Trump advisers, campaign staff and other Rs are starting to assign blame for what looks like it could be a big loss for POTUS and the GOP in November, according to interviews with more than a dozen GOP sources. by @tomlobianco & @davelevinthal ($) businessinsider.com/trump-world-br…
Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale has taken most of the heat. But other Republicans interviewed by Insider are emphatic that Parscale hasn't failed alone and that Jared Kushner, Bill Stepien and the president himself bear more responsibility.
"The one person to blame for all this is Donald J. Trump," said one Republican close to the Trump campaign.
Asked about the Trump campaign's ongoing troubles, one veteran GOP operative emailed back a photo mashup of a circular firing squad to describe the 2020 effort.
Few Republicans have written off Trump entirely and some genuinely expect the president to shock Democrats the same way he did four years ago against Hillary Clinton and win a second term come November.
But terrible poll numbers, a surprising cash crunch despite raising historic amounts of money, and Trump's continual struggles to manage crises as president have it looking like he could join other modern day American leaders like George H.W. Bush & Jimmy Carter as one-termers.
A Republican close to Trump dropped an F-bomb when asked this week about Parscale's handling of the campaign money. "You stupid f---," the Republican said of Parscale. "How the f--- do you spend all the money that fast?"
Despite the fire and fury behind the scenes, Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said Thursday the campaign would be walking into Election Day flush with cash.
Other Republicans close to the campaign say it's too simplistic to blame everything on Parscale. "The idea that the campaign and Jared did not know how much Brad was spending, there is no way the others did not know," said a former '16 adviser.
Asked to comment on the finger-pointing, Trump campaign comms director Tim Murtaugh emailed a one-sentence statement: "The president will be re-elected."
That's a pretty good tease there of this story. Please subscribe to @businessinsider Prime for the whole thing and much more from our DC bureau. It's $1 for a month or here's a link to get a 20% discount for a full year: businessinsider.com/subscription/p…
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