Republicans Sticking With Trump Is 'Definition of Insanity': Larry Hogan

Maryland's Republican Governor Larry Hogan said on Sunday that following Donald Trump and being under his influence has repeatedly cost the GOP an election win, adding that sticking with the former president is a "definition of insanity."

During an interview with CNN's State of the Union, host Dana Bash asked the governor how he would interpret the midterm election results as a "Republican warning against GOP extremism and specifically election denialism."

"The way I would interpret it...this should have been a huge red wave. It should have been one of the biggest red waves we have ever had, because President Biden's approval rating was so low, one of the lowest historically," Hogan responded. "More than 70 percent of people thought the country was going in the wrong direction. And yet we still didn't perform."

Hogan blamed Trump for the GOP not being able to secure victories in past races, adding "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result."

"And Donald Trump kept saying, we're going to be winning so much, we will get tired of winning. I'm tired of losing. I mean, that's all he's done," Hogan added.

Over the past week, Trump's midterm failures have impacted his popularity among his own party as Democrats achieved major gains in some states. At the moment, Democrats are officially maintaining and potentially growing their Senate control as many of Trump-backed candidates failed to win office. Meanwhile, it is still not clear which party will take House majority.

Hogan pointed out that candidates who focused on issues that mattered to the public during their campaigns outperformed those who continued to tout baseless claims about voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

"I think common sense conservatives that focused on talking about issues people cared about, like the economy and crime and education, they did win. But people who tried to relitigate the 2020 election and focused on conspiracy theories and talked about things the voters didn't care about, they were almost universally rejected," he said.

Bash also asked Hogan on Sunday about whether Republicans would continue to be influenced by the former president after notable losses and whether they will "embrace the party of Trump."

"You know, if you lose over and over again to what's really not that great of a team, you have got to reassess, is it time to rebuild?" Hogan said. "And you have to go back and think, how do we have a more hopeful, positive vision? How do we appeal to a broader group of voters? Because we—in some cases, we fired up the base, but we turned off wide swathes of swing voters. And that's why we didn't perform."

Trump reportedly is expected to announce a 2024 presidential run on Tuesday. When asked about what he thinks will happen if Trump announces that he'll run again, Hogan said that the ex-president is "still the 800-pound gorilla."

"And it's still a battle. It's going to continue for the next two years. I would just say that we're two years out from the next election, and we're just trying to—the dust is settling from this one," he said. "I think it'd be a mistake. As I mentioned, Trump's cost us the last three elections. And I don't want to see it happen a fourth time."

Newsweek reached out to Trump's media office for comment.