Trump could quit race over repeated gaffes claims former Ambassador
'If he starts to feel he’s losing it, it would be the one reason he would not go ahead,' claimed Joe Hockey in exclusive interview.
Donald Trump would quit the Presidential race if he felt he was starting to lose his cognitive abilities, Australia’s former Ambassador to the United States Joe Hockey has claimed.
Trump recently confused his GOP rival Nikki Haley with former House Speaker and veteran Democrat Nancy Pelosi. He also seemed to suggest that E. Jean Carroll — who successfully sued him for defamation — was running for office and has previously wrongly claimed he ran against Barack Obama.
Haley has attacked Trump as constantly ‘confused’ and has questioned his mental fitness.
‘I do think that he is in decline and I think that he needs to know to step away,’ Haley told NBC’s Meet The Press on Sunday.
Trump, who has previously described himself as a ‘stable genius,’ declared: ‘I feel sharper now than I did 20 years ago … and I think anybody running for president should take an aptitude or a cognitive test.’
Hockey said Haley’s attacks, which have been gleefully redistributed by President Joe Biden, marked the first significant blow she had managed to land on the frontrunner.
In an interview with Latika Takes in London, Hockey, who had a front-row seat to the Trump Administration during his time as Australia’s top diplomat in Washington DC between 2016 — 2020, said that repeated gaffes were the one thing that would get to Trump.
‘The one thing that I know Donald Trump would be most concerned about is if his cognitive ability is seriously an issue,’ Hockey said.
‘If he starts to feel he’s losing it, it would be the one reason he would not go ahead, he would stop himself, that’s the one thing he’d stop himself on, from what I hear.’
‘He’s a very proud person, he would be very concerned.’
Hockey, whose firm Bondi Partners operates in the three AUKUS countries and counts Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney as one of its advisers, said he believed Trump was on course to clinch the GOP nomination.
Age and mental competence are already themes of the US election with opinion polls showing voters think Biden, aged 81, is too old to be seeking re-election for another term. But Trump who is just four years younger than Biden has largely managed to evade the same scrutiny when it comes to his mental rigour.
Hockey said Trump would try and frame the Presidential race as one between himself and Vice-President Kamala Harris.
‘Trump says - let’s be honest with ourselves, Joe Biden in 12 months time is going to be sitting in a corner of a nursing home dribbling, Kamala Harris becomes President – this election is really between me and Kamala Harris,’ Hockey said.
‘The question in my mind is not whether Donald Trump can beat Joe Biden but whether Donald Trump can beat Kamala Harris because that’s the way I think the election will go.’
FiveThirtyEight shows Harris’ disapproval rating at 53.5 per cent and polling conducted by J.L. Partners for DailyMail.com between 15-20 December shows half of voters want Biden to choose a different running mate.
Trump’s disapproval is currently higher at 55 per cent but the margin between his approval and disapproval ratings – 11 points – is smaller than Harris’ which is currently 16 points.
Trump is currently outpolling Biden.
Don’t offend Trump
During his tenure, Australia was exempted from Trump’s steel tariffs imposed on friendly countries including the European Union and Trump even agreed to honour an Obama deal to take some of Australia’s unwanted boat people.
Hockey said Australia was able to achieve this because the government, led by Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull didn’t fall into the trap of criticising Trump, even though doing so could have been domestically popular.
Keir Starmer is poised to return Labour to government in the UK later this year setting up a showdown with his supporters who loathe the bombastic Trump, including the London Mayor Sadiq Khan who recently told the Fabians’ annual conference at Guildhall that if Trump returned, ‘as long as I’m there, I won’t be scared to say boo to a goose.’
But he said insulting Trump was not the way to go.
‘Trump’s a pugilist, he’s a showman and it’s all about Trump - he’s a narcissist,” he said.
‘If Trump wins, it will have an impact here in the UK.
‘Don’t offend him, publicly, privately you can go as hard as you want, which I’ve always done,’ Hockey said adding that the first thing Trump would do if restored to the White House would be to draw up a list of his perceived enemies.
‘The first unit that he’ll set up is a research unit that will provide him with information on everyone who’s ever been personally critical of him,’ Hockey said.
‘His enemies and his critics have the most to fear, some in the media – he’ll have a very long memory.’
This could prove problematic not just for UK Labour but also the Australian Labor government because Hockey’s replacement as Ambassador, former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, has previously declared Trump ‘a traitor to the West,’ said he was widely perceived as ‘nuts,’ and was ‘the most destructive President in history.’
Hockey said Rudd had been working very hard on building relationships with Republicans in the event of a second Trump Administration but when asked if that would be enough, he said: ‘I don’t know, for the sake of my country, I hope so.’
Hockey was emphatic that the American institutions could withstand a resurrected Trump, who is facing 91 felony counts in four criminal cases, including 13 relating to his alleged participation in trying to overturn the 2020 election results and a further four in a federal case.
Trump’s refusal to accept Biden’s win in 2020 led to the January 6 insurrection which Democrats accuse him of inciting. Trump has demanded complete immunity given his status as a past president and has also threatened to destroy the ‘deep state’ which he believes is against him.
But Hockey said that even though the US President was Commander-in-Chief they were not ‘all-powerful’ and said he doubted Trump returning to the Presidential stage as either candidate or victor would lead to political violence.
‘If Americans have to choose between King Donald or freedom of the constitution and the rule of law, they will always choose the latter, always.’