MSNBC’s John Heilemann: ‘The Race Is Slipping Away from Donald Trump’

MSNBC’s John Heilemann had a warning for President Donald Trump on Monday. The NBC national affairs analyst suggested that the presidential race was slipping away from the President, in part due to his handling of the Coronavirus and recent poll numbers.

“I would ask, what does Donald Trump do moving forward?” co-host Joe Scarborough asked. “But again, he doesn’t seem to be able to control himself at all. I’m just wondering, here we are in May, and a lot of people would say it’s way too early. But I still remember the 2012 story you wrote about how Barack Obama defined Mitt Romney in such a way in May that Romney never recovered from it.”

“You go back and talk, Joe, to people who have been at the core of incumbent re-election campaigns. White House political directors and campaign managers in re-elections, So, Obama in ‘12. Bush in ‘04. Clinton in 1996. Just the presidents in our lifetime, right?” Heilemann said.

“All will tell you that all three of those races in the re-elects had presidents who were struggling in various ways. They were a little below 50% or maybe a little more than below 50% in their approval ratings. All of them were deeply concerned about their bosses’ ability to win. All of them ended up winning and ended up winning close races.”

Heleimann said that those who’ve worked on reelection campaigns have pointed out that previous presidents won in the spring and not in the fall.

“The races in all of those incumbent re-elects were determined by what happened in the spring,” he said. “The state of the country, the arguments that were made by incumbents who turned the race from a referendum on them to a choice between them and an opponent that they rendered unacceptable in the public eye. So now, we come forward to 2020. We are in that spring again.”

“What you’re seeing in the polls you just cited across the board, on the fundamental issue that’s gonna face these two candidates in this fall, the question of the Coronavirus and President Trump’s handling of it, is the race is slipping away from Donald Trump.”

“I’m not trying to say he can’t win. I’m just trying to say that if history is a guide, this race is being determined right now. Not after Labor Day. It is being determined now. If that’s true, and that pattern holds, then the President’s people should be deeply concerned about what’s happening right now because views of him with respect to the central issue are hardening right now.”

“And the Biden campaign isn’t even having to do very much to make it happen. That’s a worrying situation for President Trump.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.