Rachel Maddow: Trump’s ‘presidential snowflake factor’ could leave GOP in the cold

MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow described what she called the “presidential snowflake factor” that’s weighing down Republicans ahead of the midterms, as President Donald Trump continues to campaign for GOP candidates in red states while his party fights to hold onto Congress.

Maddow said Trump has spent his second term “pursuing things that make him feel good about himself” instead of focusing on policies that could give Republicans issues to tout to voters.

“You get all the vanity projects and him naming everything, and all the gold gewgaws everywhere that make him feel wealthy, all the pointless and feckless revenge investigations and attempted prosecutions of his perceived enemies,” she said. “It’s all stuff that’s designed to make him feel powerful and to feel good about himself.”

The “Rachel Maddow Show” host said Trump’s approval rating is “deep, deep, deep down in the political toilet” and argued that his preoccupation with praise has left little room for a strategy focused on actually helping Republicans in November.

“I think it’s obvious that he’s not going to pursue a midterm strategy that is based on propping up vulnerable Republican candidates other than himself,” she said.

Maddow said Trump had become such a “wuss” and a “snowflake” that he could only “bear hearing happy stories about himself.” She added, “He can only go to places where he gets adulation, and he only can stand ever hearing ‘Yes.’”

“He’s only going to go to places that still like him, and there are vanishingly few of those left,” she said.