Donald Trump’s admission that he “doesn’t care” about the looming November midterms should be setting off alarm bells, his biographer warns.
Michael Wolff said on the Inside Trump’s Head Podcast that the 79-year-old president’s comment indicates that he is scheming for ways to try to avoid the consequences of his actions.
“They thought they were going to outwait me, you know. ‘We’ll outwait him, he’s got the midterms,’” Trump said at a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday. “I don’t care about the midterms. Look what happened last night; that was the prelude to the midterms.”
On Tuesday, Trump’s pick for Senate in Texas, Attorney General Ken Paxton, defeated four-term incumbent John Cornyn. While Trump viewed that as a win for Republicans, several election forecasters see scandal-plagued Paxton’s nomination as better than Cornyn for Democratic candidate James Talarico. Also, the GOP foresees having to spend much more to defend the seat.
On Thursday’s podcast, Wolff recalled how Trump said two weeks ago that he wasn’t at all considering Americans’ financial situation while negotiating the costly war that has sent gas prices soaring.
“We’re in the ‘I don’t care’ phase of his presidency,” Wolff told co-host Joanna Coles, who compared Trump to Shakespeare’s King Lear going mad and running off into a storm unsheltered.
“‘I don’t care’ has to do with his anger and contempt when he’s held to account, you know? When the rules of gravity apply to him... when actions have consequences that he can’t fix,” Wolff continued. “So, really, ‘I don’t care’ is saying basically, ‘f--k you.’”
While Trump may say he doesn’t care, there’s more going on under the surface, Wolff went on.
“Basically, he is saying that... he desperately cares and that he recognizes that his back is to the wall, that he’s in a corner that he can’t get out of,” Wolff continued.
“Also, we should note that when he’s in this mood he is at his most dangerous and most audacious. So, the ‘I don’t care, I’m above it all’ guy is really down in the mud thinking of some slur or libel to save himself or some new enemy to elevate and attack, some preposterous lie to propound and spread, and some emergency to declare,” Wolff said. “This could be a very messy moment or an ugly Trump moment at this point—that he’s going to blame us for demanding that he care."
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
As the midterms approach, polls have shown troubling signs for the president. His grip on white working-class voters, for instance, has slipped.
A CBS News poll conducted this month found that 54 percent of white voters without a college degree disapproved of his job performance. In February of this year, that number was 45 percent, and last February it was 32 percent.
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