The Daily Blast: Trump Rages at GOP to Hurry Up and Rig Midterms as Awful Fox Poll Hits

I'm your host Greg Sargent.

“Donald Trump exploded at Senate GOP leader John Thoon during a Wednesday rally, demanding”

that Republicans pass voter suppression legislation immediately. This prompted an angry response from Thoon, which in turn triggered mega rage in response. It's no accident that this comes amid new polls showing the GOP midterm position deteriorating, including in a major Fox News survey. Thanks voter suppression can save the party.

This is all coming to a head because the House just passed something, and the pressure on the Senate is getting brutal. This whole situation has gotten weird and complex, so to really understand that we're talking to the great voting rights reporter Ari Burman of Mother Jones.

Ari, always good to have you on.

Hey, Greg, great to talk to you again, thank you.

“So House Republicans just passed a massive $95 billion budget with new war funding, and it”

also contains $10 billion for provisions related to the safety act, which is the big voter suppression legislation Trump wants. The idea is to pressure the Senate to then pass these things via the simple majority reconciliation process. Ari, before we talk about the Senate, can you just explain what these provisions are in the

House budget resolution and how would they work? Well, that's a good question, Greg, and I can't really answer it because we don't really know. All we know is that the House passed a resolution that says that states are going to get $10 billion in grants if they pass parts of the save act, but they didn't release

any more details, so we can only speculate on what they're trying to do, but this seems to me a backdoor way, trying to pass the save America act. So if you look at the core provisions of the save act, if you're going to incentivize states to pass those, it's basically proof of citizenship to register to vote, voter ID to cast a ballot, and some kind of ban on mail voting.

Those are the three big parts of the save America act.

So basically what this is starting to look like is the House's passing $10 billion to

use to essentially try to get states to pass by themselves in their state legislatures. These things in the save act, voter suppression mechanism is like ending vote by mail, requiring proof of citizenship, you do all these things through the states and the House would try and incentivize that. Yeah, they're basically paying states to do voter suppression, I mean, that's the simplest

way I could explain what the House is doing. Trump ratcheted up the pressure on John Thun, the Senate Majority Leader, to pass these provisions of the Save Act, the reconciliation, again, we're talking about the things that the House is basically on track to passing. Listen to this.

Everybody called John Thun at the Senate, he's the leader of the Republican Party and tell him to get this stuff approved. So we're fighting so that all voters, my show voter ID, we're fighting so that all voters must provide proof of citizenship, okay, and also the no mail-in ballots. So the White House blasted out video of that appearance, which is an unusual move since

it pressures Republicans, and then on Thursday, Press Secretary Caroline Levitt said this. Look, the President spoke about this directly yesterday. His patience is running out. He wants to see as much of the Save America past as possible by the August recess.

“He knows that's what the American people want to see past.”

Ari, the idea seems to be that the Senate can pass these provisions of the Save Act, again, that would be in the House bill, be a reconciliation, because by structuring them as appropriations to incentivize states to restrict voting, that they think might get past the parliamentarian. But we don't even know if that's at all likely, do we? Yeah, I think it's a pretty big stretch that A, it would get past the parliamentarian,

and B, there's enough votes for it, because Trump keeps talking about getting real of the filibuster. But the fact is, there isn't even a simple majority for the Save America Act at this point. You have Markowski announced he's against it, tillists announced he's against it, and it's current form going into effect before the midterms, McConnell, wherever he is, as

he's against it, corn in, Cassidy, all of the people that Trump has basically pushed

So even if you got rid of the filibuster, even if you tried to pass it through reconciliation,

Thun keeps saying, we don't have the votes. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I really have to tell you about our sub-stack. The DSR network of sub-stack is the absolute best way to follow deep state radio. The DSR Daily words matter need to know, silicaciousness, AI energy, and climate, and the daily blast.

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Please consider joining us at DSR network.substack.com, that's DSR network.substack.com. Thank you, and back to the show. These provisions of the Save Act probably won't get past the parliamentarian because the reconciliation process is really only supposed to be used on things that concern taxes and spending in fiscal matters and, as you said, bribing states to suppress the vote.

Just doesn't qualify for that. We think the Senate parliamentarian would essentially rule those out of order, right?

Yeah, because basically the only financial part of it is to incentivize states what they're

actually doing is radically changing how people would vote in those states. And that has nothing to do with the budget reconciliation process. And there's already a number of Republicans on record saying, we don't think we can do this through reconciliation. So the Senate parliamentarian isn't going to have to look very far for a justification

in terms of why this wouldn't work. So that's one pretty big hurdle, and you brought up the fact that there probably aren't even enough Republicans in the Senate to pass this thing with a simple majority via reconciliation.

“That's what John Thune said in response to all this pressure.”

He responded by urging the White House to pressure Democrats and Republican holdouts. He said this about the White House, quote, instead of pointing the finger at Republicans, they might think about going after the people who are stopping it on the floor, the Democrats, and if there are Republicans that they think are getable, get on the phone, close quote. I mean, they just aren't 50 votes for these provisions of the same act at all, right?

I mean, that could change. I got to think these Republicans really would hope that the parliamentarian would throw this stuff out, so they're relieved of the pressure of having to pass it. Yeah, they mean, they've been wanting this to go away for months. I mean, I would urge everyone to watch this speech that Tom Tillis gave last week on the

Senate floor. I mean, he just went nuts basically about this. They are so fed up that Trump keeps telling them to pass this bill. The votes, number one, are not there. And number two, this would not have the impact on the midterms that Trump thinks it would.

I mean, a lot of these provisions, I've been arguing this for months now, would hurt Republicans as much as Democrats. I'll just give you one example.

“The bill says you have to present your citizenship documents in person at an elections office.”

That means that if you live in a rural area, you could have to drive hours just to be able to register to vote. It also says you need a passport or a birth certificate to register to vote.

Well, 146 million Americans have all Americans don't have passports.

The top 10 states where people don't have passports all voted for Trump, meaning that it's Trump voters that don't have these passport requirements. You look at the citizenship requirements, 69 million married women have changed their names, meaning that they could have a different name on their birth certificate and on their driver's license, for example, women who take their partner's names are twice as

likely to be Republicans than Democrats. So I do believe the Savour America Act is a voter suppression bill. I also believe it's a voter suppression bill that could suppress many Republicans. And if you talk to some Republicans privately, they will tell you this. They will tell you that this bill would not help the party, nearly as much as Trump says

it well, and it would hurt lots of Republicans, and that doesn't even get into the whole thing with banning mail in voting, which ask Republican strategists in Alaska in Arizona in Florida. It was a smart idea to outlaw mail voting four months before the midterms. They'll tell you unequivocally, yes, this would hurt Democrats, but also her a lot of Republicans

as well. Yeah, and it looks as if Donald Trump has just gotten it into his head that if he can get this past, it saves the midterms for Republicans, he's just simply not capable of grasping

“the situation at a very fundamental level as he so often is not, right?”

Number one, every time that Trump is about to lose or on the verge of losing, he starts

We saw this in 2020 with mail voting, we're seeing it again now at the Save America Act.

“Secondly, this is my real concern about all of this, Greg, is that I believe he's using”

the Save America Act as a pretext to challenge legitimacy of the midterms. So if it does not pass, which it won't pass, he's going to say, we don't have the Save America Act, therefore the elections were rigged, therefore I have no choice but the challenge legitimacy of the midterms, and he's going to point to that crazy speech he gave and say, I laid out all the evidence, even though he laid out no evidence, but he's going to say,

I laid out all the evidence, the elections were rigged. The Congress didn't act on this, therefore I have no choice but to issue a national emergency executive order or sees voting machines or take some kind of dramatic intervention to mess with the midterms.

I'm not saying that's going to succeed because I think the present ultimately would not succeed,

but I believe that he's going to blame the failure of the Save Act as a reason why he needs to do some kind of more dramatic intervention than midterms to really mess with how people vote or how votes or how elections are certified. Yeah, it's a pretty horrifying scenario, and I will point out that Republicans have privately said that they think they are being set up in exactly that way, that they think

that Trump's pressure here is really about being able to say later that Republicans are why they lost the midterms in addition to kind of creating a pretext to do the absolute worst. I want to bring up some of the polling now. All this comes amid very clear signs that the Republican position in the midterms might

suddenly be deteriorating again, the new Fox News poll finds Democrats leading the House

Generic Ballet Matchup by seven points, 53 to 46, and get this, that 53 percent for Democrats

is the highest percentage, either party has gotten in the House Generic Ballet Matchup in Fox News polling going back 20 years. It gets worse, Democrats are favored on the economy over Republicans in the Fox poll by 54, 45, 9 points, and Democrats have now edged ahead of Republicans on immigration, 50 to 49. It's just astounding stuff for a Fox poll to find all that as an extremely serious bloat

of Republicans, I think. What do you think? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's a worst case scenario for Trump because the Iran war is flaring up again,

“gas prices are rising again, and what is Trump talking about intelligence from China?”

In the 2020 election, I mean, he's not even remotely close to being on topic here, and I think we should fully expect that as the poll numbers continue to deteriorate, the White House is going to consider more dramatic interventions in the midterm as a response, meaning the more in popular Trump becomes the more desperate they're going to be, and so it's not going to end with the save act.

I think that's a really important thing, like even if this fails before recess or wherever it comes to a head, we don't even know when it's going to fully come to a head, because it's already come to a head to number of times, but this is not ending. Like, let's say the Senate has a definitive vote on the save act. Trump's going to think about something else to do, and I believe that something else is

going to be pressuring law enforcement somehow to take some kind of incredibly drastic unconstitutional action in the midterm, and that's the next phase of what I'm watching,

“and I think that's what we should all prepare for, and that's why the death or the demise”

or whatever we want to call it, the save act, while a victory, it only gets you so far because I do believe that the failure of the save act is really only beginning, the beginning of what is going to be a much broader fight over the legitimacy of the midterm. Yeah, and my sense is that Democrats and a lot of democratic align lawyers and groups get this and are really gearing up, but we should really be using our imaginations to imagine

the very worst right now. I just want to bring up a bit more polling that shows this deterioration, and Emerson Poll puts Dems ahead in the generic house ballot matchup by 11 points, 53, 42, a new pupil has Dems up six, 43, 37, between those and the fox poll having it at seven, I think it's very possible the democratically is starting to grow a bit because the generic house

ballot averages have been around five points, and we don't have three polls showing it bigger than that, and including a fox poll, and including an Emerson one that's even bigger. So I think we may be seeing the start of some significant deterioration, do you think that's possible? Yeah, and people who have been saying this, they've been saying that a lot of these polls

are going to move from a registered voter to a likely voter model, and when you get to a likely voter model, Democrats are going to do better because they have much more enthusiasm in terms of voting, and I think it needs to be a landslide, quite frankly.

If it's really close, that's where I worry about, for example, the GOP's lead on gearing mandoring mattering. That's where I worry about Trump pressuring Mike Johnson not to see it seat Democratic members of Congress. That's where I worry about state level challenges and governors races or other close state races. If the margin is overwhelming, if Democrats win by 20 seats in the house, for example, then it's really hard to challenge the election.

And so that to me is the best case scenario here of it being closer to a landslide. I do worry

“that if it's close, this may not succeed, but I think you're going to see a tremendous”

amount of pressure from Trump for Republicans to try to mess with the mechanics of voting,

either in terms of how votes are counted or ultimately, how elections are certified, and

how members of Congress are seated. Absolutely. It's going to get really hairy. One of their questions about the same back of I could. Let's say somehow the House passed these provisions by which there is congressional appropriation used to essentially incentivize or bribe states to pass voters oppression. Let's say somehow it got passed the Senate. Would any states actually do it?

And that's sort of a pretty key question. As in, it's say you've got major Senate races in places like Texas, Ohio, Alaska, which you brought up, you know, some states with some pretty large rural areas in them. And so I really wonder whether the Republican legislators in some of these states would actually take the money to do this. What do you think? I mean, can you

“kind of parse that out? Do you think it's likely that they would do it or might they not?”

I don't think they would do it before November. I mean, it's too late to do it. To do anything. I mean, Florida passed kind of a mini-save act months ago that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote. And they didn't, they put it in effect after the midterm to avoid this whole question. So states are out of time to make major changes before the election. I'm sure

some red states would take the money. Ultimately, I'm sure some red states would like to have

these policies. Some red states already have these policies. And I'm sure that when we see state legislators coming to session next year, some of them are going to pass similar bills. But in terms of trying to save the midterms, quote unquote, it's too late for Republicans to do that. Do you think that there's a plausible scenario in which Donald Trump has law enforcement sees ballot boxes? We're seeing a bit of a test run for that in Fulton County already. The FBI

“has already seized ballot boxes, but these pertain to a previous election. I think it's a little”

hard to see how they would seize ballot boxes, which contain votes that need to be counted. I do not, for a second, rule out them trying this at all. But do you think that they might actually be able to go through with it to some degree? And then what would happen? Well, I agree with you that they're going to try. I absolutely think they view the Fulton County ballot seizure as a test run. And I think they're in Georgia right now, quote unquote,

investigating with 260 FBI agents, because they're trying to lay the groundwork to challenge the legitimacy of the results in November. I hope that the courts would treat this differently,

like they did in Fulton County, because in Fulton County, a magistrate judge basically signed

off in the affidavit. The affidavit that was used to initiate the FBI search and eventually the taking of those ballots in Fulton County, Georgia. We later learned was just totally based on recycled disinformation by election juniers. It was essentially it was like they said we're looking for the evidence. Well, you're supposed to have evidence to get a war in the first place, let alone take 700 boxes of ballots. But maybe the judge thought, okay, these, this has already been

adjudicated. Therefore, there's less risk in terms of them taking it. I would hope that there would be a very high bar for a court to sign off on taking machines or taking ballots before votes are actually kind of the fact that we're even talking about this is so insane just to step back for a second. I mean, just the fact that we're talking about the federal government's seizing ballots in an election. I mean, this is, this is so dictatorial. This is so authoritarian.

The fact that we're even talking about it to me is crazy. Let alone the fact that we both agree that this is a likelihood in terms of happening. But I do think that people are preparing for this election officials are preparing for this lawyers are preparing for this and they're not going to be blindsided, like they were by their rate in Fulton County, Georgia. So do I expect Trump to try it? Yes, do I ultimately think Trump will succeed in stopping an election in overturning

election? I think the answer to that is most likely no. I agree 100%. I have picked up plenty of

seriously and preparing. So I don't think Trump's going to get away with it. But again, we need to

“use our imaginations to the fullest to think through what he might try because he's pretty desperate.”

Ari Burman, always great to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on. Thanks so much, Greg.

Great to talk to you again.