President Joe Biden‘s efforts to coalesce doubting Democratic officials after the first debate bear a surprising resemblance to a campaign strategy previously employed by his 2024 general election opponent, former President Donald Trump.

In recent days, the president has found himself in a position not totally dissimilar to that of Trump throughout the 2016 election cycle. Though Biden, the incumbent, faced little opposition during the primary, he is heading into the final months of the election with senior members of his own party grousing about his candidacy.

Republicans initially mocked Trump’s 2016 candidacy due to his lack of political experience and general temperament, and he entered the general election cycle widely viewed as an underdog to an opponent with the full backing of her own party, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

That perspective makes Biden’s Trumpian turn even more apparent, though his campaign strongly denies any similarities between the two men’s strategies.

“President Biden respects and defends our democracy, including the more than 14 million who voted for him to be his party’s nominee,” Biden campaign spokeswoman Sarafina Chitika said in a statement. “Trump, meanwhile, is a convicted felon who cannot accept that he broke the law or that he lost to Joe Biden by more than 7 million votes. The difference between them couldn’t be more clear to voters — and it’s why Donald Trump will lose yet again this November.”

Still, since the debate, the president has called into friendly morning shows for unscheduled interviews, blamed the press for negative coverage, railed against political elites within his own party, and even pointed to his campaign crowd sizes as a sign of his popularity.

On Tuesday morning, Biden phoned in for a nearly 30-minute, no-video conversation with MSNBC’s Morning Joe. The same program hosted Trump for dozens of interviews during the 2016 campaign, and host Joe Scarborough said in 2020 that he regretted giving Trump the free air time. The former president now prefers to call into morning shows with a smattering of conservative television stations, including Fox News and Newsmax.

Biden made his case for his continued candidacy to the Morning Joe crew, complete with a thorough dismantling of political “elites” within the Democratic Party calling for him to exit the race.

“I’m getting so frustrated by the elites — now I’m not talking about you guys,” Biden angrily declared in the interview. “The elites in the party, ‘Oh, they know so much more.’ Any of these guys that don’t think I should run, run against me. Announce for president, challenge me at the convention.”

During an ABC News interview that aired Friday, the president boasted to host George Stephanopoulos about the size of his rally crowds as a means of rebutting his negative polling.

“How many people draw crowds like I did today?” Biden asked, to which Stephanopoulos responded, “I don’t think you want to play the crowd game. Donald Trump can draw big crowds.”

That same day, the president went after reporters on the tarmac in Wisconsin.

“Look, you’ve been wrong about everything so far,” he said in response to his ongoing candidacy. “You were wrong about 2020. You were wrong about 2022 that we were going to get wiped out. Remember the ‘red wave?’ You were wrong about 2023.”

And on Tuesday evening, Biden capped his opening remarks at the NATO summit in Washington with a surprise award to outgoing Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg: the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

Trump pulled a similar stunt with Rush Limbaugh at the 2020 State of the Union, less than a year before the conservative radio host’s death from cancer.

Some of the president’s most recent policy decisions similarly appear to be mirroring those of his rival.

Biden has taken a decidedly conservative turn in his attempts to address historic northern migration, even though Republicans argue his efforts fall far short of an effective response.

Meanwhile, the president has heartily criticized Trump’s new tariff proposals while keeping, and in some cases even expanding, his predecessor’s levies on incoming Chinese goods.

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Biden’s team likens the difference to a targeted approach from the president, compared to a doomed-to-fail, trickle-down proposal from Trump, but Biden campaign officials have previously told the Washington Examiner that the strategy could also help the president take over the “tough on China” mantle from Trump.

The Trump campaign did not comment for this story.