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| We are joined by Kirk Bado, National Journal's hotline editor, to talk about the electoral landscape ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. | ||
| Kirk, welcome to the program. | ||
| Thanks for having me on. | ||
| So remind us about the hotline and the work that you do there. | ||
| Yeah, the hotline is a twice-daily political publication where a newsletter goes out at 9, 11.40 in the morning. | ||
| And we cover races all over the map, all over the ballot, from early looking at the 2028 presidential races down to the Senate races, the off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia, the House races. | ||
| If there's a competitive dollar race, we're covering it at the hotline. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, you said in a recent podcast that Republicans could, quote, redraw themselves into the majority a year before voters even head to the polls. | ||
| Explain that. | ||
| Well, so I think before we get into the redistricting, we have to look at what the battle for the House is looking like right now. | ||
| It's very, very narrow. | ||
| Democrats only need to net three seats and they'll be in the majority again. | ||
| Now, the White House is putting a lot of pressure on red states to redraw the congressional lines to favor Republicans. | ||
| In Texas, we have a proposal right now that would shift five seats into Republicans' favor, redrawing those districts to seats that Trump carried by more than 10 points. | ||
| In Ohio, we know that there's going to be mid-cycle redistricting there because of a legal challenge last year that has the current line set to expire before 2026. | ||
| We don't have proposals yet in Ohio, but Republicans there are probably going to target two, maybe three seats. | ||
| So if we look at it like that, that's eight seats now shifting towards Republicans' favor. | ||
| That almost triples the size of Democrats' lift right now to win back the majority. | ||
| And it's going to be increasingly difficult to win that number of seats, given how narrowly divided the House is and how partisan the whole country is. | ||
| I mean, are there eight seats out there that Democrats could win that might be in play for them? | ||
| If the election were held today before these changes, yes, absolutely. | ||
| There's plenty of seats right now. | ||
| There's three seats that Republicans hold that Harris won that are the prime targets for Democrats, especially that open seat in Nebraska II and the Omaha seat. | ||
| But with this redraw right now, that task gets so much more difficult, especially, you know, given the history of the midterms where, yes, the party in power usually loses a lot of seats, but more recently, those losses have gotten narrower and narrower. | ||
| And you say more difficult. | ||
| Is it impossible? | ||
| I don't think it's impossible. | ||
| Given the right conditions, the right circumstances right now, at the bottom falls out of Republicans, then there's a whole slew. | ||
| There's a whole universe of districts that could be in play here. | ||
| And there's plenty of more reached districts that aren't going to get redrawn that Democrats can target. | ||
| My colleague James Downs, our House campaign correspondent, was writing this morning about places like Virginia won the Rob Whitman seat. | ||
| There's some other seats as well that are just on the periphery of the battlefield that Democrats can start targeting heavily. | ||
| But the whole calculus is going to change with about a year to go. | ||
| So, Republicans have accused Democrats of doing the exact same thing in the past, that this is nothing new. | ||
| Well, what's new here is that it's so explicit right now from the White House. | ||
| You have Trump in front of the White House talking about how we need five seats. | ||
| We can get these five seats. | ||
| We're going to get these five seats. | ||
| Now, Democrats have, of course, been using hardest and gerrymandering as well. | ||
| Look at the Illinois map, look more locally here at the Maryland map where there's a lone Republican representative. | ||
| What's so brazen here is that it is mid-cycle for very explicitly political purposes. | ||
| The Constitution says that redistricting should happen about every 10 years to coincide with the census and apportionment. | ||
| This new push to just open up the lines without any court decisions pending, without any real impetus besides just a partisan power grab here. | ||
| That's what's new. | ||
| So, what are the challenges that Democratic states are facing if they want to redraw their maps as well? | ||
| Well, what's interesting here is that Democrats are kind of abandoning those high-minded ideas about fairness and taking the partisanship out of the map-making process. | ||
| You know, 10 years ago, Democrats really responded to the first Trump administration with this appeal to defending Democratic institutions, small deed democracy. | ||
| They formed the National Democratic Redistricting Committee that was supposed to try to take the partisanship out of gerrymandering out of drawing the lines. | ||
| However, with Trump 2.0, they've tried to say, All right, we're going to go down into the trenches with Trump here. | ||
| The problem is, a lot of these states that Democrats could draw their lines in have enacted these good government reforms to make it much more difficult. | ||
| In California, for example, where Gavin Newsom's making a lot of noise about redrawing the lines, they would have to put a ballot measure in front of voters this November if they want to change the lines for next year. | ||
| In New York, it would require a change to the state constitution, which is really, really difficult right now. | ||
| The barriers for Democrats are so much higher than it is for Republicans. | ||
| If you'd like to join our conversation with Kirk Beto of the National Journal, you can. | ||
| The lines are Republicans: 202748-8001, Democrats 202-748-8000, and Independents 202-748-8002. | ||
| Another part of the story is that President Trump has asked for a new census. | ||
| Talk about that. | ||
| I'm still trying to wait for more details from the White House on what he means by a new census. | ||
| Now, Trump just dropped this in a true social post last week. | ||
| The officials that I've talked to are also looking for clarity as well. | ||
| Is this a new census? | ||
| Is this changes to the census that's going to be conducted in 2030, which is already in the early stages of coming together? | ||
| They're already doing trainings for that. | ||
| What's interesting is that Trump's demand for a new census coincides with a bill that Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia introduced earlier this year, also calling for a new census to exclude non-citizens and also to have it be conducted before the 2026 midterms, which is almost impossible to do. | ||
| And it's also constitutionally not allowed. | ||
| No, wait, wait, wait. | ||
| Let's go back to exclude non-citizens, also green card holders, so people here in the country legally but not American citizens. | ||
| Yes, Trump only wants to count citizens in this census, which isn't a census. | ||
| It's a glorified survey at that point. | ||
| The whole point of the census, as outlined in the 14th Amendment, is to get an accurate count of every resident in the United States, regardless of your legal status. | ||
| And for those who don't know, the census is what controls the apportionment of congressional seats. | ||
| It controls the apportionment of the Electoral College as well. | ||
| There's massive implications here electorally. | ||
| Trump tried to do this during his first term where he tried to add a citizenship question to the census. | ||
| The courts strut that down. | ||
| There wasn't a whole lot of support for it in Congress. | ||
| And now, with this new unchained Trump that we have, this really bold taking action Trump that we have in this second term, he's trying to push for it again here. | ||
| Well, beyond the census, and the redistricting and all that that's happening, what's the state of play of politics going into the midterm elections? | ||
| It's not the same type of, if we flash back to Trump 1.0, Democrats at this point were feeling pretty good about their chances in the midterms. | ||
| There was a lot more Republican retirements. | ||
| They kind of saw the writing on the wall. | ||
| Democrats were vastly outperforming expectations in special elections. | ||
| And they were about 10 points ahead in the generic ballot. | ||
| Fast forward to Trump 2.0 now, and it's not the same type of Democratic advantage. | ||
| They have about a three-point advantage in the generic ballot. | ||
| Trump's approval ratings are right around where they were in the first term, maybe a little bit higher. | ||
| The image of the Democratic Party right now is much more unfavorable than it was this time around. | ||
| And that's going to be really difficult to overcome right now, especially with how narrowly divided Congress is. | ||
| The Senate's going to be very difficult for Democrats given the map. | ||
| Even though there are more Republicans up for re-election this time around, their best bet, if I was a betting man, is probably going to flip the House. | ||
| But if you asked me that a month ago, I'd have a much different answer. | ||
| Now that we're in this redistricting arms race, a lot is up in the air for Democrats. | ||
| Great. | ||
| Let's look at some of the latest polls. | ||
| Here's President Trump's approval rating. | ||
| This is an average from real clear politics. | ||
| He's at a disapproval of 51.6%, approval at 45.7%. | ||
| How does that compare to not only his first term, but other presidents during this time? | ||
| Trump was historically unpopular at this point during his first term. | ||
| And this is just a slight uptick of where it was at a similar point. | ||
| But this is not where you want to be. | ||
| You don't want to be underwater as a president here. | ||
| And I think back to where we were about four years ago now with Joe Biden, where up until about August of his first term, his approval rating was above water. | ||
| He had more approval than he did disapproval. | ||
| But then after the Afghanistan pool out, his numbers inverted and never really recovered. | ||
| We saw Trump's numbers invert a lot earlier than we have seen a lot of other modern presidents. | ||
| It started around April during the first Liberation Day where he announced his first round of tariffs. | ||
| And they've been consistently underwater since then. | ||
| All right, well, let's take a look at some of the details, breaking it down by topic of President Trump's approval. | ||
| So the economy, he is at 55% disapproval, 42% approve. | ||
| The inflation specifically, 59% disapproval. | ||
| That's the highest on this list. | ||
| 39% approve. | ||
| Immigration at 52% disapproval, 45% approval. | ||
| And foreign policy, 53% disapproval, 45% approve. | ||
| Well, if you look at the issue that mattered most to voters in 2024, it was the economy followed behind by about 10 points or so by immigration. | ||
| Now, by most counts, Trump has been very successful about enacting his immigration policy. | ||
| Border crossings are near historic lows. | ||
| His very visible crackdowns on immigrants are exactly what he promised. | ||
| And while the images playing out on TV have been pretty divisive, this is what he said he was going to do. | ||
| The big thing here that's going to matter is those economy numbers. | ||
| That's the number one issue for voters. | ||
| If the price of goods keep going up right now, you're going to see voters take out those frustrations on the party in power, because that's what midterms usually are. | ||
| They're a referendum on the party in power. | ||
| I want to show you another poll. | ||
| This is from YouGov in June about congressional Republicans, and then I'll show you congressional Democrats. | ||
| So the view of congressional Republicans, 58% have an unfavorable view, 38% have a favorable view. | ||
| It's even worse for congressional Democrats. | ||
| So 65% have an unfavorable view of congressional Democrats, only 30% a favorable. | ||
| What do you make of those numbers? | ||
| That people are really upset right now at their elected officials. | ||
| And I think one of the defining characteristics as we go into the midterms here right now, there's a lot of issues that are up in the air right now. | ||
| I don't think a lot of the stuff that we're talking about today are going to be the major factors in 2026. | ||
| I don't think the Sydney Sweeney commercial, for example, is going to hold a lot of weight. | ||
| What I think is whether your first name, if you're on the ballot, is Congressman or not. | ||
| I think there's a lot of dissatisfaction right now with elected officials. | ||
| And I think one of the most important usual, because we usually have this whole throw-the-bums out kind of sentiment in the country. | ||
| We do. | ||
| And it's very difficult to have that type of wave election now. | ||
| In recent election trends, the swing in either way has not been as extreme as it was even in 2018. | ||
| But I do think that there's a real anti-incumbent streak right now. | ||
| You've seen it play out in the New York mayor's primary as well, where Zohran Mamdani ran against the Democratic machine there. | ||
| Now, Andrew Cuomo has his own unique set of baggage. | ||
| But I think that type of pushing back against the political system right now that's not working, that's leaving people behind, I think that's going to be pretty pervase next year. | ||
| All right, let's talk to callers. | ||
| We'll start with Rick, Columbus, Ohio, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, Rick. | ||
| Rick, are you there? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes. | |
| Yeah, go right ahead. | ||
| Rick? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| Yes, go right ahead. | ||
| You're on the air. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| What I'd like to talk about is the federalization of the police force. | ||
| I don't understand why Americans aren't upset about this in the sense that this gives way to a larger problem, basically moving towards a police state. | ||
| He's already talked about moving to other cities, and this is part of his larger plan. | ||
| These Republicans, basically, they disenfranchise. | ||
| They want to do everything they can to disenfranchise voters so that regardless if you vote or not, they still remain in power. | ||
| And they're not serving people whatsoever. | ||
| I mean, they're just the biggest crook as the crime that's being committed by people still in purses. | ||
| They're stealing money left and right now by financing all these companies that Republicans have interest in that are part of ICE, that are part of taking over government functions that Doe just cut. | ||
| And no one realizes that that's going on or cares about it. | ||
| And what's even worse is, so you come in, you clear the city. | ||
| Where are these people going to go? | ||
| And all these conditions that we're suffering from today, homelessness, the mentally ill on the street, no one remembers this. | ||
| It goes all the way back to Ronald Reagan when he, because of their policies, people were not allowed to be institutionalized that needed help. | ||
| And we're given help. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Well, let's get a response, Kirk. | ||
| I think that's the big news dominating Washington right now: Trump federalizing the city's police force and calling in the National Guard here. | ||
| Now, he called in the National Guard during his first term to help handle the protest in 2020 that summer. | ||
| It's been a very rapid escalation for Trump and his takeover of the D.C. police force right now. | ||
| Now, legally, he can only do it for about 30 days without an act of Congress. | ||
| So, we're still in the early stages of this. | ||
| We don't know exactly what it's going to look like. | ||
| We have about 800 or so guardsmen mobilized here right now. | ||
| And Trump yesterday in a press conference said that he, if the problem with crime in D.C. isn't solved, which I don't know what the markers of success for that look like, he could call in the military as well, which would be an incredible escalation to call in the U.S. military for a domestic crime issue. | ||
| Got a question for you from Jimbo in California. | ||
| Could Mr. Beto explain the sausage-making process of gerrymandering congressional districts? | ||
| Does it involve AI and voting role data? | ||
| Well, you mean how long you got here to talk about the sausage making here? | ||
| I mean, there's a lot of new technologies that are being used right now to draw these new lines. | ||
| I'm really interested to talk to the folks behind the Texas lines and see how they went about that process here. | ||
| But it's a lot, there is a little use of AI depending on the state, but usually it's just trying to carve up what is going to be the most advantageous district for you. | ||
| What's interesting about Texas during their first, the redraw earlier this decade is that a lot of Republicans complain that it didn't go far enough with pushing Republicans' advantage because it's a state-run process. | ||
| Instead, it was more of an incumbent protection program where you had some people grumbling, but it largely preserved the folks who were in power. | ||
| This one's much more of a reach. | ||
| And while those five seats that are drawn into Republicans' favor aren't slam dunks, it's looking pretty favorable for them right now. | ||
| Let's talk to Harold in Easton, Illinois, Democrat. | ||
| Hi, Harold. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, hi, America. | |
| Thanks for having me on. | ||
| I'd like to talk about the gerrymandering. | ||
| I don't think it's good for either side. | ||
| I think it takes away the vote from the people. | ||
| If they're gerrymandered, they can vote however they want to for the big business, rich people, but they don't have to vote for the people that they actually represent. | ||
| They're picking the I don't, I just think that the whole electoral thing is completely messed up right now. | ||
| It's all you have the richest people in the world taking control of our votes because they we do not lobby anymore. | ||
| Lobbyists used to be like get 200,000 votes and you could have somebody change their mind. | ||
| Now it's how big a check can I contribute to your campaign and I got your vote. | ||
| I just think that we need to get rid of the gerrymandering. | ||
| We need to get rid of Citizens United. | ||
| We need to have government finance elections to where they're not indebted to anybody but the people that elect them. | ||
| We need to get rid of the electoral college. | ||
| We need to... | ||
| A lot of changes there, Harold. | ||
| Let's get a response. | ||
| Well, it's interesting what Harold's talking about for the most part with those changes are stuff that Democrats have put forward with H.R.1, their big for the people voting bill that they introduced in 2017 shortly after Trump took power the first time around. | ||
| And part of that was to reform campaign finance. | ||
| Part of that was to end partisan gerrymandering as well. | ||
| And now, again, when we see in Trump 2.0, we've seen Democrats largely abandon that right now. | ||
| You have Ken Martin, the chair of the DNC, talking about how this isn't your grandfather's Democratic Party. | ||
| We're not bringing a pen to a knife fight. | ||
| We're bringing a knife to a knife fight. | ||
| You have Eric Holder, the Attorney General, the former Attorney General, who's leading that Democratic group to take partisanship out of the gerrymandering, out of the redraw process. | ||
| Say that, look, this is like when Germany invaded France. | ||
| We can't sit down idly by. | ||
| And he was trying to invoke Churchill with that, but he more sounds like Bluto from Animal House, where he's going, was it over where the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? | ||
| Democrats aren't really worried about the details because they can't really redraw these maps, but they're like, don't worry, he's on a roll right now. | ||
| So it's really contributed to this partisan, this very, very partisan nature right now of Congress, self-sorting, this gerrymandering where compromise is now a dirty word. | ||
| And there's so much more narrow divides in Congress and legislation doesn't get done. | ||
| Compromise doesn't happen. | ||
| And it really makes the whole process, drive the whole process down. | ||
| You're calling in your article, redistricting arms race leads to mutual assured destruction. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| And that's what I wanted to try and get at with this, where, yes, Republicans are doing this power grab right now. | ||
| But at least for the first Trump term, Democrats try to appeal to better angels. | ||
| Tried to talk about defending small D Democratic institutions. | ||
| And now they're in the trenches with Trump. | ||
| And it really kind of reminds me of during the first Republican debate in 2016, during the 2016 race, where Marco Rubio and the other Republicans running against Trump tried to have those high-minded approaches. | ||
| But then Marco Rubio started to make fun of Trump's hand size as well, trying to fight fire with fire with Trump. | ||
| And we all know how that turned out for him. | ||
| And I feel like the Democrats are going down a similar path right now. | ||
| And I just don't think if you're a Democrat, you don't want to be compared to Marco Rubio's 2016 political campaign right now. | ||
| Well, he is Secretary of State, so it's not that bad. | ||
| It's not too bad for him right now. | ||
| Let's talk to John in Washington, D.C., Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, C-SPAN listeners. | |
| Good morning, Americans. | ||
| Good morning to your guests. | ||
| I wanted to kind of focus on America's short memory and how gullible some of us Americans can be. | ||
| Donald Trump is now taking possession, seizing the District of Columbia's police department, calling in the National Guard for what he's calling violent crimes and corruption. | ||
| Do we forget when people stormed the Capitol and he blamed everybody for not calling in the National Guard and the police? | ||
| I mean, what is going on with America? | ||
| You mean to tell me that those weren't violent crimes? | ||
| Those weren't people doing things that was illegal? | ||
| And you mean to tell me he sat in that White House and did not call the police, did not seize the police then, did not seize the National Guard? | ||
| Come on, America. | ||
| We need to wake up and realize exactly what's going on. | ||
| I'm not going to belabor the point. | ||
| I guess you get my message. | ||
| Thank you very much for letting me speak. | ||
| Well, John, morning to you as well. | ||
| And I think what John is getting at is speaking to a larger problem here where voters across the country don't see D.C.'s issues as national issues. | ||
| They do think that D.C. has too much crime. | ||
| They do think that D.C. might not be a safe spot right now, even though there has been a steady downward tick in the crime rate over the last few years here. | ||
| But I think that's a problem that Democrats are tearing their hair out about as well: that voters across the country forgave Trump and forgave a lot of the Republicans who enabled what happened at January 6th and returned them to power. | ||
| And I think that's a frustration that you hear a lot of Democrats' voice. | ||
| You talked about how inflation will be a big topic for the midterm elections. | ||
| What about the One Big Beautiful bill, Medicaid cuts, anything like that? | ||
| Do you expect that to be a big issue? | ||
| I expect that to be a big issue as well. | ||
| And that kind of ties up into people's personal economy as well in healthcare. | ||
| Again, Democrats rode running against Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2018 to the blue wave in Trump's first term, which I don't think there are enough seats to have a blue wave this time around. | ||
| But they're looking for a similar playbook where they're running against the Republicans who voted to those cuts to Medicaid. | ||
| And what you're seeing right now during August recess is a lot of Republicans who are having events in districts or in the states are getting some fierce pushback from frustrated voters. | ||
| Last week, it was Nebraska rep Mike Flood who made headlines for having to pause his town hall and be like, hey, everyone, we need to calm down here right now. | ||
| I'm getting heckled a little too much. | ||
| If we want to continue this evening, let's do it in an orderly fashion here. | ||
| There's a lot other, there are a lot more town hall events over the next few weeks here before Republicans, before Congress comes back in September, and we're going to be watching those pretty closely. | ||
| It reminds me a lot of the frustrations that we saw during the Tea Party midterms in 2010 when Democrats were getting heckled in their districts. | ||
| Same thing in 2018 as well when Republicans were getting heckled in their districts. | ||
| Again, I don't think the swing is going to be as big, but the breadcrumbs are there, that voters are very frustrated. | ||
| How are voters reacting to Democratic lawmakers? | ||
| Are they holding town halls and what's the reaction there? | ||
| They're holding a lot more town halls than Republicans, I'll tell you that much. | ||
| Republicans have been given instructions by their leaderships and suggestions to maybe go to virtual town halls, teletown halls to avoid some of these big displays of protest here. | ||
| Democrats are trying to take advantage of that. | ||
| And a Republican in a swing district isn't going to hold an in-person event, then Democrats are going to go there and hold their own in-person event. | ||
| What Democrats are facing right now from their constituents, especially in bluer districts, is frustration that they're not pushing back hard enough right now on Republicans and on Trump. | ||
| The problem is, again, Eric Holder likes, or Ken Martin likes to talk about how they're bringing a knife to a knife fight right now. | ||
| The problem, like I was writing about earlier this week, is that they've really disarmed themselves in the redistricting battles. | ||
| There's not a whole lot they can do in Congress right now, but they are trying to find more visible ways to resist Republicans. | ||
| Let's talk to Tina in New Jersey, Republican line. | ||
| Hi, Tina. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, good morning. | |
| Morning. | ||
| And I'm happy that you took my call. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| This call is actually against, and making the comment against the Democratic voters, the people that call in to C-SPAN. | ||
| And I hope that they're listening right now. | ||
| The fact remains that they have so much, the Democrats, the voters, they have so much hatred in their head and in their mind that anything that President Trump does that is good, okay, they are against it because they hate him. | ||
| They don't care of what he's doing, and he's doing a fantastic job for America. | ||
| Now, listen up, you Democrats, okay? | ||
| Take the hatred out of your minds, okay, and come to the fact that what is happening is a good thing, okay? | ||
| What Biden did and Harris did, okay, to this country is a disgrace. | ||
| And the Democrats know it. | ||
| They are demonized. | ||
| They will continue to be demonized, okay? | ||
| And their minds are not on what is happening in this country. | ||
| Very Tina. | ||
| Any comment? | ||
| I think what she's voicing is the common Republican complaint that Democrats are focusing too much on the negative of Trump and not seeing the good in the Trump derangement system that you hear Republicans talk about a lot. | ||
| Let's talk to Cynthia in Cleveland, Ohio, Democrat. | ||
| Hey, Cynthia. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hello. | |
| I think that when you see the disapproval numbers on the Democrat side, they're just trying to urge their representatives to try to do more and to try to fight fire with fire more instead of we keep playing within the rules and they have abandoned all rules, starting with the president. | ||
| He doesn't follow law. | ||
| He doesn't follow rules. | ||
| He doesn't follow court things. | ||
| So that's different than when you see the Republican approval numbers going down. | ||
| Those are moderate to conservative Republicans who are leaving the Republican Party. | ||
| So that's the difference. | ||
| These Democrats are not leaving the Democratic Party. | ||
| They're just frustrated that the Democrats aren't really presenting a clear plan. | ||
| Now they're being very active. | ||
| I'm proud of the Democrats, what they have been able to do, given the fact that we have a dictator. | ||
| This is martial law we're seeing on our streets of our cities. | ||
| They're going against the people who were elected by the people, mayors, congressmen. | ||
| They're going over those. | ||
| You're powerless now. | ||
| Even attorneys and judges, your title is not going to mean anything if this man continues in power. | ||
| He's taking lessons from dictators. | ||
| He's handing Ukraine to Putin. | ||
| He's handing Gaza over to Netanyahu. | ||
| His first term was dictator 101. | ||
| Now he's in graduate school, okay? | ||
| And this is practice. | ||
| The reason he's doing martial law is so that he can take over the elections again. | ||
| That's what he's going to do. | ||
| Wake up, people. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| Well, I think what the caller there is talking a lot about is the frustrations that voters, that Democratic voters have that their representatives aren't just doing enough to resist Trump right now because they see it as an existential threat right now. | ||
| The problem, I think, for Democrats is that they've been running as Trump as an existential threat for almost 10 years now. | ||
| And unless you are a more base-centric Democratic voter, it's kind of running on a little bit of deaf ears right now to swing voters and independent voters. | ||
| And that's why I think you see a lot of the approval ratings that we talked about earlier so low for Democrats. | ||
| We are in August recess. | ||
| They come back in September after Labor Day, and then the government runs out of funding September 30th. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| What happens in the three weeks that you've got? | ||
| A lot of dealmaking and a lot of late nights for the congressional reporters right now running around. | ||
| It's going to be another drag them out fight right now. | ||
| And again, to relate it back to what we were talking about earlier with gerrymandering and the very narrow divides in Congress, Republicans only have about a three-seat majority right now. | ||
| And the reason they can't get a whole lot done is because they don't have any room for error right now. | ||
| There's a lot of factions within the Republican Party. | ||
| There's no compromise that the Democrats are going to offer right now because they're more worried about their primary voters. | ||
| It is going to be another drag them out fight. | ||
| It is going to be another lot of late nights. | ||
| And it's going to probably be, if I was to venture, yes, a last-minute funding deal that keeps it at the current levels. | ||
| But when you say they can't get a whole lot done, they are getting things done. | ||
| I mean, the one big beautiful bill did pass. | ||
| I mean, Speaker Johnson has been surprising a lot of pundits who are saying that he can't get it done during this time or he'll have to change things. | ||
| He's not. | ||
| He has been efficient at carrying out the president's agenda. | ||
| Trump has his back all the way. | ||
| He's 100% a Trump guy. | ||
| And I think that is more the key to Johnson's success than anything else. | ||
| I think him not being Kevin McCarthy, being someone who was not in leadership. | ||
| Now, I think he's great at making relationships. | ||
| I think he's great at balancing the different needs of his diverse conference. | ||
| But having Trump as your enforcer in your back pocket is a pretty powerful tool in Republican politics. | ||
| Anna in North Carolina, Republican Lion. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning, Mimi. | |
| Good morning, Kurt. | ||
| Sorry, I have a cold. | ||
| But I just had a question. | ||
| First of all, Mimi, please, would they say that January 6th that Trump did not send in the National Guard? | ||
| Please explain that Pelosi and the sergeant-at-arms denied them to come in. | ||
| That just really bothers me. | ||
| And the 34 felonies against Trump, they were overturned, and now they've got to pay back the money to him. | ||
| So he's not a convicted felon. | ||
| What I want to know is when the Democrats speak of President Trump as nothing but hate-filled, honest to goodness, I see these people on TikTok, and they're asking for horrible things to happen. | ||
| What kind of message can the Democrats start maybe sending out that kind of tones down that narrative? | ||
| I mean, I never heard of Republicans saying such vile things, and I think that's kind of destroying our country with the hatred that the Democrats literally have for the president. | ||
| You never heard Republicans saying vile things and negative things about Biden when he was in office? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Not like what I'm hearing and seeing. | |
| I mean, this is, it's very dangerous. | ||
| And if we, if the Republican had said that, you know, they would have been knocking on our door under the Biden administration. | ||
| But, you know. | ||
| All right, let's get Kirk to respond. | ||
| I think Nana does have a point there that there's a lot of heated rhetoric right now. | ||
| In fact, last year, the United States Capitol Police Service invested a record number of threats against lawmakers, against their staff, and against their families. | ||
| Already this year, we've seen a spade of really concerning political violence from the attacks on the lawmakers in Minnesota to Josh Shapiro's house. | ||
| The governor of Pennsylvania was firebombed after a died out through the fence there. | ||
| There's real concerns that this year is going to see another spike in political violence right now. | ||
| And that political violence is on both sides? | ||
| I do think it is. | ||
| I hate to, you know, both sides this right now, but the rhetoric from both sides right now is pretty concerning. | ||
| Now, Trump has a bigger megaphone than probably any other politician in America, probably in the whole world right now. | ||
| And I think if he were to try to take the temperature down, which difficult for him to do, I think that would go a long way in trying to calm down this situation right now. | ||
| But we've been talking to experts. | ||
| There's been studies done at the University of Princeton that show that the concerns of political violence are at an all-time high right now. | ||
| John in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, Democrat. | ||
| Good morning, John. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| Yeah, when you hear people talking about the Biden administration, you had Moody's, or you had Mark Elizandi on there from Moody's Analytics, and he indicated that the economy was the best in 35 years. | ||
| You're breaking up, John. | ||
| You still there? | ||
| Looks like we lost John. | ||
| You could try to call back if you would like, but he was talking about the Biden economy. | ||
| And I think one of the Biden economy, what he would talk about on the campaign trail is that he inherited a struggling economy from Trump and turned it around. | ||
| Trump is now trying to claim that all the gains in the economy right now are from his administration. | ||
| And I think that with how heavy-handed he is right now with enacting the tariffs, with how he is really trying to make a more command economy run from the White House, that unlike his predecessors who have a little bit more of a transition period to where they can start owning the economy and owning the jobs numbers, this is all Trump's right now. | ||
| And I'm very curious to see how it plays out over the next few months here. | ||
| We have two big events, which I'm looking at for consumer sentiment. | ||
| It's the back-to-school shopping that's about to start happening and then holiday shopping as well. | ||
| If we see rises in spending there, if we see soaring consumer sentiment, I think Trump and Republicans might be on the right track. | ||
| All right, here's Mark, Ocean City, Maryland, Republican. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I've got a question for Kirk. | ||
| Earlier, he said that the intention regarding Jane, not gerrymandering, the intention was that the districts can be withdrawn, redrawn once a decade to coincide with census data. | ||
| So when you're saying that that's the intention, are you also saying that Democrats have never done it otherwise? | ||
| Because I feel like I'm hearing half-truths, you know, when you say that, well, that's the intention, and the Republicans are guilty of doing this now. | ||
| But you're saying also that Democrats never have, because maybe I could be persuaded to go along with you on that. | ||
| I appreciate the question. | ||
| I'm not saying that Democrats don't gerrymander. | ||
| I mean, again, look at Illinois. | ||
| Look at where you are in Maryland right now. | ||
| You're an ocean city over along the eastern shore there. | ||
| That's the only Republican district in the state. | ||
| What I'm saying is that this very blatant power grab of mid-cycle redistricting kind of out of the ether right now, that's the part that I'm trying to draw attention to right now. | ||
| Democratic states have redrawn outlines outside of the mid-cycle, outside of the every 10 years redraw as well, mostly though due to court orders. | ||
| What we've seen the vast majority of redraws happen is because of what's going on in the courts, where a district, where a state map has been deemed illegal or it runs afoul of the Voting Rights Act. | ||
| Those are the typical type of redraws that we've seen. | ||
| But mid-cycle redistricting now, for more partisan purposes, has becoming a lot more standard. | ||
| I think it's a worrying trend. | ||
| Let's talk to Delia, who is in New York City, Line for Democrats. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Morning, Mimi. | |
| Good morning, everyone. | ||
| I want to say yesterday I watched the press conference with President Trump. | ||
| And let me just say I'm a Christian. | ||
| I'm an African-American woman. | ||
| And I'm a Democrat. | ||
| And I'm not leaving my party, although I will say that I did vote for President Trump in this last election. | ||
| And by the way, I did not vote for Obama because of what I saw that happened to Hillary. | ||
| I thought that was disgusting, particularly after all the Clintons had done, you know, not just for the country, but particularly for African Americans. | ||
| I want to say that I live in New York City. | ||
| I live in Harlem. | ||
| Right now, physically, I'm in New Jersey because of what's going on in New York. | ||
| I was so glad to see that press conference yesterday to see that they're finally going to do something about the crime, you know, period across the board. | ||
| They were talking about what was going on in D.C. | ||
| I, you know, I pray that they do something about what's going on in New York, which is why right now I'm in Jersey. | ||
| And let me just say, I'm looking at the crime, and let me just say about D.C., the crime in there is really bad. | ||
| So them saying that the numbers went down. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, okay. | ||
| Yeah, they went down. | ||
| But when you think about how bad the crime has been in D.C. all these years, it really did, it's not making a dent. | ||
| And when you hear the stories of what's going on in D.C., you know, it's staggering. | ||
| Of course, I had to do something about that. | ||
| I pray they do something about what's going on in New York. | ||
| They've got this candidate, Mehmet. | ||
| Mom Donnie, thank you, dear, that's running who's saying defund the police. | ||
| He's talking about socialism. | ||
| He's talking about all of these things that's just going to continue. | ||
| And I'm sorry, I have to say it. | ||
| What Eric Adams started, whether he wants to change or not. | ||
| I'm not really moved by that. | ||
| I didn't vote for him either. | ||
| And why? | ||
| Because there's a pattern that seems to be going on here that no one really wanted to address. | ||
| And I'm praying, you know, which is why I voted for President Trump, because he is not just saying, but he is doing something about what's going on. | ||
| All right, Delia. | ||
| Go ahead, Kirk. | ||
| Well, I think, first off, I'd love her contact info. | ||
| I have a lot of follow-up questions for her and her voting patterns. | ||
| But what I think is really interesting there is that she's really hitting on a very salient talking point and very salient messaging strategy from Republicans that they've been riding and really been reaping a lot of success with since 2022, which is making cities safe, making you feel safe, making not just you feel safe when you go outside your home, but making your money safe. | ||
| And yes, I think she does have a point that, yes, D.C. crime is going down, but it's not like it's no crime here at all. | ||
| You and I both live here. | ||
| I walked over to the studio today. | ||
| There have been times where it's been a little concerning being out and about. | ||
| But I think that's what Trump and Republicans are banking on right now, that these heavy-handed actions right now, yes, they're in escalation. | ||
| Yes, they are very unprecedented. | ||
| But the voters who put them in office wanted unconventional approaches to these problems right now. | ||
| And again, we're in the day two of Trump's seizure of the DC police right now. | ||
| We'll see how it plays out. | ||
| We'll see if it happens in other cities as well. | ||
| But Republicans are banking on that. | ||
| They want voters want them to be obeyed, and they're going to be obeyed. | ||
| And she also mentioned that, you know, President Trump is, at least he's doing something. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And how big of a sentiment is that among voters that President Trump does a lot? | ||
| I mean, as a reporter, you know how many things that this administration has been doing in just six and a half months. | ||
| Well, it's so interesting. | ||
| You know, I do remember the days being a reporter in the pre-Trump era right now. | ||
| And it's been fascinating to see how Trump is just the sun through which all politics orbits around. | ||
| It doesn't matter if it's on the international stage. | ||
| It doesn't matter if it's a race for a local school board. | ||
| Trump is everywhere. | ||
| Trump is the main story in almost in entertainment, in politics, in almost every major news aspect right now. | ||
| And he does that because he's so action-oriented. | ||
| He is a guy who can, you know, he's like Zeus hurling thunderbolts from Mount Olympus with his true social posts where he can call for a new census, like what we talked about earlier. | ||
| He can hire and fire people. | ||
| He can declare an international peace agreement or something like that with just a few taps on his phone. | ||
| And it's fascinating to see how that resonates so much with voters who want to see this type of action, who want to see him take these bold strokes. | ||
| Lisa is in Alexandria, Virginia, Republican. | ||
| Hi, Lisa. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi. | |
| I'm calling because I want to say this to Democrats on crime. | ||
| We are tired of our Democrat cities saying gun buybacks annually. | ||
| And every time there's a crime in our community, or we have this outbreak of we shall overcome moments, you know, we're just a little tired of it. | ||
| And then the second thing is housing. | ||
| Something has to be done. | ||
| Democrats have tents all across this country thinking that's a solution. | ||
| And if they're not putting them in tents, they're housing them in our community centers. | ||
| And then they complain that there's nowhere for the kids to go. | ||
| Who wants to send their kid to a community center where homeless people have slept in the night before? | ||
| So Democrats, get it together if you want people to start that voting Democrat. | ||
| What's interesting is that callers from Virginia, where there is actually an off-year election here, a gubernatorial election, which is usually seen as a referendum on the party in power in Washington here. | ||
| Now, if voters like her are just as frustrated that Democrats aren't doing a whole lot right now, they have an opportunity to do that at the ballot box here. | ||
| The problem for Republicans there is that their candidate, Lieutenant Governor Winston Earl Sears, has been struggling to find a coherent message there. | ||
| She's been struggling to consolidate that type of Trump support and also more moderate Republican support as well. | ||
| Abigail Spanberger, the Democratic nominee there, has been running a pretty centrist message. | ||
| She's focusing a lot on the layoffs going on right now in the federal government that's impacting Virginia's economy. | ||
| She's been talking a lot about the housing too. | ||
| So I think that if we want to see how voters can channel that frustration that she's talking about, watch Virginia here in the next few weeks. | ||
| She didn't mention crime. | ||
| Have congressional Democrats found a coherent message on crime? | ||
| I think they're doing a lot better than they were a few years ago, but I don't think they necessarily have found the winning message yet. | ||
| You saw Republicans really seize on that message in 2020 and 2022, talking about how Democrats are for defunding the police. | ||
| In fact, Abigail Spanberger, when she was in Congress, was leading the charge within the Democratic caucus of we need to respond more forcefully to this. | ||
| What you saw in subsequent elections and subsequent races is Democrats aligning themselves more with law enforcement. | ||
| You saw sheriffs appear in their TV ads. | ||
| You saw them kind of stiff arm any notion of defunding the police right now. | ||
| And I think that's been their best mode of operation right now. | ||
| And I think it's been very telling that you haven't seen this mass condemnation of Trump's move to federalize the police in D.C. from Democrats, where they can acknowledge that crime is high, but maybe this isn't the right tactic right now. | ||
| One more call, Antonio and Findlay, Ohio, Independent Line. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| How are y'all? | ||
| Good. | ||
| I just want to get on here as a true, I'd say independent. | ||
| You know, I see a lot of people on this big, almost call it a tug of war type thing of people doing the one-sided coin here and there. | ||
| You know, you have the whole let's go brain phase, then you have the whole, you know, great big orange monster doing this whole thing. | ||
| There are true problems in a lot of communities that are having right now. | ||
| And people just, you know, overall just truly just not focusing on the true problems at hand. | ||
| And I feel like, you know, when they get on here and they say, you know, the whole demons of Republicans and the whole bands of Democrats, it's truly saddening to see people just truly going off ways. | ||
| I understand moral characters and opinions go on there 100%, but sometimes it's just very sad seeing people doing that back and forth on that and not having a true, true set for the American people and going from there. | ||
| And that's just what I want to say. | ||
| And God bless everyone and everyone just get back together. | ||
| I appreciate that comment because I think it's kind of the issue that Democrats have right now with responding to Trump, where do they chase the news of the day here? | ||
| Do they go after, hey, where are the Epstein files? | ||
| Or, hey, why are we talking so much about the Sidney Sweeney Gene ad here? | ||
| Where the divide with them is, how are we going to make solutions for everyday Americans? | ||
| And I think that's kind of the big divide with Democrats right now: do we chase the Trump news cycle or do we try to make our own weather? | ||
| The problem is Trump is such a big weather system, it's hard not to get swept up in it. | ||
| It's the editor of National Journal's hotline, Kirk Beto. | ||
| You can find his work at nationaljournal.com/slash hotline. | ||
| Thanks so much for joining us. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
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