'Panic among never-Trump Republicans' that GOP voters will pick 2020 loser again: MSNBC's Lemire

The conservative Koch network is raising tens of millions of dollars to help sink Donald Trump's re-election campaign, and MSNBC's Jonathan Lemire said that betrayed a sense of "panic" amongst the former president's Republican opponents.

Right-wing billionaire Charles Koch has collected more than $70 million to fund GOP races in next year's election cycle, and his Americans for Prosperity Action has pledged to back a single candidate in the GOP presidential primary for the first time ever, and while the group has not yet chosen a contender it has already launched digital ads warning that Trump cannot be the nominee.

"You're right, the Koch network extraordinarily influential, though diminished a little in recent years," Lemire told "Morning Joe." "They've been opposed to Trump for some time, and he has given it right back. He also is less reliant on some of the big donors because he has proven so successful at those small donations, of raising money from his loyal followers, including getting them to pay for his legal defense fee on more than one occasion. We'll see here, though, that's still a big number, and it does symbolize that somehow some, I stress some, Republican-leaning institutions are really trying to move the party away from Trump, largely because of electability reasons. They don't think he can win again in 2024."

"Right now, the anti-Trump movement hasn't really taken off," Lemire added. "It's not clear if they coalesce around one of his rivals and who that might be. Ron DeSantis was certainly the great hope among many Republicans who wanted to find a different path away from Trump. So far his campaign has not achieved liftoff, he is 30-odd points behind Trump in the polls. Yes, it's early, but there's already a sense with Republicans I speak to here and across the country, a panic among never-Trump Republicans, that the party is already hurtling toward nominating him again."

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