The new edition of New York magazine has a lengthy cover article by Olivia Nuzzi on the Trump campaign shitshow. Starting with the grifting former campaign manager Brad Parscale, Nuzzi writes:
"'He was never there,' a senior White House official said. 'He’d make phone calls from his house in Florida and brag that he was by the pool. And because he was never there, at the campaign office, people would leave at four o’clock in the afternoon.' (ed. -- Sounds like "Executive Time" Donnie, too). [snip]Of course, despite his nonsensical rambling about fake news polls and his great handling of the coronavirus:
It was a sign of impending doom, to some, when earlier this summer Parscale began coming in more often just as the target on his back swelled to carnival proportions. The polls? Trump trailed his almost-invisible challenger by double digits nationally and by a considerable margin in most battleground states. The messaging? Well, you try to 'spin' six months in which 160,000 Americans died and at least 5 million more were infected by a virus you first said wouldn’t be much to worry about. Six months in which your best case for reelection — the greatest economy in the world — was destroyed too. The offense? Trump couldn’t even settle on a nickname for Joe Biden. Was he “Sleepy Joe,” or “Creepy Joe,” or “Beijing Biden”? That tiny Tulsa rally Parscale had organized — which followed weeks of massive hype — preceded a spike in coronavirus infections in the city that, local officials said, was probably born of the event, where the guest list included Herman Cain, who later died." (our emphasis)
"Even Trump was finding it more difficult to believe the fiction that everything was going great, and easier and easier to see the nihilistic wisdom of open warfare with the Postal Service in a way that might both cut Democrats’ likely vote-by-mail margins and delegitimize the election more generally. His closest advisers were now telling him that the bad numbers and bad reviews weren’t the fruits of Fake News or a deep-state hoax but a genuine reflection of what could happen in November." (our emphasis)There's much more about the internal confusion, corruption and incompetence of the campaign, and the desperate tactics they are willing to use as the election looms. Good read.
(image: Cover of the latest issue of New York magazine)
