I don’t trust that the top leaders of the party aren’t relying on vibes created by Times’ editorials - they don’t seem to have good instincts and no one seems in charge of anything
If they weren’t so deferential/scared of the Times and its readers I think the campaign would be a lot more antagonizing with them - this is only one of their daily journalistic failures
This would imply that the president has been walled off from the top leaders in his party enough that they weren’t able to quickly dismiss it. “Meh, bad night. I spoke with him yesterday and he was fine” would have been easy to say if it were true.