Transcript: Trump Blurts Out Surprise Midterm Admission as GOP Panics

Source: The New Republic · Bias: Left

Summary

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 28 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.Donald Trump just uttered an extraordinary quote. He said this: “I don’t care about the midterms.” But it actually got more revealing from there on out. In discussing what just happened in Texas, where the MAGA extremist will now be the GOP nominee in the Senate race, Trump accidentally revealed that he’s still under the delusion that he and MAGA are popular. Meanwhile, three different indicators in the polling contain terrible news for Trump and the GOP. And new reports say that Republicans are growing more alarmed about the midterms. Some of them are plainly afraid to say so. So how much longer can they stand by while Trump drags them down?We’re discussing all this with New Republic contributing editor Felipe De La Hoz, who’s been arguing that Trump’s historic unpopularity gives Democrats all kinds of new openings. Felipe, nice to have you on.Felipe De La Hoz: Always good to be here, Greg.Sargent: So let’s start with what Trump said at his cabinet meeting. He was talking about how he’s winning a huge victory over Iran, which he isn’t. That aside, here’s how he characterized that.Donald Trump (voiceover): They thought they were going to outwait me, you know, ‘we’ll outwait him, he’s got the midterms.’ I don’t care about the midterms. Look what happened last night. That was the prelude to the midterms. People understand it. They know that it’s very simple—Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. I’m doing that for the world. I’m not doing it just for us.Sargent: So let’s break this up into two pieces. First, Trump’s claim that he doesn’t care about the midterms. I think this is quite literally true. He doesn’t care what happens to Republicans, really. He really doesn’t give a shit. And it’s also true that Trump’s war is absolutely tanking their chances. What do you make of all that?De La Hoz: Yeah, as is often the case with Trump, it really could be interpreted in a variety of different ways. And I doubt that they’re going to really clarify. On the one hand, it could mean that he literally doesn’t care, which I think is possible. As far as American political figures go, he is probably the one that has most openly and with gusto thrown his political allies under the bus. I think it could also be a reference to the idea that his MAGA-endorsed candidates have been winning primaries in the last several weeks. I think it could be interpreted as him saying that this is an indication of the strength of his brand, which I think is mistaken.We saw something similar play out in 2018 and 2022 with his MAGA candidates winning primaries and then getting slaughtered in the general.Sargent: To your point about how Trump really only cares about how he’s doing with MAGA—the second piece of what Trump said in that little clip is really telling. He says “the prelude to the midterms is what happened last night,” meaning Tuesday night. He’s clearly alluding to MAGA extremist Ken Paxton getting the GOP nomination in the Texas Senate race, something Trump engineered. But what’s funny, Felipe, about that is that this has improved Democratic chances in the Senate race, though it’s certainly not going to be easy by any means. That aside, Trump is saying that it’s good that Republicans nominated the MAGA whack job. He really is under the illusion that he and MAGA are popular. He revealed that accidentally, I think. Your thoughts on that?De La Hoz: Yeah, I mean, Texas is this great white whale for Democrats. And I think there’s sort of an intermediate point that we have to look at this from. On the one hand, I think that this idea that there will be some sort of Democratic savior who’s going to run such an excellent campaign that will overcome all the odds and deliver a decisive Democratic victory in a statewide race in Texas is probably not going to happen, at least not in the foreseeable future. However, the idea that it’s also some kind of pipe dream or fantasy, and that it can’t happen—Texas is Texas, blah, blah, blah—I think is clearly wrong and has been disproven, as you wrote, by the success—not the victory, but the success—of the O’Rourke campaign a few years ago.I remember when Trump endorsed Paxton, which was really on the eve of the election, there was a lot of reporting about how Republican strategists in the state and in Washington were furious, already almost not writing off the race, but really concerned about the impact that this was going to have. And I think they’re looking at the same polling—more polling than we are. They have their own internal polling and they realize that this is going to be, I think, disastrous.And James Talarico, I think, as you wrote, is someone who has several layers of credibility.

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Transcript: Trump Blurts Out Surprise Midterm Admission as GOP Panics
The New Republic

Transcript: Trump Blurts Out Surprise Midterm Admission as GOP Panics

Left

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 28 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.Donald Trump just uttered an extraordinary quote. He said this: “I don’t care about the midterms.” But it actually got more revealing from there on out. In discussing what just happened in Texas, where the MAGA extremist will now be the GOP nominee in the Senate race, Trump accidentally revealed that he’s still under the delusion that he and MAGA are popular. Meanwhile, three different indicators in the polling contain terrible news for Trump and the GOP. And new reports say that Republicans are growing more alarmed about the midterms. Some of them are plainly afraid to say so. So how much longer can they stand by while Trump drags them down?We’re discussing all this with New Republic contributing editor Felipe De La Hoz, who’s been arguing that Trump’s historic unpopularity gives Democrats all kinds of new openings. Felipe, nice to have you on.Felipe De La Hoz: Always good to be here, Greg.Sargent: So let’s start with what Trump said at his cabinet meeting. He was talking about how he’s winning a huge victory over Iran, which he isn’t. That aside, here’s how he characterized that.Donald Trump (voiceover): They thought they were going to outwait me, you know, ‘we’ll outwait him, he’s got the midterms.’ I don’t care about the midterms. Look what happened last night. That was the prelude to the midterms. People understand it. They know that it’s very simple—Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. I’m doing that for the world. I’m not doing it just for us.Sargent: So let’s break this up into two pieces. First, Trump’s claim that he doesn’t care about the midterms. I think this is quite literally true. He doesn’t care what happens to Republicans, really. He really doesn’t give a shit. And it’s also true that Trump’s war is absolutely tanking their chances. What do you make of all that?De La Hoz: Yeah, as is often the case with Trump, it really could be interpreted in a variety of different ways. And I doubt that they’re going to really clarify. On the one hand, it could mean that he literally doesn’t care, which I think is possible. As far as American political figures go, he is probably the one that has most openly and with gusto thrown his political allies under the bus. I think it could also be a reference to the idea that his MAGA-endorsed candidates have been winning primaries in the last several weeks. I think it could be interpreted as him saying that this is an indication of the strength of his brand, which I think is mistaken.We saw something similar play out in 2018 and 2022 with his MAGA candidates winning primaries and then getting slaughtered in the general.Sargent: To your point about how Trump really only cares about how he’s doing with MAGA—the second piece of what Trump said in that little clip is really telling. He says “the prelude to the midterms is what happened last night,” meaning Tuesday night. He’s clearly alluding to MAGA extremist Ken Paxton getting the GOP nomination in the Texas Senate race, something Trump engineered. But what’s funny, Felipe, about that is that this has improved Democratic chances in the Senate race, though it’s certainly not going to be easy by any means. That aside, Trump is saying that it’s good that Republicans nominated the MAGA whack job. He really is under the illusion that he and MAGA are popular. He revealed that accidentally, I think. Your thoughts on that?De La Hoz: Yeah, I mean, Texas is this great white whale for Democrats. And I think there’s sort of an intermediate point that we have to look at this from. On the one hand, I think that this idea that there will be some sort of Democratic savior who’s going to run such an excellent campaign that will overcome all the odds and deliver a decisive Democratic victory in a statewide race in Texas is probably not going to happen, at least not in the foreseeable future. However, the idea that it’s also some kind of pipe dream or fantasy, and that it can’t happen—Texas is Texas, blah, blah, blah—I think is clearly wrong and has been disproven, as you wrote, by the success—not the victory, but the success—of the O’Rourke campaign a few years ago.I remember when Trump endorsed Paxton, which was really on the eve of the election, there was a lot of reporting about how Republican strategists in the state and in Washington were furious, already almost not writing off the race, but really concerned about the impact that this was going to have. And I think they’re looking at the same polling—more polling than we are. They have their own internal polling and they realize that this is going to be, I think, disastrous.And James Talarico, I think, as you wrote, is someone who has several layers of credibility.

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