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https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/05/trump-eyes-campaign-shake-up
By Gabriel Sherman
May 11, 2020
Trumps Feeling Is "Why Are We Losing Everywhere" With Advisers Feuding and Numbers Plummeting Trump Eyes Campaign Shakeup
With the coronavirus death toll surpassing 80,000 and the unemployment rate at Great Depression-era levels, there is a growing consensus among senior Republicans that Donald Trumps reelection is slipping away. Recent internal polls show Trump trailing Joe Biden in six swing states, a data point that augurs a landslide loss in November. The swing state polls are horrific, a prominent Republican briefed on the numbers told me. The White Houses COVID-19 outbreak is only the latest headline that reinforces the narrative that Trump cant get control of the pandemic. This is what should worry the campaign: Biden is in his basement and hes beating Trump, a former West Wing staffer told me. If I were Biden, the lesson I would learn is: Shut the fuck up and let Trump go out there and destroy himself.
Seeking to change the trajectory of the race, Trump is now discussing a shake-up to his campaign leadership, three sources close to the White House told me. Two sources said Trump has told people he wants to install 2016 campaign manager Corey Lewandowski in a senior role. Trumps feeling is, why are we losing everywhere? The president is sick of it, another former West Wing official said. According to a source, Lewandowski has told Trump that the RNC doesnt grasp how dire the polls are. Corey thinks the GOP isnt solid on fundamentals. He says the campaign and the party spend time sending out press releases bragging about how well theyre doing, the former official said. (Tim Murtaugh, communications director for the Trump campaign, said in an email, literally none of this is true.)
Trumps interest in Lewandowski has sparked conflict with Jared Kushner, two sources said. Theres a battle over personnel, a former West Wing official said. Kushner is strongly opposed to Lewandowski joining the campaign, sources said. Kushner led the effort to force out Lewandowski in 2016, and has since successfully kept Lewandowski on the outer edge of Trumps orbit. According to two sources, Kushner is trying to recruit Mike Pences former chief of staff Nick Ayers to take a senior campaign role. In 2018, Kushner recruited Ayers to replace John Kelly as Trumps chief of staff. Ayers turned down the offer, and sources said he has no interest in joining the Trump campaign. One person close to Ayers told me hes aligning himself with Nikki Haley to lead her potential 2024 campaign. He views Haley as the right train to be on, the source said.
(Ayers did not respond to a request for comment.)
Trump and campaign manager Brad Parscales relationship has been fraying for weeks, sources said. Trump was said to be annoyed last month about a largely positive profile of Parscale in the New York Times Magazine. Trump had already been irked by Parscale because of the talk that Parscale, a former website designer from San Antonio, had made millions of dollars through his companies from Trumps campaigns and bought a Ferrari. The money is the biggest issue for Trump, a former West Wing official said. A few days before the Times Magazine piece was published, Trump called Parscale and reportedly threatened to sue him for the campaigns weak poll numbers. According to a source briefed on the widely reported call, Parscale told Trump to blame the campaigns struggle on Kushner. Brad said, Blame the people Jared brought in, the source said. (Parscale did not respond to a request for comment.)
As Trump debates who should lead his campaign, hes also struggling to settle on a 2020 strategy. Some advisers are lobbying Trump to embrace the reopening. Theyre going to gamble on the economy and hope it works, a former West Wing official said. But another camp is pushing the view that Trump should run on a blame-China message. On top of everything, there is also fear in Trumpworld that Senate Republicans might finally break from him if the polls get bad enough. The numbers are fucking terrible, another former West Wing official said. Theres massive anxiety in the GOP that hes gonna take them all down with him.
no_hypocrisy
(46,202 posts)"Julie, why are they laughing?"
flying rabbit
(4,644 posts)That guy can do anything!
SeattleVet
(5,480 posts)tanyev
(42,622 posts)and your ratings plummet. That is a head-scratcher.
Skittles
(153,199 posts)NO STAFFING CHANGES IS GONNA CHANGE THAT
Baclava
(12,047 posts)stillcool
(32,626 posts)but this current crop does seem to be the longest lasting. Probably too much going on for him to mess with the help.
OAITW r.2.0
(24,638 posts)What DJT is unable to realize, it does not matter a whit what campaign manager/lipstick he puts on his piglips. He is going down. The polling now is gonna be a highwater mark when he looks at his Sept/Oct polling results. He is toast, but he is too delusional to understand it. He lost by 3MM voters last time. I'm thinking he'll be 10MM voters underwater by November.
saidsimplesimon
(7,888 posts)pigs out on KFC and goes away from whence he came. Pig, glutton, dumbo
spanone
(135,885 posts)AND 18,000 LIES...
global1
(25,272 posts)"You jumped the shark - Trump. You jumped the shark."
Hermit-The-Prog
(33,447 posts)regnaD kciN
(26,045 posts)...although he may be trailing substantially in swing states, he's only about 4-5% behind Biden in an aggregate of polls, no doubt because he's winning red states by a landslide. This sets up the possibility that, under the right (wrong) circumstances, Trump could narrowly win the popular vote while losing the electoral college by a large margin. Ordinarily, I'd call that poetic justice, but you just know that, having happily accepted that split decision in 2016, Trumpublicans would be throwing a full-on temper tantrum should that happen this time, and demanding a popular uprising to overturn the EC results because "It's only fair that the candidate with the most total votes be President, period!!! Anything else is un-American!!!!!"