Donald Trumpās debate performance was far worse than even his inner circle anticipated.
While Donald Trumpās team is publicly pushing a postdebate victory lap, many in his camp were privately disappointed in the Republican candidateās performance on Tuesday.
CNNās Kaitlan CollinsĀ reportedĀ Wednesday night that several Trump insiders were āstunnedā by his poor performance and byĀ just how easily he fellĀ for all of Kamala HarrisāsĀ attempts to provoke him.
āIām told that as soon as Donald Trump exited that debate stage, he immediately began quizzing those waiting in his viewing room about how the last 90 minutes had gone,ā said Collins. āWhile several people praised him to his face, telling him they did a great job, thatās not what a lot of them are saying privately today.
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Apparently, all that practice with members of his team, such as former Hawaii RepresentativeĀ Tulsi Gabbard, had ultimately amounted to very little when it came time to debate.
Itās really not about him losing votes, though. Despite the fact that there are a truly mind-boggling number of idiot cultists out there who are for some reason devoted to this moron, there are not enough of them to win an election. Both candidates need to appeal to the vast pool of undecided or apathetic voters in order to win. In 2020, the Democrats won because that pool of people were highly motivated to oust Trump after living through 4 years of his presidency, but people have very short memories and even shorter attention spans, and so the Dems canāt really count on the same thing happening again in 2024.
When Trump was running against Biden at the beginning of this race, things were looking grim for the Democrats, because that group of morons who canāt be bothered to pay the slightest bit of attention to whatās happening in their government (apathetic & undecided voters) decided that they couldnāt really tell the difference between two senile, doddering old men, so Trumpās rambling incoherence wasnāt that big of a problem. Now that heās facing someone more than 2 decades younger than him who still has the complete use of her mental faculties, itās imperative for him to do SOMETHING to make himself not look like a shoeless old man in a hospital gown wandering between lanes of traffic after escaping from his rest home. This debate didnāt do that.
While that all may be true, if you look at projections for the electoral college based on polling numbers in battleground states, Trump is currently projected to win the presidency. So he actually doesnāt need to do much to make himself look any different, as frustrating and scary as that may be.
Current projections have Harris winning the popular vote and losing the election. So if she doesnāt increase her vote share, sheās going to lose due to the vagaries of the electoral college. She basically need to win by something absurd like 3.4% and have that adequately reflected in about five states.