Donald Trump’s dark and divisive rhetoric has led one GOP operative to believe the former president is “decompensating” in response to Kamala Harris’ late surge because he realizes what lies ahead if he loses the presidential election.
“He’s realizing that he could lose the election, go to prison, and maybe die there,” the unnamed operative who worked on previous Trump campaigns told The Independent.
For Trump, the stakes of this election could not be higher. If he wins, Trump could use the powers of the presidency to squash his ongoing federal prosecutions for mishandling classified documents and trying to overturn his 2020 election loss.
If Trump loses, he faces the threat of being sentenced later this month to jail time in New York. Trump was convicted earlier this year on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up the reimbursement of hush money paid to Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
Trump’s rhetoric has grown increasingly dark during the final days of the campaign as polls show Harris surging, in part due to errors by Trump and his team.
Those missteps include platforming a comedian who called Puerto Rico an “island of floating garbage” at his Madison Square Garden rally late last month.
Days before the election Trump told a rally in Pennsylvania that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after losing the 2020 election.
At a campaign rally in Green Bay, Wisconsin, last Wednesday, he vowed to “protect” women, “whether they like it or not”.
At a campaign event in Glendale, Arizona on Thursday he suggested that one of his main critics, Liz Cheney, should be shot at.
And on Sunday Trump suggested that he wouldn’t mind if members of the press were killed.
A Democratic operative told The Independent it’s as if the stars had aligned to bring about the Trump’s collapse at the exact time Harris has been surging.
“Aaron Sorkin couldn’t have written it better,” the operative said.
