One of President Donald Trump’s closest advisers privately gave GOP donors a grim assessment of the president, and his former supporters seem to agree.
On Saturday’s episode of “The Focus Group Podcast,” Politico reporter Kimberly Leonard told host Sarah Longwell that Tony Fabrizio, Trump’s longtime pollster, recently warned Florida donors that the president has become a liability for Republicans beyond his base.
Leonard said Fabrizio made the remarks at a fundraiser at Miami Beach’s Fontainebleau for Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), the Trump-endorsed candidate running for governor of Florida.
“He was telling donors that Trump is both the biggest motivator for the base and the biggest drag for kind of everyone else,” Leonard said.
The episode featured a focus group of 2024 Trump voters who now disapprove of his job performance, and several echoed Fabrizio’s warning while discussing Donalds.
“He’s got the kiss of death because he’s a Trumper. So, I can’t support him for that reason,” one participant said. “Anybody associated with Donald Trump for me right now, I won’t support him.”
Another praised Donalds as well spoken, “unlike our president who sounds like he’s in the first grade.”
Even Donalds’ supporters in the group complained he would not break with Trump. “I need him to be his own man, and if Trump’s wrong about something, to say so,” one said.
Leonard, who covered Trump’s double-digit 2024 win in Florida, said the roles have reversed this cycle. “Democrats are actually not calling me at all. Republicans are the ones calling me. And they’re calling me panicked,” she said.
Longwell, a former Republican pollster, said GOP voters across her focus groups sound “as depressed as I have ever heard them.”
“They feel betrayed by Trump,” she said, adding that rural voters hit hardest by tariffs and high prices “might stay home in droves.”
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