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Just more than six months into Donald Trump’s second term, Jen Psaki says there are signs that the president’s grip on the Republican Party could be starting to slip.
On Wednesday, the MSNBC host noted that in recent months, “we’ve seen countless countries and institutions and media organizations bow down to Trump in the face of pressure.” She called the constant capitulation “frustrating, maddening, disheartening.”
But Psaki said the tides have started to shift as more people realize that Trump is “not as powerful as he thinks he is.” That includes, she argued, some members of his own party.
“Now, to be clear, I’m not about to give any elected Republican a ‘profile in courage’ award, nor do I think that Trump has completely lost his hold on the Republican Party,” Psaki added, acknowledging that Senate Republicans just voted to give Trump’s former personal attorney a lifetime appointment to the federal bench.
“But for a long time, Republicans in Congress have operated under the assumption that they would pay a big political price for opposing Trump on anything, any tiny thing at all,” she continued. “‘Oppose Trump and his voters will oppose you’ — that’s been the logic. But now it seems like some Republicans are starting to think that the wrath they will face for opposing Trump really isn’t that bad, or maybe — and this is part of their calculation — it’s just not as bad as supporting or opposing the thing he wants them to support or oppose.”
To back up her argument, the former Biden White House press secretary referenced Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, a usual MAGA loyalist, who publicly broke with the president over legislation to ban stock trading by members of Congress. On Wednesday, Hawley joined with Democrats to send that legislation out of committee, immediately drawing the ire of Trump, who called the Missouri Republican a “second-tier” senator on Truth Social.
Beyond Hawley, Psaki mentioned another issue uniting some Republicans against the president: the continuing scandal over his administration’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case. Last week, three Republicans broke with the president and voted to subpoena files related to Epstein.
Psaki said that while Republicans may not be “on the verge of abandoning their president,” some are now “starting to test what it means to defy him, to take votes that he doesn’t like, demand documents he doesn’t want them to have.”
“And whether they realize it or not,” she added, “that nascent defiance is showing just how much of a paper tiger Trump really is.”
You can watch Psaki’s full analysis in the clip at the top of the page.