Donald Trump leaning into
concerns some voters have
and critics have about him
retaking the White House.
The former president sharing a word cloud
that features the words
like revenge economy,
power, dictatorship.
The word cloud is from a survey
of a British newspaper.
It shows some of the most common words
that people use
to describe what they think
a second Trump term would be like.
Trump has repeatedly promised
supporters to be his
to be his supporters retribution.
If elected.
He has said
he would appoint a special prosecutor
to go after President
Biden and his family,
and he suggested that he would weaponize
the Department of Justice
against his enemies.
Here's what else he said.
For those who have been wronged
and betrayed, I am your retribution.
I am your retribution.
We will root out the Communists,
Marxist fascists
and the radical left thugs
that live like vermin
within the confines of our country.
Under no circumstances
you are promising America tonight
you would never abuse power
as retribution against anybody
except for day one.
He says you're not going to be
a dictator, are you?
I said, No, no, no. Other than day one.
Back with us now, CNN
national correspondent Kristen Holmes
and CNN political commentator
and former special assistant to President
George W Bush, Scott Jennings.
You informed us
with your reporting on this, Christiane,
a couple of hours ago
there was no strategy
behind Trump putting this up. Right.
I mean, this word cloud was,
you know,
about how people feel about him
and how he's running his campaign.
Your thoughts on this?
Yeah, that's right, Poppy.
I mean, I think this is three fold.
You know,
one of this
is that the main word here is revenge.
And Donald Trump,
as you just showed in various
clips, has made it
clear that part of his campaign
messaging is revenge.
So that is part of posting this.
The other part of this is
he is trolling his critics.
There has been a lot of talk in the media
and he has gotten more attention
since he said those dictator comments
that he would only be
a dictator on day one.
This is his way of trolling his critics,
trolling the media.
Any of his rivals
just putting it out there
without any context.
The last part of this
is that
some of the other words
on their power economy,
those are words
that he believes
his Republican base wants to see,
that he believes that his voters
want someone who is strong.
So he is looking at those words as well.
But overall,
say this is more of a trolling strategy
than an actual political strategy.
And it's effective
because Scott is sitting
there begging us to talk about this
every single day. Scott, can I ask so
I mean, this in all seriousness,
Kristen Soltis Anderson is
just a really great piece
in The New York Times.
She's a pollster.
She's on
she's a friend of the show,
a friend of everybody at CNN
who goes through
kind of the dynamics of the race,
talking about chaos
versus non chaos candidate and comparing
kind of why Biden won in 2020
and why he's having difficulty
in the polling in 2024 throughline
kind of from Afghanistan to now.
If this becomes a contrast election
where Trump is trolling
and Trump is chaos
and Trump is all the things that he's
using to great effect in the primary,
how does that benefit him
in a general election?
Well,
the way he's going to run
the race is just to try to have
a referendum on Joe Biden.
And to the op ed point.
If we have a referendum on Biden
and hold him to his own promises,
I'm going to calm everything down.
I'm going to have a boring presidency.
I'm going to be an adult.
I'm going to
eliminate the chaos of the Trump era.
So if you're really just thinking about
did you fulfill your promises,
that's out.
That's how
Trump would want to win the run the race.
Now, if I'm Joe Biden,
you try to get people to remember
that the Trump years
weren't all that calm,
that they were chaotic as well.
The problem is right now,
if you look at the polling,
a lot of people are having nostalgia
for the Trump years,
particularly on the economy.
Me And so that's Biden's challenge
is to try to get people
to remember that, hey,
this wasn't as good,
this wasn't as good as you as
you think it was, or that you
you remember it
being on the word cloud, by the way.
The word that jumps out to me,
frankly, is power.
Because I think
one of the Republican arguments
this year is that Biden is too weak.
He's too weak to control the border.
He's too weak to manage
these international crisis situations
that we have popping up everywhere.
He's too weak to control inflation or,
you know,
so it's really less about here's
my policy prescription and more about,
you know, you're just too weak
to do anything
about any of these problems.
And and we have to eliminate that.
So it sort of absolves you
of having a policy platform.
If you just project
strength over weakness.
The vague Rasmussen
who is
not critical of Trump
but still running against him
to be president,
just replied to a tweet about him
stopping all TV ad spend a month out,
less than a month out
from my own New Hampshire.
Chris, let me read you what he said
because he said basically
it's not smart to spend money that way.
And he also called candidates that do
basically people who have a low IQ.
Is this strategic in terms of
not having enough money
to spend on TV left?
But also,
I would like a position
in a Trump cabinet should he win.
Well, first of all,
it does look promising.
He promised he would spend
far more money on television than he has,
and he has spent quite a bit.
He spent over
$4 million,
but I'm fairly certain
he said at some point he's
going to spend ten digit.
So the double digit millions there.
Now, in terms
of whether or not this is low return
return on interest, you know.
Yeah. Lower.
I that's that's
probably an accurate statement.
And there are a lot of people who believe
that this way of reaching voters
is antiquated.
Donald Trump himself,
if you'll remember, in 2016,
almost released zero ads.
He relied completely on earned media.
And I know that's not
an option this time around,
but when it comes to ramaswamy
and potential cabinet positions,
it's much too early to talk about that.
However,
we can note that
senior advisers on both campaigns
are in communication.
The two of them
ramaswamy me and Trump,
have sat down on multiple occasions
and Trump, I am told, really likes him.
He enjoys being around him.
So that could be a down
the road conversation.
But he
certainly, of all of the Republican
candidates, has been the most careful
not to step on Donald Trump in any way.
Scott As somebody who's
who's been involved
in a number of campaigns in the past,
if you pledge that you're going to spend
10 million, spend a little bit over two
and then pull all your ad spend down
and then say the reason
why is because you found
a new way to do things
and everybody who buys
TV ads is an idiot.
Do you feel like he's
found a new way to do things
or he doesn't have any money?
Well,
he's doing a lot of self-funding,
so I guess he has all the money
that he wants to spend.
What I suspect is happening
is that they found out
that his campaign is dead.
He has no chance to win.
And so he doesn't
want to spend his own money
on these TV ads
that he claimed he was going to do
just a few weeks ago.
It is true
that what they're talking about,
this targeting of ads,
you know,
using addressable
advertising mediums,
social media, digital
spend campaigns do that,
but they usually do it in conjunction
with TV ad spending.
I suspect what he's doing right now
is planning an exit strategy,
trying to save as much of his own money
as he can,
and figuring out the exact right
time to get out of the race
and endorse Donald Trump
to please Donald Trump the most.
He's essentially functioned as a Trump
Sarah getter, a Trump stand
in on the debate stage
and throughout this campaign.
So I have no reason to believe
it won't continue.
Kristen Holmes, thank you.
Scott Jennings of the Perfect ten.
If we still had a room rater,
your Christmas decor solid is very solid.
It's a leak.
We know you put that up yourself.
Yeah.
My wife, she gets
she gets this all set
up for every holidays,