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Trump's 'psychological disfigurement' prevents him from seeing midterm reality · INSIGHT TODAY

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: It is 33 days until the midterm elections. Republicans are
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: doomed to spend every single one of those days caught
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: in the political catch-22 that.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Is belonging to a party led by Donald Trump.
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  Speaker 1: You can't be elected as a Republican on November 3rd
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  Speaker 1: unless you demonstrate full and public fealty to Donald Trump
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  Speaker 1: at all times in all matters.
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  Speaker 2: That's the rule of the cult.
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  Speaker 1: But in a lot of places in America, you also
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  Speaker 1: can't get elected if you're standing next to the guy
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  Speaker 1: who's losing an illegal war of choice to Iran while
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  Speaker 1: gas prices skyrocket and mortgage rates go up and health
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  Speaker 1: care gets cut. Betray Trump, though, and you're out. Stand
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  Speaker 1: beside him, and you're also probably out. In a new
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  Speaker 1: APNORC poll that was released today, Trump faces 69% disapproval,
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  Speaker 1: a record for him across both terms. But this is
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  Speaker 1: the other big problem for Republicans. Trump will not acknowledge
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  Speaker 1: this reality. 65% of Americans say higher prices are because
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: of Trump's policies, and they're right. 69% of Americans, including
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  Speaker 1: 52% of Republicans, say Trump's handling of the cost of
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  Speaker 1: living has been worse than expected.
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  Speaker 2: It's been bad.
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  Speaker 1: I don't know worse than expected. What did you expect
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  Speaker 1: from this guy? We've known him for a long time.
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  Speaker 1: These numbers are bad.
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  Speaker 2: They're not bad. They're not bad at all. They're toxic.
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  Speaker 1: So Republicans are trying to discreetly distance themselves from the president.
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  Speaker 1: One Florida Republican edited his website's answer to an age-old
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  Speaker 1: campaign question, why run for public office? Earlier this summer,
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  Speaker 1: Mike Beltran's site said he wanted to, quote, stand with
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  Speaker 1: President Trump to finish making America great again.
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  Speaker 2: It's according to the Washington Post.
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  Speaker 1: Now the website reads that Beltran felt called to public
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  Speaker 1: service and is running to be a champion for lower costs,
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  Speaker 1: lower taxes and increased health care access.
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  Speaker 2: Trump's gone from the website.
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  Speaker 1: One senior Republican involved in a House battleground race told
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  Speaker 1: Politico the White House, quote, called me four times now
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: to see if we want Trump to come. And I've
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  Speaker 1: said no. Even the White House understands Trump's toxicity. One
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  Speaker 1: White House official told MSNOW that Trump was visiting a
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  Speaker 1: swing district. If he were visiting a swing district, it
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  Speaker 1: would be, quote, a net negative for the candidate there.
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  Speaker 1: The closer the race, the more the Republican candidate is
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  Speaker 1: trying to break from President Trump.
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  Speaker 2: This is actually quite a normal political dynamic.
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  Speaker 1: The president's party almost always loses seats in the midterms,
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  Speaker 1: and most presidents understand that dynamic.
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  Speaker 2: But Donald Trump doesn't. And therein lies the catch.
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  Speaker 1: Trump wants this election, in which he is not on
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  Speaker 1: the ballot, to be all about him.
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  Speaker 3: So what I really want you to do is pretend, please,
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  Speaker 3: that I'm on the ballot.
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  Speaker 2: Just come and vote.
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  Speaker 4: It's so important.
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  Speaker 2: Now, in a.
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  Speaker 1: Political environment where Republicans need the president to be low-key...
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  Speaker 1: He simply can't help himself. Last month, Trump's solution to
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  Speaker 1: lagging GOP enthusiasm was a never-before-seen midterm convention, which the
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  Speaker 1: Republican Party willfully called a Trumpapalooza. It was held in Texas,
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  Speaker 1: with Republicans there facing tougher election odds than usual in
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  Speaker 1: the race for both governor and Senate. Trump said the
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  Speaker 1: convention helped the Senate candidate Ken Paxton a lot. How
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  Speaker 1: does Paxton feel about it? Well, according to audio leaked
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  Speaker 1: from the New York Times, Paxton said at a fundraiser
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  Speaker 1: shortly after the convention, quote, to be honest with you,
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  Speaker 1: the numbers when we did that convention, it dropped our numbers.
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  Speaker 1: Everybody's numbers dropped right now.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, not good. End quote. Ken Paxton. And this is
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  Speaker 2: quite a story.
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  Speaker 1: When Ken Paxton doesn't want Donald Trump campaigning with him,
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  Speaker 1: you know something's wrong. The problem is, The big guy
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  Speaker 1: doesn't do numbers. When Trump was asked about his low
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  Speaker 1: poll numbers in an interview with Time magazine, he responded, quote,
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  Speaker 1: they're fake numbers. I would beat anyone running today by
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: 20 points. Your numbers you have are fake. The pollsters
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  Speaker 1: are corrupt, end quote. Of course the pollsters are corrupt.
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  Speaker 1: The pollsters are corrupt.
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  Speaker 2: Your numbers are fake. 20 points? Joining me now is
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  Speaker 2: John Harwood.
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  Speaker 1: He's a political columnist for Zateo and a former White
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  Speaker 1: House correspondent and an old friend of mine. You have
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  Speaker 1: to talk a little bit here, buddy, because I don't
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  Speaker 1: know what to say anymore. I don't know what to say.
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  Speaker 2: It's wild. Donald Trump is delusional.
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  Speaker 1: And the point here is that presidents understand that in
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  Speaker 1: a midterm election, some candidates might want you there and
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  Speaker 1: a lot would rather you not be there. He doesn't care.
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  Speaker 1: He's going to just come in and rain on anybody's parade.
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  Speaker 3: The problem, Ali, is that Donald Trump is trapped in
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  Speaker 3: a fantasy world in which he is doing a great job.
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  Speaker 4: He's fantastic. The economy is great.
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  Speaker 3: So at a time when people, as you just showed,
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  Speaker 3: by way more than two to one disapprove of his presidency.
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  Speaker 3: disapprove of his handling of the economy. You know, on
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  Speaker 3: that approve, disapprove, the number of people who strongly disapprove
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  Speaker 3: of Donald Trump is more than three times the number
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  Speaker 3: of people who strongly approve him.
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  Speaker 4: That is a toxic number.
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  Speaker 3: But his psychological disfigurement will not allow him to feel
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  Speaker 3: the voters' pain, as Bill Clinton once said. He can't
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  Speaker 3: acknowledge that things are going bad and he's going to
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  Speaker 3: fix them. He has to pretend that he has fixed them,
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  Speaker 3: And it's a very, very bad.
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  Speaker 4: Situation for Republicans.
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  Speaker 3: You know, when I interviewed him, Ali, in 2015, and
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  Speaker 3: he was saying then all sorts of ridiculous things that
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  Speaker 3: were obviously not true, didn't stop him from winning the presidency.
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  Speaker 3: But I asked him in that interview, I said, what
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  Speaker 3: are you going to do when voters pull back the
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  Speaker 3: curtain as they did in The Wizard of Oz and say,
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  Speaker 3: there is no Wizard of Oz behind that curtain. There's
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  Speaker 3: just a guy talking into a microphone. And he says,
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  Speaker 3: I'll never let that happen. Well, it's happening right now,
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  Speaker 3: big time.
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  Speaker 2: So, John, one of the things— I' m in D.C.
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  Speaker 1: Right now, and unlike Los Angeles or Minneapolis, Donald Trump
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  Speaker 1: deployed military, National Guard here on the pretext that crime
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  Speaker 1: was a problem, and now he talks about the fact
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  Speaker 1: that there's zero crime in Washington. In the Time magazine article,
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  Speaker 1: he said something that was interesting. The journalist asked him,
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  Speaker 1: would you rule out declaring a state of emergency in
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  Speaker 1: the lead up to the midterms unless there was widespread
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  Speaker 1: violence in the streets?
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  Speaker 2: Trump says, I don't rule anything out or in. We'll see.
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  Speaker 2: You mean the Insurrection Act? Journalist. Yeah. Trump.
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  Speaker 1: No, I've never used it. I could use it. A
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  Speaker 1: lot of people think I use it. I should use
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  Speaker 1: it sometimes. And then he goes on to talk about
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  Speaker 1: the amount of crime involved. that has come down by
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  Speaker 1: him using the military. So he's conflating two things here.
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  Speaker 4: Well, of course.
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  Speaker 3: And the very idea that he would invoke the Insurrection
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  Speaker 3: Act is absurd. There's no conceivable conditions for that. But
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  Speaker 3: when he says, as he said to the Time magazine reporters, yes,
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  Speaker 3: I could do that. He thinks he could do anything.
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  Speaker 3: And he's constantly putting on the table preposterous ideas and saying, well,
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  Speaker 3: I could do that if I wanted to. This is
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  Speaker 3: a very it's actually a dangerous situation for the country
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  Speaker 3: because the president of the United States is not in
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  Speaker 3: touch with reality. And yet he's the president of the
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  Speaker 3: United States with the nuclear button and all that goes
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  Speaker 3: with it. So Democrats are feeling very, very good right now.
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  Speaker 3: They've got the prospect of winning both the House and
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  Speaker 3: the Senate. The polls indicate that both of those things
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  Speaker 3: are likely. But this is a president who you can't
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  Speaker 3: rule out him taking extreme actions to try to protect
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  Speaker 3: himself because he's compelled to try to do that.
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  Speaker 2: So there are things you can do.
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  Speaker 1: Obviously, there's the intimidation factor of either FBI agents or
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  Speaker 1: DHS agents being in polling places, which they might justify
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  Speaker 1: on the basis of there being criminal violations or immigration violations.
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  Speaker 2: But that serves to be an intimidation tactic. So that
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  Speaker 2: could weaken turnout in the elections.
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  Speaker 1: There are there's a fact that Trump will make allegations
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  Speaker 1: in various states that noncitizens voted, which, as you know,
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  Speaker 1: is a is really not much of an issue in America.
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  Speaker 1: The worry now is that, and Mike Johnson has demonstrated
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  Speaker 1: this before with Adelia Grijalva in Arizona when she won
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  Speaker 1: her election and he delayed her swearing in because it
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  Speaker 1: was going to end up creating that Epstein problem for them.
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  Speaker 1: There's some speculation that Mike Johnson might do that. He
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  Speaker 1: might say, well, you know, there's dispute about the outcome
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  Speaker 1: of the elections. It's not certified and not seat this
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  Speaker 1: new Congress.
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  Speaker 3: Is it theoretically possible that Mike Johnson could do that?
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  Speaker 4: Yes. Could he make it stick? I do not think so.
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  Speaker 3: I think when you're talking about a president with a
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  Speaker 3: 31 percent approval rating, the public opinion, the American public
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  Speaker 3: would not allow things to happen. He has less clout
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  Speaker 3: with the business community. He's got less clout with the courts.
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  Speaker 3: The Supreme Court watches election returns, too. And they're only
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  Speaker 3: going to go so far in protecting a guy who
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  Speaker 3: is acting way, way outside.
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  Speaker 4: The the norms and the will of the American public.
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  Speaker 3: So I think his capacity to interfere with the election
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  Speaker 3: is less than he thinks it is. You know, we
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  Speaker 3: saw courts stop some of the intimidation tactics in 2024
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  Speaker 3: and in 2020 as well.
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  Speaker 4: Could he try to do it again?
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  Speaker 3: Could he send ICE to the polling stations and try
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  Speaker 3: to deter Hispanic voters from turning out?
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  Speaker 4: Yes, he could try to do that. But I don't
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  Speaker 4: think it's going to stick. He's in a.
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  Speaker 3: Position right now, Ali, where he's defending territory in Oklahoma, Texas, Florida, Alaska, Kansas.
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  Speaker 3: Democrats have real shots of winning there. In South Carolina,
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  Speaker 3: in Nebraska, this is an election where the bottom is
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  Speaker 3: falling out for Republicans. He can't stop it from falling out.
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  Speaker 3: He doesn't have credibility anymore. Outside the sort of hardcore cult,
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  Speaker 3: which is reflected in that 31 percent, Donald Trump has
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  Speaker 3: no credibility anymore. And so he can talk. He can
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  Speaker 3: curse at the Time magazine reporters and say, all you've
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  Speaker 3: asked me is hostile questions and you haven't asked me
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  Speaker 3: this and you haven't asked me that.
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  Speaker 4: But he's just fulminating.
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  Speaker 3: And I don't think that there's a mechanism for him
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  Speaker 3: to make positive things happen between now and Election Day.
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  Speaker 4: The one thing.
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  Speaker 3: Voters know, is that with our economy, Ali, it's not
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  Speaker 3: objectively terrible. We're not in a recession, but everybody in
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: America can see that it's worse because of things that
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: Donald Trump has done. They're directly tied to him. The tariffs,
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: the Iran war, the chaos that's going on. And they
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: see that he's not trying to address their economic problems
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  Speaker 3: at a time when he is raking in as much
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: money as he can. The personal corruption is off the charts.
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  Speaker 3: This is just a nightmarish situation for the Republican Party.
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  Speaker 2: Hey, it's Rachel.
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• 11:09
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• 11:11
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• 11:22
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• 11:25
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• 11:29
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• 11:33
  Speaker 4: Thanks.