Maureen Dowd: It’s going to be a very ugly slugfest between the Unserious Man and the Untested Woman

I have a crow in my backyard in Washington, DC, that has been cawing for three weeks. It has been driving me crazy, so I was happy to get out of town and back on the trail.
But now comes Donald Trump cawing and cawing even louder than the damn crow.
If you need more evidence that Trump is flummoxed about how to counter Kamala Harris, just check out his daffy reaction to her dynamite convention.
Friday morning, Trump crowed on Truth Social: “My administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights.”
Friday evening, Trump crowed: “The Republican Party is charging forward on many fronts, and I am very proud that we are a LEADER on IVF.”
Yeah, a leader in trying to get rid of it.
At first, I thought there must have been an Iranian hack. These posts were too ridiculous even for Trump. His modus vivendi is projection, but the posts seemed intended to back up Harris’ line in her big speech that, when it comes to women’s reproductive rights, Trump and JD Vance are simply “out of their minds”.
Trump is usually crowing, after all, about the three conservative justices he put on the Supreme Court who would overturn Roe. If he gets back in the Oval, he’ll probably put yet another religious fanatic in the court who will try to foist some other horrible legal restriction on the country.
And the worst part about it is that Trump is not even a true believer. He was pro-choice rights long before he decided to run for president as a Republican. The amoral man who was once a famously promiscuous New York playboy wrecked the Supreme Court simply because it helped him with his Christian right disciples.
Harris ridiculed Trump in her speech, dismissing him as “an unserious man,” but the real dagger in his heart was that she trumped him in the ratings. That set off a meshuga meltdown on Truth Social, with Trump maniacally capitalising any piffle that entered his head.
When Harris came out onstage, looking strong and elegant in a Chloé navy pantsuit, Trump demanded: “WHERE’S HUNTER?”
Then he accused Tim Walz of resume enhancement for his role on a high school football team. “Walz was an ASSISTANT Coach, not a COACH.”
Ripping defensive coordinators is not a good strategy for running up the vote in “Friday Night Lights” territory.
He followed up the posts with a scream-of-consciousness call to Fox News, filibustering Bret Baier and Martha McCallum for 10 minutes until Baier abruptly cut him off to throw to the Greg Gutfeld comedy show.
“At several points during the call, a familiar beeping sound interrupted Mr Trump’s remarks,” wrote the New York Times’ Michael Grynbaum and Michael Gold. “It appeared that the former president was accidentally pressing buttons on the keypad of his phone.”
Trump conceded that the Democrats had “a nice-looking room” for their convention.
Friday was another day of lunacy, as Robert F Kennedy jnr – the anti-vaxxer – dropped out and endorsed Trump, who once proclaimed himself “father of the vaccine” for Covid-19. In Phoenix, RFK jnr gave an incoherent speech that went from contaminated food to media collusion and censorship to Democrats being the party of “big money”. (That last, even though he chose a billionaire as a running mate, got millions from a billionaire, and is endorsing a billionaire.)
Among other delusional statements, RFK jnr said he could still somehow win and end up in the White House. He said his former party “abandoned democracy” by swapping Joe Biden for Harris, even as he gave his backing to a man who tried to overthrow the democracy he was running.
At an evening rally with Trump in Glendale, Arizona, Kennedy said, without irony, that Trump would protect us from totalitarianism. The fast-food champion praised Kennedy, saying he wanted to clean up the food supply.
Trump loves being embraced by a Kennedy – even an off-kilter one. But the former president’s motto is more like: “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for me.”
Kennedy brought up his father and uncle during his announcement, and his other relatives must have been mortified.
RFK jnr’s cousin and John F Kennedy’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, a convention speaker, commented on social network X: “Never been less surprised in my life. Been saying it for over a year – RFK jnr is for sale, works for Trump. Bedfellows and loving it.”
At an event in Las Vegas on Friday to tout his no-tax-on-tips policy, Trump continued his obsessive critique of Harris’ performance while still mispronouncing her name, and saying that she had mentioned his name 21 times in her speech. (Trump’s name actually appeared 16 times, but everyone knows he can’t help inflating numbers.)
“She lied,” he said. “But that’s okay because a lot of people lie. They’ll do anything to get elected.”
Well, he should know.
“She’s a copycat,” he said. “She’s a flip-flopper.”
Well, he should know.
Now we begin what is going to be a very ugly slugfest between the Unserious Man and the Untested Woman.
Top Democrats warn that Trump could still be formidable if he stops unravelling.
Harris came across as tough talking about the military and foreign policy in her speech. But there are many tests yet to come – including vicious Trump attack lines, eventually a difficult interview and next month’s debate. She has to show she has what it takes once she steps away from the teleprompter. Can she manage to get through a minimum of policy stuff with no viral blunders?
Harris holds the hopes of a lot of people in this country who are praying that she doesn’t fall on her face in the next 10 weeks.
She can take heart that she’s driving Trump crazy. He is jealous of her looks, her crowd sizes, her star power and her vivacious, bodacious vibes. That’s a good start. – This article originally appeared in the New York Times