Olivia Nuzzi has a long profile in New York of Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign. She builds an extensive metaphor around Trump as Norma Desmond in the film Sunset Boulevard (which is one of Trump’s favorite films and which he still watches repeatedly at Mar-a-Lago). The fact that Trump openly expresses his devotion to both Citizen Kane and Sunset Boulevard suggests that, somewhere in Trump’s mind, he is consciously or unconsciously in on the joke.
Stripped of its cattiness, its rhetorical flourishes, and its left-leaning assumptions, Nuzzi’s central point is consistent with what we can observe and what has been reported by everyone who cares to pay attention: Trump is doing none of the things we would associate with a real presidential campaign — even compared with his previous ones. He spends nearly all of his time at Mar-a-Lago or his golf resort near Miami, he spent the first month after announcing his campaign in Florida, and he has surrounded himself with buffoons and hangers-on who are far from serious about public policy or electoral politics. With even family members such as Ivanka having distanced themselves from his latest run, and a conspicuously limited slate of endorsements, Trump’s world and his campaign seem smaller than ever.
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