With the economy in free-fall, a baffling handling of a pandemic that has claimed more than 50,000 lives, an impeachment, a two-year investigation of his campaign and Russia, and three plus years of constant turmoil, President Donald Trump appears to have finally run out of tricks to fool Americans into believing his alternative facts and keeping the GOP faithful on his side.
Now, Republicans are increasingly nervous over Trump’s bizarre behavior and internal polling showings their TV reality show candidate is in trouble, the New York Times reports in a piece title: Nervous Republicans See Trump Sinking, and Taking Senate With Him.
“Mr. Trump’s standing in states that he carried in 2016 looks increasingly wobbly: New surveys show him trailing significantly in battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, and he is even narrowly behind in must-win Florida,“ the Times writes.
Many Republicans believe President Trump’s daily news briefings have inflicted grave damage on his political standing.
The once-careful decorum of presidential news conferences is gone — shattered into a thousand tiny pieces as the president battles with the press, interrupting, talking over, and insulting reporters.
“Perhaps most significantly, Mr. Trump’s single best advantage as an incumbent — his access to the bully pulpit — has effectively become a platform for self-sabotage,” the news outlet notes in its report.
Indeed. Trump’s news briefing is a mesmerizing show to watch. And it’s the predictable result of two colliding fault lines: Donald Trump’s decades of media overexposure and the emergence of a young crop of White House correspondents born into — and unintimidated by — that same environment of sensory overload.
“Republicans face a very challenging environment and it’s a total shift from where we were a few months ago. Democrats are angry, and now we have the foundation of the campaign yanked out from underneath us,” longtime GOP pollster told the Times.
A 17-state survey commissioned by the Republican National Committee found Trump struggling in battleground states. There is also trouble in the Senate:
“The surveys also showed Republican senators in Arizona, Colorado, North Carolina and Maine trailing or locked in a dead heat with potential Democratic rivals — in part because their fate is linked to Mr. Trump’s job performance. If incumbents in those states lose, and Republicans pick up only the Senate seat in Alabama, Democrats would take control of the chamber should Mr. Biden win the presidency.“
With disinfectant debacle still fresh in voters minds, Trump’s number could sink even further. Consequently, we will probably see less of the president in coming weeks as advisers fear he’s overexposed. At Friday’s briefing, Trump took no questions and made a relatively brief appearance.
And Trump seems to have gotten the message — he’s dialed back on his time at the news conferences, and didn’t hold one at all Saturday.
But that realization probably comes years too late.
