Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Tara Palmeri.

In today’s issue, further reporting from the underbelly of Trumpworld, where the battle for power between Corey Lewandowski and Chris LaCivita is getting more intense by the day. The latest wedge between the guys concerns Elon Musk’s super PAC, American PAC, which numerous campaign staffers fear is simply a reincarnation of Ron DeSantis’s failed Never Back Down, helmed by former DeSantis lieutenants Phil Cox and Generra Peck. More on that, below the fold.

• 🎧 Which Trump will Harris debate?: If you missed it, check out the latest episode of my podcast, Somebody’s Gotta Win, wherein The Bulwark’s Marc Caputo and I break down all the biggest questions surrounding Tuesday’s presidential debate. We exchange inside reporting on debate prep, evaluate the candidates’ myriad strengths and weaknesses, and try to determine which version of Trump will show up. And earlier this week, I had a rollicking chat with feminist author and content creator Liz Plank about this election’s widening gender gap. (Listen to the Caputo conversation here, and Plank here.)
• 🎧 The Daily Show Renaissance: On the latest episode of my partner John Heilemann’s Impolitic podcast, he reunited with his old pal Jordan Klepper to candidly assess Jon Stewart’s return to The Daily Show, and to discuss his signature forays into the “dark, savage, and achingly comical heart of the MAGAsphere.” It’s yet another great episode. Listen here.

In Trumpworld, there will always be suspicion toward DeSantis and anyone who works for him. After all, Trump campaign co-chairman Susie Wiles was unceremoniously fired by the Florida governor after she helped him win that very seat. Wiles went on to stock the Trump campaign with her coterie of fellow DeSantis-world exiles, including political director James Blair, spokesperson Brian Hughes, and senior advisor Taylor Budowich, among others. So you can imagine the scene at Mar-a-Lago after it came to light that a crew of DeSantis alumni had taken over at America PAC—the super PAC backed by Trump’s (current) number one fan Elon Musk—especially since this same group of advisors had been behind the DeSantis campaign’s fairly disastrous decision to rely on a super PAC to handle almost all of its field operations.

Anyway, despite the new ruling, campaigns still have little control over the outside groups that they’re relying on. That’s why it baffled many inside the Trump campaign when Chris LaCivita blessed the mid-July shake-up at Musk’s America PAC. DeSantis’s former campaign manager Generra Peck and former senior advisor Phil Cox subsequently fired all the existing vendors, including canvassers, and dismantled the existing ground operation, only to bring in their own people just a month and a half before early voting is set to begin. Indeed, I’m told that shortly before Trump was interviewed by Musk on X, in August, he scolded his team for allowing the DeSantis people to run a PAC that was responsible for such a large part of his own ground operation. “It’s a limp-dick version of Never Back Down, an organization that everyone universally sees as a failure,” said a campaign source. “It’s a model you ridiculed, and then you bring in the same team to replicate it?”

Naturally, all of this has juiced the tensions between Trump’s newish-ly appointed “personal envoy,” Corey Lewandowski—who is already trying to usurp control of the campaign, and who was not back-briefed on Cox and Peck—and LaCivita, who several sources close to Trump are predicting may be nudged further away from the inner sanctum. “Corey said to LaCivita, ‘Elon’s PAC is not doing enough in the field,’ and LaCivita was like, ‘What do you want me to do about it?’” the campaign source said. “Corey was asking why it was set up, why there was no accountability, why no one was paying attention to make sure that the work was getting done.” Said another source, “It’s going to get to a boiling point, and Corey is looking at all of the angles.” (Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung described this scenario as “bullshit.”)

Meanwhile, Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point super PAC, which is running operations in Arizona and Wisconsin, has been described to me as shaky, which is on-brand for Kirk, a guy who is best-known for riling up young CPAC goonies. A Republican operative running Wisconsin described Turning Point to the The Dispatch as “big press releases, big tweets, lots of smoke, very little work.” At the same time, Kirk organized the event where Robert F. Kennedy Jr. endorsed Trump, which was seen as a massive success. “Whoever left that quote is jealous or trying to stir the pot. Our Chase the Vote initiative is massively successful and is only gaining steam,” said Turning Point Action spokesperson Andrew Kolvet.

Alas, in this historically messy election cycle—pitting one increasingly disorganized campaign against another that’s being assembled before our very eyes—nothing is a surprise any longer. And while it seemed predictable that Trump aides would balk at the specter of DeSantii entering the picture, the emergence of Musk adds a whole new wrinkle. The only thing kookier than Trump’s recent behavior and his campaign’s turbulence is the fact that, as of today, most people still think he’s going to win.