Donald Trump Advisers Reportedly Pessimistic About Election, Believe Joe Biden Will Win

President Donald Trump’s advisers are becoming increasingly pessimistic about the 2020 presidential election and believe that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden will win, Axios reported on Friday.

Three senior advisers who recently talked to campaign manager Bill Stepien told Axios that he seemed “darkly pessimistic.”

On top of that, the campaign appears to be struggling to overcome internal rifts, since it is “filled with internal blaming and pre-spinning of a potential loss, accelerating a dire mood that’s driven by a daily barrage of bleak headlines.”

Stepien has reportedly told staff members to pay no attention to public polling, urging them to take things week by week.

In private conversations, however, he has allegedly likened Trump’s re-election effort to an airplane flying through turbulence, saying that the main goal is to “safely land.”

According to one adviser, Trump is largely to blame for the situation.

“A lot of this is the president himself. You can’t heal a patient who doesn’t want to take the diagnosis.”

Those critical of Stepien told the publication that he has repeatedly refused to make unpopular decisions, fearing retribution from Trump.

Others, however, believe that the commander-in-chief has several paths to victory and claim that Stepien can’t do much to curb his worst impulses.

Trump has, for instance, repeatedly refused to clearly embrace mask-wearing, even though public polling shows that most Americans believe it is important.

Stepien reportedly agrees that Trump has multiple ways of getting re-elected, provided that he wins Ohio, Florida, Iowa, Georgia and Maine’s second congressional district.

Trump and his team have seemingly refused to commit to a single path and appear to have decided that the best way forward is to keep all options open.

“The notion will be, probably at some point in the next week we’ll be making some decisions on where we place our bets and how we do it,” one official said, adding that both the commander-in-chief and members of his family will be “everywhere” in the coming weeks.

In recent days, Trump has reportedly asked confidants for advice, wondering whether he needs to modify his strategy. Still, those familiar with the situation don’t expect any major changes and believe that only the president himself can improve his standing.

“In terms of really changing the trajectory of the race. there’s only one person, from either side, who can do that. And that’s Trump,” an individual briefed on the matter said.

As previously reported by The Inquisitr, longtime Republican strategists Dan Judy and Brad Blakeman have argued that Trump needs to change his approach, noting that the attacks that worked on Hillary Clinton four years ago clearly aren’t working on Biden.