Trump’s base is solid, but it is small: His approval rating is hovering just below 40 per cent, a dreadful plateau. Terry Holt, a former spokesperson for George W. Bush’s campaigns and former House speaker John Boehner, said Trump is impeding his own agenda by shunning the news outlets and the policy messages that might allow him to widen his support.

“Those 35 to 38 per cent of the American people who support Donald Trump are going to support him almost under any circumstances . . . but the Congress has to work with a broader range of people,” Holt said. “And so even though Trump sees the power of the media only in communicating his base, that still leaves him 12 or 13 points short of a majority. That weakens his presidency. And it weakens the ability of his policy partners to go along with what he wants to do, or to pass legislation that is more popular than the president.”

Matt Mackowiak, a Texas-based Republican strategist, said Trump will harm Republican candidates in the 2018 congressional elections if he maintains his “insufficient” strategy of speaking to just a third of the public rather than trying to “put a coalition together that is certainly in the mid-40s and ideally is a majority.”