Watching Trump the last few days it’s been obvious to me that he’s stressed and upset about the race. He didn’t get any kind of bump from his assassination attempt and the RNC which was no doubt a huge shock to him. (Hubris is his middle name, after all.) The new polls show Kamala now slightly ahead with momentum and it’s driving him crazy.
Here’s a report from inside the campaign:
Two weeks ago, Donald Trump was riding high, envisioning a landslide victory against Joe Biden after beating an assassination attempt, briefly proclaiming himself to be a new man, and enjoying a drama-free convention that felt like an early victory party. Days later, of course, Biden euthanized his campaign, elevating his vice president as his presumptive replacement and definitively resetting the table. Trump, who is now at parity in the polls with Kamala Harris, has responded with his own stages of grief: complaining at the unfairness of a new challenger; befuddled by the inability of his campaign to land a punch against Harris; furious at the suggestion, proffered by his own team, that her gains were inevitable; and annoyed at having to clean up J.D. Vance’s messes.
Predictably, the campaign’s loss of elevation has all manner of Trump courtiers and advisors blaming each other for the past week’s various fuckups and distractions—including at least one major unforced error by the principal, himself. “It’s just two weeks, and I’m like, what the hell is going on,” one stunned Mar-a-Lago denizen told me.
In many ways, their frustration is understandable. For months now, Trump’s campaign has been lauded for its eerie proficiency under the co-management of political professionals Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita. And yet, in recent days, Wiles has faced an unusual degree of criticism in Trumpworld, after she quickly jumped on the Vance train and was charged with vetting him. LaCivita, for his part, is getting lashed for publicly gloating about Trump’s ostensible path to 320 electoral college votes. Some detractors blame both Wiles and LaCivita for not having a backup plan for Harris (a source familiar countered that they were “exceptionally ready”); others are frustrated over the statement Wiles and LaCivita issued celebrating the resignation of Paul Dans, the director of Project 2025, after Democrats made it politically toxic. “They danced on the grave after Dans resigned,” said one Washington insider. “It was a ‘Let this be a warning to anyone who claims to have the president’s ear,’ but with a knife.”
Naturally, there’s an emerging consensus that this insider squabbling, reminiscent of an earlier chaotic era, is distracting from the race. In one pointed example, twenty sources took the time to blame Kellyanne Conway for leaking negative stories about J.D. Vance to The Bulwark’s Marc Caputo. “A lot of people are very frustrated. There are cracks within the ranks and team, why are the consultants knifing Kellyanne in the Bulwark?” said another Trump ally. “They should be focusing on Kamala.”
Until this week, I’m told Trump was still enjoying the honeymoon stage with Vance, and largely ignoring the brutal savaging his V.P. pick has received on social media. In particular, he was distracting himself with the promise of the Silicon Valley money that Vance might haul from tech billionaires like Marc Andreessen and Elon Musk. Now, however, Trump is said to be perplexed that the furor over Vance’s “childless cat ladies” comment hasn’t died out, forcing him to waste time defending an underling. As I’ve previously reported, Trump has long viewed the requirement that he pick a vice president as unnecessary, a perspective he shared openly this week, when he told Fox News’s Harris Falkner that Vance would have no impact on the election. “If he keeps slipping in the polls, he’ll blame J.D. Vance, but he would never take him off the ticket,” said the Mar-a-lago denizen. “That’s a very drastic move. He’d have to admit he made a mistake.”
I hadn’t heard that Trump thinks he shouldn’t have to name a VP. Lol!
It becomes more obvious every day that he’s lost a step. Vance didn’t have a honeymoon for him to enjoy.. The cat lady and couch stuff was all over social media and it’s going to dog him (no pun intended) for the rest of his career. I certainly believe he was busy counting the money from the tech bros but if he thought things were going well he needs to get out of the Mar-a-Lago fever swamp.
This campaign has been endlessly promoted in the media as super professional and extremely well run. It’s hype. There’s no evidence that they’ve put together any kind of ground game and they obviously didn’t bother to vet Vance. They clearly have no influence on Trump. He’s unlikely to make any changes unless he really starts to slip in the polls. (And he’ll just say that the polls are rigged and so is the election so…)