Republicans are praying Trump won't 'sabotage' himself — and drag them down with him: CNN analyst

On Saturday, CNN analyst Alex Burns described how Republicans have given up on trying to get President Donald Trump to stay on message, and are just hoping he doesn't actively work against them.

"So do we know anything about what is happening behind the scenes, his speechwriters, people, is there anybody trying to change the narrative for him and maybe he's just not listening?" asked anchor Christi Paul. "Because I think it is hard for people to understand the kind of support he has behind the scenes."

"Well, my understanding from my reporting is that, yes, there are people who have consistently tried to nudge him more in the direction of talking about the economy, generally, and signs of the economy that it may be recovering, although the signs are not as encouraging now as it might have been two or three months ago because of the surge in the coronavirus pandemic," said Burns. "But a lot of Republicans that I talked to at this point and they felt this way for a couple of weeks now, have sort of reached the acceptance stage of the President Trump experience in this campaign. Just feeling like, he's going to do what he's going to do and they just need to kind of run their own races and try to sort of grit their teeth and get through this and hope that he does not sort of sabotage himself even more dramatically than he has before election day."

"I don't want to overstate the optimism on the Republican side that this is possible," added Burns. "But the people in a position to call him up on stage are aggressive intervention [sic]. My understanding is, they've reached the conclusion there is no chance that would be successful and it is not worth the try."

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