As Vice President Kamala Harris reverses a Democratic slide in the race for the White House, former President Donald Trump is making preemptive excuses for a possible second defeat. Most are clearly liars.
Trump recently said it was unconstitutional for President Joe Biden to drop out of the race because of concerns that the Democrats would lose. not. The Constitution is silent on the nomination of parties.
He and his allies accused Harris create a fake pictures the crowd using artificial intelligence as a means of enhancing perceptions of its electoral power. His audience is real.
Thursday, Trump In a post, Truth Social claimed that Judge Juan Merchan, who will sentence her next month on felony charges in New York, is using a partial gag to prevent her from speaking to reporters in the middle of the campaign. A narrow statute allows him to speak to the media as long as he does not attack the families of court officials.
Trump, for example, spoke to the media at a polling station in Florida on Wednesday and held multiple press conferences at his Mar-a-Lago home last week.
Nearly four years after his attempt to overturn the 2020 election results, Trump’s renewed focus on building a fraudulent case that Democrats tried to defraud him has ended with supporters storming the Capitol. January 6 to decertify Electoral College votes — speaks to his insecurity, according to people familiar with his behavior, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation from the Republican Party’s most powerful figure.
Those uncertainties are less about the integrity of the election and more about his chances of winning — and his frustration at not always being at the center of the national political debate, these people said. Some Republicans worry about him one more time It avoids issues that matter to voters, including inflation and immigration, because it pursues grievances that don’t resonate with voters.
“He can never be a loser,” said a former top adviser to Trump The former president’s push to call the elections unfair. “He’s going to do anything he knows how to do,” the former adviser said, explaining that he sees Trump’s media presence as a sign of his political power.
Republican strategists say Trump is fighting the wrong battle if he wants to retake the White House.
“If Trump doesn’t focus on the problems facing America and Harris’ failed record, but instead talks about grievances or the recent election, the result will likely be the same,” he said. last week, Trump stopped short of talking about Harris at a rally, instead attacking Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, who has resisted Trump’s efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 results.
Trump’s advisers say he is not worried about the state of the race.
“President Trump and our campaign have never been more confident that we will win this election,” Trump spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt said in a brief phone interview. “Our strategy to defeat Kamala Harris has not changed since Joe Biden became the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party after the coup. We will work hard every day to expose Kamala Harris’ dangerous liberal policies that have created an inflationary nightmare, bloodshed at the border, and war around the world.”
Trump has never let go of allegations of election fraud in 2020, a line of argument that plays well with his political base but alienates many voters outside that set. But his determination to think the system is rigging him tends to wax lower when he’s sure he’s stopped and worried.
Earlier this week, the Republican National Committee, effectively an arm of the Trump campaign, X boasted 157,000 people said they signed the “election integrity program”.
“Why is the RNC recruiting hundreds of thousands for the ‘election integrity project’ instead of hundreds of thousands of precinct captains and GOTV. [get out the vote] have people actually focused on persuading voters and attracting voters?” said one veteran GOP operative who questioned the strategy. “That’s because it’s easier to scream ‘phony’ when he inevitably loses another winnable race because he he doesn’t know how. making a case for his vision.”
Polls consistently show a close race — but Harris is in a better position to win when Biden steps aside. In the midst of this sudden change in trajectory, Trump increasingly began to question the integrity of the election.
“Things like this were always going to be part of the message, but it’s more central now,” said one Republican operative, who was not authorized by his employer to speak publicly about the presidential campaign. “He’s using it to undermine a potential loss or to further motivate the base, who knows? But undermining trust in institutions is the basis of everything he does.”
Unreasonably after Trump He said this last week at Truth Social At the top of the Democratic ticket, he announced that he thought the change was “unconstitutional.” At the Mar-a-Lago press conference.
“For a country with a constitution, we cherish this Constitution, It’s pretty tough, pretty terrible to do it this way,” Trump said. “I’m not a fan of Biden, but what can I say from a constitutional standpoint, any standpoint you look at it. the presidency is far away”.
Although Biden chose not to end his re-election campaign, he remains president until his term expires on January 20.
Trump in X Spaces chat with billionaire Elon Musk this week he repeated his false claim He said the 2020 election was “rigged” and accused Democrats of trying to steal it as he was sued in federal and state courts. A New York jury convicted him earlier this year of nearly three dozen counts of falsifying business records to cover up an alleged relationship to help his election hopes. Trump denies having sex with an adult film actor Stormy Daniels has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Trump’s advisers say he has discussed his differences with Harris on key issues such as energy policy, immigration and inflation, including at a rally in Asheville, North Carolina, on Thursday.
But Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist who works in New Hampshire and Washington, said Trump risks reminding voters who voted against him four years ago of what they don’t like about him when he becomes embroiled in fraud allegations.
“Fictitious personal grievances don’t play well on the campaign trail,” Bartlett said. “Telling voters who voted against you in 2020 that the election was stolen is not a welcome message. It was political poison in the midterms and could be political suicide for Trump in the general election.”