Latest / The Kinzinger Report / The Base Is Breaking | Republican Voters Hand Trump's Candidates a Brutal Night — August 19, 2026
Transcript
- 0:05[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Adam Kinzinger, and you're listening to the Kinzinger Report, where I bring you top stories and analysis on current events and the growing threats to our democracy.
- 0:15[SPEAKER_01]: After serving over a decade in Congress, I hope you know what's true and what really matters so that we can all work to save this country that we love so much.
- 0:29[SPEAKER_01]: Well, everybody, welcome back.
- 0:32[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for being here.
- 0:33[SPEAKER_01]: Let's see what kind of goodies we have today.
- 0:36[SPEAKER_01]: Our top story, Republican voters just sent Donald Trump a message last night, because his hand-picked candidates lost in Florida and Wyoming in Democrats, actually flipped a Pennsylvania seat that has been red for almost 30 years.
- 0:53[SPEAKER_01]: Trump carried that district by 18 points in 2024.
- 0:57[SPEAKER_01]: The man who claims he does nothing but when keeps picking losers and now even his own voters are saying that.
- 1:05[SPEAKER_01]: We're also going to get into Senator Darling Graham's atrocious debate performance.
- 1:12[SPEAKER_01]: Jelaine Maxwell losing her last fight to keep the Epstein files buried.
- 1:17[SPEAKER_01]: A mystery polling firm admitting its election polls were fake.
- 1:21[SPEAKER_01]: and calling it all a social experiment and the national debt crossing 40 trillion dollars this week after Trump promised us he'd pay it off.
- 1:31[SPEAKER_01]: So do me a favor, like the video, share it with someone who needs to see this, subscribe, you never want to miss an episode.
- 1:38[SPEAKER_01]: You'll be the most informed person you know.
- 1:40[SPEAKER_01]: So let's get to it.
- 1:41[SPEAKER_01]: So we're gonna start with an election night that went about as badly for Donald Trump as an election night can possibly go.
- 1:49[SPEAKER_01]: Voters went to the polls yesterday in Florida, Wyoming, Alaska, and Pennsylvania, and in race after race, the president's chosen candidates went down.
- 1:58[SPEAKER_01]: Let's start in southwestern, Florida.
- 2:01[SPEAKER_01]: Trump endorsed Catalina Lau for the open house seat that Byron Donalds is leaving to run for governor.
- 2:07[SPEAKER_01]: He posted on truth social that she has the courage and wisdom to deliver strong results.
- 2:13[SPEAKER_01]: Wisdom.
- 2:14[SPEAKER_01]: Lao for self said Trump's endorsement would make or break the race, well, if broke it, she lost to a local businessman named Jim Schwarzsel in a district that Trump won by 30 points in 2024.
- 2:28[SPEAKER_01]: Also a guy named Oberwise who ran for Congress in Illinois like 400 times, but whatever, I'll leave that aside.
- 2:35[SPEAKER_01]: Florida Congressman Corey Mills also endorsed by Trump.
- 2:39[SPEAKER_01]: lost his primary two.
- 2:41[SPEAKER_01]: Now that's an incumbent losing.
- 2:43[SPEAKER_01]: Same story out in Wyoming.
- 2:44[SPEAKER_01]: One of the reddest states in the country.
- 2:46[SPEAKER_01]: Trump endorsed his pick for governor there.
- 2:49[SPEAKER_01]: She lost to a state senator who campaigned on quote, respectful, effective leadership.
- 2:55[SPEAKER_01]: Imagine that being a wedding
- 2:58[SPEAKER_01]: And this isn't just some flute, Trump's choices for governor already lost their primaries this cycle in Iowa, Georgia, and South Carolina.
- 3:06[SPEAKER_01]: And the my pillow guy lost his race in Minnesota just last week.
- 3:10[SPEAKER_01]: These are Republican primaries.
- 3:12[SPEAKER_01]: This is his own base that's telling him no.
- 3:16[SPEAKER_01]: But the biggest shocker the night came from Butler County, Pennsylvania, that's Trump country.
- 3:20[SPEAKER_01]: It's where he survived the assassination attempt in 2024.
- 3:24[SPEAKER_01]: He carried the house district there by 18 points and the seat has been read for almost 30 years.
- 3:32[SPEAKER_01]: Last night, a Democrat named Brandon Dukes flipped it by 88 votes.
- 3:36[SPEAKER_01]: Dukes could barely believe it himself, saying, quote, we just flipped a Trump plus 18C.
- 3:41[SPEAKER_01]: We made history.
- 3:43[SPEAKER_01]: Democrats have been overperforming in special elections like this all year, flipping Republican seats again and again without losing a single one of their own.
- 3:53[SPEAKER_01]: And now Trump can't even carry his own people across the finish line.
- 3:57[SPEAKER_01]: His bases rejecting his candidates and swing voters are rejecting his party.
- 4:02[SPEAKER_01]: Somewhere in the White House, somebody is looking at these results and sweating.
- 4:06[SPEAKER_01]: And if they're not, they should be because they know what is coming in November.
- 4:11[SPEAKER_01]: And they're not going to like it.
- 4:13[SPEAKER_01]: And there's a reason Trump's picks keep losing his bad he backs bad candidates.
- 4:18[SPEAKER_01]: That's the main thing.
- 4:19[SPEAKER_01]: Last night, one of them was on a debate stage in South Carolina.
- 4:24[SPEAKER_01]: Senator Darling Graham is the sister of the late Senator Lindsey Graham.
- 4:28[SPEAKER_01]: At Trump's urging, Governor Henry McMaster appointed her to fill the seat, even though she'd never held office in her life, now she's running in next Tuesday's runoff against Congressman Ralph Norman to keep it, with Trump's full endorsement, by the way.
- 4:43[SPEAKER_01]: Last night, the two candidates met in Newberry for their only debate.
- 4:47[SPEAKER_01]: Graham was asking a question, any Senate candidate should be able to handle, well, really actually any kid in school.
- 4:54[SPEAKER_01]: Our Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States take a look.
- 5:02[SPEAKER_02]: Senator, our Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States.
- 5:08[SPEAKER_02]: If so, why?
- 5:11[SPEAKER_03]: I'm sorry, could you repeat the question?
- 5:12[SPEAKER_02]: Our Taiwan and the South China Sea national security issues for the United States and if so, why or how?
- 5:20[SPEAKER_03]: I'm just going to be honest here, I'm not on national security that I'm not that informed on national security, so I do support the military.
- 5:32[SPEAKER_01]: Look, nowadays, unfortunately, nobody expects every senator to be an expert on every corner of national security, but every senator should be able to give at least a basic answer to that question.
- 5:45[SPEAKER_01]: Taiwan and the South China Sea are at the center of one of our biggest strategic challenges and she's running for a Senate seat.
- 5:53[SPEAKER_01]: that will vote on war powers, confirm Pentagon leadership, and decide whether our troops go into harm's way.
- 6:00[SPEAKER_01]: But the person Trump wants in that seat says it's not her thing.
- 6:05[SPEAKER_01]: I guess at least she's honest, so we'll give her that.
- 6:08[SPEAKER_01]: So why does Trump support somebody who's clearly unqualified for the job?
- 6:11[SPEAKER_01]: Because in Trump's mind, she is qualified.
- 6:13[SPEAKER_01]: Trump has one requirement for the job loyalty.
- 6:17[SPEAKER_01]: That's the only thing he cares about.
- 6:20[SPEAKER_01]: And Darlin checks that box.
- 6:22[SPEAKER_01]: She's made that very clear.
- 6:24[SPEAKER_01]: And Trump's bad week doesn't end there because the courts keep forcing out the Epstein story that his administration is trying to bury.
- 6:33[SPEAKER_01]: A Manhattan judge ruled that the remaining case files from an Epstein victims 2015 defamation lawsuit against Jelaine Maxwell must be released.
- 6:43[SPEAKER_01]: That case produced tens of thousands of pages of evidence, including sworn depositions of Maxwell herself before she settled and paid millions of dollars to make it go away.
- 6:54[SPEAKER_01]: Nearly all of it has been sealed ever since, and Maxwell fought for years to keep it that way.
- 6:59[SPEAKER_01]: But now she's lost.
- 7:00[SPEAKER_01]: The judge ruled that the Epstein files transparency act overrides the old secrecy orders, warning that keeping the documents hidden would leave the public with an incomplete and potentially misleading picture of Epstein and Maxwell's crimes.
- 7:15[SPEAKER_01]: The files will be redacted, of course, but hopefully to protect the victims and nothing else, because that should be protected.
- 7:23[SPEAKER_01]: But the rest is coming out, depositions, exhibits evidence that reporters who know this case believe implicates some very powerful people, and it seems like the administration knows that.
- 7:35[SPEAKER_01]: In a separate case last week, another federal judge held a hearing over the Justice Department's refusal to release parts of its own Epstein files, including material about allegations involving Trump himself.
- 7:47[SPEAKER_01]: That judge is already ruled that the DOJ is violating the transparency law, writing that attorney general Todd Blanch has admitted it in court.
- 7:56[SPEAKER_01]: So the DOJ is breaking the very law Trump signed while a convicted trafficker's secrets get pride loose by everyone else.
- 8:06[SPEAKER_01]: Court by court, the truth is coming out anyway.
- 8:08[SPEAKER_01]: The only question left is why the White House is standing in the way.
- 8:13[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you can come up with your own judgment for that.
- 8:16[SPEAKER_01]: Speaking of Uncovered Secrets, let's talk about the polling company that never actually existed.
- 8:22[SPEAKER_01]: A few weeks ago a firm called Media and Strategy started publishing polls online that got real attention.
- 8:29[SPEAKER_01]: One showed Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass.
- 8:32[SPEAKER_01]: Leading her Challenger by 12 points, Bass's campaign promoted on social media news outlets, reported on it.
- 8:39[SPEAKER_01]: Another one showed Wisconsin Governor candidate Francesca Hong, up more than 20 points in her primary days before she lost.
- 8:48[SPEAKER_01]: But here's the problem, every one of those polls was made up.
- 8:51[SPEAKER_01]: After one LA Times reporter repeatedly questioned the company, they admitted the numbers were fake and they shut down entirely.
- 9:00[SPEAKER_01]: In a statement, the firm called itself a short term social experiment to see how fake polling could spread through the political information ecosystem.
- 9:08[SPEAKER_01]: They refused to give any interviews so we don't really know who was behind it.
- 9:12[SPEAKER_01]: They just walked away.
- 9:13[SPEAKER_01]: This isn't sane by the way.
- 9:15[SPEAKER_01]: So a handful of anonymous people invented polling numbers and within days they were being amplified by sources that people trust.
- 9:23[SPEAKER_01]: Poles tell donors where to send money, they tell campaigns where to fight, and they tell voters whether they're vote even matters.
- 9:30[SPEAKER_01]: A fake poll showing big leads can convince people to stay home.
- 9:35[SPEAKER_01]: And what exactly is stopping Trump's operation, a foreign government, or anyone with bad intentions from flooding the zone with phony numbers designed to do just that?
- 9:46[SPEAKER_01]: Right now there's nothing to stop it.
- 9:48[SPEAKER_01]: So take this experiment as a warning between now and November.
- 9:51[SPEAKER_01]: Treat every poll you see with suspicion.
- 9:55[SPEAKER_01]: The good ones and the bad ones.
- 9:56[SPEAKER_01]: Your candidates up 10 vote, down 10 vote.
- 9:59[SPEAKER_01]: Anything you see online can be fake.
- 10:02[SPEAKER_01]: The one thing that is real is your ballot.
- 10:05[SPEAKER_01]: And it matters now more than ever.
- 10:08[SPEAKER_01]: And finally, a milestone arrives this week that nobody in the administration wants to acknowledge.
- 10:13[SPEAKER_01]: Back in 2023, Trump made huge promises to deal with the national debt if he was reelected.
- 10:20[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to make so much money.
- 10:21[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to pay off debt.
- 10:23[SPEAKER_00]: the $35 trillion in debt.
- 10:25[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to pay it off.
- 10:26[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to get it done fast too.
- 10:28[SPEAKER_01]: Of course, that was a lie the moment he said it and there were receipts to prove it.
- 10:33[SPEAKER_01]: When Trump was first sworn in back in 2017, the debt stood in about $20 trillion.
- 10:39[SPEAKER_01]: By the time you left, it was nearly 28.
- 10:42[SPEAKER_01]: No reasonable person expected a second term to be any different and sure enough, that instinct was correct.
- 10:48[SPEAKER_01]: Sometime this week our national debt will cross forty trillion dollars, double, where it stood the day Trump took office.
- 10:56[SPEAKER_01]: And on his watch, it's growing quicker than expected six months ago.
- 11:01[SPEAKER_01]: The Congressional Budget Office predicted the debt would top out at 39.4 trillion in this fiscal year.
- 11:07[SPEAKER_01]: But on Monday, the Treasury reported 39.9 and climbing months ahead of schedule.
- 11:13[SPEAKER_01]: Why so soon?
- 11:15[SPEAKER_01]: While on top of the record interest we now pay on the debt, Trump's war with Iran and tax cuts for the rich are piling on Trillions more.
- 11:24[SPEAKER_01]: The President only plans, President only planned to close that gap.
- 11:29[SPEAKER_01]: Naturally, was tariffs, but the Supreme Court struck those down.
- 11:33[SPEAKER_01]: Why have you not been estimated $250 billion in revenue and forcing the government to borrow faster?
- 11:40[SPEAKER_01]: And where are the so-called fiscally responsible Republicans?
- 11:43[SPEAKER_01]: I want served with people who lectured everyone for years about burning our grandchildren, but that party is gone.
- 11:50[SPEAKER_01]: The dead is as high as it's ever been, and none of them are willing to speak up, even as Trump breaks every promise he made to bring it down.
- 12:01[SPEAKER_01]: What's it worth if all you have to do is just defend this guy and lie?
- 12:06[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
- 12:10[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's it.
- 12:10[SPEAKER_01]: That's chill for the 19th of August.
- 12:12[SPEAKER_01]: Do me a favor like this.
- 12:13[SPEAKER_01]: Share it with someone who needs to see it.
- 12:15[SPEAKER_01]: Subscribe.
- 12:15[SPEAKER_01]: See you never miss an episode.
- 12:17[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to catch you back here tomorrow and I'm sure there's going to be some all great news, right?
- 12:23[SPEAKER_01]: All right.
- 12:23[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for subscribe and catch you soon.