Where Is Trump?

 Remember way back when Joe Biden was running for re-election? So long ago...

Anyway, the lead story on pretty much every glance at the Times home page would have been concerns about Biden's age. He would have a verbal gaffe or appear slow, and that would generate several days of concern trolling by the prestige media.

Donald Trump has disappeared from the campaign trail and I can't really find any coverage of that on the front pages of the Times and the Post. Apparently, he's going to give a press conference at Mar A Lardass and he has a campaign event in...Montana at some point this week.

Meanwhile, Harris is rolling Walz out with an extensive tour of battleground states that are drawing huge crowds. Given how much Trump obsesses about his crowd sizes, this has to be eating him alive. The Harris-Walz rallies are vibrant, joyous affairs, which draws a stark contrast with the doom and gloom of Trumpism. 

What's more, Trump's absence from the trail means that his Vice President pick, Ron DeSantis With Less Accomplishments or Charisma, has to take up the slack, and that is not going well. Vance is incredibly awkward, as he has almost no real experience in politics. He's not a natural speaker, he's not charismatic, he's simply a personification of an Angry White Guy thread on a 4chan board. He was picked to appeal to the angry incels that make up so much of the Trumpist shock troops, but his actual political chops and his closeness to the toxic Project 2025 agenda means that whatever weird energy Trump brings to his campaign is being replaced by a guy who probably couldn't win a purple House district, no matter how much money Peter Thiel threw at him.

So, where is Trump? Two theories.

The first is that he has some sort of PTSD from the shooting and is terrified of going up on an outdoor stage again. Frankly, that would be the most relatable thing about that shambolic turd of a human being. Those rallies were the lifeblood of his campaign, because he himself fed off them. Now, if he's really afraid to go on stage, then he could be sinking into a depression.

The second is that he did go out to Chicago for the event with Black journalists and...woof. He's old, he's meaner and nastier than he was in 2016 because he's lost, he's been rejected. He has the message discipline of a meth addict on a three day bender. His press conference today should be interesting, if journalists press him on...anything. He could decompress on camera.

There's a writer on Twitter that I follow because I don't always agree with him, but he makes interesting points. He's arguing that Trump isn't even trying to win. The subtext is that he's simply going to cheat. Given the Democratic governors in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, I think that's unlikely. Trump also insulted Brian Kemp, so I can't see Kemp delivering Georgia to him. Arizona and North Carolina have Democratic governors, too. Those are the states that will decide the election.

However, what if Trump starts to completely collapse both in the polls and psychologically? He's already siphoning off his campaign contributions to pay for legal bills and fines - likely in violation of the law - and has not ground game to speak of. If he really is just embezzling funds and he's looking at a sentencing hearing in September...could he just flee the country? 

The whole "logic" of his campaign is that he needs to win to stay out of prison. If he clearly is going to lose, if he's a collapsing narcissist in the grips of depression and PTSD and incipient senility...why not just take all that money and hop on a plane to Russia to live out your days as Putin's house guest?

Until then, I'll be waiting for those assholes at the Times to spend one quarter of the energy on discussing Trump's age and unfitness for office as they did on Biden.