SAUNDERS: Democrats’ favorite topic at convention is Trump, not Harris
CHICAGO — Let’s talk about Donald Trump.
When he lost the 2020 election, he did not concede. Instead, when gullible people who believed the election was stolen attacked the Capitol, he did nothing. No wonder his former vice president, Mike Pence, will not endorse him.
Trump has a petty side. He disparages the looks and intellect of women. He says his Democrat rival for the presidency, Vice President Kamala Harris, a graduate of Howard University and the Hastings School of Law, has a “low IQ.”
Trump was born into a successful family and parlayed his personality into reality TV gold, and still he holds tight to a never-ending list of people he wants — needs — to demean. Trump is ungrateful.
His lack of discipline and self-control have made him the star of the Democratic National Convention.
Not Harris. So there are no infamous word salads, no press conferences and no one-on-one interviews with pesky questions about, say, her high staff turnover or San Francisco’s sanctuary city policies.
Democrats have nominated a candidate who has not granted a single interview since Joe Biden endorsed her — and the press hasn’t had an opportunity to ask her why.
During a presser with reporters Wednesday morning, senior Trump adviser Brian Hughes said that quick transcript checks found Trump’s name was mentioned more Tuesday night than Monday night — maybe 50 to 60 times.
Of course Democrats are talking about Trump. It’s far better to discuss his personal faults than Harris’ record or platform.
Former President Barack Obama nailed it Tuesday when he described his successor as “a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he rode down his golden escalator nine years ago.” Since then, Obama told the Democratic National Convention, America has seen “a constant stream of gripes and grievances,” as well as his “childish nicknames” for people he dislikes, “crazy conspiracy theories” and Trump’s “weird obsession with crowd sizes.”
That last bit brought me back to Trump’s first full day as president, when he claimed that 1 million to 1.5 million showed up for his inauguration. Then Trump sent out his brand-new press secretary, Sean Spicer, to discredit news reports about the crowd’s actual size — even though photographs of the Capitol Mall showed Trump did not draw a record-breaking following.
Of course, Trump blamed the media for his own unforced error. The problem with never admitting you are wrong is that you never learn from your mistakes.
Did Trump call American service members who died in service to their country “suckers” and “losers?” I am sorry to report that stories that began as leaks later were confirmed. At least he was not a military adventurist.
As a reality TV star before he won office, Trump’s signature quote was, “You’re fired.” As president, Trump often had others deliver the bad news as he burned through four chiefs of staff and four press secretaries. He publicly trashed his own aides. He’s a bully.
Obama likened him to “the neighbor who keeps running his leaf blower outside your window every minute of every day.”
And still, Obama warned the audience, “This will be a tight race.”
I’ve been following politics long enough to know that there will always be staffers who turn on a Republican president — because the minute they do so, they are hailed as heroes on cable news and book deals magically appear.
So, of course, there is a group called Republicans for Harris — the rub here, however, is how big that group has become.
Earlier this month, The Washington Post looked into how many former Trump Cabinet members support Trump — and figured the number was 24 of 42.
Three top members of the Trump administration have made it clear they do not support Trump, including Pence.
The rest weren’t really talking to the press. Just like Kamala Harris.
Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.
