There was never a Plan B
By 
In his most recent public meltdown Trump referred to Maggie Haberman as “Maggot Hag.” This may have been related to the debunking of his fantasy of having been in a near-fatal helicopter crash with Willie Brown. Or perhaps he knew that this brutal story was about to drop [gift link]:
The Aug. 2 dinner at the Bridgehampton, N.Y., home of Howard Lutnick, the Cantor Fitzgerald chief executive, was a high-powered affair. Among the roughly 130 people who dined under an air-conditioned tent were some of Donald Trump’s wealthiest supporters, including the billionaire hedge-fund financier Bill Ackman, who sat next to the former president, and Omeed Malik, the president of another fund, 1789 Capital.
Some guests hoped Mr. Trump would signal that he was recalibrating after a series of damaging mistakes. He did not.
Before the dinner, answering a question that voiced concerns about the upcoming election during a small round-table discussion inside Mr. Lutnick’s house, Mr. Trump said, “We’ve got to stop the steal,” reviving yet again his false claims about the 2020 election — claims that his advisers have urged him to drop because they don’t help him with swing voters.
According to two people present, Mr. Trump himself also brought up his remark, made two days earlier at a gathering of the National Association of Black Journalists, in which he had questioned Vice President Kamala Harris’s racial identity.
It had been a display of flagrant race-baiting that was egregious even by Mr. Trump’s standards, and it instantly reprogrammed America’s TV news chyrons: He falsely claimed that Ms. Harris had only recently decided to identify as Black for political purposes.
But Mr. Trump showed no regret. “I think I was right,” he told the rattled donors that Friday night.
Later, at dinner under the tent, Harrison LeFrak, the scion of a New York real-estate family, whose father is an old friend of Mr. Trump’s, asked how Mr. Trump planned to take the narrative back from Democrats, and what his positive vision for the country would be. It appeared to be a request for reassurance.
Mr. Trump provided none. Instead, he criticized Ms. Harris on a range of fronts, before adding: “I am who I am.”
I do enjoy Trump making fun of the reporters who made up his alleged spiritual serenity after catching shrapnel in Pennsylvania:
At the Aug. 2 dinner, Mr. Trump told donors that the news media had been incorrectly suggesting that he had mellowed since the assassination attempt. “I’m not nicer,” he said, according to one person in attendance.
And his sentiments about falling behind a Black woman are exactly as you’d expect:
Indeed, Mr. Trump has often been in a foul mood the past few weeks. He has ranted about Ms. Harris. He has called her “nasty,” on “Fox & Friends,” and a “bitch,” repeatedly, in private, according to two people who heard the remark on different occasions. (“That is not language President Trump has used to describe Kamala, and it’s not how the campaign would characterize her,” Mr. Cheung said.)
I wonder how long until he lets that fly in public.
The rollout of Peter Thiel’s Juicero boy has also been less than smooth internally:
Over the past two weeks, Mr. Trump has fielded complaints from donors about his running mate, JD Vance, as news coverage exploring Mr. Vance’s past statements unearthed — and then exhaustively critiqued — remarks including a lament that America was run by “childless cat ladies.”
Mr. Trump dismissed out of hand donors’ suggestions that he replace Mr. Vance on the ticket. But Mr. Trump privately asked his advisers whether they had known about Mr. Vance’s comments about childless women before Mr. Trump chose him.
And, at the Aug. 2 fund-raiser, according to two people with knowledge of what took place, when a donor at the round-table discussion asked about Democrats trying to paint the Republican ticket as “weird,” Mr. Trump replied: “Not about me. They’re saying that about JD.”
You love to see it.
Anyway, we’re now almost three weeks since Biden’s historic decision to step down, and Trump’s plan is still…to hope that he can run against him again:
LOL. No.
Trump: “I hear [Biden's] gonna make a comeback at the Democrat convention. He’s going to walk into the room and he’s going to say ‘I want my presidency back. I want another chance to debate Trump.'" pic.twitter.com/A4b21GPiJK— Victoria Brownworth (@VABVOX) August 10, 2024
I assume Doug Schoen is going to try to clear a profit by convincing Trump that actually Hillary is going to swoop in and steal the delegates in Chicago.
Democrats should be careful not to make the same mistake — the Electoral College and the Republican judiciary leave very little margin for error and there’s a lot of runway left — but the banked win scenario is definitely starting to play out in the Republican camp.