Republicans worry Trump is having a 'public nervous breakdown'
By: Kelly Rissman (The Independent)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
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Republicans are concerned that party leader Donald Trump is having a "public nervous breakdown" after he made a series of offensive outbursts about Vice President Kamala Harris as he slips behind her in the polls.
The former president has made a number of insulting personal attacks against his Democratic rival since she moved to the top of the ticket. Last week, Trump questioned Harris's racial identity at the National Association of Black Journalists conference. Over the weekend, he accused Harris of having a "low IQ."
New polls indicate Trump is slipping behind the vice president in the popular vote and races are tightening in battleground states.
"This is what you would call a public nervous breakdown," Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist and former Trump state department appointee, told Politico.
"This is a guy who cut through the Republican primary like a knife through butter. This is a guy who pummeled a semi-conscious president in a debate and literally out of a race. And now this is a guy who cannot come to grips with a competitive presidential race that would require discipline and effective messaging," Bartlett continued. "And we're seeing a candidate and a campaign absolutely meltdown."
Donald Trump gestures to the crowd as he arrives to speak at a campaign rally in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on July 31. Republicans are worried he is having a "public nervous breakdown." (AP)
Chair of the Vermont Republican Party, Paul Dame, predicted that Trump allies will start to wane in their defense of the former president.
"I think we're starting to see the old Trump that a lot of Republicans got tired of in 2020, got tired of defending him," Dame told USA Today. "If the next three months is defined by more examples like this I think he's going to see some of that soft centrist support deteriorate."
One GOP consultant suggested Trump's negative comments are the first time he has been able to cut through the media frenzy around Harris's campaign since he survived an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13.
"We're talking about Trump for the first time in two weeks," Alex Conant told USA Today. "The risk is he's reminding voters of the things they didn't like in 2020, the reason why he's not president now."
On top of attacking Harris, Trump also congratulated Russian President Vladimir Putin this past weekend over the historic prisoner swap. But he criticized Joe Biden for the deal and suggested, at a Georgia rally on Saturday, that top GOP officials were hampering his chances of winning the election in the state.
"This is a man who is incapable of controlling his emotions," said former congressman Adam Kinzinger, who has signed on to the initiative, Republicans for Harris. "Against all advice, against all sanity, he is attacking the Republican governor of Georgia... Donald Trump is losing his marbles."
Trump's running mate JD Vance has managed to generate his own negative headlines with his "weird" antics, and caused outrage when his past comments, calling the vice president a "childless cat lady", resurfaced.
An anonymous GOP strategist also told the outlet: "Every day Trump swipes at shiny objects — attacking the popular governor of a swing state, questioning the race of his opponent, or battling cat lady comments by his VP — is a day he is letting Harris define herself on her own terms."
GOP political consultant Mike Madrid echoed this sentiment on X, writing: "Trump fatigue is real. America is ready to move on."
Likely not helping his case, Trump shared a rambling post on Truth Social on Tuesday afternoon, suggesting that President Joe Biden has plans to crash "the Democrat National Convention and tries to take back the Nomination." The former president wondered aloud whether Biden "feels that he made a historically tragic mistake by handing over the U.S. Presidency, a COUP, to the people in the World he most hates, and he wants it back, NOW!!!"
Trump added that President Biden, who is still serving as commander-in-chief yet dropped out of the 2024 presidential race, had his "Presidency...Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him by Kamabla, Barrack HUSSEIN Obama, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, Shifty Adam Schiff, Cryin' Chuck Schumer, and others on the Lunatic Left."
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We shall see...
We ALL know Trump cant control himself, largely because he is mentally ill. We all know it, but 40 % of the country is in severe denial.
We are seeing it
When Biden mispronounces something or loses his train of thought "they say" its aphasia, an early sign of dementia.
When Trump mispronounces something or loses his train of thought they say its normal or deliberate.
Trump can't seem to pronounce certain names like Kamala, but "they say" it's deliberate.
Trump says he doesn’t care if he mispronounces Kamala Harris’s name (msn.com)
I'm pretty sure that Donald and his loyal followers would have a collective meltdown if Harris and Walz started referring to Trump and Vance as Drumpf and Bowman(or Hamel)
What's in a name anyway?
I’m partial to Don-old and JD Pence.
newrepublic.com /article/184569/trumps-campaign-drowning-rage
Trump’s Campaign Is Drowning in Rage
Susan Milligan 5-7 minutes 8/5/2024
There was One (very) Angry Man at the Georgia State University Convocation Center last Saturday. Donald Trump had harsh words for everyone. He insulted his general election opponent, “ Crazy Kamala ” Harris, for her “low IQ, ” and jeered at President Joe Biden for “choking like a dog” during the debate that started the campaign to convince him to step aside for Harris. Trump slammed several Georgia Republicans, including “ disloyal ” Governor Brian Kemp, who Trump said should “ get off his ass ” and do something about Atlanta murders. The GOP nominee even went after the host university itself for not letting more people into the at-capacity stadium to see Trump.
That’s a lot of grievances to air at an event meant to rally supporters of the former president as he seeks another term in office. And it’s understandable why Trump—who has appeared flummoxed at times over how to handle a head-to-head campaign against Harris—would go back to his old, winning 2016 playbook: Insult people and groups of people. Blame immigrants, city-dwellers, Democrats, and insufficiently loyal Republicans for the ills of the country and the world.
But anger, a driving force in 2016, is a weakening tactic, eight years after Trump shocked the world by defeating Hillary Clinton. Enough voters were tired of politics as usual that election that they were willing to see if a blunt talker could be better. Biden prevailed in 2020 because voters wanted to turn on the TV and be bored by the president.
Anger is still a powerful motivator for Trump’s base, but he’ll likely need to peel off more voters to score another victory. And he may just have exhausted the mental, physical, and emotional energy of swing voters who are simply tired of his antics and his rage.
“I think Trump is very much playing to his base right now,” but “he might not be winning over some of the folks he really needs,” such as female and suburban voters, Indiana University associate professor Steven Webster, author of the book American Rage: How Anger Shapes Our Politics , told me. “There may be voters in this country who are sick of his anger at the deep state or him, now, going into the 2024 election.” And on top of that, there’s a “newfound enthusiasm” on the side of the Democrats, who are newly hopeful that replacing Biden with Harris could keep the White House in Democratic hands next year, he added.
The hope follows a stunning (and historically un-Democratic) unity in the party, whose leaders and rank-and-file quickly coalesced around Harris as the nominee. I myself incorrectly predicted that pushing Biden out of the way would bring more problems than it solved, leading to a bloody and bitter convention floor fight, with Democratic factions bickering about Gaza, race, gender, and what kind of candidate could mobilize progressives without alienating suburban swing voters. I expected the Democrats to be burdened with having to build an entirely new campaign team and raise money for an entirely new campaign message.
Instead, Democrats had about as smooth a switchover as they could have dreamed they could get. Biden—despite how shabbily fellow Democrats treated him—stepped aside without public complaint, and cleverly did so on the Sunday after the Republican National Convention, stealing Trump’s buzz and turning the spotlight immediately to Harris. With the exception of a comically insignificant interest in the nomination by self-help guru Marianne Williamson, the deal was done. Harris raised a stunning $310 million in July—the vast majority from first-time donors—while Trump and his joint fundraising committees, in the month of the RNC convention, pulled in just $139 million.
Harris’s Georgia rally, held four days before Trump’s, was a polar opposite in tone. Reinforcing her popularity with young people (who were disaffected with Biden), she had rappers Quavo and Megan Thee Stallion perform to a joyous—and newly hopeful—packed stadium. She criticized Trump, for sure, but with none of the barbs and personal insults that poured out of the former president’s mouth. “The path to the White House runs right through this state, and you all helped us win in 2020, and we’re going to do it again in 2024. Yes, we will,” Harris said in a not-so-subtle callback to Barack Obama’s “Yes, we can” message.
Trump knows how to play to an audience, but the audience for his vitriol is limited to those who are already with him, Michael J. Hamner, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement, told me.
“The effectiveness of that [anger] strategy has peaked and sort of plateaued,” Hamner said. “I think it’s really curious when he doubles down on January 6 and on things that are just highly unlikely to resonate with people who are on the fence, people who aren’t just in his camp no matter what.”
In political terms, it’s still a ways to Election Day; unhappy veterans of Clinton’s campaign recall how she went from leading Trump by double digits in a late-October 2016 CNN poll to narrowly losing the election (while winning the popular vote) a couple of weeks later. And former Obama strategist David Axelrod has become the Harris campaign’s official warner (or wet blanket), urging Democrats not to feel “irrational exuberance” over early polls taken while Harris is still in a honeymoon period.
But Trump needs a new campaign message—and a new attitude—if he wants to defeat his new opponent.
City-dwellers?!?!?! He's been a city-dweller his entire life!
Trump recognizes two categories of people , those who admire him and obey him, and everyone else.
today
Trump is a lunatic. What has happened to our country ?
Donald (Mothball) is getting worse not better.
What kind of idiot thinks these kinds of words are the way to win an election ? That is the person we should really make fun of.
It's Donald (Mothball) 'crashin' and burnin' and of course the Trumpists have been called to put out yet another 'blaze' - Donald (Mothball) has "socially" lit!
A whole lot of projection and batshitcraziness every time he opens his rectum of a mouth.
No doubt there's a reason for that,......
He done lost his marbles a long time ago
What reason would that be?????????
Kinzinger as a source?
The TDS is very strong in these individuals and the author.
"But Trruuummmmppppp!!!!!!" is all that Democrats have; along with abortion.
They can't run on anything else.
What will he do if Trump loses? The guy's whole career is being the Republican who attacks Trump.
What will he do if Trump loses?
Celebrate, like everyone else. Then enjoy the benefits of not having Trump as President. The guy has riz - he’ll do just fine.
He was simply quoted along with other critical GOP consultants
Trump depression symptoms?
and independents dont care
and just in case you didn't actually read the article
"Trump fatigue is real. America is ready to move on,"
I've been saying this for some time now, am so tired of trump 24/7, so tired of him and his cult.
"TDS" is the feeble epithet Trump cultists hurl at sane and rational people who dare to ridicule their utterly ridiculous Lord and Master.
They also can't stand that Democrats have a broadly popular policy agenda while Trump only has Hannibal Lecter and a fantasy of deporting 12 million people as the basis of his joke of a campaign.
Abortion - 63% of people polled say abortion should be legal in all or most cases.
Gun legislation - 56% of people polled favor stricter laws covering the sale of firearms.
Support for Labor Unions - 71% of people polled approve of labor unions.
Separation of Church and State - 55% of people polled support separation of church and state.
Support for NATO - 58% of people polled have a favorable opinion of NATO.
Support for providing economic and military aid to Ukraine - 58% of people polled support sending both economic and military aid to Ukraine.
Raising taxes on the wealthy - 79% of people polled support raising taxes on the rich and big corporations.
It looks like the laugh is on you!
I think the polling is around 73% of people say abortion should be legal in most cases. I wish Congress would come up with a bipartisan approach to abortion as the majority of people do want some sort of legality around it. And I personally (even though I'm a mid-60's guy with absolutely zero chance of needing an abortion myself) agree that there should be a compromise. Problem is the extremists have grabbed the issue and are the loudest on the street. Although I think it still remains to be seen how Trump removing the abortion issue from the Republican plan will impact the election. But Republicans do themselves no favors by allowing the minority to be so vocal over the issue.
I keep waiting for anybody to come up with "common sense gun laws" that would actually make a difference. Continuing to bleat about banning the sale of "assault weapons" won't make any real difference and politicians appear loath to do the work to come up with harder laws that would actually make a difference.
One has to wonder if the support is more for the money the unions give to the politicians. Unions have done some good things for people, but it's not all good. After getting out of the military oh so many years ago, I moved to a right-to-work state and never had any issues with my employment. I had a series of good jobs, made very decent money and have retired with sufficient money in investments that my retirement is very good.
Personally I'm surprised it's that low. I think this is more an issue that civics and ethics are no longer taught in schools. People should know that the US was set up as a secular nation, the very first secular nation in history. Religion is good, but it should not be used to govern unless we want to change the name of the country to something like Iran-Also. (before anybody bitches, I used that as an example of a country that is governed by religion).
Personally I think the hype over pulling out of NATO is more the anti-Trump crowd than any sort of reality. All Trump really wanted to do IMO was to get them to live up to their promise and stop having the US fund everything around the world.
Yep, but I think people are getting tired of the continued spending without a real plan to end the war. Afghanistan went on way too long and I think that may also be impacting the support for Ukraine. A bigger question to the American public will be what happens if Israel is hit hard in the near future. I don't agree with how the administration has handled the Middle-East and if we start to lose troops over there I imagine the uproar over this will be huge.
This polling is not surprising at all. Everybody always feels they pay too much in taxes. But nobody really seems to understand how this really works. The rich already pay much more in taxes than anybody else, in 2021 the top 1% paid 45.8% of all income tax paid.
The argument for getting the wealthy to pay more always seems to come down to net worth. We hear arguments that anybody with over $1 billion in wealth can pay a 3% tax on that wealth because it's only $30 million. Problem that everybody ignores there is the $billion is paper money and the person would need to sell something to generate that 30 million and would also have to pay income tax on that $30 million to in reality would need to sell around $50 million to raise enough money for that. But isn't that a definition of double taxation?
Some European countries tried to set up a wealth tax over the years, the number has dropped to only three who still do. As there's no world-wide laws on this, it's easy for the truly wealthy to park their money elsewhere to prevent the taxation.
Wealth Taxes in Europe, 2024 | Tax Foundation
As far as raising taxes on corporations, let's not forget the first rule of business for large corporations is to make money for their shareholders. Who can really think that corporations, if faced with higher tax bills, would just pay the tax? They would just add that to the cost of doing business and pass that cost on to the customer. So in reality, those cheering on the attempt to raise corporate taxes are just raising their own taxes.
IMO Washington doesn't need to raise taxes. They need to cut spending. And I don't mean just to reduce the deficit, but actually work to a balanced budget as well as they can and work to reduce the debt. We cannot continue this pace of borrowing money and expect the country to last forever.
Why not? Because all those Senators from desert red states can impose minority rule by blocking and filibustering any progress...
Why not to what? A little clarity on your part would go a long way.
I was surprised, too. And I agree it's because civics and ethics aren't taught anymore and I think schools are doing a piss poor job of teaching history. If schools were better at that, then young people would know that the USA is the first secular nation and maybe that number would be higher. But then again, I have a feeling that the 45% don;t even know what the word secular means
Still no clarification on what exactly you are asking why not to.
I think there are about 12 people in this country that think Kinzinger is credible. Eight of them are family members and the other four are the total viewers of CNN
First of all, this is an election year. The next PotUS will be Harris or Trump. Of course Trump will be compared with Harris. And the guy is in the news every single day. Of course, he will be mentioned in posts. This scoundrel is the GOP nominee. Your whining that he is mentioned is ridiculous.
The Ds and others who recognize that Trump is entirely unfit for office have plenty of evidence to support their conclusion. The problem, the obvious problem, is that you cannot defend your nominee so we get to read this incessant "But Trump" whining in lieu of an actual argument.
As JR just posted @3 , this is representative of the mindset of Trump:
This is all over the media. What PotUS —what world leader for that matter— makes such childish, irrational claims?
How could you possibly even consider supporting this nutcase? Especially given all he has done which, I will remind you, includes the use of fraud, coercion, lying, and incitement in an attempt to steal a US presidential election for the first time in our nation's history.
He has taken to calling Harris "Kamabla". Why would he do this ? First, he wants to "own" his opponents, and by renaming them to his liking makes him think he is in control of their image, and secondly he tries to use these ridiculous nicknames to make a point . Inside Kamabla is "mab" , mob, and "bla" as in bla bla bla. To the MAGA this passes for surpassingly clever.
It's not clever. It's stupid and makes him like a fucking clown's ass
He is a man-child. Apparently there is no point at which his supporters will wake up and realize they are supporting an irrational clown.
Donald's supporters know and agree with what he is and brings. They might occasionally agree with the 'packaging/baggage' that he brings along (everywhere), but he is definitely their choice (three times they have ran Donald-even after a loss!) Why? Because for over fifty years some conservatives have wanted a 'guard-dog with big teeth' to take away the gains of liberals and independents who do not follow the conservative worldview. In Donald, he is that uncompassionate, transactional (meaning they are using each other), old monster that will concede nothing to anybody-including them.
And, if true, they do not care how abysmal he is as long as he is against 'the left'. It is insanity.
Donald's supporters are those hard-cases (born out of and replicating since the 1950's of William F. Buckley's 'promise'):
America’s Most Destructive Habit
Each time political minorities advocate for and achieve greater equality, conservatives rebel, trying to force a reinstatement of the status quo.
Although the United States was born of a revolution, one common view maintains that the Constitution tamed our rebellious impulse and launched a distinctly nonrevolutionary political experiment. But throughout American history, an important strand of conservatism has repeatedly championed rebellions—or what are better understood as counterrevolutions.
They emerge like clockwork: Each time political minorities advocate for and achieve greater equality, conservatives rebel, trying to force a reinstatement of the status quo.
The term counterrevolution is significant not only because conservatives have regularly employed it, but also because it highlights their own agency, something they often seek to conceal.
I n order to portray their actions as defensive rather than aggressive, conservatives tend to depict themselves as acted upon and besieged .
As William F. Buckley wrote in the National Review ’s mission statement in 1955, conservatism “stands athwart history, yelling Stop.” Here the agent is history; conservatives are merely making a reply. But such rhetorical gestures discount what any close look at these movements makes clear: Conservatives have done much more than yell.
They have fought against equality vigorously, often violently.
More at the link:
In Donald, the conservative movement finally located their 'lion' who shall bite off chunks, and slay their opponents (liberals, progressives, and others) mercilessly or even with glee .
Perhaps Trump’s candidate luck has finally run out.
You're the kind of person you meet at certain dismal, dull affairs
Center of a crowd, talking much too loud, running up and down the stairs
Well, it seems to me that you have seen too much in too few years
And though you've tried you just can't hide your eyes are edged with tears
You better stop, look around
Here it comes, here it comes, here it comes, here it comes
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdown