As Democrats debate whether or not President Biden should remain his party’s presidential nominee, former President Donald J. Trump has remained unusually silent on the issue in public.
Mr. Trump, who is not shy about sharing his views, has not been entirely silent since last week’s debate, giving a few radio interviews and continuing to post a steady stream of messages and videos on his social media platform, Truth Social. But Mr. Trump has largely stayed out of the spotlight and allowed the Democratic Party to dominate the debate over Mr. Biden’s political future, a sign that he is his preferred opponent.
After months of relentless attacks on Mr. Biden, whom he accuses of being too physically and mentally weak to lead the country, the former president has been content to let media coverage of Democrats’ doubts about their party’s leader take over, according to two advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss strategy.
His relative lack of public comment on the issue also reflects to some extent his desire to see Mr. Biden stay in the race and his confidence that he can easily beat the president in November, one of the advisers said.
A New York Times/Siena College poll taken after the debate and released Wednesday suggests that some Republican voters feel the same way: 28 percent said they thought Biden should remain the Democratic nominee, up from 21 percent in a poll taken before the debate.
On Monday, Mr. Trump publicly rejected the idea that the president would be replaced by the Democratic ticket.
“If you listen to the professionals who do this stuff, they say it’s very difficult for anyone else to get into the race,” Trump said in an interview with John Reid, a Virginia-based radio host.
And echoing an argument that Mr. Biden’s Democratic allies have long made that he is best positioned to beat the former president, Mr. Trump also argued that polls show that “Biden is doing better than the people they’re thinking of using to replace him.”
The day after the debate, he argued at a rally in Virginia that Mr. Biden had fared better in head-to-head matches against him than Vice President Kamala Harris, whom he would have “been very happy” to run against, or Michelle Obama, the former first lady.
Two polls released Tuesday somewhat belied that claim: A CNN poll found Ms. Harris with a two-point lead over Mr. Biden in a hypothetical contest against Mr. Trump, even if he had still beaten her. And an Ipsos/Reuters poll found that Mrs. Obama — an unlikely potential option for Democrats given that she has repeatedly said she has no interest in running — beat Mr. Trump, 50 percent to 39 percent, in a hypothetical matchup.
Mr. Trump appeared to revel in mocking his rival in a raw video first reported by The Daily Beast on Wednesday and later shared by Mr. Trump. It’s unclear who originally filmed the video or what day it was filmed. While golfing on his New Jersey estate, Mr. Trump called Mr. Biden “that broken-down old piece of shit” and suggested he would quit the race, according to the video of his comments.
If Mr. Biden were to step down, Mr. Trump would lose two lines of attack that have been central to his campaign. He has spent years attacking Mr. Biden as “sleepy,” posting videos of his missteps, mocking his speeches and cartoonishly imitating him — attacks he could not easily deploy against another opponent.
For months, Mr. Trump has tried to woo undecided voters by directly comparing his term to Mr. Biden’s, often in misleading terms. That message would be undermined if another candidate replaced Mr. Biden on the ticket.
A new opponent could open the door to new political challenges. Mr. Trump could face a younger opponent who could appeal to voters worried about the ages of both candidates and looking for new alternatives to two men who each had a chance at a White House term.
““I don’t think anyone on the Trump campaign has ever said they want Biden off the table,” said Corey Lewandowski, a longtime Trump adviser who is now an adviser to the Republican nominating convention. He added that the matchup between “two candidates that America knows very well and who have comparable records is a matchup that favors us enormously.”
The Heritage Foundation, a leading conservative group, is also exploring possible legal challenges it could pursue that would make it difficult to replace Mr. Biden on the ballot in some states if he withdraws.
Mike Howell, executive director of the Heritage Monitoring Project, said the group is targeting key states like Georgia, Nevada and Wisconsin, where laws could make it difficult to put another Democrat on the ballot.
In a statement released Wednesday, Mr. Trump’s two campaign managers, Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita, expressed confidence in Mr. Trump’s ability to “beat any Democrat” in November. They accused Democrats now attacking Mr. Biden of being hypocrites, saying that “each and every one of them has lied about Joe Biden’s cognitive health and supported his disastrous policies over the last four years.”
There are signs that some close to Mr. Trump are preparing more seriously for the possibility, however remote, of a runoff against another Democratic candidate this fall. The Trump campaign and his Republican allies have stepped up their attacks on Ms. Harris, who has long been a target of the right.
In their statement Wednesday, Mr. Trump’s campaign managers dubbed her “Kamala Harris, the sneering co-pilot,” mocking her mannerisms and directly linking her to Mr. Biden’s policies. During the debate, the campaign ran an ad suggesting that Mr. Biden was unfit to lead the country for a second term and warning that Ms. Harris was waiting in the wings to take over.
On Tuesday morning, Make America Great Again Inc., the main super PAC supporting Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, sent out a list of attacks on Ms. Harris that essentially claimed she would be no better than Mr. Biden, particularly on immigration, an issue that Mr. Trump has made central to his campaign.
On Wednesday, the House Republican campaign committee announced a new digital advertisement that linked Ms. Harris to Mr. Biden’s border policies. “Vote Republican. Stop Kamala,” the ad’s headline reads at the end.
“Any good election campaign considers every possible eventuality,” Lewandowski said. “The campaign strategy doesn’t change, but it would be a dereliction of duty not to be prepared if Joe Biden dropped out of the race.”
In the video clip released at his golf club, Mr Trump is already looking past Mr Biden and seeing Ms Harris as his likely opponent.
“That means we have Kamala,” Mr. Trump said. “I think she’s going to get better. She’s so bad. She’s so pathetic.”
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, a close Trump ally, issued a warning of sorts on social media about how the 2024 race could change if Harris becomes the nominee.
“I believe the Trump campaign realizes that the 2024 race could very soon shift dramatically away from Biden’s abilities and become a fight for the heart and soul of the country,” Graham wrote on X Wednesday afternoon.
And if that scenario comes to pass, Graham added, Republicans should “lean on President Trump’s ability to expand our party’s demographic reach in 2024.”
