"Unprepared and Uncertain" Trump's Team Caught Off Guard by Biden Withdrawal Speculation"
"Unprepared and Uncertain" Trump's Team Caught Off Guard by Biden Withdrawal Speculation"
Transcript
00:00Well, it's interesting. And as you mentioned, Pamela, Trump, but also Republicans in general
00:04are really relishing this period where so much attention is focused on Joe Biden's mental
00:11fitness, his physical fitness, and of course, the criticism from the fallout of his poor
00:15performance at the debate last week. And due to that, Donald Trump has been uncharacteristically
00:21quiet this week. He's been laying low. His advisers say he's at his club in Bedminster,
00:25New Jersey. However, we did hear some criticism leak out on a video was first obtained by the
00:31Daily Beast and Donald Trump himself posted this video to his own true social page. And
00:36essentially in this video, he is sharply criticizing Joe Biden as well as Kamala
00:40Harris and arguing that he actually thinks Harris may be an easier opponent. Take a listen to what
00:45he said. I do apologize. I meant to warn our viewers that there was some profanity in there
01:09that Donald Trump used, but clearly a candid moment for Donald Trump. It's unclear if he
01:14knew he was being filmed on the golf course, but again, he did share this himself. So he is
01:20happily criticizing both of these leaders in this moment. And I will notice though,
01:25or note that I think something that's really interesting is for months now, we actually
01:29haven't really seen Donald Trump in his campaign attack vice president Harris. Instead, they've
01:34largely ignored her. However, that started to change this week as reality has snuck in that
01:40potentially she could succeed Joe Biden as the Democratic party's nominee. And so there's a lot
01:47of discussion behind the scenes about how to deal with this. But right now, Republicans and Donald
01:51Trump himself are trying to continue to let Joe Biden and the Democrats be the story.
01:57And how else is Trump trying to seize on this moment?
02:02Well, Pamela, it's interesting because they really are uncertain about how to move forward,
02:06just as all of America is waiting to see what Democrats and Joe Biden does around his own
02:12candidacy. Republicans are also watching that very closely and they do not know what's going to
02:17happen. I have to say from my conversations with many of Trump's advisors, as well as many allies
02:22close to the former president, they actually thought that this wouldn't be as big of an issue
02:26heading into this week. They thought there was going to be a lot of hand-wringing following the
02:30debate. But I got frantic calls from all corners of Trump world on Monday afternoon asking what's
02:37going to happen. Is he going to step down? Who's going to potentially replace him? So again,
02:41they are very uncertain about how to move forward. And I think one of the issues for them is that
02:46they have spent months over a year really building out their general campaign infrastructure,
02:52mining data, honing their data operation and the money, all of that geared toward a single person
02:58going against Joe Biden. And so they're trying to look now behind the scenes about
03:02how that may have to change for their own campaign.