Donald Trump's angry press conference on Tuesday, where he railed against the national media, will not hurt him with voters, as he "does in front of the camera what most do behind the camera," American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp contended Wednesday morning.
"Look at the disdain Hillary Clinton has for the press," Schlapp told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program, where he joined a panel with conservative columnist and editor Ed Morrissey and Washington Examiner columnist Kristen Soltis Anderson.
"She says 'I had to do 300 press interviews' as if that's like a punishment," Schlapp continued. "It's a democracy. You're supposed to do that. That's part of this."
Trump belittling the press, though, was "what a lot of conservatives love doing at cocktail parties all over this town, certainly in Washington D.C.," Schlapp continued. "I think what happened yesterday is another one of those moments which connects to a lot of people that are disdainful in politics."
But he does think that Trump can't "run this show like this every day between now and November," as that will result in a loss.
"I do think there are these moments when he captures people by the fact that he's very candid," said Schlapp.
But Morrisey, who examines the issue of persuadable voters in his book "Going Red," said he's "out of the Donald Trump prediction business" but there is no evidence that Trump's actions are reaching voters who are not already for him.
Morrisey said in his studies, he learned that most people don't want an ideological candidate, but instead a pragmatic one who they believe can get things done, and if Trump can stick to that message, "he will be pretty competitive."
Meanwhile, Anderson spoke about her polling of young people ages 18 to 29 about what they think it will take to get ahead and found out that most Republicans in that age group believe they'll succeed by pulling themselves up, but others think a promise has been broken to their generation.
"Young people look for candidates who don't just have happy talk and says we are all equal but acknowledges real systemic barriers to success in America," said Anderson.
Part of the Trump phenomenon, Schlapp agreed, is the fact that many Americans are not happy with how the nation's political parties have run things.
"There a great upheaval, a whole realignment going on," he said. "I wouldn't be surprised in a couple of election cycles, if things looked very different than they do today."
And in the primary election season, Republicans had a party that was "not really listening to its voters," said Morrisey, and if that doesn't change, "voters are going to decamp to something else, to people who are listening to them."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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