Donald Trump is sputtering and panicking in North Carolina

| 8:15 pm EDT September 26, 2024
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We’ve seen nearly a decade of media narratives (from both sides) about Donald Trump supposedly being an all-powerful dictator type who acts swiftly and ruthlessly and decisively in overwhelming fashion, at no point have Trump’s actions ever matched up with this characterization. Instead Trump has always come across as tepid, hesitant, and afraid to make a decision. He usually dithers for way too long until it’s too late, and then tries to make up for it with outsized panic moves that don’t get him anywhere. Now we’re seeing this play out with Trump yet again.

Trump clearly considers North Carolina to be a priority, and almost can’t win the Electoral College without it. He doesn’t do many swing state rallies in general, but he’s gone to North Carolina twice for rallies. He’s that worried about the state. And he should be, given that he’s basically tied there, even as his party’s candidate for Governor continues to implode.

So you’d think that Trump would be going into North Carolina with some kind of strategy, or some kind of position on the most important issue, which is the implosion of Mark Robinson. But when a reporter asked Trump on Thursday what his position is on Robinson, Trump sheepishly said that he doesn’t “know the situation.” Really? That’s all Trump can come up with?

It’s one thing to try to fence split the matter. But this isn’t that. Trump isn’t trying to find some middle ground where he distances himself a little from Robinson while also not fully casting him aside. No, Trump is instead pleading ignorance – about one of the most highly publicized political scandals in the nation.

That’s probably because Trump doesn’t know what’s going on with Mark Robinson. As his dementia symptoms continue to get worse, Trump increasingly doesn’t know what’s going on in general. He thinks Nikki Haley is Nancy Pelosi. He thinks people are eating dogs. He thinks Hannibal Lecter is real. Trump’s position on any given matter on any given day is going to be a combination of whatever his failing memory and paranoid thinking tell him to believe that day, and whatever his handlers have convinced him to believe that day.

Donald Trump is almost literally saying ‘I have to go ask my babysitters what I’m supposed to say about Mark Robinson.’ And that doesn’t help Trump at all. Persuadable voters in North Carolina are trying to figure out whether to give up on the entire Republican Party slate because of Mark Robinson. Trump, with his laughably inept take on Robinson, is making it easy for those persuadable voters in North Carolina to give up on him.

This is the pattern we always see from Trump. He knows he’s supposed to be worried about North Carolina, but he has no idea what he’s supposed to be doing in North Carolina. He’s always been tepidly hesitant to make a decision or make a move of any kind. Now he seems to be confused about what’s even going on.