Unnerved and exposed, Trump struggles to regain campaign mojo

An assassination attempt, the shock withdrawal of Joe Biden from the White House race and replacement by his younger, high-energy vice president, Kamala Harris, all seem to have taken a toll on a candidate who -- until recently -- had seemed well on course for victory in November.

President Biden's exit has been particularly impactful, removing a rival whose 81 years, faltering speech and physical frailties had largely shielded Trump from scrutiny of his own age and weaknesses.

Now it is Trump, 78, who is the oldest presidential nominee in history, and the point of comparison is a 59-year-old former prosecutor who has come out fast and swinging.

Trump is "very upset" as he huddles with aides searching for a new campaign narrative, said Anthony Scaramucci, who served briefly as Trump's White House communications director in 2017 before the two had a falling out.

"He's now frightened, he's now cornered, and he's very angry," Scaramucci told MSNBC.

'Quit whining'

Trump's campaign managers are reportedly desperate to have their candidate focus on issues that play with his base like immigration and inflation.

And while Trump does address those subjects at length during his long and often rambling public appearances, he repeatedly pivots to personal insults, questioning Harris's intelligence, attacking her racial identity and branding her a "communist."

Republicans including Nikki Haley, who Trump vanquished in the primaries but who has since endorsed him, say such attacks play badly with the undecided voters Trump needs to win.

"Quit whining about her," Haley said on Fox News, while also urging Trump to stop obsessing over who draws the most people to their campaign rallies.

"The campaign is not gonna win talking about crowd sizes," she said.

But Trump's long list of grievances has only grown -- "they're not being nice to me," he complained recently -- as the momentum has shifted to Harris, erasing the poll leads Trump had in the swing states likely to decide the November election.

Sensing an opportunity, the Harris campaign has sought to amplify the image of Trump as withdrawn, angry and embittered.

"Donald Trump To Ramble Incoherently," it said in a mock promotion for a Trump campaign event on Thursday that promised "another self-obsessed rant full of his own personal grievances."

The Thursday event had been billed as a press conference focused on Trump's economic agenda.

Standing in front of tables loaded with supermarket goods aimed at illustrating the household cost of inflation, Trump stayed on message at first -- head down, reading out examples of product price rises that were listed in a binder.

But then he repeatedly veered off topic, talking about wind turbines that killed birds, going over crowd sizes again and peppering it all with derogatory personal remarks about Harris.

While politics of resentment can play well with his base, "it is less clear how Trump's personal attacks against Harris will play with undecided swing voters," political science professor Elizabeth Bennion of Indiana University told AFP.

"Some observers wondered whether Trump might exercise restraint when facing a multi-racial female candidate," Bennion added. "The answer is clearly no."