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Republican megadonor Steve Wynn has told Donald Trump point-blank that he’s “off message” as he joins a growing list of allies warning the former president he should be doing better in the 2024 race.
For the longtime friends, Trump and Wynn share a lot in common. They are both billionaires, both were rival real estate titans in the 1980s and both, at one stage, donated to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
But more recently, the pair haven’t seen eye-to-eye, according to a report.
Two sources briefed on the meeting told Politico that disgraced casino mogul Wynn met the Republican presidential nominee behind closed doors and allegedly told him he has become distracted and gone off message.
The meeting, which is said to have been held in mid-September, was set to the backdrop of Trump peddling a false conspiracy theory at the presidential debate on September 10, claiming that Haitian migrants were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.
Wynn, who served as the Republican National Committee’s finance chair during the Trump administration and once helped raise close to $100m for the former president’s inaugural committee, is said to have called for a change in tack.
After showing the Republican presidential nominee some polling, Wynn reportedly suggested that Trump instead target areas where the electorate sees Vice President Kamala Harris as vulnerable, rather than pushing baseless rumors, according to the sources.
Wynn told Politico the description of the meeting was “inaccurate”.
The Independent has contacted him for further comment.
Around a dozen Republican allies have been sounding the alarm over Trump’s rambling rhetoric and inability to stick to the script in recent weeks.
“Trump is strongest when he is talking about what people care about the most: the economy, immigration, crime, trade, the Trump core messages,” David Urban, a Republican strategist who ran Trump’s successful 2016 campaign in Pennsylvania, told Politico.
“You need to avoid distractions as you’re building momentum towards Election Day,” an anonymous RNC member added.
Before President Joe Biden stepped off the Democratic ticket in July, Republicans were quietly optimistic about Trump’s reelection chances.
But whatever lead the former president garnered quickly slipped when Harris kicked off her presidential campaign and Trump began to make increasingly outlandish claims at his campaign appearances.
In the months that followed, the former president has wildly claimed that Harris “all of a sudden... became a Black person,” has more closely affiliated himself with right-wing conspiracy theorist and self-styled “proud Islamophobe” Laura Loomer and claimed that “Jewish people would really have a lot to do” with his election loss.
Despite being embroiled in controversy, Harris and Trump remain in near-deadlock across the national polls, with The Independent’s average of national polls showing the Democrat 2.6 points ahead.
“It’s not that he’s going backwards,” one Trump ally told Politico. “But he should be doing better.”
