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After imbibing days of wall-to-wall news coverage of the 2020 Democratic debates, President Trump seemed to feel a little left out. “The Democrats spent more time attacking Barack Obama than they did attacking me, practically,” he marveled. ... Delivering a reliably red-meat, 80-minute speech, Mr. Trump singled out former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and he seized on some of the more liberal proposals advanced by Democrats, including eliminating private health insurance in favor of a government-run system and providing health care coverage even to illegal immigrants. (Baker and Rogers, 8/1)

He mocked some of the leading Democratic contenders, reviving his nickname of “Sleepy” for Joe Biden, teasing Elizabeth Warren for claiming some Native American heritage and lashing the Democrats for their health care and immigration proposals. “The Democrats have never been so far outside the mainstream,” Trump claimed. (Lemire and Sewell, 8/1)

After two nights of debates between 20 presidential hopefuls that exposed a wide rift between the Democratic Party’s progressive and centrist wings, President Trump’s allies and Republican strategists said Thursday that they had gotten largely what they wanted: Five hours of a nationally televised clash where Democrats themselves questioned the practicality of prominent liberal wish-list items. ... “What the moderates were doing was pointing out that a large group of the Democrats running are simply out of sync with mainstream swing voters,” said Karl Rove, the former top political adviser to President George W. Bush’s two winning presidential campaigns. “The idea they’re going to provide illegal immigrants free health care, that’s not going to go down in union households in Michigan.” (Peters and Karni, 8/1)