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.
Already a subscriber?The August 2 dinner at the Bridgehampton, New York, home of Howard Lutnick, the Cantor Fitzgerald chief executive, was a high-powered affair. Among the roughly 130 people who dined under an air-conditioned tent were some of Donald Trump’s wealthiest supporters, including billionaire hedge fund financier Bill Ackman, who sat next to the former president, and Omeed Malik, the president of another fund, 1789 Capital.
It had been a display of flagrant race-baiting that was egregious even by Trump’s standards, and it instantly reprogrammed America’s TV news chyrons: he falsely claimed that Harris had only recently decided to identify as Black for political purposes.
As Harris — long ridiculed and underestimated — has transformed the contest, campaigning energetically and drawing roughly even with Trump in many polls, Trump has responded with one unforced error after another while struggling to land on an effective and consistent argument against the Democratic candidate.
But to Trump’s close allies, that first night in Milwaukee now seems a foggy memory, as though it never happened. The texts complained about the people running Adelson’s super political action committee, Preserve America, into which she is pouring millions of dollars to support Trump. Over the past two weeks, Trump has fielded complaints from donors about his running mate, J.D. Vance, as news coverage exploring Vance’s past statements unearthed — and then exhaustively critiqued — remarks including a lament that America was run by “childless cat ladies”.
Despite his public insistence that he would rather face Harris than Biden, those close to him say that is untrue. He had been on a glide path to an all-but-certain victory. Now, he needs to work for it. He has also peppered his advisers with questions about whether Harris can sustain her momentum, constantly asking what new polling shows.
For the first time in Donald Trump’s political life, his opponent has received more sustained news coverage than he has. Kamala Harris has campaigned extensively this week, with thousands of people attending her rallies.Nearly three weeks since Harris became his Democratic opponent, Trump and his campaign are still struggling to settle on how to define her, what message to use to attack her, and even what nickname with which to belittle her.
Outside advisers and allies have also called Trump to impress on him the political peril of continuing with those kinds of attacks. Kellyanne Conway, who managed his 2016 campaign, recently told Trump to stick to policy contrasts, rather than personal attacks, and to treat Harris as a formidable adversary, as he had Hilary Clinton.
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