Trump is no longer 'loved nor feared' -- he's just become a 'joke': conservative

In his new column for the Daily Beast, conservative Matt Lewis claims that, as Donald Trump's re-election hopes continue to collapse, his attempts to salvage what is left of his campaign has turned him into a "laughingstock."

Lewis, who left the Republican Party due to the president, noted that the president recently appeared on Fox News in a "rambling" interview likely meant to make viewers forget his disastrous interview with Jonathan Swan of Axios, and ended up coming off worse, saying "it became clear that the president can’t hit anything other than softballs."

According to Lewis, he is getting a sense that the tide has turned against Trump -- who he believes is headed towards defeat in November -- and that the president has become a national joke.

"If the polls are to be believed, Trump is losing so badly that a good or bad interview isn’t likely to be determinative. But while Trump’s America will likely remain in awe of him at least until he officially becomes a loser, I am picking up on a psychological shift: The Other America is starting to view him as a joke," Lewis wrote before writing that the president's standing has fallen so far he is now "He is neither loved nor feared. Soon, he may even be pitied."

According to the columnist, the president is effectively being undermined by groups like the never-Trumper Lincoln Project, whose ads often ridicule the president, and it's working.

"In mocking, trolling and taunting Trump, the resistance is using his own style against him. To the extent that Never Trump conservatives are involved in this project (one could argue the Lincoln Project’s greatest contribution has been in the field of psychological warfare), they are channeling not only the insult-comic-in-chief but also left-wing organizer Saul Alinsky, who famously said that 'Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon,'" he wrote before warning, " And if they have their way, he might soon become a joke to his fans. The public is a fickle mistress. As Patton might say, they 'love a winner and will not tolerate a loser.'”

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