Donald Trump ‘feels this election slipping away from him,’ ex-aide says: ‘When he gets desperate…’

Aug 14, 2024 07:50 AM IST

A former Donald Trump aide has claimed that the ex-president has been embracing false theories about his political opponent.

A former Donald Trump aide has claimed that the ex-president has been embracing false theories about his political opponent as Kamala Harris’ campaign benefiting from a boost in voter enthusiasm is making him “desperate.” “I think that he feels this election slipping away from him, and that’s where you’re beginning to see him spiral and cling to these conspiracy theories, as you noted with the AI-generated crowds, which obviously can be easily disproven,” Sarah Matthews, a onetime spokesperson to the former president, said in an interview on MSNBC’s Inside with Jen Psaki.

Donald Trump ‘feels this election slipping away from him,’ former aide says (Photo by Michael Ciaglo / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA / Getty Images via AFP)(Getty Images via AFP)

Harris has been drawing huge, enthusiastic crowds at her rallies, but Trump has dismissed them. He reportedly even embraced online theories that these crowds, often captured in videos and photos, are generated by artificial intelligence technology.

‘These are not winning campaign messages’

“I know it’s insanity,” Matthews said. “There will be people out there that will believe it, though, because he’s pushing it. And that’s what happens when he gets desperate, is he pushes these conspiracy theories.”

Matthews said there were other instances where Trump seemed to embrace messages that harmed his campaign. She cited his interview at the National Association of Black Journalists convention as an example, where he said of Harris, “I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago, when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black.”

Matthews also noted how Trump attacked Brian Kemp at the recent rally in Georgia. In 2020, Kemp reportedly refused to help Trump in his efforts to “find” votes in his state to reverse the results of the 2020 election.

“These are not winning campaign messages,” Matthews said. “But that is what he does when he feels like he’s under attack, is he uses these kinds of lines of defense that don’t make much sense for campaigning.”

At the rally, Trump ripped Georgia’s Republican governor, blaming him for his loss to Democratic President Joe Biden and other things. “He’s a bad guy. He’s a disloyal guy. And he’s a very average governor,” Trump said. “Little Brian, little Brian Kemp. Bad guy.”

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