Washington Free Beacon editor in chief Matthew Continetti said on Friday that President Donald Trump's message on manufacturing and trade is helping strength his support with former President Barack Obama's supporters, who switched over to support his presidency.
Continetti appeared on MSNBC's "Meet the Press Daily" panel alongside Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus and Bloomberg News reporter Sahil Kapur, where they discussed whether or not Trump loses credibility if he tells falsehoods.
Host Chuck Todd asked Continetti if it mattered whether Trump has credibility, saying, "It's sort of like he can have credibility even when he doesn't tell the truth or doesn't he. It's this weird--it's different than the seriously 'literally' debate we had a year ago."
"Speaking journalistically, of course it matters when one has to cover the president's statements and compare them with the empirical evidence," Continetti said. "Politically, however, is another question. And when you look at some of the polling that we've received in the last few weeks, it doesn't seem that the American voter is giving credibility the same weight that say, people in the media and Washington, D.C. are."
Kapur praised Continetti's response as an "excellent point," noting Trump's approval ratings have been "remarkably stable" over various stages of his presidency. He added that Republicans overwhelmingly continue to support Trump, overlooking "what is beyond reasonable doubt with this president to use a legal term, speaking falsehoods and misleading statements and lies at an exponentially greater clip than his predecessors."
Later in the segment, Continetti compared Trump's presidency to the presidency of former President Bill Clinton, talking about how Clinton's approval ratings continued to be high, despite the Monica Lewinsky Scandal, "because of conditions on the ground."
"If we look broadly: we look at the economy, we look at the fact that voters like peacemakers and Trump is preparing for this summit with Kim Jong Un," Continetti said. " I even, in particular, think that Trump's message on manufacturing and trade is strengthening his base, is getting people on the--not so much the Republican voters but those kind of Obama voters who switched for Trump."
"Broadly in the political sense, I think he's okay," Continetti added.
Todd later said two-time failed presidential candidate Hilary Clinton paid the price of her husband's personal issues in the 2016 presidential election when she lost and that Republicans will eventually pay the price of Trump, prompting Continetti to say Democrats need to figure out how they are going to play off Trump's perceived weakness on the credibility issue.