Trump seeks to boost Sanders and foment Democrat discord
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump has stepped up his efforts to boost Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign and to sow doubts among Sanders’ supporters about the fairness of the nomination process, an update of the disruptive strategy he believes helped him win the White House four years ago.
People close to Trump and his campaign say the tactic is as deliberate as it is simple, with a goal of creating chaos in the Democratic Party in hopes of weakening its turnout in November while aiding a potential opponent who Trump considers fatally flawed.
With Sanders hoping to lock down a clear delegate lead after the all-important Super Tuesday contests on March 3, Trump also is playing a card that fires up his own base, taunting the iconoclastic senator from Vermont as a “crazy” socialist who would lead the country into economic ruin if elected.
Sometimes he combines the two messages. After Sanders won the Feb. 22 Nevada caucuses, for example, Trump congratulated “Crazy Bernie” in a tweet, warning “Don’t let them take it away from you!”
On Tuesday in New Delhi, Trump claimed without evidence that Democrats had leaked intelligence to undermine Sanders’ campaign. Democrats “don’t want him, so they put out a thing that Russia is backing him,” Trump said.
And in South Carolina, where registered voters can vote in either party primary, Republican activists urged Trump supporters to vote for Sanders in Saturday’s Democratic primary — echoing Trump’s instructions to New Hampshire independents to “vote for the weakest candidate” before that state’s primary.
“The only thing better for Trump than
Bernie Sanders getting screwed out of the nomination is if Bernie Sanders wins the nomination,” said Michael Caputo, who worked on the 2016 campaign and remains in touch with Trump’s advisors. “It’s a win-win situation.”
Many of Trump’s allies see Sanders as the most beatable Democrat in November, although there is growing debate over whether they are underestimating Sanders’ ability to galvanize a hidden bloc of disgruntled voters, as Trump did in 2016.
Sanders’ thumping win in the Nevada caucuses, where he swept every voting group except people over 65, stunned operatives in both parties. The results suggested for the first time that he could build a broad-based coalition, as he long has claimed.
Unlike in 2016, Sanders had a hand in crafting the Democrats’ nominating rules this year, giving him less room to argue that the process was designed to make him fail.
But if he loses the nomination, Trump wants Sanders’ impassioned supporters to believe he was cheated so they will either stay home on Election Day or vote for Trump. The two share some of the same raw populist rhetoric on trade and elites, despite fundamentally different ideologies, grievances and solutions.
“The last time we had a lot of Bernie Sanders supporters,” Trump told a TV station in Arizona, which holds its primary on March 17. “If they take it away from him like they did the last time, I really believe you’re going to have — you’re gonna have a very riotous time in the Democrat Party, because they really, they did a lot of numbers on him.”
Stirring dissent in the opposition party “makes sense,” said a Republican operative with close ties to the White House, who requested anonymity to reveal internal strategy discussions.