Behind the Curtain: Inside Trump's slump
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Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Don't buy the public bravado. Former President Trump's advisers are deeply rattled by his meandering, mean and often middling public performances since the failed assassination attempt.
- They're pleading with him to adopt a new "hard-hitting" stump speech to define Vice President Harris as liberal and weak, advisers tell us. And praying he'll stop the recidivistic pull to simply improvise haphazardly.
Why it matters: Trump, who looked and felt like a clear front-runner heading into last month's Republican convention, has fumed, stewed and stumbled in private and public ever since.
- Advisers are telling him Harris will grow her lead coming out of the Democratic convention, which begins a week from tomorrow — especially if they don't define her better, faster. Then just a week after the convention, it's already Labor Day.
What we're hearing: Republican sources close to Trump tell us he realizes he needs to bring new focus to a message that can be meandering and self-indulgent. But it's Trump. So a new script is often fictional wishfulness.
- Trump "is struggling to get past his anger," a top Republican source tells us.
- Trump's aides know he won't change. So they're focusing "not on the need for him to change but on the need to adapt his message to win," the source said. "But he has to convince himself to leave the other garbage behind."
"President Trump knows he's the only one who can end the media's honeymoon with Kamala Harris," a top Trump ally tells us, "and he sees a significant opening to do so with Harris' inability to defend her record on inflation and the border."
- "To get past the media force field protecting Harris, however, he knows he needs to be very specific with his policy contrasts and is planning on debuting a hard-hitting stump speech very soon."
The big picture: Three weeks after President Biden left the race, no longer does it look like Trump could win every swing state. No longer does he hold the advantage on crowd size and base fervor.
- New polls by The New York Times and Siena College show Harris up by four points among likely voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania (50% to 46% in each state) — quite a momentum shift after Trump spent eight months before Biden's exit tied or ahead in most battlegrounds.
This past week, the Cook Political Report reset its ratings to "toss-up" for Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, after earlier moving them to "lean Republican." Those states rejoin Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania as the six toss-ups, with North Carolina leaning Republican.
- Amy Walter, publisher and editor-in-chief, writes that the campaign has gone from "Trump's to lose to a much more competitive contest," with Democrats "united and energized" and Republicans "on their heels."
In addition to the new speech, look for a Trump ad blitz. Trump's campaign and the biggest Trump-aligned super PAC spent four times as much on TV ads in Georgia in the two weeks after Biden left the race than in the rest of 2024 combined, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
- On Friday, the Trump campaign placed $37 million in new ad buys (nearly two-thirds of it in Georgia) — the most he's reserved on TV ads in a single day this cycle, the tracking firm AdImpact found.
The latest: The Trump campaign said Saturday that its internal email had been hacked, with documents "obtained illegally from foreign sources hostile to the United States, intended to interfere with the 2024 election and sow chaos throughout our Democratic process."
- Steven Cheung, the campaign communications director, warned reporters in a statement: "Any media or news outlet reprinting documents or internal communications are doing the bidding of America's enemies and doing exactly what they want."
Behind the scenes: A New York Times article over the weekend (the one that says Trump has repeatedly called Harris a "bitch" in private) vividly captures the former president's foul mood, pettiness and stubborn refusal to change. Among the revelations:
- At an Aug. 2 dinner in the Hamptons, "rattled donors" hoped Trump "would signal that he was recalibrating after a series of damaging mistakes." Instead, he invoked the "stop the steal" claims about 2020 that his advisers have urged him to drop. And Trump said of a race-baiting comment to the National Association of Black Journalists, where he questioned Harris' identity: "I think I was right."
- Trump stunned one of his wealthiest patrons, Miriam Adelson, widow of casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, on July 25 "by having an aide, Natalie Harp, fire off a series of angry text messages to Mrs. Adelson in Mr. Trump's name," complaining about people running Mrs. Adelson's super PAC, Preserve America, into which she's pouring millions to support Trump.
The bottom line: Put the Times piece and this column in a time capsule. If Trump loses, you'll understand why.
- Go deeper: Vance finds footing as Trump's attack dog, by Axios' Sophia Cai.
