Trump’s Terrible Week
By Nayyer Ali MD
As the election moves into its final month, President Trump needed to have some good days to move back into a competitive position, as he was 6-8% behind Biden in mid-September. But in late September, Trump had one of the worst weeks a Presidential candidate has ever had.
In short order, The New York Times released its result of an analysis of over 10 years of Trump’s tax returns, Trump debated Biden in front of 60 million viewers, and Trump ended up being flown to Walter Reed Medical Center after contracting COVID pneumonia. This triple whammy has moved some of Trump’s supporters to abandon him, and the latest polls now show Biden ahead nationally by 10-14%. These numbers would result in a Democratic landslide and the worst defeat by a sitting President since 1932.
The NY Times got their hands on Trump’s tax returns, but how they did that remains a total mystery. Trump has denied the details that The NY Times analysis has made public, but he continues to keep his taxes a secret. According to the Times, Trump paid a mere 750 dollars in taxes in 2017, a ridiculous amount for someone who claims to be a millionaire. Trump also got a 70-million-dollar tax refund from the US government in 2009, which the IRS says was actually illegally obtained and is trying to get clawed back. In addition, it appears that Trump’s businesses are all basically money-losing operations, and he has massive debts. Apparently Trump owes over 400 million dollars which are due to be paid in the next few years, and it is not clear where he can get the money.
Instead of being a brilliant businessman, Trump appears to be a financial sham and fraud. His massive outstanding debt is a major red flag. Does he owe that money to foreigners? To the Russians? The American people deserve to know who their President is in hock to.
A few days after the tax story came out, the first Presidential debate was held. This was a complete debacle for Trump. He obviously had a strategy of bullying Biden and interrupting constantly. This may have played well with his rabid fan base, but it totally turned off the rest of the nation. Opinion polls showed Biden clearly the winner. Most Presidential debates don’t usually change the polls, but this one clearly hurt Trump with the groups he had lost ground with in the last four years, namely college educated Whites, and non-college educated White women. Biden’s performance was not particularly noteworthy, but by simply coming off as a sane rational human being, he easily beat Trump.
This already bad week was worsened when the White House announced both Trump and his wife had tested positive for COVID. Shortly after, it came out that Trump was actually ill, had a fever to 103 degrees, and was coughing and short of breath. He had to be taken by helicopter to Walter Reed Medical Center, and was given an experimental monoclonal antibody cocktail along with the antiviral drug remdesivir and intravenous steroids. He spent the next several days in the hospital before returning to the White House. This did not make him take the pandemic any more seriously, in fact he started tweeting about how he was “cured” and is now immune to the virus, and that it is no big deal. But it totally dominated the news cycle and stopped any chance for Trump to make up ground with Biden. It also was a stark reminder to the entire country that this pandemic is not over with in the least, and that Trump’s own recklessness led to him becoming infected. It reinforced all the doubts many Americans had about his total lack of judgment or understanding of what is happening to the country.
The end result of this bad week is that Trump is now down by 10% or more to Biden with only a few weeks left. It’s even worse given that millions of Americans are already voting by mail or early voting in many states. Biden and the Democrats in general are being deluged with cash from small dollar donors, while Republicans are struggling to raise funds. Trump’s campaign has had to pull ads from the airwaves in several critical battleground states, while Biden has expanded the map with ad buys in Texas and Georgia. Trump’s troubles are dragging down the Republicans all across the country. Democrats look set to add seats to their House majority. In the Senate, they look likely to win seats in Arizona, Colorado, Maine, and North Carolina. They also look quite competitive in Montana, Iowa, and Georgia, and even have a shot against Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, and in Texas and Kansas.
Unless Trump can pull out a miracle, he is heading for a landslide defeat, one that will drag down the Republican Party with him. This could set the stage for among the most consequential and liberal period in American history. We can expect major action on health care, college costs, income inequality, the minimum wage, immigration reform, and clean energy transition. In foreign policy expect the US to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord and the Iran Nuclear Treaty, and to rebuild a foreign policy that supports our democratic allies while confronting Russian mischief. To achieve all that, Biden may need to pressure a Democratic Senate to get rid of the filibuster, which allows a mere 41 Senators to block legislation. Expect the Republicans to be as obstructionist as possible, so the Democrats may have no choice if they don’t want their election victory to be rendered meaningless.
