[Music] join now is New York time senior political correspondent Maggie Haberman so if Trump is in fact rattled by vice president Harris is it clear to you what it is specifically that rattles him so well I think there's two things Anderson number one uh she's closed the polling Gap with him in a pretty short amount of time and he had gotten very used to running against Joe Biden that was comfortable for him he knew what the line of attack was and his campaign had spent a lot of time and money on it uh but she is a woman and she is a black woman and uh both of those factors have proven pretty challenging for him in the past uh you know yes he is his his allies will say he is an equal opportunity offender and he goes after everybody and it's certainly true that he insults a wide variety of people but he has seemed to really struggle with women opponents women critics and particularly black women who are critics it is also just remarkable how kind of regurg ated many of the messages coming from Trump are not just regurgitated by Trump from years past you know going after Barack Obama you know talking about his his name pointing out his middle name raising questions about the origin his Origins but but regurgitated from dozens of American political races in our history I mean calling people marxists and Communists and demonizing people of color Trump is a man of few moves and so we have seen him make the same ones over and over you are correct that he is trying to run against kamla Harris the same way that he attacked uh President Obama when Obama was in office and Trump was uh flirting with the idea of running for president in 2011 and was promoting the birth or lie uh that suggesting that the first black president was not legitimate to serve you can see his campaign if you look at the the Trump War Room account on Twitter um they are they are trying pretty hard to bait her and to bait Democrats uh into a fight about race uh and you know that has been something so far that the Harris campaign has not taken the bait on um but this is something that we have seen him do before it is something that uh comes up has come up in in other races again we will see what this race looks like in the fall but so far the Harris campaign has been pretty focused on what it wants to talk about and it's not what Donald Trump wants to talk about is it clear to you I mean does he still receive you know messages from I mean does he still talked to all sort of a whole strange cast of Misfit toy characters um throughout the day I mean CN has been reporting that some Trump allies are concerned that he's more susceptible to Fringe conspiracy theories when he's most vulnerable who who has his ear right now yeah Jonathan Swan and I reported this weekend about the fact that that he is so disoriented has left him pretty susceptible uh to being manipulated he's actually we just reported that he has a meeting planned with Mariam Adon uh the the Widow of the casino magnet Sheldon nson uh this week at Bedminster and this comes after he attacked her abruptly out of nowhere uh over text through one of his AIDS a couple of weeks ago he has a lot of people around him who either support conspiracy theories or don't like what they see as the establishment or are critical of certain kinds of Republicans and when he is feeling cornered he tends to listen to those people he is clearly feeling cornered right now he's also I mean the fact that he's still talking about the crowd sizes which was you know from the earliest days of him in the white house he was you know we all remember the sea Spicer you know having to kind of sadly go up and and you know back him up on on these crowd siiz claim yeah it feels very familiar again man of few moves and again these are moves that he makes when he is uh under strain or anxiety or uncertainty and he tends to be at his at his most erratic look the number of people um who we have spoken to who who just say that he he seems on edge uh is not small