Allies Reportedly Urging Donald Trump To Stop Mocking Joe Biden’s Mental Acuity
A new report from The Washington Post published on Saturday details an emerging divide in President Donald Trump‘s campaign. According to the report, the president’s allies are divided over how to attack former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.
For months, Trump and his confidants have been trying to cast doubt on Biden’s mental acuity. On numerous occasions, the president himself has suggested that the Democrat is mentally unfit for the presidency. Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, has been even more aggressive in his attacks. Last week, he suggested that Biden is cognitively impaired.
“There is something missing. I feel bad for him. I wish his wife would pull him out of this,” Parscale joked.
But not everyone agrees with the campaign chief. Some of Trump’s closest advisers — including senior aide Kellyanne Conway — have reportedly called for a more cautious approach.
Conway and others apparently believe that the attacks on Biden are the main reason Trump is losing ground with seniors. Polls have indeed shown that Biden enjoys more support from senior citizens than Trump, which some of the president’s advisers allegedly see as a sign that older Americans have an issue with Trump’s mocking of the 77-year-old Democrat’s cognitive abilities.
Some members of the Trump campaign told The Washington Post that there are concerns about the 2020 presidential election strategy because Biden seems far more popular than Hillary Clinton, who represented the Democratic Party in 2016.
“We have to introduce people to a different Joe Biden. One of the reasons we won in 2016 is because so many people hated Hillary Clinton. I’m not sure people hate Biden that much,” a Trump campaign adviser said.
WATCH: Joe Biden appears to read prepared answers to questions in MSNBC interview. pic.twitter.com/tbUO1SOjiw
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) May 2, 2020
Furthermore, according to the report, some in the president’s campaign hoped that Biden’s popularity would decrease the more he campaigned, and the more mistakes he made. However, the coronavirus pandemic has made campaigning impossible, which has allowed the Democrat to stay on the sidelines.
According to individuals familiar with the campaign’s deliberations, Parscale has argued that Trump needs to be more aggressive in order to win in November. Parscale reportedly wants the campaign to dedicate its resources to running negative advertisements against Biden in order to damage his favorability ratings.
“You can’t let Biden hide in the shadows,” Parscale reportedly told other members of the campaign, expressing frustration that the former vice president seems to have avoided scrutiny by keeping a low profile and relying on media interviews to spread his message and attack Trump.
