How the Trump Campaign Learned It Was Losing

Politico: “The campaign is ‘feeling comfortable’ with the state of the race, Manafort told a TV interviewer… But in private, the top brass of the Trump campaign was growing increasingly alarmed at the dire numbers they were seeing — and aides knew they had to confront their boss with the truth. On Aug. 9, Tony Fabrizio, Trump’s chief pollster and a longtime party strategist, sat down with the nominee. The previous week had been a disaster, punctuated by Trump’s damaging confrontation with a Gold Star family. Fabrizio, who was joined by Manafort deputy Rick Gates, had just completed a fresh batch of polling and had an urgent message for the candidate: If you have another week like the last one, you won’t win.”

“According to interviews with over a dozen aides involved at various levels of the campaign, Trump’s team had already come to recognize the peril they faced.”