The following is just part of an op-ed by Maureen Dowd in The New York Times:
As a video circulates of Trump celebrating his CNN performance by dancing to “Macho Man” by the pool at Mar-a-Lago, we see Trump unplugged. The existential threat is aiming to get back in the Oval, this time without anyone trying to keep him from going completely off the rails, and with the scary new world of superevolved A.I. chatbots to help him lie and smear. (Trump posted a doctored video on Friday of Anderson Cooper saying “That was President Donald J. Trump ripping us” a new one “here on CNN.”)
Trump is spiraling into even more of a self-deluded narcissist, if that’s possible. And he’s even more obsessed with numbers — if that’s possible. When he was asked by the terrific Kaitlan Collins if he regretted his actions on Jan. 6, he began rhapsodizing about, and exaggerating, the size of the crowd that day.
“I have never spoken to a crowd as large as this,” he said, adding: “They were there with love in their heart. That was an unbelievable — and it was a beautiful day.”
He called one of the most heinous days in American history “a beautiful day.” He called the Black Capitol Police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt, who was trying to break into the House chamber, a “thug.”
New Hampshire voters in the audience were cheering on Trump, and many even laughed when he crudely re-defamed E. Jean Carroll.
The town hall was enlightening — and frightening. But we needed that reminder to be on full alert, because Trump is not just an unhinged and dangerous extremist; he is also a cunning and dominating insurgent.
The argument that the media should ignore Trump and keep him under a bushel basket is ridiculous. You can’t extinguish Trump by not talking to him. He’s always going to find a platform.
Sun Tzu stressed that victory depends on knowing the enemy — “Force him to reveal himself.” Roberta Kaplan, Carroll’s lawyer, did a skillful job of letting Trump convict himself in the deposition.
President Biden needs to see what he’s up against. There are only so many times Biden can say “C’mon, man!” in a debate. The more he sees Trump in action, the less likely he is to be steamrolled. Biden’s team has been blithely underestimating the opponent. The cascading indictments allow Trump to play the gilt-dipped martyr on an even larger scale.
The task is to challenge Trump and expose him, not to put our fingers in our ears and sing “la, la, la.”
“It strikes me as fundamentally wrong to deny voters a chance to see candidates, and particularly front-running candidates, answering challenging questions from journalists and citizens in open forums,” David Axelrod told me Friday. “You can’t save democracy from people who would shred its norms by shredding democratic norms yourselves.”
