White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf reacts during a U.S. President Donald Trump's event to sign an executive order regarding vaccine flexibility, in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., (REUTERS)
Zeteo reports Republican operatives and lawmakers are freaking out as President Donald Trump continues to tear down walls and break new barriers — for the other team.
“They’re bleeding us in Kansas,” a GOP lawmaker on the Hill told reporter Asawin Suebsaeng this week, as the Republican Party flails in places it never expected.
Once a credit to the party for his ability to draw a cultlike MAGA legion, Trump is now a sinking anchor and a pariah driving away precisely the kind of independent Americans Republicans need to stay afloat. The personal blows to the president just keep coming as Trump gets sidelined by his most dependable media supporters. Even Fox News has reduced its coverage of his campaign rallies as disenchanted MAGA followers tune out and the company loses viewership. According to a new CNN analysis, the network, which once broadcast Trump's speeches in full, no longer does so routinely. And new Nielsen figures show Fox losing 27 percent of its total-day audience in October compared with the same month last year.
But now the pain is hitting in outlandish places as Republicans bewail the party having to invest money and resources in what was formerly bastions of deep-red politics.
“These Republicans all think it’s, in the words of a Trump White House official, ‘inexcusable’ that Kansas was ever in play, even in the current environment,” said Zeteo reporter Asawain Suebsaeng. “Several sources have told me they are prepared to at least partly blame [Trump-backed senatorial candidate Roger] Marshall if the GOP and Trump suffer a historic ‘bloodbath’ next week.”
And even if Marshall manages to beat his Democratic opponent Adam Hamilton, “a solid number of elite Republicans would be happy to hurl some of the blame at their own man,” said Suebsaeng.
“Whether this is cynical scapegoating or a fair assessment, the thinking goes: We may very well lose Ohio, Texas, and elsewhere because we had to waste time and money bailing YOU out,” said Suebsaeng, summarizing the claims of GOP operatives.
“These GOP sources tell me that many of the senator’s Republican cohorts, including other lawmakers on Capitol Hill, are absolutely furious with him, and at the fact that the party and Trump’s outside political operation have had to plow a significant amount of resources and millions of dollars into defending Kansas – again, Kansas! – of all places,” reports Suebsaeng.
And it does not help that Trump is plummeting in popularity while Marshall himself “uniquely resented on the Hill, not by Dems but by other conservatives who find him, among other things, lazy, stubborn, and not a team player,” Suebsaeng said.