A recent ad from President Joe Biden's campaign highlights claims that former President Donald Trump described fallen American soldiers as "suckers" and "losers" and it got under Trump's skin so much that he demanded Biden take it down.
In interviews with The Daily Beast, current and former Trump insiders say that the ad does a good job of picking at some of Trump's own insecurities.
“He just has no concept of service, that’s the main thing here,” one former Trump official told the publication, referring to Trump getting out of being drafted to serve in Vietnam with an eyebrow-raising medical diagnosis of "bone spurs." “So it’s really difficult for him to imagine why people would even [serve in combat]. It’s just a whole foreign thing to him.”
Want more breaking political news? Click for the latest headlines at Raw Story.
Another Republican strategist suggested that simply using the word "loser" in the vicinity of Trump was enough to trigger a psychological backlash.
‘That's the Kool-Aid’: Republicans triple down on Trump the morning after guilty verdict
"The biggest insult to him to get under his skin is that he lost in 2020, he lost his court case and he’s convicted now," said the strategist. "You can call him fat, call him an insurrectionist, call him a racist [but] that’s just not gonna stick."
The strategist added that portraying Trump as a loser is a surefire way for Democrats to wage psychological warfare against him.
“I think his deepest fear, or the deepest psychology with Donald Trump is that he [didn’t win] the 2020 election [when] he’s won everything in life,” they explained. “That’s the pressure. He’s married hot women, he built famous buildings, he had a highly rated, successful TV show. And he became president, right?”
On the campaign trail, President Joe Biden has continuously taunted Trump over his 2020 loss, which Trump furiously tried to overturn in an effort that culminated in a deadly riot at the United States Capitol building.