The following is a lightly edited transcript of the August 29 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
This week, Donald Trump amplified a screed from a MAGA influencer that will make Republicans very, very unhappy. It accused the GOP of utterly failing Donald Trump. That could depress base turnout. But here’s the thing: Trump keeps saying things like this. In other words, Trump keeps directly undercutting the GOP message in the midterms right now, which is that the Republican Congress has accomplished great things.
So here’s the question: Could what Trump is doing here make a difference and hurt Republicans in the midterms? We think it actually might be seriously damaging, and we’re going to try to lay out why, with Jennifer Rubin, editor in chief of The Contrarian, who’s been writing scaldingly on the GOP’s failures lately. Jennifer, good to have you on.
Jennifer Rubin: It’s great to be here, Greg.
Sargent: So this week, Trump posts a tirade from a MAGA influencer named Matt Van Swol. It says this:
“I don’t think the GOP fully grasped how badly they are fucking up right now. I’m talking to people who normally have zero interest in politics who are legitimately pissed off. They’re not seeing the major reform they thought would happen and are really mad about it. I’m very worried the GOP is sleepwalking toward a midterm reckoning they don’t see coming.”
Jen, this guy thinks he’s constructively criticizing the GOP, but Trump has now taken it and turned it into an effort to discourage Trump voters from coming out in the midterms. Your thoughts about all that?
Rubin: I think our work is done here, Greg. Perhaps you just have this guy on your show. He perfectly embodies the reality, which is: the Republicans have fucked up. They’ve done nothing. Now, the irony, of course, is that they’ve just deferred to Trump. And Trump’s the one who’s done nothing. Trump is the one who has raised prices with tariffs.
Trump’s the one who started a war that no one wanted. Trump is the one who has made hash out of every government agency. So, yes, on one hand, the Republicans are to blame. But they’re to blame because they have blindly followed Trump into one blind alley after another.
Sargent: It’s a thing of beauty that they’re going to get screwed by this too. By the way, there’s another element to this that people are missing, I think. The screed from this guy that Trump amplified also said this:
“No meaningful decrease in the deficit. People are pissed off that they voted Trump into office, and then the GOP continues to slow-walk every reform people want,” close quote.
Jen, it’s a really creative strategy for Trump to admit that the deficit isn’t going down on his watch. I mean, in fact, it’s going up. But wow, like, what a message: me and my party are failing. Your thoughts?
Rubin: Well, forty trillion dollars in the debt later—these people really have fucked up. Now, it’s also ironic, because Trump himself keeps saying this is the golden age of the economy. So it’s not even consistent with Trump’s own messaging.
So I think he is so upset and looking for people to blame. For a while, he was going to blame, I don’t know, election fraud. Now I think he’s decided to get a jump on things and blame the Republican Party for the upcoming failure and defeat that they are facing, because he sure isn’t going to take the blame.
Sargent: Right. It sure sounds like he expects defeat, and that’s why he’s saying this. And the real crux of this is that it isn’t a one-off. Trump keeps saying things like it. Listen to this. It’s Trump talking to a reporter about his own voters. Listen to this exchange with the reporter.
Donald Trump (voiceover): Because a lot of them are very angry at Republicans, to be honest with you.
Reporter (voiceover): Why are they angry at Republicans?
Donald Trump (voiceover): I don’t know. I mean, they’re angry at Republicans, but they’re not angry at me. They’re not angry at me, but they are angry at Republicans.
Sargent: Jen, that is basically a direct command to his voters to see the GOP as having let him down. It’s complete nonsense, of course. As you said, voters are furious with Trump across the country, but he’s now trying to redirect that anger at his own party that’s facing the midterm elections, so they bear the brunt of his failures. It’s really something, isn’t it?
Rubin: It is. And it’s even worse than that. Because what Trump wants to do is spend millions and millions of dollars talking about himself. He thinks what needs to be done is talk about his achievements. So he wants to run ads all about Trump. Last time I looked, his approval was in the low 30s. He was underwater on every issue. He is a failing president.
The American people—in places including Red America; I did a piece recently on the failure in statewide races, Senate races, House races in Red America—they don’t like Trump. So I would encourage Donald Trump to talk more about Donald Trump. I think that’s just what this election needs. And I don’t think Democrats could pay enough money to have Trump talk more about Donald Trump. This is an in-kind gift to Democrats.
Sargent: Just to clarify for listeners, what you’re talking about here is the news reported earlier this week that Donald Trump is privately urging his advisors to spend his super PAC money on ads promoting his accomplishments, with himself, which is an extraordinary thing. And I want to home in on this, though. It’s not just a laughing matter. I mean, it is very funny, but this really could make a difference, right? Like, it actually could matter. And let’s kind of go through why.
If we think about what’s going to decide these midterms, it’s Senate races in places like Texas, Alaska, Iowa, Ohio—places that Donald Trump won by double digits. That’s going to decide control of the Senate. And the Republican candidates in these places are struggling with a lackluster base, and they absolutely need Trump voters to show up for them.
They need Trump voters to say to themselves, I need to go out and vote for this Republican candidate in order to keep the president’s agenda going. But Donald Trump is telling them directly, no, you don’t, don’t go out. And that could actually matter. These races are going to be very close. And if turnout is depressed another point among MAGA diehards, that could make the difference in some places.
Rubin: Absolutely. There is already an enthusiasm gap that is quite extensive. When you look at the generic polling, Democrats are ahead across the board. But even more troubling for Republicans is the enthusiasm gap. Who is going to show up? And as you know, Greg, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Once they have a sense that their candidates are kind of lackluster, that even Donald Trump says their candidates aren’t very good, then who wants to bother to show up? So it becomes this never-ending pattern of defeat, of depression, of, why does it matter, why should I show up?
And meanwhile, Democrats, for all of the haranguing and all of the supposed infighting, have got some phenomenal candidates who are exciting people. The so-called, you know, battle between the far left and the left really has not manifested itself post-primary. The party has come together. The so-called moderates are campaigning with the so-called more left-leaning candidates. They have exciting candidates. The candidates are knocking it out of the ballpark.
When you see Talarico, when you see Ossoff—when you see these people, they are talking in a language that is fun, that is funny, that is aggressive, that is biting. That is whipping up Democrats to a level we have not seen, frankly, I think, since Barack Obama was on the ticket.
So you have, on one hand, Democratic enthusiasm going up, and you have Republican enthusiasm going down. And if you are a moderate who is somewhere in the middle, or you’re an independent who is somewhere in the middle, are you excited to go out and vote for a Republican? I don’t think so. I really don’t.
Sargent: I agree. And I want to talk about the House races as well, because the control of the House is going to be decided in a number of very, very swingy districts. We’re talking about places—some of these House districts went for Trump, districts in South Texas. We’re talking about districts in Iowa that are real swing districts that are incredibly close. A district in Wisconsin, Wisconsin’s Third. Three or four districts in Pennsylvania that are all made up of a fair amount of Trump country.
And what Trump does with all these sorts of outbursts is directly undercut Mike Johnson’s message. Steve Benen at MS Now kind of caught something interesting here. He pointed to a good example. Listen to Mike Johnson here.
Mike Johnson (voiceover): History will record this will be one of the most successful and productive Congresses in the history of the institution since 1789. Why? Because we did what we said we were going to do. We passed about 800 pieces of legislation, we codified over 125 executive orders, and we brought the biggest tax cuts and the biggest wage increases in generations.
Sargent: So Mike Johnson has repeatedly said variations of this, that the Republican Congress has been extraordinarily productive. Now the head of the Republican Party is saying, no, it hasn’t, it’s failed. And I think that that’s a good message. I really do.
Rubin: It is. But this is the old joke: you’re right, and you’re right. They have been very productive in doing things the American people didn’t want. Every time the big ugly bill is brought up—first of all, people aren’t even sure what was in it. And secondly, to the extent they know, they don’t like it. So the things that were done, the people don’t like. And on a whole range of other things that people want something done, they haven’t.
But I will tell you, Donald Trump used to have kind of a feral instinct for where the voters were, at least where his voters were. He has completely lost that. And I’ll give you a very specific example: data centers. Data centers have become a flash point. They have become the focus of the public’s ire about a lot of things—about AI, about corporate greed, about Silicon Valley, about Flock cameras.
Now, many of these things are not exactly tied together. But in data centers, people have found a symbolic enemy, a bogeyman. What does Donald Trump do? He comes out and says, I love data centers. Excuse me—that’s going to show up in a whole bunch of ads. You have people like Greg Abbott—we have suddenly discovered data centers are not a popular thing. But no, Donald Trump is going to come there and talk about data centers. So he is so far off message now that he really does pose, I think, a fundamental problem for many, many Republican candidates.
Sargent: It’s absolutely true. I want to return to something you said, to close out, where you kind of talked about how we’re looking at a bunch of layers that add up to almost like a perfect storm of effects. And I want to go through them a little bit here. So you pointed out that Trump is bleeding Hispanics, and that’s really important. So the constituencies that Donald Trump gained with in 2024—nonwhite working class, Latino, young people—they’re all gone now. So Trump and the Republican Party have effectively lost those people. That’s point one.
Point number two is this hyper-energized Democratic base, which you mentioned—the enthusiasm numbers in all the polling, very clear. We’re seeing things like an 18-point shift in a state legislative contest in western Pennsylvania that really attests to that type of energy that we’re seeing.
Point number three, though, that we haven’t talked much about, is that Trump is absolutely cratering with independents and moderates, the center of the electorate. Really bottom-dropping-out stuff, that kind of thing. And so if you take those three things together, the thing that Republicans absolutely need to be able to fall back on is MAGA, is Trump voters, because they’re losing those other crutches, or whatever you want to call them.
And so for Trump to be going out of his way to tell those people not to vote—that’s the perfect storm, I think. And, you know, I don’t—we don’t know if it will be enough to win. I think obviously Democrats are right now on track to win at least the House and maybe the Senate as well, but we don’t know that they will. This is the sort of thing, though, I think—this kind of combination of factors—that really could push it there.
Rubin: Absolutely. And if he has to spend time and money recovering the MAGA base—in other words, winning those people back—he’s going to do the very things that alienate those other groups that you just said. The way elections are supposed to work is, you take your base, you put them in your back pocket, you say, thanks very much, now let me go out and win up a bunch of other people who aren’t so enthusiastic about us. And the base kind of says, fine, we get it, go out, make your pitch to the middle of the country. Trump hasn’t done that.
So when he goes out now, and he has to say, OK, MAGA people, I really love you, look at all these wonderful things I’ve done for you, I’ve destroyed, you know, Iran seventeen times, I’ve done all these things, I’ve got you health care—well, he’s making his other problems, that you just listed, a lot worse. So you get into this no-win situation that is totally of his own making.
Sargent: Right, he should have the base in his pocket already. And now going out there to have to energize them just drives everybody else away. I just want to end on a bit of a sober note and see what you think of this. The flip side of everything we’re saying here is that you can see things going wrong. All these Senate races are on a knife’s edge. We’re talking about having to win a lot of Senate races in very tough territory, places that voted for Donald Trump by double digits. Democrats have to win a few races in places like that. I think Abdul El-Sayed is a question mark. I’d like to feel a little better about that race. I don’t know about Troy Jackson in Maine. You can easily see Democrats falling short in the Senate. It could easily happen. And then in the House, the gerrymandering successes, unfortunately, that Republicans have had, kind of take off the table something like a 40-seat win like the one we saw in 2018. It makes it much more like trench warfare. There just aren’t as many pickup opportunities. It looks very good, but you can see things going wrong. And I wonder how you think about that stuff. How troubled are you by those possibilities?
Rubin: I think it’s very important not to be overconfident. That’s an unusual problem for Democrats, but it’s very real. You’ve got to run through the tape. And these are close races. The other thing that I am worried about is that Donald Trump is busy screwing around with things like mail-in voting. And although he is unlikely to stop these things, he could very well sow mass confusion. And when there’s confusion, people don’t show up to vote. So I think Democrats have to, number one, keep their enthusiasm high.
Number two, not get overconfident. And number three, put a lot of time and money into voter education, so people know where they’re supposed to vote, when they can vote. They know the early voting rules inside and out. They know the mail-in ballot rules inside and out. And they really have to devote enough resources for those kinds of activities. So that Donald Trump, in his effort to suppress voting on our side, if you will, or the general electorate, does not succeed where we have failed to kind of keep educating, keep up with the voters, keep explaining what the rules are. So that, I think, is a real concern. And I certainly hope Democrats are aware of this. I think they are.
And I think, on the flip side of this, you cannot underestimate quality candidates. And maybe I’ll end on this. Good candidates beat bad candidates all the time. And if you want to find out why certain candidates won in primaries, look at the kinds of candidates they are. Look at how well they communicate. Look at how hard they have worked. Look at people like Angie Nixon in Florida. Look at Abdul El-Sayed. Whatever you think of these people’s ideological views, they are very strong candidates. And that’s how most people vote.
They don’t put people on an ideological spectrum and say, this guy is two notches to the left of where I am, therefore I’m not going to vote for him. They say, wow, this guy really has Trump’s number, or, wow, this gal really gets it when she talks about the super rich. These are very strong candidates. And I think you really have to lean into them, feature them.
And I think the job for people who are in our space is to make sure voters get to see who the real candidates are. These are choices. You can have Mike Rogers, who is nothing more than a ventriloquist dummy for Donald Trump, or you can have El-Sayed. You can have someone who is just a mouthpiece, like a Michael Lawler, who is busy defending a credibly accused child abuser. Or you could have a sixteen-year military veteran in Kate Conley. These are very stark choices. And I think the more the voters see the actual candidates, the real choices, the better Democrats are going to do.
Sargent: All of this is so, so important. Educate the heck out of the voters, make sure they know what’s going on, dispel the confusion. And yes, all these Democratic candidates are working hard. That’s the key. They are busting their asses. They really want to win. The whole party wants to win. That’s what heartens me. Jennifer Rubin, really, really great to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on.
Rubin: Thanks for having me, Greg. It’s always fun.
Sargent: Folks, a little announcement. We’re taking a little break to recharge here at The Daily Blast. We’ll be back Tuesday morning, September 8. See you then.