President Trump is gambling that his gut instinct will guide him to election victory, even as opinion polls suggest he is losing support and some allies warn he is not doing enough to attract new voters.
With less than five months until the election, a string of negative surveys coupled with the lingering impact of the coronavirus pandemic and explosive demonstrations against police brutality have triggered concern among Trump confidants that his campaign is in trouble.
But campaign advisers insist next week’s return to mass rallies will mark a turning point and draw a line under a difficult political environment.
That can’t come soon enough for Republicans on Capitol Hill.
“The last couple of weeks, there has been a growing fear that things could get really out of hand and the bottom could fall out,” said a senior congressional aide.
As Kimberly Strassel, a conservative columnist and a favorite of Trump who has retweeted her 13 times this year alone, put it in the Wall Street Journal: “If the Trump campaign can’t turn things around, the country could be looking at total Democratic control for the first time since 2010 — and a liberal Senate majority that may well eliminate the filibuster for legislation and pack the courts.”
For his part, the president has followed his instincts and, at times, dialed back advice from aides to temper his message.
So this week, he allied himself with his conservative base on divisive racial issues, condemning calls to remove Confederate leaders’ names from military bases, while even NASCAR — the motor racing circuit beloved of many Trump fans — said it was banning the Confederate battle flag from its events.
And when he responded to protests against the death of George Floyd with plans to encourage better training of police officers, including the use of de-escalation tactics, he couldn’t help but ad-lib a line that sometimes strong force was still needed. “If you are going to have to really do a job, if someone is really bad, you are going to have to do it with real strength, real power,” he said.
The latest polls show what a difficult month Trump has endured.
Gallup’s monthly poll showed a 10% dip in the president’s approval rating, taking him from a high of 49% to 39% on Wednesday, its lowest since October. And a recent CNN poll put presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s national lead at 14%.
The president’s response was to demand CNN retract the poll and to call up John McLaughlin, his favorite pollster, to analyze the bias against him.
In a memo sent to the president, McLaughlin said the results were skewed by a methodology that surveyed all voters. That failed to account for the greater tendency of Republicans to turn out and vote.
“The refusal to screen for actual likely voters is creating an under-polling of Republicans and therefore Trump voters,” he wrote. “It seems intentional. It’s exactly what the media did in 2016. Let’s prove them wrong again.”
Allies are split on the question. Some fear the campaign is walking into a disaster that could see Trump become the first Republican since 1976 to lose Texas. Others say the lesson of 2016 was not to trust the polls.
“I never tell the truth to a pollster,” said one major donor, who said he expected an army of “ghost voters” to appear in November and propel Trump to victory.
However, several confidants blame campaign manager Brad Parscale. They fear he has been promoted beyond his political skills and experience after winning plaudits as digital media director of the 2016 campaign.
“It’s all digital,” said one adviser. “Where is the spending on television?”
Sam Nunberg, a consultant who advised Trump from 2011 to 2015, said Trump was not going to win in the same way as 2016 and would have to run on his record as president.
“The idea that you should just ignore your base is wrong. But you need to broaden out your message as well. It’s not one or the other.”
Several old faces from 2016 returned to the fold in recent weeks. Jason Miller, communications director last time around, joined the campaign to coordinate with the White House. And Boris Epshteyn, a senior adviser in 2016, was made strategic adviser for coalitions.
A senior campaign adviser said it was natural to bolster the team as November drew near and that it was wrong to extrapolate too much from two weeks dominated by street protests.
He said things would change as Trump turned the focus back on to Biden.
“As we move ahead, I think next week’s rally will be a big turning point in this election, when things start opening, the president’s back on the road, getting his mojo going,” he said, ahead of Friday’s rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. “I think you’ll start seeing the numbers moving.”
