Loser talk

Trump being clearly rattled by the trajectory of the campaign is of course far from dispositive evidence — he thought he was going to lose in 2016 — but since it seems to be negatively affecting him it’s better than the alternative:

Efforts to fine-tune Trump to the proper calibration between fiery and inflammatory have been a feature throughout his time in politics. And as the Sunday “adjustments” show, it often takes a village of advisers to nudge him back on track, but he first has to be receptive to doing it. During his first run for office, he spent much of the close sticking to script and keeping a relatively low profile. This time around has been different, with the ex-president musing about how he should have remained in office after losing in 2020, calling pollsters who showed bad results for him his enemy, and offering cryptic warnings to, among others, Michelle Obama.

Part of the issue is that Trump himself has changed. He is 78 now. And with a campaign that revolves so heavily around his moods, his multi-state travel schedule—in which he’s held multiple rallies each day—are proving exhausting. That’s amplified when, as on Sunday, Trump woke up angry to a trifecta of bad news:

• On Saturday afternoon, well-respected pollster J. Ann Selzer released an Iowa survey through the Des Moines Register and USA Today’s news network that showed Trump losing the red state to Vice President Kamala Harris by three points. It triggered an avalanche of negative coverage that reinforced the narrative of how much women dislike Trump. Top Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio and the campaign’s chief data consultant, Tim Saler, whipped up a memo to staunch the flow of negative coverage.
• Later that evening, NBC gave Harris a cameo on Saturday Night Live, a precious dose of earned media on a highly watched show, something producer Lorne Michaels had explicitly said he wouldn’t do. The Trump campaign was apoplectic.
• On Sunday morning, polling from the New York Times—a publication the former Manhattanite can’t quit—suggested he would lose the race because he was marginally trailing Harris in select swing states. Once again, Fabrizio and Saler drafted and published a pushback memo flyspecking the poll’s internals.

“This was as much about pushing back on the media as it was placating the boss. He was infuriated,” said a campaign adviser. “But all of us trust Tony’s numbers, including the boss.”

The adviser added two pertinent notes: “In Tony, we trust” and, nevertheless, “Sunday morning sucked.”

Evidence of how much it sucked was visible in Trump’s speech that morning, which illustrated a candidate rattled by the news and, in turn, rattling his own campaign. 

At one point, as Trump rambled on stage, Wiles deliberately walked into his line of sight and appeared to glower at him. Some observers assumed she was expressing her displeasure with his off-script comments about “the fake news” as human shields that were already starting to burn up social media. But a campaign adviser said she was just out there trying to make eye contact to let him know he needed to wrap up the speech because it stretched on too long. Either way, it didn’t work. He kept rambling.

Presumably this is why he’s lashing out against his advisors, while sounding like he’s had five of Rick Perry’s signature Ambien-and-Tito’s cocktail:

"They'd only screw it up like they do everything else" — Trump on his campaign advisers

(he doesn't seem to be joking) pic.twitter.com/LsDqbXB19K— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 5, 2024

But while his advisors have presumably earned his ire in part by communicating that late-deciding women seem to be breaking against him, I’m not sure his remedy is going to be effective:

Trump: "Bobby is gonna pretty much do what he wants … he's so into women's health." pic.twitter.com/Sso9WrgNvI— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 5, 2024

Was Billy Bush on stage when he said this?

And finally, another episode of “why do all these white nationalists keep ending up in my campaign“?

A white nationalist worked on the Trump campaign in an important position in Pennsylvania for five months — until Friday, when the Pennsylvania GOP fired him after learning about his views from my reporting.

Last week, I confirmed that Luke Meyer, the Trump campaign’s 24-year-old regional field director for Western Pennsylvania, goes by the online name Alberto Barbarossa. As Barbarossa, he co-hosts the Alexandria podcast with Richard Spencer, organizer of the 2017 white nationalist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. On his podcast and others, and in posts online, Barbarossa regularly shares white nationalist views.

Not sure how this keeps happening! Maybe Sam Alito can investigate once he’s found the real leaker.