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Facing a new opponent who has energized the base and brought the race back to an effective tie, Donald Trump is beginning to bury the hatchet with former foes: “Birdbrain” Nikki Haley would now be welcome out on the campaign trail; he’s thanked “bad guy” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp for all his “help and support” in the state; “Radical Left Lunatic” Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now a part of his transition team.
The timing isn’t exactly coincidental or out of the blue: The Trump campaign has engaged in multiple behind-the-scenes conversations about the need to unite the party and get some of these folks back into the fold. The theory among many in Trump world is simple: If the party doesn’t unite, they risk losing.
“We need to make sure that the basics of our coalition are nailed down,” one person close to the campaign explained. “The president definitely gets it.”
At least for right now, Trump does seem to get it: His embrace of these characters he’s long attacked is a shift, and a recent one at that — at a rally earlier this month in Georgia, the former president dismayed many of his allies when he went on a rant against Kemp, who remains popular in the key state.
There’s a few reasons for the change: The biggest one being, of course, that Trump himself has decided (swayed by multiple reasons) that this is what he needs to do to win. The advisors in his ear certainly played a role, although they only hold so much influence. But the overall story is that a candidate who seemed to treat his return to the White House as inevitable in July is contending with a much tougher race in August.
Trump rarely, if ever, publicly apologizes for insulting a political rival, and hasn’t in any of the cases listed here, but his allies have more flexibility to repair the damage. There have been concerted efforts in some of these cases to privately mend fences — Donald Trump Jr., Tucker Carlson, and Omeed Malik worked for months to build up the relationship between Kennedy and Trump, and JD Vance told reporters that he’d talked to Kemp, who was entirely “behind the ticket” before Trump came out with his praise. And it doesn’t hurt that Trump saw some of these figures strategically backing down: Kemp with a Fox News interview expressing his support for Trump and Haley slowly tamping down on her criticisms of him after bowing out of the race being two prime examples.
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Shelby’s view
It’s important to remember that we’ve seen versions of this show before. Trump’s inner circle is filled with politicians who he once denounced and advisors he once exiled. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, for one, was widely seen as one of Trump’s top three vice presidential options this campaign cycle — a stark contrast to the 2016 presidential race, where Trump ridiculed him on the trail as “Little Marco.” So, while this week Trump might be building a unity coalition, next week he might decide he doesn’t like the fact that Kemp is exploring ways to remove certain Trump-aligned members of the State Election Board.
One campaign adviser said that internally, the amends felt “kind of familiar,” as the team has long been focused on building out a broad coalition and Trump often jumps between denouncing and embracing political rivals.
“Sometimes his level of honesty is unfettered,” this person said. “He’s still not ever going to meet the traditional political vein, [but] he’s somebody who still understands the dynamic of relationships in politics.”
The shift in his relationships, though, is still notable, if only because of what it says about how he views the election. After he won the nomination for a third time, he showed much less interest than is typical from a winning candidate in bringing fallen rivals and their supporters back into the fold, confident that he didn’t need to in order to defeat a weakened President Biden. That calculus has clearly shifted with Vice President Harris in the race.
Notable
Trump isn’t just trying to bring in non-MAGA Republicans to his camp: His team confirmed on Tuesday that Kennedy and Tulsi Gabbard have been tapped to play a role in his transition team.