Inside the Trump campaign's struggle to land a punch on Biden

[brooklynite]

NBC News

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump's political advisers have bluntly told him he can't win the November election if the campaign is about him, and for weeks they unsuccessfully urged him to pivot to a new strategy focused on his general election opponent, Joe Biden.

Trump finally appeared to heed the advice Tuesday, although the setting and the tone of the political broadside may not have been what his advisers had envisioned. Trump's remarks, which mentioned Biden 31 times, were monotone, and the backdrop — the White House Rose Garden — was a break from longtime presidential efforts to separate official and re-election business.

...snip...

Trump's advisers have been encouraging him to zero in on Biden's long public record to deflect any focus on his own 3½ years in office.

But the president has insisted on pushing back against anything he perceives as a slight — including rising numbers of cases of the coronavirus — while airing old grievances and nursing new ones. In recent days he has criticized NASCAR, the media and the NFL, defended the Confederate battle flag and escalated fights with his former attorney general and his top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, even though, Trump's advisers said, he recognizes he's on a potential course to be unseated by Biden.

[Voltaire2]

1. So far, a remarkable own goal streak is in progress.

[Wounded Bear]

2. "Somebody who can be triggered with a tweet should not be President..."

Gee, I wonder who said that?

[Budi]

4. From The Atlantic 2016 archives:

TEXT
Last night, in her overall very successful acceptance speech, Hillary Clinton said with ruthless precision about her opponent:

"Ask yourself: Does Donald Trump have the temperament to be Commander-in-Chief?

Donald Trump can't even handle the rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign.

He loses his cool at the slightest provocation.
When he's gotten a tough question from a reporter.
When he's challenged in a debate.
When he sees a protestor at a rally."

(Emphasis added, as it was in her delivery)

Imagine—if you dare, imagine—imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis.
A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.

I can’t put it any better than Jackie Kennedy did after the Cuban Missile Crisis. She said that what worried President Kennedy during that very dangerous time was that a war might be started—not by big men with self-control and restraint, but by little men—the ones moved by fear and pride.



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Link to tweet

Trump to Russia: I hope you find the missing Hillary emails (some of which could contain classified intelligence) pic.twitter.com/fy919ChGuE

— Justin Green (@JGreenDC) July 27, 2016
------

From The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/notes/2016/07/trump-time-capsule-62-a-man-who-can-be-baited-with-a-tweet/493631/

[Nevilledog]

3. Must be time for a new Biden nickname.

[HotTeaBag]

5. Yep, Trump finds it quite hard to beat up on a white guy that people respect.

Much easier when it was a woman that people respect.

[gratuitous]

6. Gotta be a tough assignment

Because anything the Trump campaign can gin up against Biden is certain to look like small beer compared to actual things Trump has done.