After I left Donald Trump after our interview, I used to be considerably startled to go eight males in full riot gear, marching towards his Trump Tower workplace.
It was a stark reminder of the 2 assassination makes an attempt. Trump was about to fly to Pennsylvania, and these guys had been locked and loaded.
I’d been informed that he would use the outdated Reagan line that Saturday evening: Are you higher off now than you had been 4 years in the past?
How lengthy, I puzzled, earlier than he goes off script?
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Trump had told me he was going to Arnold Palmer’s hometown within the Keystone State.
What I didn’t know was that he would describe the late golfer as “all man” and marvel on the supposed measurement of his male endowment. He additionally used the S-word to explain Kamala Harris. A lot for sticking to the script.
Critics, together with the vp, have been describing Trump as exhausted, primarily based on one second-hand quote, however he didn’t look drained to me in any respect. If he was talking in a softer voice, that’s as a result of we had been virtually knee to knee within the tower’s library room.
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This was my second sitdown with the previous president in a couple of months, and I pushed him on a variety of subjects. How may he name Jan. 6 a “day of love” when police had been being attacked? Why, regardless of the “60 Minutes” enhancing fiasco on the Kamala interview, would you attempt to yank CBS’s license? How are you going to name your political opponents “the enemy within”? Would you interact in retribution? Will you admit the falsehood of “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats?”
He dug in, even on that final one.
Whether or not you want or dislike Trump, “‘Morning Joe’ producers and other producers that watch us and all the producers that watch us – this is not just rhetoric,” Steve Bannon mentioned. “You cannot have a constitutional republic and allow what these deep-staters have done to the country.”
Kash Patel says “we will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media… We’re going to come after you, whether it’s criminal or civilly,” however solely primarily based on the information and the legislation.
Now right here’s the sense I’ve gotten from my reporting.
With simply over two weeks to go, Trump has settled on his closing message. It’s immigration and the economic system. He could digress by cooking fries at McDonald’s, as a approach of doubting Kamala’s teenage stint there, he could use extra profanity, however the last attraction relies on these two points, interval.
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The Trump camp believes that one advert that has moved the numbers is Harris’ previous embrace of taxpayer funding for federal inmates to get gender-reassignment surgical procedure. That appeared questionable even to Charlamagne Tha God of their interview. Harris says she merely adopted the legislation in the identical approach Trump did.
The previous president is making an attempt to rebrand his effort by promising a New Golden Age. That appears a transparent response to Harris touting a New Means Ahead. Each are claiming the mantle of the “change” candidate with most voters seeing the nation as on the unsuitable monitor–the incumbent vs. the previous incumbent.
Trump did get off a humorous line with me about Kamala shifting to the middle. “She’s become MAGA. I’ll send her a hat.”
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However Trump and his strategists are mystified by what they see because the vp’s lack of a closing message and failure to win over as many Black supporters as Joe Biden had. There’s an emphasis on abortion rights, after all, and loud warnings about Trump being unstable and unhinged. However is there something that ties all of it collectively?
Trump has a longtime behavior of asking everybody round him, together with make-up artists, what they suppose, as a type of focus group. “Are you confident?” he’s been asking recently. “Are you confident?”
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The reply he’s been listening to: Sure, however you’ll win narrowly.