Biden campaign rips page from Trump playbook with name-calling strategy
President Biden’s 2024 campaign has employed a new strategy, one taken right out of former President Donald Trump’s playbook: name-calling.
Trump, during his 2016 primary campaign, referred to top Republican primary opponents as ‘Lyin’ Ted’ Cruz and ‘Little Marco’ Rubio. He took jabs at Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren as ‘Pocahontas’ and Sen. Majority Leader ‘Cryin” Chuck Schumer and Speaker of the House ‘Crazy Nancy’ Pelosi.
He called his 2016 presidential opponent ‘Crooked Hillary’ and then, in 2020, called Biden, ‘Crazy Joe.’
The Biden camp distributed an email this week calling the president’s opponent ‘Broke Don’ – a reference to Trump’s financial troubles. The 45th president recently failed to secure an appeal bond to delay payment of the $464 million he owes, due to AG Letitia James’ civil investigation of The Trump Organization.
‘Trump can’t raise money, isn’t campaigning, and is letting convicts and conspiracy theorists run his campaign,’ the email claims.
Trump has mocked Biden for years, saying the 46th president allegedly was avoiding the press and ‘hiding’ in his Wilmington, Del. basement during the 2020 race – which the email appears to reference.
‘We have a guy that doesn’t come out of his basement,’ Trump said during a ‘FOX & Friends’ appearance in 2020. ‘Somebody like Biden, he doesn’t know what to do.’
‘He doesn’t come out because he can’t. He doesn’t take any questions from reporters… This guy doesn’t come out of his basement, and he hasn’t taken one question.’
Election filings that were publicized on Wednesday showed that Trump raised $20 million for his campaign in February, while Biden’s campaign raised $53 million. Going into March, Trump’s camp had $41.9 million in hand, while Biden’s had $155 million.
Reuters correspondent Nandita Bose tweeted a screenshot of the Biden campaign’s email titled ‘Not a Winning Campaign: Broke Don Hides in Basement’ on Thursday.
Political strategist Ashley Hayek criticized the Biden campaign’s name-calling email while speaking with Fox News Digital on Saturday.
‘Crooked Joe’s campaign just can’t keep up,’ Hayek said. ‘Not only does he fail at mocking Teflon Don, he highlights his own department’s illegal seizure of the Trump empire, reminding Americans of the alarming overreach by his administration.’
‘Gallup polling shows that 66% of Americans view the DOJ negatively, [which is] purely a reflection of his failure of leadership,’ she added. ‘Biden would be better off running from the basement again.’
Trump campaign communications director Steven Cheung lambasted the Biden campaign email in a statement to Fox News Digital.
‘If Crooked Joe’s broken brain campaign thinks it can play this game better than we can, they are in for a rude awakening,’ Cheung wrote. ‘They have a cognitively impaired freakshow candidate who literally embarrasses himself every time he opens his mouth or shuffles his feet, only to fall on his ass for the world to see.’
Fox News Digital reached out to the Biden campaign for comment.
Fox News Digital’s Bradford Betz and Brooke Singman contributed to this report.