This is an adapted excerpt from the Aug. 15 episode of "Morning Joe."
Former President Donald Trump and Sen. JD Vance of Ohio versus Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is literally the campaign of yesterday versus tomorrow.
Trump has a tired, 20-year-old act. He updates it with some new figures from the past two or three years, but, at its core, it’s the same.
On Wednesday, we saw Trump deliver what was supposed to be a speech about the economy. Instead, he stood there and claimed the United States was a Third World country. I don’t know anyone who believes that.
Trump’s co-campaign managers, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, are extremely good at what they do. But that skill doesn’t matter when it seems they have lost control of their candidate.
Trump has a tired, 20-year-old act. He updates it with some new figures from the past two or three years, but, at its core, it’s the same: The election was stolen. We’re a Third World country. Crime is up. Immigrants are going to attack your children — all sorts of fear factors.
And a lot of that act comes with huge, ugly racial overtones — especially in regard to the vice president.
It makes you wonder: How long will it be before he really gets out of control?
How long will it be before he really gets out of control?
I think that’s going to happen at the debate. He’ll be in the ring with Harris, the vice president of the United States, a very sophisticated, very intelligent woman, and she will hammer him like a prosecutor. She won’t let him off the hook.
In that moment, something may snap in him. And that’ll be it.