As Trump flails and invites conspiracies, allies plea for him to stay on message

By Kristen Holmes and Steve Contorno, CNN

(CNN) — When Donald Trump’s much-anticipated interview with Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, finally commenced after more than 40 minutes of technical difficulties, Musk asserted without evidence that the former president’s adversaries had organized an attack on the social media site to silence him.

“There’s a lot of opposition to people just hearing what President Trump has to say,” Musk said.

Lately, though, some of those most eager to quiet Trump are those who want to see him back in the Oval Office.

Appearing dazed and flustered by an unfamiliar and fast-changing political landscape, Trump in response has unleashed a torrent of mean-spirited missives, race-baiting insults and conspiratorial broadsides that even close allies and donors acknowledge as unproductive. Some have privately expressed serious concerns that the former president’s recent inability to stay on message has wasted an early opportunity to blunt the momentum of his new opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Guess what? This is a different race now,” one source close to the former President said. “The Democrats are energized. They have a massive machine — and she’s raising money, and she can put a coherent argument against him.”

“It should be easy,” they added. “Talk about the economy and talk about immigration.”

For Trump, staying on message has rarely been easy, as illustrated by the former president’s return to X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, where he was once a towering figure. Ahead of his Monday interview with Musk, Trump’s account posted for the first time in a year, featuring a series of slickly edited videos that articulated the case for another Trump presidency in a way that regularly eludes the candidate himself. One post asked, “Are you better off now than you were when I was president?”

That question strikes at the heart of his campaign’s message to voters – but Trump failed to pose it until near the end of his two-hour conversation with Musk, during which he aired familiar grievances about the 2020 election, commented on Harris’ beauty on Time Magazine’s latest cover, remained fixated on President Joe Biden and, according to a CNN tally, told at least 20 falsehoods.

“President Trump prosecuted the case against Kamala Harris for over two hours yesterday in a record-breaking conversation on X Spaces. He spoke about how weak, failed, and dangerously liberal the Kamala-Walz ticket is, the most radical in American history,” campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung said in a statement that argued Trump wasn’t off message. “In every single speech, President Trump lays out his bold vision for this country through his America First agenda and contrasting that with Kamala’s dismal record of skyrocketing inflation, an out-of-control border, and surging crime in American communities.”

The interview was reflective of Trump’s approach since Biden dropped out July 21, a period marked by a surge of energy for Harris and the former president’s flailing attempts to cope with a political landscape no longer tilted in his favor. During that stretch, Trump has attacked Republican Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, the popular leader of a reemerging battleground; accused Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, of hiding half of her racial identity; and summoned the press to Mar-a-Lago for an unscripted news conference full of falsehoods, claiming at one point that the size of his audience before the January 6, 2021, riots at the US Capitol compared favorably to the turnout for Martin Luther King Jr.’s appearance at the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.

“The double edge sword of Donald Trump as your standard bearer is that at any time he can disrupt narratives that could crush Republicans and at any time can construct a narrative that’s self-destructive,” said Steve Deace, a conservative radio show host. “Donald Trump repeating talking points and campaign pitches would undermine his brand. But he definitely needs to be more focused.”

These familiar outbursts risk reminding some voters why they turned away from Trump in 2020 – a challenge his campaign had until recently managed to minimize. Before July, the race had hinged on Trump’s legal challenges and Biden’s falling approval rating and diminished appearance, while Democrats strained to turn the public attention toward the former president’s unscripted rallies and media appearances.

That is clearly no longer the case as Harris and her online allies have more effectively turned the public conscious of the words coming from Trump.

In June, Trump told a gathering of Christians in Washington to vote “just this time,” adding, “In four years, don’t vote, I don’t care.” Hardly anyone noticed. Yet, when he made the same remark a month later to another gathering of religious conservatives, Trump set off a firestorm.

In another indication of the revived attention surrounding the former president’s campaign events, renowned singer Celine Dion on Saturday publicly condemned the “unauthorized use” of her music at the former president’s rally in Montana. The Trump campaign has repeatedly featured Dion’s hit song, “My Heart Will Go On,” at rallies throughout 2023 and 2024. However, Dion’s statement revealed that she and her management team had only recently become aware of its inclusion in the campaign’s playlist.

GOP frustration with their changed fortunes has spilled into the open as Republicans on Capitol Hill have increasingly raised warnings over Trump’s recent remarks and advisers have scrambled to find ways to get the former president to change course. In a segment on Fox Business, Trump allies Larry Kudlow and Kellyanne Conway shared a message clearly tailored to their friend.

“Don’t wander off, don’t call her stupid and all kinds of names, stay on message,” Kudlow said.

Conway added: “The winning formula for President Trump is very plain to see: It’s fewer insults, more insights and that policy contrast.”

Conway, who led his successful 2016 campaign, has made a direct plea as well, recently meeting with Trump at his Bedminster, New Jersey, club to convey concerns about the current campaign’s decisions, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

Equally alarming to some in his orbit is Trump’s latest embrace of conspiracies stemming from fringes of the internet. Trump last weekend falsely claimed in a series of social media posts that “nobody” attended Harris’ recent Michigan rally. The claims, which originated from far-right conspiracists on the internet, was easily disproved by photos and videos captured by attendees and media showing thousands of supporters at the event at an airport hangar near Detroit.

“Stop questioning the size of her crowds and start questioning her position,” former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said in a Fox appearance this week.

Trump’s flirtation with conspiracy theories has long flummoxed many of his more mainstream allies. Advisers previously urged the former president to stay away from accusations the 2020 election was stolen, arguing that he should look forward and that such claims weren’t helpful in courting independent or more moderate voters. As recently as Monday night, Trump continued to spread those conspiracies.

Some allies worry that the Republican nominee is particularly susceptible to fringe theories when he is most vulnerable.

Many advisers have blamed unfettered and unrestricted access to the former President as part of the problem. Proponents of some far-right conspiracy theories have direct access to Trump, including his personal cell phone or as members at Mar-a-Lago and his other clubs. They’ll regularly call him or stop by to engage the former president when he is playing golf or eating dinner. Often, aides and advisers do not have the full scope of who is in his ear at any given moment.

“He wasn’t the one who came up with that talking point,” one adviser snapped when asked about the National Association of Black Journalists event where Trump first falsely suggested Harris only recently identified as Black. The adviser pointed the finger at far-right Twitter accounts, including Laura Loomer, a known provocateur and conspiracist who maintains a relationship with Trump and regularly posts misinformation on social media.

Loomer has regularly floated unsubstantiated rumors about Trump’s political adversaries – once accusing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ wife of exaggerating her cancer diagnosis – and had been leaning into questions around Harris’s ethnicity before Trump promoted the idea from the NABJ stage.

Trump praised Loomer during a recent appearance at a cryptocurrency conference, telling the crowd, “She’s a fantastic person, great woman.”

Another source aligned with Trump described the former president as appearing to be “in a spiral,” directly referencing his amplification of multiple conspiracy theories, expressing hope that the former president would regain focus of it as the new state of the race became clear.

“There are a lot of us depending on him,” the person said, “so he better snap out of it.”

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