HARRIS FAULKNER: Is the rift real or imagined?

CHARLES HURT: Oh, it is definitely quite real. It is very real. But oddly I think it's only now setting in for a lot of the establishment Republicans.

FAULKNER: Have they been asleep?

CHARLIE HURT: Completely asleep, and they've been asleep not just since last summer but going back years, so far that they're the ones that basically opened the lane, made it possible for Donald Trump to step in. And then when he did step in -- and they should have had their ear to the ground, they should have realized just what a powerful message he was delivering -- they should have instantly seized on it and realized this was a real problem. Instead they made fun of him. They called him a clown. They said he was a buffoon. They called him an ape. And of course every one -- as you pointed out, all of the venom and vitriol and the nasty things that they called him, all it did was it just covered him in Teflon and -- to the point that he later on when people actually had legitimate criticisms about him it all just bounced off of him because it was -- they'd heard it all.

FAULKNER: You know what's interesting about what Charlie is saying, Julie, is that they built him up because he was able to then make the comparison of himself to everybody else, even with all that money. He could say look how badly they're picking on me, imagine what they would do to you?

JULIE ROGINSKY: I don't feel badly for them at all. In 2008, John McCain, who's now shedding tears over Sarah Palin - excuse me, oh, I'm sorry, Donald Trump, who is basically Sarah Palin in male form -- put Sarah Palin on the ticket. Then you had the tea party wave in 2010, which these guys cynically rode to the majority. And I remember going to some of those town hall meetings with some of these congressmen and seeing the tea party and what they were saying. And the Mitch McConnell's of the world and the establishment rode that wave to a majority. They exploited them. They used them. They ginned them up. And now the manifestation of that, Donald Trump, has essentially taken over the Republican Party and they can't believe it. Well they created this monster. They are essentially Dr. Frankenstein. And now they can't control Frankenstein and they don't know what to do about it. And so I don't feel badly for them at all.

[...]

ANDREA TANTAROS: The establishment is embarrassed. They should be embarrassed. It was humiliating for them last night. Sandra, they got this so wrong. Charlie is right, they created this pathway for him. It's a rebuke of their policies. A lot of them have been on the payrolls of other candidates. I mean, the Bush family, you see this, they've been in D.C. a little bit too long. They cannot see clearly. Harris, it's not that they're asleep. It's not fatigue.

FAULKNER: They're naval-gazing, from what you're saying.

TANTAROS: It's arrogance. It's arrogance. And every time they attack Donald Trump and call him a KKK supporter, a racist, an idiot, everything they label, they are labeling his supporters as racist. It only hurts them and helps him. And it was, again, humiliating, so many people on TV last night and on Twitter looked like they were covering a funeral, not an election. But guess what? They were covering their own funeral.

Previously:

The Right-Wing Noise Machine Implodes Over Trump -- And The GOP Gets Burned

“They Built This”: Media Call Out National Review's Anti-Trump Feature For Ignoring Right-Wing Media's Role In Trump's Rise

GOP Civil War: Conservatives Turn On National Review Over Anti-Trump Issue

Trump Is Devouring The GOP, And Fox News Fed It To Him