Donald Trump seems unable to accept the new reality of the presidential race, and Maggie Haberman offered her analysis on CNN Wednesday.
“It’s like he’s trying to will this into existence as if he’s trying to get Joe Biden back in the race and try to run the race that he wants it to be,” Haberman told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins.
She suggested the former president behaved as he did in 2020, during the pandemic, when he would deny the reality of what was occurring across the country.
“We have seen him do this before when things have not worked out the way he wants them to,” she said. “This is what he did during COVID In 2020 when he would repeatedly talk about how great the economy it was … how unfair this all is. OK, well, now you have a different future in front of you, and you have to deal with that.”
She added, “He is wasting time.”
Trump has been on an erratic tear since President Joe Biden ended his reelection bid, opening the path for Vice President Kamala Harris to become the Democratic nominee. Harris has seen a surge in popularity and attracted millions in donations and enormous rally crowds in the weeks since, facts that have reportedly thrown the Republican nominee off-kilter.
Trump has repeatedly insisted that Biden is somehow still in the race or intends to be. In the immediate aftermath of the president’s withdrawal announcement, Trump posted a series of unhinged rants suggesting Biden would wake up and forget it the next day. “It’s not over!” he wrote.
He also floated a wild conspiracy theory last week that Biden would crash the Democratic National Convention later this month and try to take back the nomination.
And despite facing a new opponent, he continues to devote time to attacking Biden, calling his exit from the race a “coup.”
Haberman said it’s clear to her that Trump is laying the groundwork to use the change of Democratic candidate to claim the election was unfair if he loses.
“He is, you know, working the soil,” she said. “And we have seen him do this before, again, you know — man of few moves — to say, these are all the reasons why I lost if he does.”