According to the NY Times, members of Trump’s campaign are “growing concerned” that Trump’s “meandering” might be a problem:
They worry that Mr. Trump’s impetuousness and scattershot style on the campaign trail needlessly risk victory in battleground states where the margin for error is increasingly narrow.
At a time when his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, has stepped up her attacks on him as “unstable,” Mr. Trump has struggled to publicly hone his message by veering off script and ramping up personal attacks on Ms. Harris that allies have urged him to rein in.
Ya think? (I hope….)
They are right to be concerned:
Internal Harris campaign research showed that one of the most effective ways to persuade voters to support the vice president was by portraying Mr. Trump as unstable and Ms. Harris as a steady leader who would strengthen America’s security, according to two Harris officials who insisted on anonymity to describe private data.
In the past two weeks, the Harris campaign has flooded the airwaves in battleground states with a pair of television ads to underscore these themes. One spot features warnings from Mr. Trump’s former top defense officials to paint him as “too big of a risk.” Another features endorsements for Ms. Harris from a bipartisan group of national security officials.
“Even former Trump administration officials agree there’s only one candidate fit to lead our nation — and that’s Kamala Harris,” the narrator says.
On Tuesday, John Micklethwait, the editor in chief of Bloomberg News, asked Mr. Trump about the dollar and whether his policies would drive up inflation.
TRUMP: Yeah, I had four years no inflation. I had four years no inflation. I had four years. It’s better than that. And Biden, who has no idea where the hell he is, OK? Biden went two years with no inflation because he inherited from me. And then they started spending money like drunken sailors. They spent so much money. It was so ridiculous, the money they were spending. They were spending on the Green New Scam, a Green New Scam, the Green New Deal. You know, it was conceived of by A.O.C., plus three. She never even studied the environment in college. She went to a nice college. She came out. She just said — the Green New Scam. She just named all these things.
At a rally in Detroit on Friday, Mr. Trump began talking about his plans to make car-loan interest fully tax-deductible but ended up in a long digression about Elon Musk.
TRUMP: I will make interest on car loans fully tax-deductible and we will — they will — so listen to that. What will that do for the cars? Fully tax-deductible interest on a car. You buy a car, you get a deduction. Wall Street called me up. They said, how the hell did you think of that idea? That’s a good one, because affording your car is essential to restoring the American dream, and you can have the American dream finally, you haven’t had it in 50 years.
Working with Elon Musk — is he good or what? I saw that rocket come down three, four days ago, that sucker was coming down. I said, oh my, no, this, like, I never saw anything like it. I was on the phone with a friend. I’m talking about something. I don’t know, something maybe having to do with Detroit. Could that be possible? But I’m talking on the phone, and I see the screen is on and no sound. And I’m saying, wait a minute. I have to put the phone down. I don’t believe what I’m seeing.
And I saw that big monster coming down, that big — it was like a 20-story building or something, coming down, the engine, blowing and they’re firing and spitting, and it’s, I said, it’s going to crash. It’s going to crash into the gantry. Don’t crash! And then you see another engine take it perfectly, and lands right in the spot that it took off. I said, That must be Elon. He’s the only — nobody else. It must be Elon.
So I called up Elon. I said, Elon, was that you? He goes, That was me. I say, Who else can do it? Nobody. I said, Can Russia do it? No. Can the U.S. do it, meaning the U.S. outside of you? He said, No, nobody can do that. I said, You’re the coolest. That’s pretty — and he endorsed me, long time ago, actually, saying it’s the most important election we’ve ever had.
But working with Elon Musk, we will cut trillions of dollars in government waste. He’s very good at that. He knows better than anybody.
I don’t know if anyone cares about this. The polls are tight as a drum and getting tighter. But maybe, maybe the fact that he is literally falling apart on the stage, talking about dicks and swaying back and forth like a toddler will help some people realize that they can’t put their kids’ futures in th hands of this addled freakshow.