"Members of Trump's own party view him as more of a political liability than an asset"

0:00Hey everyone, it's Rachel Maddo here to tell you about the MSNow membership. You can connect directly with your favorite hosts and other MSNow fans to constream live TV and much more. Visit MS.Now slash membership to join. They wanted it out there and we built the best telepads, people in, nobody's ever seen one of my pets, turned them into a new manager and right behind you we see moral, military complexes. We're really talking to them. And usually I have to say I'm very, very sob-eager and we would like to sit with a very simple settlement to what the wedding hours are and speak up quite a place where you have just conferences and the women were made by the issues like they say issues are destroyed and the men's use of the story also. Does the new Air Force once still need to be maxed out? Is it to be maxed out? Yeah, it's going to go away and to make magnificent playing interior wise the best.

1:01Will you play first? Engine is the best. You can't afford chicken breast but the ladies and the nello, wannicks are fine. What? Hi again everybody. It's 5 o'clock in New York with less than two months to go ahead of the November midterm elections of 2026 which are already looking quite grim politically speaking for the Republican party. Donald Trump and his historically low approval ratings are really focused in on everything other than the things that matter to voters. At this point many members of Trump's own political party knew him as a political liability not an asset. This failure to deliver on almost all of his campaign promises. New York Times reports it like this quote as GOP candidates work to show that they are focused on the concerns of everyday Americans. The president is spending much of his time in Washington focused on the construction of a White House ballroom, a 250 foot arch and a golf course on a public park alongside the Potomac River.

2:01Beyond the unpopularity of the vanity projects Trump is also showing his want to be authoritarian tendencies with his unhinged social media posts that really kicked in to overdrive this weekend. A stream of posts included the White House sharing a video depicting Donald Trump as the comic book hero the Green Lantern. Trump resharing a picture of a map renaming the state of New Mexico to New America. In this post we mentioned last hour that depicts Trump menacing Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney with a hockey stick. As our friend and next guest Sarah Longwell puts it, here's what those posts show quote, it's not that hard to see that Trump has been reduced to relying on AI to make him look tough and capable. Because in reality he knows he looks like he's weak in failing. Trump's failure to focus on what actually matters to voters could help explain new numbers from Gallup that show that the number of Americans who associate themselves as the Democratic Party is growing on the up.

3:03New York Times reports this on those growing numbers quote, the shift which signals the party's largest advantage since 2008 is the latest sign of backlash against Republicans and the president ahead of the midterm elections. The latest data shows Democrats with a 10 percentage point advantage over Republicans. When voters are asked which party they identify with and when independent voters are asked which party they lean toward, the current advantage held by Democrats is wider than recent Republican leads and similar to the one the party held in 2020 and Joe Biden won the presidency and the party gained a slim advantage in the House and Senate. That is where we begin the hour with publisher for the Bullwark host of the focus group podcast Sarah Longwell. She's the author of a brand new book called How to Eat an Elephant One Boater at a Time. We'll talk about it in a second. So I told you when I saw you, I read this, I got an early copy and I read this and I had you on the podcast. But this morning my Kindle loaded it because today is pub day. Today is pub day. Today is pub day and everybody gets to read it.

4:04So thank you so much for being here to celebrate pub day. Thanks for having me. Thanks for blurring it. Oh, I love it. I mean, I love that I got to read it and I love that I get to talk about it again. I mean, so I feel like when we talked Trump was in a stronger position than he is today. Just tell me how you see him in spending all your time with actual voters, not staring at numbers. Yeah, I mean, I think what's interesting about voters today is how betrayed Trump voters feel. You and I, you know, we talk every week or every other week and, you know, where it's always the sort of the same question, where are voters? Yeah. And I was sitting with you probably a year or so ago and I was saying, you know, the Biosphere Morse is kind of starting to set in, but people also say Rome wasn't built on a day. Now we're at the point where people say he told us he was going to lower prices. He told us no stupid wars. He told us he was going to release the Epstein file. The triple betrayal. Yeah. So come up quite a bit. And, and I can't tell you how much the war in Iran really did change things with voters because it is one of those both tariffs and the war in Iran.

5:06They're Trump's to own, you know, his move has been to blame Biden. Hey, this is Biden's economy, whatever. You can't, those two things voters know not only did he not talk to them about it. He also didn't talk to Congress about it. They are his alone and voters hold him responsible for them. What about the weird behavior? I've often found it amazing. Like if someone in sports were posting at the hours at Trump Post and the content he's posting, there would be a million conversations about whether they were mentally well, whether they were substance, you know, abusing substances like like ESPN and sports media, but they athletic. They would have to deal with it. And some would be slower than others, but it would be in the water. If it was an entertainer, especially if it was a woman, they wouldn't be able to stop talking about how unstable and unhinge said celebrity was. What is the, is it, people just numbed it? What, does, does, and does it ever come up how weird he is? Yeah. Okay. So the answer to that is a little bit of yes to all of them. So yes, people are a little bit numb to it.

6:07So Donald Trump has been with us for a very long time and he's been an inter-474 years. Right. It's been our whole lives, Nicole. You're never getting enough. And so people are, I mean, from the page six days to the apprentice days, they're used to him behaving like a crazy person. And so I think that sometimes when you have a lunatic who's been then degrading into real sort of madness or real decomposition, it's not as easy to tell because, you know, when he ran for election last time, he was talking about that golfer's, um, nether regions, he like, hold on the stage. He's the archal power. Right. He's swayed one time when nobody was talking for a very long time or something happened to somebody. He's just always been like this. So, so I think that that's part of it. Um, I also think that voters are not that in tune with the incessant, you know, tweeting on truth social. That's not always the stuff voters pick up on what they do pick up on. And you were talking about this, but I want to, I want to draw it more clearly. The contrast between the arch and the ballroom and Trump's weird obsessions with the fact

7:13that people are still very poor, still can't afford groceries, still can't afford gas. It is the contrast of why are you focused on this because they don't care at the ballroom because of the ballroom. They care about the ballroom because they're like, why do you keep talking about that? Gas prices are this high. We're at a war and a round that we can't get out of. And that's what voters are really reacting to and why he's historically weak and why I'm desperate for somebody to start really going on offense against him because I think sometimes Democrats or even people in the broader pro-democracy coalition, even Republicans, they're all like, I don't know what Trump just let himself in the late, let him do it whatever. Now is the time to really go on offense against Donald Trump and lay out for the American people all the ways that he's feeling. Not just, yes, they can feel it. They could feel the negative personal consequences, but he should be hammered with this day in and day out. I mean, I feel like John Asop does that. Yes, he does. He's the first person I feel like in nine years that narratively ties the corruption and the grift, which I feel like I banged my head against the table about to why you can't

8:17afford chicken and gas. He does do it and I was just saying to somebody else, I feel like John Asop, I certainly sent them this book, but I feel like he's already liquefied it and imbibed it because this is somebody who understands, he makes it look easy. He's just saying the truth. Quoting Donald Trump. He's just quoting Donald Trump. He's just saying things like, travels with Natalie, a very benign term. There was no implication there, but Maga Melted down over it because he understands what offense looks like. He understands how to get under their skin, but more importantly, to raise the public's awareness about all of the corrupt and strange things that Donald Trump is doing. It seems like it's always just been there as a gimmie that Democrats could pick up and really use as a control, but so few have done it. And he really is. And I feel like a lot of, and some of it is because he's running for office right now. So he has this platform, but what I'm kind of begging Democrats to understand is you can all do this too. John Asop, yes, he's been lifting weights. He looks good in his shirts, but literally every Democrat could do this if they wanted

9:18to. I mean, that's what I love about the book. It's like, oh, in your five inches. I feel like the most beneficial thing to Trump was the shock and awe of how crazy and how aggressive and how unprecedented everything in the first year was. Yeah, Trump practices a kind of narrative dominance, right? He's able to, and in the beginning, he really understood how to control everybody. His tweet would set the news for the day. But as he sort of fades a little bit, he's not as good at this stuff anymore. He's, you know, he was honestly, Twitter was a much better format for him when he was constrained, character was, because now he writes this incredibly long insane on hinge things that nobody can follow. They're like this, like, you know, in the movies when they break into the room where the serial killer was hiding, and they're like the stuff that's on the pinboard with all the red string tied to the like the long, they're like, they got the clips from the magazine they're like, all caps and then weird punctuation and back to right, like they look crazy. He sounds, he obviously you read him and you say, okay, this person's not well.

10:19And I think that Democrats should draw more people's attention to it. There's been a lot of sort of waiting for Republicans to turn and say, this guy's office rocker and we're going to abandon him. Democrats need nobody's coming to save you. That is the Republicans are not going to do it. Now is the time for every Democrat to see him as a, like a bleeding target, not literally, but somebody who is failing in the polls, whose party is very unhappy that he's going to be holding a sort of midterm Trump of Paloza to draw attention to himself. Republicans don't want to run tethered to him. When somebody is at this point of weakness, you don't sort of just stand back. Now is when you push. You also give him credit for what he's done really well. His viewers or his supporters, I say viewers because I think he's treated a lot of like a TV show, but his supporters saw him and still see him as a fighter. Yeah, I mean, one of the things interesting, look, I think it's silly for him to do this

11:20midterm convention that he is doing, but it's also Trump is constantly innovating. He's constantly coming up with new ideas, but he's constantly controlling things. And that puts Democrats on defense. They're constantly responding. And at some point, everybody's tired of just saying, hey, isn't that crazy? At some point, you've got to start trying to take the narrative back yourself and drive it yourself and say, here's our idea. You react to this. I'm going to push out a series of ideas. Like Republicans putting out Project 2025, it's funny how Donald Trump ran from it and then obviously later adopted it. But what it was was it was the chum in the water that everybody ran to and Democrats can do this too. You can be policy entrepreneurs that are constantly throwing out new ideas that force Republicans to react to you and fight on your terms. There's a lot of ways. Look, I don't think and Democrats don't want to take Trump as a person, any of the lessons about how to be a terrible person. But some of the communications lessons they should learn. You write about that that he created an intimacy with his voters and with the media because

12:25he was constant and that whoever comes next has to have that intimacy. Just talk about that. Well, we live in a new communications environment and Trump sort of got there first on the idea that he didn't need anybody to be an intermediary between him and the voters. And I think part of this was because he had a background in developing parasocial relationships with people as Donald Trump from the apprentice or as Donald Trump who was always on Oprah or Larry King live. And so he built this deep relationship with voters that they feel like they're in on the joke. They feel like they're in it with him and whoever comes next. And I'll use Kamala Harris as an example, not to pick on her because I think she did the best she could with what she was given. But when I talked to voters about why they never got there on her, they would say, you know, I didn't know who she was. I didn't know really what she was about. People know where Donald Trump stands for better or for worse. And so I don't think the Democratic politicians need to do exactly what Donald Trump does in terms of their communication style. They do have to know what they believe and they have to be able to say it out loud and

13:27clearly and not be afraid of their own shadow or who they're going to make mad because voters will give you a ton of credit just for saying what you think out loud and defending it and defending it. Yeah, like you may not always agree with me, but you know where I stand is still sort of a good way to say, look, I know we're not on the same page, but I'm going to listen to you. I mean, some of it is new and some of it is the oldest political skills in history. Do you look at the midterms just through the lens of what you know voters are wanting or do you share all the concerns about what he's going to do to overturn the results? Well, I always share the concerns. I mean, you can't have watched Donald Trump at this point, watch what he did in 2020 and not think he is, if nothing else sort of laying the predicate to say things are rigged if they lose. Can people believe that? I don't think so. So this is part of the thing about Trump, right? Is that over time it does dilute. It's effectiveness for crime. You can do the same thing over and over again. The fact that all of us expect it and all of us are prepared for it, I do think diminishes

14:29the potency of his ability to really convince people that something was stolen. He'll say it. Some people will parent it. But I think that the bigger thing that I worry about is that you get a place like Texas where Talleriko, let's say he pulls it out very narrowly. And then you've got a compliant Texas governor who will do some investigating or they might try to not see them. I wouldn't put anything past them. But what I will say going into the midterms is that the thing I see in focus groups is a massive enthusiasm gap. Democrats right now will crawl over broken glass to vote against this guy. And Republicans, because of the war, because of the affordability crisis, they're not like dying to defend his record or dying to get to the polls to do a solid for Donald Trump. That's just not the moods they're in. What is your sense of who the most credible messengers are with people who are persuadable? The we used to talk about generals, how important it was for them to speak out. What is your sense of who carries the most credibility? I think that right now, when voters are watching people break from Trump, sort of big names,

15:36but not even big names. You've seen all of these different characters who say they voted for Trump. And now they're having some terrible consequence. It's my little monopolist. It's the rich guy whose wife was an immigrant. Those stories of the betrayal of the people who voted for him and are now, you know, the leper exceeding their faces situation, I think that that's the thing actually that is they're just saying like, I too feel betrayed. Yeah, it's not working for me either. It's always being, it being sort of relatable to their own experience that works. Right. Not and I told you so, but like I too thought this was a good idea and man was I wrong. Yes. Yeah. I know. I think it's so important to cover. I sometimes have a mixed feeling. I'm like, well, you know, I mean, I feel like the conversation is about who to platform or over. Anyone that understands how foolish this is and how dangerous it is should feel out to have their boy served. They are. I think some of the most potent messengers for people right now. That's really good to hear. Are you not going anywhere? When we come back, there's much more from Sarah's really important in book, how to eat

16:39an elephant, one voter at a time. And what the pro-democracy movement can do right now to counter the threat of Donald Trump's autocratic practices and the way he's leading his party in that direction also ahead. How Trump's own party just isn't that into him anymore. So I'm displayed this week in a way we've never seen before. Our friend's Tim Miller and Mark McKinnell joined the conversation later in the hour. Deadly and White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere. Hey, everybody. It's Rachel Maddo here. I wanted to tell you that more than a dozen of us from MSNOW are going to be in Texas. On Saturday, September 26th, I'm going to be there. Lauren Sodonna will be there. So we'll Jen Socky. A whole bunch of us are all going to be there in Texas. Tickets started just over 30 bucks each. And if you buy a ticket, you will get access to our new MSNOW membership free for a year. Tickets for Texas are on sale now. You can learn more at ms.nail slash together.

17:41Hope to see you in Texas. So when it comes to how the pro-democracy forces and there are more of us than anybody else, can beat back Donald Trump and the authoritarian threat that he represents. And his sickophantic party that seems to never say no. There is almost no one who can answer all of those questions than our friends Sarah Longwell. Since Trump's first presidency, she has sought to understand voters by conducting hundreds of focus groups with thousands of American voters, lots of them Trump voters. Shout out with this incredible new book we've been talking about how to eat an elephant, one voter at a time, detailing what she has learned from them, from the voters. She writes this about how to defeat the MAGA movement. Quote, here's what I know from sitting with voters. They recognize a fighter when they see one. They can tell the difference between someone who's going through the motions and someone who's genuinely committed to changing things. The Democratic candidates who succeed in the coming years will be the ones who articulate clearly why Trump and his movement have failed the voters.

18:42And they'll have help on this because even some Republicans are starting to make the case. They'll center economic concerns. They'll center opportunity. They'll center the idea of rebuilding the American dream. And they'll do it with urgency, with energy, with fight, not because they want to be like Trump, but because they understand that these times demand wartime generals, not peacetime diplomats. We're back with Sarah. This is such important council. And it doesn't come, right? Like I always feel like about four people care what an ex-Republican Bush Dapper says. So it's not advice, but it's insight into what voters respond to. And I wonder if you can just talk a little bit more about how the response to fear has to be strength. And it has to be strength of convictions. It has to be strength of standing up against bullies. Like I think the Republicans have done generational harm to their brand. And it's like Bruce Willis in the six sense. They're dead. They just don't know it. They're going to pay a price not just for being behind the economic destruction of the

19:43working-class coalition inside the Republican Party, but for being so feckless in the face of Trump's arch-building and gold, lume, everything. Yeah, I'll look out. I'll get to Republicans. But let me just start with Democrats a little bit because you talk about democracy. And this is really important. Democrats told voters throughout the Trump era that democracy was at stake. And it really was. It really is. But they don't always act like it. Like if democracies at stake, I'm sorry, you don't nominate an 82-year-old who has, at the time, who is very unpopular, like I think that the voters, and I hear this from Democratic voters all the time, they just say, why do we keep bringing a pillow to a gunfight? Like why? And I'll do things where I'll talk to really progressive voters and really moderate voters. And if you didn't know who they were, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference because they all ask for the same thing, which is, why can't you effectively push back against this and also push for things that are going to make my life better?

20:43Like that's what they're demanding right now. They are demanding people who will fight on their behalf and fight these people who are destroying the country. Now, when it comes to Republicans, I agree with you that this is going to be my hope. And this is why I talk about the Bush line so much. This has to be a shameful thing where people won't admit that they'd ever voted or been for Trump. And I think the way that you make that happen, whether it's the midterms, whether it's 2028, is that you make sure that Trump leaves office historically unpopular, below 30% in the 20s, so that everybody says that was a huge mistake. We should never have done this because that is how you ensure that the people who rode with Trump, who went along with him, that they carry him like an albatross around their neck, right? He's this historically unpopular president who leaves having lost a worth of choice and with a terrible economy.

21:43I think that that is something that allows the Republican Party to look, I don't think it's going back. And I make this clear in the book. I don't think the Republican Party is going back to the days of Mitt Romney. It never is. And people should be clear about that. I will never be a Republican again because it will never be that thing that it was. That doesn't mean it has to be actively dangerous the way it is today. It can be just a party that has a set of beliefs and policy things that I might not disagree with or you might disagree with, but it isn't actively saying, hey, the DOJ is now part of the executive that doesn't weaponize the FBI against political enemies. The thing that I try to make people understand when they say you mentioned people don't want advice from a former Republican. And I just want to remind people not you, me, like a bush. I did this too. And the thing is we're Americans, right? Who do this because we care about the country, conceivably because we want to do things that make people's lives better. We always like the idea different people at different ideas about what policies we're going to improve people's lives.

22:46Here's what I know. Nothing Donald Trump has done has made this country better over this decade. It has been a failure and we should be pointing out that it's a failure and we should be saying, like, now is the time to go fight. Now is the time to fight to take our country back. And I don't care if you're an independent or a Democrat or a lapsed Republican and never Trump or like build a coalition out of that. That says this isn't who we want to be. I think that's exactly right. That's how I feel exactly that I'll never be a Republican again, but I do think there'll be Republicans that don't threaten democracy again. I wonder what you make of the inability for people like Marco Rubio. And maybe he's about example because he's so far in to have any sort of awareness that like this will end. I mean, this will come around and he's associated with the least popular things that Trump has done in a decade. Yeah, look, I mean, they've made a Faustian bargain for themselves. They think that they made a short-term calculation. Marco Rubio, I'm sure still thinks that this is his route to the presidency. He'll be a completely different person

23:49than the person who ran. In 2016, it's funny listening to young Republicans talk about Marco Rubio because they don't know that there was a different guy who believed an entirely different sentence. Who wanted to do a comprehensive immigration form with Obama. That's right. And wasn't deporting people just because they had temporary protected status or they had a political position he disagreed with. Like 2016, Marco Rubio would have been against that. It's hard for people to remember this. Yeah, young people today have no idea what it was like in the before times. Marco Rubio might not have been perfect. Republicans might not have been perfect, but they were not trying to deport somebody for just having the wrong idea. What is your sense of what it will take to defeat the ism part of Trumpism? Yeah, that's a good question. You know, I do think some of it is Democrats focusing less on some of those issues. I think that the Republicans, one of the, like, so right now, it's got to fail warned, he's got about economy. So what do they spend their time talking about? Transport's. And what I would contend for

24:51Democrats is to say, I'm not going to get sucked into this. Like you guys, and you can say whatever your position is on that. Say it clearly, quickly, and then say, why are you obsessed with this? This affects very few people. You don't want to affect everybody, the price of gas, the price of milk, the price of bread, whether or not they get upward mobility, whether or not their job is going to be there or as AI coming to take it. That's what people are focused on. And if Democrats could sort of stop taking the bait on the culture of things because this is what voters talk about all the time that I think is interesting. They focus on emphasis. They say, I want Democrats to, it's not that they're mad about their positions. Exactly. It's like, why do you talk about it so much? I want you talking about these things that matter to way more people. And I think that's good advice. Democrats should talk about economic policy 70% of the time. It doesn't have to be just economics. It can be, or not just the economy, but it's health care, it's education. It's all of the things that go into our material well-being. Because what do voters care about? They want to be safe and they want improvements in their material well-being. People might not like it.

25:53Voters are selfish. That is a true story. And I think Democrats need to talk to them more on that terrain. And that will help them not get dragged into the nonsense. The cultural nonsense that Republicans is the only thing they want to talk about. They've got left. They've got nothing else left. That's so true. All right. You're sticking around when we come back. Well, look at what's happening around all of this this week in Texas, a state that may actually be slipping away from Republicans. It's possible. After you get another massive Trump's on making, our friends Tim Miller, Mark McKinnon, join the conversation next. Don't go anywhere. For me, being a part of this place has always been about the people, not about the politics. From a field to the studio, Jacob is finding the heart of the story, connect with Jacob Soberov. We can set 10 a.m. Eastern on MS now. If you don't have any plans, tomorrow night kicks off a two-night Republican midterm convention.

26:54I'm just kidding. But it is going to be interesting to watch. It's an event dubbed the Trump of Paloza and is absurd as it may be for a political party about to throw itself a midterm convention, while their leader is at 30%. So, Cation does make a little bit of sense. Normal political conventions are held in states where a political party is trying to host a national event, but also leave a bit of a local footprint and win. This one is in Texas. And thanks to Donald Trump's endorsement of scandal plague, Ken Paxton, who even Trump says is ugly and badly dressed, that state's Senate race has become a toss-up, which could really at the end of the day determine who controls the Senate. But if you thought that convention taking place in the state of Texas was intended to be an opportunity to boost Ken Paxton or any other candidate on the ballot, you would be wrong again. This is through the party announced as its keynote speakers. Donald J. Trump, vice president J.D. Vance, a handful of Trump administration officials. His former press secretary, his son,

27:59Donald Trump Jr., none of whom are on the ballot in any state eight weeks from today. Joining our conversation, the creator of the circus, and former advisor to both President George W. Bush and Senator John McCain, our friend Mark McKinnon's here, also joining us, political analyst, host of the Bullwork Daily Podcast, Sarah's colleague, our friend Tim Miller's here. Tim, what do you... I mean, there's the T.H. No one's coming to their party of it, and then there's the... Why are they doing this in Texas, where they're sort of hanging a lantern around their new political vulnerabilities there? But what are you watching for in this midterm commitment? I do like the name, like the Trump of Paloza. I think that's right. I should lean into that. Look, I think it's going to be boring. It's not T.H. though, actually. I think we can do T.H. and laugh about it, but I think it's kind of relevant that it just doesn't seem like there's going to be a lot of excitement about this. And who knows? Maybe they'll prove us wrong the next two days. But I think it's emblematic of this change in the vibeshift from last year.

29:02I think you could kind of imagine a different version of this in the spring of last year, that had Elon doing shenanigans and Manosphere podcasters and celebra, who knows? I don't know, C-E-O's of the big banks and tech companies that are trying to suck up the Trump, right? Where there are a lot of people trying to get on the Trump train in the spring of last year. And maybe there would have been some excitement around having something like this. Right now, I mean, there is just kind of like a fog around Trump. But I can't imagine anybody that excited to go see the secretary of housing and urban development speech or Senator John Barossa, Speedarton, juniors for that matter. Yeah, I don't... The only thing I could think of that could benefit them about Texas is this being used at all to try to motivate Republicans in Texas to turn out, because I do think that's going to be a problem for them with Ken Paxton. I know it was a Republican legislator that impeached him. So potentially some accidental side benefit from Ken Paxton there, but otherwise,

30:07you can imagine one of these things that would work, but this doesn't seem to be it. Yeah, I mean, I think Mark McKinnon, I was thinking about this in the context of what tried to pull off around the Fourth of July. And we were coming on the air every day with even a Trump adjacent talent pulling out of being associated with Trump. And it's sort of like the joke, how toxic is he? He's so toxic that the one living member of Millie Vanille was a no-show. Like that's with the Fourth of July celebrations. And he was about four to five points more popular. Correct me if I've got that wrong. In July, then he is now. I think it's sort of going to expose all that political unpopularity. Yeah, it is. In the July event reminded me of I had the awful job in the Republican conventions under Bush of getting the entertainment celebrities. And after a thousand phone calls, I got Lee Greenwood, the Oak Ridge Boys and Wayne Newton. And Brooks and Dunn came once. I remember that. I was part of it. I was with the brother. You know, I went from thinking, whenever this was

31:12announced, there was actually strategically and conceptually a pretty good idea. You know, get that faithful together two months out from the elections. Everybody got on the same page strategically. You know, a great opportunity to get everybody on message. But the problem is the strategy is completely flawed if they're making it about Donald Trump. That's the biggest anchor that they've got. So all this doing is hanging a lantern on their problems. And by the way, the other thing is, you know, whenever you do a party puts together a convention, they choose a place that they're trying to shore up. So it's not a good sign that they're going to Texas. They shouldn't have to be shoring up Texas. They should, you know, they're wasting money on Ken Paxon when they shouldn't have had to. But that's all of this, I think, is just headed for kind of a train wreck. And as Tim said, the worst thing that Trump hates for anything is to be dull and uninteresting. It was like his head in that way. Well, I think, sir, they're also maybe inadvertently making Talleriko a national figure. Oh, without a doubt. This is one of those places where we're talking before about

32:13Trump's weakness. He was always losing some of his political acumen, like the, yeah, the mojo that he had, because none of this makes sense. First of all, Ken Paxon's big liability with Texas voters is that he's incredibly corrupt. Donald Trump showing up to make it all about him and remind everybody, no, no, I like this guy. Even though a lot of Republicans in your state don't like him, I do because I like a good corrupt politician. I don't think that that plays the way that they think it's going to. Yeah, it is, it is a weird strategic choice. And this, this idea though, I keep saying this out loud and thinking it to myself. If I had said to you a year ago or 18 months ago, the states that Republicans are going to have to try to play in our Iowa, Texas, Ohio, you wouldn't, we would have all been like what scenario is happening to lead us here. And the scenario that has happened is that Donald Trump is making all of these Republicans incredibly unpopular. And he's put his thumb on the scale for some additionally bad Republicans

33:18in some of these states. Ken Paxon only got dragged over the line because Trump was mad at John Corning for being insufficiently mega a time or two. Within like 98.8 points. Yeah, sure. Yeah, I mean, I think Tim, you mentioned the vibes shift. Like I think that Trump put vibes, which I always felt a little silly covering, but he put it center stage and the vibes are large, he would help him zoom back to office in 2024. So the last guys in on the vibes wave feel like the first ones out. And I feel like that will be in sharp relief when people see a production, a Trump production and the fact that it is literally friends and families like Caroline Levitt and Donald Trump, Jr. Yeah, I mean, not to bring back bad memories since he ended up rising back from this moment, but it was kind of like his second reelect at Mar-a-Lago. And like he ends up figuring it out eventually. And so that shows you the who knows what could, with the future, will hold for us. But it was that moment where what was the old line, even the guy in the brick wall suits, didn't show up to a second announcement of that Mar-a-Lago. And then he kind of builds back up,

34:21by being de-Santis, etc. We all know what the history is, but like that isn't really on table this time, right? Because his recovery from that in 2020 was about convincing the faithful that he was on their side again. And that was a lot easier of a sell. What he's got to do now, what is his job is for the next two months is is shoring up those people that you just talked about, the kind of last ones in first ones out, whether that be Hispanic voters or manosphere types. He's got to shore them up and you know, I sensibly try to win some swing voters. And I just don't see how a convention like with his family in his cabinet and some boring senators are going to do that. And and and also what is their message even going to be for those people? I mean Trump can't focus. They put out an ad today talking about housing, but they'd use an AI Trump voiceover. But could probably, I assume because they couldn't get Trump himself to actually stay on message long enough to do a, ad read about housing. So what is he going to talk about the ballroom, the arch? And they just,

35:25he doesn't have a message, you know, that could speak to the types of people that they're trying to get to right now during a midterm. All right. So we talked about the states where Republicans are on the defensive. I want to ask all of you about that on the other side of another very short break. Stay with us. We're back with Mark and Tim and Sarah who happened to be like my desert island list, right? You're going to be a desert island. Who would you take? It's all of you. McKinnon. Here's the map. Toss-ups Michigan, Maine, Ohio, Alaska, Texas, lean Democrat, North Carolina, Georgia, New Hampshire, lean Republican, Iowa, in Scheme, Florida, Toss-up there too. Just take me through how you see some of these races. Well, it's just astonishing that we've been looking at this map, given what we all sort of thought was shaping up to be six months ago or so. And, you know, I mean, the fact that basically North Carolina and Georgia kind of off the,

36:29I mean, Democrats are going to take that away. Put their money elsewhere. I mean, they can start putting money, more money into Calorico and take in Texas. If Democrats win Texas, it's going to be, you know, that's a wave where people are just getting out their surfboards. And the thing that's surprising about these races and what's happening with Donald Trump is that Trump has convinced that the problem is that in these states and in Texas and at the Convention Hill echo, the problem is they're not talking about me or my record enough. So he's going to go in there and he's spending that money that he has on ads saying, make them about me. So it's just compounding the problem that is already putting the Senate play, which is just a very remarkable thing. Does the lack of checks and balances come up for voters? It's not that the lack of it comes up, although when you do ask voters, like what is important about democracy or what is what is important about our country checks and balances is the number one

37:32thing, I get said. And there's a reason that in these off your elections, voters, they're not so alarmed by the idea of getting rid of one party rule. They like the advantage of checking power. And this is where, look, Democrats now in midterms. It didn't use to be like this, but they have some structural advantages because in the great swap of voters between Republicans and Democrats, Democrats picked up college-educated suburban voters who are much more likely to vote in midterm elections. Now, Republicans picked up a lot of non-college working class voters who vote in general elections. But part of what's going on here is you have both the enthusiasm gap, right, coupled with then the structural difference of more Democrats just turning out midterm elections than Republicans. So Donald Trump is thinking to himself and I understand why he thinks this. He thinks, hey, when I'm on the ballot, didn't everybody turns out. So, God, you guys got to go put me on the ballot. What he doesn't understand, or I think he's missing is that he is on the ballot

38:36for the people he doesn't like in the way where they want to go check in. He's not literally on the ballot, but he needs to be to turn out those marginal voters who come out for him. Well, and interestingly, those voters are some of the most economically squeezed. I mean, they're not thrilled with it. In hindsight, it's probably a good thing that he's not actually on the ballot ballot because he's not that popular with them right now either. Yeah, that's exactly right. And that's true. I just using the Hispanic Democratic Church, I've talked about the last segment, for example. Obviously, there's some upside about the way that the deportations have been taken out, but it's also a big working class community. When I talk to, I know you've had Bobby Palito on, right? Bobby Palito, who's running as a Democrat, and a big Trump district down in South Texas. He's winning in the polls right now. And he's talking about how like the voters down there in his district are just not seeing the economic promise that Trump offered. And so, look, I think that that is a big opportunity for Democrats. The only point of

39:36caution I would just say about the good news about that map is, you know, those are all really tough states. For the Democrats, we really get a majority to win Iowa, Ohio, Alaska, Texas, to kind of be federal and proof you got to win three of those. And so, you can imagine that Americans having a good year and still coming up a little bit short. And I do think it's important, why Sarah always talks about the bush line. And like it's important, sorry to do this with three bushies as the other ones on the panel. But it's important that Trump's approval gets even lower and lower because, man, like his numbers have to be pretty bad for the Democrats to win in those states. And close, you know, doesn't, doesn't do you very good losing the Iowa Senate race by two. Doesn't, doesn't help you very much. I mean, Tim Trump seems to be trying to help the Democrats. I mean, him staying in the news is probably the best thing for Democrats. And him standing under goal played at anything if it's an arch or the wall behind him and the oval

40:36while stories come out every week about him or Cory Lewandowski or people around him grifting seems like the kind of news cycle that you couldn't, you know, dream up. And what is your sense of why he doesn't care about? We just described. I mean, it is, it is on a knife's edge politically. Well, he's an artistic sociopath, I think, is probably why he doesn't care that much about it. I just, I don't think he cares about anything that doesn't affect him directly. And so, you know, that mattered. It was his political prospects, but I don't know that he cares that much about John who steads political prospects in Ohio. So I think that's part of it. But yeah, I mean, I think that he is helping the Democrats by continuing to make this a choice. You know, where he puts it or a referendum rather excuse me where he's like putting himself up. But I think the Democrats shouldn't play private defense either. I think there's some that are on a really good campaigns in those states, but you know, it's going to be tough. I wanted to go ahead. Well, I just can say that one thing about our old boss, George W. Bush,

41:39that was absolutely true was he was pretty self-aware. And that if he were in this circumstance in this convention, we're happening in Texas, he would say, don't send me, send Barney. Yeah, the dog. Yeah, see what it's like that. Let me share some breaking news on this topic. It's just been handed to me. I'll read it to you. It is from the Supreme Court, where Justice Brett Kavanaugh has just rejected a bit by the state of Missouri to use a Republican-friendly congressional map that would have eliminated one Democratic held seat in this November's midterm elections. MSNOW's Jordan Rubin reports that quote, as is typical for such orders, there was no explanation for Tuesday's denial, though it suggests the Justice Found Missouri's claim was weak. This is the other battleground mark that we're going to be watching, right? Trump has sent everything to the Supreme Court. As a legal strategy, it is something that makes sense for Trump. They have sided with him on a lot of stuff. It does seem to be at least

42:41in this instance that they have found some sort of line, at least on this Missouri map. Well, yeah, I have no question that the one thing that is consistent is that Trump is doing everything in anything possible. He turned the election odds in his favor, even if that means suppressing votes, which he's gotten very good at. The difference in the equation now is that Democrats have gotten a lot better at fighting, particularly in the courts. I mean, one thing completely, I think over the last couple of decades that Democrats miscompletely was having a judicial rule work in American politics, and Republicans have just been whipping their butts with that over the last number of years. You exhibit a vote in the Supreme Court. So, I think thanks to a big wake-up call and a lot of damage Democrats have gotten wise at this and are very aggressively fighting this in a record in your decision possible. You get at this in the book. I mean, the Supreme Court is wildly unpopular. They are more unpopular than they've ever, ever, ever been. And there's so much in our politics that comes down to 70-30

43:44abortion. It's a 70-70 country thought abortion should be safe, legal, and rare. The Supreme Court is now more people opposed than supported. What is your sense of how to sort of take the wind at the back of the pro-democracy movement that is this broad consensus around the majority of stuff where the Trump movement is on the other side? I mean, one way is that we can't keep relying on the courts to adjudicate absolutely everything. And this is a tough part because now in this hyper-polarized environment, people don't think Congress can do anything. It doesn't feel like 70% of Americans believe that immigrants should be able to come here through a legal system. And I hear this from voters all the time. They're like, I was my grandparents came here. It's not that Americans are suddenly super hostile to immigration, but they don't like a border that people can cross and you don't know who's in the country. It's not an unreasonable thing, but it's a 70% proposition. Why can't we get immigration reform? 70% of the country believes that abortion should be legal, but of course it should also be rare and

44:48limited. But this is going to require a Congress that functions. The reason the courts have to deal with everything is because we don't have a Congress that does anything. Ted Cruz was tweeting it me earlier about my book. And I thought it was interesting because I was like, aren't you a United States Senator who has a job? He doesn't ever Senate. He just is a podcast. He just podcasts and tweets. And I really think that that is, you know, I think that is the essence of the problem here is without a serious Congress. We can't start working our way toward coming together around a bunch of these consensus issues, which is why I think that the best situation right now is for the pro-democracy movement, which includes a wide, like you have to live under a tent. So the Democrats is a two political party system. They've got to widen that tent to include a lot of independence and a lot of people from a lot of different walks of life. And then they got to go on, they got to win enough power so that they can make some reforms so that we can start

45:48actually legislating. Yeah, functioning. Yeah. The book is so important, so important. Thank you so much for being here on Pup Day. Thank you. And congrats. And congrats to you, Tony. I probably had to live through, right? Writing and Pup Day. So thank you, Mark. Thank you for being here for this. Thank you all for joining this conversation. The book is How to Eat an Elephant, One Boater at a Time. It's out right now. Showed up on my Kindle and my Audible this morning. I'm going to read it again. Quick break for us. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for letting us into your homes today. We are grateful. Join MS now live in Texas for our biggest event yet with Rachel Maddo, Chen Zaki, Michael Steele, and more MS now live together in Texas. September 26th. Get tickets today at ms.now slash together.