Racist talk at rally overshadows Trump’s message, but he scores on Joe Rogan’s podcast

It was a revealing moment for Donald Trump.

“When I say ‘enemy from within,’ the other side goes crazy.” he said on Sunday.

He’s right about that. I brought this up in an interview with Trump Tower last weekend, saying that the phrase seemed ominous, and his response that Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff were truly enemies and not just opponents was echoed throughout the media universe.

But driving the other side crazy is Trump’s specialty. When he declared at a rally in Madison Square Garden that the media was “the real enemy, the enemy of the people,” there was loud applause from a party that already despises and distrusts the press.

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A quick aside: The argument that Trump shouldn’t have in the garden because the Nazis held a rally there in 1939 – it’s funny. Two years later, Roosevelt held an event there and Democrats held their nominating conventions there. This is where I watched many Knicks games and the George Harrison concert. And Billy Joel has been selling out the arena for years.)

Trump knows how to rile up the media by reigniting the debate over whether they should cover his over-the-top rhetoric or simply normalize him.

In our interview at Mar-a-Lago a few months ago, the former president admitted to me that at times he deliberately uses incendiary language to make news stories. Remember, even negative coverage helps him dominate the headlines.

And if you think he hasn’t been intimidated by media companies, look at the disingenuous decisions of Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and Los Angeles Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong will abandon his support for Kamala Harris in favor of a stance of disapproval that apparently helps Trump. Two columnists, including Michelle Norris, left the Post, three top editors left the Times, and both papers canceled thousands of subscriptions.

Trump’s speech at the Garden was almost completely overshadowed by what came before it. Comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico a “floating pile of rubbish.” He joked about Jews being cheap and that he and his black friend were “cutting watermelons.”

“These Latinos also love to have children. Just know that they are doing it,” Hinchcliffe said. “There is no way out. They don’t. They are coming inside, just like our country.”

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It got to the point where Trump spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt said on Fox yesterday morning: “Look, this was a comedian who made a joke that was in poor taste. “Obviously, this joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or our campaign.”

The Trump camp soon said it had not verified what Hinchcliffe had to say. If this is true, then it was a big mistake.

But it wasn’t just the comedian. Conservative New York radio host Sid Rosenberg spoke at a rally about “fucking illegals” and also called Hillary Clinton “sick son of a bitch” and “Jew hater.” A friend of Trump called Kamala Harris the “anti-Christ.”

Now Trump didn’t say any of this, but he didn’t try to distance himself, either by saying, for example, that he didn’t agree with everything that was said.

New York Times News the story was in the headline “Trump in the Garden: The Final Carnival of Grievances, Misogyny and Racism.”

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And that gave Kamala Harris an opportunity. She said the rally “underscored the point I was making… He is focused and actually fixated on his grievances, on himself and on the division of our country.”

Meanwhile, Trump pulled off an absolute coup by holding a three-hour meeting with Joe Rogan.

Of course, at times he rambled about whales and aliens. But the podcast received 33 million views, and the audience was largely male and predominantly young. That’s far more than a candidate could achieve by appearing on several top-rated cable news shows.

Many believe the session helped humanize Trump, and Rogan told him he gets endless publicity because he says “weird shit.” It was clearly a sympathetic conversation, and Rogan said the media was the “propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.”

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Harris was also in talks to do Rogan’s podcast on Spotify, and he said she was welcome there, but if he wanted her, she would record the show today. To save face, she then announced that she had scheduling problems. Instead, Harris made a Brené Brown foodcast, which clearly appeals to women. The Vice President needs to improve her gender gap among men.

A week before the election, every message and mistake matters. And every day you play defense is a missed opportunity.