President Trump has called a meeting with senior political advisers from his Cabinet and reelection campaign as polls show his support slipping among voters in key battleground states.
Joining the meeting on Thursday are campaign manager Brad Parscale and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, a top aide who has sought greater oversight of his father-in-law’s reelection effort. It is not on the president’s public schedule, and it is not clear what time the meeting was to occur.
Parscale’s new deputy, Bill Stepien, a former Trump White House political director who until last month was advising the campaign informally; top pollster Tony Fabrizio; and chief of staff Mark Meadows were also to attend.
The meeting was expected to be tense, according to a report by Bloomberg News. Trump is performing poorly in states earmarked as politically competitive.
According to the RealClearPolitics average, presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden leads Trump by 3.4 points in Wisconsin, by 4 points in Pennsylvania, by 0.8 in North Carolina, and by 3.4 in Florida. Nationally, according to the site’s average, the former vice president leads Trump by 7.8 points.
A Fox News poll published on Wednesday showed Biden leading Trump by 8 points nationally, at 48% to 40%, as well as in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Arizona, three states that Trump won in 2016. The two were tied at 42% in the same poll last month.
A Wednesday Monmouth poll shows an increase in the number of voters who say Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak makes it less likely he will be reelected since April, at 38 to 31. There was also a drop among those who said his handling made it more likely, to 18% from 27% in April.
Betting odds in the general election that once had Biden collapsed beneath Trump now have the two competitors even.
Trump’s designated super PAC, America First Action, dropped a $7.5 million advertising blitz last week that targeted Biden on economic issues, an area where Trump has typically held an advantage in recent polls.
Kushner has become a lightning rod for criticism from members of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” base, who hold him responsible for diluting Trump’s populist message. “No one has more contempt for Donald Trump’s voters than Jared Kushner does, and no one expresses it more frequently,” chided Fox News host Tucker Carlson on his prime-time show this week.
