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Can Trump really save the midterms for the Republicans?
00:34:41
The president kicks off the Republican election campaign in Iowa
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Sometimes all we want is more of the same. Like another round of golf played from a channel with 247 coverage. Another look at the garden and the deer as they pick their way through it, another Taco Tuesday followed by a Whatever's in the fridge Wednesday. And to get more of the same, all we need is a little help with adaptable care plans from qualified, compassionate caregivers matched to your family's needs. Home Instead can help you and your passion stay home no matter what's on your horizon. Visit home instead online for a better what's next?
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F
I love Iowa, but I'm here because we're starting the campaign to win the midterms. We got to win the midterms. That means Senate and it means House.
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B
Got to win them, got to win them. That's what Donald Trump's going to be saying for nine months in advance of the big political event of 2026, the midterm elections coming in November. Can Republicans possibly hold on to the House and the Senate? What will it mean for Donald Trump's presidency if they don't? Welcome to AmericasT. AmericasT.
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C
AmericasT from BBC News, when Donald Trump calls, they say, yes, sir, right away, sir. Happy to lick your boot, sir. We are the sickest country in the world.
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E
Oh, dear. Are you worried that billionaires are going to go hungry?
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G
Of course the president supports peaceful protests.
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B
What a stupid question.
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F
Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?
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B
Hello, it's Sarah in the BBC's bureau in Washington.
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C
And it's Anthony right here next to Sarah in Washington, D.C. now, right now.
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B
November seems quite a long way off, but it's going to come barreling at us very, very quickly, isn't it? When we've got these crucial midterm elections absolutely vital for Donald Trump. And a little bit later, and we're really lucky because one of our podcast friends, Brian Lanza, is going to come and try and tell us what the Republican campaign will look like he worked on Donald Trump's 2016 and 2024 campaign. So he's a great guy to talk to about this. But let's lay out exactly what the stakes are first, because it is hard, isn't it, for a sitting president to try and do well in midterm elections.
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C
The stakes are very high. Control of the US Congress is in play. Control of key governorships are in play, and Republicans have an uphill battle, traditionally something that Donald Trump himself pointed to in a rally he held this week in Iowa.
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F
You know, the worst thing about the midterms is the fact that no matter what happens, the people that win the presidency, you win the. Even if you're a good president. I think we had the best first year of any president ever. Maybe they. Even if you have any great. It's like in the last 50 years, they've won it twice. Can you believe it if something happens as a screw turns with the voters? So even if it's a Democrat or Republican, whoever wins the presidency has a hard time with the midterm. I mean, I'm here because I love Iowa, but I'm here because we're starting the campaign to win the midterms. We got to win the midterm. That means Senate and it means House. Got to win them.
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B
It's not the grandest sounding name for a set of elections, the midterms, is it? What's at stake, Anthony, I think, is all of the seats in the House of Representatives, a third of the seats in the Senate, and is it about a third of the governorships across America?
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C
That's right. And state legislatures, too, which is also important for determining policy in these states. The stakes are high, there's no doubt about it, because control of Congress right now is held by Republicans entirely. Democrats really don't have any hands on the levers of power. If they win one chamber or both chambers, they're going to be able to grind Donald Trump's legislative agenda to a halt. But more than that, they're going to be able to ramp up oversight of Donald Trump. They're going to be able to hold hearings, issue subpoenas, have investigations. They can make Donald Trump's life for the last two years of his presidency really difficult in the way they did for the last two years of his first term in office, where he Democrats won control of the House of Representatives in January of 2019, and they impeached Donald Trump by the end of that year.
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B
Yeah, they would move to impeach him again, surely wouldn't they if they took control of either house?
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C
I think there's a lot of, a lot of sentiment to do something like that. Although they may start a little lower on and focus on people like Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, which they think they might have a better chance of actually bumping out of power. They may have given up on impeaching Trump after two bites at it last time around.
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B
Is he right when he says sitting presidents, their own party very rarely wins the midterms? I know it's traditional that two years into your presidency, voters have maybe turned against you a bit, but is he exaggerating when he says you can just basically never win them as a sitting president?
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C
Very seldom. I'm not sure if the two times over the last 50 years is right, although I can think of two examples where the president's party did do better and pick up seats in midterm elections. One was in 2002 with George W. Bush. That was after the September 11th terror attacks. And the Republicans ran on national security and homeland defense and did better in those midterms. The other one, I think, was in 98 with Bill Clinton, the midterms in the second term of his presidency. And that was right in the midst of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. And House Republicans were in the process of impeaching. And while the Democrats didn't take control back of the House, they did pitch pick up some seats. Those were the exceptions, though. The rule is that, as Donald Trump described, it is a pushback against the president and his party who control power. It is a way to put a check on a president who the public may think has overextended himself.
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B
And certainly across the country now, from Minnesota to Texas, we can see some very, very animated people in opposition to Trump's policies. It's not difficult to see see how you would try and motivate them to get out and vote against what's happening. It's gonna be a problem, though, isn't it, for Republicans that Donald Trump's name's not on the ballot? Because there are a lot of people who do still support him, who still love him, but may not bother to turn out to the polls if they can't vote for Donald Trump himself. Just some candidates that he's approved of. And actually his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, was talking about this the other day when she was on the Mom View podcast.
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G
Typically, you in the midterms, it's not about who's sitting at the White House. It's you localize the election and you keep the federal officials out of it, we're actually going to turn that on its head and put him on the ballot because so many of those low propensity voters are Trump voters.
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B
Yes, they are.
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G
And we saw a week ago Tuesday what happens when he's not on the ballot and not active. So I haven't quite broken it to him yet, but he's going to campaign like it's 2024 again.
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B
When she was saying a week ago Tuesday she was talking to some of those off year elections where Republicans didn't really do that well.
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C
Last year they didn't do that well. And in those off year elections in Virginia and New Jersey, the Democrats did quite well. And in some other, as we've discussed in the past, isolated little elections, like some state level elections in Georgia, the Democrats outperformed prior prior results, particularly the 2024 results when Donald Trump was on the ballot. And if you look at special elections all through last year, special congressional elections, Democrats, even when they didn't win, they did better than they did in 2024 by about 13% on average. Which tells you exactly the headwinds that Republicans are going to be going into. If they hit this November with these midterm elections and do 13% worse than they did in 2024, they are definitely going to lose the House of Representatives. And it could very well put the Senate, which is a higher bar for the Democrats to try to take. But it could put the Senate in play.
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B
Yeah, because the margins are so incredibly tight at the moment now they change a bit, don't they, in the House because some people have resigned. And what is the size of the Republican majority right now?
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C
I think it's about a two seat majority in a 435 seat chamber. So that shows you how small it is. It doesn't take much to tilt it back to the Democrats. And, and there are seats that Democrats are targeting that Kamala Harris carried in 2024 that are controlled by Republican members of Congress. For instance, I believe Nebraska is one of them. There are some in California that have been redistricted, some in New York. Now the redistricting in Texas has made it likely the Republicans will pick up some seats there. But if this is a wave election, which we've seen in the past when there's an animated out of power party looking to get to the polls, if this is that wave election, then even these little redistricting things here and there and little details aren't going to matter. It's going to be such a route that the Democrats will be able to win despite what the Republicans are trying to do.
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B
And as you say, it's harder for Democrats to try and take the Senate, but they've got a few interesting options because some big name popular Republican senators are retiring or not running for reelection, aren't they? Which means that some of those races are a bit more open than they might have been, even in unusual states.
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C
Right. Thom Tillis in North Carolina, who has been an increasingly outspoken critic of Donald Trump, he's a Republican. He isn't running again. So that's an open seat in a swing state. Democrats have to win that basically if they want to be able to take control of the Senate. They'll have to pick up four seats to take control of the Senate because it's a 5347 Republican majority. And a tie would be broken by J.D. vance because he's the vice president right now. So that's one. Susan Collins in Maine, she's running for reelection, but Maine is a more liberal state and she has won against the odds in her past reelection campaigns. Maybe her luck runs out this time around. That gets to you to two then you have to start thinking about other states that are a little bit more of a reach and where they can pick up. And one of those, Joni Ernst's seat in Iowa, where Donald Trump was this week. She's not running for reelection. That seems like a reach. But in the past, Democrats have been able to be competitive in Iowa. Maybe Florida could turn around Texas. John Cornyn, all of these would be mildly surprising, maybe even more than mildly surprising. But they're the kind of seats that Democrats would have to win to get those four flips. And it definitely means that they're going to have to find a way to kick out some incumbents, which is always harder.
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B
And then quite a lot of Americanslords have been asking us whether there's any possibility Trump might try and cancel the midterm elections, which is a very interesting question. I mean, he, I think was teasing when he told Reuters that he'd achieved so much during his first year in office that when you think about it, we shouldn't even have an election in 2026. And his press secretary rushed in and said that he was only joking. But there's been some interesting moves going on around electoral stuff. I've noticed that the attorney general, Pam Bondi, is demanding entire voter rolls from states with all the details that normally the federal government wouldn't have access to about those voters. And in Georgia as well, I think Just this week, haven't they seized a whole bunch of voter information from 2020?
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C
Yeah, the FBI went to Atlanta where they keep the ballots from 2020 and took them, had a warrant, went in, confiscated all of them. We're not sure what that investigation is related to, but it appears to be something related to trying to prove, once again, try to prove fraud in the 2020 election in Georgia state that Joe Biden narrowly won, although not the state that decided the election, but still one that Donald Trump has been fixated on for the past six years. There is a possibility that Trump could try to make allegations of voter fraud getting this voter roll data from all of these different states. If they're able to do it, they can look at the voter rolls and find people who are dead on them, find people who have moved. But it would allow Donald Trump to cast some doubt on the election results if we get to November and the Republicans don't do well.
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B
The other thing people are very worried about is this sense of whether it's the National Guard on the streets or ICE agents and all the pictures we've seen coming out of Minneapolis, but of course, that have been repeated with the National Guard in different cities, largely Democrat run cities and Democrat states across the country, that that sense of troops on the streets is potentially intimidating to Democratic voters.
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C
Right. You could see the kind of crackdowns we've seen in Minneapolis and elsewhere where they are pulling people off the streets demanding citizenship identification. You do that outside a polling place. You even do that in immigrant neighborhoods during early voting or on Election Day. I think Democrats and critics could say that that would have a chilling effect on turnout. And again, turnout is everything in a midterm election. So that might be a way for Donald Trump to use his authority to gain some sort of a partisan advantage, canceling the elections. Well, the first thing to remember is that the states run these elections. It's not the federal government. Donald Trump could say the elections are off and the states would say, no, they're not, and open up the polling places and have voting. And it's not something that a president can just issue a decree that says, we're suspending these elections. So that undercuts that fear, I believe. But there are, as I mentioned, things that Trump could do that would maybe push things a little his way. And I think that is a very real concern among Democrats.
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B
Yeah. Okay, let's try and drill down into what Donald Trump, the Republicans, can do to maximize their chances, how they're going to run this campaign, basically for the next Nine months. And so this is a great point to welcome back to Americas Brian Lanza, who is a good friend of our podcast, and he can see inside the mind of Donald Trump's campaign because he was deputy communications director for Trump in his 2016 campaign and a senior advisor on the 2024 campaign. Hi, Brian. Welcome back. Great.
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D
Thank you for having me.
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C
It's been quite a year since I think we last spoke. Brian, what do you think is happening? What do you think the outlook is for the midterms now that Donald Trump has a year under his belt in his second term?
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D
I mean, the pace has been unrelenting. I think that's what we sort of take away from the last year. I mean, I think the midterms are going to be tough, right? They're always tough for the party in power, at least on the House of Representatives sides. The economy is not where it should be. It is better than what it was under Joe Biden. But President Trump made promises that it would be exponentially better. And so they have some work to do and some catching up to do. But at the end of the day, it was always going to be an uphill battle. The fact that there's question marks about the economy makes it harder. And then you throw in what was President Trump's signature issue in the rally to the MAGA base, which is immigration, at least visually, it's turning into a liability. So it's certainly the start of an interesting year. Plenty of time to turn it around. But, you know, if the election were held today, I wouldn't have a good feeling about it.
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C
You know, we listened to a Susie Wiles clip earlier talking about their campaign strategy, and she said that she was going to get Donald Trump out there campaigning nonstop like this was a presidential election. Usually in midterms, when the president isn't all that popular, they kind of disappear. That doesn't seem like the strategy. Now they want Donald Trump front and center. Is that a good idea, do you think?
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D
I mean, he's front and center regardless. I think we learned that in 2018, that whether he's on the ballot or not on the ballot, you know, the entire campaigns for a lot of these Democrats are going to be about Donald Trump. And he is his best messenger. He is the best counterpuncher out there in American politics. And he is the contrast. Right. I think Democrats, what they're talking about now, the election for them isn't about the economy. It's not about affordability. It's not about pricing for them. It's about impeachment. And the more you have President Trump out there, the more it's going to trigger the Democratic base to stop lying behind their other political arguments. And Trump out there sort of makes them address, you know, the election for Democrats is solely about impeachment. And that's a political problem for them. People want more than just divided, frozen government and an impeachment every month.
- [16:54]
B
So Donald Trump has been getting out there and he delivered what was basically a campaign speech in Iowa earlier this week on one of the things you say that's all important on the economy. And I wonder if you think he's got the message right on this. Let's listen to what he had to say.
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F
So they say, oh, affordability, let's vote for the Democrats. It's no affordability. They caused a tremendous price increases. It was caused by the worst inflation we've ever had. And they come up with this word affordability. And I saw it even although you're not hearing it so much anymore. You know why? Because the prices are coming down so much. They don't want it to be an election based on lower prices. But we're bringing down the lower. I like that term better. It's a lower prices. We're bringing them down.
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B
Brian, to me, that sounds as though President Trump is trying to tell people that they're better off than they feel, that the evidence of their own wallets or bank balances is lying to them, which is kind of what Joe Biden tried to do before 2024 and that didn't work.
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D
No, listen, I think the differences here are your Democratic policies as a whole drive up costs. We know this. It's not a secret. So when President Trump says affordability conversation is a scam, 100% is a scam in the sense that Democrats don't care about affordability. They never have. So it is ironic for us who observers of campaigns who work with the president to hear the media prop up and the Democrats prop up the conversation. Affordability, when they've never cared about the issue before and evidence is that they don't care about it now and they want to double down on Joe Biden's policies, which led to an affordability crisis.
- [18:30]
B
That's a sophisticated argument. I put it to you that a lot of voters are going to take this much more simplistically and as you say, prices are still high. There are things people can't afford. They're going to blame the president or the party who has been in power for almost two years. By the time they go to the ballot box. If they're feeling the squeeze, they are not going to blame Democrats for it. They're going to blame the people who are running the economy.
- [18:49]
D
Well, I think you have to look at some things like energy prices are cheaper today than what they were under Joe Biden. Inflation is lower today than it was under Joe Biden. Eggs are lower. You know, there are certain. You know, the thing is, is there are costs throughout the entire ecosystem of family that are cheaper today than they were under Joe Biden. However, things could get cheaper faster. I think that's the challenge that President Trump had, is he made it sound like he could return. The great economy of Trump won with the flip of a switch. And he set that expectation. We set that expectation. It's taken longer than we wanted. And so, you know, President Trump, you know, when he's out there, you know, campaigning, you know, the campaign is against ultimately himself. He said it was going to be fast and it's taken a little bit longer. But let's be clear. The alternative is what we're experiencing in Virginia. Higher taxes, less affordability. That is what the alternative is when you vote for Democrats.
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C
So is it a messaging problem? Donald Trump has said previously that maybe he needs better messengers, better people to, to come out with a better message. Or is it a policy problem? Do the Republicans need to do something more to address these issues?
- [19:55]
D
Well, let's be clear. The best thing that President Trump can do with respect to affordability is choose a new Fed chairman. That new Fed chairman is going to have an opportunity, I think, either in May or July, most likely in June actually, to drop interest rates. Does he drop at a point, does he drop at a full point? Or does he go full MAGA and drop interest rates 2 points that will supercharge the economy overnight. That will basically make borrowing cheaper than it's been in probably 10 years. And the affordability crisis, quite frankly, disappears. Now, there's long term consequences for that, but that's post election.
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C
The long term concerns that you mentioned about cutting interest rates are that it'll drive up inflation, which will drive up prices, and is exactly the opposite of what Donald Trump wants.
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D
Listen, right now, what I've learned, and I've got a minor in economics, which means nothing, right? But what we've learned over the last years under Trump's stewardship of the US Economy is the economists get it wrong all the time. They have the worst record under President Trump when it comes to making these predictions of what's going to happen. I remember during Trump won When economists said we were going to get, you know, we were going to drive up, you know, interest rate or we're going to drive up inflation because of the tariff policy, that didn't happen.
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B
Yeah, they said that again last year.
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D
Yeah, and they said that again. I mean, so you have to be careful when you listen to economists, because economists, you know, they're on the side of every issue, and they tend to be wrong. When it comes to President Trump, we don't know what's going to happen if you drop 2%. We have theories of what might happen, but we've also learned that those people who create those theories tend to be wrong more than right.
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B
So the other big issue you identified that will be on the ballot for the midterms is immigration crackdown. And obviously that's front and center of people's minds because of the images that we've been seeing coming out of Minneapolis. Is that a real problem for Republicans come November?
- [21:46]
D
The images are terrible. There's an American citizen that's dead who, by every visualization, every video we've seen, should not be dead. You know, our hearts goes out to him and his family. You know, this is a tragic thing that took place. It's clearly a result of Customs and Border agents not having the proper training of dealing with crowd control. But that goes to the larger issue. Why are we in this dilemma? Right. I refer to this as a blue state rebellion when it comes to immigration policies. Because what you don't see is you don't see red states having these same situations. You don't see red state governors saying, don't cooperate with ice. You don't see red state mayors saying, don't cooperate. They actually cooperate with ice. So a normal ICE or Customs and Border task or action item is they pull up on a residence, they knock on the door, they identify who the illegal alien is, and they put that person into custody. And. And local law enforcement does crowd control because local law enforcement is trained to do crowd control. That is the primary training. What you have in places like Minnesota, what you have in blue states, is you don't have the local support, Customs and Borders and ICE doesn't have the local support of law enforcement to do the crowd control. So you're bringing in supremely inexperienced people who've never had the training for crowd control, because customs and borders is far different than controlling the crowd. And they're using aggressive tactics. They're using the tactics that actually work at the border but don't work in our cities. And the reason those tactics are Being used today is because of a blue state rebellion where governors and mayors don't want to cooperate in enforcing federal law and enforcing what the people voted for in 2005 in their election. They said we wanted deportation. We didn't hide what we wanted. What they didn't say is we want this, we want deportation, but we want blue states to rebel.
- [23:30]
C
They voted for deporting the worst of the worst. Right. They wanted people.
- [23:34]
D
No, that's your messaging. What we always said is we will start with the worst of the worst, but we're deporting every legal alien out there.
- [23:41]
C
So when you listen to Donald Trump, he says we're getting the worst of the worst. Now, they did have signs at the convention saying mass deportation now.
- [23:48]
D
And we never hid behind it.
- [23:50]
C
And people were saying, and journalists were saying that means millions of people being rounded up. That means it's going to be more than just criminals. But there are, I think you have to acknowledge there are people who think this is going too far. And on one hand, deporting a convicted rapist, getting them out of this country may be a good thing. But what about deporting a five year old child at a bus stop or your local gardener or someone who works in your school, People who have no criminal records beyond just violating immigration law? Those weren't the kind of people that they had in mind when they voted on immigration.
- [24:23]
D
When you say they. I make the case that half the electorate exactly knew what we were going to do. We didn't hide from it. We had signs said mass deportations. I was on this network, I was on various networks explaining how it was going to work. We were going to start with divorce or divorce. We were going to assess and then we're going to continue to the next phase. I'm sorry, these are enforcement actions. These are laws on our books. We had a Democratic president under Barack Obama, we had a Democratic supermajority or a veto proof majority under Barack Obama and we had a Democratic House. They never passed anything to address these things. It was clearly never a priority for them. This is the net effect of them doing nothing and policy not sort of marrying up with what the electorate wants. But the reality is the policy is what we're fighting for and it's what's being implemented and whether it's a five year old who is left at a bus stop or in the process of being deported. If policymakers wanted to be differently, they should change it.
- [25:23]
B
The problem though, isn't it is the images of Alex Pretty being killed and everybody can See that he wasn't brandishing a weapon, hadn't set out to massacre law enforcement, any of the things that some administration officials said. But that image risks turning off a lot of voters on the immigration crackdown. People who possibly at the end of 2024, thought, yes, we do want to get rid of millions of illegal people living in the United States without documents. But now, having seen what happened on the streets of Minneapolis, they think it's gone too far and they're not necessarily going to vote Republican as a result.
- [25:56]
D
Well, we'll see. I mean, at the end of the day, what I've learned in American politics about what the American electorate does is they care very little about the process and they care about the results. That's what I've learned over my years in politics, my years in government, is the process makes a lot of noise for cable, makes a lot of print for the media. But when you get to the polls, and it's usually the result that matters. Right. Like I said, that tragedy was a tragedy. But let's discuss what actually took place. Those weren't political folks on the ground that said, you know, he was coming out there, you know, try to assault officers. Those were career customs and border people who lacked the candidate to tell administration folks exactly what took place. And if the administration has an egg on their face on this, it's the fact that they repeated this misinformation coming out of Minneapolis first. You know, that. You know, sure, we're to blame for repeating bad information. Right? The administration's to blame for repeating bad information. The reason that information got out and the reason that they got out the way it did was because if we don't feel the narrative of what's taking place, the left is going to fill the narrative of what's taking place. And what we've learned over the years is that the left lies, and they're usually enabled by the media to being allowed to lie. And so what we've done, you know, fairly or unfairly, is we now rush to put out information. I look forward to the time when a politician is asked a question and they go back to the normal answer. This is currently under investigation. I have no comment. Bill Clinton's second term was. I'm sorry, Monica Lewinsky is under a special prosecutor investigation. I can't comment. Think about that. Bill Clinton entire second term was. I can't comment about a potential investigation. And that worked for him.
- [27:37]
B
There's been a much higher focus on foreign affairs in the first year of Trump's second term than I think many of us expected the attack on Iran, the military action in Venezuela, the focus on Greenland, Canada, all sorts of things. Is that a winning issue with voters?
- [27:55]
D
No. We have learned over the years. And the reason Donald Trump is in office right now was because the American voters lost confidence in Joe Biden and Democrats when it came to issues of pocketbook.
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C
Right.
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D
What I learned in American politics, you know, is a derivative of what I learned in, what is it, 19, you know, 1991. Right. Herbert Walker Bush won a war. His popularity was through the roof, and then nine months later, he lost an election primarily because of the economy. And so, you know, I think voters are going to pass judgment. It's either going to be thumbs up or thumbs down. We would like the question to be, are you better off today than you were two years ago? I think that answer is probably going to be most likely, yes. I think the criticism we receive is President Trump promised for it to be fast. This is not fast enough.
- [28:43]
C
So it is an uphill struggle. It is likely they are going to lose. Lose the House. Do you think the Senate's in play?
- [28:51]
D
Yeah, I do think the Senate's in play. I think you look at Ohio, Sherrod Brown having won there before, Rosh Hashani not doing as well as previous governors had done, I think that becomes in play. I think you have. Texas certainly comes into play. If Corden would lose, if Ken Paxton were to win, we probably lose Texas, which is shocking, which is jarring, but it's not the political earthquake we think it is. It's not because it's a shift in electorate in Texas. But, yeah, I very much think the Senate is in play.
- [29:19]
C
Do you think if they do lose, say, the House of Representatives, that it is a judgment on Donald Trump and his second term, that people are going to look and say, you know, this was. He's not doing what the voters want.
- [29:31]
D
Every midterm is a judgment on that president. Right. But I think the question becomes is, you know, what is the judgment ultimately say? I think if the people say, hey, it's improved a little, just not as much as we wanted, then we know, you know, you know, we made promises of a fast recovery, and we weren't able to hit those promises. But I think every midterm is sort of the test on the president of how things are going. And I don't think President Trump's any different. And we're going to make the case that the economy is better than it was two years ago. And if you give us more time, we'll make it even better.
- [30:03]
B
And you said when you sat down, you were pessimistic about Republicans chances in November with that message that you've just articulated. You think they can turn it around in the next nine months?
- [30:11]
D
Yeah, I think a little bit. Right. A lot really depends on how people feel. Not necessarily what they see, but how people feel about the economy. Right. I think if, you know, if interest rates go down significantly, they sort of feel a little bit more optimistic because money is cheaper. But I also, the Democrats have a problem. Right. Their only message is Trump. There's no policies that they're championing that are moving the electorate toward them. I think if Republicans talk more about what Democratic control means, impeachment, stalemate, nothing happens, then the electorate has a real decision to make.
- [30:45]
B
But what's the positive message you would advise the Republicans to be campaigning on?
- [30:49]
D
The positive message is, you know, we've made progress, we'll make more. Right. You know, the economy has improved a little bit. Affordability, pricing has improved. But if you give us more time, we'll improve it even more.
- [31:02]
B
So the tagline for the election is we're getting there, just not as quickly as you wanted us to.
- [31:07]
D
I think the tagline is, is we've made progress. Give us, you know, two more years and we'll make more progress.
- [31:13]
C
But saying the other guy is going to be worse, that the other guy is worse, but that's going to be a risky message. Right.
- [31:18]
D
That's what the Democrats are saying. They're saying Donald Trump is worse.
- [31:21]
C
Yeah. And they tried that in 2024 and Donald Trump is going to be awful. And voters was like, yeah, you know, you suck. We're going to get you out of here. I mean, and it's not that kind of a negative message.
- [31:31]
D
Yes and no. Keep in mind, Democrats approval rating is at 18%. It's the lowest it's ever been. So it may not be a hard argument, but I know one thing and I've seen it in focus groups and I've seen it all over the country. Voters do not want stalemate out of Congress. They're frustrated with how slow it goes, how nothing's happening. Now if they feel that it's going to get worse, that does have a resonating message.
- [31:56]
B
Can we have you back after the midterms? And we'll get your. We'll get you to.
- [32:01]
D
We'll get my scorecard.
- [32:03]
B
Right. Well, thank you so much for coming in.
- [32:05]
C
Yeah.
- [32:05]
D
Goodbye. And thank you for having me.
- [32:07]
C
Great to have you on as always, Brian.
- [32:08]
B
Thank you now, just before we go, we need your help.
- [32:16]
D
I pledge allegiance to the United States of America.
- [32:29]
C
Is that a pterodactyl?
- [32:31]
B
Sure. It's meant to be a firework. Oh, it's a bald eagle, but, yeah, that is right. We are building our very own United States of America to celebrate 250 years, I'm sure, of the founding of the United States of America. And we need to find Americasters from all over the US So we can get a better sense of what's happening right across the country. So. So we're asking all of you to tell us something that we don't already know about your state. And here's Mary.
- [32:59]
G
Hi, Amerikast. This is Mary from Kentucky, the bluegrass state where we're best known for our bourbon Thoroughbred horses and the Kentucky Derby. Fun fact. Abraham Lincoln was born in Kentucky, though he grew up in Illinois. And for a tourist site, Kentucky is home to Mammoth Cave, the world's longest known cave system. We have some excitement coming up in this year's midterms. The representative from my district, Thomas Massie, is up for reelection this year, and our Senate seat is up for grabs after Mitch McConnell announced his retirement. I wonder, with his departure, if this signals the end of an era for the Republican Party as Trump continues to exert his influence. Cheers, y'. All.
- [33:41]
B
That sounds like a really good reason to go to Kentucky to cover these midterms, which I would really like to do nothing about.
- [33:47]
C
The whiskey and the horse racing, definitely. The politics is going to be interest.
- [33:51]
B
Well, the world's longest cave system.
- [33:53]
C
Come on. I can't forget Mammoth Cave. Absolutely. But, no, Massie is a very interesting character because he's been an outspoken critic of Donald Trump's, and Trump has made it his goal to try to oust him from his House seat. And then replacing Mitch McConnell, who has been a Senate institution, kind of the voice of the old guard Republican Party, and recently has been a bit of a critic of Donald Trump's as well. The kind of person who comes in and replaces him. He's going to be a Democrat, let's be honest, but he's going to be a Republican, let's be honest. What kind of Republican comes in will tell us a little bit about the direction the Republican Party is heading.
- [34:27]
B
Yep. So Kentucky, here we come for 2026. Yeah. And to our other Ameracasters, wherever you are in the United States, we want to hear from you, too. Tell us what's happening in your state or wherever it is that you live, big or small. Tell us why it matters and something about your state that we didn't know already and you can do so by sending us a WhatsApp on 44-332-3480 or you can always email us ameracastbc.co.uk. see y' all later.
- [34:57]
C
Bye bye bye.
- [35:02]
A
Thank you for listening to another episode. It is you, the ameracaster, that makes ameracast the community that it now is. If you like what you've heard, please do subscribe to this podcast on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your podcasts. We always want to hear your feedback as well. We look at every single bit of correspondence that we get so you can send us an email americastbc.co.uk the WhatsApp is 443-301-239480 and you can get involved in the AmericasT Discord server. The link to that is in the description. Till next time, bye.
- [35:52]
E
RingCentral's AI receptionist uses Voice AI to answer on the first ring so you'll never miss a call again. In just a few minutes, you can personalize your own AI receptionist to answer questions, route calls, schedule appointments, and even send texts in multiple languages. Plus, it's easy to scale Create unlimited AI receptionists across any phone system. It's all powered by one reliable platform for effortless AI communications. See for yourself at ringcentral.com ringcentral Voice of your Business if journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcast.