Donald Trump hurled racist insults at Kamala Harris and quarreled with a panel of Black journalists, and one of his former staffers suspects he staged the meltdown to drum up media attention for his suddenly flagging campaign.
The former president has grown accustomed to dominating the news cycle, but he has taken a back seat less than three weeks from an assassination attempt after president Joe Biden stepped aside and put Harris in the spotlight, and former White House communications director Mike Dubke said he made a spectacle of himself on purpose.
"I think what he's getting at, or where the campaign is right now, is they've had a week of this Harris mania that's been going on, and Donald Trump's trying to get back into the conversation," Dubke said. "One of the ways he knows to get back into the conversation is to say things that are going to we picked up on cable news and especially saying things in front of a Black journalists audience that are going to be picked up and make news, so I think part of this is really getting back in front of the cameras and being relevant to the campaign again after the news media has shifted focus."
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Trump was combative from the start, calling ABC News reporter Rachel Scott's probing first question on race "horrible," and he lashed out at event organizers and blamed them for a late start before claiming that Harris "happened to become Black" after highlighting her Indian heritage.
"He had a pretty good month, June July, and then we had the switch of candidates and he took a back seat," Dubke said. "Now I think he's trying to get back into the driver's seat, driver's lane."
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