There’s really no other choice but to let Trump be Trump.

While Kamala Harris rocked the DNC with an unexpected appearance and short speech to the rapturous crowd, Donald Trump continued to attack his new opponent, sometimes in odd ways. 

He is ignoring public advice from such close Republican allies as Lindsey Graham. “If you have a policy debate, he wins,” the senator said on “Meet the Press.” “Donald Trump the provocateur, the showman, may not win this election.”

PUT POLICY ASIDE: KAMALA HARRIS WILL WIN OR LOSE BASED ON THE EXCITEMENT FACTOR

Nikki Haley, who’s only nominally endorsed Trump, delivered a similar message to Fox’s Bret Baier: “The campaign is not going to win talking about crowd sizes. It’s not going to win talking about what race Kamala Harris is.  It’s not going to win talking about whether she’s dumb. I think the campaign needs to focus.”

With the man he really wanted to run against, Joe Biden, pushed out of prime time to deliver a fiery speech that mainly touted his own accomplishments – and attacked Donald – Trump adopted the mindset that characterizes many White House occupants: 

If you geniuses are so smart, how come I’m the one who was elected president?

That’s especially true of Trump in 2016, when nearly everyone, including Hillary Clinton, was convinced that she would win. Perhaps that’s why she obviously enjoyed taunting Trump at the Chicago convention, smiling contentedly to the chants of “Lock him up!” – a play on the Trump crowds in that campaign shouting that she should be locked up.

When Barack Obama clashed with John McCain at a meeting after the 2008 campaign, Obama felt compelled to remind his former adversary that he had beaten him in that race. 

Trump, who is expanding his operation, bringing in his first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, and other past loyalists, is trusting his instincts.

One of the strangest moves by the 45th president was to use AI to post pictures of women wearing “Swifties for Trump” T-shirts. The women don’t exist. But it came a week after Trump, who seems enamored of Taylor Swift, falsely accused Harris of using AI to artificially create a big crowd at the Detroit airport – which was quickly disproven by wider shots of the thousands of people there.

Maybe that was just shtick. And perhaps that term also applies to a fake image depicting Trump and Harris as a couple, with him touching her enormously pregnant bare belly.

JD VANCE TEARS INTO DEM GOVERNOR FOR ‘WISHING’ TRAGEDY ON HIS FAMILY

More concerning is the video he posted on Truth Social. It begins with a fake image of Harris holding a sign that says “I am a moron.” In a parody version of the Alanis Morissette song “Ironic,” Trump accuses Biden (there’s that name again) of having dementia and says Harris was “pulling the strings to cut his rope.”

But that’s the mild part.

“Make the ballots fake on election day; no matter who votes, count’s on the take. Spent her whole damn life down on her knees; To be commander in chief, that’s how you say please.”

We all know that “down on her knees” is an unmistakable sexual allusion. It’s a reference to her relationship with future San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, who she openly dated in the 1990s. (Brown was technically still married but had been separated from his wife for many years; he appointed Kamala to two state boards.)

Trump generally has a gut-level feel for an opponent’s weakness. Maybe he believes mockery is the best way to deal with a woman of color. The jabs don’t seem to be landing, but Trump is right that he’s the one who got elected. Everyone else is staff or spectators.

Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at Trump National Bedminster Clubhouse on August 15, 2024 in Bedminster, New Jersey. In his second news conference in a week, Trump attacked Democratic presidential candidate, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris as recent polls in battleground states show gains for Democrats.  (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

The Trump campaign yesterday tried to knock down Harris’ claim that crime was higher during his administration. He cited a 2021 change in the way the FBI estimates crime statistics as making that an apples-and-oranges comparison, and independent reporting backs that up.

But as I wrote yesterday, the election is largely not going to turn on wonky arguments about border statistics or price-gouging. Go to Kamala’s home page and there is no listing of policy proposals, none. She may come to regret that.

Harris has still offered no explanation of why she abandoned her far-left positions of 2020 – Abolish private health insurance! Ban fracking! – but she’s got to confront that at some point rather than leaving it to unnamed aides.

Instead, she’s hoping to ride a wave of excitement – which should be boosted by the star-studded DNC – to a seat behind the Resolute Desk. She is running as a 59-year old happy warrior against Trump, who’s now the old man in the race at 78. But her polling numbers will eventually deflate to earlier levels, and she’ll have to withstand a furious two-month attack by Trump and MAGA World. 

TRUMP’S ‘SWIFTIES FOR TRUMP’ POST TRIGGERS SOCIAL MEDIA OUTCRY

The Trump campaign assailed the first night of the Democratic convention by saying “they would rather talk about President Trump than the problems facing our nation due to Kamala Harris’ failures.” 

The mentions on Monday night: 

Trump: 147 times

Border: 8 times

Economy: 27 times

Inflation: 3 times

Prices: 5 times

Crime: 6 times.

The Harris camp, meanwhile, castigated her opponent for comments at a Pennsylvania rally: “Trump’s advisors are desperately trying to get Donald to stick to his script. But he can’t help but veer off into rants about whether or not he and JD Vance are weird, yell that he believes the American dream is dead, and…whatever this was.” (A comment about Russian ships pulling up to New England.) 

(Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Keep in mind that Trump is also running against a hostile press corps that is quite enamored of Kamala-mentum. Many pundits push the argument that he’s a threat to democracy. I haven’t seen such unbalanced coverage since the Clinton-Gore bus tour of 1992. 

Most journalists have given Harris – and for that matter, Tim Walz – a total pass on refusing to do interviews, as if that’s not their job.

A month ago, Biden was expecting to be giving his acceptance speech in Chicago, rather than being shamefully pushed so late that he finished at 12:30 a.m. ET, with BS excuses about how there was just too much applause during the night. That’s how quickly things can change in politics.

Some critics in the media are saying that Trump has gotten boring, that what seemed fresh and tough and entertaining in 2016 now appears stale and familiar. Maybe, but Trump didn’t win that year by running on immigration and crime, he won based on his anti-establishment persona – exactly the sort of charge being aimed at Kamala.

The widespread assumption that Trump would cruise to victory, especially after the failed assassination, has been replaced by a media consensus that Harris is riding a cultural wave that will swamp him.

But that’s faulty logic. Trump still has the easier path to the magic 270. He’s still neck and neck with Harris in the battleground states after all the negative stuff dumped on him, including a criminal conviction.

And he’ll eventually figure out how to undermine Harris, even if it means cycling through one strategy after another until something works. That is, and has always been, the Trump way. 

In a personal speech sprinkled with goofy anecdotes and a reference to Kamala Harris as the “glue that holds the family together,” Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff highlighted Harris’ softer side, describing his and Harris’ blended family and their love story.

Emhoff painted a picture of a happy and loving family — with Harris, his children from a previous marriage, Cole and Ella Emhoff, and their mother, Kerstin Emhoff.

A video montage introducing Emhoff showed pictures of him and Harris in their early dating days — cozied up at the Hollywood Bowl, cooking together in their Brentwood kitchen and side by side at Harris’ vice presidential inauguration in 2021.

“Next, he is going to make history again as the first first gentleman,” Cole said when introducing his father.

Emhoff first described his own childhood, riding his bike around a suburban New Jersey neighborhood and taking the bus to Hebrew school. His family eventually moved to Los Angeles, where he worked at McDonald’s before going on to college and law school.

Then Emhoff recounted how he and Harris met, after one of his law clients suggested setting him up on a blind date. Emhoff made the first move, calling Harris at 8:30 a.m. When she didn’t answer, Emhoff said, he left a long, meandering voicemail — and later worried that he had butchered his chances.

“I was trying to just grab the words out of the air and put them back in my mouth,” he said to laughter from the audience inside the convention hall.

Harris called him back around lunch time, and they spoke for an hour. By the time they had a date a few days later, the couple had hit it off.

“We laughed. You know that laugh. I love that laugh!” he said, referring to Harris’ hearty laugh that her opponent, former President Trump, frequently mocks. “As I got to know her better, I just fell in love fast. I learned what drives Kamala. And it’s what you’ve seen over these past four years, but especially these past four weeks: She finds joy in pursuing justice.”

The two married in 2014 at the Santa Barbara courthouse, and they now share a home in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Brentwood. Emhoff praised Harris for how she embraced his children.

“Those of you who belong to blended families know that they can be a little bit complicated,” Emhoff said. “But as soon as our kids started calling her ‘Momala,’ I knew we’d be OK.”

Harris officiated at Cole’s wedding, writing her remarks in a custom-bound book and giving it to the couple as a wedding gift, Emhoff said.

Emhoff’s remarks captivated the audience, which laughed at the lighter moments and listened quietly at others. At least one person in the crowd carried a sign reading
“Doug for First Mensch.”

He recounted a recent moment amid the whirlwind of her becoming the Democrats’ presidential nominee: She was resting at home in “her favorite chair” when her phone rang. Was it, Emhoff wondered, some pressing issue of government? Not quite. Harris was talking to her stepdaughter, Ella.

“That’s Kamala,” he said. “That scene was a perfect map of her heart. She’s always been there for our children, and I know she’ll always be there for yours too.”

All smiles in the audience, Ella responded to her father’s speech by frequently putting her hand on her chest or forming a heart with her hands. Ella and her mother, Kerstin, jumped to Harris’ defense weeks ago, after Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance’s comments resurfaced in which he called Harris and other Democratic women “childless cat ladies.” In a statement to CNN, Kerstin praised Harris as a “co-parent.”

Harris, who had just wrapped up a rally in nearby Milwaukee, had entered Chicago airspace aboard Air Force Two when Emhoff’s speech began. The plane circled the tarmac for about 10 minutes so she could finish watching his speech. Senior campaign leaders in the front cabin applauded and cheered, “Doug! Doug! Doug!” as he concluded.

A photo posted to social media Tuesday night showed Harris sitting in the airplane cabin, watching her husband’s speech on a laptop resting on her lap.

“Love you, Dougie,” she wrote.

The two will celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary on Thursday, the day Harris officially accepts the Democratic Party’s nomination for president.

The South Florida Democrat who previously held the title of first Ecuadorian American in Congress has defeated her primary challengers as she seeks the seat currently held by Republican Sen. Rick Scott.

Former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell was projected to win the Democrat primary on Tuesday evening, according to the Associated Press.

Scott, won his own contested race Tuesday, has led Mucarsel-Powell in a likely matchup by mid single-digits in recent polls.

Biden has endorsed Mucarsel-Powell, previously referring to her as Florida’s “next U.S. senator.”

President Biden endorsed former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images/File)

Mucarsel-Powell immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager and won the Florida Keys-centric seat currently held by Rep. Carlos Gimenez, R-Fla., for one term in 2018.

She previously worked in the nonprofit sector.

President Biden (Samuel Corum/AFP via Getty Images/File)

Her challenger, Stanley Campbell, appeared to focus his campaign directly on Scott, expressing confidence he would win the nomination.

“I’m going to beat Rick Scott like he stole something,” Campbell said during a recent visit to a Baptist church, according to the Florida Phoenix.

FLASHBACK: GOP FLIPS FLORIDA CONGRESSIONAL SEAT, SPEAKING TO DEMOCRAT STRUGGLES IN SOUTHERN TIP OF STATE

He has criticized the fact that many Democrats were already calling Mucarsel-Powell the “nominee” prior to Tuesday’s contest, the outlet reported.

Veteran and community organizer Rod Joseph highlighted his military service on his campaign website and said he had been nicknamed “The Truth” for “steadfast adherence to honesty and integrity.”

A native of Haiti, Joseph said on his campaign website he wanted to ensure access to quality health care and champion criminal justice reform as “cornerstone[s]” of his mission to “foster equality, justice and opportunity for all.”