The staffing shakeup at the top level of President Donald Trump's re-election campaign was detailed in a new report by The Washington Post.
"A sudden shake-up of President Trump’s campaign was an attempt to refocus a reelection effort cratering under the weight of a deadly pandemic, a stalled economy and a national reckoning on racial injustice," explained reporters Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Robert Costa.
"But numerous Republicans and Trump allies said Thursday that the personnel overhaul — demoting Brad Parscale and replacing him with Bill Stepien as campaign manager — does little to address the main problem facing the struggling Trump campaign: the president himself and his chronically self-destructive behavior," The Post noted. "In Trump’s orbit and Republican circles, there is growing unease and even panic over Trump’s conduct as allies fret that the president, who lags behind presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden in both public and private polling, is free-falling into a political abyss."
The report noted, "even stalwarts are bewildered by what many view as his self-sabotaging actions, worried not only that he may lose in November but also that he will drag the rest of the party down with him."
The newspaper interviewed Charlie Dent, a Republican former member of Congress from Pennsylvania.
“There’s a total disconnect there between the president and those members in swing districts who need the president to be more measured and balanced — and, of course, he’s totally incapable of that," Dent argued. “It’s all these other erratic and bizarre comments and behaviors that are causing the most heartburn for a lot of Republicans, by far,” Dent said. “I don’t think any Republican member of Congress wants to stand up there and defend the Confederacy, which makes absolutely no sense, or go to war with Tony Fauci.”
The newspaper explained that in private, "many Trump allies and advisers agree, saying that simply changing the campaign manager is unlikely to have a major impact. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior White House adviser, is still expected to operate as the de facto campaign manager — much as he did since appointing Parscale to the job — and it is ultimately the president himself who poses the real management challenge, many aides and allies say."
