Trump's latest 'distraction' is crippling him with his base: political expert

During an MSNBC segment of Donald Trump's ongoing wave of retribution against his perceived enemies, combined with his new attacks against law firms and educational institutions, longtime political observer John Heilemann claimed it wall all come back to harm him.

The "Morning Joe" panel began by discussing the Trump administration appearing in a Boston federal courtroom on Thursday to battle with Harvard University in a case involving the attempts to restrict the university from enrolling international students, which led to Heilemann to claim the president is taking his eye off what got him elected.

"The Trump administration driven by President Trump has been so extreme in how it's dealt with Harvard and made demands that no university could ever accept, that it kind of put someone who would potentially have been a partner of the Trump administration back on its heels and pushed it into a corner," he told the panel. "And you have a lot of people who –– even people who have been very critical of Harvard –– who look at this and go, 'Hey, I think this is going a little bit too far."

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Pointing out that Trump "sees conflict as a zero sum game," he later added, "If you fight back against Trump he will fight you until there's no more fight to fight he just, he goes all the way to the extreme. He has done this across the board essentially, whether it's Miles Taylor or Chris Krebs or anybody else. If they push back against Trump, it is their fault and he will then punish them."

"It can be politically self-defeating because it takes his eye off the ball on what is really the political calculus that got him back into the White House, which is prices, economy, turning all that stuff around," he remarked. "Trump seems really distracted by a lot of personal vendettas here and not focused on what his base and what all American or Republican voters want."

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