Fox’s Gasparino: GOP operatives raising possibility Trump ‘could drop out of race’ if polls don’t rebound

A Fox News report on Sunday says that “GOP operatives are for the first time raising the possibility” that President Trump could drop out of the 2020 presidential race “if his poll numbers don’t rebound” against presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

The report by Fox Business Network senior correspondent Charlie Gasparino, political reporter Andrew O’Reilly and producer Lydia Moynihan comes as the former vice president leads the Republican incumbent by 9.2 points in the RealClearPolitics index of major polls.

The lead for Biden was 5.5 points right before the police killing of George Floyd, which sparked protests and unrest throughout the country. This came amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 120,000 people in the United States. Trump has been heavily criticized for the administration’s response to the crisis.

“It’s too early, but if the polls continue to worsen, you can see a scenario where he drops out,” a GOP operative who asked to remain anonymous told Fox News.

Gasparino also reported that one “major player” within the Republican Party described “Trump’s current psyche as ‘fragile.'”

Gasparino said he’s “not convinced yet” that Trump will bow out. He noted that Biden has been largely pushed off the campaign trail by the coronavirus. 

BREAKING— (thread)GOP operatives are for the first time raising the possibility that @realDonaldTrump could drop out of the race if his poll numbers don’t rebound. Over the weekend I spoke to a sample of major players; one described Trumps current psyche as “fragile.” I’m

— Charles Gasparino (@CGasparino) June 28, 2020

not convinced yet; he’s got time and he’s running against an opponent who is literally hiding in his basement. Plus the public isn’t focusing yet on just how left wing @JoeBiden has become, so much so, he can bring himself to denounce rioting.

— Charles Gasparino (@CGasparino) June 28, 2020

The Trump campaign pushed back on the report, citing polling from the last election showing then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton with a similar lead in June 2016.

“This is the granddaddy of fake news,” Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh told the network. “Everyone knows that media polling has always been wrong about President Trump —­ they undersample Republicans and don’t screen for likely voters —­ in order to set false narratives. It won’t work. There was similar fretting in 2016 and if it had been accurate, Hillary Clinton would be in the White House right now.”

Clinton led Trump in the RealClearPolitics average of polls by 3.2 percent on Election Day and ended up winning the popular vote by 2.1 percentage points. 

Trump won the all-important Electoral College, however, by a 306-232 margin. Because some electors did not follow the votes of their states in the actual Electoral College vote, the final margin was 304-227, with seven votes cast for other candidates.