Republicans are “starting to eat each other alive” after Democrats’ historic midterm sweep, Zeteo reported Thursday, citing GOP operatives, pollsters, lawmakers and Trump advisers who described spiraling turmoil in the party and the White House.
“It’s only been a week of this, and all signs suggest that all the intra-GOP chaos, feuding, and backstabbing is going to get a lot worse, probably faster than many of Trump’s liberal opponents would have once expected,” Zeteo’s Asawin Suebsaeng and Andrew Perez wrote. “Put simply: They’re already starting to eat each other alive. And some of them are doing it on live television.”
One person described as a senior Trump administration official told Zeteo last weekend that the MAGA movement had “self-immolated.” This week, that same official gave Zeteo an even bleaker analysis.
“The president is finished. The next two years are gonna be a joke,” the official said, adding that the past two years of Trump’s accomplishments were easily reversible, and potentially a complete “waste.”
John McLaughlin, a conservative pollster who’s worked for Trump for more than a decade, told Zeteo that “Republicans forgot what won the 2024 election,” and Marc Short, formerly chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, called the GOP’s midterm shellacking “complete Armageddon for [the] GOP.”
Privately, Zeteo found, the GOP’s frustration is aimed squarely at one man.
“Numerous influential Republicans are — in the comfort that comes by standing behind closed doors — angrily blaming Trump, and only Trump, for dragging them down to near-oblivion in this cycle, many such conservatives tell Zeteo,” the outlet reported.
“Still, vanishingly few of them will blame him publicly, largely out of fear of death threats and political excommunication by Trump and his personality cult masquerading as a federal government.”