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Hold your money. You've got a free 31st of July. What? I'm so excited about this story. Oh, yeah.
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produced and presented by the DSR network. I'm your host, Greg Sargent. [Music] Duttle Trump's own allies and many other Republicans have quietly started to fear the worst about the midterms. According to new media reports, they worried the loss of the house could be bigger than expected.
They've even started to contemplate the possible loss of the Senate, too. What's got them rattled is there's no sign Trump can get the focus back onto the economy. He just exploded with wild new tirades about his ballroom, about Fox News, and about judges. And there are even signs that Trump's been about the war in Iran is backfiring for Republicans as well.
“Few people understand the interaction between Trump's derangement and GOP politics better than George Conway.”
The former GOPer turned Trump critic who's running for Congress in New York City as a Democrat. So we're talking to him about all of it. George, nice to have you on. Nice to be on. So just in the last few hours, Trump exploded on truth social because he thinks Fox News isn't giving the California GOP,
Gubernatorial candidate and up attention. He erupted because a judge blocked parts of his ballroom. His feud with the Pope continues. He just posted something that looked a little like opposition research about the Pope. George, anything but the economy, right?
And I mean, he is somebody who has always been marked by personal obsessions, whatever's bugging him,
whatever he sees on television, whoever he thinks has slighted him. And in a sense, this is nothing new. But he's reached a different stage here because even though he was doing a lot, I mean, there were weekends where we scratched our head and said, what's wrong with his guy 25th Amendment and so on. But the difference now is that he's less inhibited.
People like him who are narcissistic sociopaths, they get worse over time. And in addition to that, his age, and I'm not saying he has dementia, but he certainly, his brain isn't functioning as well as it ever did, even though I don't think it really functioned that well. He's becoming more disinhibited. And he's got fewer people around him who can tell him, don't say that, don't do that.
Please put the phone down, not that they ever really could do it. But fewer people, you know, basically if you tell him, no, you're gone. And that's something that didn't happen as much in the first Trump term. But now he's just not listening to anybody. And as these types of personalities, these sick people,
and we've seen them throughout history, get more and more powerful,
and get more and more detached from reality. And as a result, they become more dangerous, not to themselves, but also to the people they supposedly serve. There's a political report that's really striking about rising GOP anxiety about the midterms. It said Republicans are exasperated by the constant lunacy from the White House.
One GOP operative said this, "Everything is made more difficult by the nonsense coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. A former advisor to Trump's 2024 campaign said this, "The road to victory runs through a consistent economic message, "unfortunately, Trump ignores the road map.
"George, you know how Republican politics works. "What's going on with all this? "Who's trying to communicate what to whom here?"
Well, I don't, I think they're trying to communicate something to Trump,
but he's not listening. He no longer cares. He is off in his own reality now. And the people, the Republicans are expressing concern because they know he's driving them off a cliff.
And you see it also in a lot of the Republican influence. There's the Megan Kelly, the Joe Rogans, and the Tucker Carlson's the Rodin, or the Big World.
They're basically talking about the 25th Amendment now.
“And what's happened is, and I think this is happening all up and down”
the maggot food chain from the elected who realize they're no longer getting usefulness from Trump. The influencers who realize that they, there's nothing in there for them anymore. And they have to be, they're getting sick of having to play
do the split brain where they're saying one thing and reality is hitting him in the face with the other. The cognitive dissonance, in other words, is breaking down. And the problem for them is, there's only one way out of it. And that's to get rid of Donald Trump.
You can't, he is not going to listen to them. He is not going to tone it down. If anything, he's going to get worse, because he is completely detached from reality. And there was this report, I don't know if you saw it,
probably about a month ago, in Axios, where Ted Cruz apparently had spoken to the president privately and said, "You're driving us off a cliff in substance and we're going to get killed in the midterms." And this was, I think this was even before the war in Iran
and Trump just said, "Fuck you, Ted."
“I mean, literally that's what he was quoted as saying.”
So they have a huge problem. They have a guy who, you know, they've overlooked his mental disorders in the past, dismiss them. They've overlooked his lies. They've overlooked his depravity.
They've overlooked the fact that he was basically
adjudicated sexual abuse or that he's a criminal. They overlooked these things because it served their purposes. It no longer serves their purposes. And in terms of what happens in the U.S. Senate, which we can get back to why that matters,
of course, is that, you know, the Senate, they're full of cowards. The Republican senators are cowards, and they've been afraid of Trump. But at some point, they're going to have to be afraid of something else,
which is people who used to be Trumpers who are now mad at Trump. Moderate voters who are swing voters who are basically voted for Trump once or twice, maybe even three times, and have now turned on him. And that's happening.
“And so I think the only, I think at some point,”
it consensus is going to arise because he's going to get worse
that he has to go. And I think that what has to be done is we have to start talking about that, and preparing for that moment when everybody has had enough, and the guy has to go. Well, you're ad, got it.
This is an interesting way. You had an ad in your congressional candidacy. It pulls together a dramatic imagery of January 6th, ISIS paramilitary violence, the blowing up of supposed drug votes in the Caribbean,
Trump's alliance with Putin, the Iran War and rising inflation. All of that is sort of montage throughout the ad in a fairly dramatic way, then we hear this. Just when you think you can't get any worse,
it does. It has to stop. We must make it stop. I'm George Conway. I'm running for Congress to take the fight right
to Trump on your behalf. This is no ordinary time, and I will not be an ordinary member of Congress. I'm George Conway, and I approve this message. George, I'm interested in the line about this,
not being an ordinary time. You're running in Manhattan, so obviously it's a very liberal audience, but I have to think that this sense that Trump has unleashed just sheer horrors on an unimaginable scale in America, weighs a lot on a lot of different voters.
What's the theory of the ad here? The theory of the ad is we have a lot to do in this country that people want fixed, affordable health care. I mean, I'm not sure it's Democrats, but Republicans as well, affordable housing infrastructure.
All sorts of things that need to be improved to improve people's lives that are actually getting worse because of Trump. We have higher grocery prices, higher gasoline prices. He's upholseism. He actually stopped this project.
It's right out in my window here that this is the Hudson River Tunnel project, the rail project that he stopped because he stopped the funding to support a little court and join them because he wants Penn Station named after him. You name it all these issues that people want to talk about
Affect people's daily lives.
How are you going to fix that? You can't fix it in any significant way until he's gone. He's making everything worse and he's a criminal.
“And the courts can't fix it, so who's job is it to fix it?”
It's Congress. Congress has to start reasserting its constitutional powers, and not just the power of the purse the way they did to stop ice from being funded, but the impeachment, the investigative and impeachment powers.
And basically, my campaign is about, we need to talk about
impeaching and removing Trump. We can't survive another 33 months of what we've seen for the last 15. Okay, so you get into Congress. Would you immediately start pushing for impeachment articles to be drawn up? Would you be prepared to do things like, you know,
recommend the criminal prosecution of people like defense secretary, Pete Heggseth, and others who potentially broke laws, referrals to DOJ? All of the above, when Congress has to go with a maximalist investigation mode. And that's Congress's job. Congress is a legislature to be sure, but one of its important powers is to investigate
and to impeach and to remove criminal public officials. And in fact, if you go back to the Federalist Pate papers, Hamilton and Madison and Jay talked about the impeachment powers being a granting quest on behalf of the nation. That phrase from Parliament, this is how you hold executive officials to account.
And this is what the framers gave us to deal with a president who is failing at his job, not just because he's incompetent, which he is, not just because he's crazy because he is, but because he's a fundamentally a criminal who defies the law. And the point I'm trying to make to people in this district is, let's say, like, we agree on the map, on which we work out deals on compromises on how to improve
the affordability of health care, housing, groceries, building more infrastructure. Let's figure out all the different things that people have on their laundry list of things to do. And put it in one big bill and call it the "everything is better bill." Who's going to sign that bill?
Right, of course. And then if you trick him into signing it somehow by saying Putin told you to sign it, who's going to enforce that bill? Well, a lot of things have to be on the table beyond just sort of the kitchen table stuff as you mentioned before.
“I think impeachment of a number of different Trump officials has to be on the table.”
I think referrals to the Department of Justice, even though, obviously, the current DOJ wouldn't do anything with them except wipe their asses with them essentially. But I do think, I think Democrats in Congress, if they have a majority in the house, and, you know, possibly the Senate, I guess, need to start really laying the predicate here for a major accountability agenda and the start of that.
They have the power right at the outset to start referring things for criminal prosecution that puts down on paper what it is that all these people are doing wrong. Are you for that? I am for that.
It's basically one of the two things I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I just reason why I'm running.
I mean, I want to be Jamie flat rascans wingman. I want to spend a term on accountability. I mean, I want, I, I, I never wanted a riverbowl of a public office. And I think I can only do this for two terms on the big one getting to old. First term would be accountability. Exactly what you're talking about in teaching and removing,
uh, executive branch officials creating a record for criminal prosecutions, including state criminal prosecutions. To remember, a lot of this stuff could also be prosecuted and the corruption aspects of it could be corrupted, and whether it be front running on war on war news or anything like that. Uh, that, we, we need to create the record for, for, for this kind of accountability both,
accountability by Congress and the impeachment process and accountability in the criminal process, whether it be federal or state.
And then the second thing we have to do is to make sure it never happens again.
Mostly it's going to have to be statutory because it's so hard, you know, to enact constitutional amendments. But there are whole variety of things that we can do. What's on your list? My, well, my list would include, um, you know,
there are bills that have been thrown into the opera on, on restoring in the integrity of the justice department.
“Um, I think we need to codify a lot of the practices that develop that weren't codified”
after, after watergate that Trump has simply blown through. I think we need to, we need to put, uh, more teeth on, on, on, on, on,
Restricting, uh, executive officials from not spending the money.
They are authorized and required to spend by law. You, you know, I mean, it's, uh, the, the, the, the, um, empowerment act that exists as it exists and strong enough.
“We need to basically, I think we need to put maybe possibly in criminal sanctions in place”
for people who refuse to spend the money in accordance with Congress's will. Um, and, you know, there's also, and I've been, I talked about this even before.
Um, I talked about this if, when I, when I first launched the campaign,
we need, uh, we need to create that advisory body to, um, act as the judge of whether the president is fit to continue in office and replace the cabinet. And that's something that's authorized under section for the 20th Amendment, something that Nancy Pelosi once proposed and now Jamie Raskin this week to his great credit as put it back, put it back on the table once again.
And there are so many things like that. Let, let me throw a few out there and see what you think of them. I think a real revision of the war powers act. So no president can do this shit again. It like what he's doing with Iran, uh, major reforms to the pardon power
because he's just dangling partens there for people so that they break the law form, right? And then I think, you know, transforming ice or defunding it or essentially ending it and creating a whole new bureaucracy, uh, to deal with immigration,
“maybe along the lines of, I think Ben Rhodes had a good proposal in the New York Times.”
Are you for all those things as well?
I'm absolutely for all of those things. And, you know, absolutely, I think ice has to be completely replaced. It's rotten to the core sometimes you just have to take, you know, to take the functions of a dysfunctional organization. You just can't, you just can't replace any part of it and expect it to work now
because it's been so corrupted up and down the line. Yeah, and we can't go back into this like situation where a president can create private militias out of immigration force. And that, that has to be the guiding idea here, I think. Yeah, absolutely.
And, and the other things you mentioned are absolutely, absolutely necessary. Well, okay. I just want to flag one other thing from that political report back to the congressional races. It says White House allies now fear the senators in play. A GOP operative says this quote.
Everyone is focused on doing what we can to hold the Senate because people are very worried about that. Amazing stuff. He, this operative adds that it's crazy that this is a worry. It is, George, you're obviously focused on the House, but if the Senate is really in play, then we could be looking at a bigger midterm route than we expect.
I mean, the Senate map is tough.
“But he's, I think, I think the Democrats are going to win the Senate.”
And you do. I do. I do. I think I think we have, I think, the extent of this wave. We're not, it's going to be on a matchman because he's getting, you know,
it's bad enough now. People have had enough now. You see that his cratering in the polls now. You see how he's lost. You know, he had this surge among young people in 2024 and among Hispanics.
It's all gone now. You, you, you just, I can't, I don't think you can understand how precarious, some of these Senate, those Republican senators are. I, I think you, you know, I can get to 53 or 54 by possibly. I think you can see Senator Tallahino.
I think you could see even a Senator Andrews in South Carolina. I think, I think this is going to happen because I don't see Trump turning it around. I don't think he's psychologically able to do that. I think he is in such a state of denial and unreality that he is not going to respond to these, please, to, to, to, to basically behave like a normal human being.
I think he's going to double down.
That's what he always does.
He's going to, he's going to, he's going to double down. I hate me, you know, he could, we may even invade Cuba, for example. Who knows? We don't even know what crazy things he's going to do between now and November, but you think he's getting much worse.
And, and that's the one thing you can depend on. Donald Trump, if you just go back and just say, I mean, I remember I was talking to a friend of mine in 2023 or 2024 journalists and we were having dinner in New York and, and I said, he's just going to get worse. There is no bottom with this guy.
And, and he's going to take the Republicans with him unless they get smart. I think he's going to take a lot of Republicans with him this year. And I think at some point, next year, they're going to want to be done with him for 2029. And I think that we're going to be able to make the case for impeachment and remove all the president.
Well, CNN had a really interesting nugget of reporting on all this as well. And I want to get into it said that Republicans are panicked about the midterms.
Aren't shifting their approach yet because Trump keeps promising that the Ira...
in soon. And his assertions along these lines have trapped the GOP in a holding pattern as CNN puts it. Now, I got to say that may be left because it's like Trump's lies about the Iran war backfiring badly for Republicans. And that plus the fact that they just, they just keep coming up with reasons to not do things.
They keep coming up with reasons to not change their approach with this guy. Because on some level, they just know that it's like they've thrown up their hands and some sense or I mean, they've eagerly embraced him in every which way as well. What do you make of all that? Yeah, I mean, I think they've lost.
“I think they just, they're, they realize they're in trouble.”
They're in paralysis.
And at some point, but not yet, I think they're going to basically turn on.
And I think the thing about it now is that they don't, you know, in the middle of this war, it keeps telling them, oh, it's going to, it's going to turn around. It's going to get better. And, and they want to believe that even though it's hard to see a positive resolution to this situation, right?
I mean, we have essentially taken away our leverage by, we've shot our wards, so to speak. The threats that we can, what are we going to do? I'm post sanctions on them. We did that. What are we going to do?
Bomb the hell out of them? We did that.
“So what, what incentive do they have to not do what they used to not do?”
Which was, take, control the, the shred of war moves or build highly and/or enrich uranium.
They basically, we, we took away their incentive to cooperate with us.
And I, you know, we don't have any leverage over them anymore. And that's a problem. So just to close this out, George. A lot of former Republicans who have, you know, broken with the party over Trump or ones who are sort of still Republicans, but are never Trumpers or whatever you want to call them.
They're sort of a school of thought among them, which tries to portray Trump as this kind of aberration, like he somehow, you know, took conservatism in a dramatically new direction. Took Republicanism in a dramatically new direction. You've been willing to challenge that, I believe, and I wanted to give you a chance to challenge that. In many ways, Trump really represents the culmination of a lot of basic trends that were underway in the Republican party. And then conservatism, right?
“Yeah, I mean, I, I don't view him as conservatism, right?”
I mean, I, I, I mean, I think there was this, this cancerous body within the right and within the Republican party, but that has taken root.
And has basically destroyed the party, but it's just always there.
But it never, and never took over the way it did during the Trump years. But, you know, is it conservative to impose these tariffs? Is it conservative for the government to own 10% of intel? Is it conservative for the government to, to be controlling, to be determining winners and losers of of of of. Auctions or takeovers from media companies?
I mean, it is, it's just unfalvel to me that, that, that all of this has happened, but it's, it's not, you know, it's not conservatism in any sense of work. It's, it's a nihilism, radicalism, fascism, authoritarianism, and it's some, it's just, it's just a terrible, I mean, it really is just a complete collapse. A complete collapse of of of of sense on the right. And it's just, we don't have a two party system anymore. We don't have a healthy two party system anymore.
We only have one political party that is actually trying to do things to help people and trying to have the government perform the functions it's supposed to be functioning. And only one political party committed to democracy now. And that's a very unhealthy situation, but we have to go through this until there's some kind of more permanent political change. And I think, you know, or in the midst of some kind of a political transformation that I hope in the end turns out all right, where you end up with a sensible second party.
I'm replacing the decrepit and depraved Republican party in the way that sometimes that happened. You know, the wigs gave way to the Republicans in the past. And I don't know, but that's a long way away. And right now, we have to survive. And I don't know that we can survive in over the 33 months with what we've seen on the last 15.
Well, the question of whether conservatism led to Trump as a big one.
There are some indications that it did, but that's a big conversation for another podcast, George, just to close out.
You're essentially saying the Republican party has to be broken otherwise, where it is.
And I don't, I mean, it has to be broken and driven out of business.
“Trump's going to destroy it. I think Trump is well on his way to destroy it because it's, you can see the fractures as we speak.”
George Conway, pleasure to talk to you. Good luck with your congressional line. I talked to you later.
You've been listening to the Daily Blast with me, your host Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a new Republican podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler on the DSR network.
