Trump erupts at campaign manager as reelection stress overflows

Trump erupts at campaign manager as reelection stress overflows
By Jeremy Diamond, CNN
Updated 6:32 PM ET, Wed April 29, 2020


(CNN)As he huddled with advisers on Friday evening, President Donald Trump was still fuming over his sliding poll numbers and the onslaught of criticism he was facing for suggesting a day earlier that ingesting disinfectant might prove effective against coronavirus.

Within moments, the President was shouting -- not at the aides in the room, but into the phone -- at his campaign manager Brad Parscale, three people familiar with the matter told CNN. Shifting the blame away from himself, Trump berated Parscale for a recent spate of damaging poll numbers, even at one point threatening to sue Parscale. It's not clear how serious the President's threat of a lawsuit was.
The White House did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment and the Trump campaign declined to comment.

Faced with an increasingly uphill battle for reelection and aides trying to steer him in new, sometimes conflicting directions, Trump has grown increasingly unnerved in the last week about his reelection prospects. Lashing out at Parscale was just the most recent manifestation of that anxiety.

"He's p*ssed because he knows he messed up in those briefings," one Republican close to the White House said of Trump lashing out.

Last Wednesday, two days before Trump lashed out at Parscale, his campaign manager and several other top political advisers briefed him on internal campaign and Republican National Committee data showing the President was heading for defeat in key battleground states. Parscale, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and other advisers urged him to scale back his daily, combative news conferences and pointed to data showing that the briefings were hurting him with critical swing voters in those states.

Trump has complained to aides that his restricted travel has hurt his numbers, not the briefings.

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https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/29/politics/donald-trump-brad-parscale-campaign-coronavirus/index.html