After the brutal and historic rejection of MAGA in Tuesday’s midterms, a leading Republican strategist went on international TV to make the case that Trump was a Democrat far longer than he was a Republican.
While Donald Trump has been unusually quiet in response to his brutal rejection by the American people, he’s still clinging to the idea that if he was on the ballot, it would have been different because, as he told Fox News, “You never saw rallies that big.”
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Actually, we have and they were not for him.
But it’s not just Trump who is having difficulty reckoning with the eulogy of the MAGA movement.
Leading Republican strategist Bryan Lanza went on international TV to make the case that Trump was a Democrat far longer than he was a Republican.
“(Y)ou have to remember Donald Trump has been a Democrat much longer than he's ever been a Republican, and a significant part of this tariff policy is not Republican policy or it's not not normal Republican policy, so no, I'm not surprised by his tone, and like I said, I think you know the president's always looking for opportunities and deals, and he sees you know ahead of you know with Democrats some challenges, but he also sees some opportunities,” Lanza said on France 24.
Not only is Lanza not so subtly distancing the GOP from Trump, but he’s also extrapolating out to Trump’s tariffs not being Republican.
The problem with this argument is that the majority of Republicans enabled Trump’s tariffs, and only a small group of House Republicans broke party ranks to vote with Democrats to rescind Trump's emergency tariffs on Canada, for example.
Yes, behind closed doors, many of these spineless lawmakers privately welcomed judicial setbacks like federal court rulings challenging sweeping "Liberation Day" reciprocal tariffs, but they did so in relief that they wouldn’t have to challenge Trump themselves.
Overall, the Republicans with a spine and a moral center were driven out of Congress over the last decade of Trumpism.
Trump and the Republican Party own Trump’s tariffs. Trump’s tariffs are a large part of his economic policy, that also includes driving Americans’ healthcare costs up with this One Big Beautiful Bill and gauging Americans’ at the gas pump and grocery store from his very unpopular and unnecessary war in Iran.