‘He's going to lose’: Trump’s king-making status is done for – according to these Republicans
All across the United States, there are stronger and stronger signs that former President Donald Trump's "total and complete endorsement" of Republican political candidates isn't what he cracks it up to be.
Several Republican strategists, who spoke with ABC News on condition of anonymity, say Trump appears to them to have lost king-making status. They told the network that Trump's continued droning on that he won the 2020 presidential election - which he did not - is wearing on the GOP and seriously reducing the volume of his megaphone in supporting candidates nationwide.
They are not the only ones who suspect that Trump’s power within the Republican Party is waning. Last month, political commentator Alex Shepard wrote that “his early mixed endorsement record shows that his efforts to remake [the party] entirely in his image are faltering. The Republican Party may still be rotten to its core, but it doesn’t belong entirely to Donald Trump."
Starting next month, ABC writes, "in states from Georgia and North Carolina to Arizona and Alaska, former President Donald Trump will see his influence tested in a series of high-stakes GOP primaries. Trump has placed himself in the middle of a wide range of races in which his chosen candidates have struggled or where he is at sharp odds with other prominent Republican voices -- including former Cabinet members, close aides and potential rivals who hope bad calls by Trump prove a point.
"Trump is trying to insert himself in races all across the country where people he's supporting are crazy," Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, told ABC News. Hogan is not alone in his estimation of Trump. Just last weekend New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu appeared at Washington's Gridiron Club dinner and labeled Trump "f*cking crazy."
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Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich insists, "There's nothing more powerful in American politics than the endorsement of President Trump"
But there are signs that Trump is getting nervous about backing potential election losers. ABC News noted that Trump recently revoked his endorsement of Republican Rep. Mo Brooks after polls showed him falling behind his rivals in the Alabama Senate race.
"The primaries are critically important because they are going to determine what the Republican Party looks like," said Hogan, who leaves office at the end of the year and is supporting a series of candidates whom Trump is actively trying to beat. "It will tell us how much Trump's influence has waned or not. Has he been diminished? And what does that foretell about the next election two years later?
"I'd like to be able to say, you know, we won all these races -- and he lost," Hogan said. "He lost the White House and the Senate and the House and governors' races and state legislative bodies. I wouldn't call that being a winner. And now he's going to lose in 2022 -- another round of losses for him. And so that's something that can help us steer things in a better direction."
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