President Donald Trump’s response to nationwide protests against the police killing of George Floyd and the growing calls for racial justice have left him “profoundly weakened,” “politically isolated,” and have created tremendous fear within the Republican Party.
Recent polling shows Trump losing to presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, in some cases by double digits, triggering “deep distress within the GOP about the incumbent’s judgment and instincts” and “fears that voters could sweep the party out of power completely on Election Day,” write Washington Post White House bureau chief Philip Rucker and national political reporter Robert Costa.
But Republican lawmakers still see themselves as tied to the President, regardless of the outcome.
There “is no sign yet of a mass exodus from the runaway Trump train. If anything,” GOP strategists say, “most elected Republicans see themselves as prisoners onboard, calculating that jumping off would lead to almost certain defeat.”
At the highest ranks, Republicans are now in the “acceptance phase of grieving,” the Post reports, noting that “there is an understanding that he’s president until at least November, and there is not much we can do about it.”
Read the full report here.