by Jim VandeHei & Mike Allen
Something shocking — and telling — has unfolded beyond Donald Trump‘s onstage, online and courtroom theatrics: He’s running a professional, well-managed, disciplined presidential campaign.
- His 2024 operation is more sophisticated — dare we say traditional — than the slapdash improvisation of his White House and two previous runs.
Why it matters: Trump likely will wrap up the nomination in record time, with almost universal GOP establishment backing.
- If he were to win — and run the White House like he has his campaign — he could reshape America and its government more quickly, and in more lasting ways, than he did during his first term.
Winning the nomination fast and decisively speaks only to his power with the activist GOP. Exit polling showed lots of New Hampshire Republicans won’t vote for him, especially if convicted.
- But his hand is a helluva lot stronger than most expected a year ago.
Between the lines: Many top Republicans assumed that, after the Capitol riot, no one sensible would go near him. The campaign would be fringe and cringe. Instead, Trump has rolled up the party even tighter than he did when he was president.
- Now the GOP’s biggest donors and power brokers not only figure he’ll quickly become the nominee, they assume he’d beat President Biden if the expected rematch comes to pass.
- Trump is the strongest politically that he’s ever been within his party.
Reality check: Trump has surrounded himself with pros, but he’s still Trump — an incendiary and chaotic messenger.
- You see it in the unhinged, all-caps Truth Social posts. You saw it in his fuming rant about Haley on Tuesday night. He could say anything at any time.
Our conversations with Trump officials, allies and alumni reveal the off-the-rails public Trump has a more conventional, buttoned-up operation built around him. His advisers see this as a template for governing if he were to win.
- Here’s how he did it:
1. Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, the top two officials at the Palm Beach-based campaign, run a tight, lean ship.
- Wiles is a former top political adviser to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis who left on bitter terms. LaCivita is a former Marine with decades of brass-knuckle campaign experience. Along with well-connected Trump senior adviser Brian Jack, they put in place a methodical process for Republicans to seek Trump’s endorsement for congressional and statewide offices. This machine gave Trump leverage with rising stars throughout the party, along with extensive data about their home-state political operations.
- Trump campaign staff members get along, stay in their lanes and don’t leak like sieves — all dramatic changes from his past operations.
- The campaign saves endorsements for opportune unveiling times. Aides have spreadsheets to track what material they’ve sent to which reporters.
- This is in stark contrast to the infighting and improvisational madness of Trump’s first term.
2. The Trump team has methodically wired obscure state Republican delegate rules to his advantage. Operatives have worked state by state over the past three years to be sure he benefited from mechanics such as winner-take-all rules.
- Trump also wined and dined state party leaders at Mar-a-Lago and his Bedminster golf club in New Jersey.
- “This team is lean, efficient, experienced, eye on the prize — none of the backstabbing and gossip and drama,” Charles Moran, president of the Log Cabin Republicans (the leading group of LGBT conservatives), and a member of the California Republican Party’s rules committee, told us. “No divas. It drives [Trump critics] crazy.”
- Here again, Trump was greatly limited by disorganization and bureaucratic naïveté when he was in the White House. The Heritage Foundation and other groups are spending millions to make sure that doesn’t happen again if he wins.
3. In Iowa and New Hampshire, Trump built extensive ground operations that helped cement him as a formidable front-runner in both states almost a year before voting began.
- The campaign sent the Iowa GOP suggestions for caucus locations, and installed heavy-hitter surrogates across the state to speak on his behalf. Precinct captains in gold-embroidered hats, with a suggested 3-minute speech in hand, were at every precinct.
- In New Hampshire, Trump officials — drafting off his background as a hospitality mogul — took a “customer service” approach that rewarded top volunteers with VIP rally tickets, signed Trump hats and even photos with the candidate.
4. The establishment opposition melted and proved much more amenable to his ways and plans.
- The once-mighty Reagan-Bush GOP establishment, committed to a muscular foreign policy and unfettered trade, has given way to a Trump Republicanism that’s skeptical of large companies and institutions, hawkish on trade and modest in foreign policy.
- Nearly every person of consequence at the federal and state levels fell in line by New Hampshire. Even those who’d been ridiculed by Trump stood on stage with wide smiles.
- Trump has long benefited from the dynamic that people either want his endorsement or want to avoid his taunts and wrath. Now, many of the party’s up-and-comers also want to be his VP. Much of the party’s younger talent has been campaigning for him in New Hampshire. And three of his former rivals appeared with him Monday night at his closing Granite State rally.
- The shackles imposed on Trump in Term 1 are gone, especially in Congress.
5. Trump, who had flown solo his entire political life, allowed his allies to embrace the Heritage Foundation and other outside groups that are building talent banks and policy blueprints to help him swiftly staff the government to control and shrink what Trumpers call “the deep state.”
The narrative pushed by the left is losing its thrust. Most Americans now believe less of what is told to them by both the media and the biden regime. In yuge numbers in Iowa and again in NH, voters believe biden to be illegitimate.
President Trumps power surge has now endangered the rino senate and democrat supplemental that includes money to the border but falls short of what is needed at the border. It is the two D’s, detention and deportation.
The senate bill is DOA in the House and should not be brought to the floor in the Senate. nimrata nor any democrat will be able to defeat President Trump in 2024, full stop.
Trump will monkey wrench every compromise on every issue—no matter how beneficial the agreement or urgent the problem—because he wants to be seen as the only solution to everything.
How long did it take Trump to get EU nations to pay their fair share to the NATO dues?
Had ANY D or R done anything toward that?
How much cash did Trump get from China for US farmers because the CCR refused to open their country to our products?
($27 billion)
Had ANY D or R ever even tried to do that?
Many times Trump has had no one to compromise with because the uniparty that ruled before him didn’t care about putting Americans first.
They still don’t.
Today joe met with the UAW leaders, who support him in a photo op.
Afterward, one of these union leaders admitted, joe’s got OUR votes but our workers will be supporting Trump!
07/19/22 – China bought none of the extra $200 billion of US exports in Trump’s trade deal
Biden is Chinas Puppet you Dip-Wad they pull his string and he dances for them
They wont support Biden eliminating their jobs with electric garbage no one really wants.
Trump needs to derail this, too, if he hopes to be elected:
1/25/24 – The U.S. economy grew at blistering 3.3% pace in Q4 while inflation pulled back –
BLISTERING 3.3%, of which over 30% is government spending? Let’s wait a month and see what it gets revised DOWN to.
Quietly, it’ll be revised down very very quietly.
greg, from your link:
So, not only did we pay more for our own goods, but the gov’t, at all levels, spent our tax money like drunken sailors because, it’s not their money.
Annualized is 8% inflation.
Bidenomics in a nutshell.
Don’t expect Greggie to understand economics, he can barely retype what they tell him to do.
#New: Average 1BR rent in:
New York: $4,040/mo
Jersey City: $3,220
Boston: $3,000
San Francisco: $2,950
Miami: $2,690
San Jose: $2,450
Los Angeles: $2,390
San Diego: $2,330
Wash, DC. $2,290
Source: @Zumper
11:56 AM · Jan 24, 2024
The manufactured state of the economy is a potemkin village. The economy is headed for a nose dive.
All that inflation is the result of heavy city and state taxes for which the residents now get nothing. Filthy streets, rampant homelessness and out of control crime is the benefit of living in a Democrat city.
Wow aim low to avoid disappointment 3.3 isnt exactly blistering, Housing market at a near halt, must be all the guns sold for self defense. Are they just replacing everything looted from retail stores, soon to close in California? Maybe its pots and pans because no one can afford to eat out anymore. Oh it must be survival supplies for when TSHTF with WW3.
Government expenditures are not sustainable. The GDP is not a real number. Meanwhile the CBO projected growth falls less than 1.5% for w
2024. The interest payment on the face value of the debt is now 1 trillion annually. That is not sustainable.
WHAT compromise? Democrats never compromise; they always want every agreement 100% in their favor or, when they can, they shut everything down.
Once again Greg the Fool proves to the rest of his their total ignorance and liberal stupidity
Your the Monkey Bidens the Organ Grinder he plays you dance take off your little hat and liberal fools drop money in it
01/25/24 – Senate GOP pleads with Trump not to kill Ukraine-border security deal –
It’s all about what Trump wants, and what Trump needs. It’s like trying to reason with a spoiled brat.
“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump,” Romney said. “And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling.”
Trumps latest campaign stop what a crowd, looked like a border rush.
Was it bigger than a Hitler rally?
Certainly bigger than a Robin Ware/Robert L. Peters/JRB Ware/Pedo Peter/idiot Biden rally, if there even is such a thing.
You would need to tell me goose stepper, I mostly see old reels where his troops are neatly lined up and saluting. Even Hitler wouldnt refer to his troops as “Stupid bastards” like Joey.
He has trained the Media to “clap for that” and they really are stupid bastards.
Sen. Ted Cruz on the “mysterious bill” that the Democrats say they have on the border that no one has seen, “buried down in the basement of Chuck Schumer’s office.”
He asked the reporters if they wondered why they hadn’t seen it yet.
“As bad as we think the bill is, I promise you it’s worse,” Cruz said. If the people knew what was in it, they’d be against it, he explained.
“This supplemental bill is a kamikaze plane, in a box canyon with no exit, headed for a train wreck.” The bill isn’t designed to fix the problem, he said.
The US Constitution is NOT a suicide pact, greg.
Just go out in the garden and Eat Worms Monkey Man
He could shoot a man on 5th Avenue without losing any voters, but that doesn’t mean he wouldn’t go to jail for it.
Though he has shot no one, Democrats will still charge him with murder and try to convict him.
Dumbshit greg already thinks Trump is responsible for the deaths on January 6. greg watches too much TV for stupid people.
Trump want’s what is best for the country. Democrats don’t; they only want what is best for Democrats, to hell with the country and the taxpayers.
Only with the uni-party. Not with Texans who really, REALLY want Cornyn replaced.
True, I look for the day that someone actually conservative will challenge him. He has come out in support of Trump, though. And he’s right, Trump could still run on the illegal immigration problem because it will still exist just as bad as it ever was.
Only a border SECURITY deal is acceptable. Throwing billions more taxpayer dollars just to process illegal immigrants and release them into the country faster is NOT acceptable. Trump knows THAT is what the people want and that’s what he wants.
Detention and deportation, nothing less should be acceptable.
01/25/24 – GOP senators seethe as Trump blows up delicate immigration compromise –
In recent weeks? Trump was attempting to sabotage the bill even before the details had been negotiated. He doesn’t want a remedy to the problem. He wants to keep his campaign issue.
The senate bill, text has not been released, is DOA in the House. The bill sucks and does nothing to close the border.
No the US border is non-negotiable period. Its long past time they do what they said they would do when we voted for them.
Now they need to justify borrowing billions to fund a lost war on its own merits.
Single issue bills best way to govern.
While Trump blocks compromise and his puppets block funding, tens-of-thousands more will illegally stream across the border daily and disappear. Single issue bills stop essential compromises. If you want to usefully kill something, kill all the porky legislative riders that get tacked on after the main compromises are worked out.
Biden, you may recall, wanted to move the entire political asylum application process far south of our southern border. If you didn’t show up with an admission ticket, you wouldn’t get in. That was coupled with an expedited removal process if you blew the process off. The far right and far left BOTH attacked him on that.
The Border is non-negotiable, compromises got us trillions in debt.
biden has exasperated the border crisis. He has not done a damn thing to stop the flow. He has turbo charged the flow to numbers never seen before in our history. And the worse part about it is there is zero vetting. We do not know who in the hell these invaders are and now where in the hell they have gone.
biden is guilty of seditious conspiracy.
He MADE the border crisis. Trump had border security well under way and had the Mexicans being a cooperating partner. Robin Ware/Robert L. Peters/JRB Ware/Pedo Peter/idiot Biden intentionally destroyed it and NOW complains that the border disaster is a “political issue”. HE made it one. What did he think dumping 7 million illegal immigrants into the country would do?
Bringing 5,000 illegal immigrants a day into the country is no “compromise”. It’s furthering Robin Ware/Robert L. Peters/JRB Ware/Pedo Peter/idiot Biden’s ongoing border disaster. Plus, no one expects Democrats to honor agreements.
5,000 would be a reduction by half. Multiply that by the number of days between now and the election. The result is a measure of what compromise would achieve.
The military on the border with teargas, rubber bullets flash bangs and sonic weaponry would slow it to well below 5K a day. Then stop feeding and housing the rest, offer them a 1 way ticket home.
The Red Cross needs to be sued by TX and every other NGO assisting this invasion.
Cut all the subsidies. Make it known deportations are going to happen. Enforce the laws against employing illegal immigrants. The problem will almost take care of itself.
Where are these invaders going to live, how will they feed and clothe themselves?
How many can move in with you?
Trump’s all-or-nothing demand would add around 1.8 million additional illegals before he takes office compared with a compromise—assuming he ever does.
This admin has a constitutional obligation they took the oath, no compromise. Trump is coming, deportations on a mass scale, how many illegals will you house for the next 360 days?
Yeah, I’m sure Trump can find, round up, and remove 12 million undocumented aliens. He can fly by flapping his arms. Abbott hasn’t even kept track of where he’s shipped thousands to.
Stop subsidizing the illegal immigrants and they’ll self-deport. Democrats MAKE it difficult by providing the entitlements that draw the illegal immigrants in and subsidize them. Only a stupid moron can’t figure it out.
You seem to forget, Trump has already had success securing the border. Your pedophile, Robin Ware/Robert L. Peters/JRB Ware/Pedo Peter/idiot Biden, undid everything that was working. How about you f**king Democrats “compromise” and put the border back into the secure state and complete the wall?
You keep saying this, but you’re aware that a fuckton of illegal immigrants entered the U.S. during the Trump years, right?
“Secured” in this instance really means “allowed somewhat fewer to enter than in previous years.”
Fewest in 40 years, under Trump highest detention with deportation, according to BBC.
With rapid DNA deployed child trafficking dwindled to near nil.
We welcome legal immigrants.
No one is above the law is a favorite saying of the Democrat communists, except border bashers and those that assist them.
There must be some 30 million illegals now in the country. 10% of the population.
It was not “somewhat fewer”, it was exponentially fewer. There’s a reason a new record for that number of illegal immigrants coming here was set every day, every week, every month, every year under Robin Ware/Robert L. Peters/JRB Ware/Pedo Peter/idiot Biden.
“Secured” means “under control”. The border is wide open, totally out of control right now, and that’s not because there aren’t enough Border Patrol, border wall or money for the border. It’s because Democrats want it that way.
If you had bothered to read this post and examine the chart included, you would see the difference between “secure” and “wide open”. The explosion in illegal crossings under Robin Ware/Robert L. Peters/JRB Ware/Pedo Peter/idiot Biden is ridiculous, embarrassing and, worst of all, by design.
You leftist idiots might take note that every “sanctuary city” that has gotten an actual taste of Robin Ware/Robert L. Peters/JRB Ware/Pedo Peter/idiot Biden’s border disaster have turned against the open border, or at least the irrefutable result of that open border. Remaining loyal to the open border concept is pure stupidity in the face of clear evidence.
Reducing murders by half; is that acceptable to you, Comrade Greggie? How about reducing child abuse by half? OK?
Just come out and say it; your OK with 8 million illegals invading our nation. You’re don’t understand that that 8 million, if not found and ejected from our country, will change our nation forever, and not in a good way.
But that’s your intent, isn’t it?
Significant reductions in bad outcomes are always acceptable, since there’s no on/off switch that eliminates them all instantly. Significant reductions mean you’re moving in the right direction.
Trump is monkey wrenching significant reductions. The fact is that he personally benefits from a worsening situation. His followers never seem to question his motives.
What will be done about the stupidity that CREATED the bad outcome? What prevents it from happening, over and over again? Democrats did this ON PURPOSE, intentionally taking the secure border and opening it wide open. Half way is half assed and not nearly good enough.
Mayorkas and Robin Ware/Robert L. Peters/JRB Ware/Pedo Peter/idiot Biden need to GO.
Illegal immigration has continued administration after administration, both democratic and republican. It was allowed to continue because American business benefitted from the cheap labor. Neither party is without fault.
More than 100 undocumented workers were employed during the construction of Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey resort.
That doesn’t make it right, or legal, Moron.
Trump got the border under control. Completing the wall would have completed the job. Trump forced Mexico into cooperating with our border security, Mexico has simply abused Robin Ware/Robert L. Peters/JRB Ware/Pedo Peter/idiot Biden because he is a weak, incompetent moron.
Denying this or making weak excuses is lying.
The number one issue this election is illegal immigration. The border is not secure. biden on day one reversed every policy President Trump out in place to effect control at the border. His policies when compared with the illegitimate biden were far and away more effective.
biden has no interest in controlling illegal alien invaders bringing in fentanyl and human trafficking.
He is an outstanding failure.
Greg is also a Moron
Greg is obviously vaxx damaged, I wonder how close he is to a 5 G tower.
Goddamnit, that shit don’t work. Letting the border get totally out of control, then cutting the disaster in HALF isn’t going to cut it. It needs to be set back to how Trump had it, THEN cut more illegal immigration. That stupid, incompetent moron, Robin Ware/Robert L. Peters/JRB Ware/Pedo Peter/idiot Biden, took a secure border and just destroyed it. 5,000 is too goddamn many.
I’m glad this time around Trump has a more loyal and dedicated staff and troops. Hopefully this will translate into his administration and weed out those who leak information just to damage the nation and confidence in Trump.
The New York Slimes is losing thee rust of the American People so is CNN the whole M.S. Media are leftists Propagandists and lowlife scum