REPORT: Leaked Documents Show How Democrats Will Go After Trump In 2020
by Joseph Curl
September 10, 2019
The Democratic National Committee opposition research team has begun to set out how Democrats plan to go after President Trump in the 2020 election, according to a new report.
Democrats have collected piles of information laying out the president’s vulnerabilities, Axios reports. “The research includes roughly 7,000 lawsuits, as well an extensive document detailing every time then-candidate Trump told supporters at his 2016 campaign rallies that Mexico would pay for the wall.”
“The DNC research team has mined thousands of lawsuits from nearly 50 states as part of a massive new trove on President Trump that will be weaponized through pols and reporters in key battlegrounds,” Axios writes. Other details from Axios include:
- A source familiar said this document will likely find its way to local reporters, groups and Democrats in battleground states as Trump diverts funds from the military to pay for his border wall.
- The DNC has examples of what farmers and truckers say they feel about Trump’s tariffs, the way he’s “trashed American wheat,” and how the GOP tax law hurt truckers.
- They’ve combed through local news articles and monitored local cable interviews with residents in states like Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan, Arizona, Colorado, Florida and Texas to find these folks who are being hurt by Trump’s policies.
- And they’ve already filed “thousands” of Freedom of Information Act requests to get even more info on the president.
Axios says “using Trump’s specific actions and broken promises is how DNC chairman Tom Perez is advising party officials and surrogates to define him in states he won in 2016 that they think are crucial to their 2020 election efforts.”
Last week, some 20 Democratic operatives and strategists met, including Perez, who said the plan is to “make it about [Trump’s] performance as president, not his bigotry or awfulness,” according to one source in the room, Axios writes. “Prosecute the case that he is bad at his job and it is hurting people in real ways.”
- Democrats can point to “so many ways his actual policies have really hurt people or how he’s been ineffective in fulfilling his promises,” said one Democrat familiar with the DNC’s plans to define Trump in 2020.
- “Let’s say he goes to Youngstown, Ohio. We have everything he said, what he promised in 2016 to that community — maybe it’s ‘that bridge will be fixed’ — then we’ll show what’s actually happened since.”
See the full Axios report here.
