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Republicans are concerned that party leader Donald Trump is having a “public nervous breakdown” after he made a series of offensive outbursts about Vice President Kamala Harris as he slips behind her in the polls.
The former president has made a number of insulting personal attacks against his Democratic rival since she moved to the top of the ticket. Last week, Trump questioned Harris’s racial identity at the National Association of Black Journalists conference. Over the weekend, he accused Harris of having a “low IQ.”
New polls indicate Trump is slipping behind the vice president in the popular vote and races are tightening in battleground states.
“This is what you would call a public nervous breakdown,” Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist and former Trump state department appointee, told Politico.
“This is a guy who cut through the Republican primary like a knife through butter. This is a guy who pummeled a semi-conscious president in a debate and literally out of a race. And now this is a guy who cannot come to grips with a competitive presidential race that would require discipline and effective messaging,” Bartlett continued. “And we’re seeing a candidate and a campaign absolutely meltdown.”
Chair of the Vermont Republican Party, Paul Dame, predicted that Trump allies will start to wane in their defense of the former president.
“I think we’re starting to see the old Trump that a lot of Republicans got tired of in 2020, got tired of defending him,” Dame told USA Today. “If the next three months is defined by more examples like this I think he’s going to see some of that soft centrist support deteriorate.”
One GOP consultant suggested Trump’s negative comments are the first time he has been able to cut through the media frenzy around Harris’s campaign since he survived an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13.
“We’re talking about Trump for the first time in two weeks,” Alex Conant told USA Today. “The risk is he’s reminding voters of the things they didn’t like in 2020, the reason why he’s not president now.”
On top of attacking Harris, Trump also congratulated Russian President Vladimir Putin this past weekend over the historic prisoner swap. But he criticized Joe Biden for the deal and suggested, at a Georgia rally on Saturday, that top GOP officials were hampering his chances of winning the election in the state.
“This is a man who is incapable of controlling his emotions,” said former congressman Adam Kinzinger, who has signed on to the initiative, Republicans for Harris. “Against all advice, against all sanity, he is attacking the Republican governor of Georgia... Donald Trump is losing his marbles.”
Trump’s running mate JD Vance has managed to generate his own negative headlines with his “weird” antics, and caused outrage when his past comments, calling the vice president a “childless cat lady”, resurfaced.
An anonymous GOP strategist also told the outlet: “Every day Trump swipes at shiny objects — attacking the popular governor of a swing state, questioning the race of his opponent, or battling cat lady comments by his VP — is a day he is letting Harris define herself on her own terms.”
GOP political consultant Mike Madrid echoed this sentiment on X, writing: “Trump fatigue is real. America is ready to move on.”
Likely not helping his case, Trump shared a rambling post on Truth Social on Tuesday afternoon, suggesting that President Joe Biden has plans to crash “the Democrat National Convention and tries to take back the Nomination.” The former president wondered aloud whether Biden “feels that he made a historically tragic mistake by handing over the U.S. Presidency, a COUP, to the people in the World he most hates, and he wants it back, NOW!!!”
Trump added that President Biden, who is still serving as commander-in-chief yet dropped out of the 2024 presidential race, had his “Presidency...Unconstitutionally STOLEN from him by Kamabla, Barrack HUSSEIN Obama, Crazy Nancy Pelosi, Shifty Adam Schiff, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer, and others on the Lunatic Left.”
