Does Donald Trump know there's an election on?
The former president isn't exactly barnstorming the nation now that he's got the Republican nomination in his pocket. He's got too much else to worry about.
Take Monday, for instance. Trump was in a New York court and had a tantrum when a judge refused to throw out a case over a hush money payment he allegedly made to an adult film star, setting a trial date for the middle of next month.
On the same day, it also seemed like Trump's financial empire was tottering as a deadline for a near-half-billion-dollar bond payment loomed and the attorney general of New York prepared to start seizing some of his cherished properties. But the ex-president got a break when an appeals court gave him more time to come up with a smaller sum, a mere $175 million, so that he can appeal his loss in a civil fraud trial.
If Monday was about near-financial ruin, Tuesday was about enrichment. Trump's media firm that just merged with a shell company went public, making him billions of dollars richer — on paper, at least. But there's a catch: The ex-president can't sell his stock for six months. And if he eventually does, he's likely to crash its value — and cost all his MAGA fans who bought in a lot of money.
On Wednesday, Trump was back to lashing out. He blasted the judge in the hush money case as biased and conflicted. The ex-president's strategy is clear and familiar: he always seeks to discredit a court in which he's about to appear in order to make any verdicts against him seem illegitimate.
On Thursday, Trump flew from Florida to New York to attend a wake for a New York police officer killed in the line of duty. How you view this trip probably depends on your political leanings. It's possible to see it as an act of compassion by a former president who spoke to the officer's widow. Or it might come across as an act of craven political opportunism, especially since the ex-president later slammed President Joe Biden for not showing up and complained that Democrats didn't support the police.
Trump also found time this week to hawk a Bible under a new licensing agreement and to celebrate a supposed golfing triumph. Trump said he won the men's club championship and the seniors section at one of his resorts. Given his well documented disdain for the rules of golf, however, claims about his exploits on the links come with a mountain of salt.
Trump simply isn't doing the kinds of things presidential candidates normally do. Biden, for instance, traveled to North Carolina this week to try to put a state that went for Trump in 2020 and 2016 back in the Democratic column.
And on Thursday night, Biden was hanging out with former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama at a fundraiser in New York that raised at least $26 million. The sitting president has spent the last few weeks tending to various sectors of his frayed political coalition and has been dialing up the intensity of his attacks on Trump.
Trump has always done things differently. And his third presidential campaign has become indistinguishable from his legal defenses in all the cases against him — that he's a victim of vicious political persecution by the Democrats. This works with his fans but it's unclear whether more moderate voters will buy it.
No doubt Trump will crank up the rallies as the general election approaches.
But he's showing yet again that he's the oddest presidential candidate in history.
