Donald Trump Must ‘Fundamentally’ Change To Win Re-Election, ABC Analyst Says

During an appearance on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, one of the network’s political analysts, Matthew Dowd, spoke on the current trajectory of Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. As reported by Breitbart, Dowd claimed that the president will have a hard time defeating Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in November unless he “fundamentally changes” his course.

“I think fundamentally they mistook 2016,” Dowd said of the Republican Party. “They thought they won because of Donald Trump, they won in spite of Donald Trump. He finished with the highest unfavorable rating, and he still won the election, lost the popular vote in that election.”

Dowd claimed that Trump’s “problem” is not Biden, but the current environment, which he suggested the president is not aligned with. According to Dowd, the current American population wants “change” and is not satisfied with the current state of the country.

He suggested that the majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and the weak economy. Despite these purported issues, Dowd said Trump is not responding correctly.

“The problem is fundamentally the president of the United States does not fit the moment we are in America, unless he fundamentally changes, it will be very hard to win re-election.”

Dowd then noted the uncertainty that the COVID-19 pandemic has cast over the election and Americans’ concerns and questions over when life will return to normal.

“We’re a moment in time, each candidate have to figure out how to address the moment in time, and the president is behind the eight ball,” he said.

In a piece for NPR last month, Mara Liasson argued that Trump is struggling to adjust his approach amid the shifting cultural and economic landscape and pointed to the defection of Trump’s previous allies in the culture war: the NFL and NASCAR.

Additional reporting suggested that Republican lawmakers are quietly worried that Trump’s racially divisive approach is pitting the GOP against the shifting cultural current.

David Axelrod, a Democratic strategist and former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, claimed that the biggest break amid Trump’ allies came when Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley said they would consider renaming military bases and pushed back on the president’s threat to use military force on protestors.

Axelrod also spotlighted the opposition Trump has faced from his former secretary of defense, retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis, and multiple prominent military leaders, all of whom disagreed with the president’s approach to his visit to St. John’s Church.