With just two days left in our collective national hell, the Trump campaign is in its final push to do... something. After all, Trump doesn’t have any pollsters since the campaign refused to pay them. And he barely has the support of his own favorite daughter. Now, though, Trump’s lost perhaps the only thing he’s ever truly loved: His precious, precious tweets.
In The New York Times today, a campaign report revealed that Trump’s Twitter account has officially been handed over to less volatile fingers in these crucial final days:
The contrasts pervade his campaign. Aides to Mr. Trump have finally wrested away the Twitter account that he used to colorfully — and often counterproductively — savage his rivals. But offline, Mr. Trump still privately muses about all of the ways he will punish his enemies after Election Day, including a threat to fund a “super PAC” with vengeance as its core mission.
Based on the common understanding that Trump tweets from an Android phone, the last tweet Trump sent himself appears to have gone out at 8:30 a.m. last Thursday.
Which isn’t to say that Trump doesn’t have any control over his tweets at all. According to The New York Times, it’s just that he now has to get permission from the nearest adult:
Taking away Twitter turned out to be an essential move by his press team, which deprived him of a previously unfiltered channel for his aggressions.
On Thursday, as his plane idled on the tarmac in Miami, Mr. Trump spotted Air Force One outside his window. As he glowered at the larger plane, he told Ms. Hicks, his spokeswoman, to jot down a proposed tweet about President Obama, who was campaigning nearby for Mrs. Clinton.
“Why is he campaigning instead of creating jobs and fixing Obamacare?” Mr. Trump said. “Get back to work.” After some light editing — Ms. Hicks added “for the American people” at the end — she published it.
Don’t worry, though. Trump’s still finding plenty of ways to screw himself over. Apparently, since Trump has never used a computer in his life, he’s been lashing out about “the campaign’s expenditure of tens of millions on digital ads, skeptical that spots he never sees could have any effect.”
And since he’s cycled through so many staffers, The Times notes that it “has left him with a band of squabbling and unfireable advisers, with confusing roles and an inability to sign off on basic tasks. A plan to encourage early voting in Florida went unapproved for weeks.”
And then—and then!—when Trump’s aides were squabbling over how to respond to James Comey’s recent email upset, former Breitbart goblin Steve Bannon literally caught fire:
As the aides agonized over which words to feed into the teleprompter, they become so engrossed that a hot light set up next to the machine caused Mr. Bannon’s Kuhl hiking pants to begin smoldering.
“I think my pant leg is on fire,” he said after noticing the acrid smell.
There is still some good in this world yet.
And lastly, I think I speak for everyone when I say: Kellyanne, please, for the love of god give Donald Trump his phone back. We deserve that much.
You can read the full report on the Trump campaign’s implosion here.