In a profoundly Donald Trump move, the Trump campaign has already emailed backers to brag about the US President’s performance in today’s landmark Presidential Debate against Democratic opponent Joe Biden. Ya know, the debate that hasn’t started yet.
The campaign email reportedly went out by mistake (editor’s note: “mistake” yeah sure) at 6:30pm US Eastern time. Which just-so-happened to be two-and-a-half hours before the debate begins at 9pm (11am AET, for those of you keeping score in your Australian home).
A copy of the email was published to social media, revealing the brick subtle subject line “I finished debating Joe Biden.” The body of the email then goes on a run of past-tense bragging in the first person about Trump’s supposed performance in the (still yet to begin, we stress again) debate.
“This debate will go down in HISTORY,” the email reads, taking a page out of the Daily Mail’s dumbass playbook of inserting RANDOM all-caps words into headlines. “I showed the American people that I will ALWAYS fight to put America First no matter what and that I will NEVER stop working to Make America Great Again.”
Not content to yield there, the personally-addressed email then leans heavily on the shame train by talking down to the recipient for daring to not donate to the Trump campaign’s coffers.
“I know the Fake News media will only report LIES about the debate and how STRONG our movement is, which is why I was really disappointed to see that you chose not to step up and help make TODAY our BEST fundraising day EVER.”
Hours before the debate, a Trump camp email goes out: “I just finished debating Joe Biden.” pic.twitter.com/4OHQLmLDv9
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) September 29, 2020
While commentary surrounding the supposed error has largely been about sloppiness in campaign organising, issuing material like this ahead of time also happens to neatly fit into the Trump ethos. Setting the narrative early, on his own terms, consequences be damned. Forcing opposition to chase the trail. Moving onto the next wild claim by the time they’ve caught up.
But still, this is probably just some campaign intern making a harmless, non-tactical error.
Probably.
You’d hope, at least.
Today’s Presidential debate begins at 11am AET. You can cop everything you’ll need to know about it right here.
