Former President Donald Trump and his advisers’ belief in an ethnic stereotype meant they didn’t take seriously suggestions that President Joe Biden would actually quit his campaign, the New York Times' Maggie Haberman reported Thursday.
And it left them completely off-guard when he did.
Haberman and her colleague, Jonathan Swan, wrote that Trump’s team knew the pressure Biden was under to quit, and had even made a half-hearted attempt to prepare.
But they firmly thought it wouldn’t happen, the report stated.
“The Trump team was not unprepared,” it read.
“They had planned for the possibility of Mr. Biden’s dropping out, produced anti-Harris videos and tested her vulnerabilities in private polls.
“But they were still somewhat surprised when Mr. Biden actually did it. Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers thought he seemed too stubborn — “too Irish,” one aide said — to buckle to the pressure to quit a race against a man he viscerally hated and believed he was best positioned to defeat.”
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The failure to take the possibility of Biden stepping down seriously has left Trump pushed out of the media spotlight and has allowed Vice President Kamala Harris, who was endorsed by Biden on Sunday and quickly became her party’s presumptive nominee, to garner a level of attention rarely seen, the report said.
“He has lost his grip on the news cycle and — temporarily at least — his message,” the report stated.
“Instead of commanding morning-to-night media attention, the former president and his allies suddenly find themselves reacting to their opponents.”
The report went on, “His message has been, for the moment, scrambled as Democrats have replaced an old, frail white man with a younger Black woman who is campaigning energetically and giving new life to the Democratic base.
“Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Mr. Biden endorsed on Sunday and around whom Democrats rapidly coalesced, has enjoyed a political hot streak that Mr. Biden’s advisers could have only dreamed of during the 2024 campaign.”
