Opinion

Donald Trump’s Increasingly Apocalyptic Campaign

Bruce Maiman
Tue, October 8, 2024 

Julia Demaree Nikhinson via Associated Press

Last month, I wondered if Donald Trump had jumped the shark.

“Jump the Shark,” you may recall, is an idiom referring to that moment when a TV show, brand or project has peaked and then gradually declines toward irrelevance.

Turns out, it may be worse than that.


As the 2024 election has drawn closer, Donald Trump’s rhetoric has increasingly darkened, amplifying insults, threats and false claims in his campaign speeches. At his rallies, he has called for using police violence as a tool to deter crime, repeatedly attacked Kamala Harris’ mental fitness, and promised to arrest political foes. His tone has become more apocalyptic, framing the election as a battle between good and evil, fearmongering about the future of America, and predictions of WWIII breaking out if his opponent prevails.

Donald Trump hasn’t “jumped the shark.” He has mutated into something demonic, desecrating all that is good, noble and decent solely to satisfy his own emotional needs.

It’s the type of tailspin one goes through when confronted by their worst fear, which, in Trump’s case, is losing. Losing is a reality he is incapable of accepting. It doesn’t matter that the race remains a dead heat in the states that matter. His language evokes the desperation of someone willing to say or do anything to stem the tide of some perceived slide into an abyss.

With this comes a delusion among voters that helps buoy Trump’s campaign prospects. Presidential candidates make big promises. But presidents are not kings. They can’t keep those promises without the help of Congress any more than they can control the economic forces that determine the price of eggs or a gallon of gas. Yet, presidents get blamed for higher grocery prices even though they’re hardly a president’s fault. And voters buy into those campaign promises only to blame presidents later when the promises go unfulfilled despite Congress being the reason why. How can voters not do that math, given that Congress consistently has historically low approval ratings?

It’s not worth engaging the MAGA faithful who gorge themselves on fake controversies and ginned-up rage, but there are plenty of smart conservative and independent voters who remain undecided while seemingly oblivious to the bigger picture. If Trump wins, pursues his promises, gives his Project 2025 puppet masters what they want, and Republicans win both houses of Congress (entirely possible), the last thing Americans will be worrying about is their grocery bill.

What strikes me as odd, what is so damned frustrating, is how tepidly the media covers Trump’s endless string of deranged tirades. I don’t know if it’s a misguided obsession with impartiality, a fear of being accused of bias, or just having become desensitized to where the continuous flow of extreme comments is a new normal.

We get “Donald Trump Sharpened His Criticism of Kamala Harris on Border Security,” instead of “Trump Seemed Unstable and Made Several Bizarre Remarks During a Campaign Speech.”

Or try “Trump Says ‘People Have To Remain Calm’ Amid Coronavirus Outbreak,” rather than “Trump Visits CDC During Pandemic, Asks About Fox News’s Ratings, Insults Washington Governor, Boasts About Trying To Extort Ukraine Into Digging Up Dirt On Joe Biden.”

Does this CNN account that Trump “accepted rules for September 10 debate” really reflect how Trump accepted them on his social media account? I can assure you: It does not.

This sanitizing of Trump’s ravings makes even his most incendiary comments seem lucid and levelheaded for the vast majority of Americans who have neither the time nor inclination to watch his rally rants live.

Historically, Trump has reacted to setbacks or threats to his power and ego by doubling down on combative and inflammatory language. However, if the polls remain tied (a negative to him), if he doesn’t get the attention he craves (Harris getting so much more since her entry into the race), he may feel even more cornered, leading to further unhinged ramblings and abstract warnings of societal destruction.

Yet, some voters remain reticent. Recently on Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect,” New York Times conservative columnist Bret Stephens waxed on with a familiar critique: Kamala Harris’ failure to address specific policy questions she needs to answer to earn his vote.

Bollocks.

Yes, policy matters, but that sounds more like an excuse than a reason not to vote for a Democrat. Perhaps Mr. Stephens will approve of Harris’ recent media blitz, packed with appearances on “60 Minutes,” “The View,” “The Howard Stern Show,” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”

Or maybe Stephens needs to be hit over the head with a ball peen hammer.

“She’s running against Trump,” MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle told Stephens in that same HBO episode. “We have two choices. And so there are some things you might not know her answer to [from Harris], and in 2024, unlike 2016 for a lot of the American people, we know exactly what Trump will do, who he is, and the kind of threat he is to democracy.”

Ironically, Trump’s continuing free-fall into madness can only inflame passions among his most devoted followers, making the campaign even less about policy and more about existential threats. If Trump slips further in the polls, we could see this trend intensify, with fewer discussions of policy and more calls to destroy alleged enemies of the state.

Trump, of course, responded to Maher’s program in typically venomous fashion, calling Ruhle a “dumb as a rock bimbo,” Stephens a “Trump-hating loser,” and in a steaming pile of irony, accused Maher of “sloppy and tired” attacks.

Such reactions to criticism — and they are always the same reactions — should tell undecided voters and insipid ditherers like Stephens everything they need to know about this election. It is an election entirely about character. That is the issue.

Or are vacillating voters and those who have decided not to vote comfortable having someone so childish and poisonous in the White House?

We should reframe the question for the vacillators and the indifferent: Given the kinds of things he says, the type of person he is, the type of person you readily concede that he is, would you say you are just like Donald Trump? Does Donald Trump represent the type of person you are?

Your answer will tell you why you have to vote. And for whom.