GOP strategist Rick Wilson feels tide turning against Trump: ‘The national bully got punched in his face by crying children’

Republican strategist Rick Wilson expressed hope that GOP lawmakers may turn against President Donald Trump after he was forced to back down on his family separation policy.

Wilson said in a Thursday morning tweetstorm the defeat could offer an opening to Republicans who object to the president's abuses but have been afraid to publicly challenge him.

"In the struggle to overcome Trump's outrages, evils, and rejection of American values, optimism is your friend," Wilson tweeted. "Hard fights are good fights and good fights are hard fights."

He described Trump as a "threat to our system, values, and reputation in the world," but he said Americans had overcome worse obstacles.

"Seneca reminds us that all cruelty springs from weakness," Wilson tweeted. "A presidency, and the party that revels in cruelty cannot stand. A movement based on state power deployed against the week, the helpless, and the desperate isn't conservative, it's pathetic."

He said this week's debacle could show compliant Republicans how to finally stand up to the president in a meaningful way.

"Republicans -- not enough, not strongly enough, and not passionately enough, to be sure -- watched Trump lose a battle this week, and it matters," Wilson said. "The national bully got punched in his smug, jowly face by crying children."

He said GOP lawmakers have been afraid to even "whisper" criticism of the president, but he said even some of Trump's loyal allies came out against child detention camps and family separation.

"It was people who Trump counts on," he said. "Even Republicans running for office in primaries came out opposing it."

He said the fight was only beginning, but he's hopeful that a fight had finally gone to save America's soul.

"Americans have flirted with authoritarian and statist elements a time or two," Wilson said. "We've always resisted that temptation, because our Constitution, system, and people are better than that. It takes a while sometimes for our immune system to kick in, but it is and it will."