Donald Trump Can’t Help But Bring Up One Of His Biggest Weaknesses

LOADING ERROR LOADING RIPON, Wis. ― Vice President Kamala Harris’ appearance with former Rep. Liz Cheney at Ripon College was focused heavily on the threat former President Donald Trump poses to democracy, one of the Republicans’ biggest weaknesses in the 2024 presidential election. Then, in a court filing unsealed Wednesday, Special Counsel Jack Smith revealed new details about Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 loss, including that Trump allegedly said “so what” when White House staff told him his vice president had fled a violent mob on Capitol Hill. “Donald Trump did not want to stop the violent attacks on the capitol,” she said, noting the information in Smith’s court filing came from Trump’s “closest aides.” With election denial a dominant topic of the news cycle, Democrats ― who have generally used the “democracy in danger” frame less since Harris took over for President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket ― are able to focus their advertising on other topics. “I think it’s just too risky to put democracy in the hands of someone who has shown they have no problem undermining it if it’s to their benefit.” But even before Vance’s comments or Smith’s legal filing, Trump had already brought up the stolen election repeatedly in the past week ― he brings up 2020, unprompted, pretty much every time he speaks in public, though he doesn’t always explicitly say it was “rigged.” “It was a terrible thing that happened last time. He sent tweets attacking Pence for not blocking the certification of the election, further enraging the crowd, and when an aide told him Pence had been evacuated, Trump’s response was, according to the filing, “So what?” Michael Fanone, a former D.C. police officer who was brutally beaten by the mob that day as he defended the west front of the Capitol, has become a spokesman for a liberal group called Courage for America that has been demanding lawmakers certify the 2024 election without any Jan. 6-style shenanigans.