The last weekend of the interminably long Trump For President 2024 campaign has been punctuated by a tell-all piece in the Atlantic. The piece reports that Laura Loomer has been excommunicated from Trump world, but not for the reasons that you would expect. You would assume that her horrifically racist commentary or her conspiracy theories would have toppled her, but no, you would be worng. The Atlantic is reporting that Donald Trump became disillusioned when he discovered the amount of plastic surgery the woman had. Crazy as it sounds, considering the source, it’s probably true.
Then there is the fact, hotly in dispute, of whether Corey Lewandowski was right or not when he told Trump that Susie Wiles and/or Chris LaCivita were “stealing from him.” Supposedly LaCivita has made bank on the Trump campaign and we mean bank: $22,000,000 to be exact. If true, that’s quite a haul. LaCivita and Trump hotly disputed the veracity of this contention on board Trump Force One.
They also hate each other, but this is definitely true. pic.twitter.com/DQk9savoXo
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) November 2, 2024
I daresay a lot of his own staff don’t believe he will win and that probably includes Wiles and LaCivita. In any event, take a look at some of the more salacious paragraphs in the piece.
Instead, when they arrived at LaGuardia and boarded the campaign plane, Trump signaled for LaCivita to join him in the cramped, four-seat office at the front of the cabin. As they settled across from each other, Trump reached for a small stack of paper: a printout of the Daily Beast story. LaCivita, in turn, produced a much thicker stack of paper. These were the exhibits for the defense: Federal Election Commission reports, bank-account statements, pay stubs, vendor agreements, and more. For the next half hour, according to several sources with knowledge of the exchange, the two men had it out—profanities flying but voices kept intentionally low—as LaCivita insisted to Trump that he wasn’t ripping the candidate off. Trump, the sources said, seemed to vacillate between believing his employee and seething over the dollar figure, wondering how something so specific could be wrong. Finally, after a couple of concluding f-bombs, Trump seemed satisfied. “Okay, I get it, I get it,” he told LaCivita, holding up his hands as if requesting that the defense rest. He added: “You should sue those bastards.”
The air was more or less cleared: Trump has not raised the issue of LaCivita’s pay since, aides told me, save for several episodes of the candidate teasingly—but conspicuously—calling LaCivita “my $22 million man!” Nevertheless, the alliance remains fragile. Less than a week after the détente, CNN unearthed LaCivita’s Twitter activity from January 6, 2021, including his having liked a tweet that called for Trump to be removed via the Twenty-Fifth Amendment. At that point, Trump told several people that LaCivita was dead to him—that he would ride out the remainder of the campaign, but would have no place in his administration or political operation going forward.
That was just fine by LaCivita; he had always viewed himself as a hired gun, and his reservations about working for Trump weren’t exactly a secret. Still, the word that Trump had iced one of his two key lieutenants sent a shiver through the rest of the staff. Many had noticed new faces poking around, asking questions about finances and compliance. With Trump’s suspicions piqued, every staffer, as well as every decision, would be under the microscope through Election Day.
Well, so much for the White House chief of staff position, I guess. And Loomer won’t get the press secretary job, either. And who knows? Kash Patel may not be running the CIA in a few months. Man, there’s going to be a lot of wet handerchiefs and wailing on Tuesday. And not surprisingly, it was the advent of Corey Lewandowski that led to all this infighting. I can guarantee you that there’s not a political blogger on the internet that didn’t call that shot a few months back when Lewandowski appeared.
The next day, on the campaign plane, Trump convened Wiles, LaCivita, and Lewandowski around a table in the front cabin, in a meeting first reported on by Puck. He spoke directly to Lewandowski. “We can’t afford to lose these guys,” Trump said, motioning toward Wiles and LaCivita. “They’re in charge.”
Lewandowski knew the fight was lost. “Sir, I’m the only fucking person on this plane who isn’t getting paid to be here right now,” he grumbled, according to multiple people familiar with the meeting. “I’m happy to go back to fucking New Hampshire.”
“No, I want you on TV for me every day,” Trump said. He paused. “And go win me New Hampshire, while you’re at it.”
Lewandowski slapped the table. “You’re not going to win New Hampshire,” he said. “But okay.”
When passengers reboarded the plane for the next leg of their trip, Lewandowski was not on it. Being evicted from the plane is a signature insult in Trump’s political sphere. Lewandowski told friends that he’d planned all along to fly commercial to his next destination; the former president told his traveling aides that Lewandowski’s absence was meant to send the message that dissent would no longer be tolerated. Trump had lost a lot of ground to Harris over the previous month, and victory was possible only if everyone on the campaign fell back in line.
Nobody “fell back in line” and things spiralled more and more out of control, culminating in last week’s circus at Madison Square Garden, which set the stage for the horrific insult comic, Tony Hinchcliffe and his ill advised remarks. And then of course mid-week Trump did his garbage truck stunt and you saw all of this live and in living color.
Trump is sleepwalking through his last few days on the campaign trail. As you have observed, he’s getting up in front of the mic and rerunning his greatest hits. Two more days of this.
And then we’ll see how America votes. One key change I can report here: The Hill, which is a decided pro-Trump publication, ran a story this morning hinting that Harris may indeed win the popular vote and that could translate into an electoral win. If The Hill has said anything about Harris winning before today, you would not know it by me, and I read their newsletter religiously, every single day, along with about twelve other publications of various persuasions from left to right.
Here’s one last sentiment from The Atlantic piece that sums up this entire Trump fiasco in our culture.
But this home stretch of the campaign hadn’t just been hard and stressful; it had been disillusioning. Several campaign officials had told me, throughout the spring and summer, how excited they were about working in the next Trump White House. Now those same people were telling me—as paperwork was being distributed internally to begin the process of placing personnel on the transition team and in the prospective administration—that they’d had a change of heart. The past three months had been the most unpleasant of their careers. Win or lose, they said, they were done with the chaos of Donald Trump—even if the nation was not.
So they’ve started tearing themselves apart and arguing about all the lies they have to tell themselves, so they can lie to the rest of us.
“They were done with the chaos of Donald Trump”
Well we all are, and the results coming in are showing it.
We’re all now so over him, we can hardly wait the last days until he’s finished.
And then the lies are over, the trials can continue and he can be convicted and sentenced, and put out of the public eye.
And we can get back to competent, quiet, informed, and intelligent, fact-based governance.
Now we all understand Natasha’s absence and her refusal to be seen with this diapered baby fascist. She will also carry the stench along with his nest of vipers. I wonder if I can borrow that coat she wore to show her indifference to 5500 children being traumatized at the border?
Harris now leads in Iowa!
Kamala’s going to win the election. Bigtime. The question is whether Trumpler’s handlers in Congress can steal it back. It’s the scum in suits we need to worry about, not the street thugs Donald’s hoping to mobilise with his black-&-gold fascist costume.
Something else: Women of all ages who supported him.twice got a wake-up call. At least two women died thanks to.abortion band. And then two more maternal deaths were reported last week, along with at 25% increase in fetal deaths due to fetal anomalies ( because the pregnancies were non viable). I think women realized that could be them.or their daughters or granndaughters. The women 65+ are old enough to know what it was like pre-Roe, 52 years ago. We all knew women who had unplanned, unwanted pregnancies. And we don’t want it again