Old Man Trump Cites Made-Up Polls to Excuse Low-Energy Campaign (2024)

Donald Trump hasn’t let up on insisting that Vice President Kamala Harris only recently became Black.

During a bumbling press conference at Mar-a-Lago on Thursday, the Republican presidential nominee deflected a direct question probing his reasoning for claiming that the biracial Democrat had “turned Black.”

“Kamala Harris’s father is Jamaican American, and she went to a historically Black college,” prompted a reporter, referring to Harris’s attendance at Howard University. “How is she only recently deciding to be Black?”

“You’ll have to ask her that question because she’s the one that said it. I didn’t say it,” Trump said. “But I’ve known her a long time, I actually contributed to her campaign a long time ago, because I was a developer—I contributed to lots of campaigns, to Democrats, Republicans; some were liberal, some were conservative, but you’ll have to ask her about that.

“To me it doesn’t matter,” he continued. “But to her, from her standpoint, I think it’s very disrespectful to both, really. Whether it’s Indian or Black, I think it’s very disrespectful to both. To me it doesn’t matter.”

Trump’s outrageous claim sprang up at the National Association of Black Journalists convention last week, when the 78-year-old white candidate tried and failed to curry favor with the crowd by trash-talking Harris’s racial identity.

“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black,” Trump said at the convention, seemingly unable to grasp how a person could have two parents from different cultures but still manage to appreciate both. (More than 10 percent of the U.S. population, according to the 2020 census, is multiracial.)

Donald Trump is losing in more ways than one. According to a Marquette Law School Poll national survey published Thursday, the Republican presidential nominee is trailing Vice President Kamala Harris by four percentage points.

Americans have identified Trump as the old man in the race since President Joe Biden dropped out last month, and key swing states that had previously identified as red are now considered toss-ups, according to the Cook Political Report.

Yet one issue above everything else is really gnawing at the bloviating populist: his dwindling crowd size.

“If Kamala has 1,000 people at a Rally, the Press goes ‘crazy,’ and talks about how ‘big’ it was—And she pays for her ‘Crowd,’” Trump wrote on Truth Social Thursday. “When I have a Rally, and 100,000 people show up, the Fake News doesn’t talk about it, THEY REFUSE TO MENTION CROWD SIZE. The Fake News is the Enemy of the People!”

Photographic evidence proves otherwise. Pictures of Trump’s Philadelphia rally in late June—which was held at the same arena as Harris’s event on Tuesday—stand in stark contrast to images of the Democrat’s packed crowds. Photos of Trump onstage include backgrounds loaded with empty seats and even entirely empty sections.

Meanwhile, Harris’s explosion onto the campaign trail just a handful of weeks ago has brought scores of crowds lining up to see her speak, with some queues (like the one in Eau Claire, Wisconsin) trailing for more than half a mile to enter the arena, reported AFP.

In 2016 and 2020, Trump relied on the visual logic of his loaded rallies—and, by extension, the lackluster crowds attending his opponents’—as evidence of his titanic popularity among everyday Americans. But Harris’s ability to meet and exceed Trump’s numbers has really rattled him, along with the conservative establishment. On Thursday, news of Harris’s massive crowds reached the top of the Drudge Report, the most heavily trafficked conservative news aggregator, paired with the headline: “HARRIS CROWDS ROIL MAGA.”

Other top stories on the site hinted at more chaos inside Team Trump, including concerns that Trump is “panicking” and that a short-notice afternoon press conference at Mar-a-Lago, which is reportedly only permitting the attendance of reporters hand-selected by Trump’s team, is evidence of Trump losing faith with his campaign.

Donald Trump has been throwing a prolonged tantrum, as he struggles to accept that he is no longer running against President Joe Biden.

The former president and convicted felon has become increasingly distressed at the state of his campaign, according to a Washington Post report published Thursday.

As Vice President Kamala Harris has relaunched the Democratic Party’s campaign, Trump saw his fundraising edge dissipate under the shadow of her $310 million influx in July. At the same time, his campaign has struggled to find its footing in the new matchup, leaving some close to the campaign wondering how it was possible they were so ill prepared, according to the Post.

After flying so high at the Republican National Convention in July, it seems that Trump has had a hard time adjusting to the fact that his fight is not over.

“It’s unfair that I beat him and now I have to beat her too,” Trump told an ally in a phone call last weekend, according to the Post.

Trump has reportedly been complaining nonstop about Harris’s surging media coverage and positive polling, which has since seen her rise above Trump in crucial national polls. Trump has also been anxiously asking his friends how they feel about his campaign, according to five people close to the campaign who spoke to the Post on the condition of anonymity.

The Republican nominee has also reportedly been getting flack from friends and allies over his performance at recent events. Last month, Trump made a disastrous appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists, which quickly devolved into a hostile performance rife with racist responses and caused his team to pull him offstage early, sending Republicans spiraling over what to do next.

People familiar with the inner workings of the campaign have said there has, surprisingly, been little chaos as a result of the other team’s sudden upheaval. Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told the Post that any allies or advisers who were questioning the campaign were “unnamed sources who have no idea what they are talking about and are doing nothing but helping Democrats.”

Meanwhile, Trump’s nostalgia for his low-energy run against Biden is tangible. The former president took to Truth Social Tuesday night to fantasize about the Democratic National Convention, inventing a version in which Biden swoops in and steals the nomination back from Harris.

Now Trump’s race is very different. It requires a much more sophisticated ground game, which his campaign has yet to put together—and even his allies are noticing.

Conservative radio host Erick Erickson wrote on X Thursday, “Forget the money and ads, the Democrats’ ground game is far surpassing the GOP ground game. They’ve been registering new voters and farming for absentee ballots with paid operatives, some of whom are making up to $40 an hour. The GOP has nothing at that level.”