Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
We’re talking to MS NOW opinion editor James Downie, who has a good piece laying out how Trump is hitting all kinds of historic lows. James, nice to have you on.
Sargent: So let’s start with Trump’s ramblings to reporters. He brought up the SAVE Act, which is a vile piece of voter suppression legislation that would probably disenfranchise millions of people, and then said that Democrats are trying to block it. Listen.
Sargent: It’s complete nonsense that Democratic voters want to pass the SAVE Act. But note how Trump openly says there that passing it would mean Democrats never win another election. He actually says straight out that his voter suppression bill would lead to one-party rule in the GOP’s favor and that this would be good. Your reaction to that, James?
And the fact that he is pushing this sort of SAVE Act—versus, say, a bill to help on the economy or to bring down gas prices by ending the war with Iran—shows that he isn’t really interested in winning voters over in any sort of regular, normal way. He’d rather cheat and he’d rather rig the election.
Literally everything Trump talks about pretty much all the time is the arch, the ballroom. Now he’s got this new $1.8 billion slush fund that he’s going to use to reward allies. And that’s got to be sort of lumped in with voter suppression as yet another way to try and corruptly rig the system.
Sargent: Well, totally. So this week’s Fox News poll is really something else. Trump’s approval among registered voters on the economy is 29 percent; 71 percent disapprove. These numbers have risen substantially in recent months. James, this is looking like something pretty close to total collapse on the economy, wouldn’t you say?
We’re seeing more and more movement towards sort of the mid-thirties or even low thirties. That is traditionally the floor for any president. And it takes a lot of effort to reach those numbers—a lot of almost deliberate incompetence.
He’s now underwater on that as well. And this is in a Fox News poll. I was struck by the write-up of the poll. They always generally try to come up with some way to soft-pedal the findings—they say, well, there’s this good finding for Trump. This was a harsh write-up by Fox News where they were pretty blunt that he’s in real trouble.
The polling averages are looking similar. Nate Silver has him at an average of minus 21. The New York Times polling average, similar number. G. Elliott Morris’s number—who I believe you’ve had as a guest on your show in the past—minus 24 and 60 percent disapproval on average, which is just a remarkable number.
Sargent: We are getting close to George W. Bush post-Katrina, Iraq War numbers here. I want to bring up still more numbers in the Fox poll because they go a little more directly to what’s happening to MAGA. Trump’s approval has dropped to new lows among Republicans who don’t identify as MAGA: 54 percent. Among white voters, it’s dropped to 43 percent. And among rural voters, it’s dropped to 43 percent.
James, the whole story we’ve been told about Trump for years has been that he has this rock-solid floor because his base will never leave him. But now big swaths of it are leaving him. What do you make of that?
And then I think also more generally, Trump kind of set himself up for this. He promised prices would come down on day one. He promised no more forever wars. He promised basically to a lot of voters that their lives would be sunshine and rainbows the moment he was back in office.
Sargent: Well, James, do you think there’s actually an opportunity here for Democrats to start making real inroads with some of these constituencies that have been hard for them to reach? Here, we’re seeing just the guts of the Trump coalition leave him. We’re talking about white voters, non-college whites, rural voters, even rural whites. Men are turning against him.
Downie: Absolutely. I think that the longer this economic pain goes on, the longer that gas is as high as it is, the longer that people continue to feel like they are either barely making it by or falling behind, the longer that inflation continues to outpace wages—which it did again, we now know that it did for the past year, and that’s the first time that’s happened since the middle of the worst of the Biden presidency inflation—the more chance that gives Democrats to make inroads in the Republican coalition.
Sargent: Well, two more Fox News numbers just because they go to the point that you just made. Among Hispanics, Donald Trump’s approval is 33 percent to 67 percent. That’s staggering. It’s clear that any gains that Trump made among Hispanics are just gone. Among working-class voters, meaning voters without a college degree, he’s at 40 percent approval to 60 percent. Again, the inroads he made with non-white working class—gone.
Where do you see this going? The big story has been that Republicans are on offense because they’ve been able to redistrict now. They’ve been able to rig the elections in their favor, and they’re going to win. But numbers like these will just absolutely swamp any redistricting that Republicans have done, I think.
Downie: Yeah, as you said, usually a gain of seven, eight, nine, 10 seats—about however much Republicans end up netting out in these gerrymandering efforts—that would make a big difference in an election where in House elections there’s a shrinking number of competitive seats anyway.
I think that in terms of how it plays out, for Democrats to really make inroads into this coalition—I think you see it in this Fox poll, but you see it in a lot of polls—even as Democrats do well on the congressional ballot and Trump struggles, there are a lot of voters who are not happy with the Democratic Party and don’t feel like the party is fighting hard enough for regular voters’ interests.
And I think you’ve seen some candidates like Jon Ossoff in Georgia have been moving on that message. And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Ossoff is now taking what many saw as might have been a toss-up race in the Georgia Senate contest—and now most people feel that Ossoff is pretty well on to keep it.
To your point about the slush fund and Republicans turning against it, that is happening. The slush fund is actually being rejected by Republican senators, which is a rare thing. Punchbowl News reporter Andrew Desiderio reports that at a Senate GOP lunch on Thursday, two dozen senators objected to the fund. They now want to place restrictions on the fund in the reconciliation process. But it got even more interesting. According to this reporter, one GOP senator texted him, “Our majority is melting down before our eyes.”
Downie: Yeah. I think in terms like the slush fund—I mean, first of all, the name. The ease with which Democrats can just say—I mean, it’s an unregulated fund for Trump’s allies. It is very clearly a slush fund. It’s very easy to label. And then also, I think, we know January 6 was, thank goodness, not very popular, to say the least, with independent voters.
Sargent: There’s sort of a through line here, which is basically hubris. Donald Trump went out there earlier this week and stated straight out that his slush fund will go to insurrectionists. He said basically that that was the right thing to do because the insurrectionists were right.
There’s a level of hubris here that’s almost impossible to get your head around. But it’s sure looking like—I sure hope anyway—it’s sure looking like all the pieces are coming together for a truly epic repudiation. Don’t you think?
Throughout the history of public opinion polling, no president has been this unpopular this early in a term. And so we’re entering uncharted territory where you’ve got more than two years to go and you’ve got a president whom fewer than two in five Americans support. And there’s no signs of it slowing down, especially while gas prices remain this high. So where we go from here—it’s uncharted waters, to be frank.
Downie: Thanks for having me.
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