John Heilemann: Trump Has ‘Absolutely Enormous Power’ with His Base

EXCERPT:

HEILEMANN: “Those are all good questions Mika. Let's start with the top. Does he have great power with his base? Absolutely enormous power as we've seen over the course of these past few weeks, every race that Trump has weighed in on has been a victory for him. He's been able with his his endorsements to to exact the kind of retribution that he's wanted to exact, whether it's been in Indiana or in Louisiana or In Texas where it seems less to be a bit about retribution with -- with John Cornyn more than it's been about the thing that you just mentioned which is that he doesn't seem to really care about the midterms, because there's not a sane Republican who didn't tell him over the course of the past six weeks, eight weeks since the first round of the primary in Texas that -- that John Cornyn was the stronger candidate against James Talarico and that Ken Paxton was really the only candidate potentially James Talarico could beat in Texas. But he didn't care. He wanted to reward his ally Ken Paxton and he did.”