By Asawin Suebsaeng & Sam Stein @ DailyBeast.com, July 19

[....] while numerous GOP lawmakers rushed to distance themselves from the president this past week, Trump’s most fervent loyalists circled the wagons. Far from being politically poisonous, Bannon argued, the president represented the party’s lone bit of electoral salvation.

“These House guys are running around with a very conventional district-by-district plan. This is the way you lose 40 seats. This is Trump and conventional won't work. They are thinking about this the wrong way. This is not a midterm election—this is Trump’s first re-elect,” Bannon, Trump’s ousted top White House strategist, told The Daily Beast on Thursday.

“This is a deplorables-plus electorate to hold the House and build the majority in the Senate: Deplorables plus the Reagan Democrats, plus those people who voted for the president in ’16 who never voted before in presidentials much less off years,” he added. “You’ve got to get those guys by telling them it is a presidential. Because the college-educated Republican women in the suburbs are a challenge. You are not going to be able to easily secure their support, a top target for the Democrats. Maybe they don’t vote for the other side and maybe they straggle in because their 401(k) is up. But it’s gonna be a challenge.”