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A decision by Donald Trump's campaign strategists to concentrate their efforts on reaching out to hardcore Republicans could turn out to be a fatal error according to election experts.

According to a recent report from Gallup which has been tracking party affiliations, both major parties are bleeding voters who strongly identify with their respective parties but Republicans are faring far worse.

That makes Trump's pool of voters who will actually turn out limited at a time when he and his campaign should be reaching out to the growing numbers who call themselves independents.

ALSO READ: Trump and the Republicans will do anything to win — even collude with Russia

As Newsweek reported, "As of February 2024, when the latest data is available, 28 percent say they are Republicans, while 30 percent say they are Democrats, showing Republican's base declining," political scientist Todd Landman at the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham in the U.K. said Republicans have the larger problem of the two.

"The stakes are thus high for both parties in the runup to the November election, and both parties need to draw from the independents to assure victory. The Biden campaign has so far sought to reach out to these independents, while the Trump campaign appears to be retrenching to the solid base of supporters, which mathematically may be the wrong strategy to win the election," Landman explained.

Mark Shanahan of the University of Surrey in the U.K. agreed and blamed the problem on candidate Trump as the main sticking point for potential voters.

Appearing with MSNBC host Katie Phang on Saturday afternoon, former Donald Trump lawyer and "fixer" Michael Cohen claimed his former client is struggling to raise the cash he needs after losing a half-billion dollar judgment in Judge Arthur Engoron's courtroom.

Worse still, he stated, the former president doesn't want New York Attorney General Letitia James pouncing on him if he doesn't meet his bond deadline.

Asked, "Your thoughts about what Donald Trump is doing in order to secure that very large bond," he replied, "Donald Trump will do anything within which to ensure the bond gets obtained and the bond gets posted."

"This is a real problem for him," he elaborated. "He had a hard enough time getting the $91 million [for E. Jean Carroll], which again, I can't understand how a publicly traded company like Federated, which is Chubb Insurance, was able to justify making to a guy that does not pay his bills, that's something we all know for sure."

ALSO READ: 11 ways Trump doesn’t become president

"But rest assured of something else," he added, "The last person that Donald Trump right now wants to scrap with is our unsinkable Attorney General Tish James. She already knows what is going to happen come the day the bond is not filed. She will start seizing the assets, there is going to a major sale of these assets."

"One of the things that I talk about quite often is that people do not realize just because you sell the asset does not mean the full sale price goes to, let's say Donald Trump or Letitia James in order to offset the amount of the $500 plus million bond with $110,000 a day of accruing interest," he explained. "There are taxable consequences that take place on these assets as well because his basis is substantially low."

"On top of that, many of these assets are also encumbered with mortgages. It is not as if 100 cents on the dollar will go toward paying off that $500 million obligation," he stated.

Watch below or at the link.

During an appearance on MSNBC on Saturday morning, a senior adviser to Attorney General Merrick Garland claimed he had high hopes for special counsel Robert Hur when he was chosen to investigate President Joe Biden and now admits it was a terrible mistake.

Speaking with the hosts on MSNBC's "The Weekend," ex-DOJ official Anthony Coley said the attorney general goofed by selecting Hur who appears to be auditioning for a job in a future Trump administration.

As he told the hosts, "I was at the Justice Department at the time of this appointment. I talked to Robert Hur myself as head of the Office of Human Affairs and we all had high hopes that Robert Hur would do what he was assigned to do and that is to call the balls and strikes as they are and to be apolitical."

ALSO READ: 11 ways Trump doesn’t become president

"In retrospect, and I say this as somebody who has a great deal of respect for the attorney general, in retrospect, the attorney general made the wrong choice in selecting Robert Hur to be the special counsel," he continued. "I think he should have, Garland should have appointed a special counsel who was perhaps at the end of a distinguished legal career and not someone who was midcareer Robert Hur in his early 50s."

"In my opinion, he wrote a report that was designed to safeguard his employment in a future Republican administration."

Watch below or at the link.

Former President Donald Trump officially locked up enough delegates to become the presumptive GOP presidential nominee after winning Tuesday's Republican primary in Georgia. However, he has yet to make any efforts to unite his party after dispatching his former UN ambassador Nikki Haley — his last remaining rival — on Super Tuesday.

In her concession speech, Haley refused to endorse Trump and said the former president would have to "earn" the votes of her supporters between March and November. Trump has so far not made any direct pleas to Haley voters, and continues to mock the former South Carolina governor on social media. In an interview with Politico, one unnamed "top Haley donor" said Trump ignores the sizable swath of GOP voters who were in Haley's corner at his own peril.

Faced with a massive shortfall in raising campaign cash compared to his presumptive opponent in the 2024 presidential race, Donald Trump and his advisers have decided to cut back on his high-profile campaign rallies in an effort to not drain the coffers even more.

With filings showing President Joe Biden and the Democrats sitting on a war chest of $130 million going into February while the former president, while not releasing all of his numbers, did show a combined $40 million with RNC cash included, the New York Times reports the Trump and his election prospects are facing a "perilous" stage.

As the Times' Maggie Haberman and Shane Goldmacher wrote, Trump has been holding donor meetings at Mar-a-Lago imploring supporters to increase their contributions.

During an appearance on MSNBC's "The Weekend," a former senior adviser to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland wasn't shy about accusing U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida Judge Aileen Cannon of running interference for Donald Trump who is facing felony obstruction of justice charges related to stolen documents recovered from Mar-a-Lago.

Former prosecutor Anthony Coley agreed with MSNBC co-host Michael Steele that Cannon has no intention of letting the Trump charges see the light of day in her courtroom, adding that she is acting like a "fixer."

"I have some real issues with this judge in this case," host Steele began. "I want to call your attention to Politico reporting that at the end of Thursday's session Cannon promised to 'rule promptly but made no mention of the schedule for a trial and how close she is to resolving a wide array of other legal issues raised by the case or even when other defense motions may be argued.'"

ALSO READ: Trump campaign hit with new warning about taking illegal donations

"My truth is this: she don't want to move this thing along because this pace helps Trump," he accused. "I know that is a terrible thing to say but I am looking objectively at the process here and particularly how I feel in so many ways that she has found a way to put her finger on the scale, as opposed to sitting back as an arbiter of facts and the process and saying, 'Let's keep this going people.''

"I agree with you 1000 percent," Coley quickly replied. "I think the motion was necessary and the hearing was necessary."

"One of the things I know from my time at the DOJ and [MSNBC host] Katie Phang knows this as well, is that the government wins upwards of 95 percent of these types of cases. Cases that deal with retention, unauthorized retention, of classified documents and the judge knows this."

"So she is trying, to your point, to prevent the trial from even starting," he added, "I think she is trying to fix the fight before the fight gets started."

"The thing about the case is that the evidence is overwhelming and it includes videotape from Mar-a-Lago and it includes photographic evidence and importantly, it includes a first-hand witness account," he pointed out.

Watch below or at the link.

Former President Donald Trump's legal team in New York managed to push toTrump's first criminal trial back to April. That effort — the result of a massive document dump from the DOJ — came about despite restrictions the judge already put in place.

On Friday, Judge Juan Merchan granted a 30-day postponement of trial proceedings in Manhattan in order for Trump to have enough opportunity to review more than 100,000 documents the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) released. That document dump includes phone data, emails and bank records from Trump's former lawyer and "fixer," Michael Cohen, which Trump's team waited until January to officially request. The defense is likely reviewing the documents to find ways to discredit Cohen during the trial, as he is considered Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's star witness in the case.

Donald Trump's taking control of the Republican National Committee is not going over well with Republican leadership at the state level who fear they will be left out in the cold with the RNC becoming a defacto arm of his re-election bid.

According to former RNC chair Michael Steele, the only thing stopping a revolt at the state level is the fear of Trump's hardcore MAGA loyalists.

During an explanation of how the RNC works on MSNBC's "The Weekend," Steele first added the caveat that when he took over the committee he also fired everyone but it also wasn't a mere seven months before a crucial election.

ALSO READ: Trump campaign hit with new warning about taking illegal donations

Having said that, he noted that the RNC's usual function is to work on the eight key battleground states that can swing an election.

Now, he stated, help may not be on the way because the RNC may be funneling scarce cash to pay for the former president's myriad legal problems.

He then added that he was hearing grumbling from his former associates heading up their respective state Republican parties.

"I have talked to a number of former and current state party chairs and they are not happy," he told his co-hosts. "They will put on the face because they don't want to get the blowback from the MAGA nuts inside the party. But the reality is that they are not happy."

"They know what this means," he continued. "People that have been in the process of building up and putting in place players who are going to actually execute on a plan, 'Oh, I guess there is one,' but Lara Trump is now in charge."

Watch below or at the link.

The hosts of MSNBC's "The Weekend" had a good laugh on Saturday morning as Atlantic reporter McKay Coppins described the dysfunction of the House Republican caucus that is now reeling as their attempt to impeach President Joe Biden is dying a slow death.

With Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) no longer interested in putting impeachment to a vote in the House, Oversight Chair James Comer (R-KY) plans instead to make criminal referrals to the DOJ which are also expected to go nowhere.

Asked how House Republicans are dealing with the months of hearings that have fallen apart, Coppins stated that their mood is dark and getting darker.

ALSO READ: Marjorie Taylor Greene gets fresh scrutiny from regulators after election violation fine

Reacting to a letter the White House sent to Johnson essentially taunting the failure of the investigation, Coppins explained, " I think the White House smelled blood in the water, right? They saw Republicans were losing their will to continue with this."

"I mean, you talk to Republicans on the Hill and they know that this is over, right?" he continued. "A lot of them knew it was a farce from the beginning but they were going along and saying what we can we dredge up? It was a fishing expedition on how to hurt President Biden during an election year but their star witness has fallen apart."

"To say the least," a laughing Symone Sanders-Townsend interjected.

"The impeachment has fallen apart in pretty embarrassing fashion," Coppins added. "That's why you see people like Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) just kind of completely demoralized. By all accounts, the [GOP] House conference was especially demoralized and embarrassed. You see Republicans wanting to retire and leave. I think the White House saw that."

Watch below or at the link.

Former President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner (who was also a senior adviser in his White House) has been ramping up his overseas business dealings undeterred by the optics of doing so in the midst of his father-in-law's presidential campaign.

A Friday report in the New York Times scrutinized Kushner's real estate deals in Balkan countries of Albania and Serbia, in which he stands to reap significant financial benefits once they're completed. The Times reported that Kushner has been working with Richard Grenell, who was Trump's former acting Director of National Intelligence who also served as German ambassador and a special envoy to the Balkans.

Trump cozying up to the steely Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and revering Russia's Vladimir Putin are the tell-tale signs of a democracy-deficient direction he'd like to take the country.

This week former president Donald Trump broke bread with Orbán and suggested he could end the Russian-Ukranian war by preventing even a "single penny" be allotted to fight the invasion.

The vision for Trump's America is a "dystopian hellscape."

That was New Yorker's Susan Glasser's takeaway after watching Trump hold court with his MAGA supporters at a rally in Rome, Georgia after clinching the Republican delegates needed for the GOP's presidential 2024 nomination.