Among the numerous critiques I’ve seen from campaign pros and even Republicans about the Trump team is its advance work. First they put JD Vance in front of a half-hidden banner that made him look like he was pitching the Vice President, and since then they keep putting JD Vance in empty parking lots with anemic crowd set-ups.
Then they tried to force Trump to adhere to a policy topic at a 2,500-person venue in Asheville, NC by putting economic slogans — no tax on tips! no tax on social security! — on the backdrop.
It didn’t work. He still made substance free attacks on Kamala Harris.
Yesterday’s so-called press conference was something else. Trump’s staffers had gone shopping in advance, with a bunch of consumer goods laid out on tables behind him. He mostly ignored the props, while reading from a notebook about rising prices in a bored rant. “Grocery prices have skyrocketed,” he said. “Surreals are up 26%,” he seemed to say.
Indeed they are. It was a real Fruit Loops performance.
After finishing a 45-minute monotone speech, Trump finally turned to the products behind him, “wow!” and read off the list of purported price increases. “Up 65% — wow — school lunches up 65%. How can a family afford that?”
At some point, this has to be sabotage. Because if the problem is that nobody can afford school lunches, then Tim Walz looks like the solution.
Under Governor Walz, Minnesota made free no-questions asked school breakfasts and lunches available to any kids. It’s akin to another of the measures Walz signed designed to eliminate barriers to getting kids in schools learning, just like the free tampon program that right wingers have turned into a transphobic attack.
Even as Trump laid out a problem that, in Minnesota, Walz already fixed, Vice President Harris was announcing anti-gouging initiative to bring other food prices down.