Donald Trump Super Mad His Aides Let Kamala Harris Get More Popular Than Him
Donald Trump Super Mad His Aides Let Kamala Harris Get More Popular Than Him
Another week of ketchup-stained walls at Mar-a-Lago
Donald Trump is not a happy little king these days, according to new insider reporting from the Washington Post (gift link). His mood has soured since Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee — especially because, during July’s Republican National Convention, everything looked so rosy for November: the polls were showing Trump ahead of Joe Biden, everyone in America loved him and felt bad for him after a bullet grazed his ear during an assassination attempt, or they should have, and Dems were In Disarray over Biden’s performance in the debate. As the Post reports,
As staffers and allies gathered at the GOP nominating convention in Milwaukee last month, some privately discussed what administration jobs certain people wanted — and predicted a landslide election. There was talk of spending money in states where Republicans haven’t won in decades.
Then Joe Biden had to go and drop out, exactly as some Republicans had been calling for, and suddenly, Democrats were very much In Array, raising assloads of money and worse, getting people really excited about the election. Trump’s narrow polling lead disappeared, and now he’s in a statistical tie with Harris, with every trend suggesting she can pull ahead in coming weeks.
Poor Donald! According to five anonymous insiders, Trump has
grown increasingly upset about Harris’s surging poll numbers and media coverage since replacing Biden on the ticket, complaining relentlessly and asking friends about how his campaign is performing. […]
“It’s unfair that I beat him and now I have to beat her, too,” Trump told an ally in a phone call last weekend.
Worse, Trump sycophants outside the campaign are getting antsy and sharing their worries with the Great Man, who has passed those concerns on to others, according to “three people close to him.” Meanwhile, his supporters in Congress and elsewhere are trying to get him more focused on campaigning against Harris instead of sulking.
Unsurprisingly, people in the campaign insist that everything’s under control. Situation normal. They had a slight JD Vance malfunction, but, uh, everything's perfectly all right now. We're fine. We're all fine here now, thank you. How are you?
Trump is definitely going to win big in the fall, said Trump spokesdroid Steven Cheung in a statement:
The Trump campaign has never taken anything for granted and we always fight like we’re the underdogs. That’s especially true after an assassination attempt on President Trump heading into Convention. Our sole job is to help President Trump win the election, and we’re going to beat the brakes off the dangerously liberal Kamala-Walz ticket.
Cheung also dismissed reports that Trump allies or advisers might be questioning the campaign’s direction, calling them “unnamed sources who have no idea what they are talking about and are doing nothing but helping Democrats.” Then he shot his computer with his blaster, saying it was a “boring conversation anyway.”
Still, there’s no sense of panic in the campaign, according to “people familiar with the campaign’s inner workings,” with no fights or backbiting among top advisers yet, though the Post adds that’s been a “hallmark of previous Trump campaigns where things went awry.”
The Trump campaign no longer has the fundraising advantage it garnered from Trump’s New York felony convictions and the assassination attempt, and both Biden and now Harris are outspending Trump. The Post says that Trump himself has insisted that “Republican Party officials only needed to focus on election integrity,” although the credulous reporters fail to translate that phrase properly, since it means cheating like crazy at every opportunity by filling elections offices nationwide with Trump loyalists who may delay or deny certifying the vote.
But he keeps hearing
from outside allies that he does not have a significant ground game in key battleground states. He has grown annoyed with some of the media focus on his campaign staff, suggesting to others that his advisers get too much credit. Some advisers have urged him to spend more on digital advertising, saying he is being pummeled online.
As for Democrats, they don’t mind hearing that Trump is rattled, and they certainly don’t mind taking the opportunity to rattle him some more. They’ve been amplifying social media posts from Trumpworld that they say show the campaign is nervous or just plain bad at messaging. And if they can also amp up Trumpers’ instinctive paranoia, well gosh that would be a shame, huh?
The Harris campaign has circulated posts and news releases about his staff, the pick of Sen. JD Vance (Ohio) as his running mate, crowd size and other topics they say will grate on Trump and cause him to say controversial things.
“It’s easy to live in Donald Trump’s head,” one Harris aide wrote, suggesting a story about crowd size now that Harris draws a crowd as big or larger than Trump’s rallies.
And yes, Harris has indeed been seeing far greater turnout. People in the Trump campaign really should try to figure out who’s responsible for allowing that to happen. Bet it was Cheung.
Oh, also, Cheung explained to the Post that the Trump campaign has nothing to worry about because “Our message discipline is second to none,” which he also said was why Trump “won” the debate, where he lied like crazy since there was no one to stop him.
Which reminds us of this bit of message discipline posted to Twitter by HuffPost reporter SV Dáte, regarding Trump’s weird new nickname for Kamala Harris, “Kamabla”:
Probably Cheung, too, but who knows? They all have message discipline, at least when it comes to sounding like snotty 12-year-olds.
As for the Great Leader himself, he’s always worried that people don’t love him enough, so he may not need Democrats prodding him to throw tantrums: Trump is starting to ask his “friends and allies” about how they think his staff is performing, although one insider told the Post that heavens no, he supports his people 100 percent and would never lash out at them. Mmm-hmm.
He has asked why Harris is raising so much more money than him, people familiar with the comments say. Trump has also repeatedly raised the large crowds that Harris is getting compared with Biden, people who have spoken to him said.
We rather doubt anyone has leveled with him and said, “Sir, outside your cult, people just don’t like you and they’re really happy that someone now looks like she can beat you. Have you tried smiling? … Oh god, Sir, no, don’t do that again.”
[WaPo (gift link)]
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I can't see the word "pummeled" now without thinking of Matt Schlapp. 🤢
Per...fec...tion.