Is Donald running out of Trump cards?

You never want to lower your guard against a dirty fighter who’s shown he has no respect for the rules. 

Until he’s been definitively knocked out, and preferably carried out of the ring, you have to expect him to launch a sneak, low blow if you’re ever complacent enough to turn your back on him. So we have to expect Donald Trump, slow to do good but quick to brutality he thinks advances his interest, to come up with something pretty dire in the last two weeks of the Presidential election campaign.

Trump, not outstanding for his subtle wit
He needs to pull something out of the hat and fast

Even so, we can take some comfort from two things: his standing in the polls and, above all, his own behaviour.

The polls are averaging a Biden lead rather over 10%. At the same point in the 2016 election campaign, Hillary Clinton was ahead by just over 6%. The election itself gave her a lead of just over 2%, letting Trump beat her in the electoral college.

If Biden can prevent his lead diminishing by any more than the 4% Clinton lost, he would still win by 6%, better than Obama’s second win, and little behind his first. Besides, Biden’s lead has stayed steady, and even climbed a little, for months now. From today’s standpoint, he looks ready to win decisively, and perhaps crushingly.

Again, Trump could still unleash something deadly in the next two weeks. All we can say, is that it would have to be something stunning.

Which takes me to the question of his own behaviour.

Isn’t he beginning to sound like a beaten man? If there’s one thing Trump hates, it’s to be a loser. He’s always been careful not even to mention the possibility that he might lose. Or he was until a few days ago. Suddenly, though, he’s coming out with off the cuff remarks about losing. 

If he loses, he tells us, he would leave the US. That might sound like a threat to some. To many others – I hope rather more – it sounds like a promise. I suspect that, to far more still, it sounds like the plan of a fugitive from justice.

He has also said that if he loses, it will be to the worst candidate for the presidency ever. We didn’t need any further evidence of Trump’s utter lack of self-awareness, but it is astonishing that he apparently doesn’t realise than any plausible politician running against him can, at most, be the second worst candidate ever.

Again, though, the significant aspect is his even allowing for the possibility that he might lose.

Perhaps the most telling of Trump’s most recent outbursts has been his attacks on Anthony Fauci. Now Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, has had a stellar career. He has been one of the most cited medical authorities in the world. He played a leading role in the fight against HIV, against Ebola, against Zika, and most recently, against Covid.

But Trump hates scientific information if it makes him uncomfortable politically (and Trump doesn’t distinguish between political and personal). So he has turned on him for giving evidence-based advice that conflicted with his own irrational notions. In vintage Trump form, he declared that Fauci had been around 500 years and called him a ‘disaster’, comments that attracted a cool response from the sharper and wittier Fauci.

That’s the problem for Trump: Fauci’s a great deal smarter, and he’s done a great deal more for Americans than Trump. He’s far more respected and trusted. A lot of people will be upset by seeing him attacked in this way.

That’s people outside Trump’s base. Within the base, this kind of abuse, like his bullying tactics during the first Presidential debate, plays well. However, as the polls show, he may be rallying his base but it’s shrinking. He’s made the mistake of not trying to attract people from outside it. This attack feels like the desperate ploy of a man trying to find a way out of the hole in which he’s buried himself.

Still. Let’s come back to the beginning of this piece. While his base is shrinking, it includes some vicious people, many of them heavily armed. White supremacists, most of whom are keen Trump supporters, have been declared a major threat, even by someone like Chad Wolf, the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security in the US (isn’t it amazing how many of Trump’s senior people hold their positions in an acting capacity? It’s easier than going through a formal confirmation, I suppose, and Trump always prefers the easy way).

The kind of fans Trump called on to “stand back and stand by”
No joke for anyone attached to the rule of law

With such support, there’s still no guarantee that even if he loses, Trump will go. Beating him will only be a first step. We can only say that, by his own behaviour and the state of the polls, at least that first step now looks increasingly achievable.

Trump seems to feel he’s running out of cards. That must give many of us a spark of hope to enjoy.