Bloomberg’s Mark Halperin warned Wednesday that “the Republican Party today has as big of Donald Trump problem as they’ve ever had,” because of Trump’s continued domination of the news cycle and strength among his supporters.
Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday, Halperin explained, “Trump’s floor may be higher than anybody else’s ceiling.”
Host Joe Scarborough said “you see the firestorm, but you look at the latest polls, and Donald Trump is blowing everybody out in New Hampshire. This race isn’t even close anymore, and those thinking that the remarks of the past two days are going to somehow cause a dip in the poll numbers have their heads in the sand.”
NBC’s Willie Geist suggested, “I think we should have learned the lesson by now over the last five or six months, that these things do not, while the media may protest them and people around the world in capitals and Paris and London and Egypt, in Cairo, those are unpleasant comments to a lot of those people. But to his core supporters, they rally him and allow him to say look at the media that doesn’t believe in us.”
Scarborough added, “One out of three Republican voters in New Hampshire now, despite criticisms from the head of Republican Party there and most leaders across the nation, including [crscore]Paul Ryan[/crscore] … one out of three voters are still saying they’re going to cast their vote for Donald Trump, when you have 14, 15 people in the race. That’s astounding by any political term.” (RELATED: Paul Ryan Condemns Trump’s Muslim Moratorium Proposal: ‘This Is Not Conservatism’ [VIDEO])
Halperin, directed to Scarborough, “You put your finger on it a couple weeks ago. Trump’s floor may be higher than anybody else’s ceiling. The Republican Party today has as big of Donald Trump problem as they’ve ever had as Iowa gets closer, as he dominates the news and keeps any of the other contenders from becoming the Trump alternative in any reasonable way, in any significant way, and as Trump understands the coalition he needs to hold together to become the Republican nominee, as well as anybody else in the race understands who their coalition is.”