Nervous Republicans beg Trump to stay on message — and stop with the conspiracy theories

Donors and allies of former President Donald Trump are concerned that his inability to stay on message and stay away from conspiracy theories is stunting his chances of targeting the momentum of Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump’s reaction to the upended campaign following the departure of President Joe Biden and the ascension of Harris to the top of the ticket has been to double down on his penchant for abusive messages and attacks.

Allies of Trump see his conspiratorial messages and insults based on race as anything but productive. They want him to focus his attacks on policy issues, such as immigration and the economy, rather than personal attacks against Harris.

“Guess what? This is a different race now,” a person close to Trump told CNN. “The Democrats are energized. They have a massive machine — and she’s raising money, and she can put a coherent argument against him.”

“It should be easy. Talk about the economy and talk about immigration,” they added.

Trump returned to X on Monday ahead of his live interview with Elon Musk on the platform, which ended up being riddled with tech glitches and was delayed by about 40 minutes.

“There’s a lot of opposition to people just hearing what President Trump has to say,” Musk said on the broadcast, claiming with no evidence that Trump’s enemies had attacked the social media site to keep him quiet.

Trump’s account on X posted a number of videos on Monday showcasing message discipline rarely seen in Trump and in his posts on his own platform, Truth Social.

One of the posts on X simply asked, “Are you better off now than you were when I was president?”

It’s a question that Trump didn’t ask until close to the end of his two-hour chat with Musk but one that his entire