The Trump Campaign Is In Full Nuclear Meltdown Mode [View all]

[AntiBank]

Sources describe the campaign as an incompetent, backstabbing skeleton crew without any coherent message. And Donald Trump is making it worse.

http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/06/donald-trump-campaign

For all the noise that Donald Trump makes, and all the amplification that noise gets from the media, it’s hard to see the campaign infrastructure that presumably exists behind it. Perhaps that’s because, as Trump aides and other sources close to the campaign revealed to NBC News, there isn’t any infrastructure. Instead, the Trump campaign is reportedly composed of a skeleton crew of a few backstabbing staffers unable to coordinate a coherent message about the presumptive Republican nominee’s vision for America.

The article, simply titled “Donald Trump does not have a campaign,” details the disarray within the campaign, which is described as “a bare-bones effort debilitated by infighting, a lack of staff to carry out basic functions, minimal coordination with allies and a message that’s prisoner to Trump’s momentary whims.” While the feuding between professional political operative Paul Manafort and neophyte campaign manager Corey Lewandowski is well-known, even more dysfunction exists below them. Hope Hicks, the campaign’s 27-year-old press secretary, reportedly works alone and without any support; a daunting task for a staffer responsible for managing Trump’s juggernaut media presence. A rapid-response team, crucial in traditional campaigns to rebut their opponents’ attacks before they damage the candidate further, does not exist. The Trump campaign struggles to publicize positive news, too: while Manafort corralled a host of local endorsements ahead of the candidate’s California tour last week, no press release ever went out, a source told NBC, because Lewandowski and Hicks vetoed every draft. And when Hillary Clinton delivered a devastating foreign-policy speech criticizing Trump’s temperament and credentials, Republican allies waited in vain to receive instructions on how to coordinate a counterattack. Trump tweeted about Clinton’s use of a teleprompter, but neither Trump nor the R.N.C. ever released an official rebuttal after the speech.

A lack of coordination isn’t the only reason Trump surrogates are in the dark. Trump himself is so mercurial, and his positions so inconsistent (and often at odds with the Republican Party’s own platform), that allies rarely know how to act or what to say. When Trump attacked Gonzalo Curiel, the judge presiding over a Trump University lawsuit, for his Mexican heritage, he refused to listen to the majority of “horrified” supporters and surrogates who urged him to apologize his comments. High-profile supporters like Newt Gingrich, who is widely considered to be a top pick for Trump’s V.P., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell either repudiated his remarks or remained silent.

But Trump hasn’t backed down. On a conference call Monday, reported by Bloomberg, Trump demanded that his supporters and surrogates ramp up their attacks on Curiel. When former Arizona governor Jan Brewer noted that Trump’s own staffers had previously sent a memo asking his allies to stop referring to the lawsuit, the New Yorker exploded. “ Take that order and throw it the hell out,” he said, according to two people who were on the call. “Are there any other stupid letters that were sent to you folks?” he asked. “That's one of the reasons I want to have this call, because you guys are getting sometimes stupid information from people that aren't so smart.”

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