It has been revealed Donald Trump could not believe at first that he was trailing Joe Biden in the polls leading up to the 2020 presidential election, and his initial reaction was, “How am I losing in the polls to a mental r***rd?”.
According to Michael C. Bender, author of the upcoming book Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost, the former President could not contain his anger when he learned that Biden was leading in the surveys.
As a result, Trump allegedly stomped in the Oval Office, where his advisors were in the middle of an important policy meeting, and questioned how it was possible that he was losing to Biden.
Apparently, Trump did not think that Biden had any chance of winning the election because he was “too old.” In addition, the former President also expected the Democratic Party to put Hillary Clinton or Michelle Obama in Biden’s place.
According to the book: “A month before the COVID pandemic hit the U.S., Trump said in a meeting that the Democratic leadership would realize [Biden is old] and they’re going to give it to someone else.”
Bender wrote: “The president, meanwhile, had often complained that his early attack on Elizabeth Warren had damaged her presidential bid, which he regretted because he viewed her as an easier opponent than Biden.”
He added: “Now he worried that a heavy blitz of attack ads would hasten the secret plot being hatched by Democrats, and his mind raced with who they might select in Biden’s place.”
Bender, whose book is expected to hit the stores in August, stated that he did the research for his work by talking with more than 100 people, and he also conversed with Trump on at least two occasions.
It seems that Trump was not the only one who did not expect that Biden could win the presidential race, as a couple of the former President’s advisors were also convinced that Biden had no chance in the election.
Dick Morris, White House advisor from the Clinton administration, who also worked for Trump, apparently believed that Biden “was too old and too prone to gaffes to be the nominee” and so did political commentator Sean Hannity, who allegedly predicted that Biden was to be replaced with another member of the Democratic Party.
Biden, who was underestimated, ended up beating Trump, the incumbent, by a similar Electoral College margin as the former reality TV star did in 2016 against Hillary Clinton.
