NIKKI HALEY AND LETTING TRUMP BE TRUMP. It’s no secret that many Republicans are frustrated with the way former President Donald Trump is conducting his campaign in the aftermath of the Democrats’ big switch from President Joe Biden to Vice President Kamala Harris. They roll their eyes when Trump goes off on Harris’s race. They sigh when Trump obsesses about crowd size. And they grow particularly frustrated whenever Trump brings up the 2020 election.

These Republicans think that if Trump could just concentrate on the big, important issues, the ones voters care most about — inflation, the economy, the border, crime, international crises — then he could showcase his own record, attack Harris at her most vulnerable points, and roll to victory. 

Does any of that sound familiar? Ever since Trump first emerged as a serious national candidate, back in 2015, there have been Republicans — quite a lot of them, in fact — who noted that he possesses an incredible political talent and then added, “You know, if he could just smooth down some of his rough edges, be just a little more conventional, he’d be unbeatable.” It took time, but most of those people ultimately realized that Trump is Trump and Trump is gonna be Trump and there’s nothing they can do about it.

Subscribe today to the Washington Examiner magazine that will keep you up to date with what’s going on in Washington. SUBSCRIBE NOW: Just $1.00 an issue!

Now it’s happening again. Yes, it’s probably correct to say the assassination attempt made Trump, in his personal moments, more introspective about life and how quickly it could have ended and the belief that God spared him for a reason. But that has not made a significant difference in how he campaigns. He is what he is. Yes, he is capable of tweaking his style when he needs to. But at his core, he just is what he is.

The latest to voice frustration with Trump is the opponent he defeated in the Republican primaries, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. “This is a winnable election, but you need to focus,” Haley told Fox News’s Bret Baier on Tuesday. “And the one thing Republicans have to stop doing — quit whining about her.”

Haley, who began by saying, “There’s no question that I want to see Donald Trump win this election because we can’t have a Kamala Harris and Tim Walz,” brought a clear list of Republican do’s and don’ts. On the do’s: Voters, especially female voters, “want someone to talk about the fact that prices have gone up 19%,” Haley said. “The fact that Kamala wants to raise taxes, the fact that she’s taken money from those that didn’t go to college and has given it to those who did … she doesn’t think illegal immigrants are illegal. … They want someone who’s going to talk about the status of education right now in this country and that our kids are getting dumber, not smarter. They want someone to talk about homeownership and how hard it is to own a home.”

Then the don’ts. “The campaign is not going to win talking about crowd sizes. It’s not going to win talking about what race Kamala Harris is. It’s not going to win talking about whether she’s dumb. You can’t win on those things. The American people are smart.”

Of course, those are all good ideas. It’s not that complicated — just talk about the issues voters care most about and not your personal grievances or hobbyhorses. 

But wait. Trump’s defenders would point out, correctly, that he already talks about the important issues at his rallies. He certainly discussed them in his two-hour conversation with Elon Musk on Monday night. But when he made even a passing reference to one of the controversial topics, as when he said to Musk, “I complain about a rigged election” — he said nothing else on the topic — some press reports included those words in a characterization of his entire remarks. For example, the New York Times described the talk with Musk by noting, “[Trump] repeated a number of false claims, including that the 2020 election was rigged.” The paper did not mention Trump’s discussion of inflation, which was extensive. It made no mention of Trump’s discussion of crime. Nor did it mention his discussion of the wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East.

Of course, that is just something Trump is up against; it is the nature of much of the press coverage of his campaign. On the other hand, Trump knows he will attract attention when he goes off script into controversial territory. The fact is, he will always say some things that make his supporters happy and other things that make some of them groan. Haley and others can offer all the advice in the world — and it is good advice! — but that will not change.