Chris Crucial: A bad case of Trump Fatigue 🥱

PLUS: Santos is guilty. And my DNC plan!

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1. Are people getting sick of Donald Trump?

I have — as many of you know — been going through lots (and lots) of speeches and interviews given by Donald Trump during this campaign.

And over the last, say, two months I’ve noticed something: Trump has NOTHING new to say.

This reality was particularly pronounced last week during his “press conference” from his club in New Jersey.

Trump spoke for 50+ minutes straight at the top. It was all a rehash of his campaign speech. Like almost word for word.

And then when he took questions it was more of the same. Recounting the assassination attempt. Talking about how great the economy was when he was president. Reminiscing about how well he got along with authoritarian leaders. Grousing about crowd size and how the media cover it.

What Trump feels like to me is a band that you go to see in concert. Every day for a year. And they play the same songs in the same order every single show.

At first, you might love it! Great tunes!

But, after, say a month, you might want to hear something, well, different. Or even the same songs in a slightly different order.

After a year though, I can almost guarantee that you would be sick of that band. And never want to hear those songs again — no matter how much you loved them at first.

I think something like that could be happening with Trump. What felt revolutionary in 2016 and still amounted to a middle finger to the, uh, man in 2020 now sort of feels, well, kind of boring?

Matt Bai, a brilliant political observer, wrote a piece making just that point in the Washington Post late last week.

Here’s the key bit:

Suddenly, Trump is kind of boring.

I don’t mean boring in the pragmatic sense of: I’ve decided to tamp down the crazy, act like a normal candidate and let the spotlight fall on my very flawed opponent. No, I mean boring like Greenpeace protests and rental cars. Boring as in same old. Played out. Predictable….

….But something’s happened during these past several weeks. Trump’s act feels oddly unprovocative. His third campaign is turning out to be a little like Season 3 of “The Bear.” We’ve gone through all the plot turns and character development, and what’s left is a bunch of leftover footage and montages of scenes we’ve already watched.

And Bai isn’t the only one who has noticed this trend toward Trump fatigue.

Here’s Alyssa Farah Griffin, a co-host on “The View,” expressing a very similar sentiment:

There’s at least some precedent for Trump wearing out his welcome. While “The Apprentice” and “The Celebrity Apprentice” did well in the TV ratings, they were a declining commodity as time wore on.

One more comparison if I can: No one doubts Rick Pitino is a very good college basketball coach. He can come into a bad program and turn it around very, very quickly. (Witness the transformation of St. John’s.)

But, Pitino has a shelf life. At some point, his tough guy, dictatorial approach to coaching rubs the players the wrong way. They tune him out. He loses the locker room. And he, inevitably, gets fired.

I think it’s at least worth considering whether Trump has worn out his welcome. That his schtick is just tired. That people who might have been for him in 2016 and 2020 may well decide that enough is enough.

To be clear: His base still loves him. They laugh at the jokes they know are coming. They chant “fake news” at the media. They buy the paraphernalia — the hats, the flags, the weird muscle-bound pictures.

But, this election won’t be won by the base. It will be decided by the small number of people who are undecided. Who may have gone for Trump in 2016, Joe Biden in 2020 and are in the process of making up their minds about who to vote for this time around.

They want new material from Trump. A fresh routine. Something. But all he’s delivering is the same warmed-over lines. It’s all he’s got.

2. George Santos pleads guilty

The worst person in the world is going to jail.

Disgraced former New York Republican Rep. George Santos, who lied about pretty much everything and repeatedly (and loudly) insisted he would not take a plea deal, took a plea deal on Monday.

Santos pled guilty to aggravated identify theft and wire fraud, a move deigned to keep him from going to trial for two dozen various charges related to his short and deeply ill-fated campaigns for Congress.

“I understand my actions have betrayed the trust of my supporters and my constituents,” Santos told the judge overseeing the case. He added: “Pleading guilty is a step I never imagined I’d take, but it’s the right thing to do. It is my own recognition of the lies I told myself.”

Santos will be formally sentenced in February 2025.

The plea deal represents a marked shift from Santos who, for months, insisted he had done nothing wrong. In May 2023, Santos pled not guilty to some of the charges against him. Last October he, again, pled not guilty to more charges brought against him. At that time, Santos said: “I think I’ve made it clear that I will fight this to prove my innocence. So yeah, I’m pretty much denying every last bit of charges.”

Santos’ change of heart likely ends — or so we can hope — a remarkable story of political fraud. He was elected to the Long Island-based 3rd district in 2022 but it quickly became clear that he was not who he pretended to be.

In December of that year, the New York Times published an expose that made clear that Santos had made up large swaths of his resume. My personal favorite? That he was a star volleyball player at Baruch College. (Santos never even went to Baruch much less played on their volleyball team.)

Santos was expelled from the U.S. House in December 2023 by a vote of 311-114. He became just the 6th member ever expelled — and only the third since the Civil War.

Good. Riddance.

3. My DNC Plans!

The first night of the Democratic National Convention is tonight — headlined by a speech by President Joe Biden.

Tonight, like I did during the Republican National Convention, I am going to host a live chat via the Substack app for PAID SUBSCRIBERS.

I’ll send a chat link around 8 pm although I won’t be checking in regularly with thoughts until the 10 pm hour.

Stay tuned for something really cool tomorrow night. I am pretty psyched about it!

To participate in tonight’s live chat become a paid subscriber today! I am running a special during the DNC — it’s just $5 a month or $50 for the year!

4. Yes, Joe Biden is (still) pissed

My guess is that Biden will deliver a gracious speech to an adoring crowd tonight. But don’t let that fool you. He’s still pissed about the way he was shoved out of the way by Democratic leaders earlier this summer.

I talked about it in a video I made for my YouTube channel today. Subscribe!

NOTABLE QUOTABLE

“I had one last night. It was good. It was … good.” — Nancy Pelosi, decidedly ambivalent about the Chicago-style hot dog

ONE GOOD CHART

This animated map of the growth of Target stores across the country is AMAZING. It starts slow but starts to explode right around 1980. As of June, there are almost 1,900 Target stores in the U.S..

SONG OF THE DAY

My favorite artist of all time is Bob Dylan. (Second is The Beatles.) Late last week, his label released a live version of Dylan — backed by The Band(!) — playing “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” live at the Inglewood Forum on February 14, 1974. Epic.

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