September is Trump’s month: Campaign confident they have ‘momentum’ to win

by Paul Ingrassia

Photo: Alamy

Op-ed by Paul Ingrassia

September has officially arrived. With the change in the calendar, the air in many regions of the country has already gotten noticeably crisper. Autumn looms.  And as swift as the seasonal tides have changed, so too has the momentum in this presidential contest. 

The “honeymoon” that characterized Kamala Harris’ media-induced rally during the hottest summer months has cooled down considerably. Like the turnaround in the weather, Kamala is now experiencing the cold hard truth of where her campaign stands. As Americans sober up and return to the hustle and bustle of school and work, they remember an election is just two months away – and it’s time to get serious. As such, public sentiment, over and against fake news contrivances, has reverted to the norm prior to Joe Biden’s ouster: that Donald Trump is yet again the clear favorite.

No greater metaphor for the flailing state of Kamala’s campaign is found than in the recent news that the entire Walz family – including Tim’s brother, Jeff, now a Florida resident, and a coterie of other Walzes sprinkled across the country have all publicly denounced their wayward relative in the most scathing terms. Brother Jeff referred to Brother Tim as “not the type of character you want making decisions about your future.” The elder Walz brother added that “he’s 100% opposed to [Tim’s] ideology.” He even reacted to the news of President Trump’s indictment in a Facebook post as our country having “become a third world banana republic.” How’s that for an indictment?

At the same time, famed pollster Nate Silver, whose polls historically have been unfriendly to President Trump, forecasted that the 45th President has a seventeen percentage advantage of winning the electoral college outright, and hence, the presidency. Silver, whose voice, for better or worse, is considered a kingpin in the polling industry, also warned Americans to not to live and die by the forecast models. By this he was referring to a litany of mainstream polls, some of which – like a spate of recent Fox News polls – still give Kamala an (albeit dwindling) 1- or 2-point edge in a few key battleground states like Georgia. But the fact that President Trump retains leads in states like North Carolina, Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, and even Pennsylvania – despite all the manufactured positive coverage used to prop up Kamala over the past four weeks, tells quite a lot about the state of the race overall. 

Consider this: President Trump can get the necessary 270 votes needed in the electoral college, and still lose Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, and Michigan! However, the conditions of the race are likely only going to improve for President Trump, especially given what’s in store in the weeks ahead. The 45th President is set to finally debate Kamala Harris on their September 10th meetup, a confrontation that will be very difficult for her to weasel herself out of — no matter how much she might like to. 

The encounter will be historic on many counts, not least of which is that it will be the first time the two will meet face to face. Even more important is that it will be the first time Kamala Harris is met with a serious challenger. Thus far, the Vice President has only sat down for softball interviews, like her recent chat with CNN’s Dana Bash. She has almost avoided the pressure cooker of the mainstream media entirely; part of it stems from her fear of wading into conflict, where she has demonstrated herself utterly incompetent to handle even the slightest amount of scrutiny. The other part of it is the implicit role of the Fourth Estate, which for all intents and purposes operates as an arm or interest group of the Democratic Party. 

Thus, even right-of-center networks like Fox News or the Wall Street Journal will at most bristle at Kamala’s incompetence or radical ideology. They will scarcely ever level the sort of criticisms against both her and the Potemkin Village of a Regime that props her up necessary to expose the factual, fatal truth of matters. Much better for Fox to interview failed presidential candidate and traitor, Mike Pence, for the eleven hundredth time about why he is not endorsing Donald Trump than interrogate Kamala about why she has not already implemented all the “great” things she is promising on the campaign trail – or, at the bare minimum, relentlessly call out the unconstitutional and unprecedented lawfare being waged by the Biden-Harris DOJ – and various State DAs and AGs – in what amounts to a wholesale assault on the rule of law. This assault extends all the way to the imposition of a gag order on a United States President: banana republic stuff the likes of which have never been seen before in this country. 

This week, Merrick Garland announced another probe into the possibility of “Russian interference” with the 2024 election. And yet, oddly enough, he remains deafeningly silent about the meddling occurring thousands of miles closer to home — in Manhattan and Fulton County, which have been overtaken by radical, power-hungry prosecutors in Letitia James and Fani Willis, respectively, who have taken the existential step of indicting — and sentencing — a former and likely future president of the United States. In any other age in American history, these dramatic actions would be unthinkable because they are grievous affronts to not just our Constitution and First Amendment, but they imperil our very way of life and national identity to its core. All of this weaponized persecution is occurring under Kamala’s watch: she doubtlessly condones it, and the press — better termed, agitprop — always sticks its head in the sand like an ostrich, pretending these unlawful prosecutions are not only normal, but a routine part of simply living in modern America, not worthy of eliciting national outrage.

This gross abdication of the media’s traditional duty — namely, to inform and tell the truth — lends the prosecutions a legitimacy that even if not brought to fruition will be mightily hard to reverse the damage, for the integrity of our entire judicial system has been deeply wounded. And the media sits on its hands, or worse, screeches the phony Russia collusion gambit for the umpteenth time, thinking the electorate foolish enough to buy that tired and song and dance ruse yet again.

The greatest irony is that Democrat politician after Democrat politician gets exposed for themselves being pawns of some other country. Garland’s nonsense was conveniently timed to detract attention from New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s former staffer being investigated for having legitimate ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Hochul is widely considered to be a top cabinet pick for a Kamala administration; that one of her closest and most powerful staffers, Linda Sun, was arrested and charged, according to Fox News, for “violating and conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, visa fraud, alien smuggling and money laundering conspiracy” speaks to how incompetent and unethical the Democrats are. Also it further vindicates that everything they accuse President Trump of is actually projection; a front, in other words, to psychologically cope with their own crimes, and for constantly selling out to foreign adversaries.

For his part, President Trump, who never runs from uncomfortable press scrutiny, has between his campaign rallies and countless interviews across an array of media – print, television, and increasingly, podcasting – been an absolute workhorse. The September 10th debate will be a true inflection point for this presidential election cycle; if President Trump performs as well as he did against Biden back in late June (heck, even if he performs half as well), it could prove to be the final blow to Kamala’s presidential prospects. It’s not like she even appears to have the same fire in her belly, an eagerness for the job that motivated Hillary Clinton before her, and even the comparatively lesser drive of embattled, ol’ Joe Biden when he ran in 2020. 

On the campaign trail, she cuts the harried image of a distressed middle-aged woman. The rumor mill has naturally been on overdrive of her reliance on the bottle to make it through grueling days campaigning, which increasingly come paired with arduous debate preps so that she can make it out of her impending bout with the Donald still standing – in contrast with her boss. 

The debate will be complicated by the fact that she will — probably — not have Tim Walz in tow as her comfort blanket. I say probably because the debate host, ABC, the same network that boasts George Stephanopoulos, the Democratic Party’s de facto media spokesman, is not surprisingly biased in Kamala’s favor. So, notwithstanding a last-minute rule change that makes that accommodation for her, the debate should go down as a true polemical prizefight, one that will clash two very different worldviews and agendas mano-a-mano; Trump’s showcasing freedom and the rule of law, against a ruthless communist alternative worldview in Kamala’s: highly vengeful and ugly that seeks to go scorched earth on America’s most sacred traditions and institutions.

President Trump’s campaign just announced as well that it raked in $130 million in the month of August. This fundraising haul, which was overwhelmingly supported by small dollar donations averaging just $56, reflects the grassroots momentum behind the President’s 2024 campaign – as well as the broader desire across society for a dramatic change in our political leadership. A return, in short, to the glory days of Make America Great Again.

Originally published here.

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