Donald Trump Feels Election ‘Slipping Away’: Former Staffer

Former White House staffer Sarah Matthews has said she thinks Donald Trump is “desperate” because he can feel the election “slipping away” from him.
Matthews, who served as Trump’s deputy White House press secretary between June 2020 until January 2021, spoke about what she thinks of the former president’s mindset.
She was talking in an MSNBC interview discussing one of Trump’s Truth Social posts which alleged Vice President Kamala Harris had used AI-generated images to make crowds look bigger at one of her campaign rallies.
Matthews said: “I think that he feels this election slipping away from him, and that’s where you’re beginning to see him spiral and cling to these conspiracy theories, as you noted with the AI-generated crowds, which obviously can be easily disproven.”
She added: “It’s insanity though, it truly is; and there will be people out there who believe it though, because he’s pushing it. And that’s what happens when he gets desperate, he pushes these conspiracy theories.”
Matthews went on to criticize Trump’s recent messaging in general, including comments where he seemingly questioned Harris’ racial identity.
Harris called Trump “disrespectful” after he questioned her race, claiming that he “didn’t know she was Black.”
He made the remarks during an appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists.
She said: “These are not winning campaign messages, but that is what he does when he feels like he is under attack, is he uses these kinds of lines of defense that don’t make much sense for campaigning.
“I can assure you that his campaign team is telling him to talk about policy, they want him to go out there and talk about the economy, immigration—things that voters actually care about.
“Because I can assure you that none of these things that he’s talking about at rallies or in his Truth Social posts are top of mind for most voters.”
A spokesman for Trump’s campaign team, Steven Cheung, told Newsweek in response to Matthews’ comments: “Nobody knows who the hell Sarah Matthews is. She wasn’t press secretary and was, instead, a lowly staffer who has no idea what she’s talking about.”
Trump had been speaking about a Harris rally at Detroit Metropolitan Airport on August 7, for which multiple images and clips on social media showed a large crowd. An estimated 15,000 people attended the rally, local outlet MLive reported.
But Trump shared a post which claimed the Harris campaign had edited the photo, highlighting that the crowd was not reflected in the plane in front of them.
The Republican nominee wrote: “Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!
“She was turned in by a maintenance worker at the airport when he noticed the fake crowd picture, but there was nobody there, later confirmed by the reflection of the mirror like finish on the Vice Presidential Plane.
“She’s a CHEATER. She had NOBODY waiting, and the ‘crowd’ looked like 10,000 people! Same thing is happening with her fake ‘crowds’ at her speeches. This is the way the Democrats win Elections, by CHEATING—And they’re even worse at the Ballot Box. She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!”
The BBC conducted an investigation into the allegation and assessed the metadata of the original image sent to them by the Harris campaign. It determined the photo was taken by an iPhone 12 Pro Max device on 7 August at 18:28 local time
Newsweek has contacted Trump’s team via email for a response to this article.