The following is a lightly edited transcript of the October 15 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.
Earlier this week, Donald Trump made two very audacious claims. First, he said Republicans will do very well in the midterms, thanks to him. And second, he said everybody’s costs are plummeting, thanks to him. But then reality intervened. Republicans are now leaking to the media that the House is almost certainly lost, and they’re placing the blame for it squarely on him. And new consumer data just dropped, showing that prices are very much not coming down. The consumer data hitting right now is just a crushing blow for Trump and Republicans.
So we’re going to talk about all of it with MS Now’s Steve Benen, who had a good piece pointing out how the data wrecks Trump’s midterm argument. Steve, always good to have you on.
Steve Benen: Thanks, Greg. It’s great to be back.
Sargent: So Donald Trump’s boasts this week were quite striking. First, he claimed that his rallies are giving a huge boost to Republicans.
Donald Trump (voiceover): I think the rallies have had a massive impact. You see the numbers go up every time I have a rally. It’s beyond the area, too. We have thousands of people that can’t get in. I think the rallies have had a massive impact.
Sargent: Then he claimed that his presidency has been a stupendous economic success, insisting that costs are coming down and would soon get even better.
Donald Trump (voiceover): I think we’re going to do well. Look, sitting presidents seem not to do well in midterms. It’s, you know, it’s I think two out of twenty-five. But we’ve had a great presidency. Prices are coming down, and as soon as the war ends, which will be very soon with Iran, the oil will drop like a rock. And it’s going to end very soon.
Sargent: Steve, the story Trump is telling here is clear. Republicans are going to have a good midterm election because he’s world-historically successful and popular, right?
Benen: Yeah, I mean, I’m convinced. How about you, right? I mean, here we have a situation in which Donald Trump is peddling a very familiar line that he’s been peddling for weeks, if not months, that he has ushered in a golden age, that we are living in a utopia that is entirely the result of his own genius. Thanks to the awesomeness of his awesomeness, we can all just relax, because everything’s just so wonderful. We’re living in paradise.
And of course, it’s ridiculous for any number of reasons, not the least of which is we know for a fact that Donald Trump is wildly unpopular, that Americans are not buying this at all. The recent Pew Research poll found him at just 30 percent approval, which is ridiculous.
It’s barely above what it was when Nixon was forced to resign in disgrace in the early 1970s after Watergate. And so the idea that Donald Trump is just pretending that somehow we’re all just supposed to play along with his alternate version of reality is ridiculous, and it’s not working.
Sargent: Well, since you brought up the data, I’m going to bring some more here. Nate Silver has Democrats up 8.6 points in the generic House ballot matchup. That means it’s pressing up against nine points.
All indications are that it’s pretty much expanding right now. Nate Silver also has Democrats ahead in the polling averages in the six big Senate races: Maine, Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Alaska, and even Kansas, which is kind of crazy.
Steve, what do you make of all that? I mean, the data is all pointing in one direction right now. Of course, the data can always be wrong. We want to underscore that. But what it’s telling us right now is pretty clear, isn’t it?
Benen: It is. And you know, I agree with you that all this could be approached with some caution. I mean, we can all think of races in recent years in which we’ve been surprised, we’ve been disappointed, or just thrown off of expectations, because the numbers proved to be wrong.
Having said that, however, it’s not just the public polling that we’re relying on. We’re also relying on the fact that Republicans are moving money around in such a way as to suggest that they’re panicking about races that they would ordinarily be confident about.
We see Donald Trump and JD Vance and others scrambling to campaign and hold rallies in red states where they were confident as of a few months ago, and again, now their anxieties are bubbling over. And so there are a variety of metrics that go beyond just polling that suggest that the wind is very much at Democrats’ back, and we’re seeing a wave take shape right now.
Sargent: Well, in fact, a big piece of data just dropped: the Consumer Price Index report, which is out Wednesday. It found that prices overall had their largest monthly increase in five months. Prices were 3.7 percent higher than the same time in 2025. Gas prices up big time. The cause of the rise in energy prices is largely Trump’s war.
Steve, this’ll be the last report like this before the election, right? I mean, could the timing be worse for Trump and the GOP? It seems like a big thing just fell into place here.
Benen: What really matters is the impact on real families and real consumers and the people who are struggling with being able to make ends meet. Having said that, this is an election season, and we’re three weeks out from an election. We’re in an environment where people are voting early, or they’re getting ready to cast their ballots.
And so we have Donald Trump on the one hand bragging about the fact that he’s bringing down prices, and on the other hand, we have reality. We have the fact that the new numbers show that he’s lying, and so the rest of the White House is lying. The numbers are clearly that consumer prices are terrible and inflation is getting worse.
Two weeks ago we had bad jobs data. The economy is right now at a point where we’re having the second-worst job creation since the Great Recession. And so, with all that put together, it’s not surprising that Americans are showing this incredible frustration with the state of the economy, despite Donald Trump’s absurdities on the matter on a daily basis.
Sargent: And it’s quite striking that Trump keeps touting the stock market, of all things. I mean, what could be more out of touch?
So also, you’ve got Politico now reporting that top Republicans are conceding that the House is all but gone for them. As you pointed out, they’ve been pulling money out of races that are easier for Democrats to win and transferring it to ones that are harder to win, which means they’re in triage mode. They’re giving up on some of the lowest-tier seats as lost, to save ones that should be safe.
Steve, I think the GOP money moves are worth focusing on, because they really do show what’s happening on the battlefield beyond the spin. Mike Johnson keeps saying the polls are wrong, but Republicans would not be triaging like this if they actually thought the polling is wrong, would they?
Benen: Exactly right. And they have their own internal polling that we don’t necessarily see, but we can see their moves. I mean, on the one hand, I can appreciate the fact that they want to put a public spin on this. But on the other hand, money talks. We don’t need to pay attention necessarily to what they’re saying.
We can pay attention to what they’re doing. And what they’re doing is moving money around in such a way that reinforces the fact that these guys are clearly panicked over the state of the electorate, over the state of the midterm elections. And so forget the polls, just follow the money. And the money is showing that these folks don’t expect to win.
Sargent: As you say, the money talks, and we should talk about the Senate races as well, because Republicans are largely pulling their money out of both the North Carolina and the Georgia Senate races, and they’re starting to put this money into places like South Carolina and Kansas.
Now, I don’t want to get people’s hopes up about South Carolina, especially. And you know, Kansas, maybe, I don’t know, I doubt it. I think South Carolina is extremely tough. But the mere fact that Republicans are putting money into these places means that some of these other Senate seats that seem very tough are really, really quite gettable. Texas, Iowa—I think Iowa’s tough, let’s face it.
But I think maybe Alaska, Ohio. The fact that they’re putting money into places like Kansas and Nebraska and South Carolina really does make it look as if those once very tough seats are actually really in the game now. And again, these are states that Trump carried by double digits.
Benen: Right. I look back in April, when Senate Leadership Fund, the super PAC that’s closely aligned with the Senate Republican leadership, started announcing their plans for the fall. And they started saying, here, we’re going to be making investments in Ohio, we’re going to be making investments in Maine.
And all that made perfect sense. People like you and me were looking at that list and saying, well, yeah, of course, these are going to be the most closely watched, the most competitive races of the 2026 cycle. And so, yeah, of course, no questions asked.
But if we had thought at the time—if we looked back in April, if we could have had a time machine and communicated to us in April saying, you know what, they’re going to be starting to move money out of Georgia and North Carolina and instead going to start spending it in Kansas and South Carolina and Nebraska—well, we would have thought that was absurd. There would be no way.
If that was happening, we would have thought to ourselves, well, then it would suggest that this election cycle is going so catastrophically bad for Republicans that they’d be ready to just jump out of their windows. And yet, having said that, those are the circumstances that we’re facing right now.
Sargent: And again, the polls could be wrong, but Republicans clearly do not think the polls are wrong. I want to read some quotes from these top Republicans to Politico. One says the goal is to, quote, “save as many Republican seats as we can.” And this Republican adds this: “Trump has made this election all about himself. Now we have to survive that political storm.” Another top Republican, Don Bacon, the retiring congressman from Nebraska, says: “The biggest problem is the president’s polling numbers and unfavorables.”
Well, there you have it. Republicans themselves are wrecking Donald Trump’s spin about how great his rallies are for them, right there.
Benen: I agree. And you know, I remember seeing, in early September, right before this midterm convention that they had in Texas, where Donald Trump is going out of his way to say, you know what, this is all on me, bring it all on me. I’m going to be the face of the party. I’m going to be the voice of the party. And that it’ll basically create a referendum, a national referendum, on Donald Trump’s presidency.
That was the point. It was not just some byproduct. It was literally the whole goal that was set out by the White House in advance of the midterm election cycle.
And so, I haven’t spoken to Democratic officials about this, but I have to assume that they were absolutely delighted to see this unfold, because as far as the Democrats were concerned, that was the goal anyway. That was the objective: to nationalize the race and to make this a referendum on a wildly unpopular, failing president.
And so to have Donald Trump go out of his way to make that happen, to effectively read the Democratic playbook and adopt it as his own strategy—well, we’re seeing the results play out. Of course it’s not working. Why would it make any sense to think that a president with a low-30s approval rating would want to make this entire election cycle about himself? And yet he has done so, and now the results speak for themselves.
Sargent: It’s just endlessly remarkable how everyone in the GOP is required to pretend, publicly anyway, that Trump has been among the greatest presidents in U.S. history, even as doing this hurts them. They’re not permitted to distance themselves from Trump in order to save themselves.
So they creep around whispering anonymously to reporters that Trump is why they’re toast, but no one can say it publicly. You know, I have not seen anything quite like this before. You?
Benen: No. And in fact, I think that getting back to what you were saying earlier about inflation and the fact that Donald Trump is ultimately responsible for that—I think that this is an important detail.
Because on the one hand, yes, the entire election cycle is about Donald Trump, and that is something that Democrats wanted, and now it is something that the White House wanted. But in addition to that, we’re also dealing with the effects of Donald Trump’s presidency.
I mean, if affordability is the number one issue, and I think most people would agree that it is, and Donald Trump is ultimately responsible for pushing prices higher, by way of his tariffs and by way of his failing war in Iran, well then we have the double whammy. We have the situation in which not only is the president unpopular and becoming the face of the party, but the public is furious about the very things that he did while in office that he was elected to do the opposite of.
And so really, it is a scenario that effectively serves as a Republican nightmare. This is exactly what they were afraid of seeing months ago, more than that, throughout Donald Trump’s second term. And yet this is something that they can’t seem to avoid, and that they’re stuck with.
Sargent: Well, you mentioned tariffs, Steve. So I want to bring up this ad that the Michigan Republican Senate nominee, Mike Rogers, is running in the state. He’s running against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, who’s been mercilessly attacking him over the tariffs. And in this ad, Mike Rogers says, “Here in Michigan, we know that Canada is not our enemy.” And then he says, “We need to end this tariff war now.”
So Mike Rogers is permitted to attack the tariff war, to attack Trump’s policy, but he’s not allowed to say who actually is the author of the policy. The ad doesn’t say a thing about the fact that Donald Trump is the one who initiated this trade war, and it doesn’t say, obviously, a thing about the fact that Donald Trump is saying over and over that policies like this are actually bringing costs down.
What do you make of that, Steve? I mean, even when they try to get distance from Trump, they’re not allowed to get distance from Trump.
Benen: No, that’s exactly right. I mean, in recent weeks we’ve seen a lot of these kinds of tactics, where Byron Donalds is scrubbing his website, for example, and removing any references to Donald Trump. And we see Republicans like Greg Abbott saying, well, Donald Trump is in town, but I’m busy, I have these plans, I can’t quite make it to his rally, I’m sure it’ll be fine.
And then we have Mike Rogers running this ad where he holds a Canadian beer very carefully, with the label turned to the camera, and saying, no, no, I’m not with Trump on this. Except he can’t say that he’s not with Trump on this. He can only say that as an abstraction, that he’s against Trump’s agenda, even though it’s not Trump’s agenda, because he can’t call it Trump’s agenda.
And so I’m not unsympathetic. They have to try and thread this needle, because they know the minute they say anything that’s critical of Trump, they know that he’ll be on his social media platform condemning them and telling Republicans that these guys are RINOs and that they’re betraying the MAGA base and so on. And so, this is the Republican Party in 2026.
They’re against this agenda, they’re against his failing presidency, but they can’t bring themselves to say any of that, because then they’re afraid of the consequences in terms of what it would bring to them, and as it destroys the Republican Party. And so, if I were in their shoes, I’d be changing parties, because I wouldn’t know what to do with this terrible situation. There is no way out.
Sargent: There really is not. OK, to close this out, let’s just talk about where the Senate map is going. It looks as if North Carolina’s off the board. It looks as if Georgia’s off the board. So North Carolina, that’s one seat that Democrats can, I think, count on getting.
I feel a little better about both Maine and Michigan than I did a week or two ago. Troy Jackson seems to have stabilized. He’s doing well in the debates against Susan Collins. Collins has looked a bit shaky. It’s very close there, but I think he’s going to be OK. Michigan, I didn’t expect it to look as good as it does, but it seems to be all right right now.
So where are you on the other stuff? You know, Texas, knife’s edge. Ohio, I think Sherrod Brown’s ahead, but also on a knife’s edge. Iowa, very tough. But there is a path with those three and Alaska. You can see the path. Which ones do you feel good about right now?
Benen: Well, you know, so as we go into the cycle, the Senate Democratic caucus has 47 members. So to get to 50 is three seats. To get to a majority is four. To get to a Fetterman-proof majority would be 52. They would need five.
So if we work from the assumption that North Carolina is going Democrats’ way, and I think that that’s a relatively safe assumption, that’s 48 seats. At that point, we’re down to the final seven. So: Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Texas.
I’m mindful of the fact that money is going into Nebraska and South Carolina, but I think that realistically those are real stretches. I think that Democrats would see that as a moral victory if they came within, say, five to six points. It would show that things were going really strongly for Democrats, even though they ended up losing those races.
But really, I think your summary is sound. I mean, I think Talarico continues to lead in polls in Texas. I think Sherrod Brown—I think, in fact, Jon Husted hasn’t led in a poll in Ohio, I think, since the summer.
Michigan is looking stronger for El-Sayed. Even though I think that there was a lot of concern about him being able to consolidate Democratic support, as of now, I think that he has largely succeeded along those lines. I think Susan Collins is in trouble.
I actually think you and I might disagree a little bit on Kansas. I think Adam Hamilton is running a very strong campaign, and in fact I think he is well positioned to be the first Democrat to win Kansas since the early 1930s. It has been a long time.
I think if the election were today, I would put money on Hamilton over Marshall. And so I think, all things considered—I’m not a betting man, I’m not making any predictions necessarily, but at the same time, if I’m Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, I’m looking at these races and I’m feeling pretty good.
Sargent: Right. Just to boil it down: North Carolina is one, Maine is two, and Ohio is three. So you just need one more out of Iowa, Kansas, Texas, and Alaska, basically, and ideally two more out of those four to get Fetterman-proofed, right? I mean, that’s basically the size of it, I think.
Benen: Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. And you know, the fact that we’re even having this conversation, Greg—I hate to keep going back to where we were talking about a moment ago, in terms of where we were in the spring. But the fact that you and I are even having this conversation about the fact that it’s possible Senate Democrats could end up with 51, 52 seats, that that is no longer unrealistic—I just think it speaks to the fact that the backlash against Donald Trump and his corruption and his failures is hard to overstate.
I think that we’re in an environment where the things that seemed impossible—let me put it this way. We look back at 2024. I remember, in the immediate aftermath of 2024, Republicans weren’t just going into the majority. They were considered to be ascendant. We were entering an era of GOP dominance.
Democrats were not only defeated, they were demoralized, they were withdrawing from public life. And Donald Trump was going to be reigning for the foreseeable future, and he was going to be dictating American politics for well into the future. The road ahead was red.
And yet, here we are, what is it, not quite two years later. And not only have conditions changed, they’ve reversed. Everything that we were told in the immediate aftermath of 2024 looks absurd in hindsight.
In fact, it looks ridiculous in hindsight, because what we didn’t know at the time was that Donald Trump and his party were going to fail so spectacularly that Americans were going to demand something new and better and different. And so the fact that now we’re seeing that happen just speaks to the fact that all that talk from the immediate aftermath of 2024 was completely wrong.
Sargent: Absolutely, Steve. And you know, if Democrats do win the House, or the House and the Senate, and it’s clear that Donald Trump’s catastrophic presidency is why, it would be nice if there was something of a reckoning for commentators who jumped the gun and predicted that, because of Trump’s 2024 win, we were in the midst of a great realignment. But that reckoning will not happen. Steve Benen, always, always great to talk to you, man. Thanks so much for coming on.
Benen: Thank you so much.