Sorry, Foxies, Donald “my crowd size is bigger” Trump is not going to change. You should know that by now.

Fox Newsies know that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are not just surging but that their favorite p***y grabber is blowing it. Sure, there are some valiant MAGA efforts to pretend otherwise. But there’s a heck of a lot of on-air hints to and blatant imploring of their top fan to cut out the personal attacks and grievances and – well, look presidential. Talk about deep denial!

Media Matters’ Matt Gertz wrote about this yesterday:

Trump’s unhinged temperament and his predilection for racist invective were well-documented throughout his 2016 and 2020 campaigns and his presidency, making it puzzling how his avowed financial and campaign supporters are apparently caught off-guard by such behavior this late in his third run.

I would argue that it’s because they all thought Trump was on a glide path to win and they never expected Harris and Walz to be such good candidates. But I digress.

Gertz noted that on August 2, Tomi Lahren joined Sean Hannity to advise Trump to “stay on track, hit [Harris] with her policies first and make that your sole message … They’re smart enough, they just have to maybe have a little bit of discipline for the next few months.” Hannity agreed, saying, “No more talk about religion. I wouldn’t be talking about nationality or background. I would be talking about Kamala in her own words.”

Since then, the parade of pleaders has just gotten longer.

Tonight, on MSNBC, Chris Hayes noted that the “Trump will turn presidential” delusion has been going on for nearly 10 years. “He has been doing the exact same schtick since 2015,” Hayes said, though he is obviously deteriorating now.

Hayes followed up with clips of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Fox saying, “you’ve got to make this race not on personalities. Stop questioning the size of (Harris’) crowds and start questioning her position[s]."

We also saw former Trump adviser and current Fox Business host Larry Kudlow saying, “Don’t wander off, don’t call her stupid and all kinds of names. Stay on message!” His guest, former Trump adviser and current Fox News contributor Kellyanne Conway, added, “The winning formula for President Trump is very plain to see. It’s fewer insults, more insight and that policy contrast.”

This evening, former Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley took her turn. Special Report anchor Bret Baier began by playing a clip of Haley predicting that Joe Biden would not be the nominee. If Donald Trump is the nominee, she said, “we will see a President Kamala Harris.” However that was followed by Haley giving her “strong endorsement” to Trump later.

Haley made it sound as if the country would fall apart under a Harris-Walz administration. But her real, underlying message was clearly that the Trump campaign is falling apart:

HALEY: What I will tell you is the Republican Party needs to make a serious shift here, and the first thing is the Republican Party, Donald Trump, people here at Fox, quit complaining that [Harris] is not giving an interview. You don't need an interview from Kamala Harris. I take her at her word. I take her at her word that she wants to raise taxes for households over $100,000, that she wants to add a pharmaceutical tax and a health care tax. I take her at her word that she thinks that illegal immigrants should be able to vote and be given driver's licenses. I take her at her word that she wants to ban fracking and kill a bunch of U.S. jobs.

…

Now, what Donald Trump needs to do is go out there and campaign every single day, telling the American people exactly what Kamala Harris has said. We are 80+ days out. We need him to win, but you got to go out and do the work. And the one thing Republicans have to stop doing: Quit whining about her.

…

I want this campaign to win, but the campaign is not going to win talking about crowd sizes, it's not going to win talking about what race Kamala Harris is. It's not going to win talking about whether she's dumb.

…

I think the campaign needs to focus. That’s the main thing.

Baier responded to all this by “asking” if “they” knew all along that Biden was not going to be nominee and that “it was designed this way.” Which is also exactly what is wrong with the Trump campaign: They just can't stop smearing.

Haley waved that away. “I don’t know, and I don’t think it matters. We're in a knife fight right now. Right now, we need to be focused on who we need to be.”

But Haley said she always thought Biden was not up to the job, or at least a second term. “It’s the reason why I said we should have mental competency tests. That wasn't just a campaign slogan or a joke. I was very serious about the fact that we needed mental competency tests for anyone over the age of 75,” she continued.

I’d be willing to accept all that were it not for the fact that 78-year-old Trump is so obviously not competent and not up to the job. Yet Haley is eager, if not desperate, for him to be president.

HALEY: I think what [Americans] want is someone who's going to care about them. They want someone who is focused. They want someone who is going to talk about the status of education right now in this country, and that our kids are getting dumber, not smarter. They want someone to talk about home ownership and how hard it is to own a home. They want someone to talk about the fact that prices have gone up 19% and they can't do anything about it. They want someone to talk about how we're going to prevent war.

BAIER: Is Donald Trump that someone?

HALEY: He can be, and I want him to be.

Sorry, Haley. Trump is never going to be that someone, no matter how much you want him to be.

You can watch the MAGA delusions about Trump below, from MSNBC’s August 13, 2024 All In with Chris Hayes and Fox News’ August 13, 2024 Special Report.