Former Republican strategist Steve Schmidt predicted Sunday that next month’s midterm elections will deliver a sweeping defeat to Trump’s movement nationwide.
In his Substack newsletter, "The Warning," Schmidt said the election “will strip MAGA from power in the Congress, statehouses, governors’ mansions, town councils and county offices from east to west, north to south across the United States.”
Schmidt was responding to a column by New Yorker editor David Remnick, adding his own comments line by line in brackets. When Remnick wrote that “signs of a midterm blue wave are everywhere,” Schmidt added: “DEFINITELY.” When Remnick cautioned that “polls are sketchy,” Schmidt replied that some are, “AND MOST COMMENTATORS CAN’T READ THEM.”
Remnick quoted former Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley calling Trump “fascist to the core,” then wrote, “You may prefer milder terminology. Fine.” Schmidt wasn’t having it. “NO. NOT FINE,” he wrote.
“Donald Trump is a fascist,” Schmidt wrote. “MAGA is a fascist political movement sustained by fanaticism, cynicism, cronyism and corruption.”
He took aim at commentators who once played down the threat, especially a New Republic essayist who argued Trump was “where the ordinary river flowed” and differed from past presidents only in “aesthetics.”
“Excuse my crudeness, but what a stupid f------ thing to write,” Schmidt wrote.
“MAGA is the face of American fascism,” he continued. “It is the masked federal agent who can kill and lie, and go right back to work. It is the corruption of Kimberly Guilfoyle. It is the abuse of Stephen Miller. It is the lies. It is the violence. It is death.”
He also blamed the media. He said Trump’s “partners across the corporate media” made him “ubiquitous, possible, and in the end, president.” And he wrote that the press should have taken Trump “literally and seriously.”
“Scott Jennings is a CNN employee,” Schmidt wrote. “I rest my case.”
