While I hated the way President Biden was forced into dropping out of the presidential race, his absence from the top of the ticket means that we can fully dive into attacking Donald Trump for his old age, his senility, his intemperance and his complete incompetence. Having to run against VP Kamala Harris has broken Trump’s already addled brain. He was undisciplined before all of this, but it’s gotten worse in the past two weeks. He was so contemptibly awful and racist at the NABJ conference that his own staff pulled him off the stage. His itchy Twitter fingers are now twitchy Truth Social fingers, as he sits online all day, rooting for economic collapse and test-driving new racist attacks against Harris. Politico claims that Republicans are “reeling” from Trump’s inability to run an effective presidential campaign.

Donald Trump spent Monday morning labeling the turmoil in the global financial markets the “Kamala Crash,” giving Republicans hope that he might turn his focus to an economic message. It didn’t last. By midday, the former president was already back to re-litigating his controversial appearance in Chicago last week, where he questioned Kamala Harris’ Black identity and suggested a major network journalist should be fired — “I didn’t know who she was, she was nasty,” he told a livestreamer. And if Trump had an opening to hit Harris on the economy, it was unclear even to leaders of his own party if he could sustain it.

Republicans on Monday reeled from Trump’s undisciplined approach to the opening stages of his new general election matchup with Harris — following a weekend that saw him praise Russian leader Vladimir Putin while smearing Harris as “low IQ,” and “dumb” and attacking a popular swing-state GOP governor whose turnout operation he may need in November.

“This is what you would call a public nervous breakdown,” said Matthew Bartlett, a GOP strategist and former Trump administration appointee. “This is a guy who cut through the Republican primary like a knife through butter. This is a guy who pummeled a semi-conscious president in a debate and literally out of a race. And now this is a guy who cannot come to grips with a competitive presidential race that would require discipline and effective messaging. And we’re seeing a candidate and a campaign absolutely melt down.”

“Democrats are racing to remake Kamala Harris from real life Selina Meyer into the female Obama — and Donald Trump’s lack of discipline is letting them,” said a national Republican strategist who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “Every day Trump swipes at shiny objects — attacking the popular governor of a swing state, questioning the race of his opponent, or battling cat lady comments by his VP — is a day he is letting Harris define herself on her own terms.”

[From Politico]

Republican operatives are also startled by Trump’s need to attack Republican governors like Georgia’s Gov. Kemp and Tennessee’s Gov. Bill Lee as well, because apparently Republican operatives wake up everyday with no memory of what has happened for the past nine years. Obviously, some of this is the same kind of performative clucking we’ve seen from Republicans for years. “Oh, I didn’t know Trump was like that, I didn’t know the leopard would EAT my face!” The fact is, Trump remade the party in his own image and there’s nothing any of his Republican critics can do about it. They have to go all-in with this racist nutjob because he is the party. The party is childish, senile, racist, apocalyptic, weird and creepy now. That’s the Trump brand. That and the rape.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.