In recent weeks, Donald Trump has found himself in an unusual position. Whether it’s his disgusting actions at Arlington National Cemetery, his flip-flop-flip over Florida’s abortion-rights ballot measure, or unfounded attacks on Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, Trump is on the defensive.
It’s not that the media has stopped cleaning up Trump’s statements and making his rants sound semi-coherent. Or that it’s stopped applying a double standard that means many of Trump’s most egregious statements get ignored. It’s just that this is no longer enough.
Since Harris entered the race on July 21, Trump has been thrown off-stride. He didn't plan to fight a tough, close campaign. He thought this was in the bag. But now he’s caught in a trap of reacting to Harris, and when he tries to struggle out, he and his arrogant campaign staff make things all the worse.
On Saturday, Harris blasted Trump’s actions at Arlington. Simply put, Trump’s campaign staff wanted to film a campaign video at a military cemetery—in a clear violation of both cemetery rules and federal law—and it then got into a physical and verbal altercation with a woman who tried to enforce those rules.
The campaign film itself appears to have been part of a scheme by Trump’s campaign to insinuate Trump was participating in a public ceremony that Harris and President Joe Biden chose to skip. However, that wasn’t the case: Trump’s wreath-laying and graveside thumbs-up was part of a private event to which neither Harris nor Biden was invited. It was a campaign stunt from beginning to end, created with the intention of embarrassing Harris.
Then it backfired.
But what’s really unusual, as columnist Will Bunch points out in The Philadelphia Inquirer, is that the story is still making the news a week later.
“In this wackadoodle election cycle conducted to the thundering pace of a clickbait media, most stories seem to have a shelf life of a few hours” Bunch writes. But Trump’s trip to Arlington is a “big exception.”
Trump’s usual reaction to any scandal—to bully his way past it until the press moves on—hasn’t worked in this case.
It’s not as if there haven’t been opportunities. Trump achieved the rare 360-degree flip-flop-flip last week by first declaring that he didn’t support Florida’s six-week abortion ban, then reversing himself within hours to say he would vote to keep it in place in November. Then Trump moved on to flip-flopping on legalizing recreational marijuana.
But that didn’t get Arlington off the page.
On Tuesday, Trump claimed that his team’s actions at Arlington National Cemetery were “made up” by Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.
“There was no conflict or ‘fighting’ at Arlington National Cemetery last week,” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform. “It was a made up story by Comrade Kamala and her misinformation squad.“
Except it’s a real story. And it’s not going away. Trump trying to dismiss it and move on is the kind of thing they might have gotten away with two months ago. It’s not working now.
Trump’s rapid-fire flip-flops and muddled excuses for what happened at Arlington signal a campaign in panic mode, desperately fumbling to make a connection since Harris’ entry into the race.
On Tuesday, he was fighting another defensive battle in New Hampshire, trying to convince voters there that he hasn’t given up on the state after a top campaign volunteer sent out an email saying that “the campaign has determined that New Hampshire is no longer a battleground state.”
Since then, Trump’s campaign has hurried out social media posts and campaign statements denying that it’s giving up on New Hampshire. However, he hasn’t been there since the Republican primaries, and Harris has maintained a steady lead in the state for weeks.
Of course, if the Trump campaign has indeed given up on the state, it could never admit as much. Mere weeks ago, Republicans were playing up his chances in New Hampshire, and Trump was talking about winning in more reliably blue states like Minnesota, Virginia, and New Jersey. In May, he even claimed he had a “very good chance” of winning New York, which he lost in 2020 by about 2 million votes.
But now Trump is seeing his polling in one swing state after another shift toward Harris. Trump is now having to defend North Carolina, where his edge has shrunk to a whisper. His pathway to 270 electoral voters—the number needed to win in November—is narrowing.
Trump was simply not prepared to wage a serious campaign in 2024. He thought he had enough of a lead to indulge himself by choosing unpopular Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate.
Now, Trump’s attempts to insert himself into the news cycle ends in disaster. His remaining option is to try and drag Harris down. But so far, the best that his campaign team can come up with is stunts like Arlington, which has backfired—and continues to—due to the arrogance and incompetence of his team. From him mugging for the camera in the cemetery to top campaign advisor Chris LaCivita describing a cemetery worker as “despicable” after she was shoved aside by a male member of Trump’s team, every effort to address this event has poured only more salt into the wound.
Trump could have apologized for what happened at Arlington. Or his campaign staff could have kept their mouths shut. Or they might have settled it quietly with Army officials at Arlington. But none of that is in Trump’s nature. Instead, he blamed everyone, his campaign staff insulted the victim of their assault, and then LaCivita went out of his way to needle the secretary of the Army.
Trump once claimed he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose his base. That may be true. But Trump needs more than his base to win, and he's fighting a losing battle to hold onto Republicans and independents whom, just weeks ago, he thought were safely in his pocket.
Help Kamala Harris keep Trump on the defensive, and put more states in the blue column with a $5 donation to the Harris/Walz campaign.
