In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s carefully crafted public persona became a huge liability for her. Voters saw through the pandering and recognized her as a politician who would say anything to win. In contrast, Donald Trump’s appeal was rooted in his authenticity. Love him or hate him, Trump’s blunt, unpolished style resonated with Americans who were tired of the same old rehearsed talking points. To this day, he remains the most authentic politician we've ever seen.
I can still remember how after Trump won the election, there was a whole big thing about whether he would continue the tradition of getting a White House dog. Naturally, the mainstream media turned his decision not to get a dog into a controversy — as if there was something wrong with not wanting to get a dog. But once again, Trump's explanation spoke to his authenticity.
“I wouldn’t mind having one, honestly, but I don’t have any time," he explained. "How would I look walking a dog on the White House lawn? I don’t feel it. It feels a little phony to me.”
He was spot-on. Just look at what getting a dog for public relations purposes did for Joe Biden. He was forced to get rid of his dog Major after his aggression became a liability and replaced him with a new puppy. Unsurprisingly, the new dog showed the same aggressive behavior.
Fast forward to today, and the Harris-Walz ticket stands out as perhaps the most disingenuous campaign I’ve ever encountered. We’ve witnessed some real whoppers over the years — John Kerry’s notorious flip-flops, Barack Obama’s lofty claims of being a uniter, Hillary Clinton’s aforementioned phoniness, and Joe Biden’s self-proclaimed centrism. Yet somehow, this ticket manages to take disingenuousness to a whole new level.
There are the obvious policy flip-flops: Kamala Harris, who once championed the Green New Deal, pushed for fracking bans, supported gun control measures, decriminalized illegal immigration, and called for defunding the police, suddenly found herself as the presumptive Democratic nominee and pretended to oppose these radical left-wing positions. In a desperate bid to appear tough on border security, she even ran an ad featuring Trump’s border wall and staged a photo-op at the southern border, trying to convince voters that she’s serious about the issue.
But Kamala's phoniness goes to another level. In the wake of Hurricanes Helene and Milton, she has been desperately trying to pretend that she's managing the federal response. She has even staged phone calls with local Democratic officials to make it appear she's doing something, even though she has no actual role in the federal response and never has.
Then there’s her running mate, Tim Walz. Setting aside his well-documented fabrications about his personal and professional record that quickly became liabilities for the campaign, his recent pheasant hunting trip stands out as a classic photo-op gone awry. As the Harris-Walz campaign struggles to connect with male voters, Walz’s beta-male persona has become a notable obstacle. So what do they do? They take him off the campaign trail for a day and attempt to present him as an avid hunter. What a disaster that turned out to be.
It's a level of phoniness that you simply don't see from Trump. Has Trump ever gone hunting? I have no idea, but you don't see him going on blatantly staged hunting trips, either. Trump, for better or for worse, is Trump. What you see is what you get.
