On Tuesday night, a prominent conservative commentator warned his fellow Republicans that it’s time to “move on” from President Donald Trump. According to longtime conservative radio host Erick Erickson, who was appearing on NewsNation, Trump hasn’t taken the message delivered by the GOP’s historic midterm defeat and is instead doubling down on the very behaviors that dealt the party a generational blow.
According to Erickson, the biggest “shock” following the midterms “is that the president and the White House have decided to double down as opposed to pivoting after the election.” He notes that “Clinton, Bush, and Obama, and even Biden, to a degree, all pivoted after midterms, but asserts that “Trump’s going to double down” because “he’s only got two more years and is never held accountable by the voters again.” Erickson isn’t the only one to note that Trump appears to have ignored the lesson offered by the midterms. In his first appearance after the elections, the president wandered around the ballroom construction site with the press, despite polls making it clear Americans think he’s overprioritized such projects. Then a few days later, it was announced that Stephen Miller would be the new Chief of Staff, who is widely credited with helming Trump’s unpopular deportation campaign and generally contributing to Trump’s most extreme impulses.
And Erickson argues that the GOP, too, seems not to have learned from the midterms. With the selection of Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) – a fierce Trump ally – as House leader, Erickson says that “The Republican Party has doubled down again on hardcore MAGA politics.” Fox News anchor Gillian Turner made a similar observation following Jordan’s selection, saying, “This certainly signals, at least on the part of the Republicans who voted for him, that they are not interested in modifying their platform in response to the midterms.”
What’s more, Jordan has long been a supporter of Trump’s efforts to deny the outcome of the 2020 election, and will likely back the president as he renews such claims. “What could possibly be the benefit of this?” asked NewsNation’s Lauren Wright about a social media post in which Trump questioned the election results. “I don’t think I understand.” Erickson asserted that “there is no benefit to it,” explaining, “This is Donald Trump being Donald Trump. And the party needs to realize that he’s now a lame duck and they’re going to have to start moving on from him. I think they’ll decide it’s better to ignore him than to fight him.” But according to Erickson, too many people in Trump’s base “want to double down on crazy,” making claims, for example, that the elections in Texas and Georgia were stolen. “The data not only doesn’t show that, it shows exactly the opposite – it shows frustration,” said Erickson, concluding, “The Republicans are going to get pummeled in 2028 if they don’t figure this out.”