This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the ...
I'm your host, Greg Sargent.
“For years now, it was an unquestioned truism in our political discourse that Donald Trump”
held the advantage on the economy. Yet the evidence is mounting that Trump has completely thrown this away, and now even Republican pollsters are sounding the alarm about the problem. This comes as a new analysis finds Trump's approval on the economy down at an abysmal 33 points underwater, a drop of 42 points from 2018.
Yet we think some commentators and some Democrats as well think he still possesses some sort of political black magic that we all overlook at our peril. And we don't understand why. So we're talking to new Republic senior editor Alex Shepard, who's been arguing well against the myth that Trump is Teflon.
Alex, good to have you back on. It's great to be with you. So last week we learned that the Trump economy lost 23,000 jobs in July and worse for Trump, April and May were revised down by 103,000 jobs. On this, Trump is absolutely cratering in the polls as well.
CNN's Harry entered an average of the polls and found that during the 2018 midterms, Trump's approval on the economy averaged plus nine points. Now, and didn't calculate, it's minus 33 points. That's a 42 points swing against Trump. Alex, have you ever seen anything like that?
“I don't think anyone seen anything like this before, I think the big story of the president,”
this presidency is that Trump was elected because voters were mad about inflation after the pandemic and they blamed Joe Biden and his party, the Democratic party. And they had rosy visions of Trump's presidency and they brought him back to office and then Trump and the people around him and I should say many Democrats as well saw that victory not as a rebuttal or a refutation against the Democrats.
They saw it as an endorsement of his entire cultural non-economic program. And what we're seeing now is that that was totally wrong. It was just flat out wrong. And the big story is that voters wanted prices to go down. They did not give Biden the credit that I think his administration deserved for managing
inflation and they brought Trump back in and Trump took two deliberate acts that sabotaged the work that the Democratic administration had done and he launched a global trade war in April of last year and then he launched a war against Iran in February of this year. And that's the presidency right there. I think that's exactly the story.
I want to play something that CNN's Harry Antons said about all this. He notes that what's driving Trump's huge drop on the economy is inflation and he says that in the latest CNN poll, Trump's approval on inflation is 50 points underwater. Listen to this. But now in term number two, and our latest CNN poll, look at this, Trump 50 points
underwater, 50 points underwater. I went back through the history books. Again, I told you, I dug deep into them.
I dug deeper into them than anyone has basically dug into any polling archive you could
before and no president before president Trump actually had a negative 50 point or worse net approval rating on inflation. Now of course, what does this all mean? Well, when it comes to President Trump, I'll tell you what it means. It means this.
Take a look here, Trump's negative net approval rating. Every single poll, every single poll since March 29, 2025 has had Trump in the negative. So two things there, first, no president has ever matched Trump's terrible numbers on inflation. And second, he's been in negative territory for the great bulk of his second term.
We just talked about the big story of the Trump presidency. He's been underwater virtually the entire time, Alex, do you think all this has really
“sunk in with the hive mind that interprets national politics for us?”
Absolutely not. I think that, I mean, this has been, I think, a story that goes back to Trump one, right, which is that there is, I think that people have misinterpreted it. There's this idea that there's a kind of shiny object theory of the Trump media that
basically coverage goes, wherever new news is being made.
And especially in the case of the economy and in the Iran war, which has been stuck in this kind of quagmire for several months now, that attention doesn't focus there. And I think that people then make this leap to say that, oh, this is the superpower that Trump has. You can distract you by putting your attention on this other, these other damaging scandals.
The numbers just don't back this up at all, right, people are really, really ...
that they voted for this guy to lower prices and he's not doing it.
That does not mean that the other stuff doesn't matter or it matters less.
“But I think that there's just a lot of anger over that.”
And I think that that's really what's going to drive the midterms, you know, probably for Democrats is looking that way. However, I also think that the absence of commentary from that, both by sort of mainstream and left-leaning outlets and the Democratic Party as well as a huge missed opportunity. I think there's just a real reluctance to put the blame for this on Trump's shoulders.
Even though he took two deliberate acts to sabotage the economy, which is exactly what happened. Can I just bring up a phrase that I cannot stand? It's when Democrats say, oh, Trump's negatives are baked in. So we don't have to remind voters about them.
You know, yes you do, right? If there's anything that Donald Trump has proven, it's that voters forget about what he's done to the United States of America very, very quickly. And you've got to drive it home over and over, like you don't want voters saying, oh, my prices, you know, they're really driving me crazy.
It's both parties. No, it's Trump. Trump did this to you. Trump did this to you. Say that, Democrats, right?
“Yeah, I think it's this over interpretation of Trump's return to power, right?”
It's this idea that because Trump got reelected, that that somehow negates all of the kind of resistance one point of work that happened. It's like when you talked to Democrats who say they shouldn't impeach him if he comes back, there's I think this is larger sense that they focus too much on Trump's malfeasance. And that's just not true at all.
I think one thing that was sort of true is that especially in the first term, they decided
to treat Trump as an aberration, right? This kind of fever dream that Republicans were in, but this is the party of Trump now, right? That's why he's able to hold on to power. And, you know, there's no, there's no daylight between Congress and him on Iran or the trade war, right?
So if you look at the economy, that's one issue there. But I think the other issue is that I think that there's just this fear that they've looked at focus groups that say Democrats care too much about Trump. And that's, you know, true to the extent that what voters are saying is they want an alternative to these things.
And one way that you showcase your alternative is that you point out what the other people are doing and say, we're going to do something different here. And I think on that point, Democrats have really, really dropped the ball. And I think, you know, they're not, there's a real lack of urgency in making a kind of argument for what they will do with the, you know, limited amount of power that they'll have if they
retake one or both, chambers of Congress and the fall. GOP pollsters are very aware of what's happening right now. The Wall Street Journal reports that some of these Republican pollsters are sounding the alarm about Trump and the economy and the Republican Party. And Republican pollster made what I thought was a really telling point.
He said that he's seeing something new in his focus groups of voters and battleground states, which is that these voters, quote, know exactly to the dollar, the amount of their power bill, close quote, same with healthcare and food prices. Now the Wall Street Journal says Republican analysts think time is running out for Trump and the GOP to regain their image is better on the economy.
That sort of thing where voters are hyper focused on their everyday costs is an extremely difficult thing to dislodge, I think. And I think it's also frustrating as somebody who thought that coverage of the Biden economy was very unfair and was frustrated by Republican attacks and the inability of Democrats to push back.
“But I think that there's a real fear of claiming ownership over economic policy, right?”
Of arguing that Democrats are actually a lot better at this and that what Trump is doing is sabotaging the economy and you know, when you look back at attacks that Biden face during his term in office, right? So many of them were unfair but they are very focused on the everyday well-being of Americans, right?
And you're just not seeing, I think Democrats do that as much as they could and I think this is what I wrote about last week, but you're also not seeing them tie it into the other big story of this in the Australia or one of the other big stories of this administration, which is historic corruption that we have not seen ever in this country, even in the gold at age.
And you have a presidency that is self-dealing whose family is making billions of dollars walled basically, you know, many Americans are struggling to make basic needs, right?
They know what the cost of their power bill is and the president is making $2 billion
from the crypto industry. If you're enjoying this episode and want to get even more out of the DSR network, you need to check out our sub-stack. The DSR network sub-stack is the absolute best way to follow deep state radio, the DSR daily, where it's matter, need to know, sila consciousness, AI, energy and climate, and
the daily blast. Sign up to get notified every time a new episode drops and stay up to date on the latest
News and expert analysis.
Right now, we're offering 20% off of a DSR network membership. Keep members get an ad free listening experience, select episodes two days early, 50% off of David's need to know sub-stack and more. To get your 20% off, go to DSR network.substack.com/August26. That's DSR network.substack.com/August26.
Absolutely. You actually brought something to mind, which is that at the end of the Biden presidency when Donald Trump took over the economist had this now very famous cover, which described the U.S. economy as the envy of the world. Ask yourself this, Alex, how often do you hear a Democrat say that Donald Trump inherited
“an economy that was the envy of the world, according to the economist?”
You almost never hear that.
You almost never hear them say, you know, Joe Biden actually left Donald Trump with a very good economy because Democrats are better, and the reason they don't want to say that kind of thing is this lack of confidence that you're getting at. They don't think they can win arguments, I think. And that's a particular example of one they don't think they can win.
They think voters just decided Biden was a disaster and they just never want to talk about that again. And I kind of get that. But they're throwing away this opportunity to say, we Democrats, you know, we keep leaving Republicans with good economies and they keep destroying them.
I think we should hear more of that. Yeah. And I think that there's an overlated thing here.
“I think part of the issue is just the problem is that you have a situation where the”
Democrats basically made the best of a bad situation and Trump is making the work made
the worst of a good one, which I think is a delicate political argument to make. But it's not one that's wrong. And I think what we're also, you know, I think what it overlooks to is the almost suicidal nature of economic policy under this presidency. So almost the entire story of this presidency from the very beginning, it starts with
douche cuts, which begin basically the moment that Trump kicks off. It's again, it sort of peaks for a while, at least, liberation day, that's Trump's massive global tariffs, where he puts tariffs on basically every country in the world in April of 2025. And then, you know, if things weren't bad enough, then he launches a war against Iran in
February, at the end of February. Essentially, it's seemingly, you know, convinced that air power alone will win this war and that Iran won't close this rate of war moves, even though many, as we now know, many people in the military were telling him that this was a very real possibility. And now you have a situation where, you know, the president has strangled a otherwise fairly
good economy based on his own completely bizarre economic theory about tariffs that no expert, even conservative economic economists don't believe.
No one has believed this since the 1880s, basically.
“And then, and again, also you have this kind of hubris, right?”
This sort of imperial hubris that I think people also don't credit Trump for as well, that US naval and air power and economic might can withstand anything that you throw at it. And that sort of leads to this situation that we're in now where, you know, I think part of it is, Democrats have called Trump's response to Iranian Iran's closure of this rate of war moves, like his sort of capitulation, right, a huge failure.
But it almost understates the proflop here that this is the presidency that launched a war based on the premise that it would be over shortly that you can be able to do regime change in a massive country with huge military infrastructure, essentially, has been run by the IRGC for years anyways. And now is stuck in a situation where Iran is fully calling the economic shots, they've
announced that they're closing the straight-of-war moves indefinitely. And, you know, it's not like it can, it's like Iran hasn't taken actions that have decided important elections in American history before. And so he's just completely at the mercy of, you know, this IRGC run country now. And, you know, like, there's a thing that does feel like just desserts are like shot in
a Freud as an anti-Trump commentator, but I think the insanity of that is something that is still not well-covered and Trump's own role in it, right? Like Joe Biden did not make like the cost of eggs go up during the post-pandemic period, right? But Trump has, you know, basically taken every concrete action you can to destroy the economy
right now. And as it seems to largely be held aloft by posts or statements that he makes every Sunday or Monday morning before markets open like clockwork. Now, and, you know, there's no sign that that's going to change between now and the midterms.
I think what you're getting out there is that to a very uncommon degree, voters can directly perceive a link between what Donald Trump is doing and what's happening to their own economic situation. That's extremely rare that you have such a direct link.
Here's yet another way that Trump has just outdone all his predecessors.
It's a thing in political science that voters blame presidents for the state of the economy often unfairly. But here's a case where he absolutely is responsible for the state of the economy. He's just breaking one record after another. There is a thing where you're like, oh, it's especially a reporter used to cover, you
know, the domestic economy that it is very frustrating in some ways to have a president
“who does actually control whether the economy is good or not because I think you're sort”
of taught and experts will always tell you, like, actually voter perceptions in the economy,
they're kind of ridiculous, right? We just saw that with Biden and in this case, it's very literally true. So this is really interesting, according to the Wall Street Journal and other GOP pollster, David Winston sent a cautionary note to Republicans back in June. It said this, quote, "If Democrats could sustain leads on the economy and win double digit
margins among independence, as some polls show, a blue wave is possible," close quote. So this pollster said that back in June and guess what, Dems are now leading in the economy in some polls and they are winning independence by double digits in the generic House ballot matchup now. So according to this Republican pollster, a blue wave is very possible.
Alex, just to your point about Trump's mismanagement of everything and just how
“powerful it is, I really think Republicans went into the summer expecting Trump to recognize”
the situation that he was creating for the Republican Party and they kind of expected him to try a little harder to turn things around and instead he just went out there and said, "I don't give a shit about anything."
Basically, what do you make of all that?
I mean, I think that's sort of the dynamic between congressional Republicans and the president, right now, too, is that they want him to do things that will help them and that requires essentially discipline on both the messaging standpoint and a policy one that Trump is not actually capable of doing and with Iran, I think right now, he's trapped in a place and has been trapped in a place by Iran where if he doesn't give them the JCPOA,
the Iran deal that Iran that Obama reached with Iran in 2015 plus more, right? They are not going to open the straight and Trump came to political prominence attacking Obama for many things, many of them very racist, but one of those was the Iran deal, right?
“His entire premise as a politician has been that he is a good deal maker and the only way”
out of this mess is to make a very bad deal, right?
But that's entirely his fault. But you know, I think there's another issue here as well, which is just that congressional Republicans want something to run on, right? That's not the president and Trump does not want them to be able to run on anything that's not him and that's the place that they are in right now and they cannot run on economic
stewardship, which has been the backbone of Republican messaging not just on the economy, right, on everything for more than half a century now, they can't do that, they can't run on, you know, we're making the trains run on time or good governance because this administration is clearly a mess and I think the biggest issue is that voters returned Trump to power, knowing fully who he is, I think this is one of the things that actually is really misunderstood
about the presidency and many of his supporters, they know who he is. Many of them like that he's crazy and unhinged, but others a lot of the people that voted for him in 2024 did so kind of holding their nose and saying, look, you know, I don't like the guy, but like I have good memories of the economy between 2017 and 2019 and you know what a little bit of crazy is worth it if I can get that back and what you're seeing now,
I think is something that is kind of phenomenal, which is that they're now saying actually, you know, I may not like, I may think the Democrats are woke, right? I may think that they got crazy if they want to cancel Thanksgiving, right? They want to do all this crazy stuff, but like I'm okay with woke if it gets me better economic leadership and I think one of the things that frustrates us collectively, if I can speak for you as well as me, is a failure to press that
case fully, right? This is a kind of generational opportunity that they haven't had since the end of the Clinton presidency, the scandal, marred end of the Clinton presidency to change the narrative about how Democrats actually lead and to make it realistic, the big challenge for the party is how do you change a, you know, multi-generational impression that Democrats are not going to help your bottom line, right? They're going to take your money and they're going to give it to somebody
else, and I think that that's an opportunity that's being lost here, and then the other opportunity is just to make a larger case against Donald Trump's leadership here, right? That's the story of, in every way, the corruption is the story, right? You know, the his leadership, the Iran war is the story, and his leadership with the Republican Party is the story, and I think we're not,
We're hearing a lot of Democrats say, you know, it's really expensive when yo...
right now, and it is, but who made it expensive? I could not agree more, Alex, I think that
where you have an opportunity here to see Democrats really speak to voters in a whole new way,
“I think voters years are open, they're ready to listen to a new case. Alex, good to have you on,”
man, thanks so much. Thank you, appreciate it. 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.
