They’re realizing Trump DESTROYED their party

All right, listen, something has changed and Republicans and Trump are now very worried and Republicans down the ballot, I believe, are realizing that Donald Trump has destroyed their party.

Let me kind of set the stage, which is that for months, Republicans projected a lot of confidence about these midterms and they are now having a very different sounding conversation.There's a new opinion piece by longtime political analyst Juan Williams, which says that genuine panic is now setting in inside Republican circles.

And the fear that is being described in the article isn't just that Donald Trump could become even more unpopular between now and the election.It's that he has tied the entire Republican Party to himself.And so if his prospects decline, if his approval goes down.Everybody is going down with Donald Trump and Trump is currently polling 30 percent in terms of approval, even lower in terms of the economy in some polls.And Donald Trump has sort of decided to make the entire election a referendum on himself by holding this midterm convention that is going to be held in September.Now, look at Donald Trump's behavior.

He is not acting like someone heading towards an easy victory.He is sort of endlessly campaigning for we need the Save America Act and we need to do this and we need to do that.And we've got to get rid of birthright citizenship.He is in a panic to try to do anything that he perceives might save Republicans in November.He's escalating his rhetoric.I think even the midterm convention is a miscalculation.

He's so desperate.He's going, what can we do?Let's do a convention without realizing that the convention will actually put him at the center of these midterms, even though he's not actually on the ballot.Now, the question that I suggest you askyourselves is if Republicans really believe they were comfortably ahead, would they be doing things like, for example, Mitch?I'm not Mitch McConnell.

We'll get to that later.MAGA Mike Johnson saying, hey, listen, Everything is at stake in these midterms.If we lose these midterms, it's going to be impeachment.It's going to be investigations.If they were confident, they wouldn't be playing that out.They would just be confidently saying we've delivered for the American people.

Here's the list of stuff we've done.It's so good for everybody.We're going to win.So we have a backdrop that is terrible for Republicans.Now, even though there have been individual scandals in different Democratic primaries and other races in general, Democrats have maintained the advantage in a lot of these generic congressional ballots.And that is happening as Trump's approval numbers keep getting weaker and weaker.

And in general, just structurally.History is pretty unkind to the party that controls the White House during the midterm elections.And I believe Trump knows it.And I believe that Republicans know it.Now, over the weekend, Trump referred to Democrats as animals.He described communism as a cancer spreading through the country, even though there is no communism.

And I don't really think that that rhetoric even motivates voters.Maybe it doesn't turn them off, but I don't know that it's really a motivator.

It's a sign of a campaign that's going.We need to raise the stakes and the temperature as high as possible.And the ways that they're figuring out to do it is to use terms like cancer and communism.

The larger problem for Republicans, I think, is the one Trump created for himself, which is that for a decade, the Republican Party has stopped being about conservative policy, restraint of the restraint of the executive branch.It's simply become about Donald Trump.

And if getting involved in private business is what Trump wants.and believes he benefits from, then Republicans say we'll abandon our small government principles and we'll do that.If blowing up the deficit rather than reducing it is what Donald Trump wants to do for his pet projects, then Republicans go, I guess we don't really care about fiscal restraint anymore.And we've had a number of election cycles now where candidates have not really been judged in terms of whether they have adhere to conservative principles.Like, it's almost a joke when I say that candidates have increasingly been judged on how loyal are you to Donald Trump?And the party has really become identified with one person.

That is a really effective political strategy when that person is strong, when that person is well -liked, when that person is delivering for the population, when they are not delivering, when they are unpopular, when their numbers are slipping.having a party that is identified with one person becomes a huge liability.And so now you've got all of these Republican candidates inheriting Donald Trump's baggage.There's baggage on the economy.There's the Epstein story.There's other controversies.

There's corruption, nepotism, cronyism, a free plane and all this other stuff.And the investigations that are likely to happen if Democrats take the House are going to expose even more of it.So on the one hand, You do have Democrats, as usual, stepping in it.The Plattner situation in Maine has become a huge fiasco.The odds of Republicans holding the Senate have ticked up a little bit, in fact, as these Democratic controversies have grown.But if voters decide that they're unhappy with Trump.

And they go out there and they take control of the House of Representatives away from Republicans.It's only going to do more damage.Now, in his opinion piece, Juan Williams also argues that Trump's growing focus on election procedures and voter fraud and maintaining control of Congress is all related to.I don't think we're going to win by convincing people we've done really well.If you think that the will of the people is going to be to reelect your party, you don't try to make it even more difficult, particularly for Democrats to vote.And that, I think, is a sign that they all know that they're in trouble.

So there is a level of anxiety here.

that political observers say is indicative of where November is likely going.

And regardless of whether you agree with every single prediction, there is a big picture here that we can't ignore, which is Republicans are acting like a party that knows they are likely going to get crushed.You don't hold an unprecedented pre midterm convention and crank the rhetoric to 11 and spend months talking about election fraud and say we won't even pass a housing bill.Trump said he won't sign the housing bill unless they get the Save America Act on his desk as well, which is going to clamp down on voting.You don't do that stuff unless you think there's a dangerous situation.

Now, the biggest irony of all of this, I think, is that Trump deliberately wanted to turn the Republican Party into the Trump Party.That is the very strategy that could backfire in November.Trump can't run again.He's a lame duck.So the consequences are going to hit the Republican Party.And if we do a good job, if we don't have, you know, Democrats put ridiculous nominees up there and this sort of thing, it could set up for a massive blue wave.

Forget about 26 for a second.In 2028, Republicans could quite literally not recover for years.if this all plays out in the way that it might.But we've got to make it a reality.

And that's the part where sometimes Democrats screw up.