Transcript
David Pakman (0:00)
Republicans are starting to panic behind the scenes and the reason is what happens to them in November and what happens to them when Donald Trump is gone. There is new reporting about Republican senators, not members of the House, worried that Trump could cost them everything eight and a half months from now. Not just the House, but also the Senate. We're going to break down what is happening and why there is suddenly a major problem. Also, Trump forgets his own endorsement in a bizarre moment that raises new questions. And Marjorie Taylor Greene indicates that the Republican Party may be in trouble going beyond just Trump. We are also going to look at Dan Bongino now, having left the FBI back to podcasting suddenly. Says there is no Epstein client list and there is no evidence is anybody going to buy this? And by the way, he may be telling the truth. It was before that these people were lying incessantly. All of that plus Ruth Ben Ghiat joins me to talk about authoritarianism and what happens when the Dear Leader is gone. She's an expert on this. Going to be a fascinating conversation. Today. We are following growing panic in the Republican Party that Donald Trump might cost them not just the House of Representatives in November, but also the Senate now. It is less likely. The Senate looks way safer than the House, but there is a huge asymmetrical risk here. Imagine the consequences for Donald Trump and his legacy and for maga, the future of maga, if he ends up losing both the House and the Senate just eight and a half months from now. If you think Trump is triggered and unhinged and nearly daily now because he can't do whatever he wants, just wait until Democrats control the House and Senate and Trump and his friends and family are choked with investigation after investigation and oversight. But let's talk about how we would get there and whether we can make it happen. What's happening behind the scenes is that Republican senators are now openly warning Trump could cost us everything, not just the House but also the Senate. One senator said, are we doing enough? We're not doing anything. Which is not opposition messaging about how the Republican Party is failing to connect with voters. That's internal alarm. That's what do we say to voters to convince them to vote for us despite Trump? And it's a relatively simple problem, which is that Trump has a major political liability and it is hitting Republicans where they care most, which is power. What's driving this panic is that Republicans have the power, but they have almost nothing to run on going into 2026. Yes, they can say the economy is awesome, but that didn't work out particularly well for the Biden and ultimately Harris candidacy. Yes, they can say we're doing immigration. Except most of these Republicans know that the way that ICE and CBP and Border Patrol are carrying out the immigration fiasco is not popular with Americans. So they are wondering, what can we actually run on? Now, as far as the numbers, the majority in the House is razor thin. They've struggled to pass major legislation. They're divided internally. And Trump himself reportedly told Republicans, we've already passed everything that you need. You should be able to get yourselves reelected with everything that we've done, which is quite delusional. That is a disaster heading into a midterm because voters want results. Even Republican Senator John Kennedy basically admitted voters don't care about appropriations bills or the confirmation of nominees. They care about cost of living. They care about affordability. They care about what do my groceries cost. And even though I get messages from people going, david, my, my eggs are now cheaper, the totality of inflation and cost of living is that concerns remain high and prices continue going up. They're not going up insanely quickly, but they are still going up. We had a historically long government shutdown. They're not doing well on immigration, as I mentioned. And so that is going to put Republican candidates. Remember, Trump's not on the ballot directly, but Republican candidates are going to have to go back to voters and say what? In order to justify getting reelected. When you don't have real policy wins, you need at least message discipline. Trump is maybe the least disciplined president that we've ever had. And that's kind of a deeper problem here. Trump dominates the political environment and it crowds out everything else. Every single controversy, every investigation, every scandal, every chaotic moment puts the attention on Trump. Republican candidates can't talk about local issues. They can't talk about economic plans. But because Trump is hijacking the conversation mostly with scandals and pseudo scandals, the Epstein situation, I mean, forget about it. That is such a massive risk. And Trump's name appearing tens of thousands of times, hundreds, hundreds of thousands, somebody said a million, seems exaggerated. The messy response from the administration, the lack of transparency, the Justice Department controversy, whether voters ultimately care about the substance of is constant noise and constant instability. And Republicans are on defense. And midterms punish instability. The president's party almost always loses ground in midterms. That's the default. That's the expected. Except in very rare cases, you add internal Republican division to that. Weak legislative results, the anxiety over the economy, that voters still have the controversy every single day. And that's how Republicans end up panicking and saying, we might lose everything here. Now, lawmakers are trying to focus more on their individual campaigns, but ultimately they are going to have to make a decision. Do I separate from Trump? And what is the backlash from such a separation? We're going to see that in a moment with regard to Marjorie Taylor Greene's old seat. So this is a tension that is really becoming difficult to ignore. They can't distance themselves without angering some of the baseball that loves Trump. They can't fully embrace Trump because they risk a lot of voters who are increasingly sick of Trump. So they are kind of stuck. I don't feel bad for them. They created this problem by choosing this guy as their nominee back in 2016. They could have gone a different direction. But we need to think about it in terms of what can Democrats do to punish Republicans the most electorally? And as Republicans look at this landscape and they see this decimated party, limited policy achievements, fractures, vulnerable on the economy, scandal every single day, and a dominant figure that is only hurting them rather than helping, they are going to have to figure out what did they do. They're not so much afraid of losing an argument about policy, they're afraid of losing everything because there's not even an opportunity for those discussions. So I, I welcome this. I relish this. I'm enjoying the panic, while at the same time, I think it's important to acknowledge the most likely outcome is that Democrats don't take the Senate, Republicans keep the Senate, Democrats take the House. We should still do everything we can to try to take all of it from Republicans. And as I said before, if you think Trump is triggered now, just wait until he has to spend two years with Democrats controlling the House and maybe Democrats controlling the Senate. So it's an aspirational thought, but not a completely unrealistic one. Donald Trump had a scary brain fail just hours ago where he completely forgot his own major endorsement of a candidate. And it happened on camera. And people are noticing and they are getting scared. Let me explain what's going on here. Donald Trump was asked about the race for Marjorie Taylor Greene's seat. Marjorie Taylor Greene, of course, choosing to resign from Congress. Trump says there's a lot of good people and I might just have to endorse someone.