Like a poor marksman, Trump keeps missing the target

| 9:09 am EDT May 26, 2024
Dear Palmer Report readers, we all understand the difficult era we're heading into. Major media outlets are caving to Trump already. Even the internet itself and publishing platforms may be at risk. But Palmer Report is nonetheless going to lead the fight. We're funding our 2025 operating expenses now, so we can keep publishing no matter what happens. I'm asking you to contribute if you can, because the stakes are just so high. You can donate here.

There’s a moment in “Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan” where Kirk says to Khan, “like a poor marksman you keep missing the target.” That’s the phrase that keeps popping into my mind as I’ve watched Trump spend his weekend speaking to the wrong crowds in ways that can’t possibly help him.

First Trump held a rally in the Bronx, a mostly nonwhite borough where he only got 15% of the vote in 2020, in a city where he’s widely hated, in a state where he has zero chance of getting any electoral votes. If the goal is to make Trump more popular with Black voters through some kind of self fulfilling prophecy, he missed the mark. His Bronx audience was on the small side and almost entirely white, meaning that attendees weren’t even from the Bronx. Trump’s rally got very little national media attention, because Trump speaking to a small white crowd is a nonevent. If Trump’s handlers were counting on getting headlines about him drawing a crowd in the Bronx, and hoping that such headlines would trick Black voters in swing states into voting for him, let’s just say that Trump’s handlers are pretty stupid for thinking that Black voters are that stupid.

Then on Saturday, Trump spoke at the Libertarian Convention. This was an odd decision to put it mildly, given that the Libertarian Party has its own 2024 candidate for President, and Trump isn’t it. There was a surreal effort by Trump supporters to take over the room while the actual libertarians were finishing up in another hall, but in the end Trump had to give a speech to a largely libertarian crowd – and it was received very poorly. Again, if Trump’s handlers were hoping to trick libertarians around the nation into voting for him by generating headlines about how he gave a well received speech at the Libertarian Convention, it once again failed.

Whoever is making these decisions for Trump is obviously naive when it comes to these things. You can’t just hold a rally in the Bronx, attract some white attendees from New Jersey, and expect it to help you with Black voters. You can’t just give a speech at a third party convention, send in your own supporters as ringers, and expect it to help you with libertarian voters. This kind of naive thinking reeks of someone who has never actually been involved with a campaign before and therefore has no idea why these ideas can’t possibly work.

The funny part is that back when Trump was still a functioning person, he never did seem to have any understanding that he needed to expand his support beyond his own base. It’s why he lost two elections by a combined ten million votes. Now that Trump is too senile to be making the decisions, his babysitters are indeed trying to expand his base – but they have no idea how to do it.