Vanity Fair has another major concern about Donald Trump; the competence of his campaign.
'Morning Joe' co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski were joined on Monday by Vanity Fair reporter Gabriel Sherman who discuss his latest article, 'Inside the Terrifyingly Competent Trump 2024 Campaign.'
The article, which ran last Thursday, explains that "the candidate’s third bid for the White House is as efficient as it is explicitly authoritarian" and that readers should be "very" concerned.
During his appearance on 'Morning Joe,' Sherman argued that this is essentially a "low-drama" campaign, even though the stakes are so high:
The big story in 2016 and to some extent 2020, was that his campaign was a soap opera. It was clashing personalities, it was nonstop drama. This cycle, the thing I’ve been struck by time and again, is that it is a low-drama campaign. Operatives don’t want press, don’t want their egos out there. They’re focused on getting Trump to the White House in November 2024.
As I write in the piece, his freedom is at stake, really, the only thing that is guaranteed to keep Donald Trump out of jail is becoming the next president of the United States and appointing an attorney general who will get these charges thrown out. It’s really that simple. I think that is really why you see Donald Trump so focused. Yes, he says incendiary things on the stump, but when it comes to the mechanics of running the campaign, it is a much different operation.
Sherman explained that Trump has essentially "weeded out the backstabbers" who undermined much of his first term in office and that it is his longtime communications director Jason Miller and the former Director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office, John McEntee, who are running the show:
This is a candidate who does create his own controversies, but, you know, that really is baked in now, I think, to his brand. “I think the mechanics, the underlying ground game, you know, the getting the state parties in line, getting the Republican national committee in line is really, I think, what is fueling this success he’s had on the campaign trail. Now, apparently, he’s got the money behind him, as well.”
Jason Miller said if they win the election, the White House will be staffed only with loyalists. They’ve weeded out the backstabbers. “The really important figure in the whole drama is Johnny McEntee, who is Donald Trump’s former body man in the 2016 cycle. He rose up in Trump world and became the head of White House personnel in the Trump administration. His job is really to vet thousands and thousands of potential appointees who will go into the civil service and carry out the MAGA agenda.
The effectiveness of Trump's operation may be the reason for Trump's consistent polling advantage, which continues to send shivers down the spine of the Biden campaign. According to RealClearPolitics, he currently has a 0.3-point lead over his opponent, although he retains a significant lead in swing states such as Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.