Earlier this week, I wrote about how Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign team has made a deliberate effort to leverage the GOP nominee’s persona on the trail this cycle amid a deadlocked race with Kamala Harris. We saw that with his McDonald’s stunt, which doubled as a way to troll his opponent and “showcase the GOP nominee’s talent for casual in-person interactions in a dead-heat race where momentum may prove pivotal in getting across the finish line.”
Campaign adviser Jason Miller spoke with Politico about how the former president’s team is trying to show the “human side” of Trump to voters on the campaign trail. Here’s a snippet of their full conversation that’s well worth your time:
It also seems like there’s been an intention to humanize him in a way that perhaps people forgot: That he was a celebrity, an entertainer, a dad and a grandpa. What was the moment where you said, “OK, we really need to lean into this human side of Trump?”
We did it from the very first time that he was on the trail. I hadn’t even rejoined the campaign at this point in January of 2023. But we went to South Carolina and New Hampshire, to two stops in one day. And while in South Carolina, we took President Trump to, I believe it was Zesto’s in West Columbia, South Carolina — an ice cream and burger place.
As I was looking at the beginning of his campaign and saying, “What do we want to make sure we get back to that was in 2016 as opposed to 2020?” Number one was the unscripted moments. And so when we took the president there, it took off like wildfire. Of course, when we went to East Palestine a couple of weeks later, we went to the McDonald’s there. Those were great viral moments. And so literally from his very first trip as an announced candidate in this election cycle we started working in the retail and the unscripted stops.