Trump Shapes The Battlefield

Another piece of the conventional wisdom that's been puzzling me ever since Trump came on the political scene is the view even among Republicans that he's a narcissist, an immature mental 12-year-old who can't control himself. His own attorney general William Barr said last year,

I'm not his lawyer, generally I think it's a bad idea to go on the stand. And I think it's a particularly bad idea for Trump because he lacks all self-control, and it would be very difficult to prepare him and keep him testifying in a prudent fashion.

Republicans of that ilk, let alone Democrats, continued to wring their hands and furrow their brows over whether he'd take the stand right up to the last days of the New York trial, when in fact he didn't take the stand -- and likely never intended to. Let's face it, Trump is a a shrewd guy. He had one successful career as a real estate developer, another successful career in entertainment, and now a career in politics that right now looks to be about as successful as, oh, I don't know, Benjamin Disraeli, who himslf had a separate career as a novelist.

Nevertheless, all the adults are convinced he's gonna go all James Dean or something, turn into a rebel without a cause, and blow Thursday's debate. Just yesterday, the New York Post editorial board admonished,

You know the first debate in 2020 went awry. You were too angry, too hot, and interrupted too much.

. . . A Trump rally is full of people angry about where the country is today. But most Americans don’t just want someone who shares their anger, they want the promise of a happy future and stability.

They want someone who can deliver a little normalcy. Government that isn’t pushing radical change. An economy that works for them. Optimism.

. . . You have a chance to take the high ground here, and Americans — exhausted by the prospect of an endless cycle of tit-for-tat lawfare — are desperate for it.

. . . You shouldn’t be tough and nasty. We don’t expect you to be nice and calm.

But you know what wins? Calm and tough.

In other words, keep this winning formula in mind, young man: channel Mitt Romney! Luckily, Trump is instinctively an entertainer, not an editorial writer. He knows from muscle memory that people watch hockey games because they want to see fights, they watch NASCAR because they want to see crashes. People are going to tune into Thursday's debate for entertainment, and Trump is going to provide it. He's setting Joe, Jake, and Dana up to be his patsies, and Jake and Dana are going to play right into his hands.

Recent comments from Trump and his supporters make it plain that Trump knows he's debating Jake and Dana just as much, if not more, than Joe himself. Having his mike turned off while Joe speaks will likely raise the tone somewhat, but we're starting to see that's not where the fun will come from. Trump may well insist that Joe can't finish a sentence, and Joe may or may not confirm it himself, but the hockey fight, the NASCAR crash, is going to come with Jake and Dana.

But let's first listen to the conventional wisdom from Brent Baker, vice president of research and publications for the Media Research Center, referring to yesterday's episode when CNN's Kasie Hunt muted Trump campaign spokesperson Karoline Leavitt's mike during an interview:

Not a good sign for Donald Trump and his supporters ahead of CNN’s debate. If Hunt’s aggressiveness is any guide, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash won’t be reluctant to use their power to kill the podium microphones to silence the candidate who says things they have a long record of denouncing and condemning. Trump may well regret agreeing to allow CNN to host a debate.

Absolutely they won't regret it. If anything, Leavitt's interview was a military-style raid designed to gauge CNN's own debate strategy. As Wikipedia puts it,

Raiding, also known as depredation, is a military tactic or operational warfare "smash and grab" mission which has a specific purpose. Raiders do not capture and hold a location, but quickly retreat to a previous defended position before enemy forces can respond in a coordinated manner or formulate a counter-attack.

Trump's people were already telegraphing over prior days their own likely strategy, which would be to debate Tapper and Bash, if anything more than Biden. For instance, Eric Trump told Maria Bartiromo Sunday morning,

Jake Tapper has compared my father to Hitler before. Jake Tapper is the guy who would yell at his control room, saying, "Turn this man off! I don't want to hear what he has to say!" when my father is giving press conferences. . . . So understand, he's not going to be debating just Joe Biden, he's going to be debating CNN.

Karoline Leavitt, who must certainly be in on that strategy, in effect conducted a raid on CNN via Kasie Hunt's show that simply confirmed what CNN's response would be: more than likely, they'll mute Trump's mike if they think they need to "correct a lie" or even stop a Leavitt-style attack on themselves.

Let's recall that a big part of Trump's 2024 strategy overall is a version of the "Chicago Seven defense", in which Abbie Hoffman and his codefendants, charged with inciting a riot at the 1968 Democrat convention, recognized that the trial was rigged against them, much like Trump's New York civil and criminal trials in 2023-24. Their response was to turn the trial itself into a circus and win an immediate battle for public opinion, while also baiting the judge into committing reversible errors they could win on appeal.

So far, this part of Trump's overall campaign strategy has been remarkably successful; his comeback over the past year has been characterized as "the greatest in history". In large part, this is because Judges Engoron and Merchan, along with other figures like Fani Willis, Nathan Wade, Joe's son Hunter, Merrick Garland, and Jack Smith, have played right into Trump's hands all along by facilitating his Chicago Seven-style tactics.

Trump is going to turn the debate into a circus, or maybe more accurately, he's threatening to do it. He's setting CNN up for a spectacular overreaction. Whatever Joe does, the likely impression with the public will be that Tapper and Bash had to intervene to save Joe.

Not a good look, but this overlooks the possibility that Joe himself will commit his own blunder or blunders -- but that's likely to be a sideshow to the main circus, the flaming car crash with Jake and Dana. That makes Joe a minor player standing feebly on the sidelines. That also says a great deal about Trump.