How two topsy-turvy weeks upended Trump's 2024 campaign | CNN Politics

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

65% : Trump speaks with ABC News' Rachel Scott during a Q&A session at the National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago on July 31, 2024.
64% : Still, for Trump, the NABJ conference was also an opportunity to reclaim media attention after a week in which Harris had dominated headlines.
58% : "The campaign whirlwind of the past two weeks has left Democrats who had been dejected suddenly feeling a fresh sense of optimism, while Republicans wonder whether the unity from weeks ago will return in the closing chapter of the race - and hope that Trump and his allies can refocus on what's now a much different challenge.
53% : Joe Lamberti/AFP/Getty Images'The campaign seems complacent'For months, it felt to those around Trump as though he could not lose.His fundraising numbers skyrocketed, surprising his advisers, after his felony conviction in New York.
51% : "Trump arrives to speak at his Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, rally on July 31, 2024.
49% : And the next day, Trump posted a photo of Harris in a sari.
47% : Harris has said she would participate in the September 10 debate hosted by ABC that Trump and Biden had agreed to.
46% : Multiple sources close to Trump told CNN that there were growing calls, both publicly and privately, among these outside allies for a campaign shake-up, citing in part the need for more original 2016 Trump loyalists to be involved.
43% : But Vance's main goal, the advisers said, is to be the campaign's disciplined policy messenger - maintaining more focus than Trump, who regularly veers off script.
41% : Trump himself, and his senior advisers, had signed off on the decision to participate in a panel discussion.
40% : In that moment, a unified Republican Party had rallied around Trump after he survived an assassination attempt.
37% : I didn't know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black," Trump said.
35% : You're going to see them double, triple down now," one source close to Trump said.
34% : Trump himself has test-driven a series of attacks during his rally speeches and interviews.
34% : "This event, more than anything he has done in months, has the most potential to go sideways," a source close to Trump told CNN before the former president took the stage.
33% : Trump went off-script and into attack mode in his Thursday night speech to close the GOP convention, delivering sharply partisan remarks that undercut the calls for unity that had preceded him.
33% : "We have to work hard to define her," Trump said Saturday at a campaign rally in Atlanta.
33% : In choosing Vance as the Republican vice presidential nominee, Trump had tapped an ideological heir apparent: a former critic who spent years explaining, often on television, how he'd come around to the former president's populist and isolationist brand.
32% : "He said Trump "will win on the issues" but also seemed to acknowledge that attention had shifted far away from any policy contrast.
32% : The quest to defeat Trump - now her fight - was one topic of their conversation, a White House official said.
30% : "The campaign seems complacent," one source close to Trump told CNN.
22% : But by Wednesday afternoon, Trump and his campaign had doubled down on his attack on Harris' racial heritage.
17% : Then, Biden called it quits, Democrats rallied around Harris, and Trump was thrust into a much different race.
13% : Trump launched into an attack on ABC News journalist Rachel Scott over her first question that noted his history of racist remarks, including pushing the "birther" conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama was not born in the United States, and asked why Black voters should trust him.
11% : The discussion devolved from there, with Trump falsely accusing Harris of embracing or denying elements of her heritage for political gain.
6% : Brandon Bell/Getty ImagesHarris rejects Trump's 'bait'As Trump was taking the stage in Chicago, Harris was boarding Air Force Two for a flight to Houston.

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