Trump campaign bars volunteer after his email about Trump's strategy

Donald Trump is all but abandoning New Hampshire. We have new reporting into OutFront about the Trump campaign's hopes, which now appear to be dashed for a win in the state. And it comes as Trump is striking out ahead of Kamala Harris's visit to New Hampshire tomorrow, posting on social media, and I quote Comrade Kamala Harris sees there are problems for her campaign in New Hampshire. To my friends in New Hampshire, get out and vote Trump. He may be saying that, but his campaign appears to be giving up. Steve King tomorrow is out front. And Steve, you know, here's the reality. New Hampshire, they thought they could win it. They really thought they had it at one point for the Trump campaign. How have the tides turned? Erin, very quickly. You know, New Hampshire is a state with a bit of an independent streak. It has voted Democrat in most presidential elections lately, but it has a Republican governor. And Trump came within 3000 votes of winning it, winning it in 2016. But a top volunteer to his campaign in the area put out an email recently that said, here he is. It's his understanding that the campaign has all but given up on New Hampshire, noting that it has no more surrogates coming there and it doesn't have any advertising, and that internal polling seems to suggest that Trump could actually lose the state by more than he did in 2020. Now, the Trump campaign says that this person is speaking out of turn, that the Trump campaign has a robust operation in New Hampshire, and they intend to fight there. But when I talk to other Republican operatives in the state, they said that this volunteer is painting a pretty clear picture that's really illustrative of what's happening there. One of them, Mike Dennehy, he's a longtime Republican operative there. He has been a strategist. The presidential campaigns. He told me, quote, if the election were held today, Trump would lose by 6 to 8 points. He's got to win the race. So you have to shift resources and I can absolutely understand that point of view. It's just hard to make the case for him to spend his resources there now. Mike, you know, others have said that there's still two weeks, not two months left in this race that has already had a lot of twists and turns. So the momentum could shift again. But Aaron, he's running out of time. And I will point out that the he has no advertising reserved for the fall, the Trump campaign has just barred a top volunteer for the campaign's New England operation. After that, volunteer told supporters in an email that Trump was effectively pulling out of New Hampshire to focus on other battleground states because the campaign determined the New Hampshire was no longer one of them. I should note the Trump campaign says that's not true, that they still have a strong ground presence there. But a lot to discuss tonight. My political sources who are here at the table with me, including Vice President Harris's former communications director Jamal Simmons, Trump's former white House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin, as well as CNN political commentator and the host of Spectrum News, is a big deal with Errol Lewis. Errol Louis, great to have you all here. But Alyssa, let me on this New Hampshire stuff that's coming out. This is Tom mountain. He's a volunteer for the Trump campaign, is downplaying his role. But in this email that he sent out to to other Republicans who was saying that they're they're suspending all their resources in the state at this moment. As you know, Trump from posting on social today about Harris and New Hampshire. Right. Well, first and foremost, that would be the prudent thing to do. Trump is not going to carry New Hampshire. That's simply a fact. There are important down ballot races. Obviously, Kelly Ayotte is in a tight race for the governorship there. So I would you would hope that the Republican Party and Trump campaign is directing resources to her. But listen, Kamala Harris upended the race. There was a moment when Joe Biden was still and there were talks about Virginia being in play for Republicans and for Trump. Now, this looks like a competitive map where the Sunbelt is somewhere they're going to have to spend money. She's appearing in Florida and she's not going to win. But I think it speaks to the fact that this became a very narrow field. It is really going to come down to just a handful of these battleground states. And she has him on his toes. That said, it's neck and neck. We see these polls every single day. I could not put good money on who is going to win this election, but she's got the resources and she's putting them out there. Yeah. And you heard Trump saying, no, it's not going to be close. It is going to be close. Despite that, Harris has a very particular framing of how she's talking about this race. This is what she said today about it. It's going to be a tight race to the very end. So let's not pay too much attention to those polls. We are the underdog in this race. I mean, she doesn't want anyone looking at any of the polls showing her up in any of the battlegrounds and becoming too comfortable. That's exactly right. And regardless of the polls, the one that really counts. If you really want to gauge what the campaign thinks is important and where they want her to be, just look at where she's going, right? She's making yet another trip into Georgia in the next few days, she's going to be making another trip into North Carolina. We know what she's trying to do. We know why she's trying to do it, and that is what really matters. Polls, of course, are a snapshot. The thing is there, the snapshot of somebody who hasn't made up their mind yet. So you catch somebody on any given day, they're going to look to the left, they're going to look to the right. They might be leaning this way or that way. So she understands what's going on. I'm sure her campaign aides have pounded into her head that they have a chance to do something that will be historic. It's history making, but that means you can't pay attention to the polls the way you normally would. You have to design your strategy, stick to your strategy no matter what, not get thrown by stray comments from the other side, and certainly not by the polls. Well, and speaking of where she's going, she's going to be in Pennsylvania for the whole week starting on Thursday. Jamal. She's going to to Pittsburgh. And what we're being told by sources that she's just basically camping out there until that debate one week from today in Philadelphia on Tuesday. Do you think that's the right strategy? What do you make of that? Look, she's got to focus on Pennsylvania because Pennsylvania is just so important. The strategy that takes them to North Carolina and Georgia and even some of these expansion states, Arizona is one that's important because she has a chance of perhaps having an electoral college route if she catches the right wave. The problem is you got to be there. But Pennsylvania is a linchpin to make sure this all works. They're going to be in debate camp mode, right. So some of this is going to be like, let's camp out and do some day trips, right, that aren't going to tax the candidate too much, get back and do more prep. They've got to figure out how do they make an argument about Donald Trump, not just throw a bunch of facts at the wall, right? Only people will remember the core argument that's made in that debate. And that means that there's going to be some things voters might want to hear about they won't hear about, because they just don't support the argument that the candidate and the campaign are trying to make during that debate. Yeah. And, you know, Trump is looking at this debate. He's been doing debate prep for this earlier than he did for Joe Biden. It seems, based on what we've been hearing. Well, I mean, what does that look like behind closed doors with Trump, who has not successfully landed an attack line on Harris? Really? Yeah. And he frames it as policy time, which is basically different advisers going in and kind of reminding him what his key points are on some of the core policies they're hoping he'll hit on and proactively talk about in the debate. He's never you know, this he's never been a traditional debate prepper, where you've got somebody playing the other candidate and he's, you know, does it for 90 minutes and is just asked a ton of questions. So I think that he's he's got staff around him who are trying to remind him of the issues that win for him with voters. The border, the economy on shoring American jobs. But he also is going up against somebody who is so different than who he thought he was running against a woman much younger than him, who he's never actually met but has really strong feelings about. They need to be prepping him to not go off the rails, to not lash out, to not name call. It won't play well for him with the people he needs to win over. But it's Donald Trump. You just you never know what you're going to get. Well, I'm so glad you brought that up because Trump did this lengthy podcast today and he the person was essentially saying, it's so much better when you're on message than when you are not on message. And I mean, it's it's kind of the most Trumpian moment. You just everyone just watch it and see what Trump's response was. From my personal opinion, I think you are at your best when you're talking about a positive vision of the future versus criticizing the other side. Yeah, I think you have to criticize, though. I think I think the nasty it was, got to say reluctantly, of course, he sadly, it is his duty to sort of be aggressive and nasty. What he's not really going to be ready for, I think. And this is really where he ought to spend some debate prep time is that Kamala Harris, unlike Joe Biden, is going to go on the attack. This is a professional prosecutor. This is somebody who knows how to break you down, hit you here, here, here, and then come back and do it again. And I think that's going to be the kind of narrative that she sort of builds in a way that he won't be able to wiggle out of, you know, I mean, the normal Trump response is to say something so outrageous that it throws the opponent off guard. It captures the headline. It dominates the debate. I don't know if that's going to be available to you. That's a great point, because today Trump just pleaded not guilty formally again to that retooled indictment by Jack Smith in the election interference case. His attorneys are formally going to go and do that on Thursday. Trump has waived his right to an appearance, but one of the criticism that I heard from Democrats and White House officials after the CNN debate was Biden didn't bring up Trump's conviction enough or his indictment enough. Is that something that you think she's going to bring up? A lot depends on what their core argument is. They might decide that people know enough about that. It may also be that there's only one of them. They really want to go out. There's only one proof point. They need to make to make sure that voters are trying to target really understand it. But this is a key point about what arrow's just saying. What they can't do is get into a policy point counterpoint, because that's not going to convince anybody. If anything, it's going to be a bunch of facts up against the wall. They've got to have a core argument. And somebody's job also has to be that debate prep. Can you say this part a whole that's on TV, but somebody your kids might not like it, but someone has got to be the asshole here. Like somebody's got to sit there and really pepper her and get her to get annoyed and aggravated, because that's probably what Trump's going to do. And what you want her to do is to work out that aggravation and prep and not do it when she's on stage. But that's a great point. Does Trump do that in prep, though? Is he willing to let someone, as Jamal puts it, be the a whole to him? I mean, Trump doesn't really like being criticized, not in my experience. And I never did presidential debate with him, but I did prep for town halls and media interviews. He does. Even if you prep him and say, hey, they might ask, you know, do you denounce white nationalism? This was an actual conversation I had before an NBC town hall. He did. So they're going to ask that and flew off the handle. Didn't want to answer it. So that's what he was like. You. Yeah, that's a pretty easy thing to prep. And also a really easy answer, by the way announcing it now. But he he's not someone you could prep in a traditional sense.