'Backfired': Conservative says Trump and his allies sealed their own fate in Indiana loss

President Donald Trump's efforts to strongarm the Indiana legislature into redrawing the state's congressional maps to give Republicans the current two Democratic seats ended in brutal failure on Thursday, with a majority of even the Republican caucus voting against the plan. It puts an end to a monthslong saga in which the White House and right-wing activists bullied and threatened holdout senators to change their vote, to no avail.

And the MAGA world has no one to blame but themselves for it, conservative commentator Erick Erickson wrote on X.

"I can’t express enough how much the bullying hurt the redistricting chances in Indiana," wrote Erickson. "There was a point they would have done it. But the pressure campaign backfired, particularly in light of the November election."

Perhaps the final nail in the coffin, Erickson wrote, was the post by the right-wing Heritage Action, the campaign arm of the think tank behind Project 2025, which warned if Indiana Republicans don't bow to Trump's wishes, “All federal funding will be stripped from the state. Roads will not be paved. Guard bases will close. Major projects will stop. These are the stakes and every NO vote will be to blame."

"A text from one Indiana Senator who sent me that HAFA tweet, which turned out not to be true: 'F--- him' with a link to that tweet. That Senator had been on the fence," wrote Erickson.

Trump, for his part, has started trying to downplay the loss in Indiana since the vote went down, telling reporters, "I wasn't working on it very hard. Would've been nice. Would've picked up two seats if we did that."