Benzinga - by Shanthi Rexaline, Benzinga Editor.
On Thursday, Mary Trump, the niece of former President Donald Trump, weighed in on the possibility of her uncle accepting President Joe Biden’s challenge of two televised debates, his lawsuit and a potential second term.
Presidential Debate: Mary Trump expressed skepticism about the debate occurring and its potential usefulness.
“I think it remains to be seen whether or not it actually happens, and I’m of two minds about this,” she said in Zeteo’s Mehdi Unfiltered podcast.
“On the one hand, I’m glad that Biden is going after Donald and kind of calling his bluff,” she said. “I was saying back in 2020 that I thought he really needed to go hard after Donald’s deficiency. So I’m glad he’s sort of taking the gloves off.”
On the flip side, giving him a platform would be legitimizing his actions, Mary Trump, a psychologist, said.
“It concerns me that he’s legitimizing a man who incited an insurrection against his own government by putting him up on that stage with him,” she said.
“He’s potentially normalizing him as the presidential nominee, when quite frankly, he’s a traitor to this country. So that worries me.”
That said, the psychologist thinks a debate is unlikely, given her view that “Donald is nothing if not a coward.”
If it does happen, Mary Trump said she wants the president to be more on the offensive against her uncle. She added she sees a repeat of what happened in 2020.
“Donald is a chaos agent. But this time, hopefully, President Biden will be much more attacking,” she said.
Setting Bar Lower For Biden: When asked about the Trump camp’s claims of Biden being intellectually and mentally degraded, Mary Trump said these arguments lost traction after Biden’s State of the Union address, leading to a temporary halt in such attacks.
Mary Trump pointed that it was her uncle who, in fact, allegedly fell asleep in his criminal trial.
“I don’t think those attacks carry the same weight that they might have done,” she added of the criticism aimed at Biden.
Trial Proceedings Bothering Trump? Mary Trump said that for Donald Trump, the real humiliation in the New York hush-money criminal trial comes from having to listen to testimony from people he considers enemies, rather than from losing control in the courtroom.
The psychologist and podcaster said there were some mitigating factors that she did not anticipate. She referred to the many members of Congress “who were willing to sell their soul and undermine American democracy and the rule of law by acting as extensions of ego and breaking the gag order on his behalf when Donald Trump isn’t allowed to do so.”
Vengeance Presidency? “We cannot overstate how dangerous a second term would be,” Mary Trump said of a potential win for her uncle.
“It’s unthinkable what that man is capable of, for most people, which is why I don’t think people are taking him seriously as they should,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter if he’s a foolish clown. He’s a dangerous man who is being enabled by an entire political party who will have essentially unlimited power … It’s insane to put him back in the Oval office,” she added.
Mary Trump said the relaxed attitude about a potential second Trump term is terrifying and attributed it to a failure in messaging by the corporate media. She added there’s a split screen between Donald Trump, the criminal defendant, and Donald Trump, the candidate.
“The former seems to have absolutely no impact upon the latter because of the way it’s framed in the corporate media,” she said.
She said people are also not paying attention.
“It’s the same two candidates. It’s not interesting,” she said, adding that she hoped this attitude would change after Labor Day.
Biden Alternative: Mary Trump also weighed on potential alternative candidates for Biden, given his not-so-flattering poll numbers.
“It’s pretty late. If they wanted to do that, it would have had to be at least two years ago,” she said.
“And it’s a very similar reaction I have to 2016 when people were saying that Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate, and my response was, compared to whom? Donald Trump is the worst candidate in American history, and we know that,” she said.
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