Mike Madrid, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, says he has never seen a president plummet as thoroughly with Independents as President Donald Trump during his second term. This, he told, Left Hook substack writer Wajahat Ali, is not the kind of damage one comes back from before the midterms.“Waj, he's at, like, 20 percent with Independents. That's insane. I've never seen that before. No one has ever seen that before,” said Madrid, who was a Republican strategist before founding the Lincoln Project. “These numbers are really, really bad. … [R]ight-wing polls are dumped in to kind of manipulate the system a little bit, so you're seeing incredibly, incredibly low levels of support.”Madrid pointed out that Independents serve as “the thermometer … and the best gauge of public opinion” to measure a candidate's support, primarily because Independents are a more volatile group, being that they are, by definition, less partisan.“When you start to see three-, four- or five-point swings, it's because you're seeing these broad movement shifts with Independent or unaffiliated voters,” said Madrid. “Very rarely do you see those numbers drop amongst Independents — regardless of what's going on — below a 40 percent floor. Okay? If you're seeing a 60-40 loss with Independents, you're in trouble. And we're talking low 20s.”Madrid said he was seeing tallies in the 20s, with a CNN poll placing Independents at 26 percent and a YouGov poll at 22 percent. “If you're starting the number with a 20, whatever it is, it doesn't matter. Those numbers aren't recoverable to be competitive at a national level,” said Madrid.The strategist was so staggered by Trump’s collapse that he had to caution “patience” because he’d “never seen this before.” But he said recent election results made it difficult to deny the extent of Trump’s and Republicans’ plight.“We're seeing the election results on the ground match this stuff,” said Madrid. “We're seeing 35-point swings. We're seeing massive turnout. … But when you start to see massive shifts ... 30-point shifts, 40-point shifts, and dramatic turnout numbers like you're seeing in Texas, there's something going on. … The polling was off by 12 or 15 points in New Jersey. It was off by more than double digits in Virginia. It was off by 15 points in California. It was off by 12 points in Miami. It was off by 20 plus points in the special district in Texas. This is why we don't have a way to gauge this environment — but people are that upset at this moment.”