I agree. Lewandowski was the guy who pushed for Trump to act out and get attention. Manafort was brought in to quiet Trump down and make him appear respectable. The two have been fighting over how Trump should present himself.
If Manafort has won the power struggle, we can probably expect Trump to start developing a new facade. He’ll still be crazy but he’ll start acting sane in public. This could make Trump a lot more dangerous.
I don’t think the power struggle was between Lewandowski and Manafort, it was between Trump and anyone on his staff. No one lets Trump be Trump; Trump will *be *Trump, and damn anyone who gets in his way. I foresee no letup in the over-the-top rhetoric.
I think you’re right. But I was just thinking of the Spock quote from “Mirror, Mirror”: “It was far easier for you as civilized men to act as barbarians, than for them as barbarians to act like civilized men.” I’m not sure how well an unstable bigot can successfully pretend to be anything else.
First off, Trump appears to be utterly addicted to the rally. Where he can bask in the attention and approval he needs so badly. That is why he wastes valuable time and resource in states that he probably already has in the bag, he is the atom bomb of attention whores.
We’ve all seen outakes of his speeches, his “punch lines” that thrill/outrage the crowd. Any of you listen to any all the way through? He doesn’t give speeches, he gives improv. He meanders about, looking for something that gets that zing! from the audience.
(If you’ve ever been involved in theatrics, if you’ve ever been onstage, even for the smallest part, you know the feeling: when the attention of the audience is focused on you, you can feel it from scalp to toenail. Juice! Some folks fear it, some folks like it, and some others cannot live without it.)
A real political pro can pull off a pre-written speech, where every line and nuance is carefully put together. It sounds as though the speaker is speaking, talking, rather than vocalizing a pre-recorded message. Trump is an amateur, he doesn’t know how to read a speech like a politician. You’ve probably seen it, where a pro gets to a line where a response is expected, and there isn’t one, or the audience responds to the line just before the punch line, upsetting the rhythm. A pro can recover, Trump is not a pro. He does not lead his audience, he probes his audience for energy, and follows it. Improv politics.
I think Trump sincerely and mistakenly believes that rallies are an effective campaign tool, that preaching to the choir over and over will expand the size of the choir. It works great to fire up the people who are already fired up, it has no useful purpose in bringing around the people who are looking for intelligence.
If he is to “turn around” his campaign, he will have to change his style, he will have to give up all that sweet, sweet ego juice for solid political practice. I don’t think he can.
One measure of whether he is just talking stupid or really is stupid is his spending in California. If he spends good money here, which he has no chance of winning, then he really believes his crap about being competitive.
Donors don’t like to throw good money after bad, and lots got burned by Karl Rove’s PAC four years ago. That no one is donating to Trump sends a signal to lots of donors that smart money is sitting this one out and concentrating on downticket races.
I think elucidator and Bayard are right. At the same time, as I’ve said before, the race can’t continue as it has; Trump is already about to go into his convention a walking dead man, and eventually the signs are going to be too noticeable for even him to ignore. He’s going to have to attempt some kind of pivot.
I think what Manafort is going to do is replicate George W. Bush’s campaign strategy: tightly managed public appearances packed with hand-picked supporters to cheer and wave placards, heavy on heroic staging and with few press conferences and no questions taken from sources thought to be the least bit unfriendly. Trump will begin to deliver a standard stump speech and get passably better at it. (He’s lucky in that his opponent is no great orator herself.) The occasional peevish tweet will slip out, but the tweet-barrages of insults will end. His campaign will issue policy statements; they will be vague, rambling and contradictory, but they’ll be enough to give his candidacy a veneer of legitimacy.
You may have noticed the media is having fun right now feasting on the shambles that is Trump’s current campaign operation. Trump’s pivot will give them the opportunity to revive the horserace and tout a “new” Trump, determined to look and sound the part of President. Going into the debates, Trump will benefit from the same diminished expectations that helped Bush: as long as he doesn’t call for mass deportations or refer to Mexicans as rapists onstage, he’ll be declared “surprisingly presidential.” He will come across as stiff and fake for much of this, but a few moderates will likely come back on board and that, combined with the natural tightening of the polls as Election Day draws near, will make the race appear more competitive than it is today.
But the rot has already set in. Trump is a year behind where he should be in terms of his campaign operation; he doesn’t have time to build the state-level organizations he needs to drive up his voter numbers. Trump’s team will attempt to mend fences with the GOP donor class, but they will never have confidence in him, and he will remain at a permanent fundraising disadvantage behind Clinton. Minorities — hell, most people in general — are repelled by him and are going to remain so, no matter how many canned speeches he makes or how statesmanlike he tries to appear. And that’s assuming he doesn’t slip back off the leash and offend another constituency, once again giving the Clinton team a new stick to beat him with.
In short, filing the rough edges off of Trump’s temper (assuming it can be done) may give him a boost and act as a shot in the arm to his campaign. But it doesn’t fix the underlying problems that may have already doomed him.
Would even a pivot work at this point? you can’t unsay all the things this guy has said… and would giving a dozen or so speeches without being a racist egomaniac change all that? really?
I just can’t draw a line between folks who are republican but anti Trump to some pivot that would make them pro-Trump. I refuse to believe it…refuse!
Trump could be Lincoln + Gandhi reincarnated at this point, but his debates and rallies and tweets have given Clinton enough material to go negative for 6 campaigns.
I don’t think so. If he was just big on being anti immigration like some candidates before, he could pivot and sound more presidential. But after saying that the worst is sent here, and continually insulting Hispanics, you can’t go back to sounding presidential from that. People won’t forget those insults.
Like his lie about how he never said the people at Pulse nightclub should have been armed?
She doesn’t actually have to go negative. She just has to quote him.
Well, you can only work with the tools you’ve been given, yes. 
Regardless, the amount of bombast, Twitter-wise, has considerably dropped since last Thurs - mostly tweets about “Thank you, <CITY>”. Before the 16th of June, lots of long-winded (for Twitter) rants with the word “I” sprinkled liberally throughout. Recently, we get short updates about his rally/fund raiser, never using “I” (I’m not including “join me in my rally…” quotes) for four whole days… until last night, of course, when Trump obviously wrested control of his cell phone from Ivanka for a few crucial hours.
(Since Trump doesn’t differentiate between his tweets and campaign tweets, I pretty much assume any tweet that doesn’t use the word “I” or doesn’t have blatant hashtag fails, to be campaign tweets. They just read differently.)
I’m surprised he hasn’t lost weight with all the walking back he’s done.
Like I said before, what a flapdoodler frail fingered fiddle-sticker flip flopper Trump is.
Don’t worry, Deep Drumpf is picking up the slack.
[QUOTE=Deep Drumpf]
I always was with guns, but I still hate to see what’s happening. Now we have to protect with different things. Fully nuclear weapons.
[/QUOTE]
If Trump gets any lazier about his campaign, perhaps he’ll just start retweeting Deep Drumpf.
NPR has an interesting article detailing just how thoroughly Trump has wasted the month head start he had on Clinton. What little he’s doing to carry his campaign forward is being wasted in states that should be safe, or are likely a lost cause. Manafort has his work cut out for him.
Michael Sandford charged over attempt to kill Donald Trump at Las Vegas rally
Tries to grab police officer’s gun.
So, are we going to block all immigration from the U.K. until we can figure out what the hell is going on?
It seems to me that profiling and monitoring all those under 30 is just “common sense.” Note the Orlando shooter was also under 30 and most of those engaging in violent protests are too. Heck most shootings in this country involve people under 30 …
Seriously, I hope that security for all candidates is even better than usual this time around. This election season has brought out all the nutjobs on all sides.
I forget if this was posted - Dem PAC ad showing Trump mocking the disabled reporter. It’s kind of talky but repeated video of Trump doing his mime act is revolting. It works on fast forward, too, since you end up wondering what Trump is doing.
Link with video.
I get the impression that the NYT has no clue yet about the concept that what was not much appalling in the Republican sandbox was at the same time noticed by most in the whole playground as being crass indeed.