New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman says Donald Trump may be feeling the heat as he runs out of moves in his bid to outplay Kamala Harris’ burgeoning campaign.
“Trump is a man of few moves, and so we have seen him make the same ones over and over,” Haberman told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Monday night.
As Harris narrows the polling gap between her and Trump, Haberman says the Republican presidential nominee has reverted to similar tactics he used with his “birther” attacks on Barack Obama in 2008. Earlier this month, Trump caught significant backlash after interrogating Harris’ racial identity in a calamitous interview at a Black journalists conference earlier this month.
“They are trying pretty hard to bait Democrats into a fight about race and it's been something so far that the Harris campaign has not taken the bait on,” Haberman said.
ALSO READ: Harris has figured out Trump’s greatest liability
As his usual playbook flatlines, Trump is “clearly feeling cornered right now” Haberman said, which makes him vulnerable to fringe thinkers and conspiracy theorists that threaten to further distract from his campaign’s message.
“He is so disoriented and it has left him pretty susceptible to being manipulated,” Haberman said. “He has a lot of people around him who either support conspiracy theories or don’t like what they see as the establishment or are critical of certain kinds of Republicans and, when he is feeling cornered, he tends to listen to those people.”
Cooper brought up Trump’s fixation on crowd sizes and his oft-touted conspiracy that the media is tampering or somehow disguising attendance at his rallies.
“These are moves he makes when he’s under strain or anxiety or uncertainty and he tends to be at his most erratic,” Haberman continued. “The number of people who we have spoken to who just say he seems very on edge is not small.”
Watch the clip below or at this link.
