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- [00:00]
Gabe Fleischer
The other question is how much is public opinion driving what Trump is doing at this point? Don't think, even again, even if Trump were to have dislodged Maduro and, you know, kind of the remnants of the Castro regime in Cuba and then the regime in Iran, even then, I don't think it would be much of a political benefit to supervisorating or to Republicans, but it would be undoubtedly a huge legacy win for the president. Historically
- [00:32]
Galen Drouke
foreign. Hello and welcome to the GD Politics podcast. I'm Galen Drouke. We are officially in the second week of war with Iran and the fallout is intensifying. Trump now says the goal is Iran's unconditional surrender. Meanwhile, Iran's clerics have appointed Khamenei's hardline son as the new supreme leader, suggesting surrender is unlikely. At the moment. Fifteen countries have been involved in the conflict in some way. The number of US Service members killed has risen to seven. And the number of deaths in Iran is estimated to be over 1200. Markets are falling around the world as the likelihood of this being a short contained operation is fading. Perhaps most notably, oil prices have gone vertical. They reached $120 a barrel overnight and are at about $100 a barrel at the time of this recording. That compares with just $55 a barrel in December and $65 a barrel just before the war. The average price of gas nationally has shot up 50 cents per gallon in just a week and now sits at about 350 a gallon. Last week, Congress declined to rein in Trump's authority in the conflict. But that doesn't mean the domestic politics of this matter are settled, not by a long shot. So here with me to discuss the unfolding politics here at home is Gabe Fleischer, author of the Wake up to Politics newsletter. Welcome to the podcast, Gabe.
- [01:58]
Gabe Fleischer
Thanks for having me, Galen.
- [02:00]
Galen Drouke
Interestingly, in a recent newsletter, you used public opinion on AI data centers as an indication of how Americans react to energy shocks like the one that we're experiencing right now. So what's the comparison?
- [02:14]
Gabe Fleischer
There's actually, I think, twofold comparison there. I think a. As you said, I think we can see in polls, just in the last few months, we've seen a sharp uptick in people very opposed to, you know, just asking the question, would you support an AI data center being constructed near your home? As of just a few months ago, most people, slim kind of plurality of people, said they would support that over people who would oppose it. In just a few months, that's completely reversed. We now have a large majority of people who say they would oppose an AI data center being constructed near them. I think speaking to, as you mentioned, you know, kind of the widespread concerns that, that, you know, a closer data center is to the higher energy bills will go up. And that does show, I think, how concern people are about, about their energy bills and about the possibility even before a war that, you know, we are nearing with kind of as AI intensifies, we're nearing kind of rising and rising energy bills that people are already concerned about. The other thing I kind of, the reason I brought it up in that newsletter was cuz interestingly, this is an issue that, that President Trump is trying to address now. His solution, I think there's a lot of experts that are skeptical whether his proposed solution will be very meaningful. But he at least had an event last week that was trying to kind of bring attention to. He brought various big tech executives to the White House, had them sign a pledge that they will kind of subsidize the cost of any kind of energy increases related to their data centers. Again, a solution that not all experts think will work, but at least you would assume would be kind of a popular policy initiative to address what is kind of an urgent concern, economic concern on Americans minds. And yet that kind of policy rollout got completely swamped by what was obviously going on at the same time, which is the war in Iran. Trump literally couldn't stop himself from mentioning the war repeatedly during the event people may have seen on social media. At one point towards the end, he seemed to kind of get a little bit bored with the event, said I gotta go check on the war, and then kind of wrapped it up pretty quickly. And I think basically to me kind of showing that, you know, the war, even on its own terms, is just stepping on his efforts to try to address economic concerns. Even putting aside the fact, as you mentioned in the intro, you know, the war itself is going to make some of those exact concerns even more exacerbated.
- [04:23]
Galen Drouke
Yeah, I think an important signal in that comparison is that Americans preferences when it comes to policy will shift according to how energy prices affect them. And so I mentioned that the average price of gas nationally has shot up 50 cents per gallon in just a week. Over at the betting markets, there's a majority chance that prices exceed $4 a gallon this month on average. And so, you know, we were talking about energy, mostly electricity, in the context of AI data centers. But how do gas prices shape American public opinion?
- [04:59]
Gabe Fleischer
I think even more because I think, you know, we talk a lot obviously about, we Talk about affordability and inflation. And I think these can kind of seem to be, in some ways, kind of vague terms. You know, the inflation or affordability that speak to so many different, the prices of so many different things, some of which are moving in tandem. But, you know, the price of eggs and the price of gas or the price of housing, these are all very separate dynam. But we do know potentially out of all of them, the price of gas is potentially the one that is most indicative of American public opinion. It is literally the price that, you know, if you're driving, if you're driving around, it's the place you can't help but see in huge signs every time you pass a gas station exactly what the price of gas is at that station. And as people are driving around the last few days, they will have noticed it going up and up and up. And there is evidence to suggest, there's scholarly studies that have looked at it that can literally find an exact correlation between presidential approval ratings and gas prices and showing that is potentially the price, the kind of, you know, price vector that, that is most kind of responsible for shifting people's opinions. We saw this during the Biden era even as prices on some goods were, were going down or, or at least as inflation was going down on some goods. But even after kind of the war in Ukraine, as kind of price of oil continued to rise, the price of gas continued to rise, that, that voters were still very skeptical and of President Biden's insistence that that inflation was being tackled because they could see that the price of the gas they were purchasing was going up. So I think it is, it's incredibly significant in terms of how people are judging the economy, how people are judging the state of their own pocketbooks, and how they're ultimately judging a president.
- [06:37]
Galen Drouke
Yeah. And as a benchmark, Trump is at about a net negative 12 approval rating going into this. We haven't gotten a lot of updated polling so far since the conflict has begun. But the fact that his approval rating has not gone up is in some ways significant on its own, because usually when the country goes to war, there is a rally around the flag effect. And we'll get into, in just a minute some of the analysis that you did on Trump's attempts, or lack thereof, to sell this war before even starting it. But I want to read this. So we also got a pessimistic jobs report on Friday showing that we shed about 100,000 jobs in the last month. You wrote this marriage of job losses and rising gas prices is a Five alarm fire for Trump. The sort of thing that can wreck a presidency, and certainly that can presage steep midterm losses. Ask Jimmy Carter what high gas prices stemming from a crisis in Iran can do for one's political fortunes. Or Joe Biden, whether it helps to deny the economic realities that people feel. Okay, so remind us.
- [07:36]
Gabe Fleischer
Yeah, so I mean, those are two separate crises that were both, in their own ways, very urgent for presidency. And we both know neither of those presidents, for somewhat different reasons, but neither of them served a second term. And certainly both of them saw some midterm losses during their presidenc. Presidencies. That's during the Carter era, as we saw a very different crisis, but in the same country at the beginning of the Iranian revolution that we're now seeing. I guess Trump basically tried to undo decades later, but this is in 1979. But that also caused huge shocks to the oil markets. Came amid at the same time as other kind of economic instability, kind of causing stagflation, both the kind of marriage of both economic stagnation and the lack of economic growth, and then also really high prices and specifically high gas prices of kind of gas lines and a lot of instability in the oil market, which Carter's presidency never recovered from. Did not win reelection in 1980. And there's a lot of reasons for that, including the Iran hostage crisis, which is somewhat separate from the economic impacts of what was going on there, but still was incredibly destabilizing for his presidency. And then obviously many of us remember from the Biden era, I think most Americans could admit maybe there are some times when it would be necessary for a president to go to war, and then perhaps there'll be economic instability, stemm from that. But normally you might see a president have an Oval Office address, own up to that with the people, acknowledge the difficulties that might come from a conflict like this, and try to message to voters why it's necessary to do it. Anyways, Trump's response to gas prices going up, basically, he told Reuters in an interview, if they rise, they rise. Incredibly blase attitude, not exactly the same, but in some ways similar to what Joe Biden did for a lot of the time when inflation was going up during his presidency. Not really trying to. People think of the Bill Clinton moment in 1992, you know, I feel your pain, or even Jimmy Carter going on TV and at least trying to kind of address economic malaise as it was kind of referred to. But Biden often kind of took the strategy of really trying to deny that the economy was getting worse at all. In some cases, like Trump, for some of his term, had objective economic data to back that up. But even the case, no matter whether the President is right or wrong about how the economy is doing, it is very difficult to change people's minds once they have kind of got it set. The prices I see are going up. And you know that that's what I'm feeling. It's very hard to kind of change people's minds on that. And I think the other thing that is worth noting, you take both of those crises and then you take this one, we're in an especially unique period because those were, for the most part, not exclusively, but at least partially inflation shocks that were partially exogenous from anything the President was actively doing. Obviously, there's debates to be had. The degree to which the Biden economic agenda contributed to inflation there or how Biden was of Carter's handling of the Iran crisis might have made that situation worse. And those are all fair things to debate, but nothing to the degree of there is a literal line to be drawn. As you said, literally, Trump attacked Iran and gas prices go vertical immediately. So I think in the best of times, voters blame the president for gas prices going up and for economic instability, even when it's difficult to pin it exactly on the president. Here it is very easy for the opposition party to literally point to actions that everyone knows the president himself did and explain why that is related to the prices you're seeing go up.
- [11:03]
Galen Drouke
Yeah, I mean, not to mount one of my hobby horses, but the economic data was pretty, pretty conclusive. I think during Biden's presidency. For most of his presidency, Americans were literally getting poorer because prices were rising faster than wages. And, you know, the San Francisco Fed concluded that, you know, an overstuffed American rescue plan contributed significantly to the inflation, inflation that Americans felt and the inflation that Americans experienced above and beyond what people in other developed economies experienced as a result of supply chain snags that were Covid related. Okay, I'll dismount that hobby horse. For all 100%, but all true. There was a lot of consternation at the time. Like, first, Biden tried to own those economic policies, calling them bidenomics, saying that, you know, the combination of stimulus for the working class and industrial policy were going to contribute to rising wages for the worst off among us, whatever. Maybe, maybe long term, there are parts of that that could have been true. Ultimately, what we've seen over the past decade is by and large, the better off parts of the economy better off parts of the country doing even better. However, whether he tried to call it Bidenomics and claim ownership over it or he tried to say, you know, I understand inflation is bad, we're trying to do things to make it better, it didn't really affect public opinion. Americans knew what they were experiencing in many ways, like you said, seeing gas prices go up along the highway and whatnot. So in this sense, there's a lot of folks, analysts saying, oh, Trump should, Trump should say that he shouldn't be so dismissive. He should say he experiences he knows people's pain or that he's going to try to make it better or whatever. I mean, what difference does it make really? That clearly is not Trump's personality. And given that both tax didn't work for Biden, like why would Trump say I feel your pain and I'm sorry that this is happening and I'm going to try to make it better.
- [13:00]
Gabe Fleischer
I think it's a fair question. I think there's probably a middle ground. I think letting, let's put it this way, if who knows what'll happen between now and November. We don't know how long this war will last. We don't know what will happen next. But if these gas prices continue at this rate, we continue to see this sort of economic instability. Giving your opposition in an ad, being able to splash the quote, if they rise, they rise. I don't think ideal politically for a president. I agree with you. There's also oftentimes a downside to acknowledging economic instability when it happens and that that can also just backfire on the president. Cuz you see president saying I feel your pain, but then people are like, okay, what are you doing about my pain now that you're acknowledging it? But I think Trump has maybe gone a little bit farther in giving Democrats ammunition than it is at all necessary. Although I think it is notable that a lot of the quotes that he said about this have come in phone interviews, which is I think to some degree strategic. Trump has not been in front of cameras as much in the run up and during this war as you might expect. I think partially because you know, a phone interview, while you could splash a quote in an ad, it's no video. And also if you have all these different phone interviews given to different outlets, they're less likely to kind of give prominence to other outlets exclusives. So like it kind of buries it a little bit. But I think you're right and I think the broader point, kind of tying into what you said before about the Lack of a rally. The flag effect is that, like, we are clearly living in an age where it is just very difficult to move approval ratings and certainly very difficult to increase them. And I think, you know, we do think of foreign policy as sometimes being an area that could increase approval ratings that, you know, if, you know, obviously no one wants there to be a war or a terrorist attack, but that those sorts of moments do unite a country and lead to increased popularity for a president. And yet since 9 11, there's really, you know, so in the past 25 years, there's really no good evidence for that. You know, we saw President Obama, during the Obama administration, Osama bin Laden be killed, and a slight and kind of temporary increase to his approval rating, but not a very permanent or large one. You know, we saw it during the Biden administration. Foreign policy definitely had a big impact on his approval rating, but it was when kind of the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, and that's when we saw Biden's approval rating tank. And so I do think there's good reason to believe a, that presidential approval ratings in this era are just pretty static. So to your point, there's probably not much Trump could do either way to change people's minds about how the economy is, but that also that foreign policy can really only hurt a president, perhaps unless you're barring maybe the most extreme example of kind of a large scale terrorist attack, that you can really only mess up foreign policy. Like we saw Biden in Afghanistan or as we see some unpopular indications that Trump's war so far is unpopular, that people will punish you. But you take Venezuela, which on its own terms, what seems to be going successfully for Trump, he dislodged the leader there, who was an adversary of the US Seems to have kind of still incarcerated.
- [15:57]
Galen Drouke
Still incarcerated. Just a stone's throw from where I'm sitting right now.
- [16:00]
Gabe Fleischer
There you go. Right? Yeah, right. He's, he's sitting in a prison cell and his successor is pretty much doing what Trump wants. We've restarted diplomatic relations. He's getting oil from Venezuela. Like that's all going somewhat well. And there's no indication that that success has had any increase in his popular, in his approval rating. And I just think, you know, the war in Iran could end incredibly successfully and an incredible victory for the US And I don't think it would have much of an impact. I think it can really only hurt him.
- [16:25]
Galen Drouke
Yeah, it's an interesting dynamic which gets me to maybe a question that is then in part hard to answer. So on last week's podcast, I mentioned that Reuters polling shows American intervention in Iran at net negative 16 with the American public. That's one of the worst overall polls for Trump. But, like, the best one shows it at like, net negative 10. There's, there's no poll in which it's actually popular. There hasn't been a ton of new polling, but a recent Marist poll shows it at net negative 12. 86% of Democrats oppose. 60% of independents do, too, with 84% of Republicans supporting it. We can dig into the politics of Democrats and Republicans within the two parties in a second, but, I mean, what do you see as the upside and downside, political risks for Trump in this moment? Given what you said about approval being relatively static, like, do we feel like the bottom could actually fall out? Or if this, you know, it seems like you're saying if this wraps up neatly, even within the next week or so, it's not like Trump will become particularly popular. But things have had a way of working in, you know, sometimes unpopular second terms where the bottom does fall out. Maybe, maybe the, maybe that just doesn't happen for Trump. But I'm curious.
- [17:44]
Gabe Fleischer
Yeah, I, it is a difficult question to answer and I could always be wrong. I mean, basically there are now polls. I don't think this is exact, the averages show. But for example, I believe, like CNN's most recent poll and I believe one other showed basically Trump's approval rating now, and this is before the war started, is basically where his approval rating was after January 6, you know, the very nadir of his first term approval. So it is personally difficult for me to imagine it getting much lower than that, that we have reached somewhat approaching the kind of possible floor for Trump's approval rating. And that, you know, I do think we are in an age where it's just difficult to move those numbers. And I think both parties and that I just think, frankly, maybe approval ratings tell us less than they used to. I think the approval rating, like the independent number is, I think, very telling for, you know, how maybe swing voters are voting. Although even obviously identification is independent. It's, you know, always the most helpful political indicator. But, you know, that could maybe be a helpful indicator of where swing voters are going or something like that. But the end of the day, we know that gone are the days where you could have, like Richard Nixon sinking to, like the teens or George w. Bush after 9, 11. We know that there's like huge blocks of the country that no matter what, will support a president of their own party in an approved voting poll and will oppose a president of the other party. And that there's just really not much. There's a really narrow band of movement between that that it could move to. So, yeah, to answer your question, what does the bottom falling out look like? I mean, certainly the biggest risk, I think, apart from anything like the literal failure of the war, I think the biggest risk is what we've talked about is economic, that I don't think Americans are all that engaged one way or the other in who the next leader of Iran is or what the type of regime they have there, or in Venezuela. I don't think there's a whole lot of concern on the part of most Americans. I think if it goes really well, I'm sure approval of the war itself will go up and most Americans will be like, okay, that was a success. Just like we saw after the Iran bombing in June and then the Venezuela attack. Like once they became real and actually came without too much kind of chaos, approval of them went up. But that. It's still hard to imagine it really affecting the President's proof rating. But. But the economic aspect of it, I think could certainly hurt Republicans in the midterm elections. Whether we'll see that affect much of the approval rating is, I think, probably not gonna happen as much only because Trump is already so historically unpopular and his pro ratings already so low that it could keep getting worse for Republicans. But I don't think the proof rating is going to go so low. And I don't think even a really, you know, successful war effort will make it go much higher.
- [20:22]
Galen Drouke
Yeah, we've seen despite approval ratings be pretty stagnant. A lot of variability in terms of how presidents are rated on the issues, like specific issues.
- [20:31]
Gabe Fleischer
Yeah.
- [20:32]
Galen Drouke
For example, even though Biden was at in the low 40s, his approval on immigration was like net negative 20 or more or something like that.
- [20:40]
Gabe Fleischer
Mm.
- [20:40]
Galen Drouke
So on the war, it doesn't look like Trump is particularly popular. I wanna ask, though. Cause we mentioned that he has. He hasn't really been selling this war so much. Has America gone to war without public opinion backing the war in the modern polling era ever?
- [21:00]
Gabe Fleischer
I believe the analysis of that is. No, this is not work I've done personally, but I believe the New York Times announced this and found no. And then G. Eliot Morris at strength in Numbers, did the same analysis. And basically every time the US has gone to war since the advent of polling in the 90s, there has always been majority support for a war effort, at least its beginning. We've often seen War efforts slide and slide and slide, the longer they go on. Obviously we can think of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which became steadily and steadily less popular. But to have a war start this unpopular, not get there, is unprecedented in the modern.
- [21:36]
Galen Drouke
You wrote in, in another newsletter, quote, the first few days of a new war are the most crucial to win public support, which is why a military blitz abroad is usually accompanied by a flurry of activity at home. In their book Selling War to America, NYU professors Eugene Segunda and Terrence Moran write that voters are typically dazzled by these messaging campaigns, which are planned down to the minute. Quote, Americans will always buy a war if it's marketed properly, they write, why didn't Trump even try to sell this war?
- [22:07]
Gabe Fleischer
It's a good question. I think part of it speaks to what we were talking about a little bit earlier that I do think. I mean, I think Trump is a pretty savvy consumer of polls and a public opinion. I don't think he always moves responsibly to public opinion, although there are many examples of him doing so. But he is a savvy consumer of the polls. I do think part of it is a recognition on the part of the president that this was an unpopular war. It was going to be difficult to get it to the point where it was. And I think Trump is sort of imagining kind of the best case scenario of like a very quick war that he doesn't even need to sell and there's no even need to really get the public behind him. Kind of keep it somewhat on the back burner. You've seen him kind of, you know, as we've said, do really no press conferences, no Oval Office address. Pretty much every, most of what he said about the war has been through these kind of, you know, behind the curtain phone interviews where you don't even see the President. We don't hear recordings of his voice even in many cases. And obviously we've seen no debate in Congress. But. And then we see at the same time the president carry on somewhat strangely like a normal schedule of events. That is also somewhat unusual for the beginning of such a high profile war where you would normally see, if you saw images of the President, it's kind of exclusively in the Situation Room or meeting with troops or at obviously, tragically, a dignified transfer like we did see the president do a few days ago or speak an Oval Office address speaking to Congress. Those are the images we associate with a president at war. Instead, he's, he's kept on doing events like the data center event I mentioned he's had sports teams, things like that, not always successfully, like I wrote, kind of moving attention off the war. But I think the goal is a little bit to kind of keep it on the back burner knowing that Americans don't really pay that close attention to foreign policy and that it's hard to kind of win a foreign policy success in their eyes and that he can hopefully pull a success, kind of a rabbit out of the hat and then kind of just go to the people at the end of it and then that's when the big Oval Office suggests will come and say aha, ah, look what I was able to accomplish. Look at this. And I do think another piece of it, another related piece. Cuz as we've said, this is the most unpopular war effort in the modern era. The other question is how much is public opinion driving what Trump is doing at this point? Don't think even again, even if Trump were to have dislodged Maduro and you know, kind of the remnants of the Castro regime, the kind of continuing communist regime in Cuba and then the regime in Iran, even then I don't think it would be much of a political benefit to supervisorating or to Republicans, but it would be undoubtedly a huge legacy win for the president. Historically, you know, those are three regimes that have been incredibly adversarial to the United States for decades. If the president, he's not done this yet, but if he were able to dislodge all three of them in quick succession and he's already done with one, and then the other two, able to somehow install pro American leaders in those other two, which has not happened yet and there's no guarantee it will, would, I don't think be a huge political benefit, but it would undoubtedly you'll really lift the president's place in the history books. And this is something we've seen from other second term presidents. I think there is a point at which you start caring a little bit more about the history books than your kind of political standing because you never have to face reelection again. And Trump, even more so than most other presidents, you know, does not really seem to indicate that he has much of a legislative agenda. Does not really. You know, when he has talked about Republicans losing seats in the midterm elections, he's largely talked about the threat of himself getting impeached. And that that seems like that's kind of the greatest risk he sees from, you know, Republican losses in the midterms, which I do think speaks to the idea that I don't think he is. His biggest concern right now, I don't think, is elections, either the midterms or 2028, when at least constitutionally, he won't be on the ballot. And you know, instead that this is somewhat a play for the history books that doesn't matter what public opinion says. Now he's kind of looking towards what historians we saying decades down the line.
- [25:58]
Galen Drouke
Yeah. And I'm sure it's also not lost on anybody that his domestic agenda has been attempted through executive action. It's gotten caught up in the courts time and time again. Of course, when it comes to foreign policy, that's an area where he can pretty much do what he wants. And so if you want to build a legacy quickly and unilaterally, I guess that's where you can do it. Although I should say, say technically, declarations of war are meant to be the purview of Congress. And the House and Senate did vote on a war powers resolution last week. It ultimately failed. How did that play out? What was the, what was the breakdown in terms of votes and who sort of went to the other side?
- [26:39]
Gabe Fleischer
Yeah, so we saw mostly along party lines in both chambers on those votes. We saw a couple of Democratic defections in the Senate and the House. In the Senate we saw John Fetterman, who's I think, you know, at this point become clearly the most pro Israel Democrat really in either chamber of Congress. We saw him vote for it in the Senate. And in the House there were a handful of kind of vulnerable swing district Democrats, Jared golden and was one in Maine who defected in the House vote.
- [27:07]
Galen Drouke
Gottheimer, I think as well.
- [27:09]
Gabe Fleischer
Yeah, yes, Josh gottheimer. Greg Landsman. And so we saw those defections in the House. And then in the Republican side it was Thomas Massie and Warren Davidson, who are both kind of two kind of, you know, you think of kind of the historic kind of the, if you think of like what the original kind of Tea Party, you know, kind of more libertarian aligned, certainly both longtime opponents of foreign intervention. That kind of flavor of Republican that, you know, I think was thought at the beginning of this year, beginning of last year, to potentially be kind of rising in the Republican Party that, you know, Donald Trump had kind of breathed new life into that kind of wing of the Republican Party, but has clearly kind of started treading the other direction and that most of the Republicans that, you know, Massie and Davidson are not the only Republicans that have been aligned with that sort of ideology in the House or Senate, but the majority of other kind of more isolationist type Republicans really kind of very quietly ended up voting to support him. And I wrote about my newsletter. Josh Hawley, who's kind of one of the kind of loudest kind of isolationists in the Senate Republican of Missouri. He, you know, for a few days after the war started, didn't even release a statement, was the last Senate to release a statement on the war, similar to how J.D. vance, another isolationist, has been fairly quiet since the war began. So you're seeing most of those sort of isolationist Republicans kind of falling in behind Trump in Congress, but not doing so in sort of the kind of ways that we've seen kind of these Republicans kind of really loudly praise Trump at other kind of points in his administration.
- [28:39]
Galen Drouke
Today's podcast is brought to you by you, the listeners. Without paid subscribers, GD Politics simply wouldn't exist. Your support means that we can make an independent podcast guided by curiosity, rigor and a sense of humor, and that we can have conversations like the one we're having on today's episode. Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes and can join in the paid subscriber chat to pass along questions for us to discuss on the show. You can also connect your personal feed to your favorite podcast player so you get every episode wherever you listen to podcasts. Become a paid subscriber today@gdpolitics.com we've got plenty of great stuff in store coming your way in 2026, so it's a great time to join the crew@gdpolitics.com we hope to see you there. How do you see the politics of this war playing out within the Republican Party? Because on one hand there are pretty loud voices, at least in the podcast space. I haven't watched Fox recently, but I've listened to Megyn Kelly's podcasts, other podcasts where there's a lot of criticism of move. But at the same time, in the poll that I mentioned earlier, the Marist poll, 85% of Republicans support the president's action. So is this just a disagreement amongst elites? Is this something that runs deeper within the Republican Party? Will it just take time for sort of opinion to evolve and some of these disagreements to play out? What do you make of the internal politics of.
- [30:13]
Gabe Fleischer
I mean, I think it's possible it'll just take time, as you're saying, but at least right now, yeah, as far as Republican voters, there is not really any split to speak of anything on the order of, as you've said, you know, there's been a number of kind of MAGA influencers, perhaps we could call them, who, you know, have quite passionately come out against the war. We don't see anything like that when we look at polls of voters. I mean, and I think it's most interesting to look at. There have been a few polls. CNN did this, I know, and I believe one other that literally broke out asked voters who identify as MAGA Republicans versus voters who just identify as Republicans broadly, and asking them whether they support the war or not. And I think you take a step back and you think about how you would expect that answer to go. Let's think about what are the issues where kind of the MAGA movement, as it sort of started to emerge, most clearly tried to draw splits from the rest of the Republican Party and tried to say this is how kind of the old school Republican Party has done things. We are a new movement. We are a new kind of group within the party and that we reject some of the old things of the Republican Party. One of the biggest ones was an opposition to foreign interventionism, opposition to regime change, wars and nation building. I mean, you can think back to Donald Trump on the 2016 debate stage railing against Jeb Bush and talking about kind of the wars that your brother started, talking to Jeb and kind of criticizing Republican support for the war in Iraq. And that being a huge talking point of his early campaigns and in 2024, that being a huge talking point of his promising to be the peace president and to end wars. And yet when it's been polled, MAGA Republicans are even more likely than other Republicans to support the war, which is already a very high level of just generic Republican support is already in the 70s, 80s, depending on the poll. And the MAGA Republicans are even more. Which I do think goes to show, you know, in elite spaces amongst, I think, a group of think tank scholars and podcasters and commentators who have tried to, you know, kind of create a sort of intellectual framework around the MAGA movement and tried to kind of explicate, you know, I think in some cases just based on what was already their own ideology and trying to place it on the MAGA movement and say, kind of plant a flag. This is where the Republican Party is heading when Donald Trump wins. This is what it means, and this is where the party is going, and this is what the MAGA movement is. And then yet it doesn't seem like those efforts have been very successful because clearly for most voters, despite your kind of previous inclinations they may have had, you know, to be a member of the MAGA movement means to support Donald Trump. You know, it's allegiance to, you know, a single politician rather than, I think, a movement of very clear ideals or principles that kind of exist outside of Trump. And so we've seen, you know, I think very little, you know, split kind of on the, on the kind of voter level within either Republicans broadly and then even less within the exact group of Republicans you might think would have misgivings about the war kind of mag, Republicans who had previously been seen as sort of more isolationist.
- [33:08]
Galen Drouke
It is going to be very interesting to see how this plays out and whether it lasts long enough to play out in dramatic fashion because polling is pretty, you know, show 85% of Republicans on board. When we talked about the vote tallies in Congress, although there has been some, some trepidation or a little bit of criticism here and there. You see the vast majority of Republicans in the House and Senate aligned with the president. And yet you have some very high profile voices in the party, Tucker, Megan, others, you know, saying and like a lot more online as well. Those are obviously the bold face names, but a lot of skepticism and outright criticism. So does, does this end up playing out in the broader electorate? And one, one test of this is going to be Thomas Massie's own primary in Kentucky in May where he has been extremely critical of the president. I mean, I'm curious if you have thoughts on how that primary might play out and also maybe how the Israel question comes to play out in it as well, because this part of the Republican Party has become increasingly skeptical of support of Israel. That is sort of, you know, a part of this primary in particular. And just before the war began, I think it was the day before the war began in Iran, Gallup released a poll showing that for the first time ever, Americans now say they sympathize more with the Palestinians in the Middle east situation than with Israelis. So it was 41% of Americans saying they sympathize more with Palestinians, 36% saying they sympathize more with Israelis. That can't really happen unless you have sort of like a mixture of different ideologies shifting their opinion. Like, we know that the left has grown increasingly anti Israel. And we saw that even before October 7, before the war in Iran. But it's accelerated over the past couple years. It now seems like this has become more of an issue on the right as well.
- [35:11]
Gabe Fleischer
I think, I don't know. I think that that again, it's sort of clearly in the elite level, there is no doubt, I think on the voter level I mean, if you look at the Gallup poll, it is again mostly Democrat. I think that there's no doubt that over the last few years there's been a collapse in support, American support. I think the idea a few years ago that Americans would have sympathized more with Palestinians over Israelis, I mean that was such a built in kind of, I think part of American conventional wisdom that it was kind of a political third rail, that that would never change. And yet I think a big part of that decline is a collapse of support among Democrats, a collaps support among independents. But even in that Gallup poll, you still see 70% of Republicans who sympathize more with Israel. And that's only down. That's down from 80% in 2024, which is a 10 point drop, which is notable. But still only 13% of Republicans say they sympathize more with Palestinians. So still not a super polarizing issue, I would say, among the Republican Party, a shifting one. And as we've talked about, maybe the shifts on kind of the elite level level will kind of water down to the voter level. Those are things that happen over time. Clearly it's happened incredibly quickly on the Democratic side that both elites and voters, or perhaps I would say voters faster than elites in some cases have really, you know, kind of in response to the last few years of war in Gaza have really quickly.
- [36:30]
Galen Drouke
It's almost the opposite. Amongst Democrats, voters have led the elites and amongst Republicans, elites or some elites are leading the vote.
- [36:38]
Gabe Fleischer
Yeah. And so I think we think of John Zoller was kind of a scholar of public opinion kind of decades ago, kind of one of the earlier scholars of public opinion. And he did a lot of work specifically on foreign policy. And kind of his finding was that Americans don't know much about foreign policy. You ask them different questions about who foreign leaders are or different conflicts outside of the borders of the US and that there isn't widespread knowledge by kind of American voters. And kind of his biggest finding was that, that the voters basically follow elite cues when it comes specifically to foreign policy. That the voters kind of always gonna follow the elites. Cause they don't know much about what's going on outside the country. They know they don't know much and they kind of pick the politicians they trust and then kind of follow them. I think it's true that on the Democratic side we've seen that theory not necessarily hold up as well in an age of social media, but you don't need an elite queue to, you know, see things in a TikTok feed or to see on social media images of war that that for many Democrats have clearly kind of shocked the conscience and kind of changed their views on the conflict. And then on the Republican side, we've seen kind of an elite split, but that clearly the elite who matters most in the Republican Party remains Donald Trump. And so I do think that to kind of go to your question about the Massie primary, not gonna make a prediction on how that will go. But I think similar to when we saw Marjorie Taylor Greene and Trump kind of threatened to endorse a primary challenger against her in kind of these are both very Trumpy, very rapid districts. And what was Greene's response? It was to drop out because I think that kind of spoke to how nervous she was about running a primary in her district against Trump's endorsement. Doesn't mean Massie couldn't win. But it does show, I think Trump is still kind of the most dominant elite in the party, much more than Tucker Carlson or Megyn Kelly or anyone else. He is still clearly tied himself very closely to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. I think that Gallup poll shows in a general election, that's a very risky proposition to be conducting a war so clearly aligned with Israel at the exact time when opinions of Israel in the United States have collapsed among independent voters. That is clearly kind of a risky thing to do in a general election. But in primaries, what we do seem, seem to see in kind of Republican polls, we see some evidence that kind of young Republicans and kind of young men, their views on these issues are kind of shifting. But that by and large, you know, Republicans, sympathy towards Israel has declined a little bit, but not nearly as much as, you know, you would think, listening to Tucker or Megyn Kelly or anyone.
- [39:06]
Galen Drouke
Right. I was going to say because their audiences are significantly younger than the median Republican anyway. Right. The median Republican is absolutely not listening to Tucker or Megan. They are not consuming TV or audio news on the regular. And to the extent that they are consuming broadcast news, it's probably Fox where you're not going to find there's a reason that Megan and Tucker no longer work at Fox News.
- [39:26]
Gabe Fleischer
And you see Netanyahu, I believe, has appeared multiple times on Fox since the war has begun. I still think, yeah, the folks, the hosts who remain on Fox to the degree, like you said, that is still kind of a place where Republican public opinion is being molded, which I think is shifting in its own right. But to the degree that still exists, you still see most of the hosts who remain are kind of more and kind of in line with kind of the older Republican Party foreign policy consensus and have continued to kind of host Prime Minister Netanyahu multiple times, I think for much friendlier interviews than you would see, you know, if Tucker Carlson were interviewing him, for example, that those are, there's, there's a clear split there in kind of media, media elites in the party.
- [40:03]
Galen Drouke
Congress has not had its last say on the war. There could be future resolutions. I think, in fact there are likely to be, yes. And also eventually Congress will have to appropriate funds since it appears this is costing about a billion dollars a day. What can we expect from future resolutions? Like what kind of resolutions are we looking at and is there a sense that Congress could potentially withhold funds from the war?
- [40:30]
Gabe Fleischer
So one, in terms of future resolutions you mentioned earlier, Josh Gottheimer, obviously kind of a moderate Democrat from New Jersey. He has co sponsored another resolution that would restrict the use of force in Iran. It's a little bit different than the one that came to a vote last week because it wouldn't require the war to stop immediately. It kind of gives the president like a 30 day window where Congress would be saying you can fight this war, but then after 30 days the authorization would sunset, kind of giving the president a little bit more cushion, but still ultimately reining him in. You know, notably the House vote that failed on the authorization of use of force last week, it was very slim and at least in that vote. And this is only because there was one Republican absence which obviously future votes wouldn't necessarily have, although that one absent absence was Tony Gonzalez, who people might recognize from the news, has been in a lot of scandal, is not running for reelection. Potentially we could expect more absences from him going forward. But it only failed because of the four Democrats who voted against it. If they had flipped, that would have been enough for the resolution to pass. At least with one Republican absence that we saw, three out of four of the Democrats who voted against that resolution are now supporting this other one which is expected to come up for a vote, I believe the week of March 23rd. Now interestingly, because of how that resolution is written, that would basically mean like I mentioned, the 30 day window, but because it won't come to a vote until March 23, that'd be like maybe give Trump like an extra week of the war and then it would kind of end it kind of much more immediately than perhaps the kind of authors of the resolution had in mind when they first wrote it. But either way, that has more Democratic support Obviously there's still questions on how Republicans would feel about that. If there's complete Republican attendance for that vote, it would still fail even if the Democrats all supported. But that is kind of one more war powers resolution to watch, kind of a compromise war powers resolution that could potentially kind of unite the Democratic caucus. And if it could theoretically get more Republican defectors, especially if the war kind of drags on and more Republicans begin to oppose it, that could be an interesting vote to watch, although there's no guarantee that more Republicans that will kind of shift as the war goes on. But it's possible. Funding is an interesting question because that's kind of whereas the current status quo with kind of war authorizations seem to be be kind of implicit approval unless stated otherwise. And we can kind of think at this point now Congress has in some ways implicitly authorized the war by not blocking it is kind of where the status quo is now. But funding is very different. There's no implicit grant of funding to the executive branch unless Congress affirmatively and actively gives him more money. Now, the Defense Department is very inflated already. It's funding from the one big beautiful bill. So there is probably some Runway. But as you said, at the tune of $1 billion a day, eventually the time will come where the president will have to go to Congress and ask for emergency funding. One thing I've been thinking about that I haven't really seen anyone really comment on is we've already seen some talks within the Republican Party of another reconciliation package, another kind of party line bill that Republicans could pass. Now we know as we've seen some conversations about the emergency war funding, there's been some indications that Democrats may be more favorable to the package, although that has mostly just been in terms of Democrats like Alyssa Slotkin and kind of Democrats saying, I'm going to wait and see, wait for a proposal to come before me. So not really saying they will support it, but not necessarily opposing it. I still think, though, you can expect it would be very difficult for a war funding package to get above 60 votes in the Senate, get around the filibuster, which is why I'll be curious to see if there starts to be talk of something we haven't really seen any conversation about. Do we see a reconciliation package with war funding tucked in where they could, where Republicans could try to fund the war with just 51 votes in the Senate and kind of a slim 218 votes in the House? Now that will be very difficult on its own. As we've discussed, Republicans like Thomas Massie and Warren Davidson would likely not vote for that package. We're working with a very slim majority for Mike Johnson in the House. House. And that's layered on top of whatever else might be wedged into this reconciliation package, might cause its own splits within the party in the House and the Senate. People will remember from previous reconciliation efforts. It's not easy to get those sorts of bills across the finish line. So there's no guarantee that that would work either. But I do wonder if that is eventually something Republicans will start considering, because it is hard at this point to imagine 60 votes. That would be seven Senate Democrats. Maybe you'd have John Fetterman, but then you would need six others who voted against the war last week to then vote to fund it. That'd be very difficult. And then we're gonna be in a very interesting place where you'll see the president, at multiple points in his administration has tried to shift money around within different accounts and try to kind of make money last longer than it has during shutdowns and things like that. I'm sure we would see efforts like that. And I think one interesting thing there is, you know, the courts have largely blocked the president when he's tried to kind of, you know, tamper with congressional funding in some of his more kind of creative interpretations of funding law have mostly been shot down by the courts. The difference being, we do know that most courts, including the Supreme Court, not in the tariffs case, but in other cases, are really resistant to get involved in these sorts of disputes when they hinge on foreign affairs and when they. When they hinge on kind of war powers, are very hesitant to get involved in war powers disputes, but then even kind of funding disputes. And, you know, we didn't see this in terms of tariffs, which are. Brett Kavanaugh tried to argue in his dissent that that was related to foreign policy. The majority did not accept that. But we did see in an earlier case on kind of the court's emergency docket early in the administration where the president tried to, you know, withhold foreign aid funding, you know, USAID funding. And the court basically did allow that to go forward under the presumption that the president gets a little bit more discretion over funding, over congressional appropriation when foreign policy is at. Is at issue. That would, you know, I'm sure there would be legal challenges if Trump tries to move money around and kind of create $1 billion a day out of. From other accounts to try to fund the war. That would likely lead to legal challenges, but ones where he would probably have a stronger footing legally than some of the other, you know, fights we've seen over, like education funding or domestic kind of funding.
- [46:45]
Galen Drouke
I'm going to ask you an answer question at the moment, but how do you think this ends? Because in some ways, Trump has a lot of flexibility since we don't have a super well defined goal, or at least the goals have shifted from, you know, eliminating nuclear capabilities to unconditional surrender to, like, regime, from regime change absolute to regime change, life, a popular uprising versus someone lower down on the totem pole taking control. In some ways, he's got a lot of options to claim victory because we don't know what victory would even mean. In the past, it seems like one of the biggest, I don't know, factors in enforcing Trump's hand have been the markets. And that's what we started by talking about today. You know, I'm curious what your general sense of.
- [47:41]
Gabe Fleischer
Yeah, I mean, like you said, hard to answer, impossible. Predict a lot of different scenarios that we could see. If I had to guess, I do think, I mean, like you said, the President does have ultimate flexibility here because the war has gone. So I guess loosely explained. And as you said, he's laid out so many different rationales that he could try to pick one and claim a victory. That is sort of my expectation. I mean, clearly, for now, the US And Israel continue to kind of pummel Iran. I mean, it is true that Iran is incredibly weakened relative to where they were one month ago or six months ago. If you go before the June bombing or two years ago, before kind of their whole sort of axis of kind of militant groups was really kind of decimated in the last few years of war in the Middle East. So Iran is in a weakened position. And I do think at some point that is my expectation, my guess, that Trump will use some sort of fig leaf to say we've beat them, they may not actively surrender, but he will basically say, there's nothing more we can do, we've completely won. I mean, already we saw a few days ago Trump insist that he should be able to pick the next leader of Iran. Clearly, he's already not been able to do that because as you mentioned at the top just today, the clerics in Iran have kind of elevated the Ayatollah's son as the new supreme leader. So he's kind of already lost that battle, at least for now. Who knows? Although there could, obviously he could be targeted and there could be more that could happen there. But that's something that's been denied to him that he was hoping to be able to pick the next leader, at least for now. And so, yeah, then I think we would see some climb down by the president, some kind of declaration of victory and try to kind of market that as a win. I think that's kind of the most likely scenario. But that said James Mattis, who was Trump's defense secretary in his first term, saying he was fond of was the enemy always gets a vote. And so what does it look like if theoretically Trump does try to take that route, declares victory, but Iran does not agree to that and they continue to attack US Bases. And as you said, we've already seen seven US Troops be killed. What if we start to see mounting US Casualties or even just one more instance of US Casualties after Trump withdraws? That would obviously put more pressure on him to then re engage and then go back. It's a difficult thing to kind of unilaterally declare victory in a war when your opponent could still continue and fire at you and then you would still need to respond, although perhaps we would then just see a slowdown of sort of, you know, more kind of one off strikes back and forth and less of kind of the very intensive strike strikes we've seen. So, you know, it's no guarantee Trump would be able to succeed in that. But I think that's kind of my expectation is that eventually, perhaps partially in response to markets or because legitimately Iran is weakened to the point where Trump will be able to say, you know, we kind of achieved what I wanted, which was eliminate kind of the immediate threat Iran posed. And now we're getting it.
- [50:30]
Galen Drouke
Well, we're going to leave things there for today. We will see see how it all plays out. Thank you so much for joining me, Gabe.
- [50:35]
Gabe Fleischer
Thanks for having me, Gabe.
- [50:37]
Galen Drouke
My name is Galen Druke. Remember to become a subscriber to this podcast@gdpolitics.com and wherever you listen to podcasts. Paid subscribers get about twice the number of episodes and can join in our paid subscriber chats and pass along questions for us to discuss on the show. Most importantly, you ensure that we can keep making a podcast that prioritizes curiosity, ferocity, rigor and a sense of humor. Also, be a friend of the pod and go give us a five star rating wherever you listen to podcasts, maybe even tell a friend about us. Thanks for listening and we will see you soon.