Amid Democrats’ heated questioning of whether President Biden should or will remain his party’s presidential nominee, former President Donald J. Trump has remained unusually quiet publicly on the issue.
Mr. Trump, who is rarely afraid to express his opinions, has not been entirely silent since last week’s debate, giving a handful of radio interviews and maintaining a steady stream of posts and videos on his social media platform Truth Social. But Mr. Trump has largely held back, allowing the Democratic Party to dominate the debate over Mr. Biden’s political future in a sign of his preferred opponent.
After months of relentlessly attacking Mr. Biden for being too physically and mentally weak to lead the country, the former president was content to soak up the coverage of Democrats’ doubts about their party’s leader, so two consultants who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss strategies.
His relative lack of public comments on the issue also reflects to some extent his desire for Mr. Biden to stay in the race and his confidence that he can easily beat the president in November, one of the aides said.
A New York Times/Siena College poll conducted after the debate and released Wednesday suggested that some Republican voters agreed: 28 percent of them said they thought Mr. Biden was the Democratic nominee should remain, an increase from 21 percent in a pre-debate poll.
On Monday, Mr. Trump publicly rejected the idea that the president would be replaced on the Democratic ticket.
“If you listen to the professionals who do these things, they say it’s very difficult for others to get into the race,” Trump said in an interview with John Reid, a Virginia talk radio host.
And echoing a talking point that Mr. Biden’s Democratic allies have long made to argue that he is best positioned to beat the former president, Mr. Trump has also argued that polls have shown that “Biden performing better than the people they are. “I’m talking about replacing him.”
The day after the debate, he argued at a rally in Virginia that Mr. Biden had performed better in head-to-head matchups against him than Vice President Kamala Harris, whom he said he would “love” to run against, or Michelle Obama, the former first lady .
Two polls released Tuesday somewhat debunked that claim: A CNN poll showed Ms. Harris two percentage points ahead of Mr. Biden in a hypothetical contest against Mr. Trump, although he still defeated her. And an Ipsos/Reuters poll found that Ms. Obama – a long-term potential option for Democrats since she has repeatedly said she is not interested in running – defeated Mr. Trump 50 percent to 39 percent in a hypothetical matchup.
In a raw video first reported by The Daily Beast on Wednesday and which Mr. Trump later shared, Mr. Trump appeared to take pleasure in mocking his rival. It was not clear who originally filmed the clip or what day it was filmed. While golfing at his New Jersey property, Mr. Trump referred to Mr. Biden as “that old, broken pile of crap” and suggested he was quitting the race, according to video of his comments.
If Mr. Biden resigns, Mr. Trump would lose two lines of attack that were central to his campaign. He has spent years attacking Mr. Biden as “sleepy,” posting videos of Mr. Biden’s stumbles, mocking his speech and performing cartoonish impersonations of him, attacks he could not easily use against another opponent.
And in recent months, Mr. Trump has sought to appeal to undecided voters by directly comparing his time in office to Mr. Biden’s, often in misleading terms. That message would be hamstrung if another candidate replaced Mr. Biden on the ballot.
A new opponent could bring new political challenges. Mr. Trump could face a younger opponent who could appeal to voters who are concerned about the age of both candidates and are looking for new alternatives to two men who each have a shot at a term in the White House.
““I don’t think anyone on the Trump campaign has ever said they want to remove Biden from the ballot,” said Corey Lewandowski, a longtime Trump adviser who is now serving as an adviser to the Republican Party’s nominating convention. He added that the coming together of “two candidates, both of whom America knows very well and who can compare them, is very, very beneficial for us.”
The Heritage Foundation, a large conservative group, has also examined possible legal challenges that would make it difficult in some states to replace Mr. Biden on the ballot if he withdraws.
Mike Howell, executive director of Heritage’s Oversight Project, said the group is keeping an eye on key battleground states like Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin, where laws could potentially make it difficult to put another Democrat on the ballot.
In a statement on Wednesday, Mr. Trump’s two campaign managers, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, expressed confidence that Mr. Trump could “beat any Democrat” in November. They accused Democrats now turning against Mr. Biden of being hypocrites, saying that “each of them has lied about Joe Biden’s cognitive state and supported his disastrous policies for the last four years.”
There are signs that some people in Mr. Trump’s orbit are preparing more seriously for the possibility of a face-off against another Democratic candidate next fall, however remote that may be. The Trump campaign and Republican allies have stepped up attacks on Ms. Harris, who has long been a target of the right.
In their statement on Wednesday, Mr. Trump’s campaign managers called her “cackling co-pilot Kamala Harris,” mocking her behavior while directly linking her to Mr. Biden’s policies. During the debate, the campaign ran an ad suggesting that Mr. Biden was unable to lead the country through a second term and warning that Ms. Harris was waiting in the wings to take power.
On Tuesday morning, Make America Great Again Inc., the leading super PAC supporting Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, sent out a list of attacks on Ms. Harris, essentially arguing that she would be no better than Mr. Biden, particularly in terms of on immigration. An issue that Mr. Trump has placed at the center of his election campaign.
On Wednesday, the House Republican Campaign Committee announced a new digital ad that linked Ms. Harris to Mr. Biden’s border policies. “Vote Republican. Stop Kamala,” reads a title card at the end of the ad.
“Any good campaign takes into account all possible eventualities,” Mr. Lewandowski said. “The campaign’s strategy is not changing, but it would be a dereliction of duty not to be prepared if Joe Biden drops out of the race.”
However, in the video clip at his golf club, Mr Trump was already looking beyond Mr Biden to Ms Harris as his likely opponent.
“That means we have Kamala,” Mr. Trump said. “I think she’ll get better. She is so bad. She is so pathetic.
Senator Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican and a close Trump ally, issued something of a warning on social media about how the 2024 race could change if Ms. Harris became the nominee.
“I believe the Trump campaign is aware that the 2024 race could very soon shift dramatically from Biden’s abilities to a battle for the heart and soul of the country,” Graham wrote on X Wednesday afternoon.
And if the scenario were to play out, Republicans would have to “build on President Trump’s ability to expand our party’s demographic reach in 2024,” Mr. Graham added.
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2024-07-04 13:00:11
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