On CNN Monday, longtime Mitch McConnell strategist and GOP insider Scott Jennings said that former President Donald Trump is bleeding institutional Republican supporters in large part because they are no longer able to defend him amid a mountain of electoral losses and criminal investigations.
This comes as Trump received another blow last week, with the House Select Committee on January 6 releasing its final report and referring the former president to the Justice Department on four criminal offenses for his role in provoking the insurrection and trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
"There is a New York Magazine cover story that writes about Donald Trump's 2024 campaign titled Trump's Sad, Lonely — broken, basically pretend run for reelection," said anchor Phil Mattingly. "A Trump adviser says that this campaign, quote, 'it's not there.' In this business you can have it and have it too hot, and it can go overnight and it's gone and you can't get it back. I think we're just seeing it's gone. The magic is gone. Is the magic gone for the former president at this point?"
"He's certainly losing altitude," said Jennings. "I mean, look, he is not without things to build a campaign out of. He's got money, he's got a cadre of advisers fully dependent upon him for their livelihoods. He has people that want Donald Trump. There is a base of people inside the party that would rather have Trump than anybody else. So that's not an insignificant thing to start with."
The problem for Trump, continued Jennings, is that too many Republicans simply don't want to defend his track record anymore.
"I mean, go back to 2016, he backs into the presidency and from that point forward losing in 2018, losing in 2020, losing in '21, losing in '22, all the legal stuff that has come along — every Republican out there is carrying his bags and those bags are getting heavier all the time," said Jennings. "So whether you want to call it losing magic or whatever, it's just getting too heavy to carry Donald Trump's bags. Because nobody wants to lose to Joe Biden in 2024, and that's what the Republicans are coming to terms with, and that's why you see people who look like winners, who feel like winners, like Ron DeSantis on the rise, and people who have been losing for a number of years like Donald Trump sinking."
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