Clowns complain about the circus

According to the Washington Post:

Some of the internet’s most influential far-right figures are turning against former president Donald Trump’s campaign, threatening a digital “war” against the Republican candidate’s aides and allies that could complicate the party’s calls for unity in the final weeks of the presidential race.

Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist and podcaster who dined with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., in 2022, said on X that Trump’s campaign was “blowing it” by not positioning itself more to the right and was “headed for a catastrophic loss,” in a post that by Wednesday had been viewed 2.6 million times.

That’s just what the Trump campaign doesn’t need — more rhetoric that appeals to Fuentes, a racist and anti-Semite, and his followers.

Fuentes isn’t the only clown who’s complaining about the Trump circus:

Laura Loomer, a far-right activist whom Trump last year called “very special,” said his “weak” surrogates had unraveled his momentum and that his approach “needs to change FAST because we can’t talk about a stolen election for another 4 years.

If Trump loses, only idiots will join Trump in talking about a stolen election for another four years.

Meanwhile, Candace Owens, no stranger to anti-Semitic rhetoric herself, complains:

“I’m just not sure who is driving the MAGA bus anymore,” she said, making clear that like other vocal far-right influencers, her problem is not with Trump but with his staff. “You’re losing that support from the people that believed in you. … You need those people.”

The person driving the MAGA bus is the same person who has always driven it — Donald Trump. What Fuentes, Loomer, and Owens are trying to do is shift the blame, in case Trump loses, from the candidate to his campaign team.

That way, if Trump loses they will have another excuse — in addition to fraud — for the defeat: Trump was betrayed by “squishes” in his campaign. Trump, no doubt, will also indulge that fantasy. When has he ever failed to blame others for his poor performance?

If it’s really true that Trump is allowing the “MAGA bus” to be driven by incompetent squishes, that’s a damning indictment of Trump. By trying to shift blame from Trump to his “incompetent” advisers — the ones he picked — all Fuentes, Loomer, and Owens are doing is portraying Trump himself as incompetent.

In reality, though, Trump is his own campaign strategist. Channeling Frank Sinatra, Trump does things “my way.” Trump is conducting this campaign his way. As he likes to say, “I’ve gotta be me.”

And although Trump isn’t running a great campaign, he’s smart not to appease his most extreme backers. It’s true (but sad) that to win this election, Trump needs their votes. But there’s little reason to fear that he won’t get them. Indeed, the Post notes that “many of the campaign’s hard-right critics [have] said they still stand strongly behind Trump himself.” Who among these critics and their followers will abstain from voting for Trump because they don’t like his campaign team?

What Trump needs most to win this election is what presidential candidates always need most — the votes of those in the middle. In this case, that means voters who are neither MAGA nor liberal. These are the votes that are up for grabs. To the extent Trump has softened his message, he’s done so to win them.

I should add that while the Post wants to portray the Trump campaign as in turmoil due to animosity from extremists who feel excluded, it also wants its readers to believe that the same extremists are influencing (or will influence) the campaign. For the latter purpose, the Post enlists self-styled experts in extremism. One of them says that Fuentes “retains a “cult following” among young conservatives who could indirectly influence the campaign “to adopt more extreme positions.”

They could, if Trump lets them. But it’s encouraging to see their “influencer” complain that Trump isn’t not letting them do it now.