Before the Cohen/Manafort disaster that changed everything Tuesday, Donald Trump had big plans to hit the campaign trail in order to save the House from Democratic control.
"Trump looking to best Obama's travel for midterms," bragged an AP headline.
Trump is aiming to spend more than 40 days on the campaign trail between Labor Day and the Nov. 6 midterms, as he hopes to best his predecessors’ travel schedules, two White House officials.
There was just one teensy-weensy problem with that strategy right from the get-go. Frankly, GOP non-incumbents have been deliberately steering clear of Trump mentions on the campaign trail, according to a Brookings Institution analysis. Vox writes:
Of all non-incumbent Republicans running for the House, 53 percent don’t talk about the president at all. Just 37 percent of Republican candidates talk of Trump positively. And among Republican nominees who have already won their primaries, a slimmer 33 percent talk of Trump in a positive light.
And that was before Trump's longtime lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen implicated Trump in campaign finance violations stemming from hush-money payments to two women with whom Trump allegedly had affairs.
In other words, that was before Trump was implicated in a criminal cover-up scheme to defraud the American people. How many Republican non-incumbents and GOP incumbents in swingy districts will want to attach themselves to Trump now?