassinate him. He shared a manipulated online image of Bill Gates in an orange jumpsuit and a call for Barack Obama to face a “military tribunal.” He promoted explicit tributes to the QAnon conspiracy theory. He hawked digital trading cards in an online infomercial along with pieces of his debate night suit. (“People are calling it the knockout suit.”) His campaign feuded publicly with Arlington National Cemetery over their visit.
And that was just in the span of 24 hours.
With fewer than 70 days until the election, Trump is zigging and zagging with an arsenal of unfocused attacks and peripheral pursuits that for any other politician would amount to a stunning stretch at such a pivotal moment in the campaign.
But when it comes to the former president, the burst of activity on Tuesday and Wednesday was a snapshot of the chaos that has defined his political career and in some ways marked a throwback to his first run in 2016, when he waged a frenetic, unpredictable campaign that put his party on edge all the way up until his surprise victory.
Some Republicans have grown similarly nervous this time around. With pressure mounting to drive a sharper message against Harris, the Republican presidential nominee is delving into distractions and delivering a mix of incendiary and false statements. While such tactics have been on regular display in his third run for the White House, he is now pushing them further, running the risk of alienating key voters.
“I think people are incredibly frustrated,” said Jason Roe, a former Michigan GOP executive director and longtime Republican strategist. Harris’s campaign and policies, Roe said, “provide opportunities for the Trump campaign to talk about issues that actually will matter to swing voters. And rather than doing that, he’s delving into this nonsense.”
Responding to an inquiry about the former president’s comments in the past week, Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt accused The Washington Post of focusing unfairly on “a few social media posts” and “negative stories” about Trump instead of Harris’s policies as vice president and Trump’s “highly successful policy speeches in battleground states over the past week.”
Polling shows Trump and Harris locked in a close race, and many voters have embraced or repeatedly brushed off Trump’s most incendiary behavior. Trump won an upset victory in 2016 despite the leak of a tape in which he bragged about groping women, which many in the GOP had viewed as catastrophic. Republicans have largely rallied behind Trump this campaign, defending him through his false claims of a stolen election, his criminal charges, his conviction this spring and a slew of controversies.
But Harris’s nomination to replace President Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket has made Trump’s position more tenuous. In a tightening contest, the former president has lashed out at his new opponent with belittling nicknames, ideological criticisms and sometimes sexist and racist attacks. He has aggressively cast Harris as too liberal but also lingered on Biden — frequently complaining that the switch is unfair — and lobbed false attacks on Harris’s racial identity.
Republican calls for more focus and discipline have run up against a candidate who has appeared determined to take the opposite approach over the past couple of weeks. On Wednesday, Trump’s campaign was battling accusations that employees acted disrespectfully when Trump visited Arlington National Cemetery this week to commemorate the third anniversary of the United States’ deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan. Defense officials said Trump aides clashed with a cemetery staff member who tried to prevent them from taking prohibited photos in a gravesite area. Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung said the campaign was given permission to bring a photographer and suggested a person who blocked Trump staff was “suffering from a mental health episode.”
As that saga first unfolded publicly Tuesday night, Trump’s interview with TV’s Dr. Phil aired. The friendly conversation Trump filmed last week turned into another venue for him to air inflammatory claims about his opponents without presenting evidence. “I think to a certain extent it’s Biden’s fault and Harris’s fault,” he said of the attempted assassination against him last month, adding, “They weren’t too interested in my health and safety.” There is no public evidence that Biden or Harris were personally involved in decisions about Trump’s security protections.
Trump spent Wednesday morning venting on Truth Social, his social media site. He let loose a flurry of reposts just after 8 a.m. There was an image of Biden, Harris, Hillary Clinton, former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, former White House medical adviser Anthony S. Fauci and others in prison uniforms. There was a call to jail members of the congressional committee that investigated Trump’s supporters over the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol after Trump’s election loss. Another repost used a QAnon slogan: “WWG1WGA! RETRUTH IF YOU AGREE.”
Just after noon, Trump began to claim — without evidence — that Harris was exaggerating her online footprint. “IT’S ALL FAKE,” he wrote. Soon he turned to resharing a video of himself promoting digital trading cards for $99 a piece: Buy enough, he said, and you could get a physical card with bits of Trump’s outfit from the June debate that helped push Biden out of the race.
Trump advisers and donors have encouraged the former president to stay more focused on the campaign trail. Recently Trump has held more small, policy-themed events in addition to his freewheeling rallies. He has also ramped up his public events and packed the week of the Democratic convention with counterprogramming in swing states.
He kicked off this week with stops in Virginia and Michigan, and will end with a swing through the “blue wall” states that will be critical in November. He is planning economic remarks on Thursday afternoon in Potterville, Mich., and a town hall later in the day in La Crosse, Wis., where former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard will be the moderator. Trump will host a rally in Johnstown, Pa., on Friday and a speech at a conservative activist conference in D.C. heading into the weekend.
But even at policy-oriented events, Trump often strays from the script. In Michigan last week, he skipped over a new crime proposal that aides had promoted in his prepared remarks. Earlier this month, at an event with megadonor Miriam Adelson meant to showcase his support for Israel, Trump veered into a comparison of civilian and military awards that prompted a rare rebuke from the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
Trump recounted giving the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Adelson, and said it was better than the Medal of Honor, which recognizes valor in war, because the recipients of the latter are “in very bad shape because they’ve been hit so many times by bullets or they’re dead.”
On Monday, after his Arlington visit, Trump sought to showcase his support for the military in an address to the National Guard Association of the United States. Audience members applauded as Trump criticized the United States’ chaotic exit from Afghanistan under Biden and said he would “get the resignations of every single senior official who touched the Afghanistan calamity.”
The reaction was more muted when Trump took aim at Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz, who served in the National Guard for 24 years.
“His nickname is Tampon,” Trump told the audience full of National Guard members, many of whom wore their camouflage uniforms. “Tampon Tim Walz,” he said later, alluding to a Minnesota bill that Walz helped pass requiring access to menstrual products in public schools.
James Palembas, a 62-year-old retired National Guard member in the audience, wasn’t a fan of the “Tampon Tim” jab.
“I would not have done that,” he said after the speech. “Some of the things that come out of Trump’s mouth are very shock-effect.” He said he does not identify as a “strong MAGA guy.”
But like so many voters, Palembas was willing to overlook that and said he trusts Trump on issues he cares about: immigration, the economy, foreign policy.
Roe, the former Michigan GOP executive director, said people around him often dismiss Trump’s behavior, saying, “It doesn’t matter, everybody already knows who Trump is.” He marveled at how Republicans who were deeply offended by Bill Clinton’s affair with an intern in the 1990s are now willing to overlook transgressions by Trump.
It’s “jersey politics,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what is said or done, it only matters what jersey is worn.”