Two Barometers of Panic

The news has been rife with tales of the Trump campaign’s inability to thwart the momentum of the woman who might go down in history as an all-time great pinch hitter.  Part of it is their own fault for the wishful non-recognition that President Biden might actually be forced out by his own party. 

But in another sense, their shock was understandable.  Although Kamala Harris was the obvious successor if Biden did leave, most assumed she would run into fierce intra-party competition in which she was only marginally expected to survive. Even she did, she would be sufficiently bruised by the infighting that she could never mount a formidable challenge against what seemed to have become a Trump juggernaut.

Even granting, however, that Trump’s brain trust had been legitimately stunned at the speed and efficiency with which Harris, not known as brilliant campaigner, had consolidated the party and secured the nomination without a challenge, they have had weeks to develop a counterattack, which, largely because of their candidate’s own weaknesses, they have failed to muster.

Instead, the Trump campaign has flailed about and made a serious of egregious, unforced errors.  Trump’s Q&A with Black journalists was a disaster, as were his public statements either denouncing Harris or trying to hang a nickname on her.  Then there is his equating crowd size with penile length in a year when women will determine the next occupant of the Oval Office.  Trump gives every impression of floundering, all the while growing angrier and more frustrated.  And that does not even include the unfortunate choice of JD Vance as his running mate, made while Biden was still in the race, so it did not seem to matter, although that turned out to be another smug miscalculation.

Worst of all for Trump, of course, is his plummeting in the polls, which his minions insist, either to convince him or themselves, is just a Harris honeymoon.  In any case, they don’t seem convinced since there is a definite sense of panic that is descending over the campaign.

 Two recent events effectively point that up.

The first is Donald Trump’s willingness to return to Twitter, now called X, to be interviewed by one of the few people on Earth as megalomanic and self-deluding as he is.  The Elon Musk session did not go as planned for either of them, but, most significantly, in just agreeing to the interview, Trump did the unthinkable—gave support to a competitor.  It would be akin to him paying to stay at a hotel that did not have his name on it.

While others have noted that in doing so, Trump was diminishing the prestige—and the stock price—of his own media company, which owns the ironically named Truth Social, it is useful to review just how much work and how much chicanery was required to get the Trump Media & Technology Group up and running—and provide Trump himself with a huge unearned profit opportunity.

Truth Social, for all Trump’s hype, was initially a dud, both socially and financially.  It hemorrhaged capital while attracting few subscribers and producing next to no revenue.  So Trump and a couple of like-minded con men devised a shell game wherein a “special-purpose acquisition company”—a shell in itself—was set up to merge with Truth Social and thus avoid the regulatory requirements of an ordinary IPO.  Making this sleight of hand possible was funding from a Chinese company already under investigation by the SEC.  (Trump’s antipathy to Chinese business practices seemed to have been set aside.)

Without wading too much into the swamp—and this deal stinks like one—when the merger was complete, Trump was granted a huge block of shares, which was later increased by 50% giving him 115 million or 65% ownership.  When the new venture began trading—with Trump’s constant drum-beating—gullible worshipers bought in, followed by Wall Street sharks who never miss a chance to take suckers to the cleaners.

The stock DJT, traded as high as $80, which meant more than $8 billion to Trump.  But, according to the rules, he could not sell for six months, which meant September 2024.  The company, which was built on hot air to begin with, continued to show huge losses, so when the pros liquidated their positions—or sold short—the stock tanked, going as low as 12.  Although it is now trading in the mid-twenties, Trump has already lost more than 2/3 of his paper profits.

The only thing keeping the stock that high is the prospect of Trump being elected.  If he loses, Truth Social will revert to the Lie it always was, similar to Trump Steaks and Trump University.  But even if Trump wins, the point was that Truth Social…not X…would be the site of choice for MAGA devotees. 

Going on X was therefore an admission that this might not be the case, and so, by agreeing to the interview, a panicky Trump potentially cost himself hundreds of millions of dollars.  (DJT was down by almost 4% the next day.)

And, since we all know how fond he is of losing money…

The other surefire way to determine the fear index in the far right is from that beacon of objective journalism, Faux, uh, Fox News.  Although it is impossible to watch their television programming after eating, the online version can be marginally more digestible and equally revealing.

On August 13, the lead story on the Fox website featured a photo of Tim Walz pulling off a face mask with “TYRANNY,” superimposed and the headline, “Grandma jailed for defying Walz’s COVID lockdown warns Americans: ‘He will take your rights away.’” 

Unsure Walz had been sufficiently demonized, a third of the way down the page, there was another headline, “Who is Walz?”  Links to four videos followed: “Former bar owner slams ‘evil’ Walz for forcing her into bankruptcy,” “Walz scorched for using same move from Harris' dodging the media playbook,” “Harris’ VP pick slammed as a ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ over hidden agenda concerns,” and, “FLASHBACK: Walz amplified comment comparing ICE raids to ‘terrorism’ in America.”

What is most significant is not the petty vitriol, which is standard, but the contrast with Fox’s treatment of Biden after the June debate.  They initially kept up attacks on Biden’s cognitive abilities but when it appeared that, just maybe, he might be forced out by party leaders, they turned their guns on Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi instead.  They even sort of defended Biden, who they and Trump both wanted desperately to run against.

Oops. Now, sensing defeat, they are trying to make up for their blunder by straying even further into the absurd, producing the sort of headlines that were applied to aliens (the interstellar variety) in Men in Black.

There is no telling how the election will turn out, but one thing is certain.  Panic almost never results in a winning strategy and if Trump and Fox cannot turn things around, they are likely to become more shrill, more desperate, and far less effective.

And they will lose.

(And for those of you who missed this fascinating foray into Constitutional history. https://legaltalknetwork.com/podcasts/sidebar/2024/08/yes-the-constitution-allows-changes-to-the-supreme-court-and-other-surprises-with-lawrence-goldstone/ )