I hope your prediction is correct. I truly dread the tsunami of admiration for Trump that would surely follow a Trump attempt to keep on talking despite his mic being cut off. All the Murdoch outlets and other right-wing sources would go on for days and weeks about how Trump Dominated the Night and Made His Own Rules and Showed How It’s Done.
Yes, many voters would be appalled. But even they would ultimately be affected by the tidal wave of Bully Worship that would pervade all our media.
Do you think he will try to talk/shout loud enough to be picked up by Biden’s mic when his own is cut off?
I doubt it. That’s more exertion than he cares for. He’ll mutter “wrong” and such.
Have you ever actually witnessed Trump debating?
Turnp won’t know how loud to shout. He won’t have a monitor or any way of gauging whether he is being heard. Good way to look completely batchit.
Yes, and I’ve never seen him yell, leave his podium, stick his face in between the other debater and the microphone while playing “I’m not touching you”, or rant about how the Enemies of the People are forcing him to break the rules of the debate. Trump may be many things, but he’s first and foremost a showman and he knows those kind of antics won’t play well outside the MAGA bubble.
What he is is rapidly deteriorating mentally and emotionally.
But he did not care that they didn’t play well outside the bubble in 2016 or 2020. So there’s no reason to think that a mentally functioning trump would care in 2024.
And as @Czarcasm says just above, trump’s ability to reason by his lights about what’s to his advantage seems to be declining by the hour. He’ll revert to type because that’s pretty much all that’s left: the habits of his archetype.
He is “first and foremost a showman”?
I have seen the show and I am not in the least impressed.
Are you?
I am not. You are not. Many other people are not.
But trump loves to play to an adoring audience, even if it’s small. To the degree he’s still capable of thought, my view is he’s going to keep trying the same schtick he’s used since 2016. Which plays great to the MAGAs; the only audience he cares about.
It’s up to the RW media to drag the rest of the reactionary right and the conservative-leaning mildish right along and to convince them to all vote for trump. Which they are doing not by boosting trump, but by tearing down Biden at every turn.
And that habit is to meekly comply when faced with opposition, then run to a friendly mic afterward to complain about how unfair it was and he wasn’t allowed to talk about this and that. The people who think he’s going to throw a temper tantrum onstage and try to steal Biden’s mic are basing that on a caricature of the man, not the man himself.
I’d like to think that my ability to parrot Trump’s speech so convincingly has shown that I have a rather good insight into his thought processes. He’s not confrontational when faced with an opponent who’ll fight back. I predicted he wouldn’t back out and I’ve been right about that so far, now I’m predicting he won’t try any microphone shenanigans.
I do think he’ll point fingers and accuse the moderators of being against him and being “fake news losers” Or somesuch.
I predict Cheeto will promise The American People the most ludicrous, outlandish and impossible shit. No Income Tax, Free College, lower prices in the supermarkets, Free New Cars, Free Healthcare, 2 months paid vacation a year, cheap gas, fewer shark attacks (for sure!), cooler Summers, Higher wages… just whatever shit sounds like it’s good to get a few votes. He’ll offer no plan or details for anything, or just spout nonsense. He won’t mean a word of it, and the fact checkers are gonna be working overtime debunking the Bullshit.
He will spend the rest of the summer backing away from every Pie-in-the-Sky lie he told, or flat-out denying them.
It’s gonna be a fun evening…
This is a more realistic prediction. He’s shown an increasing willingness to pander lately based on what he thinks the current audience wants to hear. Service workers in Vegas? Tax-free tips. Libertarians? Pardon the Dread Pirate Roberts. Tech CEOs? Green cards for diplomas. The president of UFC? Immigrant slaves for your gladiator fights.
All the details will, of course, be forthcoming in two weeks.
I predict he’ll show, make no attempt to constrain himself to the parameters he agreed to, get muted, then declare victory despite being silenced by a rigged process.
This will play with some people, but not as many as Trump expects, or thinks he deserves.
I agree with you.
By definition.
He looks to me like someone who has spray-painted himself orange, wears a really bad hairpiece and/or has a bad dye job and poops into a diaper onstage. While that certainly doesn’t constitute frailty per se, if Trump were to be stripped of artifice he would look shockingly bad. His crowds will forgive him of almost anything but I have to wonder if his closest advisors are starting to murmur amongst themselves how things are getting really, really bad with him now.
Or is it as you say where perception becomes reality? Have his lackeys talked themselves into thinking that this is strength/gravitas/dignity/whatever other superlatives they might wish to lavish him with? If this is the case, I think they are in for a rude surprise in this debate and in the next few months of the campaign as Trump’s ability to fail in an upward trajectory continues to diminish. Trump has been living on borrowed time for years now and all of Trump’s horses and men cannot perceive their way out of it if indeed they even perceive what a precarious position they are in right now.
“Not frail” is not synonymous with “good”. He doesn’t look like a strong breeze will snap him in two.
No, but he talks like he should be under observation for a stay in a mental health facility.