Transcript: Trump Erupts in Panic over Midterms as Harsh Fox Poll Hits

Source: The New Republic · Bias: Left

Summary

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the March 27 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 is very worried about the midterm elections. In a series of Truth Social posts, he raged wildly at Republicans for failing to pass voter suppression legislation, which is explicitly designed to prevent Republicans from losing control of Congress. Trump is right to panic. A crushing new Fox News poll finds his disapproval at record highs and his Iran War badly tanking. And yet Trump keeps talking about the war in ways that reveal zero awareness of the political problem it’s become. If the war does work against Republicans this fall, it would be a striking and heartening development. So we’re talking about this possibility with Ryan O’Donnell, the executive director for the progressive group Data for Progress, which has its own polling on the war. Ryan, good to have you on.Ryan O’Donnell: Thanks so much for having me.Sargent: So in these Truth Social posts, Trump erupted at Republicans for failing to pass the SAVE Act. This would be incredibly onerous voter suppression legislation requiring voter ID and proof of citizenship in ways that would surely disenfranchise enormous numbers of people. But Ryan, the thing is that’s deliberate. They’re not even hiding the fact that the bill is designed to keep Republicans in control of the House—which they’re now in great danger of losing—and the Senate too. The panic is very palpable, isn’t it?O’Donnell: Yeah, I mean, they clearly see the writing on the wall. They know how dangerous the midterms are looking for them. And, you know, they’ve seen what happened in 2018. And just like everything that Donald Trump has been doing recently has just been incredibly unpopular with voters. And so he’s trying to do whatever he can to save himself.Sargent: Yeah, it’s really important to look at it as like a three-part process. There’s the direct voter suppression legislation, there’s the effort to completely rig the House maps across the country in an extraordinarily corrupt way, and there’s the talk about using ICE agents at polls to intimidate and suppress voters. O’Donnell: As much as Donald Trump and the administration like to talk about how they don’t read polls and that they don’t trust them, they know exactly what’s happening. They know that this stuff that they’re doing is all incredibly unpopular. Every day they’re doing something new that’s driving them deeper and deeper into the ground. As you said, as we saw in this Fox poll, his disapproval rating is at the highest ever.Sargent: Okay, so let’s get into some specifics. Trump wants Republicans to end the filibuster because the SAVE Act can’t pass the Senate. In one tweet, he said this: “When is enough enough for our Republican senators? TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER.” And he called for passing an end to vote by mail as part of this package, among other things. In a second tweet, he said again in all caps, “TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER.” So it’s not even clear Republicans can do this even if they want to—they don’t seem to have enough Republican support to end the filibuster. But Ryan, I’ve got to say, the pressure seems like it’s going to keep mounting from Trump and MAGA. How do you see this playing out? I don’t feel that confident that they won’t try it. O’Donnell: It’s certainly something that Trump wants to do, and I think Republicans are very hesitant on it right now. But if they see it as their only path forward, I don’t think that Donald Trump is going to stop pushing for it anytime soon.Sargent: Yeah, I think they could definitely try it—whether it works or not is hard to say, and how it actually plays in the midterms. If it were to pass, I mean, it would be an absolute abomination. It would be absolutely disgusting morally, and terrible for the country and terrible for democracy. But it is at least marginally possible that it would hurt Republicans more than Democrats, since Democrats are highly engaged voters in midterms.O’Donnell: Yeah, that’s right. I mean, we’ve been seeing this shift ever since education polarization has taken over—basically that whether or not somebody has a college degree now says a lot about who you’re voting for. And since that’s changed, Democrats have largely become the party of midterms, which is a fairly new thing in recent American history. And so it could actually end up hurting Republicans more, but the moral issue is obviously way more important here.Sargent: No, absolutely. So in a third tweet, Trump exploded again, calling Chuck Schumer a “desperate crippled politician” who has lost control of the radical left Democrats. And again, he demanded an end to the filibuster—which is funny, because Republicans are the real problem for Trump and he knows it.

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Transcript: Trump Erupts in Panic over Midterms as Harsh Fox Poll Hits
The New Republic

Transcript: Trump Erupts in Panic over Midterms as Harsh Fox Poll Hits

Left

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the March 27 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 is very worried about the midterm elections. In a series of Truth Social posts, he raged wildly at Republicans for failing to pass voter suppression legislation, which is explicitly designed to prevent Republicans from losing control of Congress. Trump is right to panic. A crushing new Fox News poll finds his disapproval at record highs and his Iran War badly tanking. And yet Trump keeps talking about the war in ways that reveal zero awareness of the political problem it’s become. If the war does work against Republicans this fall, it would be a striking and heartening development. So we’re talking about this possibility with Ryan O’Donnell, the executive director for the progressive group Data for Progress, which has its own polling on the war. Ryan, good to have you on.Ryan O’Donnell: Thanks so much for having me.Sargent: So in these Truth Social posts, Trump erupted at Republicans for failing to pass the SAVE Act. This would be incredibly onerous voter suppression legislation requiring voter ID and proof of citizenship in ways that would surely disenfranchise enormous numbers of people. But Ryan, the thing is that’s deliberate. They’re not even hiding the fact that the bill is designed to keep Republicans in control of the House—which they’re now in great danger of losing—and the Senate too. The panic is very palpable, isn’t it?O’Donnell: Yeah, I mean, they clearly see the writing on the wall. They know how dangerous the midterms are looking for them. And, you know, they’ve seen what happened in 2018. And just like everything that Donald Trump has been doing recently has just been incredibly unpopular with voters. And so he’s trying to do whatever he can to save himself.Sargent: Yeah, it’s really important to look at it as like a three-part process. There’s the direct voter suppression legislation, there’s the effort to completely rig the House maps across the country in an extraordinarily corrupt way, and there’s the talk about using ICE agents at polls to intimidate and suppress voters. O’Donnell: As much as Donald Trump and the administration like to talk about how they don’t read polls and that they don’t trust them, they know exactly what’s happening. They know that this stuff that they’re doing is all incredibly unpopular. Every day they’re doing something new that’s driving them deeper and deeper into the ground. As you said, as we saw in this Fox poll, his disapproval rating is at the highest ever.Sargent: Okay, so let’s get into some specifics. Trump wants Republicans to end the filibuster because the SAVE Act can’t pass the Senate. In one tweet, he said this: “When is enough enough for our Republican senators? TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER.” And he called for passing an end to vote by mail as part of this package, among other things. In a second tweet, he said again in all caps, “TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER.” So it’s not even clear Republicans can do this even if they want to—they don’t seem to have enough Republican support to end the filibuster. But Ryan, I’ve got to say, the pressure seems like it’s going to keep mounting from Trump and MAGA. How do you see this playing out? I don’t feel that confident that they won’t try it. O’Donnell: It’s certainly something that Trump wants to do, and I think Republicans are very hesitant on it right now. But if they see it as their only path forward, I don’t think that Donald Trump is going to stop pushing for it anytime soon.Sargent: Yeah, I think they could definitely try it—whether it works or not is hard to say, and how it actually plays in the midterms. If it were to pass, I mean, it would be an absolute abomination. It would be absolutely disgusting morally, and terrible for the country and terrible for democracy. But it is at least marginally possible that it would hurt Republicans more than Democrats, since Democrats are highly engaged voters in midterms.O’Donnell: Yeah, that’s right. I mean, we’ve been seeing this shift ever since education polarization has taken over—basically that whether or not somebody has a college degree now says a lot about who you’re voting for. And since that’s changed, Democrats have largely become the party of midterms, which is a fairly new thing in recent American history. And so it could actually end up hurting Republicans more, but the moral issue is obviously way more important here.Sargent: No, absolutely. So in a third tweet, Trump exploded again, calling Chuck Schumer a “desperate crippled politician” who has lost control of the radical left Democrats. And again, he demanded an end to the filibuster—which is funny, because Republicans are the real problem for Trump and he knows it.

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