Donald Trump is an old man who rambles, lies and says ridiculous things. He couldn’t even get through a town hall this week – he stopped the event and swayed to music, on stage, for over 30 minutes. He refuses to release his medical records or undergo a real physical with a real doctor. His makeup keeps getting darker and less blended. He was terrified of debating Kamala Harris again because she wiped the floor with him. He keeps scheduling interviews and events and then canceling at the last minute. He refused to do a scheduled 60 Minutes interview. He backed out of MSNBC and CNBC interviews. And yet there is basically zero appetite within the mainstream media to make any of this into a larger conversation about Trump’s lack of mental acuity or his age and health. Well, finally, Politico is pointing out that Trump has canceled a lot of appearances lately, and apparently his team has cited “exhaustion” as the reason.
“Trump World in Talks With Nikki Haley for 11th Hour Joint Campaign Event,” by The Bulwark’s Marc Caputo: “The details and dates for the joint appearance haven’t been fully worked out, but the likeliest scenario would put [DONALD TRUMP and NIKKI HALEY] together at a town hall toward the end of the month, perhaps involving Fox News personality SEAN HANNITY.”
Recently, it’s become something of a pattern: Trump is scheduled for an interview with a neutral media outlet, the date nears and then … things fall apart. It happened just this week to planned Trump sit-downs with NBC in Philadelphia and CNBC’s “Squawk Box” — and that’s on the heels of him backing out of a “60 Minutes” episode earlier this month.
Why does this keep happening? Playbook has learned that yet another outlet was given an explanation by Trump’s team for why their own interview wasn’t coming to fruition: exhaustion.
The Trump campaign had been in conversations for weeks with The Shade Room about a sit-down interview. The site, which draws an audience that is largely young and Black, hosted an interview with Harris just last week. But as no interview materialized, Shade Room staff began feeling that feet were being dragged inside Trump’s campaign. No date was ever set, we’re told, but the intention was to try and work toward a sit-down.
In a conversation earlier this week, when describing why an interview hadn’t come together just yet, a Trump adviser told The Shade Room producers that Trump was “exhausted and refusing [some] interviews but that could change” at any time, according to two people familiar with the conversations.
I mean, Trump looks like bedraggled ass, but he’s looked horrible for years. It would not surprise me at all if Trump does not have the stamina to campaign part-time. It would not surprise me at all if Trump is scared and alone and surrounded by horrible people who are using him for their agendas.
Meanwhile, Judge Chutkan has rejected the Trump team’s attempt to keep the January 6th case filed under seal until after the election. The files should be released later today. Will this be the October Surprise? We really haven’t had one so far.
BREAKING:
Judge Chutkan DENIES Trump’s motion to pause the unsealing of Jack Smith’s appendix to his immunity brief. pic.twitter.com/EOFrlQy0Ef
— Adam Klasfeld (@KlasfeldReports) October 17, 2024
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.