Sensing trouble, GOP allies urge Trump to refocus campaign – National & International News – TUE 13Aug2024

Sensing trouble, GOP allies urge Trump to refocus campaign.

US speeds more military assets to Israel as Iran retaliation looms.

NATIONAL NEWS

Sensing trouble, GOP operatives urge Trump to refocus campaign

Former President Trump’s campaign has lost a lot of its momentum recently, and fellow Republicans are starting to notice. Trump allies have started sounding the alarm in ways that are similar to the Democratic panic in the final days of the Biden campaign.

Both publicly and privately, Republican donors, politicians and strategists have urged former President Trump to ditch his race-based and personality-centered attacks on Democratic opponent Kamala Harris and to ratchet up his rally schedule. Even Trump-friendly commentators on Fox News have publicly called on Trump to stay on-message. Behind the scenes, Trump’s own team have repeatedly urged him to stop attacking Harris’ mixed-race heritage and stick to issues where she’s vulnerable (like immigration), but Trump has refused.

In recent public appearances, like his interview with Elon Musk on Twitter yesterday, Trump’s policy-based jabs have been directed more at President Biden than VP Harris. He recently posited on Truth Social that Biden may make a comeback of sorts and return to the race at the upcoming Democratic Convention, a scenario that is vanishingly unlikely. This reads like wishful thinking on Trump’s part, given his repeated complaints about having to redirect his campaign’s energy and resources to attacking Harris after Biden bowed out.

Just as worrisome for some, Trump himself has held only one campaign event so far this month in Montana (a deep-red state), and has only two other rallies scheduled in the immediate future.  Instead, his VP pick JD Vance has taken the lead on public campaign events, though he is not proving to be a popular messenger. The Trump team has offered little explanation for his absence from the campaign trail. Trump claimed recently in a news conference at Mar-a-Lago that he was holding fewer rallies because he’s still ahead in the race, a belief that is not reflected in the latest polls. It’s at least possible, and understandable, that he was more rattled by last month’s assassination attempt than he has publicly let on.

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

US speeds more military assets to Israel as Iran retaliation looms

US and Israeli intelligence sources claim that a major attack from Iran could come sometime this week. The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Abraham Lincoln is already en route and the guided missile sub USS Georgia has also been ordered to the Eastern Mediterranean.

US officials have been saying a retaliatory attack against Israel was “imminent” since Israel assassinated Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in Iran’s capital city two weeks ago. Iran has signaled that it will not forego its right under international law to respond military to an attack on its sovereign territory. This is despite Western leaders calling on Iran to restrain itself for fear of sparking a wider regional war in which millions could die.

The US and the West has little leverage to influence Iran’s response. President Biden has also been unwilling to exert any of his considerable leverage over Israel to urge them to show restraint. In fact, the administration approved a $20 billion weapons transfer to Israel today, after agreeing last week to finally send Israel one shipment of 2000-lb bombs it has been withholding since May. This appears to have been the only shipment of this specific munition that the US withheld, in a show of disapproval for Israel’s invasion of Rafah in Gaza. Other shipments, including other shipments of 2000-lb bombs, have continued as normal.

Iran has been more receptive to entreaties from Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom their ties have deepened since the Ukraine war began. In a statement, Iranian leadership has also said they hoped their response would not to endanger ceasefire talks over Gaza. However, there has not been much movement on that front.

Ceasefire stall

The US is scrambling to pull diplomatic levers to get Israel to agree to a ceasefire deal, which they believe will deflate tensions in the region. Ismail Haniyeh, a relative moderate, had been leading the Hamas contingent in ceasefire talks when Israel assassinated him. Hamas has now appointed Yahyah Sinwar, Hamas’ military commander in Gaza and likely the architect of the Oct. 7 attacks, to represent them in negotiations.

Sinwar is notably more hawkish than Haniyeh, but is also politically and strategically shrewd. Today, Hamas has announced they will not attend renewed ceasefire talks scheduled for this Thursday. In a statement, Hamas leadership called for implementation of agreements that Hamas and Israel have already agreed to in principle. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly reneged on agreements and introduced new conditions after the fact, which Israel’s own negotiators have described as “poison pills”. Hamas also sees Israel’s numerous recent attacks on schools in Gaza- including one this weekend that killed over 100 people – as a sign that Israel is not interested in a ceasefire.

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