"President Trump" seems to be overwhelmed by the job... and he hasn't even been elected yet.
First of all, so many members of Trump's own party were afraid to be associated with him that they made up excuses for skipping his convention next week, from mowing their lawns to going on fly-fishing trips.
So Trump's team had to scramble to get someone, anyone, to speak at the convention. What they ended up with was a ragtag list of Trump's business friends, the few vanquished primary rivals willing to show, a handful of members of Congress and miscellaneous minor celebrities and athletes.
One big name on the list -- a real get, at least by this convention's low standards -- was NFL quarterback Tim Tebow. Wait....what? He's not coming. It was the first he'd heard of it, even though his name appeared on an official convention list.
Trump's planned "winners' evening" stocked with sports heroes seemed less and less winning.
Trump told the Washington Examiner that Religious Right megastar Franklin Graham would be speaking at the convention -- another big get! Turns out that was also wrong. As a consolation prize, Trump did get another son of a famous evangelist, Jerry Falwell Jr. While Graham has been traveling the country drawing crowds to rallies he leads, Falwell has mostly been in the news for embarrassingly kowtowing to Trump.
And then there was the news that the convention's organizers were begging a wealthy donor for the $6 million shortfall they were facing after sponsors pulled out of the event because of Trump.
By Monday, we'll see if he can make this convention great again.
But all this mess is nothing compared to Trump's search for someone to be his vice presidential running mate.
Plenty of potential vice presidential picks said right off the bat that they weren't interested in serving with Trump. Eventually, Trump seemed to settle on four men who could back up his extreme policies without threatening to steal his spotlight: Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, fiercely anti-immigrant Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions and long-ago House Speaker Newt Gingrich. As if these four hadn't already embarrassed themselves enough by being willing to serve as Trump's number-two, he then made them go through last-minute tryouts with his family on Wednesday while their plane was stuck in Indiana with a flat tire.
Then -- finally --Trump's campaign leaked to a reporter yesterday that he had chosen Pence. A couple hours later, though, campaign sources were telling reporters that Trump hadn't actually made up his mind. Then, after a brutal terrorist attack hit Nice, France, Trump announced that he was postponing his vice presidential announcement from Friday morning to Saturday morning. Then, this morning, he went ahead and announced his decision anyway, writing on Twitter that he had picked Pence.
Even that was apparently a last-minute and reluctant decision: CNN's Dana Bash reports that Trump was so unsure about his Pence pick that he asked his aides at midnight last night if he could "get out of it"after he'd formally offered the job to Pence.
All of this before the convention even starts. Who's ready for the Trump presidency?
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