Trump shaking, acknowledges he may lose tight US election, insists there will be no rematch in 2028
By Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Donald Trump is uncharacteristically shedding his macho image and bragging to acknowledge he may (actually) lose his third run for United States President at the ballot box on November 5, in contrast to the triumphalism that surrounded his seeming coronation for the job at his Republican Party convention in July.
But he is already inventing excuses and preemptively blaming others for what is staring him in the face, saying Jewish-American voters will be partly responsible if he loses to Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party candidate who has upended the race and closed the wide poll gap Trump had over Joe Biden before the President stepped down and anointed his Vice President for the Oval Office on July 21.
Current poll of polls collated by CNN shows Harris on 50 per cent nationally against Trump on 47 per cent, in surveys taken after their first debate on September 10.
Besides, Harris is leading Trump with thin margins in most battleground states and only neck and neck with him a few others.
Another poll shows Harris’ favourability rating with the American public has risen from 32 per cent in July to 48 per cent in September, Trump is on 42 per cent.
Trump has declined debating her for a second time and said he will not contest in 2028 if he loses in 2024.
Reuters reports that during comments to the Israeli-American Council National Summit in Washington, Trump lamented that he was trailing Harris among American Jews.
Israel would likely cease to exist within two years should Harris win the election, and Jews would be partly to blame for that outcome because they tend to vote for Democrats, Trump argued.
“If I don’t win this election – and the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that if that happens because if 40%, I mean, 60% of the people are voting for the enemy – Israel, in my opinion, will cease to exist within two years,” Trump told the crowd.
Trump was citing a poll that he said showed Harris polling at 60 per cent among American Jews. He also lamented winning less than 30 per cent of the vote among American Jews in the 2016 election, which he won, and the 2020 election, which he lost to Biden.
It was not clear what poll the former president was citing, but a recent Pew Research Survey found American Jews favor Harris over Trump by a margin of 65 per cent to 34 per cent.
Trump made similar comments at a separate summit earlier in the evening, also in Washington, which was dedicated to fighting antisemitism in America.
The Trump campaign has made winning over Jewish voters in key battleground states a priority. U.S. Jews have leaned heavily towards Democrats in federal elections for decades and continue to do so, but just a small shift in the Jewish vote could determine the winner in November.
In the crucial battleground of Pennsylvania, for example, there are over 400,000 Jewish people, in a state Biden won by 81,000 votes in 2020.
“Preemptively blaming American Jews for your potential election loss does zero to help American Jews,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, national director of the Anti-Defamation League.
Morgan Finkelstein, a spokesperson for the Harris campaign, criticized Trump for at times associating with anti-Semites.
Trump has rejected all accusations of anti-Semitism, noting during his speeches at the latest event that he has a Jewish son-in-law.
Trump won’t contest in 2028 if he loses in 2024
In an interview on the Full Measure television show with Sharyl Attkisson, the former president – who ran in 2016 and 2020 – was asked whether he saw himself running yet again in four years time, per reporting by The Guardian (UK).
“No, I don’t,” Trump answered. “I don’t see that at all.”
He said: “Hopefully, we’re going to be successful.”
In the polls, Harris leads Trump in most head-to-head surveys after Trump had previously established a solid lead over Biden – before he scotched his re-election campaign after a disastrous debate performance.
But the presidential race remains tight ahead of November’s election, especially in the key battleground states that will hold the key to victory.
Attkisson asked Trump what positions he saw people such as the tech billionaire Elon Musk, the former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and the ex-independent presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr, holding in his administration. Trump said he had not made deals with anybody because “it’s not appropriate to do it” and “it’s too early”.
Still, he laid out what Musk, Gabbard and Kennedy, who are all former Democrats or supporters of the party, could potentially work on if he were to be elected.
“Bobby will do great on health and on the environment,” he said. “He looks at other countries where they don’t use chemicals, where they use much less than we use, and the people are healthier than they are in the United States, which is not that healthy a country.”
Kennedy has been campaigning for Trump since he ended his own independent presidential bid to support the Republican nominee.
Trump described Gabbard, a military veteran who served as a Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii before retiring, as “a common sense person”. She recently said she would “be honored to serve” under a second Trump administration.
Gabbard ran for president as a Democrat in 2020, but chose to support the Republican nominee in this year’s elections.
During a Fox News interview, Gabbard said she was aiming for a role working on foreign policy.
“I’ve known her a little bit, and it was a great honor when we got her,” Trump said in Sunday’s interview.
Last month, both Gabbard and Kennedy were appointed to Trump’s transition team, which would help Trump choose policies and personnel if he were to win the White House in November.
Trump praised Musk as a person who can advance policies to cut costs in the federal government, an idea he has raised along with a “government efficiency commission”.
“Elon is Elon,” he said. “He’s a big cost-cutter. He’s always been very good at it, and I’m good at it. But Elon, I’ll tell you what, he will go in, and he’ll say: ‘This is what you have to do. You have to do this.’ He is so into that, he feels there’s so much waste and fat in this country, and he’s right.”
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