Day 1,196: Trump has epic meltdown over poll numbers, threatens to sue campaign manager
Donald Trump has proven over the past three years — and especially over the past three months — that he cannot take the stress of doing the job that he was elected to do. He’d much rather be on a golf course or hobnobbing with wealthy acquaintances at his garish hotels or watch TV and tweet responses than putting in the actual work to be president.
2020 has been a special kind of disaster, as Trump ignored repeated warnings from U.S. intelligence about the dangers of the coronavirus, promised Americans there would soon be zero cases in the country only to see over 1 million Americans test positive for the disease and more than 60,000 die within just two months.
Unsurprisingly, Trump’s poll numbers related to his general job performance and his handling of the coronavirus outbreak have plummeted in recent weeks.
Trump sat down with his reelection team, who showed him the grim numbers. Included in that data was internal polling data indicating Trump was currently losing to Joe Biden in a number of key battleground states. Trump went ballistic.
As he huddled with advisers on Friday evening, President Donald Trump was still fuming over his sliding poll numbers and the onslaught of criticism he was facing for suggesting a day earlier that ingesting disinfectant might prove effective against coronavirus.
Within moments, the President was shouting — not at the aides in the room, but into the phone — at his campaign manager Brad Parscale, three people familiar with the matter told CNN. Shifting the blame away from himself, Trump berated Parscale for a recent spate of damaging poll numbers, even at one point threatening to sue Parscale. It’s not clear how serious the President’s threat of a lawsuit was.
Most of the reasons for the lagging poll numbers have been self-inflicted. He remains delusional and continues to appear at daily coronavirus briefings, despite the fact that they are hurting him.
“He’s p*ssed because he knows he messed up in those briefings,” one Republican close to the White House said of Trump lashing out.
Trump has complained to aides that his restricted travel has hurt his numbers, not the briefings.
Overall, Trump is cracking about the possibility of losing in just 188 days.
“I am not f — -ing losing to Joe Biden,” he repeated in a series of heated conference calls with his top campaign officials, according to five people with knowledge of the conversations.
Trump is like a cornered animal, and he’s only likely to get more vicious and desperate as Election Day nears.
1,196 days in, 266 to go
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