President Donald Trump is throwing all his political capital at restricting the vote to protect Republicans in the November midterms, but he simply doesn't have the force he once did to even command his own party, let alone persuade the general electorate, MS NOW's Sam Stein told anchor Katy Tur on Monday.
"He's not focused on the things that people want him to focus on," said Tur, noting that analyst Paul Waldman recently compared Trump's decline to that of former President Joe Biden. "I think the thing that I find so compelling here is that Donald Trump does not have that power of persuasion any longer. Do you agree?"
"I think a couple of things are happening here," said Stein. "One is lack of power of persuasion," but the other is that Trump no longer has the same ability to push his conspiracy theories about the "deep state" when he controls the very government he is telling the public is out to get them.
"Trump's able to talk about deep state conspiracies," said Stein. "He's able to talk about the need to open up the Epstein files and lowering energy costs by 50 percent and bringing an end to the war in Ukraine within 24 hours when he's not president. But then when you are president you sort of have to answer for those issues."
It doesn't help his case, Stein added, that he is "obsessed" with his rabbit hole of conspiracy theories while voters themselves care about jobs and the economy and aren't getting answers on those things from him.
"He's long been a conspiracy theorist around the election," said Stein. "He can't give it up, and that's something he's never going to give up, frankly, because it's what animates him." Even Fox News largely left alone Trump's Thursday night election speech, he said, because "they also recognize that this isn't the stuff that animates the base as much as it used to."