By Sarah Fortinsky - 08/13/24

Democratic strategist Van Jones said Monday that former President Trump is “freaked out” that he’s not getting as much press attention as Vice President Harris and is responding by sharpening his rhetoric about the threat he says his political opponents would pose to the country.

“He’s failing and flailing. Listen, they’re saying that these are the worst three weeks of his campaign,” Jones, a CNN contributor, said Monday in an interview with Anderson Cooper. “That’s what the press is saying.”

“This is the year in which he got indicted, convicted, and shot at — and actually hit — by a bullet and none of that to him is as bad as possibly not getting as much attention as Kamala,” he added.

Trump returned to the social media X on Monday for an interview with owner Elon Musk on the Spaces platform. Earlier in the day, he posted a video on X that described the election as “the final battle” and pledged to “liberate America from these villains once and for all.”

Jones suggested that Trump’s darker message is likely a response to the enthusiasm boost that Harris’s campaign has seen in the last couple of weeks and the subsequent media attention she has gotten.

“Like that’s the only thing that’s happened,” Jones said, “is that he’s just not getting as much attention as Kamala Harris.”

“He is more freaked out about that than you know being a convicted crook and someone who almost got killed, so that lets you know the level of narcissistic challenge that we have here,” he added.

The comments also come as Trump has increasingly focused on the crowd sizes at Harris’s rallies. The former president even accused the vice president, without evidence, of using artificial intelligence to inflate her crowd sizes.

The Hill has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.