The following is a lightly edited transcript of the November 3 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Editor’s note: On Sunday night, Trump erupted yet another time along these lines in a wild rant about the GOP shutdown strategy.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Suddenly a lot is happening on the government shutdown front. President Trump called on Republicans to end the filibuster to reopen the government. That prompted pushback from Republicans, including a very gentle rebuke from Mike Johnson. And in a funny way, Trump undermined his own argument, which is that Democrats are in control of whether the shutdown continues or ends. On another front, Trump raged over the coming spiking of Obamacare premiums, claiming this is something he really, really wants to fix. But here again he undermined his own argument because if he wanted to fix that problem, he and Republicans could simply extend the Obamacare subsidies, which they refuse to do. The big story here is that Trump is just all over the place. He seems wholly disconnected from how bad the politics of this is to his own party. So today we’re talking to Maura Quint, who’s been tracking on-the-ground sentiment over the shutdown for the progressive group, Fair Share America. Maura, thanks for coming on.
Maura Quint: Thanks for having me on.
Sargent: So let’s start here. Trump unleashed this wild all caps rant in which he said, “Because of the fact that the Democrats have gone stone-cold crazy, the choice is clear. Initiate the nuclear option. Get rid of the filibuster.” Maura, that got Republicans upset because it blows up the GOP strategy. Dems have been saying this is a Republican shutdown, and now Trump admits that Republicans could end it themselves if they want to. Your thoughts?
Quint: I think it is very clear that Trump has been saying whatever he wants to say for really long time, and I would not want to have to be Mike Johnson and try and figure out how to justify these words because that is probably one of the toughest jobs out there right now: trying to make sense of Trump. It’s nearly impossible.
Sargent: I mean, it really wrecks the the Republicans’ own argument, doesn’t it?
Quint: It absolutely does. I mean, Trump both wants to pretend that he is being magnanimous and he’s governing for all of America, while at the same time, he obviously just wants to govern by fiat. And what he really would like is to not have to talk to anybody about anything. But what we have, of course, is that the Democrats have been in D.C. ready to have any sort of conversation, and Republicans haven’t even been there.
Sargent: Well, let’s listen to this from Donald Trump because it really underscores the situation very well.
President Donald Trump (voiceover): I’m always going to meet. All they have to do is open up the country. Let them open up the country, and we’ll meet. We’ll meet very quickly. But they have to open up the country. It’s their fault. Everything is their fault. It’s so easily solved.
Sargent: So Maura, there Trump claims it’s all Democrats’ fault. It’s entirely up to them whether the government opens, but he literally just said himself that Republicans could open it themselves if they want to. It really seems like they’re all over the place. I haven’t seen this level of GOP disarray in some time. Have you?
Quint: Republicans and disarray. No, I mean they’ve been in very clear array, they just sort of line up like little baby ducklings behind whatever Trump says. The problem is Trump is kind of weaving all over the place, so it’s very very hard to follow. What I love for that clip is that he doesn’t even say open up the government, right? He says open up the country. For all I know, he’s flip-flopping on his stance on borders. Maybe he doesn’t want those anymore.
Sargent: Right. They’re really in a position where they just can’t admit what their actual stance is, right? Which is they want to open up the government without having to extend Obamacare subsidies. It’s just that straightforward, right?
Quint: Oh, absolutely. I mean, it is very clear that they have no interest in helping people. I mean, it’s really that simple. They have no problem with people losing their SNAP benefits and, in fact, were trying to even force less benefits going to people than they had the opportunity to go. They had to be forced by a judge now to even allow the emergency funds to flow to SNAP.
They want people to be hungry. They want them to be suffering. They want these people’s health care to be cut. And they want to do it because that way they can continue funding these tax cuts for billionaires. I mean, they’ve had a really clear goal the whole time. And I think people in general are getting that.
I mean, what we’re seeing in polling is that people, for the most part, recognize that it’s Republicans who are at fault for all of this. And you’re seeing that not just from Democratic voters but from independent voters as well. And even Republican voters—the majority are saying, well, it’s both guys’ fault. There’s a clear understanding that, really, Republicans are the ones in charge of what is happening right now, and they have to own it.
Sargent: That’s interesting. You’re tracking the on-the-ground sentiment. So the way Republican voters kind of express their understanding that this is the GOP’s fault is they say both parties are to blame.
Quint: That’s what we saw from some polling that I saw today from Groundwork. And when we’re talking to people on the ground—I mean, I will say, going to events, speaking to people, being out across the country—I’m seeing more and more people who have voted Republican, even who voted for Trump, come out and say, This is not what I thought was going to happen. This is not what I voted for, and this is not what I want. We’re seeing that, absolutely.
And then some of the more hard-line people, who are, you know, it’s real hard to say, Hey, maybe this isn’t going the way I want, are, I think, the ones more likely to be like, Well, both sides are bad, because they recognize that Republicans aren’t doing a great job right now—and they are certainly not trying to help people like them.
Sargent: The Republican voters’ understanding of the Trump brand is that this is a guy who can get things done. He can snap his fingers. He can fire people. He can he can build things, as Karoline Leavitt loves to say. He’s like a great builder. He’s a great doer. But here you’ve just got this kind of drift, this, you know, atrophy, this failure, this, you know, sclerosis, and that really cuts against the Trump brand in a major way, doesn’t it? What are you guys picking up on that front?
Quint: I think that one of the problems is that people still have the belief that he can get things done. I think the recognition is starting to come that he doesn’t want to do the things that would help people. I mean, he had no problem knocking a hole into that ballroom there, into the White House, to create his ballroom. He can move on something like that because it’s what he wants. He doesn’t want help people, and I think that’s what cognitive dissonance is hitting some voters. They are recognizing that he’s not trying for them. He’s not actually trying to help them.
Sargent: It’s really interesting. There really is a drift here. He’s just not in the game. His head isn’t in any sense, and I think that’s probably very visible to his own people. It really requires an enormous amount of self-delusion for them to overlook what’s right in front of them. Are you picking up in the kind of on-the-ground interactions and the research or anything like that, that that’s really the issue; that they’re seeing that Donald Trump just doesn’t want to do the job?
Quint: We’ve talked to a lot of people who would label themselves as moderates and would label themselves as Republicans. Some have been Republican voters, and a lot of them are coming out to more and more things. They’re angry. They’re seeing that things that they and their families rely on are potentially going to be upended, and they are holding Donald Trump accountable. The concern right now is that a lot of them don’t know where to go. They feel rather homeless because, of course, they have a very internalized belief that the other side is not for them either, but they have a lot of anger right now and it is well-earned anger.
Sargent: Well let’s play one more quote from Donald Trump. Listen to this.
President Donald Trump (voiceover): Obamacare has turned out to be a disaster as I’ve been saying for years. It can be fixed or redone. People don’t get good health care, and their premiums go up every single year. So we should change it. It’s a disaster. Obamacare is bad health care at a very high price.
Sargent: Well, there you have it. If Trump is really concerned with high premiums, he and Republicans could, you know, extend the subsidies. He keeps undermining his own arguments, Maura. What do you think of that?
Quint: Absolutely. He doesn’t know what he wants. He wants to speak out of both sides of his mouth. I mean, at least he’s speaking out of his mouth to some extent. I think he’s speaking out of other body parts too. But he, for the most part, is obviously not looking to help anyone. What he wants to do is bash things.
It’s interesting to me when his team claims he’s some sort of builder because the thing that he really loves is tearing stuff down. He doesn’t have any plans to replace or to build—he wants to smash. So he loves saying that anything the Democrats have done, anything that has been helpful to people, is bad and that he could do something better, without ever promising anything real or delivering on it—because, obviously, we have a material opportunity right now to help people, and they are simply refusing.
Sargent: Yeah, and if you step back, that’s really the story of the decade when it comes to Donald Trump and the Affordable Care Act. He’s been saying for 10 years that he’ll come up with a replacement plan for the ACA—but he got into all this out of rage at Obama. One of the main reasons he entered public life this time around was to smash the Obama legacy. Like, that was literally his actual driving impulse.
And so, you know, they’ve been gunning for the ACA for all this time. Trump failed to kill it during his first term. But the simple truth that Trump and Republicans are never allowed to admit is that they don’t just want to wreck the ACA—they just don’t want to replace it with anything.
I want to ask you how Trump voters are really starting to view this because I guess you’re sort of plumbing those depths a little bit. He’s got this kind of vaunted lock on the Trump voter—the working-class part of his base, et cetera, et cetera. But the expiration of the ACA subsidies is going to clobber those people in a big way—not just them, but they’re a big group who get hit by this stuff.
And yet, you know, I think Democrats still have trouble getting through to that demographic, even though they have this unbelievably great opportunity. Like, the expiration of the ACA subsidies, coming along with the destruction of the ballroom and all the other stuff for billionaires you’ve been talking about—you could not ask for a better opportunity to start to really fracture the MAGA coalition, to start to peel away some of those working-class supporters.
Is it happening, though, candidly? Are Democrats really able to get to those people or not?
Quint: It’s a really good question, and I definitely am seeing Democrats attempt. Now, I mean, obviously, the Democratic coalition is a large group of people, and I’m not gonna say that all of them are doing everything they should do—absolutely not.
But with Fair Share America, we had a bus this summer; we went coast to coast. Our executive director, Kristen Crowell, was out at every single event we had. We spoke with a lot of different community orgs and individuals on the ground, and we had a lot of conversations. We were seeing more and more people come out to each event because there was such a desire on the ground to be involved and to have their voices heard, to make a difference, and do what they could.
And we’re seeing it now. I mean, I have never seen this many people on the ground being active—trying to find some way to connect, to help their neighbors, to be involved. And I’m seeing some Democrats absolutely lean in and seize this moment at hand. Is it being done, like I said, across the coalition? Probably not as well as it could.
But I think, partially, there ... I will say—and I hate saying this—but, you know, here I am on this podcast. Obviously, you’re doing a wonderful job, and I really appreciate being here. The right has done such a ridiculous job of creating such an echo chamber for everything that they say that when one sentence gets uttered, it gets bounced around all over the place. And we don’t have that same loudspeaker.
So when you have Dems who are speaking, they’ve said really great things, and they’ve repeated some really great things—but we’re not hearing those echoed over and over and over. And so I think it’s been really, really important, as someone who is working on the ground, to work with local groups and have these conversations outside of electoral politics necessarily, because people are really more engaged, I feel, than they have been in a long time.
I mean, lots of people are trying to check out, but when it is affecting them so materially and in such a massive way, they can’t help but be involved. So I think there is a lot of momentum. I think there is a lot of understanding on the ground about what’s happening and who’s at fault. And I think that we have a lot of Dems who are doing a pretty good job with messaging—but not as much as we need. And unfortunately, we don’t have the infrastructure, I feel, to really boost it.
So people sharing their stories has a lot more impact, I think, than a Dem politician at this moment in time.
Sargent: Yeah, the big problem that Democrats face right now, maybe not the only one, but a big one, is this real disparity when it comes to information. We talk about this on the podcast all the time. The thing that starts to correct that is when big events happen that really break through the clutter. The shutdown seems like something that can do that. Do you get the sense that the shutdown is penetrating into those information spaces that you’re talking about, these places that Republicans kind of dominate? Is it reaching some of these voters? And is there an opening to get the Democratic message smuggled into them somehow or not?
Quint: So yeah, I think absolutely there is a growing awareness of the shutdown. And we’re definitely seeing that independents are learning more and more what is happening. And again, they are holding Republicans accountable. And Republicans are recognizing that, despite what they might be hearing out of Trump’s mouth and Mike Johnson’s mouth, it is not just the Democrats’ fault as it would like to be labeled. I think that this is absolutely a moment where we’re seeing a lot of Republican and independent voters who are recognizing that this is not just a problem that Dems are foisting upon them. There is something wrong within their own party.
Sargent: Yeah, I think one of the big stories of this moment is what’s going on with independent voters. We’re seeing poll after poll after poll shows two things. One. independent voters really disapprove of Trump, and two, independent voters blame Trump and the Republican Party for the shutdown. Independents matter in midterm elections, and there is clearly big movement among independents underway right now. Will it translate into the midterms or not? What are the things that could get in the way of that?
Quint: I mean, that’s a great question, and independents are, as a whole, a very complicated group, right? There are so many different reasons that people decide to choose “independent” as a status. You’re coming from both previous Democrats, previous Republicans, people who have had no affiliations, people who have very single issues. So it’s a really tough group to make broad guesses about.
But I do think that when we’re looking at a government that is wholly run, at the moment, by Republicans, and we’re looking at problems that are affecting people—and there’s a lot of fear, I will also add, on the ground—people are really scared right now. They are scared about their health care. They’re scared about their food. They’re scared about whether or not they’re going to be able to afford a holiday for their family in any way. Are goods going to be so prohibitively expensive because of tariffs?
There are so many different things that are happening right now that are creating a lot of anxiety. And it’s very hard for anyone but the most dogmatic on the right to look at this and say it’s anything but Trump and the Republicans’ fault. So I really do think that it is likely that that will be something that translates into ballots in the midterms.
But again, that’s a hard prediction. Don’t start gambling on anything.
Sargent: Understood. Politics is tough. We get it. So let’s close with the comic relief. Let’s listen to Mike Johnson responding to Trump’s call for an end to the filibuster.
Speaker Mike Johnson (voiceover): What you’re seeing is an expression of the president’s anger at the situation. He is as angry as I am and the American people are about this madness. And he just desperately wants the government to be reopened so that all these resources can flow to the people who need it so much. Look, I’ll just say this in general, as I’ve said many times about the filibuster, it’s not my call. I don’t have a say in this. It’s a Senate chamber issue. We don’t have that in the House, as you know. But the filibuster has traditionally been viewed as a very important safeguard. If the shoe was on the other foot, I don’t think our team would like it. The Democrats, look, they’ve said what they would do. They would pack the Supreme Court. They would make Puerto Rico and D.C. states. They would ban firearms. They would do all sorts of things that would be very harmful for the country. And the safeguard in the Senate has always been the filibuster. But again, not my issue, not something I get to even weigh in on.
Sargent: Well, Maura, you know, what’s funny about that is this anger that Johnson refers to is the Republicans’ fault. Republicans control this. Donald Trump himself said so when he said that Republicans could just end the filibuster anytime, you know, to end this thing.
But the real truth of this is that if Donald Trump wanted to resolve this shutdown, he could do it in five minutes. He could get on the phone with Democratic leaders; he could say, All right, we’re going to make a deal on ACA subsidies that gives you a way to claim victory, or whatever. Maybe it wouldn’t be everything Democrats want, but it would be something. It might not be an outcome that you and I like, but it might be one that Democrats could accept and talk about to their voters as, in some ways, a victory.
But he’s not doing that. And that’s the story of this moment. Donald Trump is not resolving this shutdown—and he could do it in five minutes. What are your thoughts on that?
Quint: I mean, he’s more willing to throw Republicans under the bus with this call for filibuster ending than talk to Democrats. He doesn’t want to have to talk to anyone. He just wants complete and total authoritarian rule. He doesn’t want to have to come to the table. He doesn’t want to negotiate. He does not want to govern for half of this country, and the main thing that he seems to want to do is just make Mike Johnson tap dance as much as possible. I mean, I hope that guy’s getting dancing lessons because I’ve never seen anyone take to the ballroom floor so often.
Sargent: Maura Quint. It was really good to talk to you. I think that’s the bottom line is that one of the reasons Donald Trump thinks he wants to be a mighty authoritarian is that he doesn’t want to do the hard work of liberal democratic governance. Thanks so much for coming on with us. We really appreciate it.
Quint: Thank you for having me.