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Donors and allies of former President Donald Trump are concerned that his inability to stay on message and stay away from conspiracy theories is stunting his chances of targeting the momentum of Vice President Kamala Harris.
Trump’s reaction to the upended campaign following the departure of President Joe Biden and the ascension of Harris to the top of the ticket has been to double down on his penchant for abusive messages and attacks.
Allies of Trump see his conspiratorial messages and insults based on race as anything but productive. They want him to focus his attacks on policy issues, such as immigration and the economy, rather than personal attacks against Harris.
“Guess what? This is a different race now,” a person close to Trump told CNN. “The Democrats are energized. They have a massive machine — and she’s raising money, and she can put a coherent argument against him.”
“It should be easy. Talk about the economy and talk about immigration,” they added.
Trump returned to X on Monday ahead of his live interview with Elon Musk on the platform, which ended up being riddled with tech glitches and was delayed by about 40 minutes.
“There’s a lot of opposition to people just hearing what President Trump has to say,” Musk said on the broadcast, claiming with no evidence that Trump’s enemies had attacked the social media site to keep him quiet.
Trump’s account on X posted a number of videos on Monday showcasing message discipline rarely seen in Trump and in his posts on his own platform, Truth Social.
One of the posts on X simply asked, “Are you better off now than you were when I was president?”
It’s a question that Trump didn’t ask until close to the end of his two-hour chat with Musk but one that his entire campaign is based on. Instead, he mentioned his baseless claims that the 2020 election was stolen, commented on Harris’s appearance on the cover of Time magazine and remained focused on attacking Biden.
Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung argued that the former president was not off message during his talk with the tech entrepreneur, telling CNN that Trump “prosecuted the case against Kamala Harris for over two hours yesterday in a record-breaking conversation on X Spaces.”
“He spoke about how weak, failed, and dangerously liberal the Kamala-Walz ticket is, the most radical in American history,” he added.
Since Biden dropped out of the race, Trump has attacked the popular governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, a must-win state for Trump, and he accused Harris of hiding her racial identity during an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago. During a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, the purpose of which was unclear, Trump baselessly claimed that his crowd during his rally ahead of the January 6, 2021 insurrection was comparable to that of Martin Luther King Jr’s during the March on Washington in 1963.
Conservative radio host Steve Deace told CNN that “the double-edged sword of Donald Trump as your standard bearer is that at any time he can disrupt narratives that could crush Republicans and at any time can construct a narrative that’s self-destructive.”
He added: “Donald Trump repeating talking points and campaign pitches would undermine his brand. But he definitely needs to be more focused.”
“Don’t wander off, don’t call her stupid and all kinds of names, stay on message,” Trump ally Larry Kudlow recently said on Fox Business.
Kellyanne Conway, who joined Trump in the White House after his 2016 victory, said on the broadcast, “The winning formula for President Trump is very plain to see – It’s fewer insults, more insights, and that policy contrast.”
Trump has recently taken to share rightwing conspiracy theories, such as that “nobody” attended Harris’ recent rally in Michigan, despite videos and photos showing thousands of people at a Detriot airport.
Former Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy appeared on Fox this week, arguing that Trump must “Stop questioning the size of her crowds and start questioning her position.”
Advisors have pointed to the ready access that many of those who push such theories have to the former president, calling him on the phone directly or taking the chance to talk to him at Mar-a-Lago and his other clubs.
One source told CNN that Trump is “in a spiral” and that he needs to “snap out of it.”
