Donald Trump and his coterie have grown increasingly anxious over what they view as the Teflon quality of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Nothing sticks.
Trump's campaign operatives have reportedly placed negative stories about other top Democratic candidates and kicked back to soak in the results, reports the Daily Beast. In fact, following Warren's missteps with DNA testing regarding her Native American heritage, Team Trump delighted in what they figured was her early demise. But instead of crumbling, Warren's campaign has been on a steady rise ever since she regained her footing from the flap.
“We all push out the bad Warren stories but they don’t go very far,” one Republican strategist told the Beast. That person and others close to Trump said they have mounted continued efforts to land blows to Warren's candidacy that have almost all fallen flat. Worse yet, Trump himself may have already squandered what they view as his best shot at Warren and failed. Even Trump remarked wistfully about his missed opportunity at a rally last month.
“I did the Pocahontas thing. I hit her really hard, and it looked like she was down and out, but that was too long ago,” Trump told his revelers in New Hampshire. "I should have waited," he added, promising to "revive" the offensive slur against Warren.
The lack of traction is starting to wear on strategists heading into a campaign cycle with one of the most deeply unpopular incumbent presidents in history. “Sure the Republican base will ultimately loathe Warren, but she doesn’t inspire the same kind of historic vitriol that Hillary Clinton did,” another GOP strategist observed. “That, combined with [the] fact that SCOTUS isn’t on the line as it was in ’16, and remembering that Trump needed the perfect inside straight to barely win last time, and any Democrat is going to be tough to beat, Warren included.”
Even Trump is coming around to the idea that Warren is a "tougher" political opponent than he thought, quizzing his allies about whether they view Warren as a "fighter." It's a far cry from when they thought matching up against Warren in the general election would be a cakewalk for Trump.
But GOP strategists assured the Beast that more attacks were coming—ones that should work. “If we’re having these same conversations in eight weeks, that’s a very different conversation,” noted Doug Heye, a Republican strategist. If all else fails, maybe Trump can just draw some horns on a picture of her with his Sharpie and see if that does the trick.