Trump's clueless Univision town hall

We have officially entered the manic stage of the presidential election, in which the candidates are suddenly everywhere. At least Kamala Harris is everywhere. She's holding huge raucous rallies all over the swing states, appearing on podcasts and mainstream interviews, and even going on Fox News and subjecting herself to a barrage of hostile Trump-inspired accusations from anchor Bret Baier, who didn't seem to want her to actually answer them. (Harris showed she could not be intimidated, which was probably the point of the interview in the first place.) Nobody at this point should complain that she isn't available to the public. Just turn on your TV and you'll see her there.

Donald Trump is as present as always, holding loony rallies and posting crazy comments on Truth Social. Yet he is refusing to debate Harris again and has canceled numerous scheduled interviews this week. According to Tara Palmieri at Puck, Mar-a-Lago insiders say this is all because Trump is so certain he's going to win that he's just letting his freak flag fly. The campaign figures that Trump's "self-assurance" will create a bandwagon effect as voters decide to go with the winner. Republicans do love the bandwagon-effect strategy, but Trump is seemingly off his rocker in a way that doesn't easily read as "confident," except to the extent he may believe that his "election integrity" plans will ensure that he "wins" even if he doesn't.

Trump did do some events this week, but it would be an awfully big leap to say he showed self-assurance. There was the now-notorious swaying-to-the-music town hall event, which I've written about already. That appearance was so bizarre that it actually managed to dominate the conversation for a couple of days, which really says something amid this frenzied news cycle.