Over the past few weeks, Donald Trump His allies have kept a close eye on the prominent conservatives that the president believes are preparing to throw him under the bus in case he loses his attempt. Re-election.
Two people who spoke to Trump said the president had expressed doubts that his party members believed he would be defeated by Facebook Joe Biden. This feeling of insanity was fueled by aides and close associates of the president, who reported having news coverage of Republican politicians either openly criticizing his behavior or trying to distance themselves from an impending electoral bloodbath.
According to a source with first-hand knowledge, the president is already considering revenge.
“[The president] He said something touching: If you are turning away from him now, don’t bother coming back to get a favor when he wins, ”said the other source.“ He made a comment about how there are some people you can only count on when things go your way. ”
Some of the bookmarked coverage of Trump includes recent stories about the majority leader in the Senate Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who not only broke with the president on coronavirus-related stimulus legislation, but also indicated that he hadn’t gone to the White House in weeks due to his arrogant approach to the pandemic.
Trump’s frictions with Republican senators don’t stop there. Last week, the President attacked Senator Susan Collins (a Republican from the Middle East) on Twitter over a “bad rumor” that she would oppose his Supreme Court nominee, Amy Cooney Barrett. Of the endangered job incumbent, he said: “It’s not worth the job!”
This underestimation was met with sighs among Trump’s strategists, who indicated that it was not at all necessary: he already had enough votes to confirm Barrett.
Moreover, there is a strong suspicion inside Trump’s inner campus that the office of Senator Ben Sassi (a Republican from the Northeast) leaked the contents of a call he made with his voters and rebuked the president for embracing the dictators and failing to condemn the conspirators. Trump’s anger over the call was compounded on Saturday with another Twitter attack.
Then there is Senator Mitt Romney (a Republican from Utah), who issued two recent statements targeting what he describes as a devastating shift in national politics. Notable in those statements was his condemnation of Trump and little in the way he criticized Biden.
“You hate seeing him,” said former Representative Jack Kingston (a Republican from Georgia), who has served for years as a Trump administration official, but being on Capitol Hill, one great way to gain attention is to speak out against your party. alternative. Ben Sassi is a smart guy and I’m sorry he decided this is the right time to go. [but] I don’t know how it helps in the case of swing [Republicans] Either … but you still don’t see the ideological people break. If Ralph Reid said, “Well, I’m out here,” that would be different.
However, those who indicate that they are ready to hop on the ship already include some of the major players in conservative politics. One of the president’s most powerful and influential confidants, media billionaire Rupert Murdoch, was telling his aides that he believed Biden would win an overwhelming majority, much like The Daily Beast. mentioned last week. Murdoch specifically said that he was pushed back by the president’s mismanagement of the COVID-19 crisis.
Sources familiar with the situation say Trump and Murdoch have not spoken for several weeks. A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on this story, but Trump’s campaign communications director, Tim Murtaugh, said in a statement: “President Trump won in 2016 without the explicit support of domestic political audiences, and will. Once again. The president has the support. More than 90 percent are Republicans, and our caucus data shows that about a quarter of those registered in the rallies are not registered even as Republicans. “
But the knives came out, and not just the perceived coats. The blame game has already begun within the wider world of Republican activists working on the president’s reelection. A senior Republican official who consulted with the campaign said that while employees were still confident the president could win, they were also increasingly concerned about what the official described as “a fatal inefficiency in how things are spent.”
“I think there is a reality where this is what is happening in the campaign. This is the point where people start to know who is responsible for the mistake.” In response to a question about who is responsible for this error, the source added: “There is no doubt about that. [former campaign manager] refrigerator [Parscale] He’ll take a big chunk of it, because that’s easy. But anyone with a mind looking at this would point to Jared [Kushner]. Jared cannot be the mastermind and is blameless. “
Within the broader Republican Party circles, some cold realism has taken hold about Trump’s prospects. Few, if any, multicolor. Remaining optimism is linked to two characteristics in the race: that the president faced similar doubts (including from within his own party) four years ago and is still winning; Because this is happening, the Trump campaign has invested significantly more in voter turnout than it did in 2016.
“He doesn’t win, but there was always a feeling that he was in the position [2016]”This will harden, and we have this ground game that will put us at the top,” said a Republican official involved in the re-election effort.
But even that official recognized the limits of rotation. “The match on the ground is a field goal in a close match,” the official said. “It’s not three downs.”
Among Republican activists, there was an expectation that Trump’s inability to polls with Biden would end as the election approaches. This emphasis did not happen as quickly as they had hoped, among the explanations for the president’s performance in the flammable debate, his personal infection with a virus that diminished its importance, and the fact that he was spending on the airwaves.
There is also a growing consensus among the consultative class in the Republican Party that Trump lost some of the political instincts that made him unconventional and effective at the same time in 2016. At the time, Trump ended his campaign largely by adhering to the script, taking rallies, and posting regular tweets. . . In that position, he embraced more brutal plots – like the raid on Osama bin Laden – and showed more Facebook ads attacking Hillary Clinton rather than going after Biden in the business.
“I think it’s tough when you’re in the White House,” the Republican official said, “but it’s different from 2016.” “They don’t have a message of discipline. She’s totally off the rails all the time.”
