The News
As Donald Trump held a meandering appearance criticizing the same legal team appealing the sexual assault judgment against him, his top campaign advisers were privately touting the strength of their preelection position to congressional Republicans.
The Trump campaign said it has trained more than 25,000 captains — volunteers who manage other organizers in specific areas of battleground states to help mobilize voters who don’t typically turn out but are already leaning toward the former president. In a call with House Republicans and their top aides, Trump advisers also touted their progress cutting Democrats’ mail-in ballot advantage.
“We just need to stick to message and stay focused,” Tony Fabrizio, Trump’s campaign pollster, said on the call, excerpts of which Semafor obtained from a source who tuned in.
Those advisors delivered clear confidence about Trump’s position in swing states, bashing surveys that they said had not fully reflected Republican voter enthusiasm. Trump’s team acknowledged that Tuesday’s first head-to-head debate with Vice President Kamala Harris would be “a big night” and sought to moderate expectations by questioning whether ABC’s moderators would hold “her feet to the fire.”
The organized presentation to GOP lawmakers stood in stark contrast to Trump’s appearance in New York City, which was billed as a press conference but featured no questions. Trump said he was “disappointed” in the lawyers handling his appeal of a New York jury’s finding that he is liable for $5 million for sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll, who testified that he raped her in a dressing room in the 1990s.
Trump also continued to deny that he assaulted Carroll: “It couldn’t have happened, and she would not have been the chosen one,” he said.
Other Trump aides who participated in the Friday call, which is expected to be the first in a series of briefings for the Hill GOP, included senior campaign advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, as well as Tim Murtaugh and James Blair.
Kadia’s view
The Harris campaign is riding high thanks to a sizable fundraising lead over Trump that it reported Friday morning, a sign of a momentum shift since President Joe Biden bowed out of the race. So it’s smart for Team Trump to project optimism in front of what’s become a semi-unmotivated House GOP.
The push also appears designed to quell some of the concerns some Republican members and congressional aides expressed recently about the viability of Trump’s ground game, especially in battleground states.
“There are Republicans in key swing states worried about the Trump ground operation,” as one senior Republican aide told Semafor. “States like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and other swing states need to see an operation that isn’t just focused on rallies.”
And the fact remains that – based purely on the favorable Senate map for Republicans this cycle – the GOP is in a far stronger position to reclaim a majority across the Capitol than it is to grow its currently thin majority in the House.