New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, often described as the "Donald Trump whisperer," said President Trump most likely no longer has the capacity to openly admit his own mistakes — even as he moves to reverse damage of his own making, including the turmoil he has inflicted on his own party this year.

Her assessment came Thursday in a CNN interview with anchor Anderson Cooper, who noted that Trump has traveled to Texas three times, in part a consequence of the president having driven incumbent Republican Sen. John Cornyn out of office by backing the current nominee, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, in the Republican primary. The seat is one Republicans currently hold, and it will be decided in November's midterm elections, part of a national vote that will determine control of Congress. Trump must now contend with Paxton, an unpopular candidate whom a conservative CNN political commentator described as a "walking liability for the whole of the GOP."

"I think he grasps the headwinds, but I don't think that he blames himself, based on everything we've seen him say and everything in my reporting and my colleagues reporting," said Haberman. "He very infrequently blames himself."

Even so, Haberman argued that the biggest problems confronting the Republican Party stem directly from Trump's personal decisions and the policies he has singularly pursued without serious input or pushback from more intelligent advisors — a dynamic that, in an election year, leaves the party's fortunes tied to the candidates and the agenda the president personally chose.

"Tariffs would be one of them. But the much larger issue is the Iran war and the price of gas and the affordability crisis, and the fact that the president talks about it in a way that is not very understanding about voters," Haberman told Cooper.

Compounding the GOP's difficulties this year, she said, is an increasingly visible whiff of corruption surrounding the White House.

"All of this is why he has a problem, including what you were talking about in the previous episode, which is all of this self-dealing on a scale that we just have not seen ever in my lifetime like this at all, and I don't think in yours either. So, it's not that there have not been other allegations of corruption and other administrations," said Haberman. "It's the level at which this is taking place."

Among the recent controversies, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Kimberly Guilfoyle, the ambassador to Greece, had asked a Trump donor to pay off some of her debt as she sought to polish her résumé for a new White House post. Meanwhile, the candidate Trump is struggling to carry across the finish line carries baggage of his own, having nearly been impeached by his own Republican legislature over allegations of misconduct that included bribery and abuse of office.

"And so all of that is felt by voters. But he's blaming his strategists," Haberman added. "He keeps saying things privately like, 'you know, this plan is bad,' but these candidates are his candidates. And these decisions are almost all his."

Paxton will now take the Republican standard into the fall campaign, where he will face the Democratic nominee — and where the November result will show how much weight Texas voters give to the dynamics Haberman described.

Source: Alternet