Republicans know President Donald Trump’s press ban is a problem, but you won’t be hearing them say that in public anytime soon, according to GOP strategist Melik Abdul.
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In the wake of the president’s move to block CNN, Politico and MS NOW from the White House, Abdul shared on Monday’s episode of CNN “This Morning” what he’s privately hearing among Republicans and why he thinks those conversations sound nothing like the politicians’ TV “talking points.”
“If you talk to Republicans behind closed doors, everyone acknowledges that this is a problem,” he told his fellow panelists. “And you ask, well, why can’t you say that on television? We know why. Because this is just not what these platforms are for.”
Disagreeing, host Audie Cornish cut in to say, “Actually, they’re definitely for this. Get up and tell the truth!”
While neither Democrats nor Republicans are keen on breaking with their parties in public, Abdul said, members of the GOP are weighing whether speaking up is worth the blowback from the famously vindictive president and his disciples.
“The reasons that Republicans aren’t talking about this honestly, publicly is because, for one, they’re concerned about what Donald Trump is going to say about it,” he explained. “They’re concerned about access. They’re concerned about social media influences. They’re concerned about that access to power.”
With all that in mind, Abdul said, he understood why many Republicans are willing to get in front of the camera and “double down on things” they couldn’t defend if “the shoe were on the other foot.”
The strategist then compared the president’s attack on the press to the scorched-earth strategy he’s taken with the Kennedy Center after failing to get his name added to the building.
Internally, Abdul said, Republicans are getting tired of Trump’s thin-skinned antics, telling CNN, “What you’re hearing is that this type of petulance, this type of thing, this performative thing that the president does, it is truly exhausting.”
On Monday, CNN, Politico and MS NOW filed a joint suit accusing the Trump administration of blatant “disregard of the most basic guarantees of the First Amendment and the Due Process Clause.”
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