Donald Trump Seems Destined to Self Destruct

Donald Trump was angry. “With all I have done for Israel, I received only 24 percent of the Jewish vote,” he said on Thursday. “I really haven’t been treated very well, but it’s the story of my life.” Trump was speaking at a campaign event in Washington, DC on Thursday that was supposed to denounce anti-Semitism in America. Instead, Trump had the chutzpah to denounce American Jews should he lose the election—“the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss.”

Would they? With American Jews representing slightly over 2 percent of the American population, it’s a sweeping claim on Trump’s part. No doubt, small margins of voters in various swing states, including Pennsylvania, can tip the election one way or the other. But it’s Trump’s own actions that will determine his political fate—and right now, it isn’t looking too good.

The latest batch of polls indicates that Harris has a slight lead over Trump in battleground states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Trump continues to hold a big edge over Harris on guiding the economy, but their positions on abortion positions on abortion are flipped. All signs continue to point to a tight race. But it is Harris who has rapidly climbed in the polls to take the, well, pole position.

Trump’s prospects are clouded by the fresh developments in the North Carolina Governor’s race, where Republican Mark Robinson is running against Attorney General Josh Stein. CNN released a plethora of salacious material about Robinson as well as his apparent boast that he is a “black NAZI!!” Robinson has rebuffed entreaties to exit the race. On Thursday, he declared, “We are staying in this race. We are in it to win it.” The deadline has now passed for him to step down.

With his habitual bravado, Trump ignored earlier warnings about Robinson and embraced him as “one of the hottest politicians in the United States.” Now, the Harris campaign is running ads highlighting the cozy relationship between the former president and Robinson. Trump will hold a rally on Saturday in North Carolina, but it’s unclear if he will invite Robinson to attend.

The question looming over the Trump campaign is, of course, whether or not the brouhaha over Robinson will damage its prospects to win the state in November. One thing that it has done is to push the story of Springfield, Ohio, where Trump claimed that Haitian immigrants were devouring cats and dogs out of the headlines. Trump had hoped to capitalize on it. But the Robinson scandal is now dominating the airwaves. And it could hurt his presidential prospects.

As Aaron Blake notes, “North Carolina was decided by just more than a point in 2020, and it’s been polling very closely in 2024. Not only that, but it appears to be one of three states Trump is emphasizing as his most likely path to victory, with the others being Georgia and Pennsylvania.” Trump has a history of boosting tarnished candidates such as Herschel Walker, whose loss in Georgia helped cost the GOP control over the Senate.

This time, Trump may have wounded himself as well. As Trump reckons with how to deal with a self-proclaimed “black Nazi” whom he promoted, he is further tarnishing his campaign for the presidency. The appearance of a white nationalist and Nazi sympathizer at several fundraising events at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, is also attracting attention. How any of this is supposed to attract the votes of Jewish voters is an interesting question. Instead of whining about how badly he’s being treated, Trump would do well to recognize that he has only himself to blame for his current predicament.

About the Author

Jacob Heilbrunn is editor of The National Interest and is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. He has written on both foreign and domestic issues for numerous publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Reuters, Washington Monthly, and The Weekly Standard. He has also written for German publications such as Cicero, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and Der Tagesspiegel. In 2008, his book They Knew They Were Right: the Rise of the Neocons was published by Doubleday. It was named one of the one hundred notable books of the year by The New York Times. He is the author of America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators.

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