特朗普精心策划的一周活动不断偏离剧本
【中美创新时报2024 年 8 月 25 日编译讯】（记者温友平编译）尽管精心策划了一周的竞选活动，旨在与民主党全国代表大会形成对抗，但特朗普的一系列即兴言论、咆哮和失误削弱了他的大部分信息，这些言论、咆哮和失误有可能激起共和党的焦虑，而他在过去一个月的大部分时间里都在试图抑制这种焦虑。《纽约时报》记者迈克尔·C·本德和迈克尔·戈尔德（Michael C. Bender and Michael Gold）对此作了下述报道。
唐纳德·特朗普今年的政治持久力部分归因于选民对四年前拒绝他连任的原因的记忆已经模糊。
这位前总统正在尽最大努力提醒他们。
尽管精心策划了一周的竞选活动，旨在与民主党全国代表大会形成对抗，但特朗普的一系列即兴言论、咆哮和失误削弱了他的大部分信息，这些言论、咆哮和失误有可能激起共和党的焦虑，而他在过去一个月的大部分时间里都在试图抑制这种焦虑。
周一，他在宾夕法尼亚州努力澄清之前的言论，他认为授予平民的总统自由勋章“比授予军人的荣誉勋章好得多”。周二，他在密歇根州声称副总统卡马拉·哈里斯在“总统被恶意、暴力推翻”后赢得了民主党提名，并称民主党大会主办地芝加哥是“比阿富汗更糟糕的战区”。
周三在北卡罗来纳州发表演讲时，特朗普公开拒绝了盟友关于限制对哈里斯和其他民主党人进行人身攻击的建议。周四下午在亚利桑那州停留期间，特朗普称美国首位黑人副总统“懒惰”，当晚在与福克斯新闻的 10 分钟电话中喋喋不休。主持人最终打断了他并结束了采访，但特朗普很快打电话给 Newsmax，继续了他之前说的话。
周五，特朗普在本周结束时拥抱了罗伯特·F·肯尼迪，以换取他的支持，这一举动对有利于他的竞选结果影响尚不确定。
“赢得摇摆选民的方法之一不是人身攻击——他们天生不喜欢党派政治，但他们也不为国家的发展方向和经济表现感到兴奋，”长期担任共和党战略师、曾参与 2004 年、2008 年和 2012 年总统竞选活动的凯文·马登 (Kevin Madden) 说。“特朗普每天都不会谈论这个是浪费的一天。”
尽管如此，几位与特朗普关系密切的人士表示，他们对特朗普过去一周的表现感到满意。他的部分演讲集中在政策上，他能够提出自己的观点，呼吁减税、放松管制和国内化石燃料生产，他的盟友认为这些是取得胜利的关键。
根据《纽约时报》的民意调查平均值，这场竞选在全国和战场州仍然势均力敌。
特朗普政治顾问戴维·厄本 (David Urban) 表示，这位前总统本周表现明显好转，这表明他专注于竞选中的新动态。
“毫无疑问，这将是一场艰难的竞选，但如果他只谈论经济、通货膨胀、移民和犯罪等大问题，我们就会赢，”厄本说。
尽管有人呼吁关注这些问题，但特朗普已明确表示，他打算继续按照自己的方式开展竞选活动。特朗普最近告诉记者：“我认为，相对于他们正在做的事情，以及他们有多激进，以及他们在很多方面有多病态，我认为我的竞选活动非常平静。” “我必须按自己的方式做事。”
私下里，特朗普对竞选的动态越来越适应了。在过去的一个月里，他面临着来自盟友的猛烈批评和建议，其中包括长期的赌场大亨史蒂夫·韦恩。韦恩支付了民意调查费用，他告诉前总统，民意调查显示独立选民是他获胜的关键——他们希望他坚持这些问题。
特朗普告诉两个人，他很难避免进行人身攻击，因为他对对手怀有强烈的敌意。他说，无论是对杰布·布什、希拉里·克林顿、拜登还是现在的哈里斯，压倒性的敌意都让他很难不去攻击，这两位不愿透露姓名的人士说，他们谈论私人谈话。
这位前总统本周的日程安排异常繁忙。自初选结束以来，他还没有如此活跃的竞选活动。与他现在标志性的集会不同，这些集会的场地主要是小规模的，人群也少得多。
为了与哈里斯形成鲜明对比，经常攻击主流媒体的特朗普开始了一系列采访，接受了哥伦比亚广播公司新闻、美国全国广播公司新闻和美国有线电视新闻网等媒体的简短一对一采访。
目前尚不清楚这一努力是否有效遏制了哈里斯的势头。但在本周的政策活动进行到一半时，特朗普明确表示了他对这一活动的厌恶，并嘲笑那些敦促他限制人身攻击的顾问。
“让我问你们这个问题，”他在北卡罗来纳州集会上对人群说。“我们将进行一次免费民意调查。这里有两个问题：我应该进行人身攻击吗？我不应该进行人身攻击吗？”
人群咆哮着支持人身攻击。“我不知道，”他说。“我的顾问”——他停顿了一下——“被解雇了。”
特朗普在本周初相对专注。周一，在宾夕法尼亚州约克的一家制造厂内，他基本上坚持自己对经济的立场。离题相对较少。
但随着一周的继续，他似乎越来越多地转向更多的题外话。随着民主党大会的进行，他在讲话中明确表示自己在关注，这实际上破坏了他的竞选团队在全国舞台上淡化民主党的努力。
特朗普表示，他感到有必要为自己辩护，以免受批评和攻击。本周，他多次表示，拜登是一个“愤怒的人”，“怒不可遏”。巴拉克·奥巴马则“令人讨厌”。
周四，在哈里斯发表演讲期间，特朗普在社交媒体上实时发帖，批评她感谢的人太多。在哈里斯称赞已故母亲向她灌输了勤奋工作的价值后，特朗普发帖称：“卡玛拉的传记不会降低杂货店或加油站的价格！”
他还在寻找奇怪的目标。本周，特朗普在社交媒体和公开活动中抱怨纽约州州长凯西·霍楚尔，她在周一大会上的演讲几乎没有引起人们的关注。他在社交媒体上瞄准了宾夕法尼亚州州长乔什·夏皮罗，称他的言论“非常糟糕，表达方式也很差”，并称他是一位“被高估的犹太州长”。
周二，特朗普的竞选团队预计他会宣布新政策。这些政策包括呼吁对儿童强奸犯和性贩子判处死刑，以及支持对未经父母同意对变性儿童实施手术的医生处以重罪，尽管专家表示，这种同意已经是必需的。
但当特朗普在活动中没有提到任何政策时，一名竞选助理表示，这位前总统不想让这一消息在大会周的混乱中被遗忘。特朗普随后在周四亚利桑那州的演讲中途提到他支持对性贩子判处死刑。
特朗普难以坚持表达观点的部分原因可能与他在台上阅读准备好的演讲稿时明显缺乏兴趣有关。当特朗普坚持讲稿时，他经常听起来冷漠无情，好像他已经认命了，只想把演讲讲完。但当他恢复熟悉的习惯并与支持者互动时，他似乎充满活力。
“这太疯狂了，但你不能过马路去买面包，你会被枪杀，你会被抢劫，你会被强奸，你会得到任何可能的东西——你看到了，我也看到了，是时候做出改变了，”特朗普在密歇根州谈到美国城市时说。
本周特朗普最大的新闻与他本人关系不大，而与肯尼迪关系更大，肯尼迪是独立总统候选人，他于周五结束了竞选活动并支持特朗普。
前共和党全国委员会通讯主管迈克·里德表示，特朗普本周表现强劲，他指出付费广告针对哈里斯的履历，以及前总统决定与佐治亚州州长布莱恩·坎普和解，后者是一名共和党人，反对特朗普推翻 2020 年大选的努力，但周四支持他。
“最重要的是，特朗普获得了罗伯特·肯尼迪的支持，这可能有助于他在目前势均力敌的阳光地带和铁锈地带州取得胜利，”里德说。“特朗普竞选团队正在争取胜利，这对我们的参议院竞选候选人来说是一个巨大的帮助。”
南卡罗来纳州长期担任共和党战略家的罗布·戈弗雷表示，特朗普在民主党大会期间举办了一系列量身定制的竞选活动，这对他自己来说是一件好事。
“尽管特朗普无论去哪里都会遇到一些干扰，但我认为这一周对他来说并不是净损失，”戈弗雷说。“这对民主党来说只是一次净胜利。”
本文最初发表于《纽约时报》。
题图：上周三，共和党总统候选人、前总统唐纳德·特朗普在北卡罗来纳州阿什伯勒的集会上发表讲话后被送往竞选飞机。DOUG MILLS/NYT
附原英文报道：
Trump’s carefully scripted week kept veering off script
By Michael C. Bender and Michael Gold New York Times,Updated August 24, 2024
Donald Trump’s political endurance this year has been attributed in part to voters’ faded memories about why they denied him a second term four years ago.
The former president is doing his best to remind them.
Despite a carefully scripted week of campaign events aimed at counterprogramming the Democratic National Convention, Trump undercut much of his messaging with a series of off-the-cuff remarks, rants and blunders that threatened to stoke the kind of Republican anxiety he has spent much of the past month trying to tamp down.
On Monday in Pennsylvania, he struggled to clarify a previous comment that he believed the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which honors civilians, was “much better” than the Medal of Honor given to military members. On Tuesday in Michigan, he claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris had won the Democratic nomination after a “vicious, violent overthrow of a president” and called Chicago, which hosted the Democratic convention, “a war zone that’s worse than Afghanistan.”
He openly rejected advice from allies to limit his personal attacks on Harris and other Democrats during a speech Wednesday in North Carolina. He called the nation’s first Black vice president “lazy” during a stop in Arizona on Thursday afternoon and, that night, rambled during a 10-minute phone call with Fox News. The anchors ultimately cut him off and ended the interview, but Trump picked up where he had left off by quickly phoning into Newsmax.
And on Friday, Trump concluded his week by embracing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in exchange for his endorsement, a move with an uncertain impact on tilting the race in his favor.
“One of the ways to win over swing voters is not by personal attacks — by nature, they don’t love partisan politics, but they’re also not thrilled about the direction of the country and the performance of the economy,” said Kevin Madden, a longtime Republican strategist who worked on presidential campaigns in 2004, 2008 and 2012. “And every day Trump isn’t talking about that is a wasted day.”
Still, several people close to Trump said they were pleased with his performance this past week. Parts of his speeches were focused on policy, and he was able to make his points about calling for tax cuts, deregulation and domestic fossil fuel production that his allies view as crucial to victory.
And the race remains neck-and-neck nationally and in battleground states, according to a New York Times polling average.
David Urban, a Trump political adviser, said the former president had showed considerable improvement this week, a sign that he was focused on the new dynamics in the race.
“It’s going to be a tough race, no doubt, but if he just talks about the big issues — the economy, inflation, immigration and crime — we win,” Urban said.
Despite the calls to focus on the issues, Trump has made it clear that he intends to keep running his campaign his way. “I think relatively to what they’re doing, and how radical they are and how in many ways how sick they are, I think I’m doing a very calm campaign,” Trump told reporters recently, adding, “I have to do it my way.”
Privately, Trump has grown more comfortable with the dynamics of the race. For the past month, he has faced a barrage of internal criticism and advice from allies, including Steve Wynn, the longtime casino magnate. Wynn paid for polling that he told the former president had showed independent voters were key to his victory — and they wanted him to stick to the issues.
Trump has told two people that he struggles to avoid making personal attacks because of how much animosity he feels for his opponents. He said that overwhelming hostility — whether it was for Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, Biden or now Harris — made it difficult for him not to take shots, said the two people, who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.
The former president’s schedule this week was unusually busy. He had not had such an active stretch of campaign events since the end of his primary campaign. And unlike his now-signature rallies, the venues were primarily small and the crowds significantly smaller.
In a concerted effort to draw a contrast with Harris, Trump, who regularly assails the mainstream media, embarked on a series of interviews, granting brief one-on-one sessions to CBS News, NBC News and CNN, among others.
Whether the effort worked to contain Harris’s momentum was unclear. But midway through his week of policy events, Trump made his disdain for the exercise clear as he mocked advisers who had urged him to limit personal attacks.
“Let me ask you about that,” he said to the crowd at the North Carolina rally. “We’re going to do a free poll. Here are the two questions: Should I get personal? Should I not get personal?”
The crowd roared in favor of personal attacks. “I don’t know,” he said. “My advisers” — he paused — “are fired.”
Trump was relatively focused at the start of the week. Inside a manufacturing plant in York, Pennsylvania, on Monday, he largely hewed to his messaging on the economy. Digressions were relatively few.
But he seemed to increasingly veer into more asides as the week continued. As the Democratic convention went on, he made it clear in his remarks that he was watching, practically undermining his campaign’s efforts to downplay the Democrats on the national stage.
Trump said he had felt compelled to defend himself from criticism and attacks. Biden, he said several times this week, was an “angry man” who was “seething.” Barack Obama was “nasty.”
During Harris’s speech Thursday, Trump fired off a series of social media posts in real time, criticizing the number of people she had thanked. After she praised her late mother for instilling in her the value of hard work, Trump posted, “Kamala’s biography won’t lower prices at the Grocery Store, or at the Pump!”
And he sought curious targets, too. Trump complained this week on social media and during public events about Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York, whose speech at the convention Monday received relatively little attention. He took aim at Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania on social media, saying that his remarks were “really bad and poorly delivered” and calling him a “highly overrated Jewish Governor.”
On Tuesday, Trump’s campaign expected him to announce new policies. Those included calling for the death penalty for child rapists and sex traffickers as well as supporting felony punishments for doctors who perform surgery on transgender children without parental consent, though experts said such consent was already required.
But when Trump failed to mention any of the policies at the event, a campaign aide said the former president did not want the news to be lost in the shuffle of convention week. Trump then mentioned his support for the death penalty for sex traffickers halfway through his speech in Arizona on Thursday.
Part of Trump’s struggle to stay on message could be linked to his visible lack of interest onstage when he reads his prepared speech. When Trump stuck to the script, he often sounded affectless, as if he was resigned to just getting through the remarks. But he seemed energized when he fell back on familiar habits and interacted with supporters.
“It’s just insane, but you can’t walk across the street to get a loaf of bread, you get shot, you get mugged, you get raped, you get whatever it may be — and you’ve seen it, and I’ve seen it, and it’s time for a change,” Trump said in Michigan about American cities.
The biggest news for Trump this week had less to do with him and more to do with Kennedy, the independent presidential candidate who ended his campaign for the White House on Friday and endorsed Trump.
Mike Reed, a former communications director for the Republican National Committee, said Trump had a strong week, pointing to paid advertising targeting Harris’s record and the former president’s decision to patch things up with Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a Republican who opposed Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election but endorsed him Thursday.
“To cap things off, Trump secured RFK Jr.’s endorsement, which could help put him over the top in the Sun Belt and Rust Belt states that are razor-close right now,” Reed said. “The Trump campaign is playing to win, and that is a huge help to our candidates in Senate races.”
Rob Godfrey, a longtime Republican strategist in South Carolina, said Trump had done himself some good by holding a series of tailor-made campaign events during the Democratic convention.
“Despite the fact that there were some distractions, which there will be wherever Donald Trump goes, I don’t think the week for him was a net loss,” Godfrey said. “It just happened to be a net win for the Democrats.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
