Talk Business & Politics Daily: The GOP Civil War edition

In today’s Talk Business & Politics Daily, State Sen. Joyce Elliott, D-Little Rock, and TB&P analyst John Burris discuss the recent Trump controversies and how they are affecting the GOP base. The conversation occurred ahead of Tuesday’s all-out assault on Washington GOP leadership.

John Burris: [It’s] not a civil war, but definitely you would think the beginning of the hardest chapters of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, which is hard to say. Last week most pundits like us declared it the worst week of a presidential campaign they ever have seen and then he ‘out-trumped’ Trump, I guess.

You know, this coming week seems like it’s going to be even worse. He deserves it. He is a terrible candidate and he has been from the beginning. A lot of Republicans have been very outspoken in that. But you you know here Rep. Nate Bell, former House Speaker Davy Carter, Rep. David Meeks are a few of the ones who come to mind who have been pretty outspoken. Speaker Gilliam came out over the weekend and was one of the first. So it seems like this is a final blow that Trump won’t recover from but I don’t, I’ve never, I’m not surprised at all.

Senator Joyce Elliott: I start with agreeing with his very last comment: I’m not surprised at all. What does surprise me to some extent is the length of time it’s taken for people to decide to speak up about Donald Trump. Because most of us have been living through just a litany of insults to all kinds of groups of people. And I do find it fascinating that it took this particular incident [Hollywood Access video] for people to finally clue onto this man has a DNA of behavior that is just indisputably something that we should not, we should not, even entertain as conduct that’s ok for a president.

You know we can go back to when he was talking about black people who live in Hell. Or what he said about Mexicans, what he said about the Central Park 5. And the list just goes on and on and on. And these were things to me that were concerning enough that people that I thought should have spoken up and said there is something really wrong with the behavior of this man that should make us question more than we have.

Also on the daily digital, New York Times national political correspondent Jonathan Martin discussed how Trump’s struggling candidacy could affect the House and Senate, and Michael Tilley outlines how Northwest Arkansas is faring in the latest Compass Report. Watch below.