This claim about the Republican Party is a skip, too; he has been saying it for a while. In other words, Trump was ginning up interest in primary voting, not in the Republican Party. The percentage of respondents who identify as Republican has increased slightly from late 2013, when the government shutdown hurt the Republican Party. People are less likely to call themselves Democrats — but it isn’t Trump’s Republican Party that gains. On this day, to that conservative crowd, Trump was hoping to suggest that his candidacy had made the Republican Party a much more powerful force.

Source: Washington Post February 24, 2017 18:00 UTC