GOP official calls Democratic infighting a 'dream scenario' for Trump's campaign

(Image credit: Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

published 10 February 2020

Democratic presidential candidates are tearing each other apart, and President Trump's re-election team is loving it.

Billionaire philanthropist Tom Steyer used Friday's debate to tear up former Vice President Joe Biden over a campaign attack. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) spent the debate criticizing former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's attempts to "buy [his] way into a nomination." And pretty much everyone was united in going after former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg for his lack of experience.

All of that, a GOP operative tells Politico, means the Trump campaign "doesn't have to do anything but step back and watch the Democrats demolish themselves." "If you had asked me at the beginning of all of this which Democrats would be the weakest to run against from the moderate and the progressive lanes," this operative said he'd have cited Buttigieg and Sanders. That's exactly who's leading the pack coming out of the Iowa caucuses, leading to a "dream scenario" for Trump, the operative added.

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Meanwhile, Biden, a candidate Trump once feared enough to try and get damaging information about from Ukraine, isn't even getting mentioned in the Trump camp anymore, Politico reports. Biden's name "is now hardly mentioned in conversations with the president's aides ... unless they're mocking him," Politico writes. And after his dismal fourth-place Iowa finish, well, "it looks like he's competing against himself," a top Trump aide said.

Read more about how the Trump campaign is viewing the Democratic melee at Politico.

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Kathryn is a graduate of Syracuse University, with degrees in magazine journalism and information technology, along with hours to earn another degree after working at SU's independent paper The Daily Orange. She's currently recovering from a horse addiction while living in New York City, and likes to share her extremely dry sense of humor on Twitter.