Meanwhile, RNC officials still aren’t even sure where the campaign has already deployed staffers. Trump’s field organization is a patchwork of aides, some paid, some retained on a volunteer basis and many left over from the Republican primaries. While he has campaign chiefs in Florida — and solidly blue states like Washington and New York — in crucial battlegrounds including Ohio and Colorado, Trump doesn’t have so much as a state director.

One of Rick Wiley’s top tasks before he was ousted as political director after just six weeks on the job was organizing, hiring and redeploying field troops. But his sudden firing stalled the hiring process in battleground states and left the campaign hustling to replace him at a pivotal moment when traditional campaigns are rapidly ramping up on the ground. This week the campaign turned to Jim Murphy, a veteran of Bob Dole’s presidential campaigns, to fill the political director slot, according to two sources familiar with his hiring.

Amid all the public disarray, privately Trump and his aides have been making inroads with state Republican parties, essentially looking to turn them into Trump franchises for the fall campaign.