Donald Trump Reportedly ‘Erupted’ At Campaign Manager, Threatened To Sue Him After Polling Showed Him Losing
Donald Trump reportedly grew furious after being shown internal polls that had him losing the election to Joe Biden, with a new report claiming that the president “erupted” in anger at his campaign director and even threatened to sue him.
The New York Times reported that Trump was frustrated at the fast-sinking economy and the pushback he faced for an apparent suggestion that disinfectant could be injected or ingested as a treatment for coronavirus when he was given polling about his dismal re-election prospects. The report claimed that Trump lashed out at campaign manager Brad Parscale and made a threat to sue him.
The report added that Trump feels a lack of control with an inability to change his political trajectory, especially after he had been so confident of his re-election chances.
“In the phone call last week, for instance, Mr. Trump demanded to know how it was possible that a campaign that has been projecting strength and invincibility for two years was polling behind a candidate he viewed as extremely weak and, at the moment, largely invisible from daily news coverage,” the report noted.
The New York Times article was backed by several other outlets reporting the same circumstances — Trump growing angry at his inner circle after the polling showed Biden widening his lead. A separate report from the Washington Post claimed that some of the top campaign members have grown worried that Trump is hurting himself with his daily coronavirus press briefings, where he has made a number of inaccurate statements and contradicted the advice of top White House medical experts.
Another report from CNN claimed that Trump and Parscale have since patched things up and that Trump’s outburst was more about blowing off steam than a sign of tensions in the campaign. A source also told the Washington Post that Trump was not serious in his threat to sue Parscale.
“One call on Wednesday — with Parscale patched in from his home in Florida and [RNC Chairwoman Ronda McDaniel] from hers in Michigan — was designed to present grim polling data to the president to encourage him to reduce the frequency of coronavirus briefings or to stop taking questions, after seeing his numbers slip for several weeks, officials said,” reported the Washington Post.
Trump did take the rest of the weekend off after his controversial remarks about disinfectants and his subsequent explanation that he was only being sarcastic to see how reporters would react, not holding briefings on Saturday or Sunday. Reports indicated that the White House is pressing to shift these away from medical updates about the coronavirus in order to focus more on the economy.
