In the final days of the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump’s candidacy is a jarring split screen: the choreographed show of calm and confidence orchestrated by his staff, and the neediness and vulnerability of a once-boastful candidate now uncertain of victory.
On the surface, there is the semblance of stability that is robbing Hillary Clinton of her most potent weapon: Mr. Trump’s self-sabotaging eruptions, which have repeatedly undermined his candidacy. Underneath that veneer, turbulence still reigns, making it difficult for him to overcome all of the obstacles blocking his path to the White House.
The contrasts pervade his campaign. Aides to Mr. Trump have finally wrested away the Twitter account that he used to colorfully — and often counterproductively — savage his rivals. But offline, Mr. Trump still privately muses about all of the ways he will punish his enemies after Election Day, including a threat to fund a “super PAC” with vengeance as its core mission.
His polished older daughter, Ivanka, sat for a commercial intended to appeal to suburban women who have recoiled from her father’s incendiary language. But she discouraged the campaign from promoting the ad in news releases, fearing that her high-profile association with the campaign would damage the businesses that bear her name.
Mr. Trump’s campaign is no longer making headlines with embarrassing staff shake-ups. But that has left him with a band of squabbling and unfireable advisers, with confusing roles and an inability to sign off on basic tasks. A plan to encourage early voting in Florida went unapproved for weeks.
The result is chaotic. Advisers cut loose from the campaign months ago, like Corey Lewandowski, still talk to the candidate frequently, offering advice that sometimes clashes with that of the current leadership team. Mr. Trump, who does not use a computer, rails against the campaign’s expenditure of tens of millions on digital ads, skeptical that spots he never sees could have any effect.
His aides outlined 15 bullet points for him to deliver during an Oct. 22 speech in Gettysburg, Pa., to focus voters on a new theme of cleaning up government, even as several women came forward to accuse him of groping them just as he had described in the recording.
But Mr. Trump grew frustrated with the instructions. By the time he was done revising the proposed speech, only about a half-dozen of the original suggestions remained. And over the firm objections of his top advisers, he insisted on using the occasion to issue a remarkable threat: that he would sue all of the women who had gone public with the accusations.
As the advisers begged him to reconsider — it would make him seem small, they warned, and undermine a pivotal speech — Mr. Trump was adamant. There had to be a severe penalty for those who dared to attack him, he said. He could not just sit back and let these women “come at me,” he told one of them.
The speech was roundly criticized and seemed strikingly out of place on such sacred and historic ground. “The Grievanceburg Address,” one journalist deemed it.
Mr. Trump fell into despair, and the gloom already enveloping the Republican political class started to infect his campaign.
His aides outlined 15 bullet points for him to deliver during an Oct. 22 speech in Gettysburg, Pa., to focus voters on a new theme of cleaning up government, even as several women came forward to accuse him of groping them just as he had described in the recording.
But Mr. Trump grew frustrated with the instructions. By the time he was done revising the proposed speech, only about a half-dozen of the original suggestions remained. And over the firm objections of his top advisers, he insisted on using the occasion to issue a remarkable threat: that he would sue all of the women who had gone public with the accusations.
As the advisers begged him to reconsider — it would make him seem small, they warned, and undermine a pivotal speech — Mr. Trump was adamant. There had to be a severe penalty for those who dared to attack him, he said. He could not just sit back and let these women “come at me,” he told one of them.
The speech was roundly criticized and seemed strikingly out of place on such sacred and historic ground. “The Grievanceburg Address,” one journalist deemed it.
Mr. Trump fell into despair, and the gloom already enveloping the Republican political class started to infect his campaign.
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