President’s aides seek to set aside division
Campaign plans for a final sprint to Election Day
President Donald Trump’s political advisers have sharply debated in recent days how to best spend their limited money in the campaign’s last weeks as they seek to chart a path toward a repeat of their dramatic 2016 come-from-behind victory.
The final push to calm internal divisions comes as the president is once again barnstorming the country, down in the polls and facing rising rates of coronavirus infection, continued signs of economic distress and an opponent who has so far proved far more resistant to the president’s attacks.
White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, who is leading Trump’s re-election effort, convened an all-hands meeting Thursday morning at the party headquarters in Washington to bring together top advisers for the Republican National Committee and the campaign. At issue was how and where the campaign, which has been operating with sometimes conflicting sets of votertargeting data, should spend its remaining funds.
In recent days, the debates over messaging have reached the Oval Office, and advisers have raised concerns about a lack of coordination between the national party, which controls much of the ground operation, and the campaign, which has been buying most of the ads and directing surrogate travel, according to people familiar with the conversations.
The 11th-hour machinations in the White House come as the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, continues to outraise and outspend Trump and deliver a closing argument largely focused on the president’s troubled handling of the pandemic.
While Trump continues to boast of large crowds, Biden has kept up a much less aggressive schedule, intentionally avoiding large gatherings that could facilitate viral spread. Biden’s advisers have also started warning supporters that the advantage Democrats now have will dwindle in the coming weeks, possibly setting the stage for another Novem
ber surprise.
“We cannot become complacent because the very searing truth is that Donald Trump can still win this race, and every indication we have shows that this thing is going to come down to the wire,” Biden campaign manager Jen O’malley Dillon wrote in a memo to campaign donors.
With just over two weeks left before voting ends —millions of votes have already been cast in many states — both sides are looking to the second and final presidential debate, set for Thursday night in Nashville, as a final potential gamechanging moment.
Biden’s lead in national polls has grown slightly since their first encounter last month, which was marked by Trump’s frequent interruptions and his refusal to condemn white supremacists, though the race is tighter in key battlegrounds.
Trump’s team spent much of its time in recent days trying to position itself for a 2016 repeat, scouring the electoral college map for what advisers concede is a shrinking set of potential paths to victory and looking for voting populations that could still be swayed by the campaign.
Campaign manager Bill Stepien and RNC Chairwoman Ronna Mcdaniel are not viewed as internal allies, and Trump’s senior
advisers have grown concerned that the two operations were not coordinating. RNC officials, who have been focused on running the ground operations, have begun to plan their own television ads targeted at winning over voters with a message that attacks Biden’s record on policy issues.
“We’re meeting to talk about our message and resource allocation,” Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller said of the confab, before denying any rift between the campaign and the national party. “I’ve been on three calls recently with the RNC coordinating our closing-weeks game plan.”
Unlike the Biden campaign, which has relied heavily on paid advertising, the leaders of the Trump operation have focused more on using the president’s public events to get the message out and on a massive get-out-thevote field effort. The operation, estimated internally at about $250 million to 300 million, has been working for months in key states to find and mobilize voters to the polls, with a larger volunteer effort that has been on the ground longer than Biden.
Republicans are also facing a separate pitched battle for the Senate, with its incumbents in several competitive races trailing Democratic challengers as they fail to win over Trump supporters and
moderate swing voters.
Several Republican senators in recent days have taken steps to distance themselves from Trump, most notably Sen. Ben Sasse, R-neb., who, on a recent call with supporters, said the president “kisses dictators’ butts,” mocks evangelicals behind their backs and has mishandled the pandemic.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell, R-KY., and other Republicans have urged the campaign to focus on messaging that would help senators in difficult states, such as Arizona, Maine and North Carolina. But Trump has argued to Mcconnell and others that the senators would be doing better if they were more supportive of his agenda.
Multiple people involved in the Trump effort said the Thursday meeting at the RNC led to agreements on the way forward that have ended, for the moment, a mood that has at times grown grim inside the Trump operation, with finger-pointing over who should be responsible for a potential loss - and whether it should be attributed to an undisciplined message, the coronavirus pandemic or campaign spending and choices made by former campaign manager Brad Parscale.
“Bottom line: Everybody is mad at everybody,” said one Republican strategist familiar with the previous fighting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the dynamics behind the scenes. “It’s pretty ugly.”
Miller, Mcdaniel, Stepien and Kushner all attended the Thursday meeting, along with other senior aides. Katie Walsh Shields, a former White House deputy chief of staff and RNC consultant, was also asked by Kushner to be a part of the conversation, three people with knowledge of the meeting said.
Reince Priebus, a former White House chief of staff who did not attend the meeting, has also re-entered the mix, taking on a more aggressive role in helping Trump prepare for a recent town hall on NBC and advising him on strategy in certain states. Priebus has told others he is concerned about the president’s chances.
Trump’s campaign remains confident that Trump can win states such as Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia, where public polling averages indicate either a tied race or a slight advantage for Biden.
Unlike Democrats who are focused on banking their votes early, the Trump campaign predicts most of the president’s voters will turn out on Election Day.
Some campaign officials are arguing for the president to spend more time in Pennsylvania, while others want more disparate travel, exploring paths to victory that run through Nevada, Wisconsin and Michigan, where the campaign has been pulling television reservations over the past month.
Campaign officials say they will increase resources and time commitment to all four states over the coming weeks, with Trump already scheduled to address Michigan and Wisconsin on Saturday, Nevada on Sunday and Arizona on Monday. Vice President Mike Pence spent the weekend traveling through Pennsylvania.
In the week that ended Friday, the campaign added to its advertising reservations in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Maine, where there is a single electoral vote up for grabs, according to the tracking firm Advertising Analytics. The campaign pulled reserved television time out of Nevada and Wisconsin, a state that has been hammered in recent weeks by rising coronavirus infection rates.
Trump’s ability to win a single Maine electoral vote, tied to a rural congressional district, could prove pivotal in a scenario where he can hold all of his must-win states, and then also pick up either Minnesota or Wisconsin. That would result in a 269-to-269 electoral college tie, giving the newly elected U.S. House the power to select the president, with one vote given to each state delegation.