Trump shuns campaign ways of officeholder

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump spent the week of the Democratic National Convention forsaking what has historically been an incumbent’s greatest advantage: He’s in the job his challenger wants.

Traditionally, an incumbent would devote the week of his rival’s convention to bolstering his own credentials as a leader. But rather than focusing on his command of the job or using its power, Trump hit the campaign trail.

Acting “presidential” — holding briefings and leading negotiations — won’t suit him, in the view of many aides.

“Where is it written that you have to stay home and let your opponent attack you for a week?” said Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh. “The president is a fighter and one who fights back, and that’s what he was doing.”

The dynamic will be on display this week as Trump prepares for his own convention. The crux of his message is expected to be sounding the alarm over the consequences of a Joe Biden victory.

“No one will be safe in our country, and no one will be spared,” he said Friday.

To Trump aides and allies, the aggressive approach was tried and true, an attempt at repeating his scorched earth campaign from 2016, just at a new target.

As Biden laid out an appeal for national unity and cast himself as an “ally of the light, not the darkness,” Trump delivered his sharpest broadsides yet at Biden, casting him as a “radical” and “socialist” whose victory would bring about “left-wing fascism.”

“Every election is a binary choice, and this one is no different,” Murtaugh said.

Terry Sullivan, campaign manager for the 2016 presidential campaign of Sen. Marco Rubio, said Trump “only knows one way to campaign.”

“He floods the zone with his message via events and Twitter attacking his opponents,” he said. “It’s worked for him in the past, so in his mind, there is no reason it won’t work again.”

Abandoning the traditional calendar is hardly a surprise for Trump, allies said, and it could help him.

“The Trump team wisely chose to take an aggressive approach to the Dems’ big week and dominated local news by traveling to secondary markets in key battleground states,” said Scott Reed, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s political strategist. “Now that we are within 100 days, every day is a battle to win the day, the small sliver of undecided voters. Time is the one thing you cannot buy in national politics.”