with some of the lockdowns and some of the covid mitigation efforts, i think this might seem like we re in the upside down, but that is where he is most vulnerable, is that he can get positioned as, you went in with the medical establishment with the medical elites, but the raw desantis example, it s not that direction to listen to the people and the maga voter. from the man who is advocating he is not to mention for the gop. trump s rift with the evangelical seems to be born over is suggesting, and i don t think this is not incorrect, that abortion is not a great issue for the republican candidates in the 2022 midterms. evangelicals did not like hearing that. they would like to press for a national ban. they are very pro life in an absolutist sense of the word. at the end of the day, evangelicals don t like trump, but they is there any chance that the something differently than they did in 2016. he was not their chosen
potential leading contenders for the nomination, and i say that with a big asterisk because i still think donald trump is the front runner, have found pieces of trump s message that they want to co-opt, right? like mike pence is going for religion which, granted, was not something that trump necessarily something trum had bona fides in, the evangelical base was with him at the end in 2016. pence is going for that. ron desantis is going for the culture warrior stuff, whether that s anti vax or see artist of, all the things on lgbtq trans community marginalization. nikki haley is trying to bring us back to america as a global power, this foreign policy piece that trump largely abdicated on, but was a core part of the america first message in its first iteration. do you think that there is one part of the puzzle where trump is weakness, where he is most vulnerable to an outsider to come and take the mantle away from him? yeah, i think he is the most vulnerable into areas.
nikki haley effectively challenging her former boss, who is the only announced republican candidate in 2024, that is evidence that donald trump s hold over the gop will finally be starting to slip, maybe. today, but the new york times and washington post are out what new stories about trump s growing rift with the evangelical movement that one supported him. that while an influential texas pastor told the washington post this week, the most conservative evangelicals i know are in favor of ron desantis for president. and inside the republican party itself, a war has broken out between the current trump backed leadership and conservatives looking for a new direction. rnc chair rona mcdaniel who has trump s backing, is facing an aggressive challenge from his job of a former trump lawyer who has the backing of die hard conservatives, including tucker carlson and matt gaetz. it appears that the coalition trump cultivated and road to power no longer seems as
or do they really seriously think that this is shaping public opinion? well, at the white house they would tell you, this is not that big a deal. it s politically outside the people outside the beltway are not gonna pay much attention to this obsession us in the media the chattering class that is their thinking moment. but what it does, i think, is actually sort of let trump off the mat to the extent they had an opportunity to criticize president trump over his handling of the documents that were found at mar-a-lago, even though the cases are remarkably different in terms of some of the details, they have sort of lost that high ground that is not going to be something that you would hear democrats against trump, except to say that there is a distinction between what trump did and what binded, which is not exactly an easy argument to make, even if the facts may be, again, significantly different. so, they have lost that opportunity they have. i think that s an important poin
tethered to him as the 2024 campaign season gets underway. joining us not to talk about all this is tim miller, a msnbc political analyst. tim, i m so happy to see you and hear all the answers yet to give me about this most pressing question. it is an age old question, but it has new urgency. does donald trump still commit fear within the republican party? hey, alex, it s so good to be with you. to start, happy friday. yeah, he brings a little bit of fear. it s mostly fear bottom up from trump voters, so i think as you see these changes, as you see a bit of fracturing, what you re not seeing from any of these people is a repudiation of trump. it s more of a commentary about, oh we love mr. trump, we love mr. trump s voters, we might need to move on to a new direction to try to win. that s a meaningful difference