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- [00:00]
Sarah Longwell
Hey, guys, I just got off with Nicole Wallace where we were doing a double bulwark feature. Both me and Tim on in the same hour. We talked about how Trump is taking tanking the economy on tariffs. Talked about crazy Laura Loomer. Think you guys are going to love it. Check it out right now.
- [00:16]
Tim Miller
Tim, we were talking before the break about all of the seats put into motion. The Florida races aren't getting as much press. Well, nothing's getting as much press as it deserves because of the sort of volume of chaos that Trump does. But the Wisconsin seat, obviously, vitally important, the liberal winning the seat on the state supreme Court. But in a normal political climate, Democrats swinging to ruby red districts where no one spent any money. This is just pure voter sentiment. 13, 15, 17 points would be news all over the world.
- [00:49]
Derek Thompson
Yeah, it's hard to break through in the news environment when the president is tanking the global economy for no reason at all. Just kind of because he likes the word tariff. So, yeah, that's going to, that's going to kind of crowd other things out. But look, ye. It would be bigger news and what happened, you know, usually the off party does well. Right.
- [01:07]
Tim Miller
And off your election, 71 days in.
- [01:09]
Derek Thompson
But that right then at that scale. And if you're looking at these Florida districts, talk about ruby red and it's the Panhandle, it's Flora Bama, it's Matt Gates of seat in Florida. Bama. And then it's Daytona beach, you know, over there.
- [01:21]
Tim Miller
Yeah.
- [01:21]
Derek Thompson
And Waltz's seat. These are red. This is red America. And you know, they gained about 16 or 17 points between them, the two Democratic candidates without really a lot of campaigning happening. There was a little bit. But to me, and I think the biggest takeaway obviously is, and that was all before the market crashed today, 1700 points. So I think there's huge opportunity for Democrats. I like that you put up that list.
- [01:44]
Tim Miller
Let me explain the list. Let me explain. Okay, put the list back up. So there are 38 seats that were decided by a lesser margin than the swing on Tuesday.
- [01:53]
Derek Thompson
Yeah. And so some of those seats aren't seats that there have been competitive races in in a while.
- [01:58]
Tim Miller
Right.
- [01:58]
Derek Thompson
And to me, I think that there are a lot of folks out there that are like, what can I do? What can I do? Who are very upset about what's happening. And you can protest, you can call your congressman and you should do that. But one thing I've been trying to focus on on the board pod is telling people either themselves or helping find others, encourage them to run in a lot of these districts. And this is just a huge opportunity for Democrats, not just in the House, but in state House races and state rep races where they could very well win in very surprising places in 26. And that might have ramifications for years. I mean, I'm in Louisiana now with Mayor Landrieu there. Just this last week, there were these ballot initiatives that the governor, Republican governor, was putting forth. He lost all of them in a landslide. And it wasn't really because of anything on the merits of the ballot initiatives. It's because people are pissed. People are pissed for what's happening, and the people that are pissed turned out to vote against it. And so you're seeing it in a lot of very red places right now.
- [02:47]
Tim Miller
Sarah Longwell, we talked, I feel like heading into November and coming out of November, so much of what MAGA has in terms of a grip on the voters is a vibe, a vibe that they'll be richer, that they'll be freer, that the red hat will somehow sort of transfer some of Trump's gilded, golden stuff onto them. Trump has done, I think, three things this week. One, proven that that is not the case. He only has a 30% approval on whether anyone will ever be able to afford anything, gold or anything else. And he's also with the callousness of all of it, saying things aren't going to go down, they're going to go up. He's lost credibility, I would think, among some people that he ever cared at all. What are you starting to see in talking to voters? What's breaking through?
- [03:38]
Sarah Longwell
Well, here's what I know from listening to voters now for years, which is Donald Trump's carefully curated impression, you know, through his years on the Apprentice for voters, is that he's a businessman. And so I hear it over and over and over again when people say, look, I don't, I don't like his personality or, you know, I don't always like the way he behaves this way or that. But he's a businessman, and I think he's going to lower prices. I think he's going to do good things for the economy. And so right now, what you're seeing is Donald Trump taking a knife to the mythology that keeps him above water with people. And so many of the voters, look, Donald Trump has a base of voters, maybe 32% of people who they will have to be living on the street before they will admit that Donald Trump is ruined the economy. But there is another class of voters who just voted for Donald Trump because they were mad about inflation and they were mad about how high prices were. And so you're starting to hear people really worry about the fact that Donald Trump doesn't seem to be paying attention to the economy, that that is not what he is focused on. And it's starting to come up in, even in groups that are very supportive of him and that they say, I like what Elon's doing. You know, I'm still optimistic, but even those people will express concern about the potential of tariffs. And, you know, obviously I haven't talked to anybody since the tariffs went into effect, but I know from listening to people that they are just, they are deeply price sensitive and they were already in a place where they were hurting. It's one of the reasons they didn't vote for Joe Biden. These are not MAGA people. These are just consumers who wanted things to be cheaper. And if Donald Trump raises prices on them, they will abandon him very fast.
- [05:21]
Tim Miller
So, Sarah, you've come bearing gifts. This is some sound from your focus group before the tariffs, talking about economic hope streams and anxieties.
- [05:32]
Focus Group Participant 1
Right now I'm in the market where I want to buy a new car, but I'm scared because with the tariffs right now, what's going to happen? You know, I don't want to say it's going to hit me, but, you know, it's going to come to the consumer some way or another. I mean, everything you buy, you know, is overseas from somewhere. Bringing everything to the states would be great, but it's not going to happen overnight.
- [05:53]
Focus Group Participant 2
Like, I work on the automotive sector and the tariff is going to hit them big. Like, it might be one month down, but it doesn't matter for automotive because you can't actually move the factory overnight. So it's a lot to take in because it will impact, like, lots of people's job and my job.
- [06:12]
Tim Miller
So, Sarah, tell us who these folks are and what's significant about their tariff anxiety, specifically.
- [06:20]
Sarah Longwell
Well, they're Trump voters. They're 20, 24 Trump voters. And look, this is the thing about voters and tariffs. Voters understand tariffs. There are a lot of complex economic arguments that people will have. And, you know, sometimes consumers aren't going to, like, tap in on them. Tariffs are one thing that Americans just get in their bones. They know that we get a lot of stuff from overseas. Lots of people work adjacent to different manufacturing sectors where they know that they're importing things. People understand that cars, steel, housing, they just, they get it. And so this is the tariff issue is so Interesting, because it's one of those things that Trump runs on. He's explicit about the fact that he wants to do this. And voters who like him, though, or who want to like him will sort of wave off as though, well, he won't really do that because we all know how bad this would be. Like somebody will keep him from doing this, or we'll just do it, you know, in some strategic way instead of this insane blanket way in which they are also lying, interestingly enough, about sort of how these were chosen and why. And it looks, it's chaotic. There's no real strategy behind it other than, as Tim said, him just loving the word tariffs. And so voters are not going to be fooled by this. They already know exactly how much everything costs at the grocery store and across the supply chain. They understand it, they feel it. They were already in a place where it was a pain point. And so they are not going to like this. There might be the hardest core MAGA people out there swinging to defend this, but most consumers are not going to like it.
- [07:54]
Tim Miller
When you look at the Republicans, this the saddest, the saddest part of the story. But perhaps the most important, the reason we're here is because I keep thinking of this. John Mulaney, I mentioned it in the last hour. Have you seen that? There's a horse, horse in the hallway. It'll leave eventually, but it doesn't belong in the hospital. And even the horse knows it doesn't. I mean, I'm not funny, so I won't do it any justice. But Mitch McConnell knew there was a horse in the hospital. And after January 6th, Mitch McConnell refused to ban the horses from the hospital. So to see Mitch McConnell descent on Hegseth and I think RFK and last night on terrorists for Canada is interesting. But above all else, too little, too late.
- [08:38]
Derek Thompson
It kind of just makes me mad, to be honest. Right. Because they all knew better. They all know better. You could go through the list of everybody, people in this administration, Marco Waltz, Elise Stefanik, all of them were against tariffs. None of them would have been for this random regime of tariffs. When Derek was laying that out in the last segment when he said we tariffed Fiji, I was like, how much more could bottled water get? It's already pretty expensive. I look pretty worried about my FIJ water now. But they all know this, right? And I think that similar to the voters that in that clip, they kind of convinced themselves they don't know how, just because of partisan derangement syndrome, they wanted it. It was wish casting they convinced themselves that he wasn't going to do all that bad stuff, all that crazy stuff. He was just going to do the stuff they liked. And that was delusional.
- [09:25]
Tim Miller
The fact that Donald Trump appears to be getting advice on matters of national security from a far right pro white nationalism 911 truther is not even the most disturbing part of the story I'm about to tell you. It's that Trump might actually be listening to her first. The backstory NBC News today confirmed with two sources much of what the New York Times first reported that prior to yesterday's tariff palooza in the Rose Garden, Laura Loomer met with Donald Trump in the Oval Office. The topic of the conversation, firing members of the National Security Council. Mike Walz, the National Security advisor and signal chat enthusiast, was in the meeting defending his staff against what Laura Loomer was saying that some members of the NSC were quote, disloyal. Remember Trump got rid of a career federal prosecutor last week about an hour after Laura Loomer posted about him online. Well, this afternoon NBC News is confirming that at least three national security aides were fired today while other news outlets report that the number could end up being higher. Notable that this latest purge is happening a week and a half after Signalgate, a scandal for which no one has been fired that we know of, but one for which we learned this afternoon will be the subject of a DoD inspector general's investigation involving Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Everyone is back. You know, if you're here, we were going to get to the Hegseth of it all. I'm the Laura Loomer just for you.
- [10:58]
Derek Thompson
I mean that felt like a report from like a movie, like don't look up or something. If you're a fake, you get to play yourself in a movie. No, that's real. Laura Loomer is such a wild eyed conspiracy theorist. I mean she's an unapologetic. I think you had quotes in the intro. A white nationalist like has said that about herself, like cheered the deaths of Muslims, said like she hopes for more. I mean like just nasty person. I will say when I was at a bar one time when Carrie Lake costed me and Laura Loomer did de escalate. So I don't have any personal things against her so I appreciated that. But she is a.
- [11:34]
Tim Miller
Are they friends?
- [11:35]
Derek Thompson
Didn't seem like it. She's a crazy person and anybody who doesn't believe it could just google Laura Loomer crazy or just look at her ex feed if they wanted to, to get a sense for this, the fact that she is in the White House talking to the president, saying you should fire people who are in charge of national security. And he apparently said, okay, Laura, great. And fired a couple of people who are in his National Security Council or support the National Security advisor. And that's how the country's being run, you know, and we do, we have a Fox and Friends weekend host that is running the military. So it shouldn't be that surprising. But I think that it is really just important to like, marinate on that, that the people with power in the White House or outside the White House are like these extreme fringe conspiracy theorists that have big followers online and that they can dictate, they can dictate who is in charge of our country's security, your family's security. And just on this morning, one other thing. Over at the DOJ today, they had a briefing at the Department of Justice and it was like Bannon Benny Johnson, and it was just a whole rogues gallery of Loomer esque weirdos that were like having a briefing at the DOJ about the politicization of our government. So, you know, Justice Department national security decisions are being decided by MAGA conspiracy bloggers. So that should help you sleep at night.
- [12:54]
Tim Miller
Sarah, again, I sort of want to widen the aperture here to the many, many conversations we had about the generals and how impactful their warnings about Donald Trump's really. They weren't about his policies or his politics. They were about his indifference, maybe to long held beliefs and norms about the rule of law, about keeping politics out of the military. They've blown all that up gleefully over 71 days. Is that sort of seeping into the body politic?
- [13:31]
Sarah Longwell
Well, just really quickly, we knew that this term, if Donald Trump won, was going to be wildly different than his first term because those generals were there the first time. You were just asking in the last, you know, segment why voters sort of didn't understand. And it's because, you know, you take your kids bowling and they're little, so they put up those little gutter things that when they.
- [13:53]
Tim Miller
I put those things. Yeah, the bumpers, right.
- [13:58]
Sarah Longwell
The generals were like the bumpers. Donald Trump's first term was filled with career Republicans who acted like bumpers against all of his insane ideas and who protected him essentially from himself. And those bumpers are all gone. And so we are living in the gutter 100% of the time with people like Laura Loomer. And the fact is. No, it is. It is not clear yet. I think to voters until they feel the negative personal consequences from what Trump is doing. And I think the tariffs, you know, I've started to hear it in the groups. And last time I was on your show was really the first time we it had started to bubble up. It's the economic stuff. Even Doge, some people are nervous about it. They don't love Elon Musk, but people have to feel they have to touch the stove. Right. They have to feel the negative personal consequences before they're really going to turn on him. And that's why I think the tariffs are one of the things that are really going to start shifting the environment for Donald Trump, because they will have real world negative impacts on people's wallets fast.