Chatting with a relative this weekend, I felt a twinge of optimism about the presidential campaign.
Don’t worry, it was fleeting.
The relative in question voted for Donald Trump twice but her politics are anti-left, not MAGA. She worries about crime and inflation, as most of us do. She resents Joe Biden for not caring about the border. She loathes the pro-Hamas campus protesters.
But she was alarmed by what she heard on Saturday night.
She had Fox News on in the background as the network carried Trump’s latest rally live from New Jersey. And for the first time in years, she got to hear him speak at length, unfiltered. “He was ranting and raving!” she complained, taken aback.
Well, yes, I said. That’s sort of his thing.
Nick Catoggio is a staff writer at The Dispatch and is based in Texas. Prior to joining the company in 2022, he spent 16 years gradually alienating a populist readership at Hot Air. When Nick isn’t busy writing a daily newsletter on politics, he’s … probably planning the next day’s newsletter.
