Trump has lost most of his influence — and he knows it

The media and the public are losing interest in the former president, even as he struggles to maintain relevance, writes Phil Thomas

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On Monday afternoon, Jason Miller, an aide to Donald Trump, tweeted: “Hot fire POTUS 45 statement coming shortly!”

Sure enough, about an hour after that drumroll teaser, a lengthier than usual statement from the man-forbidden-to-tweet-himself emerged.

“Hot fire” might be a generous way to describe the contents. The former president crows about CNN and MSNBC getting lower ratings (“They should have embraced and endorsed ‘Trump’,” he writes); he boasts that a majority of Republicans believe his false claims about election fraud; and he claims rather unconvincingly that he is doing less media in order to keep the focus on Biden’s crises.