Donald Trump did a terrible job last night. He passed up multiple opportunities to hold Kamala Harris accountable and he let her taunts get to him. Other than when he kept interrupting Joe Biden in his first 2020 debate with Biden, his performance last night was the worst I’ve seen.
I was talking to a friend today who’s a political junkie and has been one for 60 years. (He started when he was 9 or 10. He watched the whole 1964 Republican convention when he was 10.) He follows virtually every minute of every debate and most minutes of the political conventions. His name is Eric Garris and he’s the managing editor of antiwar.com.
Eric agreed with me that Trump had done a terrible job. He had an hypothesis to explain that and the hypothesis just occurred to him this morning.
Here it is: The assassination attempt mattered. It affected Trump’s behavior.
When Eric thought about it, he started thinking: “When did I first notice the change in Trump’s behavior?” He realized that it was in his speech at the Republican National Convention in July, only days after Trump was almost murdered. I didn’t watch the speech. I was at my cottage in Canada and didn’t want to spend my time that way. But I remember thinking, after reading that the speech lasted 93 minutes, that Trump was competing with Fidel Castro, who notoriously gave 2-hour speeches. (Castro once gave a speech that lasted 7 hours and 10 minutes.)
What does Eric’s hypothesis, if true, say about Trump’s behavior if he’s elected? Will it affect his choice of appointees? Will it affect the policy issues he pursues? It may. And I don’t know in what way.
So in between now and November 5, I’ll be doing a lot of watching.
Let’s assume Trump wins the election, would you still think his debate performance was horrible? An election win might mean his debate performance was better than you thought, from the perspective of the people persuaded by the debate. An election win after that debate would mean what?
Can you point to some specific changes in his behavior? I don't follow him closely enough to have an idea how he's changed.