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Trump on cruise control ahead of convention

Former President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump raises his fist during a rally in Doral, Florida on July 9, 2024. (Photo by Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images)

WHEN DONALD TRUMP PLANNED HIS RALLY last week at his golf course near Miami, it was with specific messages in mind.

The event had been conceived as a way to put the middle finger to justice. Trump would appear alongside a crowd of Cuban-Americans, some of his most loyal supporters, where he would present himself (like them) as a victim of state-sponsored political persecution. The moment, too, was quite specific. He would speak just two days before he was sentenced in his hush money case, which, as the rally was being planned, looked like it would be a seismic campaign moment.

But then things changed. Dramatically.

Between planning the rally and the rally itself, the Supreme Court ruled that Trump is “presumptively immune” from prosecution for official acts he took as president. His legal team used that decision demand a reconsideration of the 34-count guilty verdict he had received in the hush money case. the judge agreed to entertain motions on the issue and adjourned his sentencing hearing to September.

That wasn't the only massive wrinkle.

Just days before his hearing was delayed, Joe Biden's candidacy imploded on the debate stage. Suddenly, the Trump campaign's intention to strike a defiant tone was replaced by a desire to say nothing.

They didn't cancel the Florida rally. Instead, they turned it into a festive event. Speaking on the 10th hole of his Doral golf course, Trump spent little time talking about his criminal problems. He swaggered, challenging Biden to another debate and a golf tournament, and reveled in the president's problems.

“Our victory was so overwhelming that Joe's own party now wants him to throw in the towel and resign from the presidency after a single ninety-minute performance,” Trump said.

The radical change in tone of the Doral rally from what was planned in June to what actually happened in July is a microcosm of the changes the Trump campaign has been making since the debate. The former president's inflammatory rhetoric is still there, though the really bonkers stuff often gets dumped on Truth Social, where only the most rabid fans see it.. But the craziness is balanced by a more optimistic attitude. His desire to be at the center of the news cycle has been overwhelmed, for now, by his team's belief that it is best that he essentially disappear from the election campaign. Making news, the thinking goes, would interfere with the drumbeat of coverage of Biden's implosion.

A politician who has spent the last eight years largely in a defensive crouch, or at the center of chaos, or taking income from members of his own party, has seen all of his ills suddenly rained down on his opponent. . Inside the Trump operation, the concerns now are whether the former president's luck can continue and whether he will remain disciplined enough (grading on a Trump curve, mind you) not to get in his way.

“We just hope it doesn't hurt,” said a Trump confidant. “He'll never admit it, but Trump is thinking the same thing.”

The changes in the Trump operation have been both tactical and strategic. Before the debate, there was talk that the former president could name a running mate before or shortly after his conviction. That talk ended at the time of the debate. And now it seems likely that he will either make the announcement at his Saturday rally in Pennsylvania or wait until the last minute on Monday, when the Republican National Convention officially begins.

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Trump has been playing golf daily (he hit the races last weekend at his New Jersey club with Bryson DeChambeau). And his campaign, already confident in its chances long before the debate, now believes that the electoral map has moved even more in its favor. Polls indicate that Trump could be competitive in blue states like Virginia, Minnesota, New Jersey and New Mexico, though Democrats continue to scoff at the mere suggestion that those states could flip.

“Donald Trump was on his way to a 320 electoral vote victory,” Chris LaCivita, co-campaign manager, he said the Atlantic. “This is before– debate.”

The past nine years have yielded countless reports of Trump pivoting or becoming more disciplined and politically astute. Most of them have not aged well.

But what is different now, his advisers insist, is that he can argue, and accurately, that he is winning. He never led Biden in the polls in 2020. In 2016, Clinton was ahead of Trump at this point in the campaign.

Trump also has the added motivation of having lost the presidency, although he won't admit it was legitimate.

“He's had four years to think about this moment, and he's not going to screw it up,” one adviser said.

But it's not just a thirst for redemption that drives Trump. In candid moments, he has acknowledged to others that he knows he must win the presidency because it is the only way to close the Justice Department's criminal cases against him in Washington and South Florida. In other words, Trump believes that if he doesn't win the White House, he could end up in the Big House. And it has adjusted accordingly.

Rep. Mike Waltz, a Florida Republican who flew to the Doral rally with other members of the state delegation and spent time with Trump, said it was “remarkable” to see how calm the candidate is.

Waltz co-chaired the Republican National Convention's platform committee and said Trump personally edited it platform document twice and made sure it was written in a more colloquial style (it looks like one of his speeches, the Washington Post pointed out). This year's document differs significantly from the previous platform (which dates from 2016 because the party decided not to adopt a platform in 2020). Its length was reduced from 66 pages to 16, and previous platform opposition to gay marriage was removed. Too, as Joe Perticone points out in Press Pass today, de-emphasizes abortion, a big issue for Trump, who realizes it's a general election rub for Republicans. And it includes his call for mass deportations of illegal immigrants, a popular issue he says surveys, even with Hispanic voters. When Trump mentioned the idea at his rally on Tuesday, the heavily Hispanic crowd cheered.

Even before the debate, Trump's campaign began targeting Vice President of Communications Kamala Harris more than Biden. When Democrats called for Biden to withdraw the week after the debate, Trump's campaign initially believed Biden would not be forced out. Privately, some wonder if it's still an accurate reading of the situation.

In his new campaign mode, Trump also plays political pundit, and on Tuesday, he made sure to shade Harris and Biden in a two-for-one.

“You have to give him credit for a brilliant decision, probably the smartest decision he's ever made: He picked Kamala Harris as his vice president,” Trump said as the crowd booed his name.

“No,” Trump said, “it was brilliant because it was an insurance policy, maybe the best insurance policy I've ever seen. If Joe had picked someone even halfway competent, they would have kicked him out of office years ago.”

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