President Donald Trump has outraged Democrats and offended ethics lawyers this week by parading a number of his top officials in front of cameras during the Republican National Convention — a possibly illegal breach of historic norms.
But the furor over the precedent-busting encomiums to Trump by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway and others have obscured another way his presidency has broken with the past: just how many of his onetime aides no longer support him.
At least 19 former top Trump administration officials in total have broken publicly with their former boss in one form or another, according to a POLITICO count, and several have already lent their names to various Republicans-for-Biden efforts. Not all of them have said they will vote for Democratic nominee Joe Biden — former national security adviser John Bolton, for instance, says he will pull the lever for an unspecified third person. It amounts to a never-before-seen wave of defections of people who have denounced him or his policies or criticized his character in other ways.
But the potential pool of opposition within the president’s ranks is much larger, according to interviews with more than a dozen current and former senior Trump officials. Anthony Scaramucci, for one — Trump’s short-lived former White House communications director — claimed he has talked to 20 former White House and administration officials who plan to vote for Biden but don’t want to speak publicly to avoid getting hit by Trump on Twitter.
“Anybody of substance is voting for Biden,” he said. “Anybody who has an IQ of over 100 and has worked for Donald Trump, with the exception of Steve Bannon, is not voting for him.” (In early August, Trump tweeted that Scaramucci was “a fool” and “a loser who begged to come back.”)
The interviews revealed a widespread feeling among Trump alums that he will not be re-elected. Some, like Scaramucci, are rooting for the president to lose. Others are critical of a campaign operation they see as flailing. What unites them all is shared skepticism that Trump can overcome the public’s harsh assessment of his management of the pandemic, which has now killed more than 180,000 Americans and has driven millions into poverty and deprivation.
One word that repeatedly came up when Trump alums were asked to describe his reelection prospects: “pessimistic.”
“I think people are starting to worry,” said a former senior administration official. Another Trump administration alum predicts “a total wipeout.”
That pessimism is hardly universal. Some Trump aides are reveling in the lowered expectations because it gives them a chance to replicate their come-from-behind spirit of 2016. They fully expect the race to tighten a few points in the coming weeks, and cast doubt on the polls, arguing that they consistently understate the president’s “silent majority” of supporters who are embarrassed to tell pollsters they’ll vote for Trump. They also believe that Trump counterpunches best when his back is up against the wall.
“All of these anonymous ‘sources’ will be the first to show up at the victory party with a resume in hand, looking for a job in the second term,” said Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh in a statement. “Not one of these people has any idea what’s happening inside the campaign and they don’t see our data. The president is in a stronger position than he was in 2016 and now has a record of achievement to run on.”
“Anyone who underestimates or writes off President Trump does so at their own peril,” said White House spokesman Judd Deere.
But it’s not just the president’s flat poll numbers, which currently place him an average of roughly seven percentage points behind Biden, that factors into the critics’ assessments. The lack of trademark Trump rallies has also put a severe damper on his campaign, which relied on the massive events to drive free and largely unfiltered local media coverage, to stoke Trump’s loyal base of supporters, to inspire them to volunteer and donate — and to siphon up their personal data.
“He’s someone who wants to get out, go to the rallies, see people and now he is stuck in the White House,” said the former senior administration official. “His heart is not about being confined. His heart is about getting out and he needs to find ways to do that, consistent with the realities of Covid.”
Because the June rally in Tulsa, Okla. backfired spectacularly on a number of levels and indefinitely put the president’s signature MAGA rallies on hold, “their biggest asset was left on the sidelines,” said a former White House official. The Trump campaign is trying to adjust by holding mini-MAGA events and doing more retail politics, POLITICO reported this week.
Before the virus hit, the economy was humming, with Vice President Mike Pence saying on Wednesday night in his acceptance speech: “When it came to the economy, President Trump kept his word and then some … to pass the largest tax cut and reform in American history, rolled back more federal red tape than any admin, unleashed American energy and fought for free and fair trade.” With the pandemic having plunged America into recession, Trump and his campaign have promised to “Make America Great Again, Again” and say that the president is uniquely qualified to bring back the economy and get people back to work.
It’s hard to sell that argument to the voters Trump needs to win in November, the critics say.
“The virus has redefined everything, and he has not defined his management of it in a successful way,” said a former senior White House official, who compared the pandemic to a “wet blanket” over Trump. “The numbers are unambiguous. I don’t think he’s going to be able to communicate anything about the economy, about any of these issues effectively, until this isn’t the primary concern of most people. Forget about talking about Joe Biden.”
Former Trump aides are also not happy that the Trump campaign hasn’t done a better job of successfully defining Biden as a elderly puppet of the radical left who will be controlled by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and whose presidency would lead to cities and suburbs being beset by violence.
Asked why the Trump campaign has struggled in its efforts to paint Biden in a negative light, one befuddled former senior White House official simply said: “That I don’t know.”
Some current Trump officials bemoan the president’s lack of an obvious second-term agenda, pointing to his winding response on the matter to Fox News host Sean Hannity. One said he was “horrified” at that answer, which he called “pretty embarrassing … The campaign needs to do a better job of identifying what he’s going to do in a second term.”
A senior White House official pushed back on the notion that Trumpworld isn’t optimistic about winning in November.
“We feel like the pendulum has swung and we feel really strong where we’re at,” said the official. “This convention week has been a great three nights for us and tonight’s going to cap us off and the president’s going to deliver a strong speech. I don’t think this week could have gone better with the convention and our programming. … A lot of people in the White House and among senior staff are feeling really good about where we’re at.”
Trump veterans on the outside, though, worry that if the election’s dominant question is whether to keep the president in office, he will likely lose. They would feel much more comfortable if the campaign had successfully reframed the election as a choice between Trump’s vision of rebuilding the economy after a pandemic and Biden’s message of restoring “the soul of America.”
“Right now the focus is all on whether to retain [Trump],” said the former senior administration official. “I’d love to see the president go out and make it into a choice rather than a retention election.”
Trump alums are also worried about how their former boss might fare in the upcoming debates against Biden, notwithstanding the campaign’s bravado about the 77-year-old Democrat’s supposedly declining mental fitness.
“Seventy-five percent of the questions are going to be, ‘Hey, Mr. President, many thousands of Americans have died from a virus that you’ve downplayed, you haven’t gotten a supply chain working, you haven’t reassured the public, you haven’t given clear guidance to wear a mask, you haven’t done all these things on your watch in the last 6 months well enough,’” said a former senior White House official, who said his former colleagues understand that they had underestimated the coronavirus.
“If the virus and the handling of it is the core set of questions when it comes to the debates, he’s not going to be talking about trade, about defeating ISIS, or cutting regulations or energy policy or the lowest unemployment rate among African-Americans. All those talking points and accomplishments have been kind of lit on fire,” the person added.
A former senior White House official said he also knows of one or two former colleagues who have told him they’re going to vote for Biden. “I know more who have said they would have a tough time pulling the lever for Trump but they also can’t vote for Biden so they may write somebody in,” this person said.
“I believe there is far less percent support among those that used to work for President Trump than there is in the general population,” said another former senior administration official. “I know almost no one that supports him that used to work for him. You will see more and more people coming out against him in the coming months.”
Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security in the Trump administration, said he didn’t know how the pandemic will affect turnout in November, but feels confident that Trump will lose.
“What we do know is that the sentiment of the American people is clear: They’re fed up with Trump and the tumult -- and they’re desperate for sanity in the White House,” said Taylor, who is recruiting current and former Trump officials to join an anti-Trump group he recently started. “He’s proven himself thoroughly unqualified to keep doing the job. So I suspect voters are going to deliver to Trump the same verdict that made him famous: ‘You’re fired.’”
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Former top Trump officials are betting he'll lose - POLITICO
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