Mr. Trump has been uninterested in the campaign’s mammoth online advertising efforts, which have surpassed $4.5 million. And he has made it clear that he does not relish participating in fund-raisers, leaving much of the donor maintenance and hand-holding to Vice President Mike Pence. Mr. Trump may be indifferent to the mechanics of running a presidential campaign, in part because he continues to view his 2016 victory as driven almost entirely by his own force of personality and messaging. “His counterintuitive gut instinct that drove much of the 2016 race was spot on through the primary and the general elections,” said Jason Miller, who served as a communications aide on Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign. “He views Biden as a failed vice president who’s going to be savaged by the left in the primary to the point of unelectability,” said Sam Nunberg, who worked on the 2016 campaign.

Source: New York Times June 10, 2019 23:14 UTC