U.S. President Donald Trump points his finger as he answers questions from the media after signing an executive order establishing the President's Military Spouse Commission, August 3, 2026. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
A longtime conservative insider tore into President Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans' flailing political strategy during an MS NOW appearance, ripping into the party for their inability to plan long-term.
Stuart Stevens is a veteran conservative political consultant aligned with "Never Trump" Republicans, having left the party to become an independent in 2020. He currently serves as a senior adviser for the anti-Trump advocacy group, The Lincoln Project, among other ventures.
On Tuesday, Stevens took part in an MS NOW panel interview on the confirmation proceedings for Todd Blanche, Trump's nominee for Attorney General. At one point, while touching on Blanche helping Epstein accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell transfer to a nicer prison, Stevens touched on Trump's much-discussed tactic for distracting from scandals: keep doing crazier things.
"Which is sort of this Trump technique that you advance: do something more crazy," Stevens said "So you have to talk about that and then you kind of forget, well, what about the sweetheart deal [for Maxwell]?"
In response, host Stephanie Ruhle brought up a similar point she heard from a Trump administration official during his first term.
"In the first Trump administration, I remember speaking to someone in the administration, a senior adviser to Trump, when there was, I don't even remember what, what controversy or what embarrassing event happened," Ruhle said. "And I was asking, and he said to me, 'Look up at the TV. This story will be gone tomorrow and there will be a new one.' And that's exactly where we are right now, except the Epstein files and Epstein survivors, they're not going away[.] A lot of people, a lot of young people who voted for Donald Trump care a lot about Epstein files, and we're watching them disappear into the ether."
This, Stevens argued further, aptly sums up the short-term nature of Trump's political strategy, which is only concerned with getting through the "next moment."
"If Republicans have a terrible night in November, which I think they will, probably the truth is going to go to that," Stevens said. "It's, you know, when you don't have any political philosophy, you don't have any sort of conviction, no theory of government, which the Republican party doesn't have. Now, it is all about just getting through the next moment. And that's how Trump is. They'll say anything to get through the next moment. And what Mark Cuban said is, you know, it's [like] a guy at closing time will say anything to get somebody to go home with him."