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 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Sargent: James Talarico, the Democratic nominee, is reaching out to independents and moderates and Republicans, but he’s also making it very clear that MAGA and Trumpism and Trump are a disaster for this country. He’s not sidestepping discussion of what Trump and Trumpism have done to us. And that’s really critical.
It’s not impossible though. And even if he loses, he’s probably going to end up forcing Republicans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to save Texas, which could impact the rest of the map. Just want to clarify though—Talarico could win. It’s possible, just very hard.
Sargent: It’s absolutely possible. As I wrote in my piece, and tried to argue anyway, if there’s a time it’s going to happen, a lot of events are lining up right now that make it at least plausible.
You wrote about this: Is there an opening here for Democrats to strike kind of a new set of moral positions on immigration, due to Trump’s hideous unpopularity and just the horrors he’s unleashed?
But setting that aside, we are in a different situation right now where, historically, immigration has been the impenetrable issue where Trump and Republicans writ large seem to enjoy a sort of default level of deference from the voting public—the assumption that they would handle it better, whatever that means in the median voter’s mind—in a similar way to the economy writ large. People don’t necessarily grasp it in its granularity, but they felt that Republicans did better. That is done, I think.
Sargent: I agree 100 percent. And that’s why I’m really heartened to see James Talarico talking about immigration as a positive good for the country—an affirmative good. It’s a good thing for us. And by the way, the point about Texas being a place where very hardline immigration politics works—I think we’re in a different place than we were even just a couple of years ago, because now people have seen violent white nationalism as an agenda play out on the streets of major cities across the country and they are recoiling in horror.
De La Hoz: Yeah. I mean, what ended up happening was that some of these things went from being theoretical to realized. And unfortunately, it’s a long-time American tradition that people have to sometimes just touch the stove.
We hear it over and over again. And once the understanding really sets in that that’s not what anyone meant, that’s not what Stephen Miller wants, that’s not what they’re working towards, that’s not what they’ll accept as victory in this anti-immigration zealotry—people are not only against it, they’re repulsed, they are disgusted.
Sargent: So we just got hit with a barrage of new polling that’s very bad for Trump and Republicans. G. Elliott Morris’s new poll has the Democratic lead in the generic House ballot matchup at eight points now. It’s been growing. If that continues, if it holds at eight, if it turns out to be eight at the end of the day—that’s a wave.
De La Hoz: Yeah, I think so. And look, I know that there’s been a lot of skepticism about polling that has been born out of the last several years, where there have been some significant misses, let’s call it. But I don’t think there’s any way to ignore the totality of the polling here. And it’s palpable. It’s palpable all around the country that there is a discontent and there is a sense that people were sold a bill of goods that wasn’t true.
There’s this trend that exists already. And then every day they’re sort of lustily shooting themselves in the foot because I think they’re just incapable. Nobody wants to displease the king.
It’s Trump obsessing over his ballroom, obsessing over monuments to himself. That’s really panicking Republicans. And they’re afraid to, of course, say outright that this is what’s happening, and so that just makes it worse.
Felipe, it’s an interesting loop and an interesting trap that they’re kind of caught in here. The megalomania is sinking them, but it’s also the megalomania that prevents them from going to Trump and saying, we really need a change here, right?
But one thing that it’s important to keep in mind is that what we’ve seen for the last year and a half is a Congress that has been fundamentally absent from the mechanics of government. It’s a Congress that has openly allowed Trump to usurp their constitutionally delegated functions, whether it be tariffs or whatever else. That is fine with it, has allowed it to happen, and has been paralyzed to the point where just passing a budget with very little policy—the very, very basic mechanics of keeping government open—is like some sort of feat.
Sargent: To conclude this, I really think that after 2026, American politics could get a lot crazier even than it is right now. That’s going to be pretty crazy too, and it’s going to be pretty rough going, I think, for a lot of us. But Trump is out there now saying that he doesn’t care about the midterms. I think he’s going to care about them soon enough. Felipe de la Hoz, thanks for coming on. Great to talk to you.
De La Hoz: Thanks so much, Greg. I’m here whenever you need me.
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