Trump's campaign is struggling to find a more damaging nickname for Biden than 'Sleepy Joe,' report says

• The Trump campaign is scrambling for a more damaging nickname for Joe Biden than the "Sleepy Joe" tag the president has so far deployed, Axios reported.
• Trump's advisers are reportedly concerned that "Sleepy Joe" won't generate the hostility to Biden they need in order to damage his candidacy.
• Advisers are reportedly weighing other attack lines, including trying to paint Biden as corrupt, a puppet for radical leftists or as being in cognitive decline.
• Trump's reelection campaign is in serious trouble after his botched response to the coronavirus crisis and George Floyd protests, and he trails Biden in several swing states.

President Donald Trump's reelection campaign is trying to find a damaging new nickname for Joe Biden, whose popularity so far has not been significantly dented by Trump's jibes and attacks, reported Axios on Sunday.

Trump has deployed the nickname "sleepy Joe" against Biden, who is all-but-certain to become the Democratic Party's candidate for the presidency in November's election.

With Biden pulling ahead of Trump in a slew of swing states, according to a poll last week by The New York Times and Siena College, the Trump campaign is reportedly determined to pin a nickname on Biden that does more damage to his candidacy.

As part of the bid, the campaign will seek to focus more on a narrative, based on verbal slips, that Biden is in cognitive decline.

Another line of attack being considered is that Biden, a centrist figure in the Democratic Party, is a front for radical leftists who will hijack the White House if he is elected.

Axios said that strategy seeks to play on fears provoked by images of unrest at some of the recent protests after the death of George Floyd.

Among the nickname options under consideration is "Corrupt Joe," which echoes the "Crooked Hillary" nickname Trump gave his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton.

Trump was impeached in December, with prosecutors alleging that he abused his power to encourage Ukraine to smear Biden with corruption allegations. The president was acquitted after a trial in the GOP-controlled Senate.

But the saga doesn't appear to have done significant damage to Biden's popularity, with Biden still leading Trump in favorability ratings in a June 3 Monmouth University poll, though both candidates were viewed negatively overall.

"We need to be demonizing him," a Republican lawmaker who talks regularly to Trump told Axios. The lawmaker said "Sleepy Joe" "probably sounds nice to a lot of people right now, with everything that's going on."