Trump is having a sad. A big one:
With Donald Trump’s approval sinking to Jimmy Carter levels and coronavirus cases spiking across the country, Trump is reluctantly waking up to the grim reality that, if the current situation holds, his reelection is gone. Republicans that have spoken with Trump in recent days describe him as depressed and “down in the dumps.” “People around him think his heart’s not in it,” a Republican close to the White House said. Torn between the imperative to win suburban voters and his instincts to play to his base, Trump has complained to people that he’s in a political box with no obvious way out. According to the Republican, Trump called Tucker Carlson late last week and said, “what do I do? What do I do?”
To console himself, Trump still has moments of magical thinking. “He says the polls are all fake,” a Republican in touch with Trump told me. But the bad news keeps coming. This week, Jacksonville, Florida—where Trump moved the Republican National Convention so he could hold a 15,000-person rally next month—mandated that people wear masks indoors to slow the explosion of COVID-19 cases. According to a Republican working on the convention, the campaign is now preparing to cancel the event so that Trump doesn’t suffer another Tulsa–like humiliation. “They probably won’t have it,” the source said. “It’s not going to be the soft landing Trump wanted.”
Neither the Trump campaign nor the White House responded to requests for comment.
Trump remains furious at his son-in-law Jared Kushner, whom he blames for the campaign’s dismal poll numbers. Axios reported this week that Trump complained privately that Kushner’s advice on criminal-justice reform damaged Trump politically. But because Kushner is family, sources say it’s unlikely that Trump will formally strip him of authority.
Kushner’s vast sway over West Wing decisions has become a flashpoint between him and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, sources say. The two have been engaged in a cold war over control of the campaign. Meadows pushed Trump to replace campaign manager Brad Parscale, a Kushner ally, the Republican close to the White House said. Kushner wasn’t happy that Meadows is close with Kushner’s adversaries Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie. “Meadows is in real shit. He went to war with Jared and tried to get Brad out,” the Republican, briefed on the internal debate, told me. A couple weeks ago, Meadows unloaded about Kushner over dinner with his predecessor, Mick Mulvaney, at Sette Osteria near the White House. “All Mark did was complain how much operational control Jared has and how it leaves very little space for the chief of staff,” said a Republican briefed on the conversation. “Mark whined to Mick, ‘why didn’t you warn me before I accepted the job? There’s nothing for me to do.’”
Nervous Republicans worried about losing the Senate are now debating when to break from Trump. Trump campaign internal polls show Trump’s level of “strong support” dropping from 21 to 17 points since last week, a person briefed on the numbers said. A source close to Iowa Republican Joni Ernst’s campaign said Ernst advisers are upset that a solid seat is now in play. “Joni’s campaign is pissed. They should not be in a competitive race,” the source said. (Ernst did not respond to a request for comment.) A Republican strategist close to Mitch McConnell told me that Republicans have Labor Day penciled in as the deadline for Trump to have turned things around. After that, he’s on his own.
Hilarious that Ernst is “pissed” that Trump is losing popularity apparently unaware that the fact her tongue has been glued to his boots for the past three years may have something to do with her own loss of popularity.
Sorry, Joni, if you’re so dumb (and irresponsible) that you think enabling an unfit ignoramus for three years was a winning political strategy maybe you too are an unfit ignoramus who shouldn’t be in such an important position.
Same thing for poor Mark Meadows, a D-list wingnut so steeped in Fox news and Brietbart that he apparently hadn’t heard that Jared Kushner has a knife out for anyone who threatens the Javanka power center. Maybe if he read a real newspaper once in a while he might have known what to expect.
And, by the way, Lewandowski is an amateur dipshit and Bossie is the Joe Pesci in Goodfellas of political character assassins. Neither of them have what it takes to save this sinking ship.
All these Republicans could have spared this country the total loss of confidence by the rest of the world and prevented many thousands of American deaths, not to mention the economic disaster that followed. They chose not to. Every last one of them bears equal responsibility, perhaps even more since they knew what an odious incompetent he was and they supported him every step of the way. He’s a fool. They are cynical opportunists. They are worse.