U.S. President Donald Trump looks on as he hosts a dinner with Republican members of the U.S. Congress in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 22, 2025. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura

One veteran Republican strategist is predicting that President Donald Trump's targeting of Republican elected officials in a deep-red state will end in failure.

During a Wednesday appearance on MS NOW (formerly MSNBC), Stuart Stevens — who was a top strategist for 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney — argued that Trump's pledge to primary Indiana senate Republicans was counterproductive. He also praised Hoosier State Republicans for being willing to resist Trump's attempts to strong-arm them into supporting mid-decade redistricting.

"Indiana still has some sensible core to its Republican Party. This is the place where Richard Lugar was the definitive leader of the party for decades," he said. "... There's a sense that this is just a bad idea that is backfiring on Trump. And once you start this, where do you end?"

The president's outrage at Indiana Republicans is primarily directed at Indiana Senate president pro tempore Rodric Bray, who said recently that he didn't have the votes to pass new redistricting maps through his chamber designed to give Republicans an additional seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Bray's failure was noteworthy given that Republicans control 40 of 50 seats in the Indiana Senate, meaning that at least 16 Republicans sided with the chamber's 10 Democrats against the new maps.

Stevens posited that Trump's heavy-handed tactics were becoming less effective, given his redistricting failure in one of the reddest state legislatures in the country.

"People get tired of being bullied," Stevens said. "And Trump's reaction to this that he's now going to go in and primary all these people is absolutely the wrong way to try to do this, instead of working with them."

"I think you're seeing a post-election reaction to Trump where all the Democrats had a great day. Trump's favorables are in the toilet. He's a lame duck. He seems to be falling, failing physically," he added. "So all of this is sort of, I think, the long night of Donald Trump's descent."

Watch the segment below:

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