I spoke to the BBC‘s Anthony Zurcher about where the GOP is headed in the wake of the Trump presidency.

With his victory, he became the Republican establishment – and all but the most recalcitrant never-Trumpers eventually bent to his will.

They bent, according to Liam Donovan, a Republican lobbyist and former Senate campaign strategist, because that’s where the party membership took them. Trump appointed top party officials, like Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel. And at the state and local level, Republican Party officials are Trump true believers.

“The state party leaders are the activists, not the elite,” says Donovan. “The rank and file are hardcore Republicans, and hardcore Republicans are hardcore Trump people. He has absolutely converted them.”

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Donovan isn’t so sure Republicans can – or even will want to – turn back the clock.

“What Trump proved is being a slave to whatever conservative orthodoxy says is not necessary or even necessarily advantageous,” he says.

Trump ran against free trade, open immigration and an aggressive foreign policy, and was an ardent critic of cutting Social Security. Other Republican politicians might decide Trump has proven that heterodoxy isn’t so risky.

“A lot of people are playing with different things Trump has done,” he says, “but I don’t think anyone has figured it out yet.”

They may not have to figure it out, however. Even after all the events of recent days, Donald Trump may not be done yet.

Read the full piece here.

I spoke to Ron Brownstein of The Atlantic about the opportunity for President Biden to capitalize on simmering tensions within a shifting GOP coalition.

An array of national polls conducted since the attack show that Trump remains extremely popular within the GOP base. But he’s lost voters too. “What you’ve seen over the past two months is this interesting tension, where he’s simultaneously consolidated the core chunk of people who support him while pushing away the marginal people who would put up with [his] antics because they like the policies,” the Republican communications consultant Liam Donovan told me.

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The key dynamic for the next two years: Biden, a politician with an instinct for outreach, is arriving precisely as Trump’s presidency has left many traditionally Republican-leaning voters unmoored and uncertain. Those disaffected Republicans, Donovan noted, “demographically and otherwise match the sorts of people who have been fleeing the party to begin with. That paints the opportunity [for Biden] there. I think it’s real, and it’s only going to continue absent some other shift [in the GOP] we’ve not seen yet.”

Read the full piece here.

I talked to Maggie Haberman of the New York Times about President Trump’s love-hate relationship with the polls.

Beyond the polling, the fundamentals shaping the electorate, like the economy and the record-breaking coronavirus surge, are “increasingly ominous” for Mr. Trump, said Liam Donovan, a veteran Republican strategist.

“Ironically, the polls may be the best thing the Trump campaign has going for it at this point,” he said.

Read the full piece here.

I talked to CNN‘s Ryan Nobles about the Trump campaign’s ground game and whether it will make the difference in a race that has seen Biden maintain a steady polling lead.

“If this were the down-to-the-wire race we were all expecting through March, that ground effort would be absolutely critical to winning that last point or two at the margin,” said GOP operative Liam Donovan, who is not affiliated with the Trump campaign. “But a fraught public health environment makes the execution tougher than ever, and absent a polling error even bigger than what we saw in 2016, the states at the tipping point just don’t seem to be close enough for it to matter.”

Read the full piece here.

I spoke to Elaina Plott for her cover story for the New York Times Magazine examining the Trump legacy and the long tail of his one-dimensional takeover of the GOP.

Trump’s takeover, by contrast, has been as one-dimensional as it has been total. In the space of one term, the president has co-opted virtually every power center in the Republican Party, from its congressional caucuses to its state parties, its think tanks to its political action committees. But though he has disassembled much of the old order, he has built very little in its place.

“You end up with this weird paradox where he stands to haunt the G.O.P. for many years to come, but on the substance it’s like he was never even there,” said Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist.

Read the full story here.