President Donald Trump's support is crumbling, former Trump administration communications chief Alyssa Farah Griffin told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Tuesday — and he doesn't even see it because he has fallen into the same "trap" former President Joe Biden did when he ignored souring consumer sentiment.
This came amid a discussion of how Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is increasingly moving away from Trump, attacking her own party, and pivoting for a potential run for higher office in a post-Trump world — a sign that longtime party loyalists are seeing the writing on the wall.
"It's interesting," said Cooper. "Do you see that a lot in people you talk to on Capitol Hill of this kind of shifting already for a post-Trump?"
"It's really interesting to see the positioning already," said Griffin. "We're still a year out from the midterms. Donald Trump is not a lame duck for at least another year, but there seems to be folks hedging for what the future is and whether it's, are we tying our camps to a [Vice President JD] Vance or to a [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio or sort of positioning themselves for who they want to be next, that's already starting to happen. And I think that there's also this huge — David Axelrod was talking about this — it seems like Donald Trump, who usually has his finger on the pulse of the American people, has a massive blind spot on the affordability crisis right now. And Republicans see that as an opening if they want to have future aspirations."
"I mean, he ran on very successfully bashing Biden on affordability, on prices," said Cooper. "And then to fall into, it seems, that same pattern, that same trap, is — it's fascinating to watch."
"It is because ... the Biden trap of the economy is better than you think it is," said Griffin. "Donald Trump very much judges the economy by the market, and the market's doing very well. I remember in the first term, he would always want to see how the market closes. At the end of the day. But okay, 62 percent of Americans are invested in the market. That doesn't speak to the everyday anxieties that people feel. And I don't know that I — and I genuinely don't know that he has people in this term around him who are saying, listen, I'm hearing from farmers, I'm hearing from tradesmen, from just everyday Americans who supported you, and they just can't afford anything."