Donald Trump.Photo: Mike Roemer/AP/REX/Shutterstock
On Friday — some 28 months after he was sworn into office as the 43rd president of the United States and amid high unpopularity while facing a 2020 re-election campaign against some two dozen challengers — Donald Trumpannouncedto the world that it was now “time to get back to business.”
“OK, so after two years of hard work and each party trying their best to make the other party look as bad as possible, it’s time to get back to business,”he tweetedafter years of messages savaging political opponents, the media, his “haters” and numerous other targets.
But that was behind him, for the moment.
Hecontinued: “Republicans and Democrats must come together for the good of the American people. No more costly & time consuming investigations. Lets do Immigration (Border), Infrastructure, much lower drug prices & much more – and do it now!”
He struck a different tone three weeks earlier.
Then,Trump tweeted“INVESTIGATE THE INVESTIGATORS!” — implying that since Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation had concluded, his political opponents and federal law enforcement should be scrutinized.
New York Timesreporter Maggie Haberman reacted to the change in tune on Friday witha tweet of her own: “Internal polling must show him struggling.”
TheTimes‘ Jonathan Martin underlined that assessment with his own tweets on Friday, noting that Trump’s approval ratings and national polling remain unusually soft despite a reliably strong economy.
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Notwithstanding the president’s conciliatory language on Friday, he has been aggressively pushing back against his potential rivals in the 2020 election, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren and, more recently, former Vice President Joe Biden.
Trump retweeted dozens of anti-Biden messages earlier this week, to the dismay of some in his circle.
“We’ve asked him — I’ve personally asked him — to stop. It’s not helping us. It’s helping Biden,” one advisertoldPolitico. “We don’t think Biden can make it out of the woke Democrat primary. But he will if the president gives him oxygen.” (Former Trump campaign staffer Jason Miller disagreed, telling the outlet, “If Biden is going to be on the front page of every paper, leading every single newscast, why not weigh in and help frame the debate?”)
PerPolitico, Biden noted Trump’s attention at an event on Wednesday, telling attendees, “I understand the president has been tweeting a lot about me this morning.”
Biden said, “I wonder why the hell he’s doing that.”
source: people.com
