Donald Trump’s allies are “completely exasperated” after the candidate’s wildly disturbing speech over the weekend in a key battleground state.
During Trump’s Sunday address in Lititz, Pennsylvania, the former president said that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after being voted out of office in 2020, and said that he “wouldn’t mind” if members of the press took a bullet meant for him. Both represent significant escalations in Trump’s explicit election denialism and violent threats.
CNN’s Kristen Holmes reported later that day that Trump’s allies are fed up with their candidate’s use of extreme rhetoric in a crucial state.
“I spoke to a number of allies who were completely exasperated after that Pennsylvania rally,” Holmes said. “We cannot talk about how critical Pennsylvania is as a state. There are many people inside of Trump’s inner circle who believe that Pennsylvania will decide the election.”
“One of these allies telling me, ‘How hard is it to just go up there and say, ‘Kamala broke it and I’m going to fix it?’” Holmes said. “Another one telling me that they have spent an enormous amount of time talking to campaign advisers, trying to get Donald Trump to focus on the economy, to focus on inflation. They believe these are the matters that voters actually care about.”
“These allies are incredibly frustrated about the language that he is using on the campaign trail. The darkness of the rhetoric, at least how they see it, they believe that he can win this election, but he’s going to have to actually change how he is talking,” she continued.
Trump’s latest remarks come after other disturbing escalations, including threatening to turn the U.S. military on its own citizens. Last week, he doubled down on attacks against Liz Cheney, a Kamala Harris ally, after he suggested the former representative ought to be put in front of a firing squad.
A panel led by CNN’s Erin Burnett unpacked the concerns of Trump’s top allies, highlighting just how weird and gruesome the former president’s rhetoric has become. Jonah Goldberg, a political commentator, said that the problem with Trump was that he always managed to “unload with craziness, and that’s what gets covered.”
Lulu Garcia-Navarro, an opinion podcast host for The New York Times, said that Trump’s remarks about the press were “not normal” and “not right.”
“Everything that [Trump] has done has sabotaged his campaign. I don’t know a single person, even people who like Donald Trump, even people who support Donald Trump, who think this is a winning message,” said Garcia-Navarro.
Shermichael Singleton, a conservative political commentator, said that he’d spoken to multiple Trump supporters who agreed.
“I called a bunch of folks that I know, who are Trump supporters, some just regular people, some who are doing grassroots stuff in critical states,” Singleton said. “And every last one of them said, ‘What in the hell is the president doing?’”
“These are people who love Donald Trump and respect Donald Trump,” Singleton explained. “I’m hearing them say, ‘It’s almost as if he doesn’t want to win.’”
Trump’s allies’ panic comes after early voting numbers suggested that the former president could be in trouble in Pennsylvania, a state that is critical to ensuring his victory. Last week, more than 100,000 new voters, a majority of whom were women, had already cast their ballots in Pennsylvania ahead of Election Day.
Meanwhile, the Republican Party in Scranton, Pennsylvania, appeared to be a lot more focused Saturday on signing up poll watchers than signing up voters, according to The Washington Post.
The post Team Trump Is Losing it Over His “Crazy” Latest Rally appeared first on New Republic.
