‘There’s enormous frustration’: Trump forces Republicans off-script… again

Politico

Some top Republicans acknowledge the growing angst and concern, as it’s become clearer that Trump may have been warehousing some of America’s most sensitive secrets in an unsecured basement — and even refused to turn them over when the National Archives and Justice Department tried to recover them. One top Republican fundraiser asked to describe the mood among donors, said, “There is enormous frustration.”…

“The question is, is there willingness to express that frustration,” the fundraiser added. “I don’t know the answer to that. But there is real frustration, and with the exception of people who are too stupid to understand the need to be frustrated, it is nearly universal.”…

In interviews, some GOP operatives insisted that there was a “been-there, done-that” feeling to the current news cycle. David Kochel, a longtime Iowa operative and a critic of the former president, said that’s why he would “always counsel for more caution.” He felt the GOP’s response was rooted in the conviction that media coverage of Trump was inherently over-torqued.

“After five years of this,” he said, “I think a lot of these Republican members are sick of it all and just punch back. It’s Pavlovian at this point. They punch back at the media who they think is always unfair to Trump and none of these things are as bad as they’re made out to be in the press. They’re not going to frog march him out of Mar-a-Lago.”