photo credit: AP Photo/Alex Brandon
BREAKING— (thread)GOP operatives are for the first time raising the possibility that @realDonaldTrump could drop out of the race if his poll numbers don’t rebound. Over the weekend I spoke to a sample of major players; one described Trumps current psyche as “fragile.” I’m— Charles Gasparino (@CGasparino) June 28, 2020
It's hard for me to imagine that Donald would walk away, but I decided to post this just in case. As I've said here before, he sure doesn't look like he's having much fun as president. Maybe he will declare victory and leave the field. Stay tuned.
Update. The Lincoln Project weighs in:
Donald Trump might not know it, but this is his resignation letter. pic.twitter.com/6wJJpd9BKW— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) June 29, 2020
Update #2 on Tuesday afternoon. Apparently Joe Scarborough thinks Donald might drop out. The question was asked during Eugene Robinson's Live Chat today:
Hi Eugene! I watched Morning Joe this morning and Joe thinks that maybe President Trump will drop out in August. Politically, what would that mean for the race? I want Mike Pence to suffer political consequences for following Trump lock step--but would VP Biden have a harder time with VP Pence? Do you think Trump would go after Mike Pence because he couldn't stand to see his VP win? I know it's speculation, but would love to know what you think!
A: Eugene Robinson
I don't think Trump is going to drop out. If he did, and Pence ended up being the GOP nominee, I think Pence would lose -- I don't see him taking votes from Biden and I don't see him firing up the Trump base. I think the Republican Party would get massacred and basically have to start from scratch.
I'll see if I can find a clip of Joe Scarborough's remarks.
I haven't found video of Joe this morning, but I did see another tweet and this one uses the term "resign" rather than "drop out:"
A former Trump staffer — who worked side by side with him — just told me this: “I think Trump will resign and control the narrative of his own demise. I'd rather see him contract the virus and save us all from a national suicide.”— Jon Cooper 🇺🇸 (@joncoopertweets) June 30, 2020
Days until the election: 126
Update #3. I found the Joe S. video, which is from Friday morning:
Update #3. I found the Joe S. video, which is from Friday morning:
Update #5 on Sunday, July 5. Donny Deutsch and Joe are still talking about the possibility that Donald would walk away. This is from Friday, July 3:
Donny Deutsch: "I want to go back something you teed up last week, that I've been thinking about all week, I would not be shocked if at some point he drops the mic. This thing is away from him, it's not turning around. and this is a guy that I can not see standing up and owning the biggest landslide defeat in U.S. history. ... I don't see this guy going the distance."
Joe S: "I've been talking to people who are actually close to him who have speculated for some time that rather than lose a huge election, a huge landslide loss, that he would walk away. Sort of do what LBJ did. ... He does not want to get beaten, with Biden getting 350, close to 400 electoral votes. You look at the polls, I don't know if people close to him are lying to him, but he's behind in Georgia, Texas is tied, even, I read that even some GOP pollsters are talking about the problems, he's struggling in Kansas. This is shaping up to be a historic landslide so I don't understand why he would hang on, especially because the coronavirus just keeps getting worse."
I wonder if somewhere, very quietly and very discreetly, officials from the RNC are developing a plan for what they would do if Donald drops out of the race.
Update #6 on Monday, July 6. An interesting thought from Jonathan Bernstein:
Seriously if Trump had given up on re-election and was mainly interested in cultivating a small but fanatical group of marks to make money off of in the future...how would he be acting differently? https://t.co/bhuJvSf3yN— Jonathan Bernstein (@jbview) July 6, 2020
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