President Donald Trump did not provide Republicans with a message to rally around, according to an analyst on "CNN This Morning."
The 79-year-old president spoke Tuesday for a record one hour and 47 minutes, where he boasted of an economic "turnaround for the ages" and claimed to be making deals to benefit all Americans, but CNN's Edward-Isaac Dovere said he did not lay out much of an agenda for GOP candidates.
"I thinkthat the question here for the Republicans in the audience iswhat the president gave them torun on this year, in thismidterm year," Dovere said. "It was a speechthat was very much about him andhis accomplishments and whathe's done, and when you have Democrats who are both attackingwhat he's done and trying tosay that the Republicans in Congress are just a rubber stampon him, they are still lookingfor what that agenda would be, tosay this is what we're going tokeep doing or what we're goingto do now, rather than whatwe're going."
Trump lambasted Democrats for opposing his mass deportation campaign but conspicuously did not address the controversial specifics of that agenda, including the Immigration and Customs Enforcement occupations of Democratic-led states and cities, host Audie Cornish pointed out.
"He did notaddress ICE, did not addressDHS, did not address thesethings that are actually likelots of people, like, hey, give mean answer on this," she said. "Like, wheredo you stand on thisconceptually? Do you think it'ssomething that is going to,again, Republicans on the trailare going to have to answer for?"
Republican strategist Bryan Lanza, who was a senior adviser to Trump's 2024 campaign, said those issues were just a matter of framing, but Cornish challenged him to explain how GOP candidates would do that.
"That's why I'm askingwhat's the framing?" Cornish said. "I think the framing so far is we'vedone a lot to help with theborder, and they've donenothing. But he's not talkingabout what happened on the wayto accomplishing that."
Lanza argued that voters didn't care about the process.
"Well, I don't think he hasto," he said. "I mean, at the end of theday the voters are going to lookat the end result voters. Whatwe've learned in politics, atleast over my 20 years, isvoters don't care about process,they care about results, and sothe process that you're seeingtake place is great for TVclicks and great for fornewspaper articles. But votersultimately decide was he was hesuccessful."
Dovere said the polling so far shows that voters do not believe Trump's second presidency has been successful.
"At least so far, that's notwhat we're seeing from thereactions and the polls andother things over the lastcouple of months where peopleare saying, that a majority ofthem saying that they agree thatthere is a problem withimmigration, the border, theythey are still support forpresident trump doing thingsabout it," Dovere said. "But they haveconsistently said what happenedin Minneapolis, not like this,essentially, right, and thepresident didn't give it like hewas saying. There was noacknowledgment, noacknowledgment, there wasnothing to address that, to say,okay this is how that happened,and this is what's going tohappen differently goingforward."