A week after the attempted assassination of Donald Trump , the Atlantic published a headline claiming that "Trump is Planning for a Landslide Win."
Now, a little over a month and one presidential candidate swap later, the 2024 presidential election’s likely results appear a little less obvious .
With the defiant photo of a post-assassination attempt Trump pumping his fist in the rear-view, the former president has become increasingly frustrated by the surging poll numbers enjoyed by his presumed opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris , according to five people close to the situation who spoke to The Washington Post .
He reportedly told a supporter he felt it was “unfair” that after he “beat” Joe Biden he had to turn around and run against Harris.
“It’s unfair that I beat him and now I have to beat her, too,” the former president reportedly said.
While Trump famously has never beaten Biden — a fact the president brought up frequently when he was trying to justify staying in the 2024 race — it wasn't looking good for Democrats in early July.
“At the convention, it was game over, and the Democrats realized that,” Richard Porter of the Republican National Committee in Illinois told the Post . “It felt like it was too good to be true, and it was. It’s amazing how quickly they coalesced behind another candidate.”
Biden would eventually leave the race after facing pressure from the public and from fellow Democratic lawmakers. Without any real second guessing or opposition, Harris stepped into the open spot.
Trump's campaign has been on uneven footing since the RNC. The announcement that Senator JD Vance would run alongside Trump prompted the press to dig up the Hillbilly Elegy -author's previous comments on his running mate.
He once suggested Trump could be "America's Hitler."
Vance and other Republicans also launched some wildly tone deaf attacks against Harris — calling her a childless cat lady, calling her a "DEI" candidate — that ultimately were rejected even by other Republicans lawmakers and the talking heads on Fox News programming.
With the post-assassination attempt momentum apparently depleted, it brings Trump back to playing the same old tunes; he’s the victim, reporters are bad, everyone’s mean to him.
"If Kamala has 1,000 people at a Rally, the Press goes 'crazy,' and talks about how 'big' it was - And she pays for her 'Crowd.' When I have a Rally, and 100,000 people show up, the Fake News doesn’t talk about it, THEY REFUSE TO MENTION CROWD SIZE," Trump complained on Truth Social . "The Fake News is the Enemy of the People!"
That outburst was almost certainly sparked by comparisons in the press and on social media between the crowd sizes at Trump and Harris's rallies at Temple University in Pennsylvania.
Photos of the Harris rally — where her newly-selected running mate Governor Tim Walz addressed the crowd — showed the university arena venue filled to the brim. During Trump's rally in the same venue reportedly "needed some of it curtained off and left the whole upper bowl empty," according to Pennsylvania journalist Nick Field, who attended the rally.
Whether or not the Trump campaign has just hit a speed bump or has lost a tire is unclear. As far as his campaign staff is concerned, it doesn't matter — they will continue to present Trump and his campaign as an underdog.
“The Trump campaign has never taken anything for granted and we always fight like we’re the underdogs,” Steven Cheung, a Trump spokesman, told the Post in a statement. “That’s especially true after an assassination attempt on President Trump heading into Convention. Our sole job is to help President Trump win the election, and we’re going to beat the brakes off the dangerously liberal Kamala-Walz ticket.”
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