It’s Almost Worse When Trump Tries to Be Normal

Trump? Acting normal? It’s rare, but when it happens, it’s dangerous.

On a special episode of The New Abnormal responding to the final presidential debate, Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson are joined by Daily Beast senior editor Tim Teeman, Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), who is here to outline the fight against voter intimidation at the polls, and TNA fave, GOP political consultant Mike Madrid.

Molly was aghast at Trump’s almost normal debate performance. “It’s almost worse when Trump tries to be normal than when Trump is just insane,” she said. “When he acts like a normal president… then you have constantly fact check him in a way that you don’t when he’s just huffing and puffing and screaming.”

Madrid, a veteran Republican pollster now working with the Lincoln Project, said Trump’s relative calm on stage means he can’t be counted out of the race yet. “If he had just blown his top and set his hair on fire and started stomping on his feet, then we’d be like, OK, it’s done,” he said. “He can lie in different gears.”

But Rick is not convinced that Trump did enough to turn it around. “My theory of the case going in was that Trump needed an absolute knockout, absolutely needed to slaughter Joe Biden on that stage tonight. And I don’t think he got there. I don’t think he even got close to getting there,” he said.

Away from the debate stage, Tim Teeman joined the gang to discuss the Trump campaign’s last gasp “gaslighting” effort to court LGBTQ voters by claiming Trump had been an ally all along. “I don't know about Donald Trump’s personal bigotry, but it doesn’t matter if he’s a bigot personally or not,” he said. “He’s advancing a course of bigotry for his own ends. And that honestly makes him just as dangerous as the bigot with a pair of keys in their fist, ready to punch you in the face on the street.”

Listen to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher.