Donald Trump Is Having Too Much Fun to Lose

I take no pleasure in reporting this, but Donald Trump is having way too much fun to lose this election right now.

For a time, Vice President Kamala Harris was under Trump’s skin. Trump had the election in hand before she supplanted President Joe Biden atop the Democratic ticket. So when Harris reenergized her party and closed the gap in the polls, Trump melted down in an embarrassing fashion that only underlined all of Harris’s messaging about “joy.” In fact, forget joy; she just seemed like a functioning adult. He didn’t.

But with a few weeks to go, the momentum seems to have swung the other way. Harris is still yet to present a coherent vision for where she wants to take the country, which has voters assuming that a vote for her is a vote for a rerun of the disastrous, historically unpopular Biden administration. It didn’t help when she said she couldn’t think of a single thing she would have done differently than her boss.

Really, Jack? Are you sure? Because that guy was on track to lose to Trump in a landslide.

Harris’s superficial campaign seems to have run out of road. Veteran reporter Mark Halperin says that Democrats are concerned Harris is in danger of losing six of the seven swing states expected to decide the election.

“I just saw some new private polling today that’s very robust private polling: She’s in a lot of trouble,” submitted Halperin earlier this week.

The chatter within the Harris camp is similarly dour. According to a report from CNN, members of the vice president’s team are having “flashbacks to 2016,” not because they’re worry warts, but because Harris is polling much, much worse than Hillary Clinton was back then.

Worse yet for the Democrats, Trump seems to be enjoying himself.

That’s not just a sign that Trump is confident that he will win, it’s a boon to his chances of doing so.

Even Trump’s most vociferous critics must admit that he has a strange sort of charisma. There is, simply put, no one else like him. And when he feels comfortable, his indomitable personality comes through in a mesmerizing, and more palatable way.

Consider his recent interview on the Flagrant podcast with comedians Andrew Schulz and Akaash Singh. The hosts flattered him with a little bit of ooo’ing and ahh’ing, and the result was one of the most humanizing appearances Trump has ever made.

It opened with him reminiscing about a party that a juvenile Donald Trump Jr. threw at their New York City penthouse with perhaps the biggest smile he’s ever sported and quipping, “No, I can never give him closure. You can never forget.”

He went on, among other things, to shower his kids with praise, profess to have been “embarrassed” when he went down after being shot earlier this year, and give their audience a peek into his brain.

“And so it’s one of this I was saying before, though, that, you know, I do a thing called The Weave, and there are those that are fair that say ‘this guy is so genius!’, and then others would say, ‘he rambled.’ I don’t ramble if I start a story,” explained Trump. “I go so far here or there and I can come back to exactly where I started.”

There will no doubt be those on the left who laugh at his explanation for his winding tangents, but while Trump’s “weaving” might not be the sign of a genius, his branding of “The Weave” as a kind of endearing personal habit is kind of brilliant in its own way.

More evidence that Trump has successfully stolen the “joyful” label from the Democrats comes in the form of his new refrain about enjoying the rest of his life on a beach somewhere.

At a rally in Reading, Pennsylvania on Wednesday, Trump declared that he was “on a mission to rescue our nation from a failed and corrupt political establishment.”

“I’m putting everything on the line to fight for you, I didn’t have to be here,” he continued. “I could be on a beautiful beach. I could be on a gorgeous beach somewhere in the world, the sun beaming down on this beautiful body in a bathing suit. The sun would be beaming down, the waves would be crashing into my face. Instead, I’m here with you in Pennsylvania and I’d rather be doing that!”

He repeated this schtick in Detroit on Thursday.

“I could be right now in the most beautiful ocean, on the sand, exposing my really beautiful body — so beautiful — to the sun and the surf,” he daydreamed. “Or I could be in Detroit with you, and I’d rather be in Detroit with you, okay?”

If you read the words on the page, they seem gross. If you watch, it’s apparent that Trump is capable of self-awareness. It’s a joke that he’s in on and one that has a pretty compelling underlying political message.

Trump is old, rich, and capable of retiring to a beach. And it’s true — although his motivations are probably less than pure given his legal troubles — that he is instead spending his time pounding the pavement in Pennsylvania and Michigan. There’s little doubt that that lands with some voters.

There’s still plenty of time left until election day, and the race for the White House remains very close. The presidency is still very much up for grabs.

But if Harris wants to be confident going into November 5, she had better find a way to wipe that smile off Donald Trump’s face.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.