Donald Trump's Better Good Than Bad Day

Your official scorecard HERE!

Mark Halperin

Jan 29

Save

▷ Listen

What have you done so far this Sunday morning?

I got up and wrote today’s Wide World of News for you.

I could have slept in, worked out, caught up on my reading and emails, or engaged in leisure.

But, instead, I wrote the newsletter.

How about, in return, you finally become a voluntary paying subscriber or contributor to support my work?

As you might know, reader contributions are the only compensation I receive for doing Wide World of News — no sponsors, ads, corporate backers, or merchandise.

Please consider acting right now.

Or contribute in the amount of your choice:

* Buy me a cocktail (at Salem prices….), tax and server tip included, by clicking here.

* Buy me a cup of coffee (or a month’s worth) by clicking here.

* Check. Send a simple email to markhalperintalk@gmail.com and ask where you can send a check.

• PayPal. markhalperinnyc@gmail.com

• Venmo. Mark-Halperin-4 (telephone number ends in x3226)

• Zelle. markhalperinnyc@gmail.com

Thank you for your support.

Mark

****

****

YOU MAKE THE CALL

Was LeBron James clearly fouled by the Celtics as he tried for the game winner at the close of regulation, in a game the Lakers would eventually lose in overtime – or not?

“The best player on earth can’t get a call. It’s amazing,” Lakers coach Darvin Ham said. “As much as you try not to put it on the officiating, it’s becoming increasingly difficult.”

ESPN @espn

LeBron was not happy after this play to win the game.

ClutchPoints @ClutchPointsApp

Patrick Beverley took a professional camera to show the officials the missed foul call on LeBron James in the final seconds of Lakers-Celtics. He got hit with a technical foul for it.

Typeshit @Typeshit3

This the *foul #lakers fans crying over?? This is grown men Playing basketball at the highest level. Jayson Tatum barely even hit lebron’s wrist

Josh Reynolds @JoshReynolds24

I kid you not, LeBron may have just been screwed out of one of the most obvious & clear foul calls I’ve seen in a minute… How do you miss this?! Come on bra @OfficialNBARefs lol

****

After Donald Trump’s doubleheader of events in New Hampshire and South Carolina, we know some more key stuff about the status of his campaign.

11 GOOD SIGNS FOR TRUMP’S CHANCES

1. He’s willing and able to pull off the kind of retail events that get crazy good local coverage and even still are shown love by the national media.

Meridith McGraw @meridithmcgraw

The start of 2024 retail politics: Trump stopped here in Columbia, SC at Zestos — known for fried chicken, burgers and shakes:

ALX 🇺🇸 @alx

Worker at Zesto in Columbia, South Carolina says a prayer over Donald Trump:

Jason Miller @JasonMillerinDC

2. He’s got a stronger, hands-on national campaign leadership than he had in 2020 – and, arguably, than he had in 2016 (certainly at this stage of the campaign); these are experienced folks who know presidential politics and are realistic about how to manage the candidate.

3. His team knows how to use social media creatively to get his message out and leverage his following (and that is before they start utilizing Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook fully).

4. He is willing and able to work the early voting states.

5. He is not afraid/reluctant to take on Ron DeSantis, while the Sunshine State topper (so far and likely for awhile) stays quiet.

6. He knows how to talk about both Red/indy issues and the Biden record in ways that rev up the voters he needs to win the nomination (and stay at least close in the general).

7. For all the derision about rallies (and not rallies), he still puts on a better pure show no matter the format than other candidates can do (by a lot).

8. He has a massive small-donor fundraising operation both online and via direct mail that he will build around his live events in a way no other candidate (not even DeSantis) can match.

9. Dan Balz is taking Trump’s chances of winning the nomination seriously.

10. He still knows how to talk to -- and leverage attention from – the Dominant Media, as in his interview in South Carolina with the Associated Press and as in giving CNN and a few others access to him on his plane – again, something DeSantis has shown no willingness or capacity to do.

11. Between his big airplane, the Secret Service, his experienced advanced team, no other job, and his expertise as a television producer, he can efficiently and effectively move around the nation to campaign with an entourage and big-time feel that no other candidate can match.

David J. Urban @DavidJUrban

I can tell you from personal experience that @realDonaldTrump loves these "OTR"/no notice stops (voters love them too!) and has an excellent "retail" game. @realDonaldTrump "Advance" Tim Unes, in the background in this photo, is a pro and makes it all happen. #OTR #2024Campaign

Meridith McGraw @meridithmcgraw

The start of 2024 retail politics: Trump stopped here in Columbia, SC at Zestos — known for fried chicken, burgers and shakes: https://t.co/sUDLcj7xut

Rob Schmitt @SchmittNYC

Today Trump flew palm beach to New Hampshire and gave a speech, then flew To South Carolina and gave a speech. Flew back to palm beach and did dinner with 6 others until 11pm. 78 years old. Nobody will be able to out campaign this insane warrior.

11 BAD SIGNS FOR TRUMP’S CHANCES

1. He still can’t resist dabbling as an election denier.

2. The Dominant Media will remain in glass-one-quarter-filled mode in covering him, until and unless he wins the nomination, with the Washington Post story about his day typical in its negativity.

Mark Halperin @MarkHalperin

There are two potential SC candidates with national prominence who might run and Trump gets the backing of the current governor and the senior US senator. Why aren’t the stories (also….) about the weakness of Haley and Scott?

3. Where was Melania?

4. When they aren’t trashing him, the Dominant Media is ignoring him; you would think the first day of active campaigning by the frontrunner for the Republican nomination would have gotten more coverage than it did; on the CBS News Radio hourlies this morning, Trump wasn’t even mentioned.

5. There is not now, nor will there ever be, a shortage of prominent/quotable Republicans who supported Trump in the past who are willing to trash him, argue the party needs to move on, and praise other potential candidates — and reporters know this.

6. Team Trump is opening itself up to having their guy mocked, such as:

* This hilarious and unintentionally ironic juxtaposition of Trump Force One and Les Misérables.

* This hilarious and unintentionally ironic juxtaposition of heroic music and what is, in the end, just a standard, somewhat awkward, somewhat low-energy photo op at a fast food joint.

Dan Scavino Jr.🇺🇸🦅 @DanScavino

1/28/2023 | South Carolina…

7. His act is objectively somewhat stale.

8. The potential entry of Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, and Chris Sununu scrambles the impact of the first-in-the-nation voting states in a way that makes playing the expectations game a challenging puzzle for Team Trump.

9. He still hasn’t mastered his team’s current preference for doing his events toggling between adlib and teleprompter.

10. Far fewer reporters, strategists, and elected pols are afraid of him or delighted by him than in 2016.

11. His team’s efforts to make his campaign about the future and about ideas face a lot of obstacles.

All in all, based on the coverage, the politics, and the relative importance of the two lists above in the short term, I would say it was a solid and positive day for Team Trump by the metric of helping him win the nomination.

****

ICYMT

* Here is Trump’s New Hampshire event:

* Here is Trump’s South Carolina event.

****

ESSENTIAL 2024 READING

* More of Trump’s interview with the Associated Press:

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday said the footage of the brutal beating of Tyre Nichols by five Memphis police officers is “horrible” and that the attack “never should have happened.”
“I thought it was terrible. He was in such trouble. He was just being pummeled. Now that should never have happened,” Trump said in an interview with The Associated Press on Saturday, a day after authorities released footage of the attack on the 29-year-old Black man after a traffic stop. Nichols died three days later.

* Politico:

In recent days, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley called Trump and suggested she would be announcing her decision to enter the presidential race soon, a conversation that a person familiar with it described as cordial.
“She called me and said she’d like to consider it. And I said you should do it,” Trump told reporters, noting that Haley once said she would not get in the race if Trump runs again.
But Haley may be only a modest challenge for Trump going forward. He also is on a collision course with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is widely expected to jump into the race.
On Saturday, Trump took his sharpest swings at DeSantis to date, accusing the governor of “trying to rewrite history” over his response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Trump said DeSantis, who has been openly skeptical about government efforts to vaccinate people against the virus, “promoted the vaccine as much as anyone.” He praised governors who did not close down their states, noting that DeSantis ordered the closure of beaches and business in some parts of the state.
“When I hear that he might [run] I think it’s very disloyal,” Trump said.
As for the polls showing DeSantis beating him in key nominating states, Trump was dismissive.
“He won’t be leading, I got him elected,” he said. “I’m the one that chose him.”

* More Politico:

Along with staff from the Trump-allied Make America Great Again PAC, there are around 40 people working on Trump’s campaign or with the aligned PAC, according to multiple advisers.
There is a push for the campaign to be scrappier than it was in 2020, when a massive operation worked out of a slick office building in Arlington, Virginia. And that ethos, according to an adviser, extends to how Trump will approach fundraising with a focus on small-dollar donations over big donor events.
The Trump campaign will still be working with longtime adviser Brad Parscale’s Nucleus to send out emails but is also working with an entirely new vendor in 2020 — Campaign Inbox — to help with digital fundraising…
Both Trump and his team seemed eager on Saturday to get back to the hustle and bustle of his time in the White House, and there were signals he has kept his same habits. Following Trump on the plane on Saturday were his assistants — Natalie Harp, the young OAN-anchor turned aide, and Walt Nauta, who carried a giant stack of newspapers on board for Trump to read through on the flight. Margo Martin, a former White House press aide who has worked for Trump in Florida since his 2020 loss, watched from the tarmac as Trump boarded the plane with a wave.

* The Washington Post (free link):

Advisers to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis are actively preparing for a possible presidential run, according to two Republicans with knowledge of the conversations who described meetings and preliminary staffing moves — the latest indication that DeSantis is laying a foundation for a national campaign.
DeSantis’s political team has already identified multiple potential hires in early primary states such as New Hampshire and Iowa, according to one of the Republicans, who said experienced operatives have expressed interest. This Republican also said that Phil Cox and Generra Peck — two key members of DeSantis’s 2022 reelection team — are involved in ongoing talks about 2024.

* The Wall Street Journal re Team Biden (free link):

Among those under consideration for senior roles in the campaign are Sam Cornale, the executive director of the DNC; Jenn Ridder, a former Biden 2020 campaign aide and adviser to Colorado Gov. Jared Polis; Julie Chavez Rodriguez, a White House senior adviser who served as deputy campaign manager on the 2020 Biden campaign; and Roger Lau, the DNC’s deputy executive director who managed the 2020 presidential campaign of Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.).
Top White House aides Jen O’Malley Dillon, who managed the 2020 campaign, and Anita Dunn, who was the campaign’s senior adviser, are expected to remain in the White House. White House senior adviser Mike Donilon may shift over to the campaign, people familiar with the plans said, confirming an earlier report by Bloomberg News. Ron Klain, who is set to depart his position as White House chief of staff, said on MSNBC Friday that he expected to be part of the campaign team as well.

* Bloomberg, glowing, on the big role Jill Biden is expected to play in the reelect.

****

ESSENTIAL READING

* Farah Stockman on what “might be the strangest friendship in Washington:”

He’s a well-known Christian conservative who speaks out against gay marriage and abortion. She’s a former civil rights lawyer who has spent much of her career fighting to desegregate schools and protect transgender kids from bullying.
Given their résumés, one might think that Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, and Anurima Bhargava, who worked in President Barack Obama’s Justice Department, would be adversaries — if they ever crossed paths at all.

You're currently a free subscriber to Wide World of News. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription.

Upgrade to paid