A former top Republican official has reportedly predicted the exact moment the party could abandon President Donald Trump.
Politico’s politics bureau chief Jonathan Martin told MSNBC’s Morning Joe when he expected lawmakers to break ranks with Trump.
“Quite frankly, I talked to a former GOP senator,” Martin said. “[They] said two words to me: filing deadlines.”
He added, “Why do filing deadlines matter? Because what the senator was talking about was the filing deadlines for primaries next year. Which is to say, when that clears, when that passes, when these lawmakers know who is or is not running against them in primaries next year, then you’ll see even more freedom, even more independence.”
Martin’s comments on the show came amid a discussion about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s alleged commission of war crimes and Trump’s pardon of a former Honduran president convicted of narco-trafficking.
These represent only two instalments in a firestorm of controversies that has burned almost nonstop since the MAGA leader assumed office for the second time in January.
That storm has, in turn, torched Trump’s approval ratings down to a miserly 38 percent, and left an increasing number of GOP officials wondering how they went from a resounding presidential victory last year to staring down the barrel of a potential electoral bloodbath in next year’s midterms.
“I think it’s one more rock on the back of the members of Congress that they’re carrying up the hill,” Martin said of forthcoming congressional hearings into whether Hegseth may have committed crimes against humanity under international law.
“The hill is Mount Trump,” he went on. “And the hill is having to burden this daily humiliation.”
Republicans, Martin believes, may therefore be more than willing to throw Trump to the wolves next year once they can rest relatively assured they’re insulated from primary challenges backed by the White House.
“These guys care about their seats and about their reelections,” Martin said. “If they see that they don’t have a primary challenger by a date certain next year, 2026, they can start saying what they actually think about what [right-wing pundit] George Will calls the ‘moral slum’ of this administration.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.
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