Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Simon Rosenberg: Greg, it’s always great to be with you.
Rosenberg: Yeah. I mean, look, Trump’s tariffs and his broader economic strategy had already caused the economy to slow, job growth to slow, and inflation to reignite prior to the war. And the more data that we’ve gotten, the more it’s clear he took an extraordinary risk by engaging in this war, given that things were already heading in the wrong direction in the economy, which we also saw in his polling data.
Sargent: Absolutely. And Trump knows he’s in trouble on all this. He was asked about all of it by a reporter and he lost it. Listen.
Donald Trump (voiceover): My policies are working incredibly. If you go back to just before the war, for the last three months, inflation was at 1.7 percent. Now, we had a choice. Let these lunatics have a nuclear weapon. If you want to do that, then you’re a stupid person. And you happen to be. I mean, I know you very well.
Rosenberg: Costs are up because of him. And I think the reason this has hurt him so much in the polls is that he promised otherwise. He promised to lower everybody’s prices and costs and to make lives better for everybody. And he’s done the exact opposite. And I think that’s part of the reason that he and his party are paying such a heavy price right now in polling.
Sargent: Well, look, you’ve been a Democratic strategist for a long time, and for Democratic strategists like yourself, one of the things about Trump has always been that he’s really hard to hit on the economy. He’s a billionaire, but he just comes across to a whole lot of people out there—especially low-information voters—as some combination of an economic populist [and] as someone who’s not like other Republicans on the economy. He very consciously distanced himself from other Republicans on the economy in 2016, sort of did the same again in 2024.
Rosenberg: Yeah. I mean, and I think your analysis is correct. In the 2020 election, despite the fact the economy was in the toilet when Trump ran for reelection, Trump beat Biden with voters who said the economy was the number one issue by 81 to 18. And he also beat Biden by more than 10 points on the question of who would be better for the economy. Biden won the election because of COVID, but even though he had crashed the economy, his economic numbers stayed unbelievably high in the 2020 election. So yes, you’re right.
And you’re seeing this gradually. And what happened is, about a month or six weeks ago, you started seeing polling where Democrats were more trusted on the economy, more trusted on inflation, on fighting for working people. And now in CNN, Democrats had significant leads in all those measures, as opposed to just being up by a couple of points.
Sargent: I want to get to the question of Democrats and the economy in a bit, but first let’s listen to more of Trump. A reporter asked him to what degree Americans’ financial situation shapes his thinking about Iran. Listen.
Donald Trump (voiceover): Not even a little bit. The only thing that matters when I’m talking about Iran—they can’t have a nuclear weapon. I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing. We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That’s all.
Rosenberg: Well, and they also have said that they think the war is just going to end magically, right? Just the way that COVID ended. He kept saying COVID is just going to end one day. The war is just going to end and things are going to snap back to the way they were. And I think that is the widespread belief in the Republican Party now, that this is a temporary blip. And yet what we’re seeing in the inflation data in this report is that—remember, energy inflation is different than food inflation or different than other inflation because it affects anything that is transported. That also goes up in price.
Sargent: Well, not all the data shows that unfortunately, and I want to get to that. We have this new CNN poll, which does contain brutal news for Trump and Republicans. Trump’s approval on the economy is down to 30 percent among Americans—the lowest ever from either Trump term. Seventy percent disapprove. Among independents, it’s 21 percent approve to 79 percent disapprove—that’s just extraordinary.
Rosenberg: I think the generic ballot has been all over the place. I mean, to be fair, there were three polls taken in the last few weeks that had the generic ballot up high single digits and double digits for the Democrats. It’s been more choppy and bouncy than I remember in recent election cycles. But certainly, look, in a potentially wave election—which we may be in—there are two different dynamics, right?
But obviously it would be better if we also had a short, clear agenda about what we would do when we got back into power. And I think that agenda is available to us. Things like we would get rid of the tariffs, which would lower your prices, right? We would restore some of the healthcare cuts so you can afford healthcare again. These are not complicated things that we can run on that are necessary things for us to do.
Sargent: You just brought up the tariffs and Democrats and I want to home in on that for a second. This is something you’ve talked about as well. Obviously healthcare—Democrats feel really comfortable running on. We almost joke about it all the time at this point. But tariffs, less so. You do see some Democrats attack the tariffs and Democrats have been pretty good in some of these congressional votes. And yet you don’t hear that many Democratic candidates in tough races—tough House districts or tough states—really going hard at the tariffs, which is just mystifying to me.
Rosenberg: You know, it’s like most times when I join you—you raise interesting and complicated things. I do think I’ve been a little surprised that Democrats have put a lot more energy into the healthcare discussion than tariffs and inflation, particularly given what Trump promised, and particularly given that we know that inflation hurt Biden in 2024.
All these incumbent Republicans voted for the tariffs and higher prices and challenges for small businesses and farmers. They voted for the war, which further increased gas prices and other prices. They voted for the healthcare cuts—which is, every day that we get closer to the election, those cuts are going to be more biting in every one of these districts. They all voted to fund ICE at unprecedented levels without any reforms. And they voted to cut taxes on the wealthiest people while raising them for middle-class people.
Sargent: Well, I’m really heartened to think that you think some of these Democrats in tough races are engaging on the tariffs. You mentioned a little bit earlier that Democrats are leading on the economy in polls. I agree that that’s an important thing—that it’s actually something of a milestone to have Democrats favored or more trusted on the economy than Republicans. But—and I want to ask you about this—I think the data is a little bit less conclusive than I’d like it to be. You sometimes see polls with Republicans up.
Rosenberg: Yeah, no, I agree. Let me make three points about what I think is going to happen with the brand. One is I think the further we get away from the election, the sort of ugly hangover from what happened in 2024 will be more in the rearview mirror and it’ll be less of a drag on us. Second is that we’re not running as a party brand. We’re running candidates. And when candidates actually are running against Republican candidates, we’ve been way outperforming the current fundamentals of the election.
Sargent: Here’s more of Trump. Here he starts talking about his ballroom being under budget. And then a reporter says the costs have doubled. Listen to what happens next.
Sargent: Simon, just to close this out, one thing I don’t quite get is why isn’t there more discussion of what a political disaster the ballroom is for Trump and Republicans? We just learned that vulnerable Republicans don’t even want to vote for the thing, which is pretty staggering.
Rosenberg: Look, I think Trump goes to China in a few days and he’s going to go there in a very weakened position. His tariffs—I mean, the economy, the data on the economy is terrible. His economic program clearly isn’t working. His war has failed. His tariffs, which were a central bludgeon he was using against the Chinese, were just declared illegal for the second time.
So listen, I am optimistic by nature. I think if you’ve been in politics for a long time, you have to constantly—you have to believe that you can make things better, right? That you can improve people’s lives, that you can improve the standing of your party. And I think that right now, the stench of failure around Trump is actually getting far more powerful than any sense that they’re in any kind of recovery right now. And if we put our heads down, I think we can have the election that we all want to have.
Rosenberg: Greg, great to be with you. Thanks for your incredible hard work. The hardest-working man in show business. I’ve been calling you that for years.
Rosenberg: Take care. Thanks, everybody.
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