Laura, you've covered the White House.
What is -- what did Joe Biden learning from this last week about Trump and how to deal with Trump?
What are Biden's advisers learning?
LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Well, Joe Biden actually was another person that was trying to get under Trump's skin this week.
And in recent weeks, I mean, on the stump, he has started calling Trump a loser, saying he's a loser, a big loser, he lost in 2020.
And that is an attempt to get under Donald Trump's skin, to see him get distracted and go after Biden.
And so I think that we can expect to see President Biden deploy those types of tactics more often.
Just today, he tweeted out, his account tweeted out, that he was basically owning this strategy of, yes, I'm going to try to get under his skin, because they think that it works.
I mean, right now also, the president is trying to focus more on just really creating this contrast between him and Trump, that it is all about him and Donald Trump, that there is no Nikki Haley in the race, and that he is the Republican standard bearer.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Chuck, stay on this subject for a minute.
Is that going to be an effective tactic?
Can Joe Biden throw Donald Trump, the master of the low road tactic?
Can he throw Donald Trump off his game?
CHUCK TODD: He could, but there's always this fine line because, you know, if Joe Biden does something that is considered, like take the DNC's statement, trash talking Asa Hutchinson, right, and it was sort of like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't, you know, there's always this line that the public will, in some ways, punish Biden if he or punish anybody that tries to behave like Trump.
ASHLEY PARKER: Like Rubio in 2016.
CHUCK TODD: I was thinking Rubio -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Rubio trying to go low.
He didn't go low enough.
CHUCK TODD: I think there is getting under his skin, but it's sort of like he's still got to be the grown up, right, like he's got to do it while also staying the grown up.
I will say this about Biden.
Like I said, I think this has been the best week he's had in a long time, both the consumer sentiment.
I think there was proof here that there isn't -- I mean, New Hampshire could have been a disaster, right?
First in the nation, grumpy New Hampshire Democrats, and he took it away.
Gaza is something that's unpopular with progressives, right?
This could have easily been turned into something that would have hung him out to dry politically.
And it was just the opposite.
So, I think he's shown real strength.
I'll say this.
If he's, poll numbers have improved by April 1, then I do think you'll have another round of hand-wringing.
ASHLEY PARKER: And one very brief point on one challenge, at some point, there will actually be an official Republican nominee, same with the Democratic nominee.
But one challenge for Biden now is that the nation sort of still collectively cannot believe that we are going to have a rerun of 2020 with these same two guys, like Democrats cannot imagine.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Can the nation believed that or is the nation not fully focused?
CHUCK TODD: I mean, I think they're in the stages of -- they're not an acceptance.
ASHLEY PARKER: Yes, they're not an acceptance.
And so Democrats like cannot imagine that Trump will actually bring themselves to imagine that Trump will actually be the Republican nominee again and Republicans truly cannot imagine that Democrats would put up Biden.
And so one challenge for Biden now is, as Laura was saying, he wants to make it all about Trump, not about Nikki Haley, because he thinks when it's a one-on-one contest, he wins.
We'll see if that's the case.
But it is hard to make it one-on-one against Trump when the nation is like, isn't there just something like a little more energetic, guys?
CHUCK TODD: Guess who's not going to complain if media decides to put Trump rallies on T.V.
all the time, the Biden campaign.
They want Trump platformed and front and center all the time.
They think the agitation helps them.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: That, in other words, all of the court cases combined with these new strategies of more Trump's under the skin strategy, more Trump is better.
But that sounds like - CHUCK TODD: Risky, I think.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, because last time, they put Trump on T.V.
quite a bit and then Trump became president.
TOM NICHOLS: But when he was president and he was going on every afternoon supposedly to do briefings about COVID and he would go into these kind of freeform, you know, tone poems of grievance and anger, his number started to drop.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Wait, I want to write that, freeform tone poems of grievance and anger.
It could be the name of your autobiography.
Yes.
TOM NICHOLS: That was my college cars tribute.
But, you know, they finally -- his own staff came to him and said, please stop talking to the country every day, because they knew how damaging it was.
And I think the Biden campaign -- I think I've always believed the more you put Trump on T.V., the more people seek Trump and say, oh, wow, I didn't realize, you know, or I'd forgotten that's what he really sounds like.
