CHRIS CRUCIAL: How chaos works for Trump 🤪

PLUS: My VP debate plan

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1. The Chaos Candidate

Back in the 2016 campaign, as he was losing the Republican primary to Donald Trump, Jeb(!) Bush said something profound about the billionaire businessman.

“Donald, you know, is great at the one-liners,” Jeb(!) said. “But he's a chaos candidate. And he'd be a chaos president.”

Jeb(!) clearly meant “chaos” in a pejorative sense. Trump, to the establishment eye of the Bush clan, represented deep unpredictability in a world that needed America to be reliable and safe.

And, Trump is, without question, a chaos candidate. And was a chaos president. And, if elected again, would usher in even more chaos (if that’s possible). More on that later.

But, in the context of this campaign, the more chaos people perceive there to be in the world, the better for Trump.

This idea was very much on my mind today — as Iran fired 180 ballistic missiles at Israel, the latest in a series of recent incidents involving Israel and the broader Middle East.

Here’s how the New York Times described the last few days:

The attack from Iran was the culmination of a dizzying sequence of events over less than 24 hours that began with Israel launching a ground invasion into Lebanon to pursue Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Lebanese militia. Israel pounded Lebanon from the air throughout Tuesday as its troops advanced on the ground and Hezbollah fired rockets deep into Israel.

And here’s how the former president of the United States responded to the news:

Before I go on, let me say this: The average undecided American voter is NOT closely following the latest out of the Middle East. Or the most recent developments in the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia.

Foreign policy barely ever makes a mark — as a deciding factor in votes — in presidential elections, and this year is no different.

But, here is what the takeaway of the last few weeks/months is for the average voter: Things are crazy in the world right now! Wars are breaking out everywhere! It seems totally out of control!

People don’t like out of control. They don’t like to feel as though countries are bombing each other willy nilly — and that the U.S. can’t or won’t do anything about it.

And, in case you forgot, Joe Biden is the president (still). And Kamala Harris is his vice president. Which means they own the bulk of the chaos and uncertainty that people are feeling.

Enter Trump. And his (ridiculous) promises that he will solve the Middle East situation and the Russia-Ukraine war on his first day in office.

Of course it’s impossible for him to back up that claim. But, it’s simple. It’s a promise that if you only elect him, things will get better (ie less chaotic) — and fast!

This is, more broadly, Trump’s promise to voters: He alone can fix it. Whether it’s a world on fire or the border or grocery prices or the American dream, the only hope for America is to elect Trump. He will bring order from chaos. He will make everything ok.

Roll your eyes if you like but lots and lots of people want to be told everything is going to work out just fine. That the people in charge right now are terrible but all we need to do is change out the president and things are going to be good or even great (again).

How can someone who has created so much chaos as president possibly be seen as the solution to the current chaos people are feeling? Now that is a very good question — and one I don’t have any easy answers to.

It’s possible that people simply have short memories. They remember the stuff they think they liked about Trump’s presidency (the economy!) and sort of yada yada everything else.

Or they think Trump has changed somehow from his first term. (I find this hard to believe since Trump never changes.)

Or they think that the only answer to the chaos in the world is to have a chaos-adjacent president — someone who is totally unpredictable and wild. Under that logic, Trump is regarded as so dangerous and unhinged by other world leaders that they don’t do anything that might set him off.

Which is a hell of a way to think about the U.S. and its role in the world.

But, chaos in the world works to Trump’s advantage politically. He’s like Littlefinger in that way.

2. Tim Walz, call your office

This is not exactly the headline Tim Walz (or Kamala Harris) wants to see pop up in the hours leading up to tonight’s vice presidential debate: “Walz’s claim that he was in Hong Kong during Tiananmen Square protests undercut by unearthed newspaper reports.”

That’s a CNN report that does not look great for the Democratic vice presidential nominee. Here’s the gist of the story:

Newly unearthed reports contradict previous claims made by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz about his travel to China, including a claim that the Democratic vice presidential nominee was in Hong Kong for a teaching position in 1989 during the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests that ended in hundreds of protesters killed by the Chinese government.

The discrepancy over Walz’s relationship to China comes ahead of Tuesday’s vice presidential debate in New York, where Republican allies of Ohio Sen. JD Vance have signaled that the GOP vice presidential nominee may use Walz’s history in China to attack his rival. Walz regularly organized and chaperoned trips to China during his time as a teacher prior to entering politics….

…Walz’s claims that he was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests have been repeated in media reports. But contemporaneous newspaper reports first resurfaced by the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news outlet, place Walz in Nebraska around that time. An issue of the Alliance Times-Herald dated May 16, 1989, features a photo of Walz touring a Nebraska National Guard storeroom. In the photo’s caption, the paper notes that Walz “will take over the job” of staffing the storeroom from a retiring guardsman and “will be moving to Alliance,” Nebraska. A separate newspaper article about Walz’s planned trip to China published by a Nebraska-based outlet in April 1989 reported that he planned to travel to China in early August of that year.

When asked by CNN if Walz was in Hong Kong during the Tiananmen Square protests, the Harris campaign was unable to provide evidence to substantiate Walz’s claim.

Oomph.

This latest story lands amid a series of exaggerations made by Walz that have come to light since Harris named him as her VP pick in August. Walz admitted that he misspoke when he said he had held “weapons of war.” There were questions raised about the rank with which he retired from the military — and the timing of that retirement. And his congressional campaign repeatedly made false claims about a 1995 DUI arrest.

This is a pattern. Time and again, Walz or his campaign staff have, seen in the kindest light, exaggerated or misstated facts about his past. Which matters — because Walz is running to be a heartbeat away from the presidency.

3. My plan for the Veep Debate

At 9 pm eastern tonight, JD Vance and Tim Walz will take the stage in New York City for a 90-minute debate hosted by CBS News.

Which is still more than an hour away! In the meantime, check out the video I made on my YouTube channel on the most memorable VP debates over the years — including, yes, the famous/infamous “Who am I? And why am I here?” line from Admiral James Stockdale in 1992.

As for the debate itself, here’s my plan. I am going to be driving to and from soccer tonight. (I do this a lot.) I will, of course, watch and/or listen to the whole debate. But I am not going to be offering minute-by-minute commentary because, well, that would be dangerous while driving!

That said, I AM going to set up a live chat — via the Substack app — for paid subscribers to commiserate during the event itself. (I will likely send the link out for the chat by about 8:45 pm.) I will pop in as much as I can to offer my own steaming hot takes but I also wanted to provide a place where the “So What” community could hang out and the shoot the, uh, stuff during and after the debate.

After the debate, I will offer my quick analysis — probably in video form — in this space. If I wake up tomorrow morning with more thoughts, I’ll do a separate post about them.

Also: Before you draw deep conclusions about how much the Trump-Harris race has changed because of what happened in the Vance-Walz debate, remember this: VP debates don’t historically, change much of anything — and way less people typically watch them than check out the main card debates.

NOTABLE QUOTABLE

“He doesn't need a lot of advice. He's a pro.” — Donald Trump on his conversations with running mate JD Vance in advance of tonight’s vice presidential debate.

ONE GOOD CHART

Jimmy Carter turns 100 years old today. In 30 years, if trends continue, he might not be the only former president to reach the century mark.

SONG OF THE DAY

Kris Kristofferson’s death this week has been, rightly, huge news. In reading the various obituaries, I learned something: Kristofferson served as a janitor at CBS Studios while Bob Dylan was recording his 1966 classic album “Blonde on Blonde.” Said Kristofferson in later years: “I got to see [Bob Dylan] when I was a janitor there at Columbia. That’s who I wanted to be like, was Bob Dylan. … Looking back, it really was amazing. … I was the only songwriter in Nashville who got to be at those sessions for the ‘Blonde on Blonde’ album”. In honor of that amazing historical coincidence, here’s Dylan doing “Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands.”

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