After Shake-up Trump Campaign Undeterred
Donald Trump and his political campaign are many things but one can’t say they are throwing in the towel—unless one feels outrageous antics should count.
It had not been a few hours after the latest campaign reboot and already Trump and his campaign had yet another made for television awkward moment. While the big man himself wasn’t involved, one of his staffers happened to indulge everyone with yet another bizarre moment.
Attorney Michael Cohen, who represents the Trump Organization, went on CNN to discuss the shake-up, which according to the campaign, isn’t a shake-up. During the discussion, CNN host Brianna Keilar asked for a comment on the changes and Cohen happy obliged. When Keilar proceeded to ask how the campaign is expected to win when they are down in all of the polls.
It went just as anyone could have expected.
“You guys are down,” Keilar said.
Cohen quickly interrupted her by asking, “Says who?”
When Keilar replied, “Polls,” he repeated the question but decided to ask which polls.
Keilar said, “All of them.”
“I think it helps us to be a little bit behind, and we are. It lights a fire under us and reminds us what we need to do to get this done,” she said on CNN.
The real problem is the campaign seems to enjoy living in this delusional environment. It’s no secret that Trump had a bad August. Between his feud with Gold Star families and not endorsing high Republicans such as Paul Ryan and John McCain, August probably did a lot of damage for the former real estate mogul. Whether or not Conway can fix it remains to be seen but the message needed to get across from the candidate down is that he will have to put in some work to catch up to his opponent in Hillary Clinton.
To have Cohen not understand, or appear to not understand, how far behind Trump has fallen isn’t a good look. In fact, it’s scary as he isn’t the only person to publicly admit there is a problem. Trump’s spokesperson Katrina Pierson is denying there is a shake-up or that anything is wrong.
“No, he didn’t,” Pierson aggressively said on CNN to a host of guest panels. “He added. Donald Trump adds people to his campaign. No one is out. When you shake up your campaign that usually means someone is out. CNN is probably the only one reporting that some shake-up is happening.”
However, Pierson is off the mark on whether or not Trump doesn’t do shake-ups. Also, other outlets were reporting that it was a shake-up too. Just a scant few weeks ago, former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was let go in favor of Paul Manafort. Now, Manafort is taking a back burner, amidst the Ukrainian lobby scandal, but he is no longer in charge of the campaign. How is that not a shake-up exactly?
Team Trump has got to get on the same page with the message they want to send out. There’s a difference in coming from a position of being strong, by denying a shake-up or that there was a problem, but to fully deny that there is a problem is—well the problem.
Considering this is the second time in two months that Trump has rebooted his
presidential campaign, it’s going to be interesting to see if it actually sticks this time. However, if his own staff doesn’t understand they are playing catch up, then they might as well pack it in now.
