Why Trump Is Dooming Himself with MAGA Candidates

Photo Illustration by Victoria Sunday/The Daily Beast/Getty Images President Donald Trump is dooming himself by backing MAGA “buffoons” who will not have the benefit of sharing a ballot with him in the midterms, his longtime biographer says.

Author Michael Wolff tells the Inside Trump’s Head podcast that the all-important difference between a general election and midterms is that Trump’s base is not nearly as energized when he is not at the top of the ticket.

With Trump-backed Senate candidates like Ken Paxton in Texas and Mike Collins in Georgia being particularly scandal-scarred, Wolff estimates that a MAGA disaster is looming.

“There’s an interesting pattern of men who won’t admit to their wives that they are voting for Donald Trump, and then they vote for Donald Trump,” Wolff said.

“The dynamic is different in this midterm election because he’s not on the ballot.

So, you know, the buffoons who are running in his name don’t have the luxury of being the ultimate buffoon, as it were.” Wolff added, “You might like to vote for the greatest buffoon of all time.

But the many buffoons, you don’t really want...

Ken Paxton.

Do you really want to vote for Ken Paxton?” Co-host Joanna Coles theorized that many Americans secretly support Trump while telling friends and pollsters they do not.

Whether that applies to MAGA-friendly Republicans in the midterms, too, is another question.

“I think a lot of people don’t want to admit that they support Donald Trump,” Coles said.

“They don’t want to admit they like his party, so they don’t admit it.

And then, right up in their final run to the privacy of the voting booth, they can finally admit they do like him.

Yeah, no, they would prefer him to the other candidates.” Reached for comment, a White House spokesman emailed that “Michael Wolff is a professional scumbag and serial liar whose brain has been completely warped by his severe and incurable disease known as Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Trump has acknowledged Wolff’s theory himself.