Latest / INSIGHT TODAY / 'This is a revulsion of the Republican Party, starting with Trump' Leibovich on voter frustrations

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'This is a revulsion of the Republican Party, starting with Trump' Leibovich on voter frustrations · INSIGHT TODAY

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: He seems to be very much a, you know, singly
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: operated agent at this point. He's doing what he wants.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: I don't know why. He thinks he'll probably get the
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: biggest applause in Alabama, which is really one state that
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: no one's talking about as being in play in any way.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: So that's what he's doing.
• 0:15
  Speaker 3: But are Republicans even helping their own game there?
• 0:17
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 0:18
  Speaker 3: Tommy Tuberville's latest.
• 0:20
  Speaker 4: He's on the Senate floor making an argument, panicked over
• 0:23
  Speaker 4: flight attendants and pilots that might be furries. How does
• 0:27
  Speaker 4: that address any of the needs of the people of Alabama,
• 0:30
  Speaker 4: especially as it relates to their top priorities, which are
• 0:33
  Speaker 4: the economy and health care? Yeah.
• 0:34
  Speaker 5: I mean, look, right now, the Republican campaign, certainly the
• 0:37
  Speaker 5: one that Donald Trump is running, is a big distraction
• 0:40
  Speaker 5: campaign stuff. You know, it's a smoke machine of, you know,
• 0:44
  Speaker 5: crazy issues. You know, pick pick what they are. Remember,
• 0:47
  Speaker 5: the president has already said that voters, you know, essentially
• 0:50
  Speaker 5: are victims of a Democratic hoax and that affordability is
• 0:54
  Speaker 5: a hoax.
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: You know, it's not an issue.
• 0:56
  Speaker 5: Now, obviously, this is a man who hasn't been to
• 0:57
  Speaker 5: the grocery store any time recently, where I can tell
• 1:00
  Speaker 5: you it's not a hoax. But, you know, whether it's
• 1:03
  Speaker 5: the crazy, furry conversation, it's Donald Trump going after the media,
• 1:07
  Speaker 5: it seems to me that it's a sort of a
• 1:08
  Speaker 5: fog machine to distract from Trump.
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: Underlying issues of the election.
• 1:13
  Speaker 5: What I'm struck by, though, is that with so few
• 1:16
  Speaker 5: weeks left until the election, it's really hard to see
• 1:19
  Speaker 5: Trump digging out of this in any way. What is
• 1:21
  Speaker 5: it that he could possibly do, even if the war
• 1:24
  Speaker 5: with Iran were to end tomorrow because of the screwed
• 1:28
  Speaker 5: up supply chain, because of the issues that have been
• 1:31
  Speaker 5: created from it. I don't think that would even make
• 1:33
  Speaker 5: a difference in a meaningful sense in people's pocketbooks before
• 1:36
  Speaker 5: the election.
• 1:36
  Speaker 6: But that would at least give some of these Republican
• 1:39
  Speaker 6: senators and House members, incumbents, something to run on if
• 1:42
  Speaker 6: they could say they're going to end the election in
• 1:44
  Speaker 6: these last five weeks.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: In the war, sorry.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Not in the election.
• 1:49
  Speaker 6: The election is going to end no matter what.
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: I'm pretty sure they would like to end the election,
• 1:52
  Speaker 4: but it's a war they don't want to end.
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:55
  Speaker 6: They would— they are— I mean, if you look at the reporting
• 1:58
  Speaker 6: over the weekend, even from our own reporters, they are
• 2:01
  Speaker 6: desperately begging the president— to give them something, whether that's
• 2:06
  Speaker 6: the Iran war, so they can at least talk about
• 2:07
  Speaker 6: gas prices, whether that is a ban on diesel exports that,
• 2:11
  Speaker 6: you know, Senator Chuck Grassley is asking for. They are
• 2:14
  Speaker 6: asking him to do something to help their candidates. And
• 2:18
  Speaker 6: they're asking it very, very publicly, because even as Kevin
• 2:21
  Speaker 6: Fry was reporting, they want— They are worried he is
• 2:24
  Speaker 6: not focused on the right things. And frankly, we've talked
• 2:27
  Speaker 6: about the media ban on us. We have talked about
• 2:31
  Speaker 6: how focused he is on the ballroom. We've talked about
• 2:34
  Speaker 6: all kinds of things, the arch he wants to build.
• 2:36
  Speaker 6: None of that is a focus on the things that
• 2:38
  Speaker 6: the electorate is telling us they are super, super worried about.
• 2:41
  Speaker 4: OK, but it doesn't even matter what the media is covering.
• 2:44
  Speaker 4: This goes back to Susan Glasser at the grocery store.
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: We could talk about the media ban all day long,
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: but millions of Americans don't actually care about the media.
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: They don't like the news and they don't like lawmakers
• 2:56
  Speaker 4: on either side of the aisle. But as long as
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: Republicans do not address our economic woes, won't that be
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: a huge issue? Because for the most part, Trump's voters
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: have forgiven him for almost everything because they say when
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: it comes to the economy, he's our guy.
• 3:10
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, look, that's the cratering in the polls
• 3:13
  Speaker 5: that I've been watching rather than even the overall numbers,
• 3:16
  Speaker 5: because Trump has always been a divisive character. What's different
• 3:19
  Speaker 5: here is you have core parts of his own MAGA
• 3:21
  Speaker 5: base that are deserting Donald Trump finally over breaking his
• 3:26
  Speaker 5: pledge of no new wars and his. apparent lack of
• 3:31
  Speaker 5: concern for the economy. So I think the number that
• 3:33
  Speaker 5: really has struck me, Steph, is like at the beginning
• 3:36
  Speaker 5: of this year, something like a quarter of the electorate,
• 3:38
  Speaker 5: about 26 percent were saying they strongly supported Donald Trump.
• 3:42
  Speaker 5: You know, that's the core MAGA base. These people need
• 3:44
  Speaker 5: to come out because a lot of other independents aren't
• 3:46
  Speaker 5: going to vote. That number is down to 13 percent
• 3:49
  Speaker 5: in many recent polls, 13. So that's lost half of
• 3:52
  Speaker 5: his core support of strong supporters. I think that's really important.
• 3:56
  Speaker 5: You have something like 60 percent of likely white voters
• 4:00
  Speaker 5: in this election, working class voters. Again, a core Trump
• 4:04
  Speaker 5: MAGA constituency saying they're unhappy with the president's economic policies.
• 4:08
  Speaker 5: And my point was that Republicans may be now sort
• 4:12
  Speaker 5: of crying out for help, but there's nothing they can
• 4:14
  Speaker 5: do this close to an election in a policy sense,
• 4:17
  Speaker 5: in a legislative sense, in a Trump flip-flopping again sense
• 4:21
  Speaker 5: that's going to change those dynamics. And I think that's
• 4:24
  Speaker 5: why you see people like Charlie Cook, who I learned
• 4:27
  Speaker 5: everything from about politics. We worked together for eight years.
• 4:30
  Speaker 5: You know, when he's out here 30 whatever days from
• 4:34
  Speaker 5: the election making this point, those dynamics change. are already
• 4:38
  Speaker 5: pretty hardened and baked into the election.
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: But what about Trump's new base, right?
• 4:42
  Speaker 4: I would argue that wealthy Americans, many of whom didn't
• 4:45
  Speaker 4: support Trump, when you think about the business community who
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: said he's so unpredictable, I'm not interested in him.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: When I talk to those folks, and I spent.
• 4:52
  Speaker 4: A lot of time over the last week with a
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: lot of sort of influential business people in America— They're
• 4:58
  Speaker 4: panic stricken because they desperately want to maintain the status
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: quo because it works for them. And when they look
• 5:04
  Speaker 4: at these scores of Americans who say the system doesn't
• 5:06
  Speaker 4: work for me, I do.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: I need to break it. I want something else.
• 5:10
  Speaker 4: Could we start to see that group of Americans say,
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: even though.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: Trump is what he is, I don't want to mess up.
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: I don't want the game to change because I'm winning it.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, but is that a critical voting mass
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: at this point?
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: I don't know.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: That's my question to you.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: This is a donor class, you know, or to get
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: invited to the state dinner class. I mean, this is
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: a very small number of people, and it is not
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: material to what's going to happen in the midterms necessarily.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, I do think, I mean, obviously it's keeping
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Republicans very well funded, I mean, in large part, which
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: is probably the biggest asset they have at this point.
• 5:40
  Speaker 6: Especially in the Senate, Matt.
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. No, and they're giving there too, but.
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: They only get one vote.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: They only get one vote.
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: It doesn't matter how.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: Rich you are. You only get one vote.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: And it's probably in New York or California. I mean,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: you know, it's a good job. You know, I don't know.
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: It doesn't matter where it is. But so this is
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: why it's a red undertow, though, basically.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: I mean, what Charlie says, and we all love Charlie,
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: but this is a revulsion of the Republican Party, starting
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: with Trump. the pathetic sort of attempts by, like, members
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: of Congress to try to distance themselves from Trump, you know,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: at the 11th hour after doing nothing for two and
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: ten years. I mean, people hate that, I do think.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's going to be counterproductive. And
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: so this is just driving the Republican brand down. It's
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: not because Democrats are doing something so brilliant here.
• 6:22
  Speaker 6: But is that donor class still talking to the president? Absolutely.
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: So what do they say?
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: Absolutely.
• 6:30
  Speaker 6: Are they listening to him? Is he listening to them
• 6:33
  Speaker 6: when they say give us something?
• 6:35
  Speaker 4: He is listening because they don't think there's an affordability crisis.
• 6:38
  Speaker 4: Wealthy Americans are so much wealthier than we have ever
• 6:41
  Speaker 4: experienced before.
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: They don't go to our schools. They don't go to
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: our hospitals.
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: For the most part, they don't even drive on our
• 6:46
  Speaker 4: highways and they certainly don't use our airports. So they
• 6:49
  Speaker 4: Donald Trump and this donor class truly exists in a
• 6:53
  Speaker 4: new gilded cage.
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: And they are panicked that they're still panicked.
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: They're panicked that the outsiders are going to come for them,
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: so they need to make sure they.
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: Don't elect them.
• 7:02
  Speaker 4: And what they don't realize is there are so many
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: banging down the gates saying, I'm done with this system.
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: That's the problem, right? They're saying, oh, my God, the
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: DSA is coming for me. No, no, no. You created
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: this for yourselves.
• 7:13
  Speaker 6: And I think the one thing that we have in
• 7:15
  Speaker 6: this election that I don't think politics sees all that
• 7:18
  Speaker 6: often are the problems directly, directly, directly connected to the
• 7:22
  Speaker 6: president of the United States.
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 7:24
  Speaker 6: Usually, and correct me if I'm wrong, in politics, it
• 7:27
  Speaker 6: can be a little bit wishy-washy. Are your taxes going
• 7:29
  Speaker 6: up because of Congress? Are your taxes going up because
• 7:32
  Speaker 6: of the presidency? We can all spin it different ways.
• 7:35
  Speaker 6: We've all been spun a thousand times. But people see
• 7:37
  Speaker 6: their gas prices directly connected to the Iran war, which
• 7:41
  Speaker 6: is directly connected to a president who said they wouldn't
• 7:43
  Speaker 6: get them into more foreign wars. I do not know
• 7:46
  Speaker 6: exactly how you counter that, but the Senate map is
• 7:49
  Speaker 6: still the Senate map.
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: It's still going to be difficult.
• 7:51
  Speaker 6: And I think even as we see the polling come out,
• 7:53
  Speaker 6: most of the polling we see is within the margin
• 7:55
  Speaker 6: of error in these polls. That means they're toss-ups, and
• 7:58
  Speaker 6: that's probably not going to change from polling very soon.
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: Nobody is thinking about, is their airline pilot a furry?
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: They're saying, how much does my flight cost?
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: Are we still going to have it?
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: We've heard from some of the major airlines that they
• 8:12
  Speaker 4: are cutting back flights toward the end of the year.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: That is when so many of us.
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: Are getting on planes to see family members for the holidays.
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: No one is thinking, is my flight attendant wearing bunny ears?
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: Let's let's get past the midterms.
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: If we're suddenly seeing and we are, to Mark's point,
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: more and more Republicans quietly or publicly break with Trump.
• 8:31
  Speaker 4: If we see this red undertow, this blue wave, is
• 8:34
  Speaker 4: it going to be a Republican free for all as
• 8:37
  Speaker 4: it relates to who's going to run in 2028?
• 8:39
  Speaker 3: Right. If we're saying all the time, well, it's J.D. Vance,
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: it's Marco Rubio. If you're that closely tied to the president,
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: maybe it can't be either one of you boys.
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, so one thing is to look at
• 8:48
  Speaker 5: what is the lesson that Republicans take from the midterm elections.
• 8:51
  Speaker 5: I think, you know, we all remember where you could
• 8:54
  Speaker 5: argue that Joe Biden and his way has over interpreted
• 8:57
  Speaker 5: less bad performance than expected. in the 2022 midterm elections
• 9:01
  Speaker 5: and said, well, gee, that means I should run for
• 9:03
  Speaker 5: reelection for president until I'm 86 years old. And I think,
• 9:07
  Speaker 5: you know, that was an overinterpretation. Democrats did lose the
• 9:10
  Speaker 5: House in 2022, even if they didn't perform as terribly
• 9:15
  Speaker 5: as they feared that a red wave would come. And
• 9:17
  Speaker 5: so I'm looking at what's the lesson that Trump and
• 9:20
  Speaker 5: other Republicans take away from this midterm, first of all.
• 9:23
  Speaker 5: Second of all, let's remember, Donald Trump is not going
• 9:26
  Speaker 5: to be some lame duck who goes quietly into the
• 9:28
  Speaker 5: good night. He's an escalator. Put Donald Trump in a corner.
• 9:32
  Speaker 5: He's going to lash out. He's going to undertake even
• 9:35
  Speaker 5: more extreme actions. He has found in the past— defeat
• 9:39
  Speaker 5: to be liberating in a way. And that's what you
• 9:41
  Speaker 5: saw after the 2018 midterm elections when Republicans lost the
• 9:46
  Speaker 5: House in 41 seats. You saw Donald Trump immediately fire
• 9:49
  Speaker 5: his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, immediately undertake a fight with
• 9:53
  Speaker 5: Congress that led to the longest at that time government shutdown.
• 9:56
  Speaker 3: So I would.
• 9:57
  Speaker 5: Expect Donald Trump not to just you know, be increasingly irrelevant,
• 10:02
  Speaker 5: but to demand relevancy, at least from his party. I
• 10:05
  Speaker 5: think that's I've always anticipated that J.D. Vance is in
• 10:08
  Speaker 5: a very, very tough position by choice.
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: Well, exactly.
• 10:12
  Speaker 5: Do you really want to be? Do you think Donald
• 10:14
  Speaker 5: Trump does anyone think? that Donald Trump is going to
• 10:18
  Speaker 5: just magnanimously hand over the succession to J.D. Vance and
• 10:24
  Speaker 5: step aside while he comes into his own?
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: Obviously not.
• 10:26
  Speaker 5: So it's going to be, I think, a very volatile
• 10:29
  Speaker 5: period in American politics.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: Then are we naive.
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: In even asking the question, like, what has this White
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: House learned? What has Donald Trump learned when just this weekend, right,
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: we're now seeing a taxpayer-funded ad? Featuring Donald Trump, using
• 10:42
  Speaker 4: video and rhetoric from his presidential election, talking about the battle.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: This is taxpayer dollars.
• 10:48
  Speaker 4: So we can all sit here, not just clutching our pearls,
• 10:51
  Speaker 4: but be rightfully infuriated that this is happening.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: He doesn't care. No, he doesn't care at all. I mean,
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: this is not a course.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: He's like, I'm going to use your money, not mine.
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He's like, I mean, the whole idea of like
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: George W.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: Bush saying, you know, we had a, no, Obama's was
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: a shellacking and Bush's was the thumping.
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: Oh, I thought you.
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: Were saying that George Bush said something in the last
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: few years.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: No, no, no, no, no.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: This was almost 20 years ago. But no, I mean,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: but there is like this precedent for a kind of
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: course correct.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: I mean, I guess, yes.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: Well, Sessions is a Trump thing because that was personal grievance.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, Bush fired Rumsfeld in 06. because the Iraq
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: war was going south and you know you could argue
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: that was a political thing to do but it was
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: also a practical thing to do and it spoke to
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: what the reality was then but yes ultimately what we're
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: seeing now is I mean okay one point parenthetically you
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: mentioned four years ago with Biden I mean people were
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: talking with pretty pretty pretty self-assuredly about the fact that
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Republicans were going to absolutely have a wave tsunami kind
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: of situation so you There is a precedent recently for
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: people getting midterms quite wrong. So, I mean, this is
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: a pretty universal sort of narrative that we're sort of
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: we're part of here.
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