Team Trump Fine With Pissing Off MAGA to Compete With Biden

Welcome to Trail Mix, your 2024 election sanity guide. See something interesting on the trail? Email me at jake.lahut@thedailybeast.com. To get Trail Mix in your inbox, subscribe here for free.

This week, an exploration of how much Trump can run afoul of MAGA and why he would do it. Plus, life after the 2024 primary, and more news from Michigan’s Senate race.

NOT SO BASED DON

It’s one of the seemingly ironclad natural laws of the Trump era: that rarely is there any daylight between the former president and the Republican Party base on any key issue.

But in recent weeks, some cracks have begun to emerge, illuminating potential weaknesses for Donald Trump as he works to return to the White House in 2024.

Trump Punts on Abortion in Announcement Sure to Anger Conservatives

First came Trump’s much-hyped statement on abortion on April 8, which was prompted by national backlash over continued restrictions on abortion rights that were enabled by the reversal of Roe v. Wade.

In wishy-washy remarks, Trump took credit for ending Roe but also declined to endorse a national abortion ban—fully infuriating anti-abortion conservatives, who make up a key portion of the Trump base.

“We are deeply disappointed in President Trump’s position,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, a leading anti-abortion activist who has been a key figure marshaling evangelical support for Trump and represents millions of single-issue abortion voters.

Then Trump invited backlash on an issue that is rapidly becoming a core concern to the MAGA grassroots: U.S. aid to Ukraine. His close ally, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), championed and passed legislation with tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine, overcoming the vehement opposition of Trump-aligned members—who are now threatening Johnson’s job.

As the revolt came into focus, Trump stood with Johnson at Mar-a-Lago on April 12 and said he supported the speaker. And while Trump hasn’t taken up the mantle of Ukraine aid directly, Johnson has credited the former president with an idea to frame the latest tranche of support as a “loan” that Ukraine would pay back—a concept most MAGA Republicans rejected.

Trump could have made the Ukraine vote far tougher for Republicans, but decided not to. Since the House passed the package on Saturday, he’s even praised Johnson.

Even Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) credited Trump for holding his tongue on Ukraine aid, effectively allowing it to pass the House without interference from his own voters.

It’s highly unusual for Trump to break with his base like this, especially when his campaign is strapped for cash and in dire need of an uptick in small-donor enthusiasm. And while MAGA-minded Republicans aren’t showing signs of mass revolt over abortion or Ukraine just yet, there’s still the question of why he’s taking such risks in the first place.

The Trump campaign, however, doesn’t see these moves as risks. They’re spinning it as all part of a plan to broaden his 2024 appeal as much as possible.

“Politics will always be about addition, not subtraction. We understand that,” a Trump campaign source familiar with the planning told The Daily Beast.

Gone are the days of Trump conducting live focus groups at rallies or issuing lists of potential judicial nominees to smooth over any perceived weaknesses in his conservative credentials, as he did in 2016.

This time around, the Trump campaign is willing to take calculated risks with the base. They see some fights as worth the trouble in order to appeal to new voters—and they’re also confident that his core supporters will always follow his lead.

Can Donald Trump Save Speaker Mike Johnson?

Just don’t call it a pivot in strategy.

“I don’t want to use the word pivot,” a Trump operative said, “but it’s sort of broadened the tent.”

While political conventional wisdom suggests Trump’s base always follows him, the reverse can often be true—making his moves all the more risky in terms of inviting backlash. But clearly, Trump’s team is aware that remaining in lockstep with the core MAGA movement on extreme positions, like a national abortion ban, could ensure his loss in November.

It’s a play for survival—but the Trump campaign is nevertheless insisting that President Joe Biden’s problems with his base are worse.

Top Trump campaign advisers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles released a memo on Wednesday outlining what they describe as Biden’s “base problem,” pointing to the campaign’s heavy early spending in battleground states.

Many would see that as a sign of strength for the Democrat, compared to the cash-strapped Trump, but the former president’s team spun it as a weakness.

“This remarkable phenomenon is such a worry to the Biden campaign that they are spending millions on paid TV to shore up traditional Democrat constituencies in the battleground states,” Trump’s co-campaign managers wrote in the memo. “We don’t hate it in the Trump campaign.”

The Biden campaign interpreted the memo as a cry for help from a sputtering Trump.

“The only remarkable phenomenon here is that the Trump campaign thinks this ridiculous quadruple spaced memo changes a damn thing,” Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer told The Daily Beast in an email. “Trump isn’t campaigning, they have no battleground infrastructure, no money, are driving away moderate voters, and their candidate is obsessed with his own revenge and retribution—how do they expect to win?”

In the fights Trump has decided to risk with his own base, a Trump-aligned strategist also attempted to distinguish between regular Republican voters and “the conservative activist class.”

Mike Johnson Came to Ukraine’s Aid. Will Democrats Come to His?

Ukraine aid, unpopular as it may be with the base in no small part because of Trump parroting Tucker Carlson, is not as big of a concern to the average Trump voter as it is to someone like Steve Bannon or a cable news clip-seeking missile like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), the Trump-aligned strategist claimed.

But any junior aide answering the phone in the office of a Republican who backed Ukraine aid can likely testify to the broad and deep grassroots anger over the vote. Popular figures in the party base, like Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Greene, have a much broader reach than most conservative groups or “activist class” members.

Indeed, Trump’s public support of Johnson still might not be enough to save him, as The Daily Beast reported over the weekend, with more hardliners joining Greene’s call for a motion to remove him and other House Republicans conceding it will be up to the Democrats to keep him in place.

But the Trump operative said Greene’s “stock has plummeted” in Trumpworld and “she’s making a big mistake” by continuing her quest to end Johnson’s speakership, given that the former president has stood firmly behind him.

“President Trump is the leader of the party,” they said. “He dictates the strategy, he dictates the play calls.”

Greene also appears to have violated a central unspoken rule of Trumpworld: Never try to show you know the base better than the boss.

“I think that the notion that Trump is held captive by anyone,” the Trump campaign source said, “is probably misplaced.”

AS WE GO ON, WE REMEMBER…

For a group with every reason to hold hard feelings toward Trump, some Republicans who worked for rival primary candidates in 2024 are remarkably calm today—even if they risked torpedoing their careers by trying to stop the Trump train.

With the GOP primary receding into history, The Daily Beast spoke to three veterans of rival campaigns who opened up about life after a hard-fought, but never truly close, campaign. (Two spoke on condition of anonymity to speak candidly about their experiences and Trump.)

Generally, there was no sense of regret over the missed opportunity—or even much of an expectation that anyone could have surpassed Trump at all.

How the Biden Campaign Plans to Win Over Nikki Haley Voters

“You always knew Trump loomed large over everything,” said a rival campaign staffer, who described the primary as more of a showcase for their candidate and less as a genuine challenge to Trump.

Still, one former campaign hand couldn’t help but revisit the hope for a Trump alternative that emerged at the very beginning of the 2024 cycle. In the 2022 midterm elections, Trump-endorsed candidates around the country lost winnable races, failing to flip the Senate and only winning a tiny majority in the House. His brand was fading and rising stars like Ron DeSantis were circling.

“Coming out of the November 2022 elections, he was really weakened, and there was an opening there,” a rival campaign aide said of Trump. “I’m not gonna sit here and tell you it was a big one, but he was certainly a lot weaker coming out of those elections.”

In what proved to be a crucial window between the fall midterms and the spring of 2023, Trump consolidated power and those hopes began to fade. The former president’s first criminal indictment in March 2023 ended up being a particularly instructive episode for the rest of the field—save for Chris Christie—when it became abundantly clear Republican voters did not want to hear any rival candidate criticize Trump over his legal woes.

Blowback from voters and conservative media led to months of candidates either repeatedly defending Trump or avoiding any mention of him in a statement attacking the justice system.

Once Trump was poised to lock up his third straight nomination this winter, he may have loomed largest over the future prospects of staffers who were soon to be out of a gig.

Former staffers recalled being fully aware during the primary that having a rival candidate’s name on their résumés could limit opportunities in a second Trump administration or in a GOP apparatus influenced heavily by him.

At least one staffer for Trump’s most hated rival, Nikki Haley, didn’t seem overly concerned about the possible repercussions.

“It was worth it 100 percent,” Woods Wooten, a former Haley campaign staffer based out of Charleston, South Carolina, told The Daily Beast. “It was worth it because we were able to see people were tired of the same old same old.”

While Wooten said he wasn’t “necessarily gung ho on working for the Trump camp,” he did take into consideration what working for Haley would mean for his career in GOP politics. Thankfully, Wooten said, most of the colleagues he’s stayed in touch with from the Haley campaign haven’t left the game.

“I don’t really think that we were all necessarily that worried about our future,” Wooten said, “just because we chose a good candidate who has a fairly decent favorability.”

Still, all three former staffers said they’re at peace with how the primary turned out—despite the fact that Trump and his campaign allies viciously attacked pretty much the entire field.

Trump mocked Haley’s husband while he was on active military duty in Africa. He called Christie a “fat pig.” He took particular joy in mocking Ron DeSantis for everything from his height to his personality to the way he walked.

“At the end of the day, we’re all Republicans and we’re all going to be pulling in the same direction,” the second rival campaign staffer said. “And so you try to see people at debates and people you know—people who are friends, people you have known for years—and so that made it interesting and fun all at the same time.”

ROGERS THAT

For Mike Rogers, the Michigan GOP Senate hopeful who made his name as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee a decade ago, it was an endorsement that raised eyebrows.

Last week, the Rogers campaign announced he secured the backing of Kash Patel, a staunch Trump ally who ended the administration as acting secretary of defense. The campaign posted on X that Rogers was “proud” to receive the endorsement.

Ex-Flunkies Steve Bannon and Kash Patel Warn Trump Is Serious About Revenge

Patel might be best known as a top aide to Rogers’ successor, former Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), who led the charge against the so-called anti-Trump “deep state.” He then rose through the Trump administration while championing 2020 election conspiracies and calling for the criminal prosecution of journalists in a second Trump administration.

In other words, Patel seemingly does not mix whatsoever with Rogers’ background as a lifelong intel and national security hawk. Certainly, the congressman’s old colleagues thought so.

“Back then, you thought tea party guys like me were crazy,” former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL) said in a quote tweet of the original post from Rogers, recalling his time in Congress with him. “Now you’re embracing a guy like Kash Patel? Wow.”

Amid the backlash, Rogers’ account deleted the tweet announcing Patel’s endorsement. When reached for comment by The Daily Beast this week, the campaign declined to talk at all about the endorsement or why they deleted the tweet.

Patel is still listed as a supporter on Rogers’ campaign website.

OFF THE BEATEN PATH

About that Chick-Fil-A

In third-party candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s quest for access to the presidential ballot in Georgia, a rising star in Trumpworld found a way to get in on the action—revealing another strand of connection between Kennedy and Trump.

A $3,750 payment to Michaelah Montgomery’s company appears in the Kennedy campaign’s latest FEC filings. Montgomery, of course, earned numerous headlines for appearing with Trump at an Atlanta Chick-fil-A recently.

The conservative activist was widely quoted as a Trump supporter, though she helped organize the visit, as the Associated Press reported at the time. She’s also the founder of Conserve the Culture, an LLC which recruits and organizes students at historically Black colleges and universities, and the same company which shows up in the Team Kennedy filings.

CAMPAIGN LIT

Rodeo Drive. Nevada GOP Senate candidate Jeff Gunter sported cowboy fashion in his campaign launch, but records show he paid for it all at a chain retailer, Riley and Reese report.

In plain sight. There’s a big mystery behind Trump’s $8 million legal payments—which Roger Sollenberger uncovered.

Ballot box out. State-level pushes to let voters directly have their say on abortion rights this November could power Democrats to wins, Sam Brodey reports.

Where’s Melania? The elusive former first lady headlined a rare fundraiser for LGBT Republicans at Mar-a-Lago recently, and Jake Lahut got the details.

No Summer of George. Disgraced former Rep. George Santos’ longshot comeback bid for Congress ended as swiftly and surprisingly as it began, Amanda Yen writes.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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