‘What the Hell Is Going On?’ Puck’s Tara Palmeri Reports on Finger-Pointing in the Trump Campaign Amid Kamala Harris’s Rise
L: AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File R: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais
An incisive new report from Puck’s Tara Palmeri details the drama inside of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign after a tough couple of weeks.
After noting that the principal himself has responded to Kamala Harris’s replacement of Joe Biden “with his own stages of grief: complaining at the unfairness of a new challenger; befuddled by the inability of his campaign to land a punch against Harris; furious at the suggestion, proffered by his own team, that her gains were inevitable; and annoyed at having to clean up J.D. Vance’s messes.”
Meanwhile, de facto campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita have both come under fire, Wiles for her championing of Vance, LaCivita for his pronouncements on social media, and both for dancing on the grave of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.
Twenty — yes, 20 — sources also pointed fingers at Wiles and LaCivita’s predecessor, Kellyanne Conway, for leaking negative stories about Vance to The Bulwark’s Marc Caputo, per Puck.
Still, LaCivita told Palmeri that Trump’s “team of professionals has been through more campaigns than all the bedwetters on Twitter and prognosticators in the media combined.”
“We don’t get rattled by imaginary ‘chatter,’ we execute and live in reality,” he added.
Harris has been enjoying momentum that’s been reflected in both vibes and the data. She has gained on Trump in the key battleground states that are expected to decide the election and benefitted enormously from both Vance’s failure to launch as well as a series of unforced errors from Trump himself.
On Thursday, elections analyst Nate Silver announced that his model now pointed toward the presidential race being a toss-up after months of calling Trump the favorite.
“Now that the election is in kamala_mode, however, it’s far from clear whose position you’d rather be in, and I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to bet either on Harris or on Trump,” he wrote.
One Trump insider summed it up like this for Palmeri: “It’s just two weeks, and I’m like, what the hell is going on.”
