WASHINGTON —
During the nine years Donald Trump has been running for president, his political superpower has been his feral talent for seizing media attention and knocking opponents off-stride with insults, falsehoods and demagoguery.
Until this year, it usually worked.
But over the last five weeks, as Kamala Harris launched her late-starting presidential campaign, Trump has been the one who appeared off-balance, seemingly unprepared to run against anyone younger than President Biden.
So as Democrats gathered in Chicago, Trump went back to his old playbook to regroup. He abandoned the already-frayed tradition of taking a break during the other party’s convention — what’s one more norm to break? — and set out on a cross-country tour aiming to cut the surging Harris down to size.
But Trump’s attempt to grab back the spotlight — his most frenetic week of campaigning in months — didn’t work.
Harris’ convention ratings were higher than his. Even worse, Harris’ rally crowds were bigger than his. Worst of all, his old nemesis Barack Obama made fun of him over it.
Trump was seething even before the week started, when Time magazine put a formal portrait of Harris on its cover.
“I’m a better-looking person than Kamala,” he complained.
He was still seething when the week ended, when Martha MacCallum of Fox News had the temerity to note that Harris was “having some success” at attracting young and minority voters.
“No, she’s not having success,” Trump snapped. “I’m having success.”
For those who missed it — because, after all, it didn’t get much media coverage — here’s a brief diary of Donald Trump’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Convention Week:
Monday: York, Pa. — Trump speaks to an audience of about 150 at a small factory and questions Harris’ origins: “I wonder if they knew where she comes from,” he muses. That evening, he watches Biden’s speech at the convention. “[I] was amazed at his ANGER at being humiliated by the Democrats,” he writes in a social media post. “I was happy to have played a part in his demise.”
Tuesday: Howell, Mich. — Trump falsely accuses Harris and other Democrats of using violence to push Biden out of office. “That was a coup,” he claims. “It was a vicious, violent overthrow of a president of the United States.” (“I think he has a problem,” Biden responds.)
That evening, Trump watches former President Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama, as they ridicule his obsession with crowd size. “Very nasty,” Trump says.
Wednesday: Asheboro, N.C. — At a rally, Trump charges that the FBI is faking crime statistics and the Labor Department is faking job statistics. (The numbers are often fallible, but there is no evidence that they are faked.)
And he returns to talking about the Obamas’ speeches. He acts out a mock dialogue with his campaign aides,