A former senior advisor to Hillary Clinton said this week he does not think Hillary has any chance of defeating President Donald Trump in 2020 and stopping him serving a second term.
During an interview for National Review reporter Jamie Weinstein’s podcast, Philippe Reines said that at this point he would bet serious money on President Trump being comfortably reelected in 2020.
The lifelong liberal also offered a back-handed compliment to the president, saying that Trump will remain impervious to political convention or attacks by the mainstream media.
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“He is a freak of nature, and it doesn’t matter if he’s dumb or not. It doesn’t matter what I think. He is a bulldozer,” Reines said.
Politco reports: Reines said he thinks Trump would beat out what is sure to be a large field of Democrats “for a lot of reasons. Also because moments in history like this tend to not get resolved.”
“The only two presidents in the last 85 years that have been denied a second term: Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. And both because they had, as a sign of trouble, they had serious primary challengers,” he continued.
Asked which Democrat he thinks has the best shot at beating their party’s opponents in a primary as well as the president, Reines responded: “I don’t know.”
“I think there are people out there who would make great presidents; I just don’t know how you would get through both” the Democratic primary and the general election, he said, adding that the two are a “different dynamic” of campaign.
“I always think of it this way, that if the election were held tomorrow, stick in a name, would Trump win,” Reines said, throwing in the names of a few celebrities. “I have a hard time thinking of … I think Tom Hanks would win, I think The Rock would win. I have a hard time seeing how a lot of the people who are running would win. Just as comparison.”
Reines, however, argued to POLITICO last month that his former boss should not be completely written off as a viable 2020 candidate, adding that there’s a “not zero” chance of Clinton making a third run at the White House. He later told The Hill that Clinton was “more likely to win the Powerball” than run again.
