Shocked Trump staffers “pleaded” with Donald Trump to abandon plans to use an offensive slur as a new nickname for President Joe Biden, a report claimed Saturday.
Tim Alberta based his revelation, made in The Atlantic, on conversations with several Trump camp insiders in the run-up to Tuesday’s election.
He was told that in June, as concern about Biden’s mental capacity grew and before the president dropped out the presidential race and was replaced as the Democratic Party nominee by Kamala Harris, Trump announced he’d come up with the new monicker.
“The guy’s a re—,” he said, using a slur referring to somebody with a mental disability.
“He’s re—------.I think that’s what I’ll start calling him. Re—--- Joe Biden.
Alberta said three separate people told him about the conversation, which they said happened aboard Trump's campaign plane.
The three “pleaded with Trump not to say this publicly,” Alberta reported. He said they were joined by other campaign staffers after they heard about the conversation.
“They warned him that it would antagonize the moderate voters who’d been breaking in their direction, while engendering sympathy for a politician who, at that moment, was the subject of widespread ridicule.”
His desire to use the name also puzzled them, as Trump’s popularity in the polls was soaring at the time, Alberta wrote.
“Why would he jeopardize that for the sake of slinging a juvenile insult?”
Alberta continued that the staffers spent days nervously waiting to see if the nickname would be used. Ultimately, it was not.
“Over the next several days — as Trump’s aides held their breath, convinced he would debut this latest slur at any moment—they came to realize something about Trump,” he wrote.
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“He was restless, unhappy, and, yes, tired of winning. For the previous 20 months, he’d been hemmed in by a campaign built on the principles of restraint and competence. The former president’s ugliest impulses were regularly curbed by his top advisers; his most obnoxious allies and most outlandish ideas were sidelined.
“These guardrails had produced a professional campaign—a campaign that was headed for victory. But now, like a predator toying with its wounded catch, Trump had become bored. It reminded some allies of his havoc-making decisions in the White House. Trump never had much use for calm and quiet. He didn’t appreciate normalcy. Above all, he couldn’t stand being babysat.”
Trump’s campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told Alberta the name “was never discussed and this is materially false.”
