Morning Joe examines 'deep panic' in Trump's re-election campaign

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough and John Heilemann agreed President Donald Trump was in a "bad place" politically, six months out from Election Day.

The "Morning Joe" host said the president's support from seniors has been wiped out by the coronavirus crisis, and Scarborough said the campaign was spending money in some reliable Trump strongholds -- which he said was a bad sign for his re-election chances.

"Time to look at your operation and see how you got in such bad shape in May, or start looking at yourself and asking why you keep inflicting damage on your own campaign," Scarborough said. "Insulting women, insulting doctors, the medical community. Donald, the conspiracy theories, they're not working."

Heilemann agreed that Trump's focus on his base was a warning sign for his 2020 campaign.

"At this moment in Donald Trump's political operation, there is so much panic over the erosion of the president's base," Heilemann said.

"When you're president of the United States and you run for re-election, the year that you run, by the time you get to the spring, if you're in any position to win, you are already so confident of your base vote, that you have got it locked down and locked away and you know that you have the win number that you need with the core of your electorate and with the right percentage of Republicans," Heilemann added.

A popular president would have solidified his base and party behind him by now, but Heilemann said Trump's spending reveals deep worry within his campaign about November.

"By the spring you're thinking about how do you destroy the other guy and build your own vote?" he said, "and go to states that you didn't win last time and improve your margins with groups that you didn't do that well last time. That's not the campaign that they're running. Their base is hemorrhaging. He's down with non-college whites against Joe Biden versus 2016, he's down with men overall against Joe Biden versus 2016. He is down, or as you just pointed out, with seniors dramatically, like fatally if the election were held today."

"That is what the [Barack] Obama fixation is about, it's about trying to shore up his base," he added, "and the cost of it is everything you just said. The cost of it is the suburbs, the cost of it is educated voters across the board of all races and genders, and the cost of it is, of course, any chance to even make small gains with African American voters. But that's the position they're in right now. They're in the position where their base is not nailed down, so that's job one for Donald Trump right now, and for that to be job one for an incumbent president in the middle of May of a re-election year, you are in some deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, deep bad business -- bad place to be."