You've been doing this for the whole time, and then you've been in the mood.
No, not at all. I'm so sorry. You're so sorry.
You're all right? Yes, exactly.
“I'm so sorry that I'm just a part of the studio.”
I'm just a part of the studio or a part of the studio. I'm sorry. I'm not as sorry. - You're a part of the studio? - I'm sorry. With what? I'm sorry. I've been in the mood for a year and a half.
I've been a part of the studio for a year and a half. I've been a part of the studio for a year and a half. Your song is for you the most beautiful city of the world. That means you're the most beautiful city of the world. This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic,
produced and presented by the DSR network. I'm your host, Greg Sargent. Donald Trump is very worried about the midterm elections. In a series of truth social posts, he raged wildly at Republicans for failing to pass voter suppression legislation
which is explicitly designed to prevent Republicans from losing control of Congress. Trump is right to panic. A crushing new Fox News poll finds his disapproval at record highs and his Iran war badly tanking.
And yet Trump keeps talking about the war in ways that reveal zero awareness of the political problem it's become. If the war does work against Republicans this fall, it would be a striking and heartening development. So we're talking about this possibility with Ryan O'Donnell,
the executive director for the progressive group data for progress which has its own polling on the war. Ryan, good to have you on. Thanks so much for having me. So in these truth social posts,
Trump erupted at Republicans for failing to pass the save act. This would be incredibly onerous voter suppression legislation, requiring voter ID and proof of citizenship in ways that would surely disenfranchise enormous numbers of people. But Ryan, the thing is that's deliberate.
They're not even hiding the fact that the bill is designed to keep Republicans in control of the House, which they're now in great danger of losing.
“And the Senate, too, the panic is very palpable, isn't it?”
Yeah, I mean, they clearly see the writing on the wall. They know how dangerous the midterms are looking for them. And you know, they've seen what happened in 2018 and just like everything that Donald Trump has been doing recently has just been incredibly unpopular with voters.
And so he's trying to do whatever he can to save himself. Yeah, it's really important to look at it as like a three-part process. There's the direct voter suppression legislation. There's the effort to completely rig the House maps across the country and an extraordinarily corrupt way.
And there's the talk about using ice agents at polls to intimidate and suppress voters. You know, as much as Donald Trump and the administration like to talk about how they don't read polls and that they don't trust them and they know exactly what's happening.
They know that this stuff that they're doing is all incredibly unpopular. Every day, they're doing something new that's driving them deeper and deeper into the ground. As you said, as we saw in this Fox poll,
his disapproo rating is at the highest ever. Okay, so let's get into some specifics. Trump wants Republicans to end the filibuster because the save act can't pass the Senate in one tweet he said this quote, when is enough enough for our Republican senators
terminate the filibuster that last part was in all caps. And he called for passing an end to vote by mail as part of this package
among other things in a second tweet he said again in all caps.
Terminate the filibuster. So it's not even clear Republicans can do this even if they want to. They don't seem to have enough Republican support to end the filibuster. But Ryan, I got to say the pressure seems like it's
“going to keep mounting from Trump and Maga, how do you see this playing out?”
I don't feel that confident that they won't try it. It's certainly something that Trump wants to do. And I think Republicans are very hesitant on it right now. But if they see it as their only path forward, I don't think that Donald Trump is going to stop pushing forward anytime soon.
Yeah, I think they could definitely try it. Whether it works or not, it's hard to say. And how it actually plays in the midterms, if it were to pass. I mean, it would be an absolute abomination, if it did pass. It would be absolutely disgusting morally and terrible for the country,
and terrible for democracy. But it is at least marginally possible that it would hurt Republicans more than Democrats since Democrats are highly engaged voters and midterms. Yeah, that's right. I mean, we've been seeing this shift ever since education polarization has taken over,
which basically that like, you know, that somebody's whether or not somebody
Has a college degree now says a lot about who you're voting for.
And since that's changed, and Democrats have largely become the party of the midterms,
is like a fairly new thing in, you know, recent American history. And so it could actually end up hurting Republicans more, but, you know, the moral issue is obviously way more important here. No, absolutely. So in a third tweet, Trump exploded again, calling Chuck Schumer,
a desperate crippled politician who has lost control of the radical left Democrats. And again, he demanded, and then to the filibuster, which is funny because Republicans are the real problem for Trump, and he knows it. You know, he's getting more on popular, and I do think that there's, there's also a possibility that more Republicans are going to start to break with him as they get to the midterms,
because they know that he's toxic. That's really interesting. It would be quite the poetic justice moment if his own unpopularity was what got Republicans to refuse to follow and down this voter suppression path. Let's talk about this extraordinary new Fox poll.
It finds that only 42 percent of voters support Trump's war against Iran,
and 58 percent of post-it, Trump's overall disapproval rating is 59 percent. That's the highest ever in Fox polling for Trump in either term. His approvals only 41 percent, and this is a Fox poll. Ryan, it's very clear that the war is politically working squarely against Trump and Republicans. Now, your thoughts on those numbers?
They're terrible. We find similar things. People not only disapprove of the war, but they also, even in that same Fox News poll, they said that it would make the U.S. less safe going in on this war.
“So voters aren't just, you know, ambivalent about this, right?”
They're actively opposed to it.
We actually, we also asked a question recently about launching a war with Iran,
and whether it benefits Israel or the United States more, and actually more people, including Republicans, said that it benefits Israel more. And so it's something that people just don't want to see. I mean, people have been telling us since right after the pandemic,
that affordability is their number one concern, and Trump has just been doing anything he can, not just to keep his eye off of focusing on affordability for voters, but also actively making it worse. Like, we asked people recently, too,
if they've seen, if they've been paying more or less for gas, and almost 80% of voters, just this past week said that they've been paying more for gas. Wow, that is really extraordinary.
“I think you raise an important point there that it's not ambivalence.”
It's active opposition. All this polling really strongly suggests that voters are squarely rejecting the central arguments that Trump is making for this thing. One of the things in the Fox poll, by the way, has approval among independence is 25%, his disapproval among independence is 75%.
And only 28% of independence support the war in Iran. On top of that, Ryan Trump is underwater with non-college whites and even non-college white men. Those demographics also oppose the war. That sure looks like he's losing his base in part over the war, doesn't it? I think it's very clear that he's losing the exact voters
that helped win him the presidency in 2024. We recently published something about disaffected Trump voters and the people who are leaving his coalition. And what we found after doing some modeling on our own data is that we found that people of color, younger voters, women, and also people that don't pay that much attention to political news are all leaving him and are all much more likely now to say that they disapprove of him.
So that's like, you know, voters of color, young people, obviously he didn't win those voters, but he was able to make significant inroads in 2024 and with that falling away, that coalition is evaporated.
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That's code in DSR 26 at the DSR network.com/buy. Thank you and enjoy the show. So not only is Trump underwater with non-college whites and even non-college white men, who are his base, he's also losing these working-class voters who he won over in 2024, right? We're talking about young voters, non-white working-class, non-white, non-college,
that type of demographic. The whole coalition seems to be eroding on every single level
In every single way you look at it.
Yeah, I mean, you know, tell me something that Donald Trump has done recently that people support. You know, it's it's it's it's Epstein or ice or the shutdown or Iran. Like, you know, it's just like he's just bleeding when people just want when people want him to just focus on on affordability and
“cost-seared home and nobody thinks that that's what he's focused on right now. And so people are”
really are people that use to support him are leaving him. And with regards to how this war is impacting the midterms, we did a poll recently with with the Teo and drop site where we asked people if they would be more or less likely to vote for a candidate in 2026 who supports the war in Iran and 51
percent of voters were less likely to vote for something and that's with only 32 percent more likely.
So it's a net 19. We also asked a candidate for president in 2028 who supports the war with the Iran that was negative 22. And we asked about the reelection of a U.S. Congress member in 2026 who supports Trump's supplemental funding request to continue the war in Iran and that was negative 20. So everything, everything about this war is is not only on popular now, but it's making the Republicans chances in November less and less likely. That is extraordinary stuff right there.
Now, as you said earlier, obviously, the big issue for everybody is prices and the economy.
“That's what's weighing most heavily on the voters who will probably decide the midterms.”
But I got to say the war seems like it's a pretty fat target for Democrats. And yet, I don't see Democrats going after it as strongly as I'd like to. I mean, they're certainly way better than they were during past conflicts. They've been opposed to the war pretty much at the outset, which is itself a striking development for in Democratic politics, usually the parties much more split in these situations. But do you think Democrats are prosecuting the case against
the war frontally enough in these midterms or not? I mean, I think they're starting to make the case. And like you said, they've come out against it from the start, which is new for the Democratic Party. Like you said, we saw people like Barack Obama swept into office by opposing the Iraq War. And it is something that's salient for voters, especially depending how long this war goes on and how much it costs. But for me, what I would like to see, the Democrats do more of in this moment
is Trump is asking for $200 billion of funding. And there should be more discussion about this war
because it's going on right now and what we could be doing with that money if we did it here. Right. Well, why, you know, more Democrats in my opinion should be talking about, hey, if we kept
“the $200 billion here, how much, you know, how much would that save you in your healthcare costs?”
You know, how many people could go to college for free, et cetera? Right. That message pulls pretty well as far as I can tell. It's a strong one for Democrats. We had representative Adam Smith, who's the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee on this show just the other day. And he said hell no to funding. He said no Democrats should support another dime of funding for the war. I would like to hear more Democrats saying that, would you? Me too. Trump had a funny aside
of his cabinet meeting that we can close on. He talked about oil in the stock market and the war. Listen to this. Frank and I thought the O prices would go up more and I thought the stock market would go down more hasn't been nearly as severe as I thought. I think they have confidence and maybe the American president. So Trump thought that oil would go up and the stock market would go down if he invaded Iran. That's quite an admission. He said it straight out. He thought these things
would happen and he did it anyway. But that aside, this kind of shrugging off of the problems, not going to go down well with voters who are upset about the economy and costs. Is that exactly?
I mean, you are, you are never winning when you're trying to convince people why their price is
going up might be a good thing, which is what Donald Trump has been trying to do for the last couple of days. It kind of is reminiscent of when Biden was trying to really convince people that that prices weren't bad. And I think that, you know, that obviously didn't work out very well. Well, we've got around four or five months to go until the midterm elections actually happen. How confident are you that this current dynamic and these current numbers are going to sustain
themselves through the midterms? And what's the nightmare scenario to worry about? It's a good question. I mean, like the closest thing to compare it to is 2018, right, where we had a Trump presidency and, you know, and the midterms were a referendum on him. And so, you know, things are looking fairly similar to 2018 at this point with regards to the numbers. And, you know, in a lot of ways that they creeped up for Democrats and the generic congressional ballot as we went along.
So, you know, by all accounts now, I do think that Democrats are looking towa...
November. But, you know, things are even more tumultuous than they were back in 2018 than they are now.
So, you know, who knows what can happen? But, you know, traditionally the party out of power
“does very well in the midterms. And I think Democrats are on track to do that. But we live in a new”
cycle that's incredibly short. And people's memories are, you know, they're, they're forgetting about things much quicker than ever before. I think as well, too. So, I think the nightmare scenario for, for Democrats at this point is that, you know, Donald Trump wraps up all these incredibly
unpopular things he's doing with many, many months to go before the midterms and actually focuses
on lowering costs for Americans and drops all of the things he's focusing on that the American public doesn't want him to focus on right now. And also, I would say, too, that I think one of the reasons why Democrats aren't overperforming on the generic congressional ballot as, as they should at this point is because, you know, the American public doesn't think that they have a plan to fight affordability either. And so, you know, the nightmare scenario is that Trump,
since Trump does have control over Congress and the presidency and can actually do something on some of these issues, that if Democrats don't show that they're actually the ones to fight for affordability, then, you know, you could see things not, not ending as well as we would think at this point. Yeah, and it doesn't seem likely. I got to say that Trump's going to drop all the unpopular things and suddenly focus on costs. He's just not particularly interested in costs as we
saw from that video, just to finish this out. One thing that I'm heartened by and I'm curious to hear your take on it is that you really do have a lot of strong Democratic candidates running. And this is exactly the kind of environment where even if the national Democratic Party's image is in bad shape, which it absolutely is, voters are going to give a hearing to some of these Democratic candidates. And these are strong candidates. They're talking a lot about costs and they
seem to know how to win elections. It looks like it right now. Is that you're feeling as well? Yeah, I think there's a, there's a lot of really, really strong candidates out there who are talking about things in the right way. I think what we saw in our data over and over and over again, especially since the beginning of the Trump term is how badly Democrats and independent to
“lean Democrats just wanted their representatives to fight against Trump. And that's what we heard”
over and over again, it beat out everything. They just thought that the Democratic Party was looking weaker and more and more fecteless. And they wanted somebody to stop all the things that were happening. Like goes to your point about, Donald Trump just keeps doing all of these incredibly on popular things. And the American public wants them to stop. And so Democrats specifically want their representatives to fight hard enough to stop that from happening. And I think there's a,
there's a lot of great candidates out there that are actually showing the will and power to do that.
Yes, it really is very similar to 2018 in that sense. Trump's first presidency ushered in a whole
“wave of really, really good Democratic candidates. And I think the same's happening now.”
Ryan O'Donnell, awesome to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on. Thanks so much for having me. Thanks for watching.
