Trump Insiders Say His 2024 Campaign Is More Disciplined: “This Time, He’s Not Talking to Randos”

With polls showing Donald Trump on track to handily win next week’s Iowa caucuses, the 2024 Republican primary is looking like a repeat of the 2016 race. GOP rivals like Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis have spent months attacking one another instead of rallying around a candidate with the best chance of beating Trump one-on-one. But the 2024 cycle has been starkly different in one respect: The Lord of the Flies–esque chaos and infighting that plagued Trump’s prior campaigns have been tamed. “This campaign is locked down,” a Republican close to Trump said.

Republicans close to Trump said there are multiple reasons Trump is running a competent campaign. First, his tight inner circle is made up of veteran operatives Susie Wiles, Chris LaCivita, Jason Miller, and James Blair, who don’t play their agendas through the media. “You have experienced people who don’t leak,” Roger Stone told me. In previous cycles, Trump populated his campaigns with huge egos like Stone, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Corey Lewandowski, and Brad Parscale, among others. (In August 2015, I wrote a piece headlined: “The Trump Campaign Has Descended Into Civil War—Even Ivanka Has Gotten Involved.” The tumult followed Trump to the White House, or rather, “the Westeros Wing.”)

While Trump continues to stoke controversy with his baseless January 6 claims, incendiary rants, and authoritarian promises, his 2024 team is smartly keeping a low profile. “Everybody is mature enough that they want the president to win. The thinking is, let’s be organized, let’s get him in,” a veteran of Trump’s 2020 campaign said. This team has also been able to curb Trump’s habit of self-sabotage. Trump has committed fewer unforced errors like his indefensible decision to host white nationalist Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago in the fall of 2022.

Secondly, Trump trusts his senior team members to do their jobs. In prior cycles, Trump worked the phone constantly, soliciting advice from a wide circle of friends, family, Manhattan business associates, and media personalities. Trump’s style of pitting staffers against one another created an incentive to leak. “The side whose opinion lost would run to the media,” the 2020 veteran explained. “This time, he’s not talking to randos.” That said, Trump hasn’t totally quit his phone habit. According to sources, he speaks with Stone, Lewandowski, and 2016 campaign chairman Paul Manafort. (Trump pardoned both Stone and Manafort before leaving office.)

Finally, Trump is disciplined because the stakes of this campaign are existential. Trump faces 91 felony counts across four criminal cases, the outcome of which could send him to jail for the rest of his life. Trump’s best chance at protecting his freedom is to win the presidency.