McLaughlin to Newsmax: Biden Worried About Trump, RFK Jr.

President Joe Biden’s reelection announcement early Tuesday appeared “slapped together,” and that was most likely “out of weakness,” pollster Jim McLaughlin said on Newsmax shortly after the campaign video was released.

“Having been involved with President [Donald] Trump’s reelection announcement, and we’ve all seen this in the past, it’s usually months of preparation, and there’s usually some strategy that goes on,” McLaughlin told Newsmax’s “Wake Up America.”

But Biden’s announcement, released on a pre-recorded video early Tuesday, looks like it was “put together really quickly and hastily,” said McLaughlin, adding that’s probably because Biden’s campaign was worried about environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to run for the 2024 Democrat Party’s nomination and because it was worried about Trump.

“I think they were worried about Donald Trump surging in the polls right now, and I think they were also trying to look for some sort of a reset right now because Joe Biden’s negatives are so high,” said McLaughlin.

He also noted that Biden made his announcement with a video, but not with “thousands of adoring fans … I don’t think they could find 1,000 adoring fans to do that.”

McLaughlin also said that Biden “doesn’t look good” in the video.

“He looks old,” said McLaughlin. “He doesn’t sound good. He sounds weak in his own video … the other interesting thing is [that] there weren’t a lot of issues in there. I mean, he basically doesn’t even talk about issues.”

Meanwhile, a new Morning Consult poll Tuesday shows Trump with a 37-point lead over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for the 2024 race, coming while the Florida Republican is making overseas trips to Japan and Israel, but McLaughlin said that his company does polling in Israel that shows that Trump is the “most popular politician in Israel.”

“The Israeli people know he has their backs,” said McLaughlin. “I think this trip by Ron DeSantis was being done out of weakness. He wanted to look like a statesman. He wanted to look presidential.”

But Trump has been “talking issues” because “in comparison to Joe Biden’s record of failure his record of success looks great to the voters.”

An NBC News poll showed that 53% of voters who supported Biden in 2020 are saying he shouldn’t run, and McLaughlin said the “only way” Biden can win those voters back is if “he starts showing some wins and some successes on real issues.”

“We’ve got a bad economy,” he said. “We’re weak around the world, and that’s just the recipe for disaster for the president. It’s all about the two Ps, peace and prosperity, and we don’t have that right now in the world.”