NBC “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd said Sunday on “Today” that he believed former President Donald Trump has “convinced” his supporters they have not been losing elections.
Host Willy Geist said, “Chuck, good morning. It’s good to see you. So, former President Trump had that town hall meeting in New Hampshire this week that was broadcast on CNN, alarmed a lot of people in the country, not least of which, a lot of members of the Republican Party, who say if that’s what we’re putting out there, if that’s what we’re gonna run with, we’re not gonna win independence. We’re likely not gonna win the general election. We can debate whether or not that’s true. But Ron DeSantis sees an opening. We saw some outlines. I think the key there from Monica was indirect criticism of former President Trump. So if he does indeed get in, what will be his strategy to go at Donald Trump?”
Todd said, “That’s a question I have because if those remarks are an indication of the strategy, I don’t know if that’s gonna work, because I don’t know if Trump’s supporters accept the premise that they’ve been losing, and, and that’s the, you know, he’s going to say, ‘Hey, we’re, we’re going to keep losing.’ Well, Donald Trump has convinced his supporters that they’re, they haven’t been losing. They’ve been winning. The deep state and Democrats and the media have been in cahoots to, to sort of rig it against them. So that’s the problem here.”
He added, “What I noticed this week is the just sheer paralysis that Republicans — elected officials — have when it comes to dealing with Trump. Cause the other thing that happened this week is the E. Jean Carroll defamation suit. So here he is convicted by a jury of defamation about a sexual assault and it was crickets from his party. Even Mike Pence, Willie, who is somebody who has built his political career on the ideally of, on the idea of leading with wearing your morality on your sleeve, essentially said, you know, I think it’s only the media that’s interested in this,” Todd observed. “So I, I don’t think they have figured out how to take him on yet. Uh, and I don’t, and I think that’s Ron DeSantis as well.”
Geist said, “Yeah, that’s probably not gonna cut at what we saw yesterday,” he said. “But we’ll see if he steps things up when he actually gets in the race.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN