The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 28 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.
Donald Trump just uttered an extraordinary quote. He said this: “I don’t care about the midterms.” But it actually got more revealing from there on out. In discussing what just happened in Texas, where the MAGA extremist will now be the GOP nominee in the Senate race, Trump accidentally revealed that he’s still under the delusion that he and MAGA are popular. Meanwhile, three different indicators in the polling contain terrible news for Trump and the GOP. And new reports say that Republicans are growing more alarmed about the midterms. Some of them are plainly afraid to say so. So how much longer can they stand by while Trump drags them down?
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.
Felipe De La Hoz: Always good to be here, Greg.
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.
Donald Trump (voiceover): They thought they were going to outwait me, you know, ‘we’ll outwait him, he’s got the midterms.’ I don’t care about the midterms. Look what happened last night. That was the prelude to the midterms. People understand it. They know that it’s very simple—Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. I’m doing that for the world. I’m not doing it just for us.
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?
De La Hoz: Yeah, as is often the case with Trump, it really could be interpreted in a variety of different ways. And I doubt that they’re going to really clarify. On the one hand, it could mean that he literally doesn’t care, which I think is possible.
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.
We saw something similar play out in 2018 and 2022 with his MAGA candidates winning primaries and then getting slaughtered in the general.
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.
But what’s funny, Felipe, about that is that this has improved Democratic chances in the Senate race, though it’s certainly not going to be easy by any means. That aside, Trump is saying that it’s good that Republicans nominated the MAGA whack job. He really is under the illusion that he and MAGA are popular. He revealed that accidentally, I think. Your thoughts on that?
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.
However, the idea that it’s also some kind of pipe dream or fantasy, and that it can’t happen—Texas is Texas, blah, blah, blah—I think is clearly wrong and has been disproven, as you wrote, by the success—not the victory, but the success—of the O’Rourke campaign a few years ago.
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.
And James Talarico, I think, as you wrote, is someone who has several layers of credibility. He has the angle of his faith, which is something that we haven’t necessarily seen a Democrat successfully exploit in a race like this. And I think there’s something interesting about him, which is that so far what we’ve seen is that he is very willing and able to attempt to welcome moderates and independents, while at the same time he’s not doing the kind of bipartisan kumbaya thing of, “my opponent is a good man, this is a contest of ideas,” yada yada.
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.
Also, to your point, it’s going to be really hard. We have a piece on this up at NewRepublic.com. We’re under no illusions here. This is a very hard state for Democrats. Beto O’Rourke came nearly three points away from winning and he really outperformed in some major ways. It’s going to be a big lift for Talarico to get there.
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.
De La Hoz: I think in my lifetime—presuming that we maintain the same sort of electoral political system—I think that it’s entirely conceivable, and I would say even likely, that at some stage a Democrat will win a statewide race in Texas, just given the demographics, given what we’ve seen. I don’t know if it’ll be Talarico, but it could be. I don’t think that this is a crazy pie-in-the-sky idea.
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.
Just as an aside on this, the Texas Senate race is going to be really interesting on immigration. Paxton is a MAGA radical, a true extremist whack job. And the Democratic nominee, Talarico, has a striking position on the issue. He calls for increased border security to distance himself from Joe Biden, but he also speaks about the need to be welcoming to immigrants, how immigrants are a positive good for our country and how they deserve due process and fair treatment. And critically, Talarico casts this as a matter of his Christian faith.
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?
De La Hoz: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when it comes to Texas, I’m unfortunately not sure that being a complete immigration whack job is a disqualifier, in part because obviously Greg Abbott was sort of the original whack job. And I think he’s kind of a dark horse for a template for how to use immigration as a political cudgel in a really messed-up way, with what he did with the busing and whatever.
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.
I don’t think that there is an inherent turn towards trusting Democrats necessarily, which is why I have argued for not just this approach of responding to what Republicans are doing—though obviously Democrats need to and should respond to the truly atrocious things that are happening in all of our names—but setting out an actual cohesive, forceful, unified vision that can be packaged and repeated by candidates all around the country, with their regional variations, but that actually exists on a separate axis than the defensive posture that Democrats have adopted for the most part—which is to say, not just we’re going to do enforcement better, which has really been the core message, I think, of especially national Democrats.
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.
And by the way, Trump has thrown away his 2024 gains with Latino voters as a result. So I do think this is the time to step up and provide something affirmative, moral, coherent, clear, and say: here’s what we’re for. We tried it their way. Mass deportations failed this country and we’re going to do something better. That’s what I’d like to see.
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.
There are so many stories all over the country published everywhere where people on the ground in various cities and suburbs and exurbs and even in rural areas are saying, look, I had this conception of the enforcing the borders agenda or whatever that was going to entail—rounding up these criminals, yada yada.
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.
And so I think that viscerality, that feeling, is something that can be harnessed, if Democrats want to use it as a hook to then also present their alternative agenda. It has to be both things. We’re going to hold these people accountable, we’re going to ensure that this doesn’t happen again is a powerful message. And, Here’s what our vision is—which, as you mentioned, is something that Talarico is attempting to do now. Here’s how we think these things should go, which is just not something that has been part of the conversation.
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.
Meanwhile, in the new YouGov tracking poll, Trump has sunk to an approval rating of 34 percent with 59 percent disapproving. That’s around 25 points underwater. And critically, that may not be an outlier, because in the polling averages collected by 50 Plus One, a website, Trump’s approval is at 36 percent. He continues to slide. Felipe, all the polls are telling the same story right now, no?
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.
And it’s like almost every day I hear Trump or some of his cadre say something that is just a dream for a Democratic strategist. The idea that they have unified behind the notion of a large billion-dollar ballroom as some sort of necessary policy, as some sort of objective—this grand objective is laughable, right? Especially when people are struggling economically.
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.
Sargent: Even Trump’s Republican allies are admitting this. The New York Times had a pretty remarkable piece just a couple of days ago reporting that Republicans are growing frustrated by Trump’s megalomania, basically. They put it a little more politely than that, but that’s what they meant.
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.
A couple of quotes from Republican strategists that I want to read. One is from Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster. He says, “If Trump’s highest goal were to maintain control of Congress, he would not be doing what he is doing.” And then on top of that, we’ve got David Urban, a Republican strategist and ally of Trump, telling the Independent, “It’s going to be a tough fall unless things dramatically change.”
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?
De La Hoz: Yeah. I mean, they have seen the primary results, as we all have, where Bill Cassidy got knocked off even though he voted, infamously now, to confirm RFK Jr as a sort of bone to Trump and all this stuff—and it wasn’t enough to save him. And so they’re all terrified that they’ll either lose the primary or the general, right? That’s the position that a lot of these elected officials find themselves in.
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.
And so what Democrats would also do well to remind people is that this isn’t just about acting as a check on Trump necessarily, but that if Democrats were to take control of the House and the Senate, then a lot of things could be put into motion that would severely—or could severely—constrain and actually very functionally limit what Trump is able to do. Congress can take away some of these executive tools that have been misused. Congress can haul officials in under oath and force them to testify about certain things.
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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