It was a telling moment for Donald Trump.

“When I say ‘The enemy from within,’ the other side goes crazy,” he said Sunday.

He’s right about that. I raised the issue in our Trump Tower interview last weekend, saying that phrase seemed threatening, and his response – that Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff are actually enemies, not just adversaries – was picked up across the media universe.

But driving the other side crazy is a Trump specialty. When he said at the Madison Square Garden rally that the media was “the real enemy, the enemy of the people,” there were loud cheers from a party that already despises and distrusts the press.

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A brief digression: The argument that Trump shouldn’t have been in the garden because the Nazis held a rally there in 1939 is ridiculous. Two years later, FDR held an event there and Democrats held nominating conventions there. It is the place where I saw many Knicks games and a George Harrison concert. And Billy Joel has been selling out the arena for years.)

Trump knows how to anger the media and reignite the debate about whether they need to cover up his hyperbolic rhetoric or just normalize him.

In our Mar-a-Lago interview a few months ago, the former president admitted to me that he sometimes deliberately uses inflammatory language to drive news coverage. Remember: Even negative coverage helps it dominate the headlines.

Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump waves goodbye after a campaign rally at Madison Square Garden on October 27, 2024 in New York City. Trump concluded his campaign weekend in New York City with a guest list of speakers that included his Republican vice presidential nominee, U.S. Senator JD Vance (R-OH), Tesla CEO Elon Musk, UFC CEO Dana White and House Speaker Mike Johnson, among others nine days before election day. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

And if you think media companies won’t be intimidated by him, look at the disingenuous decisions of Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, and Patrrick Soon-Shiong, owner of the Los Angeles Times, who advocated for Kamala Harris Eliminate non-advocacy stance that obviously helps Trump. Two columnists, including Michelle Norris, have resigned from the Post, three top editors have left the Times and thousands of subscriptions have been canceled at both newspapers.

Trump’s speech at the Garden was almost entirely overshadowed by what came before it. One comedian, Tony Hinchcliffe, called Puerto Rico “a floating pile of trash.” He joked about Jewish people being cheap, and he and a black buddy carved “watermelons.”

“These Latinos also love having babies. They just need to know that they are doing it,” Hinchcliffe said. “There is no retreat. They don’t do that. They come in, just like they did in our country.”

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It got to the point where Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Fox yesterday morning: “Look, it was a comedian who made a tasteless joke. Obviously, this joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or our campaign.”

The Trump camp soon announced that it had not verified what Hinchcliffe would say. If that was true, it was a big mistake.

But it wasn’t just the comedian. Conservative New York radio host Sid Rosenberg spoke at the rally about “damn illegals” and also called Hillary Clinton a “sick son of a bitch” and a “Jew-hater.” A friend of Trump’s called Kamala Harris “the Antichrist.”

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump waves at a campaign rally at the Greensboro Coliseum on Tuesday, October 22, in Greensboro, North Carolina (AP/Alex Brandon)

Now Trump didn’t say anything about it, but he also made no attempt to distance himself by saying, for example, that he didn’t agree with everything that was said.

A New York Times news story was headlined “Trump at the Garden: A Final Carnival of Grievances, Misogyny and Racism.”

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And that gave Kamala Harris a chance. She said the rally “highlighted a point that I’ve been making…He’s focused and actually fixated on his grievances and himself and the division in our country.”

Meanwhile, Trump pulled off an absolute coup with a three-hour meeting with Joe Rogan.

Sure, he rambled sometimes and talked about whales and extraterrestrial aliens. But the podcast received 33 million views, and the audience was predominantly men, especially young men. That’s far more than a candidate would achieve by taking on multiple top-rated cable news shows.

Podcast host Joe Rogan told former President Trump he became so popular with Americans because of the “wild shit” he says. (Screenshots/The Joe Rogan Experience)

Many believe the session helped humanize Trump, and Rogan told him he was getting endless publicity for saying “weird shit.” It was an obviously friendly conversation, and Rogan said the media was “the propaganda arm of the Democratic Party.”

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Harris was also in talks to do Rogan’s Spotify podcast and he said she was welcome there, but if he wanted her, she would record the show today. To save face, she then announced that she was having scheduling problems. Instead, Harris did Brene Brown’s prodcast, which obviously appeals to women. The vice president needs to narrow her gender gap among men.

With just one week until the election, every piece of news and every misstep counts. And every day you play defense is a missed opportunity.