Trump Is Shockingly Out of Touch This Election—and His Team Knows It

Besides stumbling through his speeches onstage, it appears that Donald Trump is also struggling to keep up with basic facts this election season. And even his team has given up.

In a wide-ranging interview with New York magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi, published on Monday, Trump seemed to be unaware of major news events, as well as basic details about Kamala Harris. During one part of the conversation, Trump predictably went on a tangent about Harris’s Marxist background.

“And she’s Marxist, and that’s, that’s strange in this country because this country will never be a Marxist country. She’s actually—you know, her father is a big promoter of Marxism,” said Trump. Nuzzi pushed back and attempted to fact-check Trump: Harris was raised by her mother and does not have an active relationship with her father. Trump seemed genuinely surprised by the correction.

“I don’t know …” Trump said. “Maybe that’s true, yeah. I just don’t know anything about it. I just know that he’s a Marxist professor,” he responded.

When Nuzzi asked a Trump adviser how it could be the case that Trump appears to have not done his research, the longtime adviser gave a troubling anecdote about Joe Biden’s postdebate interview with George Stephanopoulos. “I called [Trump] and said, ‘I know a little about what happened in the interview. Do you want me to read it to you?’ He said, ‘What interview?’ He didn’t even know about it. I’m like, ‘Mr. President, there’s absolutely no possibility that you don’t know?’” Trump then reportedly asked the adviser what network the interview was airing on so he could TiVo it.

This interaction paints a picture of Trump as a student who refuses to do homework—even if  it means he’ll fail.

But some fault must be placed on Trump’s new ragtag team, as well. Neither Susan Wiles nor Chris LaCivita, Trump’s co-campaign chairs, was on the 2016 or 2020 team. And though it seems like Trump may appear to be course-correcting by bringing back Corey Lewandowski, his adviser from 2016, the former president told Nuzzi he wasn’t trying to fix a failing campaign.

“I just like him. Corey’s a character,” Trump said. “But I’m very happy with everybody.”