'Disorienting': Trump advisors admit he’s been 'knocked off his bearings' by Harris campaign

10 August 2024

Former President Donald Trump has suddenly found himself in the middle of a particularly rocky period of the campaign cycle with less than 90 days to go before the election as he contends with Vice President Kamala Harris' sudden and unexpected candidacy.

That's according to a recent report by the New York Times' Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan, citing "more than a dozen sources close to Mr. Trump" who spoke anonymously to the Times. They wrote Saturday that the ex-president is in the throes of a "disorienting" three-week stretch that has persisted since President Joe Biden exited the 2024 race. And Trump's woes may get worse before they get better, with his campaign's top polling official telling the Times that the vice president's momentum will likely continue to surge through August as she continues to draw massive crowds to her rallies and garner favorable media coverage.

"[Harris] has gotten the equivalent of the largest in-kind contribution of free media I think I have ever seen in all the years I’ve been doing presidential campaigns," pollster Tony Fabrizio said.

Haberman and Swan observed that this stretch marks the first time in the former president's political career that he's been out-hustled in media coverage, as his opponent has enjoyed "overwhelmingly positive" coverage since launching her campaign with fanfare and record fundraising hauls in late July.

"The people around Mr. Trump see a candidate knocked off his bearings, nothing like the man who reclined serenely on July 15 as he watched as thousands of delegates cheered him on the first night of the Republican National Convention," Haberman and Swan wrote. "Then, Mr. Trump, his ear bandaged, was a living martyr after the assassination attempt two days before. Inside the Milwaukee arena, the Democrats had already been defeated; the only thing left to wonder about was the margin of Mr. Trump’s victory."

"Mr. Trump has seemed to want to wish his new situation away," they continued. "He has vented about wasting time, energy and millions of dollars on Mr. Biden only to find himself facing a new opponent for the final 100-day sprint."

In one particularly revealing segment of the report, the Times noted that Trump has lately been "susceptible to manipulation," in regard to a series of text conversations that turned off the former president's top donor. Billionaire heiress Miriam Adelson — the wife of the late casino magnate Sheldon Adelson — had already committed to backing Trump with a super PAC funded by $100 million of her own money.

However, Trump donor Ike Perlmutter reportedly convinced a Trump aide to "fire off a series of angry text messages to Mrs. Adelson in Mr. Trump's name" in which staffers at Adelson's super PAC were labeled 'RINOs [Republicans in name only]." The aide, Natalie Harp, reportedly told Adelson that her deceased husband would have never tolerated them. Perlmutter supposedly convinced Harp to send those texts in the hopes that Adelson would direct her money toward a separate PAC he controlled. Instead, Adelson now "might scale back her support" of Trump's 2024 campaign.

Additionally, Trump's campaign is reportedly alarmed by internal polls showing him sliding in Ohio, which he won comfortably in 2016 and 2020. The Buckeye State was previously thought of to be safely in Republican hands, but one private poll showed Trump with less than 50% support.

Click here to read the Times' report in its entirety (subscription required).

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