On Thursday, Donald Trump walked into a room of journalists gathered at his Mar-a-Lago estate for a news conference. He didn’t look particularly happy.
His remarks came after a week in which Kamala Harris and her new running mate Tim Walz have dominated media attention, raked in millions of dollars and enjoyed a bump in polling. Trump’s media event seemed more an attempt to win back the spotlight than announce anything new.
Just before Trump stepped up to the podium, one of his advisors texted me the wry assessment that Donald Trump is “never boring!!” (the exclamation marks were his).
The event included a couple of news items. Mr Trump announced that he’d agreed to join a TV debate with Vice-President Harris on 10 September. ABC News, the debate host, confirmed that Ms Harris had agreed to participate as well. Trump also said he’d like to do two more debates. There’s no word from the Harris team yet on whether they’ve accepted those additional matchups.
Over the course of the hour-long event, Trump took dozens of questions and he chastised Ms Harris for failing to take questions from reporters since ascending to the top of the ticket.
Much of the event, though, was spent on Trump’s old favourites, as if he was reaching for his rally hits. He talked about poll numbers, the unfair media, the dire state of the country and, yes, crowd sizes (even comparing his crowds to those of the civil rights leader Dr Martin Luther King, Jr)
Historically, one way Trump gets attention is by saying things that are controversial. And there was some of that today, too. He suggested America is on the brink of a world war and said Jewish Americans who support Vice-President Harris need “to have your head examined”.
This attention deficit is an unusual position for Trump.
The former president is not used to having to fight for the limelight, particularly in this election cycle. The Biden campaign was happy to let Trump dominate the news, in the belief that the more the race was about the former president, the better it would be for the current one. The Biden team wanted Trump front and centre.
But the shake up on the Democratic side has been dramatic and newsworthy and has pushed Trump off the front pages. To make things harder for the Republican candidate, much of the coverage of Ms Harris’s unexpected roll out as Democratic candidate has been positive. So, the strategy by Democrats has flipped.
Right now, Democrats are enjoying the media attention. Ms Harris wants this race to be about her. And with all the Democratic political drama, the press has been happy to oblige.
Hence the Mar-a-Lago news conference that didn’t really have much news.
Trump may do better following the advice of Marc Lotter, the Republican strategist who ran communication strategy for his 2020 campaign, who texted me to say the way the former president should win back attention was to stay focused. “Define Harris and Walz on policy. He wins on policy and results.”
To be fair, there was some of that in this press event. Trump repeatedly described Ms Harris as “extreme” and “liberal”. He did tout his own record on the economy and the border. But the attacks got rather lost in his grievance about crowd sizes and how they are reported, even suggesting that there may be something unconstitutional about the Harris campaign.
And, then it was over. And, as if to prove a point, within minutes of Trump walking off stage, the fickle cable news cameras had shifted their lenses from Florida to Michigan where Ms Harris and Mr Walz were holding a meeting with union workers. It was the Democrats time for some press coverage. Once again.