Donald Trump‘s political stylings are so erratic and internally motivated they can be hard to pin down, but the man’s motivations couldn’t be more clear.
The Republican candidate is a demagogue with goals of becoming a dictator, and a huge factor behind his continued success is a lack of pressure. Sure, the left puts pressure on him, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz put pressure on him, but not a single person coaxed into Trump’s inner circle pushes back on anything the former president says.
As a result, there are no checks on his increasingly unhinged behavior, which leaves Trump to spiral out of control as he realizes, achingly slowly, how narrow his shot at the White House is becoming. He refuses to engage in another debate with Harris, after she soundly trounced him the first time around, he rejects the opportunity to appear in hard-hitting interviews, something Harris has readily taken on, and he surrounds himself with hopeless sycophants who would die before criticizing their ghastly god king.
Trump hasn’t faced a hard question since the second debate, and he’s spent the bulk of this election cycle labeling any negative responses as “fake news” or spurred on by “lyin’ Kamala.” Which is what made a recent Univision Town Hall appearance so satisfying to watch, as an undecided voter makes up his mind in real time. That voter, unregistered Republican Ramiro González, posed a straightforward question to Trump, after noting that he’s providing the Republican candidate with a chance to “win back” his vote.
“Your action, and maybe inaction, during your presidency and the last few years… was a little disturbing to me,” González starts off. “What happened during January 6, and that fact that you waited so long to take action while your supporters were attacking the Capitol, Coronavirus — I thought the public was misled during Coronavirus — and that many more lives could have been saved if we would have been informed better.”
González goes on to reference the numerous people from Trump’s previous administration “who don’t support” the former president, including former VP Mike Pence. “I’m curious how people so close to you and your administration no longer want to support you, so why would I want to support you?”
Trump’s response leans on his patented redirection techniques, but when delivered to a room full of undecided voters — with no roaring crowd to soften those glaring inaccuracies — it comes across like exactly what it is: An outright lie.
Starting off strong by inaccurately stating that “the people that don’t support are a very small portion,” Trump claims a good “97% of the people in the administration support” him. That is utter hogwash. Less than half of Trump’s former cabinet support his push for reelection, and those who’ve turned against him have since become some of his most vocal opponents.
Then Trump pivots to the attempted insurrection, which he labels “a day of love,” as the crowd quietly listening share aghast looks. Asserting that his supporters “peacefully and patriotically” marched on the Capitol, he insists that “nothing” was “done wrong.”
When he makes the baffling claim that “Ashli Babbitt was killed, no one was killed,” an absolute queen captures everyone’s feelings as she openly reacts in bewilderment to the nonsensical statement, a moment that really shows how little sway Trump has outside of his precious little echo chamber. The same is true when he makes that “day of love” claim, which is absurd enough to coax a physical reaction out of González himself.
The extremely normal responses from extremely normal Americans couldn’t be more refreshing. After months of watching Trump seclude himself in his horrific hive mind, it’s delicious to watch those same tired lies work against the notorious perjurer. He certainly convinced a fair few people at that Town Hall to go vote, but not for him.
That much was made blatantly clear in the aftermath of the event, when a reporter asked González if Trump answered his question, and if he planned to vote for the former president. His clear disappointment in Trump is only elevated by clips of Kamala Harris’ Town Hall from a week earlier, in which the same undecided voter actually received an answer to his question about the devastating hurricanes wrecking Florida. Something tells me he’s undecided no more.
