The following is a lightly edited transcript of the February 25 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.
Sargent: During his State of the Union address, Donald Trump put on a big show of being focused on the middle of the country. He worked really hard to not seem too extreme, avoided some of the hot-button issues that he usually traffics in, and his appeals to the base seemed a bit less overt than usual. But then on Wednesday, he exploded in a wild racist tirade at two non-white members of Congress. And we think this tension captures the essence of this moment. In some deep sense, Trump and certain of his advisers simply cannot wean themselves off the race war and off the vile demonization of immigrants. And in fact, some Republicans are admitting that the speech didn’t move the needle enough to help in the midterms. Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg had a mixed reaction to the speech. He’s optimistic about what’s ahead, but he also thinks there are things to worry about. Simon, good to have you on.
Rosenberg: Always great to be with you, Greg.
Sargent: So Simon, in a nutshell, what was your overall reaction to what you heard on Tuesday night from Trump?
Rosenberg: I mean, strong theatrics, you know, it felt like it was a last hurrah in some ways — that he was just enjoying himself being on stage. But there was no significant course correction, no significant change in direction that’s going to alter, I think, the struggle that he has.
It may have felt good for him, and he may have reconnected with some of the voters that he was struggling with, but I don’t think it did what he needed to do to reset what is a period of struggle with him politically.
Sargent: I agree. I think he probably did reconnect with some voters. I want to quickly sum up Trump’s speech. He angrily attacked Democrats for raising issues of affordability. He insisted that he’s engineered a miraculous resuscitation of the American economy, calling it a turnaround for the ages. He claimed he’s completely conquered inflation. He claimed he secured $18 trillion in investments in the country. He called Democrats crazy and cast them aside with immigrant criminals against American citizens.
Simon, a lot of this is complete bullshit. There was no historic turnaround. Growth under Trump has been very low. Inflation and crime were falling when he took office. The trillions in investments are mostly phantom. Some inflation metrics, meanwhile, are going the wrong way. Still, though, I think he managed to seem like he’s concerned about the economy in certain respects. What did you think of what he said about the economy?
Rosenberg: I think you touched on it in your remarks, which is that it’s just so crazy that he’s so unconcerned with truth. He is desperate to stay within this world that he’s constructed that you once called Foxlandia — this sort of imaginary world where he’s young and virile and the economy’s booming and everybody in the world loves him. Because he had a choice, right? If things are not going well, you can course correct. He could have accepted [getting] rid of the tariffs. He could have produced a healthcare bill that really actually made people’s lives better.
The Trump team has made a decision that they’re not going to course correct, that they’re doubling down because they believe — and I think part of what’s driving this is that they believe — that they’re just going to be able to spend a lot of money and flood the zone with false stories. And that people are dumb and will be confused and that they’ll just overwhelm it with a billion dollars of paid advertising. And then everything’s going to be fine.
Because what’s your theory of the case when you are where Trump is right now? Either you have to believe that you can basically bullshit your way through the electorate, or you course correct. And they haven’t course corrected. There’s no evidence of course correcting. And so it means that they’re doubling down on a politics the country has wildly rejected. And there’s enormous risk to it politically for him.
Sargent: So Trump exploded on Truth Social over Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who pointed out that American citizens were killed by his paramilitary forces, which actually happened. I’m going to read from his tirade:
“When you watch low IQ Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib as they screamed uncontrollably last night at the very elegant State of the Union, such an important and beautiful event. They had the bulging bloodshot eyes of crazy people.”
Trump called them “lunatics” and “mentally deranged” and “sick,” then said, “We should send them back from where they came as fast as possible.” And there was a bit more of that. Then Trump concluded: “The good news is that America is now bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before. And it’s driving them absolutely crazy.”
Simon, that’s some pretty bifurcated stuff. On the one hand, he’s trying to talk about the economy and appear somewhat like a statesman. But then when he gets into his room and he’s by himself, all of a sudden he erupts into all this crazy talk. What do you make of that?
Rosenberg: I mean, it’s consistent with what we’re describing, right? Which is that he knows his powers are ebbing. He knows he’s become mildly unpopular. He knows that he’s struggling to maintain his coalition. He’s just suffered huge defeats in the Supreme Court, in Congress, from his own people. He’s been repudiated and rebuked by his own party now repeatedly. And so part of what they’re doing is just doing the thing that they believe is what makes him strong and powerful — the foundation of his brand, which in 2024 was about lowering prices and making people’s lives better, and then immigration.
The failure of his immigration policy, I think, has got to be creating enormous confusion internally in the White House because I don’t think they ever imagined that something like this could happen. I don’t think they even really believe it is happening. I mean, they still have a huge swarm of people in Minnesota and they haven’t really accepted that there’s been a complete repudiation, not only of the escalating power of ICE, but of the mass deportation agenda too.
Sargent: I think you probably agree that in some ways, in pure theatrical terms, Trump did make some good political moves in the speech. The patriotic gestures, even though I think they’re completely hollow, probably made a good impression on people. The theater with some of the guests was probably successful. And look, he did talk a lot about the economy, and though most of it was bullshit, he remained focused on it for a good stretch. And I’m sure even the smartest advisers around Trump are pretty happy about that.
So candidly, Simon, I know this is something you think about: Republicans are going to have a shit ton of money. This speech is clearly the beginning of an effort to rehabilitate Trump. So as a Democratic strategist looking at these midterms coming up, what do Democrats have to be wary of, both in what we saw in the speech and going forward?
Rosenberg: Listen, I think we have to recognize this is an atypical midterm. Every election is unique, but this one is going to be very different because, first of all, there has never been a presidential-level super PAC operating outside the House and Senate races. And so what Trump is going to have — this money he’s raising is largely through the corrupt deals that he’s cutting, or people are tithing into his super PAC in order to get a pardon or whatever else — he’s going to have a half a billion, a billion dollars.
And the thing is, what Democrats have to realize is that in early 2023, Trump was at minus 21 job approval in January of 2023. That’s two or three points lower than where he is now. And so he was in worse shape in January 2023. And after a two-year-long rehabilitation campaign where they tried to repair his broken brand, he was able to get his job approval back to minus seven.
So they increased by 14 points and made the election competitive. The people that orchestrated that effort, Tony Fabrizio and Chris LaCivita, are running his super PAC again. It’s the same people that we were up against in 2024 who beat us in a head-to-head election. And I think part of the reason that they’ve decided to grind it out as opposed to course correct is that they have this belief that they took us head on in 2024 and beat us. And they’re going to do it again in 2026. And I think that we don’t have an analogous institution to counter this. In 2024, we had super PACs and the presidential campaign, and we were spending on reasonably equal terms to them. And we still lost.
We’re not going to have this countervailing institution to combat the half a billion to a billion dollars of ads — AI slop and all the other Russian disinformation and all the stuff that’s going to be flooding the zone — because this was really the kickoff of the campaign last night. We have to be a little bit worried about them outmatching us financially and also in terms of desperation.
I mean, Mike Johnson said something in the last 24 hours that is the thing that we all have to recognize. He said, if the Democrats flip the House, Trump’s presidency is over. So what that means is that Donald Trump and his allies, including the Russian government, are going to do whatever it takes to stay in power.
Sargent: What I hear you saying is that Democrats cannot get too confident about the hole that Trump is in. You’re not just saying that it’s money, right? Although money is a big part of it. You’re also saying that on some level you have to be aware of the possibility that they actually can rehabilitate his image in time for the midterms. Is that what you’re saying?
Rosenberg: Yes, and I think that they’re going to do everything that they can — because they already did it, it already happened, right? I mean, I think that’s the critical thing: he was in worse shape in the 2024 cycle and they were able to rehabilitate him. And we were ineffective in 2024 at preventing his rehabilitation.
Sargent: Actual political rehabilitation for Trump is something that Democrats have to worry about?
Rosenberg: Yes, because it happened before. And I don’t think we’ve really been honest with ourselves to some degree about what happened in 2024 and the failure of our political apparatus to prevent his rehabilitation. I think this is something that’s in the after-action report that the DNC has produced.
I hope that some version of the after-action report gets released, because it would be informative and helpful for those of us who are working in the 2026 election to understand why it was that we failed to prevent him from being rehabilitated in 2024.
Sargent: I couldn’t agree more. I really wish the DNC would release that thing. So let me now point out that there seems to be a bit of a division among Republicans. A bunch of them are kind of crowing about this thing, saying it’s the start of this new rehabilitation process, which again, I think we need to be sensitive to the possibility of. But on the other hand, some Republicans are admitting that the speech didn’t move the needle for the midterms.
I’m going to read some examples. GOP strategist Matthew Bartlett told Politico that Trump projected patriotism, but he adds this: “In terms of a political speech, there was no policy prescription that will guide Republicans towards safer ground in the midterms.” Another Republican operative told Politico anonymously, “It’s all look behind as great as it all is. I wish we had more detailed steps to take directing Congress to do more for people who are hurting.” And Curt Mills of The American Conservative tells The Independent that Trump has much more to do to sell his economic agenda, adding, “I don’t think this was much of a game changer.”
So there you have it. You’ve got the Susie Wiles types of the world, the super PAC people, the hard-boiled operatives around Trump who aren’t ideologues, who really think that they can pull this off and rehabilitate him. But you’ve also got these other Republicans who are serious players as well, who just don’t think that speech did it.
Rosenberg: Right, because the key here is the tariffs. Donald Trump had an off-ramp on the tariffs and he didn’t take it, and he doubled down. This is what I was saying about the lack of course correction. And I still am a little bit shocked about what he’s done, because he just disregarded the clear sort of intent of what the Supreme Court was doing.
He manufactured this other fake ability to sort of put in this temporary set of tariffs. And what it means is — and he also, by the way, forced the Republicans in the House — because what happened, people don’t realize this, but a few weeks ago, the House took up the tariffs, the Canadian tariffs, and the vote. And almost every incumbent Republican in a battleground district voted to keep the tariffs, meaning that he’s forced his party to take votes to raise prices on people when it’s the most important issue in the election.
This also happened in the Senate. And I think that part of the frustration you’re probably hearing from many of those folks on the right is that they had an off-ramp. He had a clear kind of path here to get out of the unbelievable economic and political hole that he’s dug himself into, and he didn’t take it.
And what he’s doing now is recommitting the Republican Party to higher prices, to brazen illegality, to sort of dictatorial, mad-king behavior where he ignores Congress and the courts, which is very unpopular, and he’s recommitting to a slower economy. And so why would you do that? That’s part of the thing that I think there’s a lot of frustration about on the Republican side, which is: why are you so hung up on these tariffs? These are obviously a political and economic disaster. What are you doing?
Sargent: Yes, I think you’re absolutely right that one of the things that Republicans are really saying when they criticize the speech is that, damn it, you’re still stuck with these tariffs. Do you think Trump’s most consequential comments might have been about those tariffs? So let’s listen to him for a second from the speech on this.
Donald Trump (voiceover): I believe the tariffs paid for by foreign countries will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love.
Sargent: So that’s incredible stuff, because Trump is still deceiving people about who pays the damn things. They tax consumers. He treats the tariffs as if we don’t pay them, but it’s a regressive tax that working people pay. And he even says that this will do away with the income tax. I guess he means this will do away with taxes on rich people, which — let’s recall — he’s already cut, and he’s using the tariffs to pay for that. Your thoughts on that part.
Rosenberg: Listen, I’m going to sort of paraphrase a commentator that I admire and respect, Greg Sargent, who wrote the other day about Trump doubling down on how the core pillars of his ethno-nationalism were crumbling — which are the tariffs, his mass deportations, and the terror regime towards immigrants. And the reason this is so important is that if you pick apart Trumpism or try to distill it down, it’s really two things. It’s more money for him — and the tariffs are a way of him having more money because it’s tax cuts, money to the hoop for him.
He’s pushing the tax burden of the United States towards middle-class people and regular working people. And then he’s doubling down on ICE and the terror regime. And they’re not walking away from any of that. And they’re not even negotiating with the Democrats. There’s no negotiation going on in these DHS negotiations. He cannot walk away from those two things.
Sargent: So let’s listen to what CNN’s Harry Enten said about CNN’s snap poll of the speech.
Enten (voiceover): But if you look at our post-poll right after the State of the Union, I simply don’t see it for him. Why do I say that? View of Trump’s speech to Congress, “very positive,” among speech viewers — who are more Republican than the electorate overall. This was actually the least well-received speech. We’re talking about 38 percent of speech viewers who viewed the speech “very positive.” And that is lower than in 2025, when it was 44 percent; lower than in 2019, when it was 59 percent; lower than in 2018, when it was 48 percent; and lower than it was in 2017, when it was 57 percent. The bottom line is this: State of the Union addresses simply do not, traditionally speaking, move the American electorate. And this Trump speech, especially so, is not likely to move things, because simply put, it was the least well-received one among speech viewers of any of the speeches that Donald Trump has given to a joint session of Congress.
Sargent: So Simon, that was quite a shock to me, because I think in some ways Trump was more sedate in this speech than he was in past ones. And yet this one seems to poll worse than any of his other performances. I guess what that tells us is that he’s very deeply damaged and this has been a very bad year for him.
Rosenberg: Yeah, look, he is deeply damaged outside of his core MAGA base. And this was a confirmation of that. In part, Navigator did work called dial groups, which is, as people watch the speech, they push the dial up if they’re happy and down if they’re unhappy. Parts of the speech that did the worst were when he talked about how good the economy was.
Sargent: Well, just to close out, I want to return to something you said earlier and return to that epic rant that Trump unleashed about the two congresswomen, because I think that this really captures the essence of it. As you pointed out, at bottom, Trump is really sticking with the two pillars of Trumpism. The tariffs, which are supposed to rejuvenate manufacturing and cause a manufacturing renaissance, but are failing miserably. And the mass deportations, which are supposed to ethnically purify the country, but are also creating an epic disaster for them. And no matter how they try to gussy this all up, the bottom line is — as I think you got at — that Trump is not moving away from those two big things.
He’s not moving away from the right-wing nationalists, the Trumpism, that whole set of ideologies. And that’s the problem that they’ve got right now.
Rosenberg: They had a decision to make going into this speech: whether they course corrected and actually did things that would be good for the American people, because the things they’re doing are harming us. Or whether they were going to choose the route of just bullshitting their way through, cheating in the elections, asking the Russians to come in and do whatever they’re going to do. And they chose the second path. And that’s the decision they’ve made for now.
I don’t think, as you heard, the Republican candidates and those that want to win elections in 2026 who are down-ballot are going to be happy with that decision. I think they would have preferred the course correction and to actually have done things that they can run on that are going to help make people’s lives better. And Trump didn’t give them that last night. So I think we’re in this place where we have to anticipate that his desperation grows, his willingness to do extraordinary and dangerous things — like invading Iran with no real plan — because he knows that unless something fundamentally changes, we’re going to win the election, he’s going to get subpoenaed up the wazoo, and as Mike Johnson said, fundamentally his presidency is over. And they’re just going to do whatever they possibly can to prevent that from happening.
Sargent: Well, Simon Rosenberg, I tend to agree that Democrats look like they’re in a strong position, but as you also pointed out, Trump has been in worse shape before and he’s surrounded by people who have won elections before. Always great to talk to you, man. I guess this is going to get really interesting this year.
Rosenberg: Yeah, it’s good. Listen, we should — I want to just conclude by saying people should feel good about what’s happened. We’ve been successful politically and electorally, but we still have a lot of work ahead of us and this thing is not cooked and we’ve got to work as hard as we can.
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