Washington: President Donald Trump is banking on his loyal base of supporters to help him through the tangle of the Russia turmoil.
Trump had his core backers in mind as he decided how to respond to former FBI Director James Comey's Senate testimony and the steady creep of congressional investigations.
Trump's Republican allies might have found Comey credible, but the president called the man he fired as FBI director a liar and a "leaker."
Trump said he was the victim of the "fake news" media. And he tried to charge ahead by resorting to what worked for him as a candidate pushing policies dear to his base and using strong rhetoric to convey that message.
"As you know, we're under siege, you understand that. But we will come out bigger and better and stronger than ever. You watch," Trump said Thursday as Comey was telling senators that the president had pressured him to drop an investigation into an ex-White House aide.
"You fought hard for me and now I'm fighting hard for all of you," Trump said to evangelical supporters.
The strategy is consistent with the way Trump has governed in his first four months in office. His White House has made little effort to broaden the bedrock of support for a president who lost the popular vote and receives scant backing from Democrats.
Trump has yet to hold a rally in a state he lost to Hillary Clinton in November. He visits many of the small Rust Belt cities and rural heartland communities that went for him.
While backing away from some campaign promises, Trump has made good on policies his loyalists track closely.
When Trump pulled the United States from the Paris climate accords despite pleas from American allies, he framed it as a victory for American industry and the blue-collar workers who backed him. He has not dropped his attacks on President Barack Obama's health law, as a GOP replacement sputters in a Congress controlled by his party.
"The Democrats are destroying health care in this country. We have had no help," Trump said Wednesday in Ohio, which he won comfortably on Election Day.
"We will get no votes, no matter what we do. If we gave you the greatest plan in the history of the world, you would have no Democratic votes."
Support for the president has broken down sharply along party lines.
Only 4 per cent of Democrats back Trump while he has an 81 percent approval rating among Republicans, according to a Quinnipiac poll released this past week. His overall job approval number has fallen to the mid-30s, a new low, but the GOP number has remained steady in the past two months.
Even if Trump's core holds, the erosion of support from independents and wavering Democrats would jeopardize his ability to build support in swing states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida, said Paul Maslin, a Democratic pollster based in Wisconsin.
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