The President Is Getting Desperate

President Donald Trump is picking fights with cable networks, pressuring his Justice Department to carry out political prosecutions, and showing all-around desperation as national polls show him badly trailing former Vice President Joe Biden. 

With less than two weeks until Election Day, Trump is trailing in nearly every swing state, and Biden has put states previously thought to be out of reach—such as Texas and Georgia—into play. Biden is up 8.5 points nationally, according to aggregator RealClearPolitics.

That’s bringing out an even more vicious Trump than usual. After he slammed top public health advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci this week after Fauci’s interview with ‘60 Minutes,’ Trump ignited a controversy of his own based around the TV show by threatening to release video of the interview before the show airs on Sunday.

“I am pleased to inform you that, for the sake of accuracy in reporting, I am considering posting my interview with Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes, PRIOR TO AIRTIME!” Trump tweeted Tuesday. “This will be done so that everybody can get a glimpse of what a FAKE and BIASED interview is all about…”

Trump’s threat came amid reports that he walked out of the interview, which took place Monday at the White House. After a 45-minute solo interview with Stahl, Trump walked out in a fit of frustration and didn’t return for a planned joint interview with Vice President Mike Pence, according to CNN. 

Trump also tweeted out a clip of a maskless Stahl in the White House, adding that there was “much more to come.” The video of Stahl was taken immediately following the interview and before she was able to put her mask back on, according to CNN. 

Trump also stepped up his attacks on Hunter Biden on Tuesday, publicly calling on Attorney General William Barr to “appoint somebody” to prosecute the former vice president’s son following the much-criticized New York Post report suggesting Biden was complicit in corruption in Ukraine. “We have got to get the attorney general to act. He’s got to act and he’s got to act fast," Trump said in an appearance on ‘Fox & Friends’.

“This is major corruption and this has to be known about before the election,” Trump said.

Trump has been hitting the campaign trail particularly hard in states he won in 2016. On Monday, before heading to a rally in Arizona—a state the Democrats have carried in just two presidential elections since the end of World War II—he told reporters that he wasn’t “running scared” but rather “running angry,” and accused the media of failing to adequately cover the Hunter Biden story to his liking. 

On Tuesday, he began a rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, with a frank admission that he’s playing defense in a state where his thin margin of victory was key to his 2016 win.

“Before the plague came in, I had it made. I wasn’t coming to Erie,” Trump said. “I mean, I have to be honest, there was no way I was coming. We had this thing won.”