Don’t buy the public bravado. Former President Trump’s advisers are deeply rattled by his meandering, mean and often middling public performances since the failed assassination attempt.
What? Meandering, mean and middling is his fucking brand. Are they just noticing? Sure, he’s obviously upset, but it’s hardly the first time. Remember the months after the 2020 election? Were they out of the country? And yes, he’s aged quite a bit and is losing his train of thought more often. But that’s been going on for the last couple of years. It’s ridiculous. Trump is an unbalanced, unfit, imbecile and always has been.
They’re pleading with him to adopt a new “hard-hitting” stump speech to define Vice President Harris as liberal and weak, advisers tell us. And praying he’ll stop the recidivistic pull to simply improvise haphazardly.
Trump, who looked and felt like a clear front-runner heading into last month’s Republican convention, has fumed, stewed and stumbled in private and public ever since.
Advisers are telling him Harris will grow her lead coming out of the Democratic convention, which begins a week from tomorrow — especially if they don’t define her better, faster. Then just a week after the convention, it’s already Labor Day.
Republican sources close to Trump tell us he realizes he needs to bring new focus to a message that can be meandering and self-indulgent. But it’s Trump. So a new script is often fictional wishfulness.
Trump “is struggling to get past his anger,” a top Republican source tells us.
Trump’s aides know he won’t change. So they’re focusing “not on the need for him to change but on the need to adapt his message to win,” the source said. “But he has to convince himself to leave the other garbage behind.”
“President Trump knows he’s the only one who can end the media’s honeymoon with Kamala Harris,” a top Trump ally tells us, “and he sees a significant opening to do so with Harris’ inability to defend her record on inflation and the border.”
“To get past the media force field protecting Harris, however, he knows he needs to be very specific with his policy contrasts and is planning on debuting a hard-hitting stump speech very soon.”
I’d guess it will be in two weeks when he unveils his health care plan his infrastructure bill, his mifepristone policy, his decision on how to vote on the abortion ballot measure.
In addition to the new speech, look for a Trump ad blitz. Trump’s campaign and the biggest Trump-aligned super PAC spent four times as much on TV ads in Georgia in the two weeks after Biden left the race than in the rest of 2024 combined, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
On Friday, the Trump campaign placed $37 million in new ad buys (nearly two-thirds of it in Georgia) — the most he’s reserved on TV ads in a single day this cycle, the tracking firm AdImpact found.
Then there’s the hacking story, the “rattled” donors, some of whom he’s yelling at for failing him and reports about him calling Harris a bitch (and no doubt worse.)
The Village princes Mike Allen and Jim Vamdehei say:
Put the Times piece and this column in a time capsule. If Trump loses, you’ll understand why.
I guess I should be grateful they aren’t licking his boots. But really? Trump is losing because he’s a loser and always has been. He barely won in 2016 with the help of his Russian buddies and lost in 2020. In fact, the Republicans have lost or radically underperformed every election since he came on the scene. There’s nothing new about any of this except that he was riding a wave that had him very slightly ahead in the swing states after Biden performed disastrously in the debate. The alleged Trump juggernaut was always overrated. Now that Harris has breathed life into the Democrats it’s just more obvious.