The biggest story in politics right now is getting no attention at all
There are a number of major political storylines right now. Donald Trump is facing a bond deadline that could devastate him financially. The Republican House majority is imploding in real time. The RNC is in financial collapse. And President Biden keeps quietly putting himself in better position for 2024. But none of these are the biggest storyline in politics right now. Instead it’s a story that’s shockingly getting almost no attention.
As of right now Donald Trump has zero events on his public schedule. No rallies, no speeches, no nothing. And it’s not a temporary thing. At the same time Trump was holding his last rally, his handlers leaked to the media that they were going to sharply cut back on the number of rallies and in-person appearances he was going to make.
Trump’s handlers used campaign finance constraints as an excuse. But it was obvious that they were pulling the plug because Trump is now so dementia-riddled, his political prospects are more harmed by him being out there than by not being out there.
Let’s put into proper perspective what this means: a presumptive major party nominee for President of the United States is so senile, he’s already quitting the campaign trail – and it’s only March. This is a huge story. Trump can’t just stay hidden for eight months and expect to be in any way viable. Yet his handlers seem intent on not letting him go out there. At what point does this come to a head? And just how dementia-riddled will Trump be by the time he forces his way back out into public?
But the real question here is why the media seems to be ignoring this story entirely. The media was finally just starting to belatedly and reluctantly start to cover Trump’s worsening dementia. And now that Trump is disappearing from the campaign trail because of his dementia, the media seems… uninterested.
Why has the media lost its nerve when it comes to Trump’s dementia? Perhaps it’s because Trump’s handlers gave them something else to play with. Trump’s people appear to have slipped the word “bloodbath” into his final rally speech before they took him off the road, so that the media would become obsessed with the specter of violence, and forget about Trump’s dementia altogether. And you know what? It seems to have worked.
But even with the media gleefully allowing itself to be played by Donald Trump’s handlers, the real story isn’t going away. In addition to Trump’s crushing legal problems, upcoming criminal trials, and toxic unpopularity, he’s also too senile to remain on the campaign trail. Trump’s play-acting as a political candidate has seemingly been the only thing that’s allowed him to even slightly hold it together. Now he doesn’t even get to do that anymore. Trump’s senility is the political story of 2024, and it’ll end up getting the headlines it deserves in the end, even if it’s not getting any headlines right now.
