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By Michael Wolff
Mr. Wolff is the one with 3 books about Donald Trump.
In August 2020, Trump’s crusade was met with a staggering $200 million budget deficit. In September 2020, Brad Parscale, a senior adviser who until recently served as the crusade’s manager, had a public outage on the street outside his Florida home. And the police were called to arrest him. For the final months of the race, the crusade staff kept Donald Trump out of his knowledge guru, Matt Oczkowski, whom Trump found strange and boring. And in the final weeks of the crusade, the incumbent was spent as much as three to one, an unprecedented delay in the history of fashionable presidential races.
In the opinion of the many Trump pundits I spoke to, adding nearly every single key member of his crusade and West Wing staff, those few months have laid bare the chaos at the center of Trumpian politics, exposing Mr. Trump for who he is: He is not a style general manager but a distracted, lazy, incompetent manager whose contempt for conference and the fiery clutter of a personality clouded his crusade with a great disadvantage. The government can continue to serve as if a president is not aware of the details. However, a presidential crusade runs into trouble when you can’t annoy a candidate through the game plan and despise the other people who try to stick to it. And Mr. Trump won his first crusade and lost the moment by a relatively small margin. In only a few key states, it was despite the calamity surrounding it.
The trail of his 2024 declaration was a characteristic prelude to the burden he places on a campaign. His inner circle, first, believed he had approved plans for an announcement earlier this summer, which was seen as the most productive opportunity to outline the ongoing process. Investigations opposed him as inherently political, to stop Gov. Ron DeSantis’ clients from moving forward and seeking immediate consolidation. But that time passed without any action or explanation from the potential candidate. It is rumored that new dates were set and the summer was missed. and early fall, first, according to one attendee, to divert attention from Mar-a-Lago’s search for documents, and then position it to claim the red wave it believed was coming as its own.
At the same time, however, there was no doubt that he would run. “I would bow my head and die if some other republican became king,” the aide told me. During long, rambling calls and meetings with aides and friends, Mr. Trump never thought of another street to himself. At the same time, he made little effort to build a team and an organization. Its trusted top political leaders, including Jared Kushner, Stephen Miller, Jason Miller and Kayleigh McEnany, pursued their own interests. Even Donald Trump Jr. Max commonly stayed away. Obviously, no new groups had emerged. Boris Epshteyn, a persistent Trump addict who never made it into the White House and worried about Rudy Giuliani’s ridiculous legal efforts to overturn the 2020 election, is one of the few people now in the middle. of the growing crusade: a harbinger of the kind of skill that could fill the West Wing in a Trump restoration.
While some other politicians may contemplate a presidential race without a position and a serious brain, Trump’s staffing is never more than a remote concern: He has handled things with his own chaotic head.
After writing 3 books in less than 4 years about Mr. Trump, with the almost constant contribution of his aides and closest friends, as well as hours of rambling on his part, I came to two main conclusions: that there is almost never a genuine plan, strategy or foresight in Trump’s global and that everyone around him lives in the criminal of his monologues. They allow no interruption or verification of the truth and nullify all plans that others have tried to make. His fixations, misunderstandings and contempt for minds that can be kind to him reign.
The aide recently described the constant turmoil within Trump’s world, as complaints and resentments are repeated and blame is assigned, such as the workings of Mr. S. ‘s “mixed brain. “Trump.
Chaos suits him, allowing him to come and go to turn what deserves to be a humiliating and defeated disaster into a difficult conflict: if he can’t find a solution to a challenge, he can almost identify an enemy to blame. The challenge is that the challenge remains.
The federal grand juries investigating him, as well as the investigations in New York and Atlanta, are for him, and supposedly for many of his aides, political prosecutions. The candidacy for the presidency becomes his main defense. But that doesn’t solve the challenge that he has multimillion-dollar legal bills per month, with paid lawyers, now paid through the Republican National Committee and through his super PACs, which happens to take into account his private pig. Bank of 100 million dollars. Both budget resources will be exhausted with your help: RNC because it cannot show favoritism for one Republican candidate over another and super PAC because they cannot coordinate with Mr. Trump now that he has officially entered the race. Without their help, Trump’s crusade could soon be placed in a serious, even deadly, monetary hole.
Yes, he survived Indictment 1 and Indictment 2 and Russian “hoax” and Trump University and Trump’s steaks and Trump’s women. . . however, no one has ever run for president on fraud charges, and many, if not most, of Trump’s aides in minus one come. An indictment would actually provide more Sturm und Drang to motivate him and his legions, but it would also impose, over the next two years of the campaign, an almost unimaginable burden in terms of cost, time, human resources. Resources and attention of an uncooperative country. man. And, of course, he would possibly be convicted.
Joe Biden turns 80 this month, seemingly fragile and with apparent intellectual flaws. It is, admittedly, a weak hand. But Democrats still have a critical advantage: the professionalism needed to run a fashionable presidential campaign, which is one of the most extensive control efforts imaginable, a complicated, data-driven venture that goes on to raise just $1 billion in the blink of an eye yet. Also spend it wisely in a matter of months.
Republicans may be stuck with a candidate who makes numbers what he needs them to be, puts the circle of family ahead of professionals, and has no doubt that his own recommendation is greater than everyone else’s. It can be said that Mr. Trump won in 2016 only because, 3 months before the election, Steve Bannon stepped in with a Hail Mary strategy of focusing on the Democratic states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania while sidelining Trump with an expanded schedule of daily rallies he wanted. Bannon then claimed the credits for the victory, claiming that Mr. Trump would never give anyone that chance again, even if it meant defeat; hence Mr S. Parscale, a green crusader manager and probably volatile satisfied to be one today for president. and his circle of relatives.
In this small grudge lies the key point: M. Trump’s main objective is not victory. He is the star. His effort to oppose the 2020 result was a colossal failure, but he managed to stay in the middle stage. If he were to become president again, we may not see a breakdown of democracy, as liberals fear, but a growing distraction from it. .
Trump is not informed of his mistakes, but comes to regard them as virtues. Another Trump crusade, like the last two, as well as his tenure in the White House, will lack the maximum fundamental controls of control. He takes responsibility, allowing him to be the screen he believes, not without reason, that his base wants him to be. But that doesn’t help make wise spending decisions.
The Democrats, in their inability to find language to silence or fire Mr. Trump, will remain their reliable dramatic contrast. They will threaten, investigate and qualify you, for your immediate benefit, galvanizing your passionate base. The result will be another close election. The good news for Democrats, even if it will check the resentments of the Trumpian base, is that a presidential election, as well as the global one itself, is aimed at finances, organization, and data, requiring wonderful expertise and attention. a truth that even Trump’s crusade opera can change.
Michael Wolff (@MichaelWolffNYC) is the one with 3 books about Donald Trump: “Fire and Fury”, “Siege” and “Landslide”.
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