It was just over three weeks ago that Donald Trump was a new man after nearly being killed at a Pennsylvania rally—or at least that’s what we were led to believe. “Getting shot in the face changes a man,” read Axios’s headline on July 15, amplifying a quote from Tucker Carlson. “His advisers tell us Trump plans to seize his moment by toning down his Trumpiness,” Axios reported, “and dialing up efforts to unite a tinder-box America” at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
What America got days later was a more subdued Trump, for a bit. Then it was an hour or so of the same old Trump, stoking fears about immigrants and droning on about his grievances. “You know, I was supposed to be nice. They say, something happened to me when I got shot—I became nice,” he told an audience the following week in North Carolina. “So, if you don’t mind, I’m not going to be nice. Is that ok?” Then days later in Minnesota: “I want to be nice. They all say, ‘I think he’s changed. I think he’s changed since two weeks ago. Something affected him.’” Trump followed up with the coup de grâce: “No, I haven’t changed. Maybe I’ve gotten worse.”
Trump had an opportunity to reset this summer, but he didn’t take it because, well, he couldn’t. First off, it’s doubtful any 78-year-old suddenly changes dramatically for the better, but it seems especially unlikely for someone like Trump, whose views are stuck in the 1950s and his cultural references in the 1980s. Even the gravity of the presidency couldn’t change him, despite pundits at times appearing desperate to declare him finally acting presidential.
In 2016, Trump was able to ride a mélange of racism, fame, charisma, and lack of a voting record into the White House. Now it’s eight very long years later, and the American people know who Trump is, so much that they appear desensitized to his outrageousness. Trump no longer drives news cycles, or dominates the airwaves the way he once did.
For instance, his ugly attack on Kamala Harris for making “a turn” in which she “became a Black person” was met with the usual disgust in the mainstream press, but didn’t amount to avalanche of free media that followed such outbursts in 2016. If anything, the racist rant was just another data point in a long history of them.
Not to mention, Harris extinguished the whole thing in a few lines, “It was the same old show. The divisiveness and the disrespect. And let me just say, the American people deserve better.” Harris just needed to remind voters that Trump can only be Trump and no one else.
What’s most surprising in 2024 isn’t Trump being Trump, but that anyone would expect otherwise.
Just look at Georgia, a key battleground state for Trump and the GOP. Instead of trying to link arms this past weekend with Brian Kemp, the swing state’s popular Republican governor, Trump tore into him, as well as his wife Marty. According to The Washington Post, “Trump mocked [Kemp] sarcastically and called him ‘Little Brian’; repeatedly called him ‘disloyal’; blamed Kemp for Trump being charged in Georgia by a prosecutor whom Kemp has criticized; suggested Kemp wanted Republicans to lose elections; and argued Georgia would have better crime and economic numbers if Kemp were no longer governor.”
Despite Trump’s clear self-interest in needing to win Georgia, his default mode is pettiness, leading to self-sabotage. He’s still mad at Kemp because Georgia election officials wouldn’t “find 11,780 votes” to make Trump the victor in the 2020 election. This cycle, he is ahead in Georgia by just 1%, even as the Republican governor he keeps bashing has a 63% approval rating as of June, which in this polarized political environment, is pretty impressive.
Maya Angelou famously said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” Hillary Clinton rightfully seized on this quote in 2016 when referring to Trump, but not enough people—or at least in a few key swing states—believed her. Despite electing him, maybe America wasn’t really ready for a reality-TV president, or didn’t know what to expect. Perhaps voters didn’t fully grasp Trump’s shamelessness and self-obsession, or imagine how he could crush guardrails, shatter norms, and nearly overturn a free and fair election. In 2024, no one should be under the illusion that Donald Trump, who could return to the White House in January, would be anything other than Donald Trump.