NEW YORK (AP) ā Heās calling in to his favorite morning cable news show, bashing the āelitesā of his party and dismissing unfavorable polls. Heās even talking up his crowd sizes.
As an increasingly defiant rejects calls to step aside after , heās been embracing some of the tactics used by a man he calls a mortal threat to democracy: his rival, .
Trump has weathered a seemingly never-ending list of controversies, from the that threatened to derail his candidacy weeks before the 2016 election, to his two impeachments, four indictments and conviction on 34 felony charges for falsifying business records. Through it all, Trump has developed a well-worn playbook for confronting allegations. He aggressively denies any wrongdoing. He lashes out at his detractors. And he often disputes what people have seen with their own eyes.
To be clear, there are significant differences between the menās approaches. Unlike Trump, Biden has repeatedly acknowledged his poor debate performance, saying he had a bad night. Instead of publicly blaming his advisers, heās said, āAny mistake made is my fault.ā
But longtime Trump watchers say there is nonetheless something familiar in some of the ways Biden has pushed back at criticism in recent days.
It remains to be seen if Bidenās efforts to keep his party behind him will work. Many congressional Democrats, worried about his prospects and their own in November, have declined to give him a full vote of confidence, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in an interview Wednesday. Trump, meanwhile, has maintained a tight grip on his party, even after becoming the first former president to be convicted of a felony. He will accept the GOP nomination next week facing no serious opposition.
Former Trump White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin, who is now a Trump critic, has called for Biden to withdraw from the race after the debate. She argues that Biden, in trying to hold onto the nomination, is āemploying Trump-like tacticsā with combative responses, cable news call-ins, pressure on lawmakers and an āI alone can fix itā attitude.
āIt very much echoes how Trump operates,ā she said. āI think Trump has changed the stakes and lowered the bar for how to behave in office and what the expectations are.ā
Bidenās campaign sharply rejects any comparison between the two men and between one debate performance and Trumpās presentations.
āPresident Biden respects and defends our democracy, including the more than 14 million who voted for him to be his partyās nominee,ā said Biden campaign senior spokesperson Sarafina Chitika. āTrump, meanwhile, is a convicted felon who cannot accept that he broke the law or that he lost to Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes. The difference between them couldnāt be more clear to voters ā and itās why Donald Trump will lose yet again this November.ā
Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, who traveled with the president over the weekend and has been one of his staunchest defenders in the wake of the debate, scoffed at any comparison to Trump.
Instead, he said he saw parallels to his own 2022 race and a debate in which he several months after .
After that debate, Fetterman acknowledged it didnāt go well, and then quickly got back to making the case against his opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz. Fetterman went on to win his race.
āThey predicted I would lose by two points and we won by five,ā he said. āI refuse to allow a debate to define a great presidentās legacy, just the way people tried to do that to me.ā
Echoes of Trump
This week began with Biden calling in to āMorning Joe,ā a favorite cable news show, where he railed against his naysayers and insisted he will be his partyās nominee.
He dared those who doubt him to challenge him at the convention and dismissed those who have called for him to step aside as out of touch with rank-and-file voters, despite recent polling that shows widespread concerns about his age.
āIām getting so frustrated ... by the elites in the party,ā he said, mocking, in a sing-song voice, the assumption that āthey know so much more.ā
Trump spent many mornings of his 2016 campaign calling in to āMorning Joeā and other morning shows, giving him unfiltered access to millions of viewers and hours of free airtime. He continues to do so, at times, including an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity that aired Monday night.
Like Trump, Biden has also aggressively dismissed polls he doesnāt like, rejecting the notion that heās behind.
āI donāt buy that,ā he said when pressed by ABCās George Stephanopoulos. āHow many people draw crowds like I did today?ā (Stephanopoulos retorted by telling Biden: āI donāt think you want to play the crowd game. Donald Trump can draw big crowds.ā)
Biden has also lashed out at the press, albeit in far less hostile terms than Trump, who casts the news media as the āenemy of the peopleā and slams any story he dislikes as āfake news.ā
On an airplane tarmac last Friday, Biden castigated reporters.
āLook, youāve been wrong about everything so far,ā he said. āYou were wrong about 2020. You were wrong about 2022 that we were going to get wiped out. Remember the āred waveā? You were wrong about 2023.ā
Heās even making calls thanking people for defending him on TV ā another Trump hallmark. Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, said she had received one such call from Biden after an appearance.
Trump has changed the crisis playbook
Eric Dezenhall, a crisis communications expert who has written multiple books on the subject, said Trump in some ways has changed the way people respond to public relations crises.
āTrump pioneered something that a lot of us in this business knew long before he did it, but were not sufficiently ethically challenged to try it. And that includes lying often works and it also includes the idea that apologies do not always work,ā he said. āThe PR industry loves this idea that if you apologize the problem goes away, when in fact an apology can exacerbate a crisis because it confirms for your critics that you did something wrong.ā
He said he saw similarities between Biden and Trump ā āHeās giving audacity a shot by saying, āIām going to stick it out. Iām fine. Pound sand'" ā but said Trump can get away with things other canāt.
āTrump is special. Trump can do things other people cannot. And one of the first things you learn in the crisis business is that not all crisis principals are created equal,ā he said. āLying is built into Trumpās stock price.ā
Fetterman, meanwhile, offered a long list of differences between Trump and Biden.
He referred to Trumpās alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels, which the former president denies. āHe was never impeached. Not twice either, Joe does not appear to be consumed by revenge. Joe never vowed to pardon ... Joe never to be a dictator.ā
āIād like to remind everybody: Thereās only one person in America that kicked Trumpās ass in an election,ā he added of Biden. āAnd thatās our guy.ā
Jill Colvin, The Associated Press
