As Presidential Chances Dim, Trump Focuses on His Brand

总统选举不明朗，特朗普关注自有品牌

WASHINGTON With poll numbers showing him falling further behind Hillary Clinton in key battleground states, Donald Trump this week focused on promoting some of his signature properties instead of more traditional campaigning. For an unorthodox politician, it was a return to form.

“Two years ago when we told the city of [Washington] Trump would be coming to Pennsylvania Avenue in 2016, we had no idea what we were foreshadowing,” Ivanka Trump, Trump’s daughter and executive vice president of development and acquisitions at the Trump Organization, said at a ribbon-cutting ceremony Wednesday for the Trump Hotel in the nation’s capital.

The entire family was on stage for the event: Trump, his wife, Melania, and his four children, each equipped with a pair of golden scissors. Slicing together, they cut apart a deep red ribbon bearing the Trump name in the lobby of the hotel, which occupies the landmark Old Post Office Tower in downtown Washington, D.C., midway between the White House and U.S. Capitol.

Guests wearing VIP badges, flawless in their makeup and designer clothing, chatted over light breakfast pastries before the remarks, and left promptly once the event was over, to avoid the reporters, cameras and protesters outside.

The first speakers, Trump Hotels CEO Eric Danziger and Ivanka Trump, focused almost entirely on the hotel itself, but the Republican presidential candidate’s speech floated seamlessly between brand and campaign.

“Our theme today is five words: under budget, ahead of schedule,” Trump told his attendees, referring to the hotel. But he pivoted immediately to point out that the opposite over budget and behind schedule was surely the theme of the federal government, as it has been led by President Barack Obama, whom Trump links inextricably to Clinton, his Democratic opponent in the presidential election, now 13 days away.

Trump delivered a very similar speech a few days earlier, during a stop in Florida that promoted one of his golf courses.

Trump family cuts the ribbon to cheering crowd. Bells are playing in the background. pic.twitter.com/FFvSGu3rsK

Esha Kaur Sarai (@egkaur) October 26, 2016

“His campaign is his brand; his brand is his campaign,” Sarah Oates, a professor at the University of Maryland, told VOA. “For most political candidates this would seem odd; for him it makes perfect sense. He’s never distinguished between the business brand and the candidate brand in fact, he deliberately links the two and campaigns on this platform of being a smart businessman.”

Protesters outside

As if mirroring the blurring of boundaries between brand and campaign, protesters gathered on Pennsylvania Avenue outside the Trump Hotel, holding signs calling out what they said was the candidate’s racist campaign and also calling for a boycott of Trump hotels and products.

This is far from the first time the Trump brand has met the word boycott. Recently, the Twitter h