B (3:06)
like that this is in there. I mean, do they sound like someone who's on their back foot who are desperate to make a deal? Why? These people are religious zealots, but they're not stupid. Now, you could argue what they believe is stupid, but they're very savvy and they're very good at the same thing that the American President is good at. Lying, defying norms and denying realities. Okay, look, let's be honest. Right now, we're in a position where you don't know who's more trustworthy on what's happening here, a bunch of zealots or the American President. I mean, let's be honest. I'm not saying that the American President is a terrorist. I'm not saying that they're better than him. I mean, that is what you have going for you is the idea that if you question what's happening in Iran, you are anti American, you hate the troops, you want America to lose. Really? That is so weak, so pathetic that there's opportunity in this. But the opportunity is not to just say, this all sucks and Trump sucks and what he did here sucks. Because that's obvious. For the people who want to see it, it's already obvious. The opportunity is in using his war of choice to make a different choice for yourselves. And a proposition for the American voter, which is to say this is what he cares about. What we care about is reconnecting with you. Our platform is not that Trump sucks, it's that we can fix what's wrong with America for you. He's focused on this. We're focused on this. And this is affordability, the regime. See, I would have all of these rifts that play off what's happening in Iran, but move them into the domestic domain. Meaning what? You want to fight the regime that threatens us most? Okay, then you're not going to be over there. You're going to be right here at home fighting the health care people and the price pirates in our top heavy economy. That's what you fight. You want to stop the spread of terror. Well, what are most people afraid of in America right now, thank God? And who knows for how long. We don't have a jihadi problem, an extreme Islamism problem in America. We have an affordability crisis. We have a death of the American dream going on because the expectations just don't make sense anymore. That's the opportunity. The midterms are not going to be a relitigation of the Iran war. They're going to be a litigation based on what was compromised because of the Iran war. And that's if Trump is lucky. If Trump is lucky, that's all it is. But we don't know what's going to happen. You know, this is not really a ceasefire. We don't know that this is going to lead to anything better. My guess is that the regime played this as a timeout, as a break. Use this time, figure out its next moves, but not to make some deal. It's clear that Trump is going to let them survive. He's saying other things because he's hearing people like me say that he's allowing them to survive. But there is an opportunity here that is being missed in what I'm hearing from the Democrats. And they got to get this right, and they got to get it right soon, because this is the key for the midterms. I'm Chris Cuomo. Welcome to the Chris Cuomo Podcast. Now, what we're dealing with here is that the midterms are going to be about what's happening in America. This Iran war has been a distraction from what's happening in America. MAGA is done. MAGA is done. There is no more a Trump led populist movement for domestic reforms going on. It's not what this administration's about. MAGA is done. Now the people who voted that way, not the bigots, not the racists, not the xenophobes, people with legitimate despair, disaffection, desperation for better to disrupt the norms, to disrupt the system, to clean it up. That's still real. In fact, it's more real than ever. That's why the no Kings protests are humongous. That's not just anti Trump, it's anti a lot of things. The need is real, the desperation is real, and MAGA is done. That's clearly not what this administration is about. So there's opportunity in that. Who is about that? Look, that was the traditional Democrat space. Let's be honest. Traditionally, before Trump, Republicans fought for the rich exclusively and outwardly with their trickle down. And the Democrats were for everybody else. Now the Democrats, ostensibly in terms of the optics of social media politics, are a bunch of rich lefties, educated snobs, who are about really freaky cultural plays and who don't get the reality that the rest of the people are living and who hate their country. Now, do I agree with that? No. But perception is reality in politics. And you let yourself be painted that way. You handed a second term to Trump. Be honest. Sometimes it's a little, you know, it's a little hackneyed, this idea that you didn't win, I lost, whatever. It's a zero sum situation. So whether you did it to yourself or I did it to you, we wind up in the same place. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that you recognize that dynamic and do something about it if you want a different outcome. And what that means here is that you don't hand it to them. You get back to your roots as Democrats, reconnecting to the people who need you most, who don't have a voice. You don't cater to the oligarchs, you don't cater to the top. You cater to everybody else. The reality in America is that the majority, the many, are being held hostage by the few. It's true in our media, social media dominates. But it's not reality. It's all fringe. Our politics caters to the loud people on each side. Our policies catered to the top, not to the many. And that's what has changed. Now, some of it you can't do anything about. If the algorithms are rewarding, the kind of rage, bait and stuff, the enragement instead of engagement, then that's what it's going to be. And anybody who wants to get paid and be a celebrity and be known is going to play that game. And some are going to play it better than others, and that's what you're going to get. But our politics has to be bigger than our popularity contest online, right? Our politics is bigger than our podcasts. What it has to be about is who connects to the many. And what the many need is an advocate and a disruption of the norms that are creating the cost of living crisis. You know, when you look at who Trump has lost, he's lost independence and he's lost white, non college educated workers. Now, you may have heard me say before, I hate that demographic description, non college educated. Why? Because it is a none too subtle code that you're stupid. And what do we know? Not only is going to college no signature event in terms of meaning that you're a sophisticated person intellectually, the problem is that there is a correlation between going to college and not going to college and who you tend to vote for and why. And there are all kinds of social theories for it. I just don't like it. But here's what matters. It doesn't matter what I like. What matters is what is instructive. And what is instructive is that people who have to work, who have to take whatever job pays them the most, who have to have multiple jobs, they have been the most upset and they are the ones, many of them left unions, left the Democratic Party and moved to maga. They are now up for grabs. Absolutely up for grabs. Why? Because this administration is not for them. And even to the extent that it talks the talk, it doesn't walk the walk and they know it. People are not stupid. I don't care if you went to college. You probably know more about life if you're 24 years old as someone who went and became an artisan and learned to trade and in and work for someone as an apprentice and is now trying to get their own small business going a few years in than someone who's a couple years out of college getting coffee for somebody at a publishing house or yet is still in school and professional school. I think that there's a lot more to be said for people who are living their lives and acquainted with taxation and cost of living themselves instead of on someone else's tit. But the opportunity is still there. You got to see it.
