Heilemann: Trump’s Rhetoric ‘Doesn’t Help Any Republican Candidate Anywhere’

EXCERPT:

HEILEMANN: “That doesn’t help any Republican candidate anywhere, not just in California, but anywhere in the country where the Republican looks up and says, 'Well, Donald Trump said that yesterday. I can run on that.' That’s part of a message that’s designed to reassure some of the skittish voters who are turning away from the party, that tries to help people feel like maybe the president and the Republican Party are on their side and focused on the real lives of those real people. There’s not nothing — there’s no analysis by which you can come up with that argument that this helps even a little bit for him to be saying these kind of things. And the message does go far and wide. People say, 'Well, he’s just going to red states.' It’s like, have you lived in America? We live in a nationalized media environment where it doesn’t matter if he says it in Oklahoma, if he says it in Illinois or if he says it in Missouri, if he says it in Washington, D.C.. Every Republican candidate now has to get — has got to answer questions about another dumbass thing the president said that doesn't help their cause at all."