--- title: Donald Trump Still Leads The Republicans. That’s Bad for Almost Everybody description: Donald Trump is out of office. That doesn’t mean he’s out of power. canonical: https://time.com/6102500/donald-trump-gop-control/ author: Philip Elliott article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2021-09-29T18:07:37.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-24T10:21:39.984Z article:section: Politics og:title: Donald Trump Still Leads The Republicans. That’s Bad for Almost Everybody og:description: Donald Trump is out of office. That doesn’t mean he’s out of power. og:url: https://time.com/6102500/donald-trump-gop-control/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8a2ad3a3b44f83c8/698a1d55db29872566266edb/donald-trump-rally.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2400 og:image:height: 1350 og:image:alt: Donald Trump og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Donald Trump Still Leads The Republicans. That’s Bad for Almost Everybody twitter:description: Donald Trump is out of office. That doesn’t mean he’s out of power. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt8a2ad3a3b44f83c8/698a1d55db29872566266edb/donald-trump-rally.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Donald Trump Still Leads The Republicans—And That’s Bad for Almost Everybody > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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Brief is TIME's Washington newsletter, written by senior correspondent Philip Elliott. It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. It reaches 85,000 subscribers with a 37.0% open rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters.  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Sep 29, 2021 6:07 PM UTC  Former President Donald Trump attends a rally in Perry, Ga., on Sept. 25, 2021. Former President Donald Trump attends a rally in Perry, Ga., on Sept. 25, 2021. Dustin Chambers—Reuters  by [Philip Elliott](https://time.com/author/philip-elliott/)  ## Philip Elliott Senior Correspondent Sep 29, 2021 6:07 PM UTC _This article is part of the The DC Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up_ [_here_](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/newsletter%5Fopt-in?qs=3a19a0aa35903a2d9f214b74f69a37910b58de73cf3f2b89adc123fac024f0478c72f91010ae9d01f08f46c616068cab3e74726837cd2cce70dac3796e46c2b4) _to get stories like this sent to your inbox every weekday._ Donald Trump is out of office. That doesn’t mean he’s out of power. In the last week, the former President has once again shown just how he plans to maintain control of the Republican Party’s brand. He has [refused](https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/27/politics/arizona-trump-election-lies/index.html) to accept the Republican-led audit of 2020 election results in Arizona that he is, in fact, still the race’s [loser](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/24/us/arizona-election-review-trump-biden.html). He continues to push for election [reviews](https://www.npr.org/2021/09/23/1039451858/republican-led-election-reviews-take-shape-in-pennsylvania-and-wisconsin) in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin—and seems to be on track to get them. Trump has been [hammering](https://www.newsweek.com/trump-slams-mcconnell-other-gop-senators-who-voted-destructive-infrastructure-bill-1633226) his supporters in Congress to [gum up](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/government-shutdown-fund-senate-gop-debt-ceiling-block-bill/) a [quartet](https://time.com/6101795/infrastructure-reconciliation-debt-congress/) of high-profile pieces of President Joe Biden’s agenda and keeps sprinkling his endorsements in races around the country, trying to exact revenge on corners of his party he has deemed insufficiently loyal. Trump has remade the Republican brand into one of chaos and obstruction, despite holding no official place in the party hierarchy. His contempt for norms continues and, especially among House Republicans, that is in itself a new norm. It’s tough to imagine a pre-Trump moment where such rancor was celebrated. In 2009, when Rep. Joe Wilson [shouted](https://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/09/joe.wilson/) “You lie!” at then-President Barack Obama, he [issued](https://www.rollcall.com/2009/09/09/wilson-apologizes-for-shouting-at-obama/) an apology almost immediately for his outburst. Now, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s [heckling](https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/marjorie-taylor-greene-s-good-christian-abortion-meltdown-ncna1280110) of fellow members on the steps of the Capitol about abortion and their faith is met with deafening silence from the GOP. (Party leaders, however, have already stripped her of committee assignments for peddling conspiracy theories.) Trump may have fled Washington even before Joe Biden took the oath but his influence never left, especially among Republicans who sincerely believe that Trump’s mix of bravado and trouble-making is a winning cocktail for victory in next year’s midterms and the 2024 race that, if Trump is to be [believed](https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2021/09/07/trump-builds-turnkey-campaign-operation-for-2024-1390750), could feature his return to the ballot. In fact, CNN polling [shows](https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/12/politics/cnn-poll-donald-trump-republicans/index.html) GOP voters prefer Trump to be the leader of the Republican Party by a 2-to-1 margin, even if those same voters say it’s a coin-toss whether he’d actually help them retake the White House as the nominee. Trump is still drawing [crowds](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/06/28/trump-can-still-draw-crowd-just-like-lot-oldies-acts/) across the country, and some [$82 million](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/07/31/trump-committees-fundraising-2021-fec/) in cash in the first half of the year moved into Trump-affiliated accounts at a network of political committees. It’s easy to dismiss the shift in what it means to be a Republican these days as something that only matters inside the Beltway; something for cable news pundits to fret about. After all, the share of Americans who actually [identifies](https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx) as a member of the Republican Party hovers around 30% year over year. (Democrats come in around that same level. The biggest voting bloc in America is unaffiliated voters, and has been for decades.) The problem is that for many voters, supporting Trump goes hand in hand with rejecting some of the nation’s basic guiding principles. In communities across this country, yard signs still are promoting Trump’s re-election last year. Many Republicans still believe he is the legitimately elected President of the United States: [two-thirds](https://news.yahoo.com/poll-two-thirds-of-republicans-still-think-the-2020-election-was-rigged-165934695.html) of GOP voters said in a poll released last month that Trump was the winner of the election, a number that has remained consistent since November despite overwhelming evidence otherwise. It’s tough for rank-and-file Republican lawmakers to ignore _that_ reality, even if meaningful election fraud is fiction. Which brings us to this disturbing [finding](https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/09/28/declining-share-of-republicans-say-it-is-important-to-prosecute-jan-6-rioters/), released this week from the Pew Research Center. In a massive survey of more than 10,000 people, Pew found only 57% of Republicans believe those who heeded Trump’s [advice](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/us/trump-speech-riot.html) to march on the Capitol and “fight like hell” on Jan. 6 deserve prosecution for the failed insurrection. That’s still a majority, sure, but it’s down from the 78% who said the same in March. And among Republicans who think the mob that stormed the Capitol and sent lawmakers into hiding deserve to face consequences, the intensity has dropped off, with the 50% of Republicans who in March said it was “very important” to prosecute the offenders falling to 27%. In other words, Trump and his allies have been working tirelessly to normalize the Jan. 6 [attacks](https://time.com/5927664/capital-siege-trump-supporters/) and, at least among Republicans, it’s working. Their near-universal [refusal](https://time.com/6082950/pelosi-mcarthy-january-6-committee/) to cooperate with Congress’ Jan. 6 investigation has delegitimized it, and the work more broadly to discredit a free and fair election continues to prove a threat to America’s democracy. To borrow an [observation](https://www.newsweek.com/trump-succeeded-where-russia-failed-attacking-election-integrity-ex-gop-arizona-ag-says-1632709) from a former Arizona Attorney General, an ex-Republican who was John McCain’s chief of staff, Trump’s efforts to undermine American democracy may be succeeding where Russia’s failed. And that’s something that all Americans across the political spectrum should watch with worry. _Make sense of what matters in Washington._ [_Sign up for the daily D.C. Brief newsletter._](https://cloud.newsletters.time.com/politics?source=dc%5Farticle) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/6102500/donald-trump-gop-control/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/6102500/donald-trump-gop-control/"},"headline":"Donald Trump Still Leads The Republicans—And That’s Bad for Almost Everybody","datePublished":"2021-09-29T18:07:37.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-24T10:21:39.984Z","description":"Donald Trump is out of office. That doesn’t mean he’s out of power.","url":"https://time.com/6102500/donald-trump-gop-control/","keywords":["The D.C. 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