Handfuls of pebbles and dust

I have been hard on the New York Times lately, especially for their coverage of Joe Biden.  Even before Biden’s disastrous performance in his debate with Trump in June, the Times was writing about Biden’s age as if it was the issue Republicans were then attempting to turn it into.  After the debate, the Times went after Biden with brutal series of leaks and whispers about the man and his campaign in much the same way they did to the Clintons when somebody turned up a real estate transaction in Arkansas with their names on it, and “Whitewater” was born. 

The transaction wasn’t crooked, they lost money on the land deal, but it was a crack in the door of the life the Clintons had lived when he was governor of Arkansas, and the Times sent a platoon of investigators through that door looking for dirt until a special counsel was appointed two years later, and four years after that, the special counsel, Kenneth Starr, testified at the impeachment of President Clinton for the “sex scandal” Starr had uncovered in his search for the Whitewater dirt on the Clintons he never found.

After Biden dropped out and Kamala Harris became the nominee and hit the campaign trail, the worm has turned at the New York Times.  With Donald Trump flailing around like a spastic squirrel trying to find his hidden stash of nuts, the Times has finally begun to dig into its vault of access journalism and is turning up a few nuts of its own.

Yesterday, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, the top Trump Whisperers at the Times, weighed in with a piece dissecting Trump as if he were laid out like a dead frog in a high school biology lab.  They picked up their phones after a recent fund raiser for Trump in the Hamptons and started looking for someone to talk.  The first indication that the Trump campaign is in big trouble is that the Times Whisperers found sources willing to quote some of Trump’s remarks at the luxo-fund raiser, held under an airconditioned tent in the backyard of a Wall Street executive by the name of Howard Lutnick. 

I’ve been in a few Hamptons backyards in my day, and I can tell you that when air-conditioned tents are involved, rain doesn’t leak into them, and information doesn’t leak out.

What’s supposed to happen in Hamptons backyards is that the candidate mixes with the crowd attired in salmon-colored pants and pink polos with the collars turned up and presses the flesh and reassures them that all is okay so they keep stuffing friendly superpacs with big bucks.  Not Trump.  The Whisperers described him as on edge and angry that he had lost control of the narrative to someone, Kamala Harris, he frequently calls “nasty” and “a bitch,” according to sources quoted by the Times. 

Trump went into the Hamptons fundraiser already having started a feud with Miriam Adelson, one of his biggest fundraisers.  The Times named the aide who Trump had ordered to “fire off a series of angry text messages” to Adelson criticizing her for having hired “RINOs” to run her superpac, Preserve America, which she was using to pour millions into electing Trump. 

That sort of wording in a Times story indicates that the writers had seen the texts, which is another hint of the panic in the Trump campaign and its environs.  The Whisperers dug deeper and turned up another nugget, that the whole thing was caused by a feud between Adelson and another Trump fundraiser, “Ike Perlmutter, the former chairman of Marvel Entertainment, who had hoped in vain that Mrs. Adelson would contribute to a rival super PAC that he backs.”

When feuds start happening between bigwigs, leaks follow, and leaks are evidence that All is Not Well in Trumpworld. 

Sources at the Bridgehampton fundraiser described Trump in the same angry mood he is when he’s onstage at his rallies, name-calling and blaming others for the stiff winds he finds himself sailing into.  Trump’s reaction to his current political misfortune is classic:  He looks for the kind of easy political darts he usually finds to attack his opponents, and not finding them, is left picking up handfuls of pebbles and dust and throwing them not only at Democrats but fellow Republicans he suddenly identifies as disloyal and to blame for his troubles, such as Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia.

The New York Times has even noted, not without a touch of pain, that Democrats seem to be having fun while Republicans are angry and confused and riven by disagreement.

None of this will last, of course.  Trump will regain his footing, although it won’t be easy.  “I am who I am,” the Trump Whisperers quoted him as telling the zillionaires in Bridgehampton, who were described as hoping to find him “recalibrating after a series of damaging mistakes,” such as questioning the racial identity of his opponent.

I don’t know exactly how to describe what is indicated by a story in the New York Times like this one – the tide is turning, and the Times is turning with it?  Who knows.  Reading the tea leaves left at the bottom of the Times cup is always difficult and most of the time, you end up being wrong.  But something is up on Eighth Avenue, where they like winners, not losers.  And right now, they’re not finding much to like about the bankrupt campaign being run by the Bankrupter in Chief.