Like we've been saying, he's not the same Trump

From our ongoing "why is this not a bigger story?" series:

 

Breaking it down: People in Trump's camp give three primary reasons he's hitting the road less this time, Axios' Sophia Cai reports:

1. He's a known quantity. The campaign feels less need to define him or his candidacy for voters this time around.
2. Rallies are expensive. Trump's campaign managers this cycle are keeping a closer hold on the purse strings.
3. He's older, and more inclined to spend his time at Mar-a-Lago.

The first two reasons don't make a great deal of sense. Trump may be a known quantity, but he's a known quantity who is either tied or running behind at this point in the race. It is entirely possible that he will outperform the polls as he did before or that things will break in his favor over the next few weeks, but arguing that he can simply coast from here is absurd.

The second reason is even sillier. Rallies are not that expensive and they can be a huge bargain relative to other options for getting a candidate's message out. Trump has no ground operation to speak of and a large television advertising buy at this point in the season would be far more expensive. Rallies energize the base, they help drive get out the vote pushes, and they generate tons of earned media. The Trump campaign may be at a financial disadvantage, but rallies should be the very last thing they cut.

Only the third reason is believable and it's also the one with the biggest implications. (The lede was definitely buried on the story.)

In terms of surprise, what's shocking here is that people with the Trump campaign are coming out and admitting that Trump is too old to campaign the way he used to. They try to couch it in milder terms, framing the decision as a preference, but this is a man whose best chance of avoiding prison is winning the upcoming election. Even with that level of motivation, he is still campaigning at around a third the level he previously did.

In terms of newsworthiness, what's important here is what has been important with this story four months. The Trump campaign has been pursuing a level of rallies and events so low as to defy any explanation other than some form of personal or organizational dysfunction. Either he couldn't or he wouldn't. One possibility leads to questions about age and capability; the other leads to questions about stability and mental state.

Trump and Biden both are showing clear signs of their age. It is true that these signs are different for the two men, but not to the extent that you can honestly claim to see them with one and not with the other. It is often said that Trump has a higher energy level, but that's not exactly true. Biden has certainly slowed down in the way he moves, talks, and probably thinks. His stammer is starting to return and he is somewhat more likely to struggle for or confuse names.

With Trump, things get a bit more complicated. As comic and writer Josh Johnson has observed, the key to understanding Donald Trump is to think of him primarily as an entertainer, and like most entertainers, he feeds off the energy of the crowd. As long as people around him are laughing and cheering and making him the center of attention, the adrenaline will keep flowing. I strongly suspect this is one of if not the main reason he keeps gravitating toward off message lines that get a big reliable response from the audience. The crowd is like a drug not just with the highs but with the crashes. Take away the adulation and stimulation, and he will often be unable to stay awake, even in situations where sleep is wholly inappropriate.

It is important not to mistake energy for acuity, or the lack of one for the lack of the other. Though it took him a little longer, Joe Biden could answer highly detailed questions about foreign policy from reporters and conduct complex face-to-face negotiations with world leaders. While Trump might not of been able to do that even in his prime, comparing debate performances and interviews from eight years ago and now reveals a man who is far more easily distracted and prone toward extended incoherence. In a story uncovered by a New York Times reporter but largely ignored by the paper, a few months ago Trump met with business leaders who either supported him are inclined to do so. Coming out of the meeting, most of those who were willing to comment talked about his inability to maintain a train of thought.

Yes, it's true that part of the huge gap between coverage of Biden's age and coverage of trumps age can be explained by the different ways they manifested themselves, but the main cause of the disparity was because reporters and more to the point editors chose to ignore half of the story. They saw a man who could not stay awake during his own criminal trial and decided that was a 24 hour below the fold story. They heard a man confuse people and events and then, rather than catching himself, continue making the same mistake often for minutes at a time. They heard him "remembering" things that never happened like the audience response to a debate that had no audience. Reporters who had in past Trump campaigns covered or at least done rewrites on multiple rallies in the same day now saw schedules with one event a week.

They had to notice. Except for a few rookies, everyone who covered 2020 or 2016 had to be aware that the Republican nominee was aging visibly, was showing less stamina, and was clearly in cognitive decline. There was simply no way for someone to be deeply involved in one of those past campaigns and the current one and not know that something was different.

While she was sending nude selfies to RFK Junior, Olivia Nuzzi famously claimed there was a conspiracy of silence around Joe Biden's aging despite it being one of the most over covered stories of the decade and there being a mere moratorium on stories about Trump's decline. After Kennedy had officially signed on with the GOP team and lined himself up a role in a future administration, while still carrying on the affair, Nuzzi wrote another piece for New York magazine explaining what a sane, thoughtful, and coherent fellow Donald Trump was. Because of her sexting scandal, people are reviewing those articles with a more critical eye. Now we just need to do that with all the other reporters who committed the same journalistic sins.