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 sorting through what this means with political scientist Julia Azari, who’s been writing well on this election’s deeper currents for the Good Politics/Bad Politics Substack. Julia, thanks for coming on.
Sargent: So let’s start with Trump’s admission. Here he was asked by Ross Douthat of CBS whether immigration hurt the GOP in the midterms. Listen to this.
Sargent: Julia, let’s break this up into pieces. The first key point, I think, is that Trump admitted there that Americans view a lot of undocumented immigrant workers as good people, as if they’re legitimately here in the U.S. despite having come here illegally. That’s anathema to MAGA, isn’t it?
But MAGA has been very clear that they’ve used this kind of law framing, but really that they’re also after legal immigration. They’re also out to decrease the number of foreign-born people living and working in this country. That’s been a very, very clear priority. And here Trump really kind of undercuts all of that.
He just declared them illegal, sort of by fiat. And so, yes, MAGA is not about law enforcement. It’s much more about, let’s make the country whiter, let’s reduce the number of immigrants here.
There are ways in which the executive branch can make those decisions, and they did do that to the Haitian population living in Ohio on temporary protected status.
It goes further and admits that the underlying ideological goal of removing immigrants itself was unpopular. That’s something that even a lot of pundits wouldn’t admit to for a long time. What did you make of that piece of it?
And in other cases, it’s really thinking about the role that undocumented immigrants play in our society, and how deeply integrated they are into the economy, particularly the service economy.
Sargent: Yes, he chose landscaping and hotel work and so forth, but he was actually speaking to the experiences of many Americans, who maybe don’t spend as much time in hotels as Donald Trump does, but constantly and very regularly encounter undocumented immigrants in their daily lives. They encounter undocumented immigrants who are integrated into the economy all around us, right?
Again, he’s not going to do anything about it. We know that. But still, it’s interesting that he went there, I thought. What did you think?
But also, what we’ve seen with ICE, and what I think is really worth pointing out, is that ICE has not been terribly discerning about the legal status of the people that they’ve gone after.
Sargent: So in the interview, Trump also said he’s open to working with Democrats on immigration, which, again, is not going to happen, given Stephen Miller’s role. We’ll come back to that. But MAGA figures raged about this. I’m going to read a few.
Now, Trump won’t do it, but these MAGA figures are not wrong, in the sense that he admitted to something that’s anathema to them, i.e., that immigrants are good for America, right?
And I think that’s a problem that affects basically everybody in American politics. But I think it affects MAGA in particular, because kind of all they have is juicing up the base with grievance. That’s really an important foundation of the movement.
Sargent: I think what you’re getting at is that MAGA, to an unusually dramatic degree, is all about enemy politics, right? And so whenever Trump is not demonizing the enemy, which he does very well and very frequently and very viciously—whenever he’s not doing that, it’s a big letdown to MAGA, right?
Sargent: Yeah, absolutely. So this also breaks with JD Vance in an interesting way. In Vance’s now kind of infamous tweet blaming Trump’s war for the bloodbath, Vance also said he’s open to the idea of changing immigration enforcement.
Julia, I want to ask you this. I really wonder if this is going to become a real schism inside the GOP, because there’s still plenty of Republicans hanging around who would like to see immigration reform, even though they’ve been a lot quieter in the Trump years. And I wonder if a few of them start to step forward. In fact, we just saw one House member go quite forcefully in that direction. What do you think?
And you kind of saw it with George W. Bush, right? It really becomes about the president and not about the broader political movement. And so, well, this is the person whose fault this is.
Azari: I think so, yeah. And really to blame bad things that have happened on things that you kind of pin on Trump specifically. So, you know, the decision to go to war in Iran, decisions that he’s made about immigration enforcement—and kind of say, well, these were specific Trump things. They weren’t about the broader kind of MAGA or populist ideology, or whatever it is that they’re going to want to maybe call it later on.
Julia, it seems like there’s, like, a core contradiction here that’s worth drawing out. Like, on the one hand, what Miller is saying is that what went wrong is that the MAGA coalition fell apart. On the other hand, he’s also saying hardcore MAGA voters need to be energized.
Azari: Yeah, I think there’s sort of a version of this, again, that’s kind of typical in American politics, which is that you have to make this trade-off between energizing your core voters and building a broader coalition. But I think this tension really has animated the Trump project from the beginning. And it’s always been a pretty narrow project.
And so I think there was sort of, like, this glimmer of that. And I think nobody—not Stephen Miller, not people on podcasts, not Democrats—actually has, like, a clear picture of what that coalition was and kind of where it went.
Azari: Yeah. I think it’s really complicated. But yeah, I mean, I think that’s sort of what Miller’s laying out. And he’s basically saying what you would expect anybody to say after a really bad midterm. But it’s interesting, because the merging of chief of staff and top political adviser, that’s a very complicated merging of roles. I have a lot of thoughts about that.
I think maybe it’s an anti-inflation coalition, and kind of an anti-incumbent coalition to some degree, and a lot of young people who felt really, really, really disoriented by the upheavals of the post-Covid trauma and stuff. B
Azari: Yeah, I mean, everything about his background illustrates that. I mean, just to speak to just observable facts, right? He has no background in kind of building a national coalition. He’s not the architect of any kind of Trumpist 50-state strategy. He’s the immigration guy. He’s the homeland security guy.
Sargent: I guess the bottom line, though, is that, judging by this MAGA fury at this tiny little admission by Trump, you can really not see Vance get through a primary by moderating in any sense, I don’t think, can you?
And then when those pressures are really strong in a primary, then there are a lot of questions about whether that can be adaptable to a general election electorate. And that’s what Vance or Rubio or Ron DeSantis, or whoever is going to pursue that nomination in 2028, is probably going to face, some version of that dilemma.
Sort of saying, well, the president said that these undocumented workers are good workers and good people. Well, does Vance not agree? And that could essentially force both Trump and Vance into some very uncomfortable positions, it seems, no?
Sargent: That is a very smart observation, and many of your observations today were. Folks, if you want to follow Julia Azari, go to Good Politics/Bad Politics on Substack. Julia, thanks so much for coming on.
Azari: Thank you so much for having me.
Hence then, the article about transcript maga rages as trump lets slip damning truth about gop loss was published today ( ) and is available on The New Republic ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Transcript: MAGA Rages as Trump Lets Slip Damning Truth about GOP Loss )
Also on site :
- Julia Garner Says Madonna Biopic Status Changes ‘Every Hour,’ But She’d ‘Love for the Movie to Get Made’
- ‘Ebenezer’ First Reactions: Johnny Depp’s Hollywood Comeback is a ‘Wickedly Fun Holiday Treat’ That Adds ‘Refreshing New Layers’ to the Christmas Classic
- In 1950, Snoopy Made His Comic Strip Debut—Today, His 76-Year Legacy Lives On in Costco’s $40 Holiday Plush Set