'They think he's a child': GOP pollster claims Republicans are laughing behind Trump's back
In a column asserting that there is increasing evidence Republicans can put former president Donald Trump in their rearview mirrors and move on without him, longtime political observer Eleanor Clift reports one well-known conservative pollster admitted that the GOP lawmakers privately have a very low opinion of the former leader of the free world.
As Clift points out, New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) took some very pointed jabs at the former president over a week ago, telling attendees at the annual Gridiron dinner, "He's f*cking crazy! The press often will ask me if I think Donald Trump is crazy. And I'll say it this way: I don't think he's so crazy that you could put him in a mental institution. But I think if he were in one, he ain't getting out."
As the columnist notes, the notoriously thin-skinned Trump did not respond in kind to the popular Republican governor which should hearten conservatives and wants to leave the twice impeached former president and his 2020 election loss behind.
"Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland said he hadn’t heard a Republican drop that many f-bombs since the Nixon administration. He also praised Sununu as the vanguard of a new GOP that dares to speak the truth, then assailed him for taking credit for federal spending in his state passed by Democrats while simultaneously denouncing Washington politicians for their free spending," the Daily Beast columnist wrote. "The crowd of media and political professionals, as evidenced by their enthusiastic response, seemed to sense that something significant had shifted with this fresh face grabbing the spotlight and saying the emperor has no clothes."
According to pollster Frank Luntz, who advised Republican for decades, Sununu was saying out loud what most GOP lawmakers are thinking.
“I don’t know a single Republican who was surprised by what Sununu said. He said what they were thinking," Luntz explained.
Elaborating on GOP attitudes about the former president, Luntz stated, "They won’t say it [in public], but behind his back, they think he’s a child. They’re laughing at him. That’s what made it [Sununu’s comments] significant.”
“Trump isn’t the same man he was a year ago,” the pollster continued. “Even many Republicans are tired of going back and rehashing the 2020 election. Everybody else has moved on and in Washington everyone believes he lost the election.”
Clift then cautioned that attitudes about Trump are subject to change depending on which way the political winds blow, writing, "Republicans may be laughing at Trump behind his back, as Luntz indicated, but making fun of the former president could backfire. When President Barack Obama ridiculed Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2011, the putdown was so stinging that some believe it prompted the real-estate tycoon’s 2016 bid for the presidency."
"This time around, we will learn when the votes are counted in the nearly 130 races where Trump has endorsed a candidate, testing his strength in the Republican Party to pick governors and senators and even state legislators—and testing the theories of those who say his best days are behind him, and the fortitude of those who mock him," she added.
You can read more here.
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