Republican strategist Rick Tyler explained why it's so "ironic" that the GOP continues to swear fealty to Donald Trump during a morning appearance on MSNBC's Up With David Gura.
Earlier in the week, the Daily Beast reported Trump has threatened to blacklist "disloyal" Republicans like Tyler. As the report noted, he even went so far as to threaten a GOP candidate in Mississippi by saying he'd back his opponent if he kept working with Tyler. As Gura pointed out, Trump ended up backing the opponent in spite of the candidate dropping the strategist.
Responding to the report, Tyler pointed out that the president's demands for loyalty are hypocritical.
"I think it's ironic coming from Donald Trump because Donald Trump is demanding loyalty from Republicans when he's never shown loyalty to the Republican Party," the strategist said, pointing out that "for most of his life, he wasn't a Republican."
During the first GOP presidential candidate debate, Tyler mused, Trump was the only Republican who said he would not swear loyalty to whoever the party nominated for president.
"Loyalty should work both ways: you're loyal to a person and they are loyal to you," he said. "It's very difficult to have loyalty to someone who is not loyal to you. You see this repeatedly with Donald Trump. Michael Cohen is a good example of that, but there are many, many more."
"I've always been loyal to all the candidates that I've worked for," Tyler added. "I don't write tell-all books about people that I've worked for and I will continue to be loyal. I would expect the same from Donald Trump to the Republican Party, which is absent."
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