Inside the Worst Three Weeks of Donald Trump’s 2024 Campaign
People around the former and would-be president see a candidate knocked off his bearings, disoriented by his new contest with Kamala Harris and unsure of how to take her on.
(linked in previous "bitch" excerpt)This story is based on interviews with more than a dozen people close to Mr. Trump, nearly all of whom insisted on anonymity to describe private discussions and events.
As Ms. Harris — long ridiculed and underestimated — has transformed the contest, campaigning energetically and drawing roughly even with Mr. Trump in many polls, Mr. Trump has responded with one unforced error after another while struggling to land on an effective and consistent argument against her.
He has found the change disorienting, those who interact with him say. Mr. Trump had grown comfortable campaigning against an 81-year-old incumbent who struggled to navigate stairs, thoughts and sentences. Suddenly, he finds himself in a race against a Black woman nearly 20 years younger, one who has already made history and who is drawing large and excited crowds.
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. 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.
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But to Mr. Trump’s close allies, that first night in Milwaukee now seems a foggy memory, as if it never happened.
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A foul mood
Indeed, Mr. Trump has often been in a foul mood the past few weeks. He has ranted about Ms. Harris. He has called her “nasty,” on “Fox & Friends,” and a “bitch,” repeatedly, in private, according to two people who heard the remark on different occasions. ...
His quickness to anger has left him susceptible to manipulation, even among close allies.
A week before the Hamptons fund-raiser, on July 25, Mr. Trump stunned one of his wealthiest patrons, Miriam Adelson, the widow of the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, by having an aide, Natalie Harp, fire off a series of angry text messages to Mrs. Adelson in Mr. Trump’s name, according to three people with knowledge of what took place.
The texts were particularly jarring because Mrs. Adelson and Mr. Trump had a friendly meeting just a week earlier at the Republican National Convention, according to a person briefed on the matter.
The texts complained about the people running Mrs. Adelson’s super PAC, Preserve America, into which she is pouring millions of dollars to support Mr. Trump.
At the time, Preserve America was spending nearly $18 million on a week’s worth of ads aiding Mr. Trump in three battleground states. The texts said that the officials running Preserve America were “RINOs” — Republicans in name only — and that Mrs. Adelson’s late husband would never have tolerated that, the people said.
According to two of the people, aides to Mrs. Adelson later discovered that the outburst against her had been encouraged by another major Trump donor, Ike Perlmutter, the former chairman of Marvel Entertainment, who had hoped in vain that Mrs. Adelson would contribute to a rival super PAC that he backs. ...
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...at the Aug. 2 fund-raiser, according to two people with knowledge of what took place, when a donor at the round-table discussion asked about Democrats trying to paint the Republican ticket as “weird,” Mr. Trump replied: “Not about me. They’re saying that about JD.”
Mr. Trump didn’t reveal any loss of confidence in Mr. Vance. Rather, he offered him simple advice: Attack, attack, attack. ...
Whipsawed by events
Mr. Trump deals more in projection than subtext, and his recent posts on Truth Social reveal how blindsided he feels about the upturned election.
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Also unsettling to him: For the first time in Mr. Trump’s political life, his opponent has received more sustained news coverage than he has, beating him at the game of “earned media,” the kind that costs campaigns nothing to produce.
Moreover, the coverage of Ms. Harris has overwhelmingly been positive.
Ms. 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,” said Tony Fabrizio, the Trump campaign’s chief pollster.
Mr. Trump has seemed to want to wish his new situation away. He claimed on Truth Social, without evidence, that Mr. Biden regretted his decision to drop out and wanted to undo it. He has talked repeatedly about how badly he thinks Democrats mistreated Mr. Biden. He has complained about how unfair it is that he’s had to start the race over again. 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.
And Mr. Trump told one aide that Democrats were trying to “steal” the election again from him...
He has also peppered his advisers with questions about whether Ms. Harris can sustain her momentum, constantly asking what new polling shows.
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Others are more concerned about what they are seeing in private polling. Two private polls conducted in Ohio recently by Republican pollsters — which Mr. Trump carried in 2020 with 53 percent of the vote — showed him receiving less than 50 percent of the vote against Ms. Harris in the state, according to a person with direct knowledge of the data.
Struggling to frame the attack
Nearly three weeks since she became his Democratic opponent, Mr. Trump and his campaign are still struggling to settle on how to define Ms. Harris, what message with which to attack her, and even what nickname with which to belittle her.
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In an angry phone call to a Times reporter on Friday afternoon, Mr. Trump denied that he was making any changes to his team, saying he was “thrilled” with his top advisers, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, and asking why he would even want to make such a change.
(In the same call, Mr. Trump threatened to sue The Times over a story about his description in Thursday’s news conference of a near-death experience on a helicopter ride with Willie Brown, the former California politician. Mr. Brown denied ever having flown on a helicopter with Mr. Trump.)
Mr. Trump’s own behavior remains one of the most unpredictable factors in his campaign.
And after years of holding only a few rallies a month and still managing to play plenty of golf, while Mr. Biden held very few campaign events, Mr. Trump now has an opponent who is outworking him politically.
