The cover of TIME’s next issue (published online Aug. 11) offers a one-word assessment of the state of Donald Trump’s campaign: “meltdown,” complete with an image of a screaming, melting Donald.
The featured piece, “Inside Donald Trump’s Meltdown,” paints a dire picture of Trump’s presidential run, citing his “sinking polls, unending attacks and public blunders,” and the rumored panic overtaking GOP strategists.
The piece begins by stressing the strained relationship of Trump and Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus, “the first person” to try to redirect Trump when he “mucks things up.” The relationship, write authors Alex Altman, Philip Elliott, and Zeke Miller, is at its “breaking point.” Meanwhile, many Republicans are preparing to abandon Trump, if they haven’t already:
There is no doubt that the possibility Republicans will all but abandon Trump now haunts his struggling campaign. Since his convention in Cleveland, Trump has done almost nothing right by traditional standards. He has picked fights with senior Republicans and Gold Star parents, invited Russian spies to meddle in U.S. democracy, appeared to joke about gun enthusiasts’ prematurely removing a U.S. President from office. He’s shuffled campaign messages like playing cards and left GOP elders fretting that he lacks the judgment to be Commander in Chief. During a dismal two-week stretch, he surrendered a narrow lead over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and now trails by an average of 8 points in recent nationwide polls.
While TIME admits that Trump has a knack for miraculously overcoming “rough patches,” the odds against him are getting increasingly more grim. “There are daunting demographics to surmount. Allies complain of massive staff shortages in battleground states. And voters are skeptical of a billionaire reality star who seems to study the rules of campaigning only so he can break them.”
Perhaps worst of all, TIME argues, are the challenges “entirely of Trump’s own making,” in part because he appears “unsure of how much to hold back and when to let loose” and he’s plagued by a number of troubling traits: “paper-thin skin, an absence of discipline, a bottomless capacity to nurse grudges,” which simply “are not going away.”
TIME devotes most of the article to chronicling Trump’s various “self-inflicted” mistakes, including the Khizr Khan feud, going after fellow Republicans, his economic advisory council being short on economists and women, and the recent “Second Amendment people” gaffe.
Despite the ugly picture of Trump’s campaign, TIME concludes by underscoring that the race is far from over. Hillary Clinton’s current 8-point lead “can melt away like ice cream in the heat.” Her own “unforced errors and defensive crouch” have furthered damaged public trust in her, and we’ve still got the debates ahead. And, of course, there’s Trump’s uncanny ability to defy conventional wisdom:
Trump has made a sport of defying prediction, party orthodoxy and political gravity. He thinks he’s on to something he alone can see, and if he is right, it wouldn’t be the first time. For a candidate who has staked his campaign on a pessimistic vision of the nation, he still manages to summon a sense of optimism despite the darkening polls. “I actually think we’re doing better,” Trump says. “I may be wrong, but I think we’re doing much better than anybody understands.”
Read the full article here.