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What is Trump doing? I don't mean that rhetorically. I'm asking literally what he's doing for the next two weeks.

He's got one event scheduled for today, in Montana. And then nothing for the next two weeks. Not a single rally or other event.

That's just so bizarre. This is such a critical time for the campaign. Harris is racing to introduce and define herself with voters....and the Trump campaign is just giving her the space to do it? They're letting her barnstorm around the country, soaking up free media - and there's no counterprogramming?

I think that Trump intuitively realized this is a problem, which is why he called his impromptu press conference tomorrow. Whatever you can say about that execrable narcissist, he's got a good basic sense of media and public perception. They're giving Harris all this empty runway and open skies to do whatever she wants leading up into the convention, when they should be doing everything they can to define her while her campaign is still being built.

I just don't understand it. Sure, maybe not do anything the actual days of the convention. But nothing in the ten days prior? What on earth is he actually doing for the next 10% of the campaign?

My impression is everything he has tried backfired on him. As usual, he has done a good job messaging his base, but this race is about getting the independents and I think his recent messaging has only pushed them to Harris. Perhaps he needs time to figure out the correct messages.
Alan

I've never seen anything like this. Trump is actually floundering. What little they throw at Kamala and Walz doesn't stick. Once Biden stepped aside ( Thank you Joe), the atmosphere completely changed. I was ready for a blood bath, but it seems Trump's camp really has no idea how to successfully approach this.

Trump was in a handgun fight with Biden, Kamala/Walz showed up with a machine gun. All he's got left is his usual dumb rocks to throw, so he's scared and cowering.

The smart people on his team probably aren't telling him what he wants to hear (talk policy) so campaign team paralysis, too.

Trump doesn't believe much of what he says, but he does believe women are inferior things, so he may believe his best hope is to give her time to mess up, then pounce on that.

The race is still neck in neck, cuz the undecided are still undecided, but I'm enjoying watching him melt.

He was asked this during his press conference...

Reporter: "You have not had a public campaign event for nearly a week. Why haven’t you been campaigning?"

Trump: "What a stupid question. Because I'm leading by a lot and I'm letting their convention go through. I’m campaigning a lot. I’m doing tremendous amounts."

Side note: Harris raised more than twice as much as Trump in July.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2024-08-02/...

First off, one thing to understand:
1. Nobody pays attention to the Presidential campaign until after Labor Day. It seems maddening now, but Trump is keeping his powder dry.

The risk with this is that early voting in Pennsylvania starts in September(!) and he runs the risk of voters having made up their minds already.

2. It's clear the campaign strategy for Harris is to keep her away from any situation where she has to speak extemporaneously. The reason is simple: she's horrible at it. For anyone reading this who wants to doubt that, you're deluding yourself. There is ample film of her rattling on about electric buses or Venn diagrams or cackling. The media is fully colluding with the democrats in this endeavor.

So what can Trump do? The media steadfastly refuses to ask Harris tough questions or to do any vetting. They've been bad with this for decades now - going all the way back to Obama - but this is the ultimate level of Praetorian Guard kind of stuff.

Trump and Vance are employing a 2-pronged strategy:
-Vance is traveling and holding rallies
-Trump is courting influencers and going to places Republicans don't go

Trump knows he's going to lose the black vote, for example. But he also knows that if is able to pick off 20% of the black vote he's the winner. So he's doing things like going to the journalism conference and other things. Vance, meanwhile is attacking the press for not doing its job.

This new level of media covering for a candidate is something we've never seen before. Even when Obama was a candidate they at least would ask him question, albeit softball ones. With Harris they won't even do that.

They're giving Harris all this empty runway and open skies to do whatever she wants leading up into the convention, when they should be doing everything they can to define her while her campaign is still being built.

Harris is more defined than you think she is. And even with zero major media hitting this, Walz is getting fried for a number of things. What a horrible pick he is.

Side note: Harris raised more than twice as much as Trump in July. - bansky

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Side note: Trump held more press conferences yesterday than Harris has since her coronation.

Trump held more press conferences yesterday

That was this presser? The pointless one?

"Trump holds seemingly pointless press conference filled with false claims

Speaking at Mar-a-Lago, Trump said that he has “agreed” to three debates in September "

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/...

1. Nobody pays attention to the Presidential campaign until after Labor Day. It seems maddening now, but Trump is keeping his powder dry.

The risk with this is that early voting in Pennsylvania starts in September(!) and he runs the risk of voters having made up their minds already.

That's rather the point. This is a truncated campaign - fewer than 100 days to Election Day, and fewer than 50 days to the beginning of voting. Unlike any other August, Harris is still putting together her campaign and getting everything in place - she literally just took over three weeks ago. It's a unique opportunity for the Trump campaign to try to define her negatively before the campaign infrastructure is really in place....and Trump is choosing to stay off the campaign trail for the next two weeks? It just seems like a weird choice.

This new level of media covering for a candidate is something we've never seen before. Even when Obama was a candidate they at least would ask him question, albeit softball ones. With Harris they won't even do that.

Which is absolutely the right choice for a campaign which is, again, only three weeks old. In the very earliest stages of a campaign, you're just starting out. The candidate almost certainly isn't ready to start speaking extemporaneously on every single issue that might come up - she's only been the candidate for three weeks! And she probably doesn't have, and won't have, the time to do that until after the convention. She's been very busy compressing literally months of campaign preparation (hiring people, formalizing position papers, setting campaign strategy) in to the space of days. And unlike a normal primary campaign, where fielding questions in September the year before the election offers a candidate an opportunity to refine themselves with relatively low stakes during pre-season, we're already in the fourth quarter of the finals.

Trump is choosing to stay off the campaign trail for the next two weeks? It just seems like a weird choice.

That's the thing - he's like *not* staying off the trail, he's just doing something else.

Which is absolutely the right choice for a campaign which is, again, only three weeks old. In the very earliest stages of a campaign, you're just starting out. The candidate almost certainly isn't ready to start speaking extemporaneously on every single issue that might come up - she's only been the candidate for three weeks!

She's the sitting Vice President. She owns the Biden/Harris record. Having her not prepared already is an indictment of their administration.

She's been very busy compressing literally months of campaign preparation (hiring people, formalizing position papers, setting campaign strategy) in to the space of days.

Somewhat, but she inherits the democrat machine - that means she gets all the Biden apparatus intact plus all the Obama people they brought in to run her campaign.

And unlike a normal primary campaign, where fielding questions in September the year before the election offers a candidate an opportunity to refine themselves with relatively low stakes during pre-season, we're already in the fourth quarter of the finals.

Again, it's not like she's some random Senator or governor - she's the sitting Vice President of the United States and the #2 executive officer in the country. If she doesn't know what to say about the stuff that she's supposedly been deeply involved in for 3 years that's not a great sign.

>>Trump held more press conferences yesterday

That was this presser? The pointless one? - Lambo

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Still more than zero....

That's the thing - he's like *not* staying off the trail, he's just doing something else.

That was my question, though. What is he doing? He's not having any public events over the next two weeks - at a time when he really should be having public events.

She's the sitting Vice President. She owns the Biden/Harris record. Having her not prepared already is an indictment of their administration.

Not really. As we've discussed before, the Vice President isn't in charge of every agency of the government. And even though as a political matter the Veep can get tagged with everything the Administration is doing, when the Veep starts running as their own candidate they're going to be formulating policies and making choices that might differ from the Administration. When they're the Veep, the President picks the policy - as a nominee, they get to pick their own policy. So when you write...

If she doesn't know what to say about the stuff that she's supposedly been deeply involved in for 3 years that's not a great sign.

...it's just wrong. The Veep isn't "supposedly deeply involved in" everything that the Administration does - even the most engaged Veeps are given a portion of the Administration's agenda to be their portfolio. They're not in every briefing on every subject on every part of the federal government. That's not the Veep's job - they're not a second President.

Which is why, again, it's confounding that Trump isn't out there holding public events. Part of his advantage is that he's been running for President for more than a year now. Unlike Harris, he's currently as ready as he'll ever be to be out there barnstorming and communicating his message. She's still working out how Harris the nominee will run her campaign, or on what issues she will pursue a different policy than Biden - Trump's already got all that locked in (as well as he ever will). So why is he giving her a pass during the time she's got so many other things on her plate?

Still more than zero....

Two points:

1) Her campaign only started three weeks ago. It's totally reasonable for her to be doing tons of other things besides pressers.

2) It's almost never a great idea to invest significant oppo/negative framing of the opposing candidate on issues they can fix. Harris can completely neutralize this critique by having a few pressers, and she almost certainly will do that after the convention. So every moment the Trump campaign spends attacking her on this, rather than stuff in her record that she can't change, is a wasted opportunity for them....

She's the sitting Vice President. She owns the Biden/Harris record.

Nope, not close. LBJ’s VP Hubert Humphrey famously came out against the Vietnam war after LBJ announced he wouldn’t run again (partially because of the Primary results which saw a resurgent Bobby Kennedy.) Harry Truman was one of Roosevelt’s VPs and had never even heard about the Manhattan Project. FDR switched out VPs twice, from Garner to Wallace and then to Truman. All had disagreements between themselves. Mike Pence refused to deny the vote totals even though it was Trump’s “policy” to have him do it.

The VP is part of an administration, but they are not responsible for everything that goes on. If you had a more realistic view of government you’d probably understand this.

But I pose an impossibility.

I won't speculate on the convict's motivations, nor his campaign's. Anyone who says they know what is going on is -most likely- just guessing.

The convict has a history of trying to steal the spotlight, and monopolize the media attention. I'll take your word that he has only had the one press conference (I read it went badly). I don't know since I stream content (no cable "news" in this house), and I already know who gets my vote in November. I've walked be a few TVs tuned to ordinary TV channels in the past couple of weeks, and at least two of them had ominous music with "Kamala is scary" ads on them. So the campaign isn't completely idle.

But I do agree that it is unlike the convict to give anyone else the spotlight without trying to elbow himself into the front (like he did at that European meeting (G7?) when he was POTUS). He probably has a "perfect plan", "very beautiful", but I don't know what it is.

The candidate almost certainly isn't ready to start speaking extemporaneously on every single issue that might come up - she's only been the candidate for three weeks! And she probably doesn't have, and won't have, the time to do that until after the convention. - albaby

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Perhaps not every issue, especially recent events, but Harris does have three plus years of actual promotions and governance of those policies to draw upon for answering questions about those policies, most of them anyway.

Hey, for months the Republicans have drilled into the American public’s mind to think “too old and too incoherent.”

Now that Biden is out of the public eye, Trump waddles up to a mic and starts waving his tiny arms and hands (like an imitation of an excited T-Rex) and people think “too old and too incoherent.”

And strong women scare the bejesus out of him.

No surprise Trump is hiding.

Perhaps not every issue, especially recent events, but Harris does have three plus years of actual promotions and governance of those policies to draw upon for answering questions about those policies, most of them anyway.

Again, not especially likely. Most Veeps - including Kamala - end up getting asked only to concentrate on a few issues directly. As I noted above, they're not a "second President" when it comes to actual policy - typically, it's the Cabinet that serves that role for the President. For example, the President will rely on the Secretary of Energy to oversee and implement energy policy - not the Veep. Where the Veep does serve as a "second President" is with head of state functions, as opposed to head of government functions - the formalities and protocol of government, greeting foreign dignitaries and the like.

Plus, don't forget that a lot of a presser isn't just getting quizzed on policy points. Harris will get asked questions about her campaign - her strategy, her priorities, where she differs from the President, where she breaks from other party leaders, etc. It's only been 18 days; she hasn't even necessarily decided all those things.

Also, only a poor candidate is purely reactive at a press conference - it's an opportunity to hammer your own message, talk about the things you want to talk about, downplay issues that you want to shift away from. Harris is almost certainly still in the process of figuring out (with her campaign staff) which issues are the ones she wants to center her campaign around, which are the issues she wants to deflect, and how best to do both of those things.

And finally...she's drowning in free media coverage and positive excitement about her campaign right now. A big part of holding a press conference is to direct attention to you and your campaign - and she does not need that boost right now. She's still riding the wave of interest over the Veepstakes, and heading into the free media deluge of the convention. From a strategy standpoint, save your first presser for a week after Labor Day, so you can pull focus from Trump and back onto you at a strategic moment.

So why is he giving her a pass during the time she's got so many other things on her plate?

I agree. This is his time. If he's shrewd he can define at least part of her and have it stick home. He just has to try a few things and see which works, or a combo. Instinct tells me this is a time to be aggressive, he's backed off so much of his prior commitments that he's open, and all of MAGAdom is ready to go with whatever he comes up with - as long as it isn't weird. :) You can drive on things that conflict - America is a multi-ethnic melting pot of a Christian thought based nation that supports Israel but every nation must be prepared to defend the western world against the Chinese and other non-Christian bullies. Terrorists are sneaking into the country daily and I alone can stop them. We will mass deport all non-contributing non-citizens and stop cold the brown hordes invading across our borders especially from Muslim countries.

Well Trump is 78 years old. The life expectancy of Florida Man* is 74.6.

Statistically speaking he's already dead...Of course, as we all know, his brain died long ago.

Maybe he just wants to slow down and enjoy the little time he has left? #SlowLiving #LazyGirls

Just doing the things that bring him joy...grabbing women by the P&$$Y, helping JD Vance apply eyeliner, remember the good times he and Epstein had together,
and swindling stupid people out go their life savings. #TickerSymbol-DJT (I hope Dope & BHM are all in!)

Enjoy your retirement Crazy-Stupid-Racist-Grandpa!

*Florida Man is an Internet meme first popularized in 2013, referring to a prevalence of people performing irrational or maniacal actions in the U.S. state of Florida. #Mar-a-Lago

No surprise Trump is hiding. - AW

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Yep, he is now trying to hide in Montana

From the NYT today, so you can count on its truthiness,

"Trump is heading to Montana today for a swing that includes fund-raisers and a rally to help Tim Sheehy, the Republican candidate for Senate."

A big part of holding a press conference is to direct attention to you and your campaign - and she does not need that boost right now - albaby

-------------

Sure. She doesn't need to but that doesn't alter the fact that citizens deserve access to her policy positions in order to make informed decisions. Maybe Harris will follow the Pelosi Plan and ask that we vote her into office in order to find out what is in her policies.

Sure. She doesn't need to but that doesn't alter the fact that citizens deserve access to her policy positions in order to make informed decisions.

Of course. But not necessarily in the first 18 days of her campaign. She'll have to do it quickly, to be sure. While most modern Presidential campaigns have more than a year to get their white papers drafted, their websites updated, and their candidates fully prepped to explain and defend their policy positions, Harris will have (checks watch) 87 days from today.

As we discussed right after the Debate Debacle, the biggest disadvantage for a new Democratic nominee replacing Joe Biden would be starting from scratch with less than four months to go. They would have to "build a plane while flying it" - run a campaign while doing all the stuff that goes into creating a campaign, such as building an organization and vetting staff and working out strategy and policy positions.

This month - the month between Biden dropping out and the convention - was the time when Harris would be least prepared to deal with incoming political fire. It is the best opportunity the Trump campaign will have to define Harris the way they want to. It's just hard to see why there aren't Trump rallies all over the country between now and the convention. Even the Montana rally seems less strategically chosen as a way to define Harris, but more to go after John Tester (we'll see if he attacks Harris more than Tester) - a worthy aim for the GOP generally, but probably shouldn't be Trump's main focus right now.

Again, it's hard to understand why. I don't think Trump is hiding. He likes doing rallies and he certainly believes he's awesome at doing them. He called the press conference yesterday because he wanted to get out there, to put the focus on himself. He's entirely comfortable doing it. So I really don't understand why they're not doing more over the next two weeks.

That was my question, though. What is he doing? He's not having any public events over the next two weeks - at a time when he really should be having public events.

Maybe. Bear in mind that Trump has to reorient his campaign machinery to attack Harris now.

Not really. As we've discussed before, the Vice President isn't in charge of every agency of the government. And even though as a political matter the Veep can get tagged with everything the Administration is doing, when the Veep starts running as their own candidate they're going to be formulating policies and making choices that might differ from the Administration. When they're the Veep, the President picks the policy - as a nominee, they get to pick their own policy.

Both you and Goofy are doing two things:
1. This is a version of the Obama Effect: When anything bad happened in his administration, he was merely a bystander. Zero accountability.
2. You both are forgetting the ego part of this *and* what the Biden/Harris regime has been saying for the last 4 years.

First, they've been telling everyone what an awesome job they're doing. The border? Secure! The economy? Best we've ever had, Jack! Foreign affairs? America is back, baby!

You both are saying Harris...isn't responsible for any of that. Okay, sure. So she's going to run away from all the "Successes" of the Biden admin? After Biden made her The Border Czar and claims she's been with him for every. single. decision.?

You guys are now saying, "Nope. That wasn't Kamala!"

Can't have it both ways. And your point about "the veep isn't in charge..." is irrelevant. She's the public face of this administration now that the people that I told you who really run the democrat party have told YOU whom you will vote for.

So she owns it. All of it. And BTW she's already on an AWESOME video saying "That's BIDENONOMICS, folks! Ha Ha Ha!" That little segment immediately spawned dozens of internet memes and will be featured in every. Single. Ad. On. Inflation.

Can't wait :)

From the NYT today, so you can count on its truthiness,

"Trump is heading to Montana today for a swing that includes fund-raisers and a rally to help Tim Sheehy, the Republican candidate for Senate."

Raising money and promoting candidates down ballot. That's exactly what he should be doing.
The left seems to think that nobody knows who Kamala Harris is. They're wrong.

Sure. She doesn't need to but that doesn't alter the fact that citizens deserve access to her policy positions in order to make informed decisions. Maybe Harris will follow the Pelosi Plan and ask that we vote her into office in order to find out what is in her policies.

What's the over/under on somebody at the dnc openly - and loudly - wondering about this "open" selection process?

Every liberal on this board meekly accepted that the people who really run their political party told them to shut up and accept another candidate.

I covered why you're simultaneously full of it and wrong in the other reply. One day you're maybe take it into consideration that your ego routine write posts that are laugh out loud bad...but I pose an impossibility.

Maybe. Bear in mind that Trump has to reorient his campaign machinery to attack Harris now.

Sure. But unlike Harris, Trump's campaign machinery is in place. And as I noted in another thread, Trump finds his attack lines by trying them out on audiences. Both of which suggest that the prudent tactical move is to get Trump in front of crowds during the critical time when Harris is trying to get her campaign launched.

Can't have it both ways. And your point about "the veep isn't in charge..." is irrelevant. She's the public face of this administration.....

I think you're conflating whether the Veep can be tagged with the accomplishments/detriments of the Administration and whether the Veep is fully briefed on every aspect of domestic and foreign policy.

The former is absolutely true. If you're part of the Administration, and there's some problem or issue that comes up in some random department (say, a train derailment under Department of Transportation), you're going to get nailed as being part of the Biden/Harris Administration that allowed a train derailment. But that's very different than saying that the Veep knows (or ought to know) the ins and outs of train derailments or regulations to prevent them the way a Secretary of Transportation, or a Presidential nominee, could or would.

Harris needs to get up to speed on all the parts of domestic and foreign policy that haven't been her actual portfolio for the last three years. She's still get blamed/credited for all of that, because she's part of the Administration. But that doesn't mean she's actually been dealing with those issues.

Which is one of many reasons why she's not holding a press conference right now. With all the other stuff she's dealing with, she almost certainly doesn't have time just yet to sit down and get prepared for one; and contrary to suggestions here, she hasn't been in the weeds on every aspect of domestic and foreign policy for the last three years.

Unlike any other August, Harris is still putting together her campaign

I'm going to push back on this a little bit.

How much of her campaign is she really putting together? And how much of Biden's campaign apparatus is she simply stepping into?

Of course, she's going to want some of her own picks in leadership, but I think she's also smart enough to ask a lot of people already working on Biden's campaign to stay in place. Further down in the campaign organization, at the state and local level, it's pretty much a swap out of the Biden signs for Harris signs. Those folks are very likely to be as happy working for Harris as they were for Biden. (Maybe even happier.) The few that do resign probably have others already working in the campaign that can step up and into that vacancy.

Now I do agree that she's lost some time in front of audiences, re-learning the skills of campaigning. But it's not like she hasn't campaigned before. She's run campaigns for local and state positions, the senate, and with Biden in a presidential campaign. But that's more of refreshing old skills instead of learning from scratch.

Most importantly, she absolutely will need to get her own positions and strategy together. But again, she's got a leg up on that. She was already a part of setting up the Biden positions and strategies, and likely agrees with most. Sure, she'll have some tweaks here and there to make it her own. But she's not starting from scratch. She's thought about those things as part of the Biden campaign, and almost certainly knows where she differed from Biden and had to yield to the person at the top of the ticket.

Rather than starting from scratch, I'd think of it more as losing your first string quarterback at the end of the third quarter and switching to the backup. The team is there, ready to go, and just has to make a few adjustments to deal with the minor differences between the two quarterbacks.

--Peter

I think you're conflating whether the Veep can be tagged with the accomplishments/detriments of the Administration and whether the Veep is fully briefed on every aspect of domestic and foreign policy.

I didn't do that.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris did!

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden...
Biden tasks Harris with 'stemming the migration' on southern border
The vice president is expected to focus on both curbing the current flow of migrants and coordinating with countries in the region to address the root causes of migration.

That's from 2021. Why isn't she able to answer questions about immigration?

How about the economy?
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statement...

Bidenomics Is Working: The President’s Plan Grows the Economy from the Middle Out and Bottom Up—Not the Top Down

President Biden and Vice President Harris came into office determined to rebuild our economy from the middle out and the bottom up, not the top down—and that strategy is working.

And there's Best economy we ever had, Jack!

The campaign is desperately trying to have it both ways; a media that does its job would have ended them by now. Had Biden/Harris been elected as Republicans they'd be down 70 points.

How much of her campaign is she really putting together?

A fair amount.

Most of the top echelons of the Biden campaign were Biden loyalists. Those folks are out. Anita Dunn is now Anita Done. Mike Donilon is Mike "Gone"-ilon. Etc. Not just because Harris doesn't want them (she wants her own team), but they probably don't want any part of the campaign either. Their guy is gone. Sure, that doesn't apply to the guy running the phone banks - but it does apply to every single member of campaign leadership, and probably many of the state campaign chairs as well.

Second, she and her new team have to figure out an entirely new campaign strategy. She's not Biden. His strengths are not her strengths, and she's not going to have exactly the same positions or priorities that he had. She can't run a campaign based on, "Look what a great job I did as President during the last four years" - because she hasn't been President the last four years.

It's not at all like switching in a back-up QB. The role of the back-up QB is to learn the existing system and run it if the starter goes down - every other player on the team stays exactly the same, and no past history carries forward into the next play. That's not the role of a new nominee, who will be replacing almost all of the important players, entering into a role she's never had to be in with donors and other party leaders, and changing all the plays.

That's from 2021. Why isn't she able to answer questions about immigration?

Because the NBC blurb doesn't accurately describe the scope of her duties. She was tasked with looking at the root "push" causes of emigration from the Northern Triangle. Not address "IMMIGRATION" - the entire range of issues, policies, procedures, and institutions that fall within that topic. Her job didn't include overseeing the Border Patrol or looking at staffing for immigration courts (for example) - she was engaged in diplomatic discussions with Guatemala and Honduras. Different things.

Again, there's a reason why the GOP wanted to impeach Mayorkas and not Harris over immigration. Because Mayorkas was the member of the Administration tasked with immigration. Not the Veep's office. Bringing out some press coverage that referred to Harris as a border czar doesn't change that.

This is why the change in candidate is so damaging to Trump's campaign strategy. The GOP spent massive political resources creating damaging conditions for Biden on the border issue - hammering Biden personally as failing to set sound policies, and hammering Mayorkas for failing to administer the border successfully. But the downside to that is that the GOP has clearly assigned who has responsibility for those failures: Biden, for failing to set better policies and for failing to replace Mayorkas. They never tagged Harris for it. And because they've spent so much time blaming Biden and Mayorkas, they just don't have much space to argue that "no, it was actually Harris that was in charge of the border."

The campaign is desperately trying to have it both ways; a media that does its job would have ended them by now.

Again, not at all relevant to whether Harris has personal familiarity with the entire economic issues brief for her to start facing press questions about her future economic policies. No one disagrees with you that since she's part of the Administration, she has to accept the Administration's performance over the last three years as part of her record, too. But neither is she going to be a Biden clone - while her role as VP meant that her job was to support all of Biden's decisions, as the new nominee she gets to choose the economic policies she wants to have. Something she hasn't had to review or decide on for three and a half years.

Because the NBC blurb doesn't accurately describe the scope of her duties.

Double Heh.
She was given that job to Position Kamala For Success - some kind of thing the administration could set up as a layup for her. The problem is...she stank at it.

Following up on my own post, Trump campaign has decided to shift course a little bit, and actually do something in the time leading up to the Democratic convention - including two full-on rallies this week.

Which makes sense. I mean, there's inertia in any organization - and I imagine the Trump team didn't really want to acknowledge that the Harris camp managed the hand-off from Biden extremely well. But even if the swell of support for Harris is transitory, it still happened, and campaigns do (and should) respond to changes in the campaign dynamic with countermoves.

They’re doing what I said also - reaching out to nontraditional outlets to get the word out.

The Elon interview had 73M views for some or all of it, generating 4M comments which resulted in 998M views according to Elon.

They’re doing what I said also - reaching out to nontraditional outlets to get the word out.

Sure. It's fine and all, probably a perfectly adequate use of the candidate's time.

I don't know that they ended up reaching an especially large number of people in any meaningful way. They ended up having to limit the number of people watching live because they couldn't handle any significant volume. So they didn't get nearly as many people taking a deep dive with Trump. But probably more than at a rally! If you think of this as a virtual Trump rally, it's a big success in terms of the number of people who sat and listened to Trump for a while.

True, a ton of people saw at least a snippet of the video. Twitter uses a standard - but very generous - measurement of a view: if at least half the video frame is visible on your screen for two seconds. That might be a useful measure for a brand impression, but counting how many people saw at least two seconds of a two hour conversation is not an especially useful way to assess whether you're "getting the word out." You'd want to know how many people watched more than a few seconds of the discussion to figure that. But again - certainly more than at a rally!

'...large number of people in any meaningful way...'
is actually far less meaningful than actual or wished for.

most employed people would drop a work-related stream if it starts more than 10min late, and they get PAID for that.

musk's metrics on anything here is as trustwothy as trump's on the viability of DJT; and that is why any non-MAGA advertisers stay away and musk has to sue them to come back.
musk has his own tweets boosted artificially by 1000%, so imagine the scam here when he wants to promote event metrics.

trump gets more mileage out of FoxNews since MAGA never need do more than turn on the tv, which is why don mostly ignores his own platform.

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