Megyn Kelly, Charles Krauthammer debate if Trump can really 'own the future' of the GOP

Megyn Kelly and Charles Krauthammer discuss future of GOP — (Image credit: Fox News/YouTube)

For an operation that appears to be run via Donald Trump rally and Donald Trump tweets, Donald Trump's presidential campaign actually has a very sophisticated data-mining operation, called Project Alamo, that was detailed in BloombergBusinessweek on Thursday. Trump campaign chairman Steve Bannon told Bloomberg that Trump has built the "underlying apparatus for a political movement" that will "dominate Republican politics" after the election, and Trump's digital director, Brad Parscale, added, "We own the future of the Republican Party." Megyn Kelly asked columnist Charles Krauthammer on Thursday's Kelly File if he thinks that is true.

Krauthammer said it depends on whether Trump wins. Any successful president, like Ronald Reagan, will dominate and change his party, Krauthammer said, and Trump is backed by a plurality of Republicans now. If Trump loses, however, what he does next is up to him. "If Trump decides to stay in the game, the first test will be whether he can successfully bring down Paul Ryan, who's become a nemesis of his, and then we'll know how transitive is his influence," Krauthammer said. Kelly was skeptical.

All along, she noted, Trump "has said, 'If I lose, this was all for nothing, it has been a complete waste of time, and I'm going to go back to running my successful business and, you know, focus on profit-making.'" It's up to Trump, and we don't know if he'll want to build a media empire, try to become a kingmaker, or return to his business, Kelly said. "But we know one thing from his entire life history," Krauthammer said. "He loves the spotlight, he finds it hard to be away from it." Win or lose, Trump will have changed, "he'll have acquired a powerful instrument, a political instrument — he didn't have that before he ran," Krauthammer said, and "it's extremely tempting because he built this, essentially on his own and out of nowhere, and he's got a lot of options. He's not the retiring type, you might have noticed." Kelly had noticed. They laughed. Watch below. Peter Weber

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