Amid the chaos of this presidential election, President Donald Trump needs to be careful not to turn off support from the Republican Party or scare off the U.S. Supreme Court by pressing litigation too soon, according to political strategist Mark Halperin on Newsmax TV.
"Right now the president looks like a relatively lonely figure," Halperin told Thursday's "Greg Kelly Reports." "It doesn't look like his side wants something done, in part, because he has not been clear."
Halperin said the Trump campaign is struggling to do an adequate job "framing this" ballot challenge, particularly his White House press briefing Thursday night.
"Given what's a raid against them, including the vote count, I think he's not putting himself in a very good position to win," Halperin said. "I thought his statement [Thursday night] didn't help him much.
"He needs wins every day. It's the only way. You've got to put points on the board, and he didn't put any points on the board [Thursday]."
Halperin said the president is waging "tough battles to win," since he is "perceived or actually behind," and he does not "have much of a margin of error."
"If you can get the grassroots on your side that can give you some momentum, but right now they have not tested the courts in a major way," Halperin said. "I'm told some presidential advisers do not want to try to get a case to the Supreme Court right now for fear that if they go there when they're in a position of weakness that the conservative justices, including Justice [Amy Coney] Barrett, may decide against the president.
"And one adverse decision in the Supreme Court would probably be the end of it. They've not mobilized the grassroots; they're certainly losing the PR war.
"That leads to politics in the vote count."
Halperin did admit there are media forces working against Trump as the remaining ballots are being counted and Democrat Joe Biden still holds the clearer path to 270 electoral votes.
"Projections are not declarations of electoral votes," Halperin told host Greg Kelly. "I don't know why the networks need or want to be in that business, pretending that states are not in play.
"You have this absurd situation of Fox, which has projected Arizona long ago with some controversy, continuing to put a graphic saying Arizona isn't a part of any path the president has, when it is.
"The president has a lot of rage against it. The press wants the race over."
The path forward for Trump is rallying his party into the fight against counting illegal votes and ballots.
"He does have one advantage right now that he might not [have had otherwise], because he put the Republican Party on his big, broad back," Halperin concluded. "And they had a great day on Tuesday.
"I think there'd be calls already for the president to consider giving this up, but he's got that support now, because they are very grateful to him for what he did politically, and I don't know that he's leveraged that yet."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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