‘It was a perfect storm’: Trump weighs in on Biden’s Super Tuesday rout
March 4, 2020America’s puckish pundit in chief is weighing in on the Democrats’ dramatic Super Tuesday results — and he seems to have mischief on his mind.
On Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump accused Democratic Party leaders of having “crushed” Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, attributing former Vice President Joe Biden’s impressive showing in the nominating contests to “a perfect storm.”
“The Democrat establishment came together and crushed Bernie Sanders, AGAIN!” Trump wrote on Twitter hours after the slate of primaries concluded.
“Even the fact that Elizabeth Warren stayed in the race was devastating to Bernie and allowed Sleepy Joe to unthinkably win Massachusetts,” he continued. “It was a perfect storm, with many good states remaining for Joe!”
Trump’s morning tweets marked his first bit of presidential prognostication since the polls officially closed in the 14 states that participated in the single-biggest primary day of the 2020 calendar, which saw Biden sweep the South and indisputably resuscitate his once-flagging campaign.
And while Sanders captured California, the greatest delegate prize, his showing overall was not as strong as recent public polling had suggested — seemingly hampered by Biden’s momentum after his staggering victory Saturday in South Carolina and subsequent endorsements from two chief rivals: former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, too, underperformed across the board Tuesday, ceding her home state in a third-place finish behind Biden and Sanders. The former vice president even maintains a narrow lead in Maine, which is close to Sanders’ and Warren’s New England strongholds.
Trump pounded the message Wednesday that Warren was undermining her fellow progressive and Senate colleague for remaining in the race, a decision he described as “so selfish” on Twitter.
“She has Zero chance of even coming close to winning, but hurts Bernie badly,” Trump wrote online. “So much for their wonderful liberal friendship. Will he ever speak to her again? She cost him Massachusetts (and came in third), he shouldn’t!”
The president also tweeted that were it not for Warren’s candidacy, Sanders “would have EASILY won Massachusetts, Minnesota and Texas” — all states where Biden emerged triumphant — and predicted that Warren “may very well go down as the all time great SPOILER!”
Speaking to reporters during a White House event later Wednesday morning, Trump seemed fixated on Warren’s effect on Super Tuesday’s outcome, dubbing her “the single biggest factor in the election last night.”
“In the case of Elizabeth Warren, had she gotten out, it would have been a very different situation, I think. It would have been a very different night,” Trump said. “Just that one simple move — had she left, you pick up Massachusetts, Minnesota and probably Texas. And those are the three I checked. I would imagine there are others that [Sanders] would’ve picked up, too.”
The president’s posts and public remarks reflect his efforts in recent weeks to gin up intraparty conflict among Democrats, claiming repeatedly that party elders are trying to steal the nomination from Sanders.
At times, Trump has consciously echoed a narrative promoted by Sanders himself, who has cast his candidacy as a populist crusade against powerful special interests and the political establishment of both parties.
“If it comes out to be a campaign in which we have one candidate who is standing up for the working class and middle class, we’re going to win that election," Sanders said Tuesday in Vermont. “Then if we have another candidate who has received contributions from at least 60 billionaires — and if there is another candidate in the race who is spending hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars — we’re going to tell him, ‘In America, you cannot buy elections.’”
Weighing in on the state of the nominating contests in real time Tuesday night, Trump turned to his favored derisive nicknames and outright mockery of the struggling Democratic candidates.
Amid a series of boilerplate posts thanking Republican voters for granting him victories in their state primaries, Trump first trained his fire on former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg — a recurrent punching bag of the president’s whose small fortune in ad buys won him first place in only American Samoa’s caucuses.
“The biggest loser tonight, by far, is Mini Mike Bloomberg. His ‘political’ consultants took him for a ride,” Trump wrote. “$700 million washed down the drain, and he got nothing for it but the nickname Mini Mike, and the complete destruction of his reputation. Way to go Mike!”
Less than 15 minutes later, the president interjected again, this time lashing “Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren” as the other “loser of the night.”
“She didn’t even come close to winning her home state of Massachusetts,” he added. “Well, now she can just sit back with her husband and have a nice cold beer!”
Source: https://www.politico.com/