Page 26 of 107 Days

As Tim and I barnstormed Arizona, meeting with small business owners at a Latino-owned restaurant and talking about border security, Trump headed to solidly red Montana for the purpose of undermining the principled Democratic Senator Jon Tester, whom he had campaigned against and failed to unseat in the previous election cycle.

It was at his rally in Bozeman that he once again pretended he didn’t know how to pronounce my name.

“Ka- mar -la, sometimes referred to as Kar -ma-la, you know, she’s got about nine different ways of pronouncing the name.

And because the press is so dishonest, no matter how you say it, they’ll say you were wrong.

You were wrong! I don’t care if I get it right.

Actually, I couldn’t care less.” He was playing up the disrespect, but the secondary intent was to reinforce the notion that I was alien, other, too different to lead America.

He lied and said I’d refused to debate him, when he’d been the one throwing up obstacles, and then said I’d refused to do a press interview. “You know why? ’Cause she’s dumb.”

I read the volley of insults as a signal that he was unnerved by the crowds I was drawing and the continuing flood of funds to our campaign.

Comments to reporters that day by Montana Senator Steve Daines, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, seemed to confirm that.

“There’s definitely a honeymoon period going on,” he said of the enthusiasm for my candidacy.

He predicted it would continue through the Democratic National Convention and the mood would change by mid-September.

It turned out to be more complicated than that. And he was off on the timing.

But he wasn’t entirely wrong.