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- [00:00]
Richard Karn
Hi, I'm Richard Karn and you may have seen me on TV talking about the world's number one expandable garden hose. Well, the brand new Pocket Hose Copperhead with Pocket Pivot is here and it's a total game changer. Old fashioned hoses get kinks and creases at the spigot, but the Copperhead's pocket pivot swivels 360 degrees for full water flow and freedom to water with ease all around your home. When you're all done, this rust proof anti burst hose shrinks back down to pocket size for effortless handling and tidy storage. Plus your super light and ultra durable Pocket hose Copperhead is backed with a 10 year warranty. What could be better than that? I'll tell you what an exciting radio exclusive offer just for you for a limited time. You can get a free pocket pivot and their 10 pattern sprayer with the purchase of any size Copperhead hose. Just text water to 64,000. That's water to 64,000 for your two free gifts with purchase W A T E R to 64,000 by texting 64,000. You agree to receive recurring automated marketing messages from Pocket Hose. Message and data rates may apply. No purchase required. Terms apply. Available@pocket hose.com Terms hi, I'm Richard Karn and you may have seen me on TV talking about the world's number one expandable garden hose. Well, the brand new Pocket Hose Copperhead with Pocket Pivot is here and it's a total game changer. Old fashioned hoses get kinks and creases at the spigot, but the Copperhead's pocket pivot swivels 360 degrees for full water flow and freedom to water with ease all around your home. When you're all done, this rust proof anti burst hose shrinks back down to pocket size for effortless handling and tidy storage. Plus your super light and ultra durable Pocket hose Copperhead is backed with a 10 year warranty. What could be better than that? I'll tell you what an exciting radio exclusive offer just for you for a limited time. You can get a free pocket pivot and their 10 pattern sprayer with the purchase of any size Copperhead hose. Just text water to 64,000. That's water to 64,000 for your two free gifts with purchase w a t e r to 64,000 by texting 64,000. You agree to receive recurring automated marketing messages from Pocket Hose. Message and data rates may apply. No purchase required. Terms apply. Available@pocket hose.com terms hey hey everybody, it's.
- [02:01]
Sam Stein
Me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the Bulwark. Back again. I'm here with Sarah Longwell, our fearless publisher. Sarah, how's it going?
- [02:08]
Sarah Longwell
It's going pretty good. I don't know. I haven't seen a tank yet, but the traffic in D.C. downtown is annoying.
- [02:15]
Sam Stein
So annoying.
- [02:16]
Sarah Longwell
And so, you know, I do not like having everybody in my town's lives disrupted by this insane man's need for a birthday tank parade.
- [02:26]
Sam Stein
I'm supposed to travel to DCA to Reagan on Saturday morning, and I'm like, kind of nervous that I'm gonna get stopped by tanks.
- [02:35]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I'm pretty interested to see what the reaction is here, whether or not, like, the protests that are being kind of pushed out, you know, because I think smartly, they've organized the protests basically everywhere but D.C. yeah. That said, when Trump came out and said, if there's any, any protests during my parade, they will be met with force, I was like, yeah, that sounds like an invitation to me.
- [02:59]
Sam Stein
Like, yeah, he's basically come on down to conc.
- [03:02]
Sarah Longwell
I wasn't considering going, but suddenly I am.
- [03:06]
Sam Stein
Well, let's see what happens. Hopefully you don't get in trouble on Saturday. Just for my own well being, we're here to talk about polls, and there's been a slew of them. I will admit, the first ones, I was like this. I feel like this is an outlier, but I feel like at this point we have some compelling data sets that suggest that Trump is in actual trouble. This all started with Quinn Piak poll a couple days ago. It showed that Trump's approval rating was at 3,854 approved disapprove. And we were sort of like, wow, that's a real outlier. That doesn't really jive with what we're hearing. But then today we have this AP N O NORC poll that has him at 39 approved. And was it 60 disapprove? No. Can't be 50. It's got to be 50. I'll double check that. But either way, the approval is still down in the toilet at 30.
- [03:54]
Sarah Longwell
They've got him at disapproved 60% and approved 39. Yeah.
- [03:59]
Sam Stein
What is going on here? Is that. Are you. Should we read into this at this point or.
- [04:03]
Sarah Longwell
No, I think you can read in a little. Here's. Here's what I would do. And instead of just taking these two polls, let's think about how things have been now for a while, which is, you saw during the introduction of the tariffs, the concept of the tariffs, Trump's rollout of the tariffs. It was disorganized. He was walking them back. Everybody was talking about them. And this is a thing that I have seen happen over and over again with Trump. When he does a thing, when he puts it, like, takes one of his big, beautiful ideas and he shows it to the American people for real, everybody goes, wait, I'm sorry, what? No. And so, like, then the tariffs were happening. His disapproval also jumped during that period. And then there was this, this middle period where everybody was like, you know, the tariff stuff kind of. There was a lot of talk. But then he pulled back, he tacoed. And as a result, you saw his numbers start to drift back up. And the other thing that was happening as Trump's numbers were drifting back up was that everyone was talking about Biden because of the Tapper book. Like, there was suddenly almost a three weeks of news cycle in which the market was a little bit up and down. But, you know, no, no big deal. And, you know, Trump was having had some of these, like, crazy meetings, but it was, it wasn't Super Trump. We were all relitigating Biden. Everybody was. And so Trump's numbers had started to drift back up because, interesting, when people are focused on Trump, his number, his approval number goes down. When people are focused on something else and Trump's able to kind of recede to the background, his approval numbers go up. This is a, this is a truism about Trump. And so where are we right now? Well, we see the protests coming front and center right now. Right? We see, we see Trump in his parade. We've just, We've seen suddenly, like, Trump kind of drifts back into the center of the focus, the center of the chaos, and also his big, beautiful bill is at the middle of it. Right. And so what did we have? Probably about the time this was in the field was the blow up with Musk, Musk crapping on the bill. And so you can see how when we're talking about Biden, Trump gets. Comes back things. You know, he. People feel better about Trump and they're like, oh, yeah, I really didn't want to vote for that guy. Look how bad Dems are. And now, once again, we're grappling with Trump's, his immigration. We're grappling with Elon calling him a pedophile, saying he should be impeached. And so it doesn't surprise me that you're seeing his disapprove go up again.
- [06:28]
Sam Stein
That's fascinating. You know, to that End. It's, it is always telling that on the ends of his campaigns, three times he's kind of sheltered. Right. Like, he knows.
- [06:40]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, yeah.
- [06:40]
Sam Stein
He knows that if he's in the news, it's not good for him. And so he just quiets. And also it's kind of ironic because here's a guy who's insatiable about the spotlight and it's just not good for him. And yet here he is. I will say I was a little bit surprised, though, because especially on the economic numbers, obviously when the tariffs were in the news and the market was kind of teetering, it made sense that his economic numbers were not great. But since Liberation Day, we've seen a lot of taco ing, if you want to call it that. The tariffs haven't. Okay, cool. The tariffs haven't all gone into effect. It's kind of haphazard. The stock market's recovered a bit. There's been less inflation. Inflation than expected. I mean, the metrics aren't great, but they're nothing like the direness that we anticipated. And yet those economic numbers really haven't improved, if you look at it.
- [07:31]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. Well, this is the same thing with Biden where when you talk about the macroeconomic numbers versus people's lived experience, what I hear in the focus groups from people, because this was the thing towards the end of Biden's term, going into the election, you'd hear people argue correctly that the macroeconomic picture was improving and improving fast. So why wasn't Biden getting more credit for that? Well, the reason was prices are still very high. Just because inflation cools in a sense does not mean it is. That only affects the rate at which prices are going up. It does not bring prices down. And when Trump made a promise to people that he was going to lower prices immediately, that got him elected. He was elected. Like, yes, there's a Trump devoted MAGA coalition that is here for liberal tears, that's here for the cruelty, whatever. There's a lot of people who just wanted stuff to be cheaper. Housing, groceries, gas. And now that it's not, you are seeing that reflected in the numbers.
- [08:30]
Sam Stein
You know better than I do because you have these focus groups. But is there that type of remorse when you talk to these people where they're like, wait a second, he promised me X, I'm not getting X. Oh, yes.
- [08:38]
Sarah Longwell
So. So in the focus group pod that that's going to come out this weekend, which I did with our colleague John Con, and, and Jonathan is one of the foremost experts on Medicaid on health care policy. And so we have a really rich discussion, but he got to hear a lot of voters. And this is actually an important point. I was just talking about this on cnn. The MAGA coalition is different from the old school Republican coalition. It includes a lot more low income voters. And so there's this woman and she's talking about how, look, she's glad that Trump is getting rid of criminal illegals. She's glad that they're doing something about the trans surgeries for kids, you know, and I hear a lot of that. But she's mad that he seems to be giving tax cuts to his rich friends and taking away her Medicaid and her SNAP benefits. So she was talking about how she lives with her, she's on disability, she's got a couple of kids, she gets $900 a month. And from the government, she's saying, I can't live on that. And if they roll this back like it's, it's over for me. And so they, I think Republicans. And this is, you see this from Josh Hawley and other places that live in poorer red states where they're like, a lot of our people get these. Oh yeah, a lot of our people are on these, are, get these government subsidies. And so to do something is politically perilous for Republicans, almost more so than it was previously because more people who are poor who do rely on these programs are now part of their voting coalition.
- [10:07]
Sam Stein
Yeah, it's not just Josh, it's Jim justice of West Virginia who's been coming up saying the SNAP cuts are just totally unacceptable for his state. Switching topics a little bit because immigration is so in the news and it has been such a potent issue for Trump. But what you're seeing in these polls again is, and to me, I can't really tell if this is real, but if you look at that AP poll on immigration, Trump is 46% approved, 53% disapproved. In terms of his handling. There was a Washington Post George Mason survey which is kind of methodologically interesting because there was a thousand texts. I think it probably got people who are really engaged in following the news, more so than usual polls. But whatever thousand texts they asked about Trump's handling of immigration, including deportations, 52% disapprove, 37% approve. That Quinnipiac poll, which was really like harshly negative towards Trump, that's 43% approve. On immigration, 59% disapprove. I mean, these are negative numbers on his signature issue, three polls, again, I'm not sure if it's indicative of something larger, but certainly I think we can conclude from this that it's not as strong an issue as it once was for him.
- [11:20]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah, I mean, here's what's happening. Donald Trump and the entire MAGA coalition convinced people that so many of the people who had immigrated here were criminals, thugs, rapists, people that we needed out of our country right away. Ms. Thirteen gang members. Here's the problem, actually, the vast majority of people who are here illegally are law abiding citizens. And the one crime they committed was when they crossed the border illegally. And so, you know, for some part of the Republican coalition, they think they're all criminals because they came here illegally. But actually there's sort of a bigger subset of Americans who sort of have that sense of like, well, there's this tacit agreement with, we needed people for labor and yeah, people come here, but if they, they've been here for 20 years and they're not committing crimes, I don't care if they're here, like, this is fine. And so he's running up against the fact that there aren't enough criminals to deport. And so they've started deporting people from communities like Carol in Missouri who overstayed her visa, who the entire community of Trump voters went, no, not our Carol. And you're seeing that play out in a lot of other communities where their ICE is in the schools, ice is in the restaurants, and they're like, this guy's not bothering anybody. And so this is always where sort of the rubber meets the road on policy is like, do you like it when you get it? And I think, look, there are still plenty of people in the MAGA coalition who are like, get them all out of here. I don't want anybody here who came into this country illegally. But there's actually a majority of Americans who are like, well, just the criminals. But if someone's been here for 20 years, let's not mess with them or their kids are our citizens. Like, I don't want you to tear their family apart. It's like that is the majority of Americans who don't want to see cruel and unusual things carried out.
- [13:05]
Sam Stein
And, and Tim Miller and I talked about this on a video earlier today where Trump is now out there on a bleep. You know, the, the great farmers of our country and the hotel and leisure executives, they need these people. Let's tone down what we're doing. All right? Two fun ones for you. First, which one do you want first? Rasmussen or Musk, you choose.
- [13:23]
Sarah Longwell
Ooh, well, let's do Rasmussen. We're talking about polling.
- [13:25]
Sam Stein
I want to show this Rasmussen, because Rasmussen, I know this is going to shock you. They're going against the grain. Donald Trump, according to Rasmussen, is at 53% approval rating. And they have an incredible Twitter graphic, which I want to pull up here. Where do they get this graphic?
- [13:46]
Sarah Longwell
Trump approval is at 53% today, up a point from yesterday. Trump, the dawn.
- [13:54]
Sam Stein
What is that graphic? The pinstripe suit, the hat, the fuck around and find out graphic up there. The watermark.
- [14:01]
Sarah Longwell
Here's what's funny about this for me is, okay, so Rasmussen, their thumb, their MAGA thumb that sits on their polling. Actually, what it, what it makes me think is that these other polls are likely correct if Trump is only at 53% approval in Rasmussen and House effect for them. And they think. And they think that at 53%, he's crushing it. Like 53%, barely a majority. Like, let's not like, I mean, it's good. It's good for Trump. Yeah, Good modern, polarized times. But, like, that is, I think, both BS and also, I mean, it's classic Rasputin.
- [14:43]
Sam Stein
All right, here's the better. Here's the more fun one. So Quinnipiac buried in the poll, they did ask about Elon Musk and, you know, notably shitty numbers. 30% approved, 57% disapprove. But the best part was this. Among Republicans, he was at 62% favorable rating. It was 78% in March. So he torched his standing with MAGA by calling Trump a pedophile who probably should be impeached. And I don't have any tears to shed. I got to be honest.
- [15:14]
Sarah Longwell
Yeah. Can I. I got to give just a quick rant because this is what's on my. Is what's on my heart, Sam. This is what's on my heart right now. It is this. It was like six days ago that Elon Musk took to Twitter, called Donald Trump a pedophile who should be impeached and was in the vaunted, much sought after Epstein files. Talked all kinds of smack about his bill, but it's very important, called him a pedophile, dropped a nuclear bomb, saying it. And six days later, as we await the tanks in the streets and as la, you know, is in the middle of, you know, protests and cop crackdowns and the Marines have been deployed, no one is talking about this. Everyone has just stopped. Everyone's decided, oh, well, this is just Two guys saying things back and forth to each other. I'm sorry. In a real society, in a real political culture with actual journalists in it, people would say to themselves, I don't know. Trump's biggest collaborator, who has been running the government with him for the first four months, said he's in the Epstein files and called him a pedophile. Now, either Trump is a pedophile and someone should be looking at that because we'd probably want to impeach him for that if there was proof and the corresponding cover up that would be going on with the FBI and everybody else. That's a massive major nuclear level story. Or, or Elon Musk is a liar and is lying about the President United States being a pedophile, which should reputationally ruin him forever. He shouldn't be able to have government contracts and instead everybody's like, just two dudes. Just two dudes.
- [16:53]
Sam Stein
I'm on a ketamine kick. And the other President of the United States and unstable in his own right. It's nutty. Even if you put away, put aside the Epstein stuff, which, whatever, you can't really put it aside. But let's just say in any other reality, what if, like John Podesta, like came out like, you know what? Barack Obama should be impeached. Like, you know, Karl Rove came. That was like, you know what? George W. Bush should be impeached. It's like we would probably spend a little bit of time chewing on that one.
- [17:21]
Sarah Longwell
I think it would be like a political earthquake, not a two day punchline. Well, that's in which everyone goes, my bad.
- [17:30]
Sam Stein
Yeah, but Sarah, that's Trump, man. I, I know, I, I don't want to excuse it, but it's just like every, every day brings a new serious controversy and it makes it that this is why journalism is so difficult under Trump. I totally agree with you.
- [17:45]
Sarah Longwell
Like, I understand the difficulty. I understand that it's difficult. And look, Donald Trump, he does feed this in his own way. I'm not saying he's deploying the Marines to LA to distract from Elon Musk calling him a pedophile. I'm not saying that directly. I do think the way that he lurches from crisis to crisis is something that we should have learned to grapple with by now because it's a very familiar pattern. And so being able to walk and chew gum, to explore, explore these things, to sit on a story that once you take a weekend break, doesn't just die on the vine. This is insane to me.
- [18:19]
Sam Stein
No, I I agree with you. I mean, I think some of it's manifesting in these numbers that we're chewing over, and you yourself mentioned it, like, it being. But the idea that we just moved on is nutty. It's nutty. But here we are. All right, Sarah, thanks for doing this. Appreciate it. Looking forward to the focus group. Talk to you later, Sarah.
- [18:36]
Sarah Longwell
See you guys.