Okay, I’m convinced. There is absolutely nothing left to be said about this election. Stop trying, Tiger Beat on the Potomac. For the love of God, stop trying so hard!!!!

On Wednesday, the former president* dressed up like a traffic cone, his orange vest clashing grotesquely with the orange of his face. He thereupon nearly killed himself trying to open the door to a fake garbage truck he’d hired for a stunt. He showed up for a rally still wearing the orange doublet and then gave a speech to an audience made up of people who’d apparently spent too much time at the complimentary all-U-can-eat Haldol buffet. During the speech, he said the following:

“I said, ‘Well, I’m going to do it, whether the women like it or not. I’m going to protect them.’ ”

So that, to me, is a pretty awful three or four hours for a presidential campaign. However, I am not part of the juice-box escadrille at TBOTP. Here is its assessment of the same three or four hours.

Who won the day? Trump—Trump won the day because he forced Harris to do cleanup—and then changed the subject.

Please, do go on.

For Harris on Wednesday, that meant contending with Joe Biden’s controversial comments that the “only garbage I see floating out there is his supporter’s—his—his demonization of Latinos is unconscionable, and it’s un-American,” according to a White House transcript, which included an apostrophe in “supporter’s”—while Republicans accused Biden of saying “supporters.”

This, of course, was arrant bullshit when it wasn’t howling hypocrisy. But do continue—I am keen to hear more.

Harris spent much of the day playing cleanup, saying she disagreed “with any criticism of people based on who they vote for.” It stepped on her closing message she delivered the night before to a crowd of 75,000 supporters at The Ellipse. “You heard my speech last night and continuously throughout my career,” she said. “I believe that the work that I do is about representing all the people, whether they support me or not. And as president of the United States, I will be a president for all Americans, whether you vote for me or not.”

Did her “closing message” seem “stepped on” to you? Did it seem that way to anyone outside of the Chuck E. Cheese ball pit that is the TBOTP newsroom?

Trump’s campaign spent much of the day kindling outrage, going so far as to take reporters’ questions in a garbage truck—itself an underscoring of Hinchcliffe’s racist joke. “How do you like my garbage truck?” he said. “This truck is in honor of Kamala and Joe Biden.” Biden isn’t running for president, of course. And the outrage poses a tension with both Trump’s comments that the nation suffers from “enemies within,” and his running mate JD Vance defending Trump’s rally by saying “we have to stop getting so offended” just days earlier.

Gee willikers, that sounds really bad. In the face of all the terrible visuals and creepy stalker-guy rhetoric, the former president* really must have rallied in the late innings in the same way the Dodgers did on Wednesday night in order to...“win the day (!)”

But for Trump, the controversy allowed him a pressure-release valve to change the subject from his rally. He won the day.

I am in awe.