NBC’s Chuck Todd on Wednesday said former President Donald Trump might be regaining the style he had in 2016 when he won the presidency as a businessman who had never held public office or served in the military.
Republican Georgia voters told MSNBC in a May segment that the former president’s legal struggles have boosted their support for him as it seems like persecution to them and Trump appears to be a fighter.
Todd on “Katy Tur Reports” said Trump has appeared to be “oddly loose” and humorous during recent events in Detroit, Michigan, and that if he can maintain this posture rather than seeming vengeful and angry, he can gain back his 2016 “swagger.”
“I don’t mean to simplify this, but, you know, Donald Trump’s rhetoric, even, and even his sort of swagger looks more like 2016 and the campaign you covered so closely, Katy, than he looks in 2020,” Todd told host Katy Tur. “And in fact, I was just discussing this with somebody we all know … he even noted, we were talking about this idea that when Trump’s losing, the worst version of Trump shows up and when Trump’s winning or he thinks he’s ahead, he’s actually a different person, a different candidate.”
“Donald Trump in Detroit, and those events he did, he was oddly loose,” Todd continued. “He was trying to be funny. And all of this where from about 2017 to 2022 and even 2023 through the primaries, it’s been nothing but angry grievance Trump, angry, angry, angry. It’s interesting if he somehow drops the grievance, he could end up looking more like that 2016 candidate where he’s the outside disrupter.”
Tur said this is possible, but she doesn’t think Trump will “drop the grievance” and Todd agreed.
“He’s going to be sentenced in a few weeks here in Manhattan,” Tur said. “The presidential immunity decisions coming out with the Supreme Court. There are reasons to continue on the grievance trail. And this whole campaign, it seems to be less for him about policy and more about what they’re doing to me is what they want to do to you. My grievances are your grievances.”
Conservative guest Tara Setmayer on “The Don Lemon Show” Tuesday tried to explain to host Don Lemon that “aggrieved” Americans feel Trump is fighting for them.
“They’re aggrieved. Donald Trump has given voice and credibility and a platform to their grievances, so they can take it out on everybody else and say see, ‘I’m not alone here. I have someone who’s championing our grievances too,’ and that’s Donald Trump. Why they believe that he gives two shits about them, volumes will be written about the political psychology around this,” Setmayer told Lemon, but the former CNN host said it made “no sense” to him.
First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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