How Trump Is Blinded by His Lunatic MAGA Faithful: Political Guru

Donald Trump is living in a MAGA mirage sustained only by his “lunatic faithful” that is destined to evaporate, a political analyst says.

The 79-year-old president gloated Tuesday evening after Trump-backed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton defeated incumbent Sen. John Cornyn in the state’s GOP Senate primary, obsessively reposting a Fox News segment showing all of his 2026 primary endorsements prevailing.

But David Rothkopf said on The Daily Beast Podcast that the president is deluding himself if he believes the primary results are a true read of how the broader country feels about him.

Rothkopf told host Joanna Coles that the people most likely to vote in a Republican primary are the “one-third of Americans who will follow him into the fires of hell.”

“And that’s why this little period that we’re in here is so distortionary because you’ve got everybody going, ‘Look, Trump had influence in the Indiana primary,’ or ‘Look, Trump had influence in the Texas primary,’” he said. “But it’s: Trump had influence among his lunatic faithful.”

Rothkopf, the Daily Beast’s Chief Global Affairs Columnist and a former Foreign Policy editor-in-chief, added, “The craziest among them are out there supporting crazier still candidates, and that’s gonna open the door in November for the other two-thirds of America, when they get a chance to vote, to express themselves.”

“Yesterday’s big headline is: The Democrats have a good chance of taking control of the Senate as well as the House,” he noted.

Trump’s bid to oust Cornyn, 74, by endorsing the scandal-ridden Paxton, 63, has angered Republican senators and buoyed Democrats, who believe Paxton’s toxic baggage could become a fatal liability in the general election battle against their nominee, James Talarico.

Paxton has a string of controversies behind him, including being impeached by the Republican Texas House in 2023 before being acquitted by the Texas Senate and having his wife file for divorce last year on “biblical grounds” after reports of an affair surfaced.

“His flaws were all out there. This wasn’t secrets that were dripping out,” Coles said.

Paxton’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rothkopf argued that Paxton’s victory is no guarantee of success in the general election. Internal polling from the pro-Talarico Lone Star Rising PAC shows that the Democrat has a significant 7-point lead over Paxton.

“I don’t think it says anything about the people of Texas,” he said. “I think it says something about the people who show up and vote in a Republican primary in Texas.”

He noted, “Trump’s underwater in almost everything, and about two-thirds of Americans ... feel he’s doing a lousy job at most things.”

Trump’s average disapproval rating at 58.3 percent is higher than at any point in his two terms, according to RealClearPolitics, which averages all the major polls. Americans’ disapproval of the president’s job performance is higher than the previous record of 57.9 percent, which he achieved in the aftermath of the Capitol insurrection.

And although Trump’s overall approval remains anchored by Republican support, with 85 percent backing him, according to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, the intensity of support is slipping: 45 percent of Republicans now strongly approve of the president, down from 53 percent in September and the lowest level across both of his terms.

When reached for comment, White House spokesman Davis Ingle sent the Daily Beast a recycled statement: “David Rothkopf is a far-left loser who clearly suffers from a severe and debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his peanut-sized brain.”