“The Trump campaign is filled with internal blaming and pre-spinning of a potential loss, accelerating a dire mood that’s driven by a daily barrage of bleak headlines, campaign and White House officials tell me. ‘A lot of this is the president himself,’ one adviser said. ‘You can’t heal a patient who doesn’t want to take the diagnosis'” Axios reports.
“In weekly pep talks, Stepien tells staff members why they shouldn’t pay attention to the perennially horrible public polls — and how they can ‘win the week’ and the campaign. But in other private conversations, described by multiple sources, Stepien can seem darkly pessimistic. He likens the campaign to an airplane flying through turbulence, saying: ‘It’s our job to safely land the plane.’ Three sources who have heard Stepien use variations of the airplane analogy say they sensed he was deeply, perhaps irretrievably pessimistic about the state of the race. Trump can still win. But make no mistake: Even his most loyal supporters, including those paid to believe, keep telling us he’s toast — and could bring Republican control of the Senate down with him. Stepien’s critics say he is in CYA mode, refusing to make tough decisions that might incur Trump’s wrath while setting up excuses for what polls suggest could be a shellacking by Joe Biden.”