Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Main
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cliff young
16:56
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john mcardle
cspan08:44
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mike bost
rep/r00:10
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A Nation Divided Finds Common Ground00:15:22
unidentified
the code on the right or go to c-span shop.org to order your copy today in a nation divided a rare moment of unity This fall, C-SPAN presents Ceasefire, where the shouting stops and the conversation begins in a town where partisan fighting prevails.
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Is it an apples-to-apples comparison to talk about Trump's second term versus other two-term presidents because he had that four-year break between his first and second term?
They're worried about taking kids to summer sports.
They're worried about their health.
They're worried about being safe, et cetera, et cetera, with those more meat and potato issues.
So it is still distant.
But when we present them the details of the bill, that is the specific benefits, potential benefits of the bill, Americans tend to be more in favor of it than not.
We ask a general ballot question, like in general, are you in favor of this bill?
We don't put a lot of specifics there.
We make sure it's somewhat vague.
And then we go into the details of the bill.
Now, what we pull out or pince out is a judgment call.
We try to get those things we think will create consensus.
Those other things that will be more controversial.
And we lay it out and we ask the specifics.
So typically what we'll do is we'll ask a general question about the ballot that is abstract, more conceptual in nature, and then we'll ask the specifics.
About a third of the population, especially Republicans, are very much in favor of the administration's actions.
Democrats aren't.
Like I said, it's very partisan.
There's a lot of queuing, right?
If you like Trump, you're probably in favor of the bill.
If you don't like Trump, you're probably not in favor of the bill.
I think more fundamentally, though, what we find is a huge age differentiation.
What we're finding, not just with Iran, but also with Gaza as well as the Ukraine across the board, foreign policy in general, young Americans are less in favor of a more muscular policy.
They're much different than baby boomers.
They're much different than Gen Xers like myself.
And that's a general trend we're finding independent of partisanship, and it manifests itself as well on the Iranian airstrikes.
Are those young people today going to be the older people of tomorrow who are a bit more okay with interventionalism than the young people of tomorrow will be against it?
What have you found over time?
Or is that something unique to this time that we are in?
Yeah, basically, as you get older, you get more conservative.
You get more cratchy like me.
I become more cratchy over time.
No, actually, what's interesting is that when we compare younger people, let's say, to the Vietnam generation or to the Iraq 1 generation or the Iraq 2 generation, younger people today are definitively less interventionist in nature.
The question would be why, and there's a variety of factors, one of which I believe are the forever wars, the fact that Americans, young Americans feel like the government has lied to them over time.
And this is something we believe that is a significant generational difference that will shape America looking forward into the future.
Americans are concerned about bread and butter issues for the most part.
There is a partisan break there.
Basically, Democrats are more in favor of Ukraine, intervention, let's say more specifically, than our Republicans.
But it's one of those things that I believe is just a tertiary issue, really, relative to all the more fundamental issues like the economy, like political extremism, and like immigration.
And we can get to some of those other issues as well.
Let me bring in some calls, though.
We'll head first to the city of Tucson in Arizona.
This is Carolyn, Line for Democrats.
You are on with Cliff Young.
unidentified
Excuse me.
Hi.
Yes, those were fascinating points to me because I am a relic.
And so my political beliefs kind of stem from a humanitarian viewpoint.
And my observation of government is similar to the youth in that I definitely feel we're manipulated.
I'm disappointed, in fact, that in journalism, there's not one area, one, we have no venue where someone, for example, will take Project 2025 and read it, however boring, and speak of what that is, because I feel that war has become very transactional,
probably always has been transactional.
But what the media used to do was inspire, I wouldn't say patriotism, but an emotional, a visceral response, which indicated the trend, the heart of your nation.
So, Carolyn, what are some of the news outlets do you trust?
unidentified
Well, that's what I'm saying, I think.
I don't trust any per se, and that I would feel better if when the big beautiful bill arrives, someone would attempt to read the whole thing publicly, take 15 minutes of a broadcast.
So, Carolyn, they did read most of that bill publicly on the floor of the Senate, Chuck Schubert forcing Republicans.
unidentified
I did.
I did watch that, yes.
And that's very important, but that's not generally I'm talking broadcast news, not public information, because that will become more and more limited via Project 2025.
And it's unfortunate because most people don't pursue, don't have the time for that matter.
So through that lens, how would you view Donald Trump reaching out to his MAGA base via Truth Social over the weekend saying it's time to move past the Epstein case and how much consternation this case continues to cause?
Yeah, and the context is a broad base believed that the system is broken.
And again, I don't think in the grand scheme of things, it will weigh so heavily from a voting or public opinion standpoint.
But there is noise in the system today because the principal champion, President Trump, had been touting for a long time that he would fix the broken system.
And this seems to be contrary to that point.
Again, the context is such that these sorts of things are not easy for someone in a place like Donald Trump.
Will Donald Trump, if he goes through with them on August 1st with a slew of new tariffs, are those tariffs supported by that same base and that same 45% that is approving his job right now?
Yeah, first I would say the tariffs in general are a risk, right?
Americans see them as inflationary in nature.
They're worried about making ends meet.
We just came off a very difficult inflationary moment that we know, obviously, things have gotten better over the last little bit, last few months, but that definitely is the fear of Americans.
But his base has supported him throughout.
You know, they understand, or at least their perception is, yes, there might be problems in the short term, but there are long-term benefits, like bringing jobs back to America.
And they've held steady and with steady support for him and his tariff regime.
I would say anywhere from 65% plus, depending on how you ask the question.
And that in part, in large part, is why he is where he is with his approval ratings.
When you do surveys on their household purchase behavior, they're very discerning, obviously.
They know where every nickel and dime goes in terms of their expenditures.
But what we wanted to get at overall was, do Americans perceive tariffs as inflationary?
And the simple answer is yes, they do.
And in part, the sort of trepidation, unease we see in the polls in general, not in the approval ratings, but in relative optimism, in consumer confidence as examples.
They're more negative right now.
Americans are more pessimistic.
It's partially a function of this worry about future inflationary pressures.
So for people who heard me read out those numbers, why were there 51 more Democrats than Independents sampled in this survey and 25 more Democrats than Republicans?
That's Eric in New Jersey calling as an independent.
If you come back to the Ipsos survey on this, 36% of independents, 36% of all Americans, I apologize, say that they supported the recent U.S. airstrikes.
That includes 71% of Republicans, 12% of Democrats, and 34% of Independents.
And once again, there's a lot of partisan queuing.
I'll support my guy, Trump, or I won't because I don't like him.
Some of the age issue is there as well.
We're not seeing it in that data, but younger Americans on average are more against more muscular interventions, as we've already stated.
But really, these numbers, we have to be very careful.
They're typically a function of partisanship, and their breaks are as such.
That said, there still is nuance.
If we were to put conditions there, should we put troops on the ground?
A vast majority of Americans would say no.
Should we provide sort of technical assistance to countries in the region?
You'd have a strong majority saying yes.
So this very simple ballot question hides many times the more nuance that's actually there, and we have to be clear about that.
Now, we didn't share that data here specifically, but definitely there is a continuum of support depending on the conditionality, the specifics of the measures.
Yeah, before I go into the specifics, I just want to say, like, it's not just how you tweak the question.
It's basically you're tweaking the policy outcomes.
And so it's legitimate to be varying the question wording because the question, because the policy outcomes can be variable.
And so we have to keep that in mind, right?
But what's been most surprising is the issue of deportation.
Immigration is extremely controversial.
And it really, in my mind, based upon all the research we've done, it's the most important political determinant in America today.
It defines whether you're Republican or not, where you stand on immigration.
So it's very important.
But Americans are very nuanced on it.
So on the one hand, you have a supermajority of Americans saying, yeah, we should deport illegal immigrants who are criminals, but don't touch children.
You only have a, you have a weak plurality in favor of it.
So the point being is, even on a controversial issue like immigration, that really defines what side of the aisle you stand, there's nuance to the policy.
Okay, and my question is: did you include any like Breitbart or Fox or Heritage or any of the conservative-leaning organizations when you did your polling?
Because if you didn't, it looks like it's a predetermined outcome.
None of this we're looking at specifically is a polling firm.
We did that deliberately, actually.
We wanted to sort of get a feel for the average, not just a single poll, not an Ipsus poll or a New York Times poll for sake of argument.
So what we showed was actually the poll of polls, the average of all polls, and we use Real Color Politics as more of the right-leaning aggregator in the mix.
We definitely could have used other ones as well.
I think it's pretty good representation of where he is today.
And as we said before, Trump is in a pretty good position.
And there are many Americans that actually agree with her.
Our estimate is that she represents maybe a third of the American population today.
You have maybe another 20% that are, let's call it, strong anti-immigration and adjacent.
They come and they go depending on the specific conditionality of the measures.
But the caller definitely represents a wide swath of America and one which gives life to Trump and his administration, where immigration is the critical issue for the base.
You know, I've been sitting here listening to this for quite a few minutes.
And when I first tried to call, it was, do you agree with the strike in Iran, you know, Donald Trump strike in Iran?
Well, you know, I was a Democrat.
Now I call myself an independent because I can't agree with most of what is underhanded being done by the Democrats with the immigration and with the LGBT scene.
But I know that when I see theater, you know, and what happened in Iran, what's going on in Israel, mostly what's happened here since last summer with that assassination theatrical event, it's all theater.
Well, first, once again, a big chunk of the American population believes the system is broken.
They believe that the establishment no longer cares about the average person.
The system is rigged.
And in a context like that, conspiracy theories have a lot of fuel, right?
Now that, obviously, we have to separate conspiracy theories from legitimate sort of beliefs that the system is not working for the average person.
I think they get confused a bit and they get conflated.
But definitely at Ipsos, there's a chunk of the population, a significant, but small polarity, but significant chunk of population that believes in a whole host of different sort of conspiracy theories.
But we can't understand that outside the context of the fact that trust is low.
Institutions are not believed in anymore.
They're not trustworthy.
unidentified
The House has been in recess, but is now gaveling back into session.