Trump Campaign Promotes Bernie's Rise

[RandySF]

Bernie Sanders has surged to the front of the polls ahead of Monday's Iowa caucuses. And some of Trump's political advisers say they are doing their best to help him stay there.

Behind the scenes: "We're trying to promote the rise," said a Trump adviser. "The campaign has been pumping up the national messaging behind Bernie, pushing out fundraising emails. When you attack his policies, it gets the media to talk about him."

The adviser said that highlighting Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, helps Trump put the whole field of Democrats under a socialist umbrella.

But a senior White House official told me that even if they agreed it would be nice to face Sanders in the general election, they were skeptical that the campaign had the capacity to help a Democratic candidate win. "We tried it with Pocahontas and look how that went," the official said.

Another senior White House official said the campaign's efforts to elevate Sanders seemed more reactive than strategic.

Between the lines: Trump advisers, including two senior White House officials, told me that elevating Sanders is far from the main reason so many Trump surrogates are going to Iowa. They want to get free media coverage. And it's working, with the Trump team's visit dominating the front page of Iowa's Des Moines Register the week before the caucuses.




https://www.axios.com/raising-bernie-as-bernie-rises-7f65334d-8858-495c-b267-a19062f001db.html

[George II]

1. trump KNOWS he can win against Sanders, he KNOWS he'll get creamed against Biden.

[Zolorp]

3. It's a Repubican WET DREAM to be able to accuse a Democrat of being a Communist truthfully

That would be the case with Sanders. It's possible he could outdo the Reagan victory of 1984 if Sanders is the nominee. But since Sanders was actually a Communist from 1977 through 1984, he cannot argue he wasn't. It's a documented fact.

[Cha]

8. #45 Got himself IMPEACHED over it.. nothing's changed.

[lees1975]

2. Trump's hit and run in Iowa

was to counter the effect of the Democrats getting almost all the attention in Iowa. A Trump rally and surrogate appearances usually means they've seen the polling data and have to respond somehow. Iowa will be one of the easier states for Democrats to flip this time around.

If Bernie can gather the kind of support he is getting in Iowa, it stands to reason he can do it elsewhere, including against Trump when it counts. He's quite popular in Iowa, also in West Virginia where his health care proposals match up head to head with Trump's failure to do anything for coal miners.

[Tarheel_Dem]

4. Well, of course they do. Which tells me they're holding something really juicy for the GE.

[NYMinute]

5. Two puppets, same puppetmaster

From Bob Mueller's indictment of Russian citizens ...

43. By 2016, Defendants and their co-conspirators used their fictitious online personas to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. They engaged in operations primarily intended to communicate derogatory information about Hillary Clinton, to denigrate other candidates such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio, and to support Bernie Sanders and then-candidate Donald Trump.

https://www.vox.com/2018/7/13/17568806/mueller-russia-intelligence-indictment-full-text

[Gothmog]

6. trump know that he can beat a weak candidate like sanders

Link to tweet

[Cha]

7. Now why would #45IMPEACHED Fucking Do that?