The Daily Blast: Trump Blurts Out Huge Admission of Midterm Weakness as MAGA Cracks Up

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In a new interview, Donald Trump lavished extensive praise on himself as always, but in the process he made a surprising admission.

He said straight out that his voters might not turn out for Republican candidates in the midterms. Then he said that voters are not angry at him, they're angry at Republicans. For a lot of reasons, that's really not what Republican candidates want to hear right now.

“It also comes amid many new signs that Trump and MAGA voters really might not turn out.”

Yet it comes as well as polls show the Democratic lead in the House Ballet matchup isn't quite as high as it needs to be. To dig through how all this is really playing on the ground, we're talking to Streeple Shaw, who oversees ad expenditures at the Demoligned House Majority Pack. Streeple, thanks for coming on. I appreciate you having me, good to see you. You too, man, let's start with the striking Trump quote, speaking to punch ball news.

Trump is talking here about his voters and asks if they'll turn out in the midterms with him not on the ballot. Listen, if I don't run, will those people go out and vote and that's the one thing I can't. I'm going to ask him to. The questions will they vote because a lot of them are very angry. Every Republicans to be honest with you.

I mean, they're angry, but they're not angry. Streeple not only does he admit here that GOP voters might not turn out.

“He also says that voters are angry at Republicans and not angry at him, which I think a lot of his voters will hear as discouraging them from voting in the midterms.”

What do you make of all that?

I think, you know, for the first time in what seems like a long time, he's actually kind of spot on as far as his voters not showing up in a midterm.

And, you know, that's not spin coming from a democratic operative or or anything like that. Like we have evidence, right? Based on history, you can you can likely bank on that. And I think that one underscores a lot of the challenges that Republicans saw across the board in 2022. And I would not be surprised to see this cycle continue on that trajectory for 26.

The interesting thing that we're seeing in a lot of polling that we're doing right now across the battleground in specific districts, including districts outside of those tier 1 coin flip districts that, you know, one by a Democrat or a Republican, a few thousand votes in this direction. That, well, I'm talking about districts that trunk one by double digits in certain places, some in Ohio, some in Iowa, et cetera, et cetera. It's not just that he's in under water. The data that we are seeing suggests that the intensity behind his negative approval or strongly disapproval or strongly unfavorable.

There are places, it's not uncommon what we're seeing that number, north of 50, which is like unprecedented. I do agree that it's a big and undercovered story that Trump's strong disapproval numbers are just wildly crazy, like nobody's ever seen anything like it, as he would say. CNN's Harriet and points out another good point that nationally, house Republicans are running about nine points ahead of Trump's approval, which is stuck at around 37%. Trump's numbers are just terrible, but it's a little unclear to me at least now whether Democrats are orienting their strategy around that very roughly speaking.

Do you anticipate that Trump will appear in a lot of house majority ads this fall or only some or not too many?

And I think that's for a few different reasons.

One, Trump is already baked into the cake, right? We're not actually offering any new information to a voter about Donald Trump's agenda. And voters generally already believe that the House Republicans and Trump are joined at the hip, rightfully so, because they are. Now are there certain exceptions? Absolutely, there will be exceptions, particularly with certain audiences.

But what we have found is that you don't necessarily need to lead with that in a way that makes the argument incredibly, you know, over the top and in your face.

“Because I think voters already fully understand that.”

I think our task is more informing people about how House Republicans have supported or amplified, you know, the consequences of the Trump agenda on the voters and on the American people. You'll see this focus. Trump is so unpopular that he's even losing parts of his base.

A recent political poll finds only a little more than one third of MAGA voters say the war is now worth the costs.

And there's been a sharp drop in MAGA support for the war. Now let's listen to this as well. It's an interviewer talking to Trump voters. The first voice is the reporter and then you'll hear the Trump voters check this out. Is this how you expected the second Trump term to go?

No, not at all. I hoped it was going to be so much better. It was a promise no new foreign wars, where I would say in this war and Iran, which is why we're seeing the grass prices so high.

“What do you make of the president not keeping those campaign promises?”

And he just told us one of the here to vote him back in.

Or would your message be to him about the economy right now, about prices, about day to day life? I would tell him you promised us you'd be the lower prices, bring back what it used to be. I was hoping that gas was going to go down so I could do something. You know, you can't do anything with gas prices and you just can't, you can't afford to breathe at this point. Are you regretting your vote right now?

I have the last two years, yeah, I have. I'm actually not even voting the next time. So street full maga is plainly cracking up here. The coalition is in major fracture mode. Can you tell us what you're seeing both in the data and on the ground on that front? Yeah, I think it's, I think it's very real.

And it's, it's not a difficult thing to comprehend when you realize Iran, Iran on releasing the Epstein files and keep voting a block on me, Iran on blowering costs. Cost continued to go high and that's a lot as driven by foreign policy, but also tariffs. Promise no more wars and now we're in a war that allegedly has ended 30 times over in the last six weeks. And it's continuing to go and go and go.

And so you can only lie to people for so long and so many times before they start to turn on you. And you're seeing that. And people are no longer willing to, you know, just turn a blind eye to what is in front of them when it has such a deep impact on their day-to-day lives. Like that woman who was talking about, you know, filling up her tank and not being able to afford to breathe. You can't, you know, you can't continue to, you can't continue to try and pull on over on people when their reality is,

is directly, you know, at odds with what you're trying to sell them. We saw this in 2009 and 10 as well, but it, it, it was very similar. People, you know, with each passing week and month, Obama owned the economy more and more, even though people believe that George Bush was responsible for the underlying challenges. He's in charge now.

You can't continue to look backwards and expect people to, to give you a pass. And that's where I think the reckoning is going to be really rooted in.

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Okay, so there are around 58 GOP health districts that are really in play right now.

Can I ask this fall as we really approach the election? How many of those districts do you think House Majority Pack will really fully play in? I mean, like real investments in real money. I know you can't give me an exact number. Not asking for that roughly, like a big chunk of those districts or half or less than half.

I think that what you're going to see in the same way that you saw in 2006, 2008, 2008, etc. is that it's not necessarily playing in every single place, but the battle field is going to move pretty dramatically from early September to mid-October. And we could hypothetically, if things continue on a good trajectory, not necessarily have to expend a lot of resources in tier one places that, you know,

six months ago, I would have told you, like we are going to be there till the end, because the environment is shifting in such a rapid way where Republicans are cutting and running from certain districts that just don't have passed to them, that they thought maybe they were going to in the terrain just ship. So we could be potentially moving away from places from the offensive posture.

You know, this district doesn't need these resources anymore, because this Republican doesn't have a pass of victory.

“That's what's happened in a lot of, you know, positive election cycles,”

dating back to 2018, 2006, et cetera, et cetera. I would not be surprised if that's what happens on this time around, but we are competing with mega-hank that has, you know, close to a trillion dollars to spend. And that is one of the dynamics that could make it more, more consistent,

or you just did a lot of places as opposed to things shifting from one to another. A lot of depends on how September plays out. Okay, so to ask a little differently of the 58 districts that are in play right now, how many do you expect will really genuinely be in play to the point where you're really putting money into them. I understand that there's going to be a core of races in the middle at the,

the most competitive races where you may just actually pull resources out, because they're pretty much square away. What's the size of the battlefield at the end of this, do you think? That you got to come back to me at about a month because it could be as low as 30 to 40, or it could be as high as 50.

It's really hard to say right now. We're still looking at every district very closely. We're still doing a lot of polling. We're still figuring out, you know, where we have identified opportunities for, you know, for offense and to pick up a seat.

“You know, look at, the map is, is dynamic because of their activities as well, right?”

And we're going to talk Edward sits in North Carolina, is 11th district, which is a district that I believe Trump won by close to double digits last time around. A couple days ago, he announced he's not running anymore, right? And so they've got to find a new candidate. We don't know what that does to that race.

I would be willing to, or, you know, bet that it's there's still opportunity for us over there, but until we know we're running against it's hard to hand the cap that race until we, the opportunity to do things that we need to do. You know, there's districts like Michigan's eighth congressional district, where a guy who dropped out on the Republican side, about a month ago,

won the primary over a Trump endorsed not me who had run a real campaign, because Maca voters weren't going to vote for that guy for whatever reason they decided not to vote for him. And I think we could probably guess why. And so like the map is continuing to shift, pretty rapidly, and then for the due to external events.

So it's just hard to say, you know, the first peak of August,

where we think September's going to look like, and what do we think October's going to look like? So right now, Dems, lead in the House Generic ballot matchup, play around six or seven points depending on which set of averages you use. That strikes me as not big enough. It would be big enough to win the house,

but not by what I think we'd like to see, not by the big margins we'd like to see. And it certainly wouldn't be enough to get you the Senate. Do you guys regard six or seven points in the generic ballot matchup as big enough?

I think it is big enough because it represents a roughly eight to nine points shift from 2024, right? We lost the house in 2024 by what? 6,000 votes spread out across the handful of districts and ate that at eight point shift. Not only takes, you know, sweet sister victory and a lot of those coin flip places,

but it puts all these second tier places in play too.

It's also, for despite the fact that we're only 90 days out from election day, we're still early. A lot of these campaigns have not really begun in earnest, particularly in the house where the races are a lot smaller than these Senate races, and you don't start communicating until September and litigating your case against the Republican

incumbent or the Republican challenger and earnest until September. I do think you will see a pretty dramatic shift, you know, come, you know, mid to late September and the generic ballot. If you do not, that doesn't worry me because the generic ballot and a lot of these polls, I do think that people are still by designer, not potentially like building out samples that are still a little conservative.

“And I think that pollsters don't want to be wrong in the wrong direction, right?”

So they're making their data potentially a little more conservative than it ought to be, because they don't want to bet on being too aggressive and too optimistic for Democrats and be wrong. It's easier to say, oh, well, we actually won by a lot, and that's just by a little, you know. And I think you will start to see those models and those screens start to shift a little bit as you get into September as well.

But I think we are where we want to be, the trajectory that we're on is the most important thing and that feels good.

And I think that once these races really start to get litigated in September, particularly in these two tier two tier three races that haven't seen robust campaigns in recent years in the house level, that's when you will start to see better. That's when you'll start to have a better understanding of the trajectory in the environment in which we're operating in 2016. Well, you guys are polling a lot.

House majority pack has released a lot of its internal polls. So I'm going to ask you a question about the polling. Right now, right now in HMP polling, our dem can that it's leading in enough districts, in a number of districts that's sizeably larger than the handful of seats that Dems need to flip the hat to win the house.

“In other words, our Dems up in a big enough block of districts in your polling that you have a real cushion over what you need to get.”

As of now, we are, okay, how many?

Oh, God. I don't have all our polls memorized, but if the election were today, we would take back the house, yes. All right, so it sounds like you guys think here on this trajectory to win the house. You said that if it's six or seven national advantage of six or seven points in the generic ballot matchup, you guys would win the house.

Like how big a margin would six or seven points get you though? As far as I can tell, a lot of the analysis shows that because of the redistricting successes, the jerrymandering successes that Republicans had, Dems need to win the house, national ballot by three points, just to take the house to begin with. If you get to six points or seven points, which is where it is now,

roughly how many seats are we talking about flipping here?

“Well, you need to also remember that the way that this jerrymandering has taken place in places particularly in Texas.”

They were relying on Trump 2024 numbers to draw those maps. That might be where you find that Republicans made the biggest strategic error, because I think that they believe that they had a lock on the Latino vote in South Texas, particularly. When in reality, the Latino vote dating back to 2016, if not before, is the most swingy of swingy electoral plots there it, right?

By definition, the Latino vote goes back and forth and you have to fight for that vote. And so I don't think that you can just take that, that calculus that you just described where you got to win by this number to do this, and this, it doesn't account for those swings I don't believe. And so I think that is where some folks are making a little bit of a miscalculation on where there is opportunity for us. You've seen us put out a poll last week in Texas 15.

That says, "Politos winning over congresswoman De La Cruz." And I think that that is a real opportunity for us. That is a district that Trump won by double digits last time, right? And so I just want to be clear on that. I think, you know, it's hard to give a number at the moment because I don't have a comprehensive view of the battlefield just yet.

I'm still pulling in a lot of places. But I do feel like we are, if election day to day, where today you would see a margin for the House Democrats that's north of 10 seats probably.

It seems like Dems are looking for a villain who isn't Trump.

Am I right in saying that? And what's the theory of the case here? I don't think it's necessarily looking for a villain.

“I think it's tapping into something that people are already mad about, which is their high electricity bills.”

You understand why people would be pissed off about that because it plays into this large argument about government corruption and people being on the take for their donors and stuff like that.

And it taps into the sentiment that, you know, Washington is not looking up for these people and they only care about their donors while I'm getting screwed.

That's the cost of the Republican corruption. And all of that together is a pretty solid argument to make. And you will see us do more and more in battle over the next 90 days. All right, Shreeple, just to circle back to where we started, Donald Trump is extremely unpopular. His base is falling apart. He's losing mega voters on a number of different fronts.

You guys are competing in a number of very Trumpy districts in rural districts with a lot of Trump voters in them.

“Do you really think that you can flip some of those or is it just going to be at the end of the day the low-highing fruit?”

Are you guys, what are you seeing in the Trumpy rural districts right now?

Is there a genuine opportunity to finally make end roads with some of these voters that have been so hard for Democrats to get to?

And if so, how is that happening? I think there is a genuine opportunity. I think there is a genuine backlash and unhappiness at a high intensity with the way that Republicans led by the home Trump have managed the country and managed to make things worse on the economy since getting into office about 18 months ago. And I think for us it is capitalizing on that with our own vision for how we would do things differently. And you were seeing candidates do that at scale and we'll see candidates do that at further scale in September and October.

And I think that's where opportunities in some of these more traditionally red-leaning districts exist for 26. Are you concerned about the Democratic brand? Is that holding back the ability to convert some of these voters or not? I think that voters are generally unhappy with politicians across the board, and that is not new. I think where our opportunity lies is that a lot of the terrain is offensive terrain where an individual candidate can run and create their own brand by communicating with the voter.

And they're not running on necessarily in these offensive opportunity districts on a brand that is rooted in Washington DC. And so that gives them opportunity to create their own brand to communicate about their own agenda and to articulate how they would serve and how they would do the job differently. And that's where the opportunity comes to have the success in some of these places that you might not have otherwise. Shreepal Shah, thanks so much for coming on, man. Good to see you. Appreciate it. Thank you so much.

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