Though President Donald Trump publicly praised his son-in-law Jared Kushner as “my star” on Monday, he has privately fumed about his top adviser over his sagging poll numbers, according to Vanity Fair’s Gabriel Sherman.
Trump and Kushner participated in a roundtable event at the White House on Monday, where Kushner appeared to declare both police brutality and systemic racism fixed.
“The law enforcement community heard the cries from the community, saw the injustices in the system that needed to be fixed and they responded by coming together to fix it,” Kushner said, referring to the First Step Act, a criminal justice bill primarily aimed at reducing prison sentences. “And it’s been a great partnership to do that.”
Trump thanked Kushner, whom he praised as “my star.”
Kushner: The law enforcement community heard the cries from the community, saw the injustices in the system that needed to be fixed and they responded by coming together to fix it pic.twitter.com/i7Dee03MYu
— Acyn (@Acyn) June 8, 2020
But behind the scenes, Trump has raged over his tanking voter support and “mulled taking oversight of the campaign” away from Kushner, according to Sherman.
“Trump is malignantly crazy about the bad poll numbers,” a former West Wing official told Vanity Fair.
“He’s going to broom Kushner and [campaign manager Brad] Parscale — the numbers are not getting better,” a Republican source close to the campaign added.
Trump has blown up “frequently” at Kushner in the past, apparently angry that Kushner “received too much positive press” earlier this year when he appeared on the cover of Time, a longtime Trump obsession.
“Any time Jared is in the papers, Trump complains, ‘We have to get Jared back to New York!'” a Republican who had discussions with Trump told Sherman. “This is typical with him and Jared.”
Trump’s complaints have grown as his poll numbers have plummeted amid protests over the death of George Floyd and his threats to deploy the military to police the demonstrations. Former Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who publicly criticized Trump last week, has privately called the president a “proto-neofascist,” according to Sherman.
Trump called up his New York friends and outside advisers over the weekend in hopes they would confirm his “belief that the polls are wrong,” according to the report.
“He’s asking people to agree with him that the polls are biased,” a Republican briefed on the calls. said. “But no one is telling him what he wants to hear.”
Trump on Monday tried to counter polls showing him down big to presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden by tweeting a memo by notoriously wrong pollster John McLaughlin which claimed that they had undersampled Republicans.
…Crooked Hillary Clinton in 2016. They are called SUPPRESSION POLLS, and are put out to dampen enthusiasm. Despite 3 ½ years of phony Witch Hunts, we are winning, and will close it out on November 3rd! pic.twitter.com/4IhuLUZjsv
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 8, 2020
“McLaughlin is notorious for producing rosy polling data on behalf of his clients. (Or, at least, purportedly on behalf of his clients, who often find themselves unpleasantly surprised on election night.),” New York Magazine reported. “A lengthy stream of overly optimistic polls culminated in McLaughlin convincing his client, Eric Cantor, that he was leading primary challenger David Brat by 34 points in 2014. Cantor lost by 11, at which point leading Republicans began begging their party not to hire him.”
“Nearly a dozen Republican strategists who’ve worked with McLaughlin over the years say they try to steer their clients elsewhere and increasingly don’t trust his polling,” The Hill reported.
But as he tries to spin media polls, his own internal campaign poll numbers paint a similarly dire picture five months from the election, according to The New York Times.
Trump reportedly threatened to fire and “sue” Parscale after the campaign’s internal polls similarly showed him struggling against Biden in key battleground states in April.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.