• by Barbara Lippert , Columnist, August 2, 2024

There was much to be exuberant about earlier this week: an optimism reset, helped by our Democratic presidential candidate and outcomes at the Olympics.

Then I watched Trump’s weird and oddly truncated appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists conference, and I felt like a bus had backed into me.

Viscerally, it brought back all the cognitive dissonance and racist, sexist behaviors toward women that were part of the Trump presidency.

I guess I had suppressed the memory.

But didn’t the July 13 assassination attempt at a rally prompt our former president to use his “uniter” words at the Republican convention?

Hadn’t he seen a slight rise in new black male voters, who’d been hurt by inflation and attracted to his bravado/machismo, as opposed to Biden’s age and pallor? Wouldn’t Trump want to consolidate that audience and solicit more voters?

As it turned out, nope. Trump had a meltdown hissy fit onstage. It seemed to bother him that he was kept waiting due to technical difficulties, and he was especially aggrieved by the poor quality of the microphones, which he blamed on the ABC moderator, Rachel Scott, who obviously had nothing to do with it. That was after he told her how “horrible” and “rude” she was by asking a fact-filled opening question that was not reverential.

I didn’t understand the Republican response that claimed he “won“ the night because he was “so brave” to show up at the convention and speak to these three journalists in the first place. Isn’t that what candidates routinely do?

On the other hand, in his Red, White & Blog column yesterday, Joe Mandese correctly surmised that “outraged media pundits assailing Trump for fumbling his appearance” at the NABJ “were dead wrong.”

MediaPost’s editor in chief maintained that the African-American crowd gathered there was never the former president’s target — that his intention was always to speak to his white nationalist base.

I agree. He had to have had his race-baiting bomb about Kamala “suddenly turning black” tucked into his back pocket beforehand. 

After all, he’d been losing his mind in an attention desert, sidelined from the news cycle by the nonstop coverage of candidate Harris and the continuing public weirdness of his VP pick, JD Vance.

Going in, he knew he had to use this appearance to dominate the cultural conversation once again. So he went to a toxic place where he’d been rewarded before — that a black candidate could not be an authentic American, had to be a phony, and that we’d better investigate.

It was Obama’s birth certificate 3.0, now with extra dog whistle.

“She was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage,” he said.

No one could make up this phrasing: “I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn black. And I think someone should look into that.”

Setting off an explosive allowed him to deflect from having to answer the actual question, or speak about policy or his own future plans.

Still, Trump’s not a politician or a businessman as much as he is a showman and professional wrestler. As long as he elicits outrage, he's happy.

Lately, there has been a theory circulating online about Trump’s “cheap heat” -- a wrestling term. In a piece in The Bulwark, Jonathan Last wrote: “Trump has long ties to the WWE and Vince McMahon… who created and masterminded the characters. …Trump’s forays into wrestling formed his understanding of how populism and demagoguery function.” 

How so? “It is important to understand that the reaction McMahon looked for was value-neutral,” Last writes. “It does not matter if the crowd loves a wrestler or hates him. In wrestling parlance this reaction is referred to as ‘heat’ and there are two kinds of heat: (1) Heel heat, which is hatred and loathing on the part of the audience against villainous characters (known as 'heels'). And (2) Face heat, which is love and adulation for heroic characters (known as 'faces,' short for 'babyfaces').”

What matters is that the character is drawing heat.

From her response, Harris is wise to him. She’s heard it all before, and immediately commented “same old show,” suggesting that she wanted to use a word other than show that also starts with sh and has four letters. She was calm and rational in her answer about the kind of leader our country deserves.

Meanwhile, Trump will continue to bring the cheap heat. A heel to some, a face to others.

But Harris is not getting down in the ring with him.

Rather, she’s decidedly cool and focused, a candidate for the moment. All eyes will be on her as she picks a vice president and moves on to the Democratic Convention, which will attract the kind of viewership numbers that will drive Trump nuts.

And by the way, Last threw in another wrestling term for what Vance emits. It happens when the audience is not entertained. He wrote that Vance brings “the most feared audience reaction in the business” -- a definite “go-home” heat.”