AP’s Jonathan Lemire: People Around Trump Are Concerned He’s Talking to an ‘Increasingly Smaller Portion of the Country’

AP’s Jonathan Lemire: People Around Trump Are Concerned He’s Talking to an ‘Increasingly Smaller Portion of the Country’

AP’s Jonathan Lemire told MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Tuesday that some people around President Donald Trump are worried that he’s speaking to fewer and fewer Americans as he channels talking points from conservative media, including Fox News.

Lemire spoke to co-host Willie Geist about Trump’s symbiotic relationship with Fox News and other supportive outlets. They highlighted the President’s tweet yesterday attacking NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace.

“The Press Secretary all the time talks about her access to the President, she’s in the room with him when key decisions are made. Yet so much of what this president does is impulse. This isn’t three dimensional or fourth dimensional chess, often it’s the President reacting to what he sees on television,” Lemire said.

“It’ s hard to know precisely but the tweet about the sports names, the Cleveland Indians and the Washington football team came a just few minutes after a segment ran on Fox Business about that. We know yesterday, there was Media Matters, tracked this, on Fox & Friends, as many if not more mentions of statues than the Coronavirus. So there’s this echo chamber between what the White House and conservative media, not just Fox, and they feed off of each other.”

“This is the concern that people around the President have had, is that he’s talking to an increasingly smaller portion of the country, a portion of the electorate. We have to think of it that way, it’s an election year.”

“And as much as he’s doubling and tripling down on the base plays, on racial grievance, distancing himself from the movement we’ve seen in the last month or so, stoking white resentment, they feel like this is out of step right now, some of the moves that worked in 2016, this cultural grievance may not be working now, the polling on Black Lives Matter has shifted so dramatically since 2016, far more of the nation supports that movement and what it’s trying to chief.”

“That as much as the President is about enthusiasm turning out the base this fall, there are many people, growing concern of those in his inner circle and certainly Republicans on Capitol Hill that these are providing distractions, not helpful to his message not going to help his case or other Republicans’ case come November.”

Watch the video above, via MSNBC.

Darragh Roche

Darragh Roche is Political Media Editor

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