Trump is running scared and looking for an excuse to avoid debating Harris - opinion

Donald Trump had a very bad week and he’s heading toward another as Kamala Harris is gaining momentum and overtaking him in the polls, the crowds, and the campaign coffers.

She started this week by picking Minnesota’s popular Governor Tim Walz as her running mate after a careful vetting. If elected, Walz won’t be the first vice president from Minnesota. My former Senate boss, Hubert H. Humphrey, and his protégé Walter Mondale held that job.

An effective campaigner and former congressman (with a solid pro-Israel record), high school teacher, football coach, and army veteran, Walz’s selection casts more light on Trump’s haphazard decision-making process at a time when Republicans are having buyer’s remorse about the selection of Ohio Senator JD Vance. 

It’s been so bad that Trump is now saying the vice-presidential candidate is irrelevant. Sometimes, but it can also sink a campaign. Remember Sarah Palin, Thomas Eagleton, Lloyd Bentsen, Bob Dole, John Edwards, William Miller, and Geraldine Ferraro?

Vance attacked Harris and wound up offending millions of women when he belittled “childless cat ladies” who are “miserable” because they’re not mothers. Harris has two step-children through her marriage to Douglas Emhoff. 

Vance has just pissed off the three most popular – and childless – women in America: Simone Biles, Taylor Swift, and Oprah Winfrey. All can carry a lot of clout with voters if they wish. 

Trump can’t drop him now because he is too vain to admit he made a bad decision by picking a running mate who once – accurately – called Trump a “morally reprehensible human being” but now is an unabashed sycophant. Walz has branded the GOP ticket “weird,” a label that has resonated.

Trump is an equal-opportunity bigot, which he showcased at a meeting of Black journalists in Atlanta. The man who discovered late in life that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, recently learned that Harris is Black. He thought she was Indian, like her mother, he said, although she’s identified as Black, like her Jamaican-born father. 

Trump's birtherism

Trump, with a long history of racism, is reviving his notorious birtherism slander. He challenged president Barack Obama’s citizenship, and now he’s saying Harris is just pretending to be Black. This from a man who wears heavy layers of orange-hued makeup. 

Many Republican senators are increasingly “uncomfortable” with Trump’s attacks on Harris’s race and fear it will only get uglier, The Hill reported. As Republican operative Scott Jennings put it, Trump “did crap the bed.”

Why bring that up at a conference of Black journalists? Did he think they’d turn on her because she’s biracial? Of course not, he wasn’t really talking to them. He knew his race-baiting would delight his deep white base, telling them yes, I still hate the same people you hate.

His main accomplishment might have been to keep Black voters thinking of supporting Trump safely in the Democratic column.

TRUMP IS running scared and looking for an excuse to avoid debating Harris. He backed out of their debate scheduled for September 10 at ABC and announced he had arranged one to be held on his terms and on his turf. He picked pro-Trump Fox and his favorite interviewers. Fox had to pay $787 million to settle claims for lying so much about the last election just to help Trump.

Harris reminded him he’d proposed debates in the first place “anywhere, anyplace, anytime” and used the slogan “Donald Ducks Debate.” She suggested the convicted felon is afraid of facing off against a former prosecutor. “If you got something to say, say it to my face,” she said.

Democratic political consultant James Carville said the idea of debating “a girl” has Trump “s----ing his pants.” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Trump is just “afraid” to debate “a strong Black woman.” The disgraced former president’s niece, psychologist Mary Trump, said it shows he is “a monumental coward.” 

Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as Trump’s White House communications director, thinks it will be a “disaster” for Trump to refuse to debate because people will say he is afraid to debate a woman, especially one who is “more cognitively aware” and has more “verbal acuity” than he has.

Trump said it is not necessary to debate because he’s leading in the polls. Not anymore. It’s a dead heat. If that doesn’t work, he may cite a flareup of his bone spurs.

His verbal assaults on Harris include his usual reliance on lies, innuendo, and mean-spirited name-calling. He intentionally mispronounces her name, calls her “really low IQ,” “lunatic,” “crazy Kamala.” Aides privately report he is busy searching to expand his repertoire. 

HARRIS, NEARLY 20 years his junior, like Walz, has taken a tactic right out of Trump’s playbook that has him running scared. 

She has brought new energy and enthusiasm to the Democrats down the ticket. And it will show if she and Trump get on the same stage, where attention will be focused on the oldest man ever to run for president and his signs of aging, the gaffes, pauses, weird tangents, slurred speech, incoherent ranting, mispronunciations, lies, mumbles, and memory lapses.

Turning Trump's words on Biden 

Everything Trump said about Biden’s age, health, and fitness can now be turned on him. He will face pressure to be more transparent about his health and can’t rely on discredited doctors to issue statements Trump himself dictated. 

According to a Washington Post report, Trump has “a history of heart disease and obesity” and “has not shared any updated blood work results or other specific information during this campaign to help experts assess his ongoing medical risks.” His obsession with secrecy raises many troubling questions.

As for a cognitive test, make it a real one and let everyone see the results. He calls himself a “stable genius”; it’s time to release his college transcripts. And tax returns.

Vance was right about Trump, before being blinded by his ambition. He is a bottomless sewer of insults. Trump, with a long history of antisemitism, accuses Jews of dual loyalty, calls them “fools” for not voting for him, and said Harris “hates Jews and hates Israel” although her husband is Jewish. He has called Schumer – the highest-ranking Jewish American official ever – a “Palestinian,” a label he also tried hanging on Biden. He’s a twice-divorced admitted serial philanderer who paid $130,000 for sex with a porn star, but he’s been digging up dirt on Emhoff’s first marriage.

In her first 10 days as a candidate, Harris’s campaign raised $310 million – two-thirds from first-time donors – more than double Trump’s haul for the entire month of July.

A Washington Post report showed that “of the 42 people who worked in Trump’s cabinet, just over half, support his bid for another term.” His former vice president, defense secretary, and national security advisor have said they will not vote for him. So did two Republican senators, three former governors, several Trump White House aides, and numerous former members of the House of Representatives.

Another former Trump aide and GOP strategist, Matthew Bartlett, sees “a public nervous breakdown” in Trump’s obsession with Harris’s race, his personal attacks, and his lack of discipline, he told Politico. “And we’re seeing a candidate and a campaign absolutely melt down.”

The writer is a Washington-based journalist, consultant, lobbyist, and former American Israel Public Affairs Committee legislative director.