On Wednesday, a new Fox News piece revealed that the GOP is beginning to look for its “post-Trump” future as a growing number of Republican candidates keep President Donald Trump at “arm’s length” in the face of his historic unpopularity. Reporting from Minnesota, Fox asserted that the trend of conservative candidates distancing themselves from Trump is indicative of how the party will move forward after he’s gone.
“As the once-long shot Minnesota GOP Senate nominee Michele Tafoya has closed in on Democratic opponent Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, the issue of President Donald Trump — who is not particularly popular in the Gopher State — has taken a unique turn,” writes Fox. “For Tafoya, as well as gubernatorial candidate Lisa Demuth and others down ballot for the GOP — not to mention their potential voters — the general attitude toward Trump is that while they support much of what he has done, they also represent what a post-Donald Trump Republican Party could look like.”
According to Fox, while some Minnesota conservative voters claim the GOP should be “hardcore Trump,” others, like “a soybean farmer with mixed and nuanced views on Trump,” complain about the damage inflicted by his policies. "The tariffs hurt us,” said the farmer, who explained the only reason he was about to “stay afloat” was due to a $40,000 government subsidy. Fox also spoke with a restaurant manager who said Trump’s immigration crackdown was so “extreme” that while he rarely protests, he “did in this case, getting pepper sprayed for his trouble.”
“When you put the above pieces of the Minnesota electoral mosaic together, it becomes clear why it behooves Tafoya and Demuth to keep Trump at arm’s length, without fully breaking with him,” writes Fox. It allows them to embrace Trump policies that are still popular with Republican voters while “questioning less popular measures such as tariffs and the Iran war… Gentle pushback on the POTUS is becoming something of a national trend for GOP Senate candidates, with both Michigan’s Mike Rogers and Iowa’s Ashley Hinson calling this week for an abrupt end to Trump’s military actions in Iran. Just as was true at the Republican Midterm Convention in Dallas two weeks ago, the firm subtext of the tight races this year is: What comes after Donald Trump?”
Fox’s report comes amidst a flurry of news regarding Trump’s waning influence on the GOP. On Wednesday, an analysis of nearly 70,000 hours of podcasting by the Wall Street Journal revealed that “conservative podcasters appear to be losing interest” as mentions of Trump’s name per hour have fallen nearly 70 percent from their peak in the run-up to the 2024 election, plunging 30 percent since March alone. On Tuesday, the senior political correspondent at the National Review declared that “Trumpism is exhausted.” On the same day, the New York Times published conversations with MAGA voters who admitted, “We drank the Kool-Aid, and we were wrong.”
In light of all this, Fox concludes, “Maybe, just maybe, more than a decade after Trump descended the golden escalator, American politics is once again becoming bigger than him.”
