By Tara Suter - 06/25/24

George Conway, the pundit and frequent antagonist of former President Trump, called the presumptive GOP nominee for president a “global, planetary joke” on a recent podcast episode.

“In MAGA land they don’t appreciate what a global, planetary joke Donald Trump is to the world,” Conway said on a Thursday episode of the “George Conway Explains it All (To Sarah Longwell)” podcast. “They think of Donald Trump as this tough guy who scares everybody.”

Longwell, a Republican strategist and critic of Trump, and Conway were discussing the upcoming debate between Trump and former President Biden, as well as legal hurdles the former president is facing.

“I think one of the things the Biden campaign needs to do going into the — into this debate — over Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday of next week, is start going after Trump in ways that make him very annoyed,” Conway said on the podcast. “Talking about the convictions, making fun of his slurred speech, doing all of those things, but doing it in overdrive in the three or four days leading to the debate.”

The remarks were first highlighted by HuffPost on Monday.

Biden and Trump are set to debate Thursday night in Atlanta on CNN. Trump has admitted that he interrupted Biden “too much” in their first debate back in 2020, which The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman noted last week. The former president’s performance in that debate was notably widely panned.

“He has said to people multiple times that he knows that he interrupted too much in the first debate with Biden in 2020, and having just rewatched that debate recently, it’s really striking,” Haberman said.

“I mean, we all talked about it at the time, but Biden could barely get a word in edgewise, and Biden was kind of smiling throughout as this was happening,” Haberman added.

The Hill has reached out to the Trump campaign.