HE WON'T LOSE HIS bASE...:

Trump's tweet may have been born out of a frustration that the Reagan Foundation, Paul Ryan, and Fox News weren't being sufficiently subservient and appreciative of his presidency. But it also was a reflection of a broader anxiety within the upper echelons of Trumpworld that the president's conservative base--which Trump and the party have long touted as rock-solid and fiercely loyal--may be starting to rupture amid the coronavirus pandemic, a weakened U.S. economy, and protest movements in the aftermath of the police killing of George Floyd. It is a concern that some close associates of the president have raised to him directly.

"I told him that he should believe the [public] polling, and that it shows that the way things are going, some of his base may abandon him by the election," said a Republican who spoke to Trump about the issue earlier this month. "That is what the numbers are saying." 

This source added that the president shrugged off the suggestion and said that this person was being "ridiculous" for entertaining the notion that his base would ever fracture. 

Part of Trump's confidence in the endurance of his base is owed to the fact that he caters so much to it. In several key policy arenas, the president has jettisoned any and all pretense of reaching beyond Trump diehards. Earlier this year, he and his senior staff made it clear that they intended to run in part on criminal-justice reform, and to strafe Joe Biden, the presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee, for his "tough on crime" past. It was an effort supplemented with a $10 million Super Bowl ad buy and aimed at depressing Biden's Black voter turnout. But shortly after the Floyd killing, Trump and top officials were completely bored with even the idea of the most modest of police reforms and chose to fully embrace an iron-fisted posture.

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