Didn't see this coming...or did I?

In Donald Trump’s West Wing, being a member of the Trump family has historically been the ultimate job security. But that truism is being stress-tested after a run of polls consistently show Trump losing to Joe Biden at this stage of the race—a CNN poll this morning has him down 14 points. According to a source close to the White House, Trump has mulled taking oversight of the campaign away from his son-in-law Jared Kushner.

  Vanity Fair

What??? Jared can't do EVERYTHING???

“He’s going to broom Kushner and [Brad] Parscale—the numbers are not getting better,” a Republican close to the campaign said.

Long before the reelection campaign went sideways, Trump frequently blew up at Kushner. For instance, former West Wing officials recall how Trump hated when Kushner received too much positive press (In January, Trump was rankled when Kushner’s portrait graced the cover of Time). “Any time Jared is in the papers, Trump complains, ‘We have to get Jared back to New York!’” said a Republican who heard Trump make the comment. In the end, the source cautioned that Trump won’t push Kushner out. “This is typical with him and Jared,” the source said.

They deserve each other.

Axios reported the campaign is debating whether Trump should talk about national unity.

How is that even a debate? Oh, wait. I think I know: he would be absolutely terrible at it.

Last week, Trump’s former defense secretary James Mattis released a blistering statement criticizing Trump’s use of military force to clear peaceful protesters from Lafayette Square so Trump could stage a photo op outside of a church. Mattis had agonized for months about whether to speak out, a person close to him told me. Mattis told people that Trump is a “proto-neofascist” but Mattis worried it would politicize the military if he denounced Trump.

[...]

Over the weekend, Trump called around to New York friends and outside advisers in hopes they would validate Trump’s belief that the polls are wrong. “He’s asking people to agree with him that the polls are biased. But no one is telling him what he wants to hear,” said a Republican briefed on the calls.

What's the matter with those people?

Republicans know how bad things are, but the party still believes sticking with Trump is the best bet for holding the Senate.

How I do hoope they are proved wrong.

Last week, Mitch McConnell told Republican senators that they couldn’t abandon Trump, according to a source.

And hopefully McConnell will lose his seat as well.

McConnell reminded Republicans that former New Hampshire senator Kelly Ayotte lost her 2016 reelection bid after breaking with Trump over the Access Hollywood video.

A lot has happened since then.

(Through a spokesperson, McConnell denied making the comment.)

Of course he did.

As he headed into Memorial Day weekend, Donald Trump complained that he was COVID-19’s biggest victim. “He was just in a fucking rage,” said a person who spoke with Trump late last week. “He was saying, ‘This is so unfair to me! Everything was going great. We were cruising to reelection!” Even as the death toll neared 100,000 and unemployment ranks swelled to over 38 million, Trump couldn’t see the pandemic as anything other than something that had happened to him. “The problem is he has no empathy,” the adviser said. Trump complained that he should have been warned about the virus sooner. “The intelligence community let me down!” he said.

  Vanity Fair

I thought they did it on purpose to try to get rid of him?

According to a Republican briefed on the campaign’s internal polls, Trump is trailing Biden by double digits among women over 50 in six swing states. “Trump knows the numbers are bad. It’s why he’s thrashing about,” the Republican said.

Looking to fire his campaign managers.

According to a source, Melania Trump warned the president during their trip to India in February to take the virus response seriously. “He totally blew her off,” the source said. Melania later told people that Trump “only hears what he wants to hear and surrounds himself with yes-people and family,” the source added.

She better be careful, or she'll find herself divorced, if not having her hair pulled out.

[T]he campaign promoted former White House political director Bill Stepien to deputy campaign manager and named Stephanie Alexander, the Midwest political director, to the post of campaign chief of staff. The moves are being seen by many in Trumpworld as a demotion for Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, who has been at odds with Trump for weeks over his spending and the president’s deteriorating poll numbers. “Trump has been screaming at Brad, ‘How many fucking times do I have to tell you I don’t like this! Are you fucking stupid?’” said a Republican who’s overheard the conversations.

As if Parscale can make Trump anything but Trump.

Stepien, a close ally of Jared Kushner, is viewed by Trump advisers as a competent tactician who can help the campaign appeal to alienated suburban voters.

[...]

The problem for Stepien, though, is that no amount of messaging or get-out-the-vote efforts can shade the reality that Trump’s mishandling of the pandemic has plunged the country into a once-in-a-century economic crisis. It’s a point Stepien tacitly made when I interviewed him before the 2018 midterms.

[...]

But the biggest obstacle standing in the way of a Trump-campaign reset is the candidate. “Trump is doing it to himself by tweeting idiotic conspiracy theories about Joe Scarborough. Women are tired of this shit,” said another former West Wing official. An outside adviser agreed. “Trump can’t pivot to a different strategy,” the adviser told me. “He only knows one strategy—which is attack. It worked in 2016. But now it’s not what people are looking for.” The adviser told me that Trump’s New York friends are planning an intervention to get him to stop tweeting about the Morning Joe cohost.

They need to stage an intervention to get him into a sanitarium.

And when he’s not feeling helpless or aggrieved, Trump continues to cling to magical thinking. “He lives in his own fucking world,” the outside adviser said.

[...]

At this point many Republicans I spoke to said the only hope for Trump is that Biden implodes.

And, unfortunately, that is certainly not out of the question.