Donald Trump believes he won the first presidential debate. He’s proclaimed that publicly and told me so himself.
Some of his advisers disagree, and they believe his debate prep was something of a disaster.
One well-placed source told me that there were too
many people in the room during these sessions, as many as a dozen at a
time, and some, including two generals, had no experience with debates
or even campaigns. The result was that the candidate got lots of
conflicting advice on what to say and do from a team that hadn’t even
agreed internally on the best strategies.
I’m also told that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, hardly unabashed Trump fans, provided debate advice by phone.
The result, in this source’s view, is that Trump was
overprepared, which left him without a clear plan to deliver his message
or respond to Hillary Clinton’s jibes.
A harsher indictment was delivered to the New York Times, one in which Trump advisers attempted to blame the boss.
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It’s striking that they would criticize their
candidate from behind a curtain of anonymity. In effect, they’re saying,
hey, don’t blame us, we tried to tell him but he wouldn’t listen.
Or viewed another way, they are using the press to
send him a message that he needs to change his approach for the second
debate in St. Louis.
Now much of this is inside baseball. Hillary Clinton
is widely credited, even by many conservative commentators, as having
delivered a strong performance at Hofstra and kept her opponent on the
defensive. She will probably get a polling bump of a couple of points.
But Trump’s supporters remain in in his corner after watching him go
toe-to-toe with a former secretary of State without committing a major
gaffe.
When campaigns are in a tailspin, loyalty sometimes
melts as its consultants and strategists scramble to salvage their own
reputations at the boss’ expense. But Trump, against all the odds set by
the pundits, is in an extremely competitive race against Clinton and
could win the thing.
Here’s what the Times reported yesterday:
“Campaign advisers to Donald J. Trump, concerned that
his focus and objectives had dissolved during the first presidential
debate on Monday, plan to more rigorously prepare him for his next
face-off”—but that “whether he is open to practicing meticulously is a
major concern.”
Yes, that is the sound of some folks throwing the nominee under the bus.
These unnamed sources “were privately awash in
second-guessing about why he stopped attacking Mrs. Clinton on trade and
character issues and instead grew erratic, impatient and subdued as the
night went on. In interviews, seven campaign aides and advisers, most
of whom sought anonymity to speak candidly, expressed frustration and
discouragement over their candidate’s performance.”
The Gang of Seven is clearly ticked off.
The last time this kind of internal carping hit the
press, during the “let Trump be Trump” debate, Paul Manafort was gone
and Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway were tapped to run the show.
Trump’s fans are angry at the media coverage
portraying him as having lost the debate, at least according to my
Twitter feed. And who knows? It’s not like the press hasn’t been
repeatedly wrong about Trump.
But a story in which some of Trump’s own advisers are
anonymously quoted as saying he was “erratic” in a debate watched by 84
million people doesn’t help the cause. Even if the Times reporters
sought out these sources, you don’t usually see Hillary advisers
anonymously griping about their candidate.
Even successful campaigns go through near-death
experiences. Clinton was sliding in the polls through her pneumonia
period and Democrats were starting to panic. In the end, the burden is
on Trump himself, and not his inner circle, to find a way to win.
Odds and Ends
--Howard Dean standing by his ludicrous suggestion
that Donald Trump might have a coke problem makes me want to ... scream.
It’s outrageous for a doctor, ex-governor and former presidential
candidate and party chairman to act like a smear merchant. Kudos to
MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough for calling on his colleague to apologize.
--A former Chris Christie ally, David Wildstein, has
testified that the governor laughed when he told him the George
Washington Bridge lanes were being closed as an act of political
retaliation. I don’t know if that’s true, and the former presidential
candidate has denied it, but imagine if Trump had chosen Christie as his
running mate.
Howard Kurtz is a Fox News analyst and the host of "MediaBuzz" (Sundays 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET). He is the author of five books and is based in Washington. Follow him at @HowardKurtz. Click here for more information on Howard Kurtz.