Donald Trump is firing blanks in the wrong direction
Over the past week Donald Trump hasn’t spent much time attacking Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden, which is weird considering Trump was recently so obsessed with trying to destroy Biden, he got himself impeached over it. Nor has Trump spent much time attacking Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders lately, even though they’re the only two other candidates with strong poll numbers. Instead, Trump has spent the week obsessively attacking two Democratic candidates who aren’t even in contention.
In the hours after this past week’s Democratic primary debate, Donald Trump was curiously obsessed with attacking Tom Steyer, a candidate who’s polling at two percent. Now Trump is obsessively attacking Mike Bloomberg, a candidate who didn’t even qualify for the debate. Not only have Trump’s attacks on these two guys been ineffective, he wouldn’t gain anything even if his attacks were effective, because the Democrats are highly unlikely to make either of these two guys their nominee. So what’s he doing?
There are two schools of thought. The first is that because Tom Steyer has been spending a ton of money on anti-Trump television ads since before he was even in the race, and because Michael Bloomberg is promising to continue spending a ton of money on anti-Trump ads even if someone else is the nominee, Trump is afraid these two guys are going to use their money to bury him. There may be something to this. But this presumes that Trump has a strategy, when most of his erratic actions these days reveal that he has no strategy of any kind.
The other school of thought is that because Steyer and Bloomberg are actual billionaires, and Donald Trump is a deeply indebted fake billionaire, he’s lashing out at them out of pure insecurity and jealousy. Imagine spending your entire life extravagantly spending other people’s money in the hope of convincing the public you’re wealthy when you’re actually broke, and then two guys who are actually wealthy decide to come directly at you. In any case, Bloomberg and Steyer are taking some heat off the viable Democratic candidates, which has to be a good thing. Trump is wasting his time and ammo on unproductive nonsense.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report