Former President Donald Trump was riding high just a few short months ago. He was atop the polls against President Joe Biden, and his campaign was being praised as the savviest and most disciplined of any of his three bids for the White House. But the closer we’ve gotten to Election Day, the more things seem to be reverting to the historic norm, as Trump lashes out wildly and his top aides begin to air their concerns in the press.
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The turbulence around the former president makes me think of a famous psychological experiment that aimed to test children’s ability to delay their self-gratification. The researchers placed a marshmallow on the table in front of each child and said that they could eat the candy now but that if they wait until later, they could have two marshmallows. As a scientific marker for future success, the “Marshmallow Experiment” has come under increased scrutiny. But as a metaphor it perfectly encapsulates the root cause of Trump’s spiraling campaign.
When Trump formally declared his candidacy in November 2022, there was still a slim chance that he might not regain the Republican nomination. His attacks on democracy after the 2020 election had been laid bare in the House, and his endorsed candidates had underperformed in the midterm elections’ most competitive races. But after two presidential campaigns defined by chaos and infighting, this time Trump handed the keys over to a pair of professionals who kept the ship running smoothly.
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The first of the two to be hired was Susie Wiles, a former aide to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who also ran Trump’s Florida operations in 2016 and 2020. She took over Trump’s post-presidential political operation out of Mar-a-Lago in early 2021 before becoming co-campaign chair. An NBC News profile this year highlighted Wiles’ role in getting Trump this far:
If there is a personality trait that links Trump to the soft-spoken, media-shy Wiles, it’s that survive-and-thrive drive: Trump feeds his by disrupting order; Wiles feeds hers by maintaining order. Many Republicans credit Trump’s political comeback, at least in part, to her bringing a new sense of discipline and direction to his campaign.
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Working alongside Wiles has been Chris LaCivita. Before this year, the veteran Republican operative was best known for helping run the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” campaign in 2004, which helped smear Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., as insufficiently patriotic to be president. Together the two of them managed not just to get revenge on Wiles’ former boss, DeSantis, who was at one point Trump’s biggest rival, but also to transform what should have been a major reckoning for the GOP into a blitzkrieg primary that left Trump the unquestioned nominee. As Trump wrapped up the nomination, much of the media coverage focused on his campaign’s apparently newfound discipline, giving Wiles and LaCivita ample credit for the shift.
But that was the campaign — the candidate has been another story entirely. Trump remains as much of a loose cannon as ever. He continues to pop off in speeches and on Truth Social about any and everything, from his many trials, both civil and criminal, to the ever-growing list of ways he’s trying to personally cash in on his candidacy. But as long as Trump remained ahead in the polls, there was peace within Trump’s operation.
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In fact, arguably the period when Trump has managed to be the most disciplined was after his June debate against Biden. In the 3½ weeks that Biden was attempting to stave off concerns about his electability, Trump stayed (mostly) silent. Rather than pull the focus to himself, he was for once content to let someone else hold the spotlight as members of Biden’s party called for him to drop out.
The apex came at the Republican National Convention in early July, when the narrative around Trump’s election was one of seeming inevitability. But even then, Trump was already loosening the fetters: choosing a MAGA sycophant as his running mate and wasting his nomination speech by repeatedly veering off topic. Then Biden dropped out and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him — a seismic shift that has left Trump stumbling and unable to regain his footing. Since then, the facade of discipline has crumbled at a quickening pace.
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Trump’s performance against Harris in this month’s debate and the coverage surrounding it rattled him to the point that he tromped into the spin room himself, clearly thinking his surrogates were failing. He’s reportedly grown irate both at the amount of credit that Wiles and LaCivita have gotten for his campaign’s successes and at their decision to debate Biden so early that it drove the president from the race. There’s some truth there, in that a campaign specifically designed to beat Biden has floundered against Harris, not least because the candidate hasn’t been able to stick with any one message against her.
Trump has brought disgraced former aide Corey Lewandowski back into the fold, hindering the effectiveness but giving Trump the battle for his approval that he craves from his subordinates. As The Washington Post chronicled on Friday, even the most basic campaign functions have become points of contention in this new abnormal, with a decision about whether or not to send out mailings to voters lasting weeks. Though Wiles and LaCivita don’t seem in danger of getting fired, they appear to have given up on even pretending to influence Trump’s choices. Instead they’re just trying to keep the focus on the campaign against Harris and not its internal drama.
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It’s been a striking transformation, albeit one that Trump’s record almost predestined. Trump has received plenty of outside advice on how to stay on track and focus on Harris’ weaknesses with voters. He has listened to none of it. Instead, he’s returned to his old standbys: picking fights with celebrities, spreading racist conspiracy theories, hanging out with far-right influencers and riling up his base in hopes of repeating his 2016 victory. It is doing little to win over skeptics who are considering giving Harris a shot, but it gives Trump the short-term gratification he’s always been unable to resist for too long. Even with the White House on the line, the marshmallow in front of him has proved to be too tempting compared to the promise of two later.
