Donald Trump’s allies fear he has sabotaged his presidential campaign by ‘choosing to loose’ and allege he may be suffering from PTSD after his assassination attempt.
Campaign insiders claim the GOP nominee has been in a ‘self-destructive spiral’ since Joe Biden dropped out of the race and is blatantly ignoring advice from his advisers, Vanity Fair reported.
His campaign advisers have reportedly encouraged him to stop ‘counterproductive’ name calling and instead launch policy attacks against rival Kamala Harris, but he has ‘rejected’ their advice, saying: ‘I know what I’m doing.’
Trump, 78, has also been watching footage of the moment he was shot ‘over and over and over again’, insiders told the magazine, claiming how he has ‘been through a lot’ and ‘may actually legit have PTSD’.
Republican insiders have voiced their concerns as Trump continues to publicly display his defiance.
The ex-president, during his North Carolina rally Wednesday night, made a lackluster effort to address campaign-relevant topics, while repeatedly mentioning an elusive ‘they’ had instructed him to do so.
Republican donors and Trump campaign officials are reportedly struggling to understand why Trump ‘seems to be sabotaging’ his presidential bid, the magazine reported.
Citing apparently baseless claims he has made on his social media platform TruthSocial – including that Harris and the Democrats are using AI to create footage of her packed campaign rallies – an insider branded Trump’s online theories are ‘nuts’.
Another alleged that advisers have encouraged him to discuss policy at his campaign events, instead of using ‘juvenile nicknames’ to attack Harris.
‘I do think it’s counterproductive to call her stupid,’ one insider alleged.
Sources suspect Trump’s actions could stem from PTSD or some other trauma response to the attempt on his life at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania last month.
‘He’s been watching that seven-second clip of how close he was to getting shot right in the head—over and over and over again,’ one source told Vanity Fair.
Another hypothesized that Trump has just refused to move past the fact that Biden dropped out of the race, claiming the ex-president has told others: ‘They cheated by swapping Biden.’
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to DailyMail.com’s request for comment.
It comes after GOP polling expert Frank Luntz warned Trump is committing ‘political suicide’ as entire voting blocs have collapsed toward Harris, causing a major shift in the campaign.
Luntz explained on CNBC’s Squawk Box Wednesday morning that Harris draws on the support of undecided voters, who have largely ‘collapsed’ in her favor.
‘The entire electoral pool has changed,’ Luntz told hosts Andrew Ross Sorkin and Melissa Lee.
The pollster blamed the shift on Trump’s campaign choices, declaring that the former president was slipping.
‘It’s as though he’s lost control,’ Luntz fumed. ‘And I know that there are billionaires who watch this show who are spending a lot of money on Donald Trump, and they don’t understand why he’s committing political suicide.’
Luntz said that Harris is ‘bringing out people who are not interested in voting for either Trump or Biden. So the entire electoral pool has changed’.
He also warned if things remained this way, the Democrats could win more than the White House. They could also take the Senate and the House.
‘She’s got intensity now,’ the polling guru said of Harris. ‘She’s got an intensity advantage. She’s got a demographic advantage.’
Trump has also been criticized by worried members of the Republican party who fear he is spending too much time bashing his opponents and not enough on important issues.
While Trump continues to lay into Harris and her VP pick Tim Walz, his advisors are trying to encourage him to discuss something voters actually care about – the economy.
During his rally in Asheville on Wednesday, Trump reluctantly touched on the economy, while repeatedly mentioning an elusive ‘they.’
‘Now this is a little bit of a different day, because we’re talking about a thing called the economy. They wanted to do a speech on the economy,’ he said.
‘They say it’s the most important subject, I’m not sure it is, but they say it’s the most important subject. Inflation is the most important but that’s part of the economy,’ the former president said.
It wasn’t clear who exactly ‘they’ referred to. DailyMail.com reached out to Trump’s campaign for comment on the matter and have not yet received a response.
Trump tried to hammer Harris on inflation, although his blast came on a day when the Consumer Price Index has annual inflation dropping to 2.9 percent, the lowest it has been since 2021. That could finally prompt the Fed to ease interest rates.
‘People go to the grocery store, they have less than half a deal,’ Trump said, before illustrating the point.
‘This is Tic Tacs, right?’ he said. ‘I don’t know if I like the company,’ he joked. ‘This is the greatest commercial they ever had, he said after fishing a box of Tic Tacs out of his pocket, and holding up a teeny, tiny box for comparison.
‘This is inflation. This is Tic Tac,’ he said. ‘This is what’s happened.’
Trump has made the comparison previously. He also previously spoke about the product in the infamous Access Hollywood tape. ‘I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her,’ he told former host Billy Bush.
‘You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful – I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab ’em by the p****. You can do anything.’
Trump insulted Harris once again. ‘She’s not a brilliant person. She’s not a smart person. She is not very smart,’ he said.
He then turned his efforts back to slamming his Democratic opponents by making fun of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz for signing a bill that requires menstrual products to be placed in public school restrooms.
‘He wants tampons in boys bathrooms,’ Trump told rally-goers.
Walz signed the bill into action to combat ‘period poverty’ – but some Republicans have interpreted the broad language of the legislation to include boys and have nicknamed the governor ‘Tampon Tim’.
Despite going off on an unrelated tangent, Trump’s attempt to touch on the economy shows that he is making an effort to listen to the advice of campaign aides.
The advice comes after voters have continuously expressed in polls that the economy is a key issue in determining who they’ll vote for.
Trump leads Harris by an eight-percentage-point margin on whom voters trust more on the economy, according to a Bloomberg News/Morning Consult poll of seven swing states.
Voters in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – three battleground states that are currently considered toss-ups – are more likely to align with Trump (53 percent) rather than Harris (44 percent) on the economy, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll.
However, some nationwide polls have shown Harris to be closing in on Trump’s lead on the issue.
New polling released by the Financial Times and the University of Michigan show that, for the first time this election cycle, voters trust the Democratic candidate more than Trump on the economy.
Results from the August polling showed that 42 percent of those surveyed would trust Harris to handle the economy – while 41 percent would back Trump.
The survey ‘marks a sharp change in voter sentiment following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the White House race’ last month,’ according to the FT.