Donald Trump’s surrogate speakers have been put in an awkward situation over the past few weeks as he has begun to assert that the election is rigged against him, slowly turning his election bid into little more than a daytime soap opera. It seems as if he has finally come to terms with the fact that he may lose the election; rather than delegating the task of making an absurd statement to his surrogates, he decided to exclaim that the election was rigged on his own. Many of his surrogates have jumped on the rigged election train alongside him, but many other important Republicans have denounced the notion of a rigged election; if influential Republicans continue to support Trump while he rambles on about rigging and conspiracy, it is likely that it will do some legitimate damage to their political career in the future.
Conspiracy pushing away surrogates 
This creation of a heated conspiracy fits nicely into the framework of the paranoid style that has perpetuated itself over time among right-wing politicians, but not everyone is buying in. Utah’s Lieutenant Governor Spencer Cox was one of the Republicans who has disagreed with Trump and his allegations of a rigged election; “it’s irresponsible and it’s ignorant at best,” Cox recently stated. Trump has stepped up to the plate to try and belittle the opinions of his former surrogates and supporters, however, even going as far as posting a tweet calling them naive. This has led to great pushback against Trump on behalf of former surrogates and will continue to lead to a fracturing of the GOP.
Some surrogates still holding on
Though Trump has seemingly lost a good number of his surrogates, there are a loyal few, namely Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich, who have come out with extreme claims that dead people are voting and that the media has rigged the election against Trump. Even strong surrogates, such as Trump’s running-mate Mike Pence, have begun to use dissociation to refine Trump’s accusations of a rigged election into something less extreme: a claim that the election results will be accepted even if viewed as unfair. Giuliani, Gingrich, and Pence have all put themselves into a position that will cause them distress in future elections, when more stock Republican candidates come into play and they were the people who supported the rogue Republican until the very end.
I definitely agree that Trump is less than popular within the Republican party. Trump has always been outspoken and has been viewed as more of an extremist with poor presidential character. His surrogate speakers and outspoken supporters will have a lot to overcome in the future if he does lose this election. They will have to work diligently to reframe and rebrand their image apart from Trump after this election. As for the conspiracy theories, Trump is trying to do everything he can to not admit actual defeat. Whether he is doing this because he purely believes he is right about the election being rigged, or using it as a tactic to again point fingers at the political system and give people another reason to vote for him, he won’t win more votes based on theories. He needs something more substantial than a theory to overcome all of the damage of the past few weeks.
I definitely see your point about how Trump’s conspiracy theories are pushing more and more of his surrogates away. Considering that he lost popularity with a large part of the GOP as soon as he became the nominee, I believe things were already in a fragile enough state to begin with that the structure of his support system came more easily unraveled much faster. In order for him to even have a chance at winning on November 8th, I believe he will have to reel those wild claims in and start focusing on a more all-inclusive message – something that seems nearly impossible for him, if his past history has anything to show for it.