In a deep dive into how the "de facto national campaign manager" for Donald Trump has brought a sense of calm to his third bid for the presidency, NBC reported that she did butt heads with the former president over his plan to crash the Philadelphia Sneaker Con in mid-February to sell Trump-branded shoes.
According to the report, there is no official campaign manager for Trump's run, with top aides labeled as "senior advisers" and those surrounding the former president admitting "that no one is really a Trump-whisperer and that anyone with the title 'campaign manager' will be the first to be sent packing if Trump grows dissatisfied."
However, Susie Wiles, the daughter of former NFL play-by-play man Pat Summerall, is generally acknowledged among Trump insiders to be running the show.
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Part of her job is advising him on what to do and what to avoid, and Trump's golden sneakers gambit was one of the things she counseled him to skip, fearing unveiling it at a Philadelphia sneaker convention might be a "disaster" before an unvetted, non-MAGA-stocked crowd.
According to NBC, "Trump consults her on everything from political strategy to decorations in his airplane and his recent brainstorm about a line of self-branded sneakers. Wiles offers opinions, sometimes pushing back gently, but doesn’t substitute her judgment for his. She thought the release of the Trump kicks at an athletic-shoe convention, in the middle of a presidential election, would be a disaster.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” she claimed to have asked him, to which he replied, "Yes, I do. You gotta trust me on this one.”
Trump did appear and was greeted with a chorus of boos, a video of which went viral and also led to a wave of mockery that has continued since.
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On an additional note, one Trump insider suggested Wiles isn't built for a national campaign.
The NBC report states, "Like most general election presidential campaign managers, Wiles has never done this before — and there are skeptics in Trump’s orbit. A former Trump campaign official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering him and Wiles, pointed to Trump’s cash crunch as a reason to doubt Wiles’ effectiveness."
“I like Susie, but she’s in over her head,” they confessed.
You can read more here.