'Panicking amateur' Trump is destroying his 2020 chances by staking everything on the wall: GOP consultant

According to a longtime GOP consultant, Donald Trump is all but destroying his chances at re-election in 2020 because he is acting like a "panicky amateur" during his government shutdown.

In a report on Trump's falling approval numbers, the Washington Post claims, "President Trump’s headstrong refusal to reopen the federal government without new border wall funding has set him on a risky and defiant path for 2019."

The Post reports Trump has decided to cater to his hardline conservative base and stake everything on his border wall -- even to the point of letting the government shut down for an extended period which is causing the public to turn on him even more than they have previously.

According to top Republicans and Democrats, "Trump’s fervent appeals to his supporters — not just on the wall but in his sharpening criticism of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome H. Powell, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and Democrats — leave him both emboldened and hamstrung heading into the new year."

Combined with the beating Republicans took in the "blue wave" midterms -- that saw them lose the House -- one GOP strategist said that Trump is his own worse enemy when it comes to righting the Republican ship.

Trump is threatening the GOP by “learning nothing from November and playing to the third of the country that he already has,” explained longtime GOP consultant Mike Murphy.

“He’s trapped,” Murphy said. “He’s playing poker holding two threes and suddenly putting all of his chips in. It’s pure emotion, the mark of a panicking amateur.”

GOP pollster Whit Ayres agreed that Trump's appeal to the base only is destructive for Republicans.

“The problem is that the base is nowhere close to a majority of the nation,” Ayres explained. “In a government of the people, for the people and by the people, it sure helps to have a majority of the people behind what you are trying to do.”

Joel Benenson, who served as lead pollster for both of Obama’s national campaigns, also piled on.

“I don’t think there was ever a time during any of the Obama presidential campaigns where the strategy was predicated on doubling down on our base,” Benenson admitted. “You don’t win presidential elections with your base typically.”

You can read the whole report here.