Donald Trump just delivered an abundance of stupid
Donald Trump held a rally in Arizona on Thursday, and if you want the short answer on how it went for him, all you need to know is that he announced he was in Texas. But Trump’s senile inability to understand what state he was in was actually just the tip of the iceberg on how stupid this whole thing was.
If Trump really is trying to somehow win the 2024 election, then his one and only job is to try to get the general public to forget about the fact that he’s a recently convicted felon, and instead focus on other things instead. Trump’s only faint hope in this election would be if he can get persuadable voters in the middle to prioritize something other than his felon status.
The problem for Trump is that he’s incapable of doing that. He’s now holding rallies, presumably to try to get the public to see him as a candidate instead of a criminal. But during his speeches, he just sits there and whines about the fact that he’s a convicted criminal. That’s the worst way to try to get people to forget that you’re a criminal.
But Trump is making it even worse for himself. Now that he’s a felon, he seems to want to surround himself with other known criminals, so as to convince himself that it’s okay that he’s one. Accordingly, during his Arizona rally, he brought former Sheriff Joe Arpaio on stage and kissed him. No, really.
Trump isn’t just whining about the fact that he’s a criminal. He’s bringing other criminals on stage with him and embracing them. More to the point, he’s aligning himself with unpopular criminals. Arpaio was ultimately voted out of office. And when he tried running again in 2020, he didn’t even make it past the Republican primary. Arpaio, like Trump, has suffered in popularity and viability on account of being a convicted criminal.
Donald Trump isn’t trying to win this election. He may think that’s what he’s doing. He may think that he’s helping himself by aligning himself with his fellow unpopular criminals. But it’s a terrible, terrible strategy. Trump’s base may approve of someone like Arpaio, but Trump’s base doesn’t matter. They’re already going to vote for him, and they only get to cast one vote for him each. Trump has to expand his popularity outside his cult. And embracing another infamous convicted criminal does the precise opposite of that.
Trump never did have any political savvy. He cheated his way through the 2016 Republican primary and the 2016 general election, and then he lost by seven million votes in 2020. He’s still losing a large portion of the 2024 Republican primary vote even though no one’s running against him anymore. And now that his poll numbers are dropping as a result of his criminal conviction, he’s playing into his status as a convicted criminal. You can decide whether it’s stupidity or senility. Either way, Trump keeps digging a deeper hole for himself.
