The Witness Chronicles, June 5, 2024
Is Trump stable enough to debate?
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Sanity Hanging By a Thread, Watch the Man Face Reality
Trump is supposed to debate in a few weeks, are we ready?
The news this morning was full of stories about an interview Trump gave on Newsmax, the far right network. In it, he did his usual haywire crazy but this time he seemed to really lose it, speculating about jailing Hillary Clinton as though his beef with her was current news.
Apparently he would not stop with his rant and the host could not rein him in. When a Newsmax host is bewildered by Trump, even their weird universe starts to fold in on itself. What if, you can hear that host thinking, this guy is really nuts?
The first thing I thought about on reading this is, what about the upcoming debate? June 27th, only a few weeks away. Trump quickly agreed to this before his felony convictions, uncharacteristically agreeing to Biden’s terms, in particular the no live audience condition.
Of course he almost immediately tried to throw a spanner in the works by saying he would require the sitting President of the United States to take a drug test as a condition of Trump debating. Trump, the ex-President and convicted felon, thinks he can dictate a drug test to the leader of the free world?
Aside from that, I’m trying to picture Trump on stage with a man he has been repeatedly demonizing in every speech, portraying Biden as the source of all evil and the Devil incarnate, while he enjoys some of his cracked supporters celebrating him as the next messiah.
My debate scenario, and I really will be shocked if Trump shows up, imagines this new incarnation of Jesus facing Lucifer in the flesh, a few feet away, on national television. I’m of two minds about this. First, the spectacle, for a political junkie, would be riveting in an extremely uncomfortable way. Second, the contrast, if Trump continues his ranting and raving style, will look really weird to average Americans who have not been paying much attention to any of it.
The reality here is we never get network television covering the entirety of Trump’s stump speeches, those he gives to the true MAGA faithful at his orchestrated campaign rallies. We get sound bites at best, cherry picked to show he is either demented, or on top of things, depending which network you watch.
But a debate, without an audience to spur him on, will put Trump squarely in the harsh light of reality, a place he has methodically distanced himself from. This is different from the last two elections where Trump was still somewhat in touch with the real world. Since his loss in 2020, he has reconstructed the world to fit his own fantasy of victimhood.
He has seldom left that fantasy world and entered the real world, until his recent trial and conviction for 34 felonies. Watching him in the courtroom we saw a man without his veneer of bluster and arrogance, and the sight was often pitiful. You could see it dawning on him that he might actually be pronounced a real criminal.
Imagine how you would view the world if you were constantly surrounded by yes men whose full time job was to insulate you from reality? And you find yourself in a courtroom smack dab in the heart of reality for weeks, then you lose big time.
That might seriously challenge your sanity. And that seems to be where we find Trump right now, a man unable to separate his myths from reality and a man in a state of shock, only able to make claims with no basis in reality, no underlying facts, and backed up by a cadre of Republican toadies, including powerful politicians like the Speaker of the House.
Now imagine that man, alone, under the harsh lights of a TV studio facing Joe Biden, giving us an unblemished contrast between the two men. That can’t go well for Trump. There will be no teleprompters to try to keep him on message. And his sworn enemy, the man he portrays as the leader of a vast conspiracy, sitting a few feet away ready to take him on.
Nope, it won’t happen. Those handlers and enablers will find excuse after excuse to keep it from ever taking place. They know their guy’s sanity and self-control hang by a thread and it will almost certainly snap.
At that point the entire house of cards finds itself in danger of collapse and it will be on a live TV broadcast to the entire nation and world. Frankly, if you are a Trump supporter this sounds like your worst nightmare, the one you have every night that wakes you up in a cold sweat.
Isn’t politics fun? Well, it would be except there is far too much at stake. Like the future of democracy. The rule of law, which just had a big win. The lives of those facing natural catastrophes from a changing climate that Trump not only denies but will sell out to the highest bidder.
These are non-trivial things, existential reality, except if you are the ex-president. If he debates, he will come face to face with a world he pretends does not exist. And it may show us the real man, a man who is likely in a non-stop state of panic.
His handlers cannot let that happen. They have too much at stake. They have literally risked their political lives and reputations on keeping Donald Trump in lalaland. That looks like a pretty bad bet to me right now.
~ I write The Grasshopper, an occasional letter on the creative life and it’s sister, mostly daily publication The Witness Chronicles, a place for my articles on politics and climate. They share a free and paid subscription. I also write The Remarkable, a recovery letter, about my addiction and reentry experience. I don’t paywall any content in these, however this is how I live and I strongly believe all writers and creatives should get paid, if we provide value. Your support with a paid subscription helps make that happen.
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If he backs out, I'll be surprised. It would be a let down for his supporters and for those on the fence a signal to them that while they might not vote for Biden, they won't vote Trump either. But we shall see.
I agree ... I can't imagine this debate actually happening. And, as much as I loathe tfg, I don't want to see a former president humiliated on the world stage even more than he already is.