A journalist who was given an insider’s view of Donald Trump’s campaign said that while the former president believes he will win a second term Tuesday, those closest to him “fear that the bottom has started to fall out” and aren’t too sure anymore.
“He does believe that he’s going to win,” Tim Alberta, a staff writer at The Atlantic, told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Monday. He added that Trump, “of course, has a pretty distorted view of political reality, I think that’s been the case for quite some time.”
Alberta spoke with nearly a dozen former Trump aides, advisers and friends for his Nov. 2 article, “Inside the Ruthless, restless final days of Trump’s campaign,” in which he gained insight into the final stretch of the Republican nominee's campaign. He told Burnett that one of the things he took away was, “This has been a total train wreck of a fall campaign for the Trump folks.”
“I think as of a few weeks ago, people close to him were still pretty bullish on his prospects. I’m not sure that’s the case anymore, I think that there is a real fear that the bottom has started to fall out here at the worst possible moment and that they are closing in about as weak a fashion as you possibly could,” Alberta said. He added that a lot of those inside Trump’s campaign feel like they’re “crawling or limping through the tape.”
He continued the interview by saying that based on conversations he had for his article, he can say “with certainty” that there are at least a couple of people “who work for Donald Trump who will not be upset if he loses.”
“I think whatever exhaustion, whatever fatigue, whatever exasperation the median American voter feels about Donald Trump, amplify that by about 10 million and consider those who have found themselves working for the man day and day out for the past 18-20 months, only to see him sort of sabotaging their efforts down the stretch of the campaign,” Alberta said.
Watch the clip below or at this link.