Donald Trump‘s tangent over the weekend about late golfer Arnold Palmer’s genitalia—an apparent preoccupation of his—left CNN anchor Jake Tapper perplexed as to how such comments could win over the undecided voters that the former president needs.
“I’ve never heard anything like that. I’m not offended, I don’t care,” Tapper said Monday on The Lead. “But I do wonder: How many voters does that get you, of the people that are in this undecided pool?”
Tapper posed the question to Kristin Davison, a GOP strategist who was COO of a pro-Ron DeSantis Super PAC, Never Back Down, last year.
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“Well, I think the undecided pool is shrinking,” Davison said. “We really don‘t have that many undecided voters. It’s really, are you going to vote or you’re not?”
“We have two different realities going on. We have one campaign that’s running to win people to the team, to persuade them,” she continued, noting that Vice President Kamala Harris has been quoting Ronald Reagan and emphasizing her support among prominent Republicans like former Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney.
“We have another campaign that is really just trying to gin up base turnout,” Davison said of Trump’s presidential effort. “And so, in that instance, I don’t think it wins over the Nikki Haley voter.”
Haley, even after suspending her campaign in early March, continued to receive hundreds of thousands of votes in the remaining primaries and caucuses. And while the former South Carolina governor later endorsed Trump, she hasn’t appeared with him at campaign stops or at pro-Trump events.
When asked on Fox News last week about potentially having Haley in a more visible role, Trump didn’t seem to like the idea.
“I’ll do what I have to do,” he said, before bragging about beating her “badly.”
