Politico: “Down in the polls and short on cash, President Donald Trump and his team are ramping up their attacks on debate organizers, journalists and social media platforms in a bid to cast the final days of the 2020 race as ‘rigged’ and ‘biased’ against them. It’s a combative strategy of attacking pundits and political arbiters drawn from the 2016 campaign, when Trump first presented himself as an outsider eager to disrupt national politics and the mores of Washington.”
“In 2020, Trump’s working-the-refs strategy is being deployed just as forcefully to target specific issues or people instead of the establishment at large. It’s an effort to reframe poor polls and an onslaught of critical advertising, while simultaneously keeping attention away from top-of-mind issues like the coronavirus and a still-struggling economy. ‘You always work the referees. That is politics,’ said Bryan Lanza, who served as the deputy communications director on Trump’s 2016 campaign. ‘It also helps that the refs have given the president and his team significant ammunition to question their credibility.'”