One remark about rival Biden signals President Trump's reelection doubts
President Donald Trump made an unusual remark during an interview at a section of the border wall Tuesday in Yuma, Ariz. Credit: AP / Evan Vucci
If this answer to a reporter's question had come out of Joe Biden's mouth, you might chalk it up as another trademark gaffe. But the statement is from President Donald Trump. And it stands out because it strays so far from his extravagant boasts that he's always a winner.
Trump posed in the sun Tuesday in Yuma, Arizona, before some steel slats that make up part of a border barrier forever in progress. There, a reporter from the Fox News affiliate in Phoenix asked him to respond to Biden, who has said he cannot guarantee the project would continue if he's elected.
“No, he’ll complete it. You’d have a revolution if they didn’t do it," Trump replied in part.
Wait. What? BIDEN will complete it?
A bit later, Trump added: "Hopefully he won’t get the chance, I’m not sure he would even know the difference.” The president smiled slightly.
Everyone knows by now how careless Trump can be with words and facts. Still, it is not like him to accept even hypothetically the premise of his losing.
The president's claim that Biden would finish the wall also clashes with the fact that Congress still hasn't funded the job. Besides, he asserts that his Democratic opponent favors "open borders." Despite Trump's threat of backlash "if they didn't do it," polls have suggested otherwise.
Trump visited Arizona in part to highlight completion of "more than 200 miles of powerful border wall" with Mexico — despite a June 19 report by his Department of Homeland Security that only "three miles of new border wall system [have been] constructed in locations where no barriers previously existed."
Trump and his inner circle reportedly doubted well into the 2016 campaign that he would win and were surprised when he did. During that race, he bellowed that the election would be rigged against him. He's doing it again, trying without evidence to link fraud to various states' expansion of mail-in balloting due to COVID-19.
Polls showing Biden with a lead may be rattling Trump's confidence. The president gets more credit for the good pre-pandemic economy than he does for other parts of his performance. Taking aim at that, Biden warned in Pennsylvania on Thursday: "There are no miracles coming." Of the incumbent, Biden said, “Amazingly, he hasn’t grasped the most basic fact of this crisis: To fix the economy, we have to get control over the virus."
Later Thursday, Trump told commentator and adviser Sean Hannity on Fox: "I mean, the man [Biden] can't speak. And he's going to be your president because some people don't love me, maybe."
Trump may not suddenly see benefits in admitting failures. But his statements about Biden hint that he knows he could lose in November. To those who follow the president's patter, that could prove significant.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
