Interview with President Trump

Three weeks before Election Day, President Donald Trump is trailing in the polls, but he remains confident of victory. “We have tremendous enthusiasm,” he says in an interview. “They only have negative enthusiasm. … Negative enthusiasm doesn’t win races. Positive enthusiasm, meaning they like somebody” is how elections are won.

Speaking with me and my American Enterprise Institute colleague Danielle Pletka for our podcast, he cites a Fox News poll showing that 49% of Americans think their neighbors are supporting him (“These people know their neighbors,” he says) and a HillHarrisX poll that many Americans think others lie to pollsters when asked about their voting preferences, as evidence that the polls are wrong.

Trump has just returned to the campaign trail after contracting COVID-19. I asked how getting COVID-19 affected him and his outlook on the novel coronavirus. “You know, I’ve lost five friends,” he says, “some very close to me, and they were gone very quickly. And now, when I think of what I went through, I think that we would have saved those people. You know, we’ve had a tremendous increase in really great drugs. Andwhether it’s Regeneron or the Eli Lily version of a similar drug, the antibody drugs. So, we’ve done a lot of great work in a short period of time and FDA has been terrific.” Trump has promised that every American will have free access to the same drugs and therapeutics he got.

We discussed the new Gallup poll that finds 56% of Americans say they are better off now than they were four years ago — a stunning number considering that we are in the midst of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, triggered by the worst pandemic since 1918 and followed by the worst racial unrest since the 1960s. Even during the 1984 reelection campaign of Ronald Reagan — the man who coined the phrase “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” — only 44% answered yes.

So, with 56% saying they are better off, Trump should be cruising to reelection. Yet, according to the RealClearPolitics average, only 42.2% of voters say they plan to vote for the president. I asked him why so many voters approve of his policies but not of him, and what he can do to win them over in the next three weeks. “Look, all I can do is create the greatest economy ever and we’re doing that,” he says. “We’re doing it at a level that people are shocked. Because, again, I say we’re rounding the turn…. I think people are going to want law and order. I think they’re going to want a great economy.”

Yes, they do. But swing voters also want their president to be presidential — and that is not what many of them felt they saw in the first debate. A New York Times/Siena College survey of voters in Florida and Pennsylvania found that 65% disapproved of the president’s debate performance - including one-third of his supporters. The president needs to turn those impressions around. He needs to spend the next three weeks explaining to Americans who approve of his policies but not of himwhy they should vote in their own self-interest and give him a second term.

The president believes the economic recovery will help persuade these voters. “Look, I built the economy once and now I’m building it a second time,” he says. “It’s going to be even better than it was last year… . We’re going to set new records, we’re setting new jobs records. 11.4 million in the last four and a half months. We’re setting new economic record, retail sales, housing. Take a look at what’s going on. It’s amazing. And the good news, I guess, I hope, is that your third quarter numbers are going to be released about two or three days before the election… . I think you’re going to have numbers are going to be record setting numbers.”

He says that if he wins reelection, his opponents will finally have to accept his presidency and begin working with him. “I really believe that they will say it’s time, it’s time,” he says. “Success will bring our country together… . We’re going [to] make the economy stronger than ever before. The best year we’ve ever had was last year. The best year we will ever have is going to be next year and that’s going to bring people together.”

Right now, that message is not getting through. The president has just under three weeks to change that.

Trump has promised that every Americanwill have free access to the same drugs and therapeutics he got.