“Donald Trump’s top brass gathered reporters in West Palm Beach, Fla., this month to showcase the inner workings of the former president’s campaign and exude a we-have-it-under-control confidence,” the Washington Post reports.
“As PowerPoints flashed on a screen, they laid out their 90-day plan — the 11 percent of the U.S. population they had identified as ‘target persuadables,’ a ground strategy that would motivate Republicans and discourage Democrats and the five-word frame to dismantle his new rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, as ‘failed, weak and dangerously liberal.’”
“The only thing missing was the candidate, who sat a few miles away at his Mar-a-Lago estate with his own plans for blowing up the news cycle.”
“Hours after the Aug. 8 briefing ended, Trump appeared on cable news networks for a news conference filled with false or unsupported claims unrelated to the campaign’s plan to defeat Harris — his crowd sizes, the ‘unconstitutional’ elevation of Harris as the nominee, a near-helicopter crash with former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown that Brown says never happened. Trump decided to hold a news conference because he heard his team was holding the briefing, but he wanted to talk.”