(And when his former ambassador to Israel, David M. Friedman, was among those to chastise him, Mr. Trump responded by privately complaining that Mr. Friedman had shown disloyalty.) In a statement, Steven Cheung, a senior communications adviser to Mr. Trump, dismissed questions about the start of the campaign, calling Mr. Trump “the single, most dominant force in politics” and insisting that all was going according to plan. Mr. Trump had pressed Mr. Walker to run and endorsed him early on, disregarding Republicans in Washington who urged caution before anointing Mr. Walker given the allegations of domestic violence in his past. Mr. Trump was adamant that Mr. Walker would prevail, just as Mr. Trump himself had weathered his own scandals. More broadly, Mr. Trump’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad three weeks appear to have called into question whether his seeming imperviousness to the normal rules of political gravity may have worn off at long last.
