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Opinion What Trump chooses to obscure reveals the truth Karen TumultyAugust 8, 2024 at 5:13 p.m. EDT

Former president Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on Thursday. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images) “Unhinged” has become a shopworn word in the years since Donald Trump descended the escalator in Trump Tower. But the former president’s hour-long news conference on Thursday afternoon from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida might have been a new personal best.

It’s clear what is going on. Trump, who only three weeks ago thought he had this election in the bag, is freaking out over the ascendance of Vice President Kamala Harris to the top of the Democratic ticket.

Trump sees what we all see: the euphoria that has overtaken Harris’s party, the tens of thousands who are flocking to her inaugural swing through battleground states, the torrent of poll numbers that show the race is suddenly tied. “We were given Joe Biden, and now we’re given somebody else,” he said, adding — not convincingly — “I think, frankly, I’d rather be running against somebody else.”

But rather than framing a sharp and coherent case against Harris, which his strategists so desperately want him to do, the former president on Thursday veered from grievance to grievance like a pinball. As he took questions from the media, desperation was practically oozing from his pores. And without the cheers of a rally crowd punctuating his rambling monologue, the incoherence of what he had to say was all the more apparent.

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How much Trump misses and needs those throngs of supporters was clear. Again and again, he boasted — lied, actually — about their size. “Nobody has spoken to crowds bigger than me,” Trump said, claiming that he drew more people to the National Mall than the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. did in 1963 when the civil rights leader gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. He lamented, falsely, that the numbers that Harris is drawing have been inflated by the media.

Yet Trump has been strangely absent lately from the stage he loves, and his most recent appearances have been disasters. He delivered a racist rant about Harris at the National Association of Black Journalists convention on July 31, and days later attacked Georgia’s popular Republican governor, Brian Kemp, during a rally in Atlanta.

This week, his only rally is on Friday in deep-red Montana. Asked why he is doing so little campaigning, Trump first dismissed that as a “stupid question” and then claimed it is “because I’m leading by a lot and because of letting their convention go through a lot, I’m doing tremendous amounts of taping here. We have commercials that are at a level I don’t think that anybody’s ever done before.”

Really? In the first five days of this month, Trump and his allies spent about $16.5 million on advertising, according to AdImpact. That compares with about $23 million by President Joe Biden, Harris and their allies. Since early March, the ad-tracking firm estimates, the Democratic side has spent nearly three times as much as Trump’s has.

The truth about Trump and his fixations is often made clearest by what he chooses to lie about. He’s scared, because he is running behind — in polls and in fundraising. And he isn’t at all sure what to do about it.

And, oh, there was some actual news in this news conference: Trump proposed three dates next month for debates with Harris. As of this writing, Harris has agreed to one of them, on Sept. 10, sponsored by ABC News. That is the same arrangement previously agreed to by Trump and Biden.

There have been many unpredictable twists in this campaign, and surely there will be more to come. For now, however, the biggest question is whether Trump, a master of driving events, can climb out of the back seat in which he finds himself.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/08/08/trump-news-conference-harris-grievances/