| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
Tax Cuts and Health Care
00:15:12
|
||
|
unidentified
|
For the annual gathering of the World Economic Forum. | |
| Today marks the end of the first year of his second term. | ||
| So we're anticipating comments from the presidents on results from the past year. | ||
| Once this gets underway, we'll have live coverage on the C-SPAN networks. | ||
| We bring you into the chamber, onto the Senate floor, inside the hearing room, up to the mic, and to the desk in the Oval Office. | ||
| C-SPAN takes you where decisions are made. | ||
| No spin, no commentary, no agenda. | ||
| C-SPAN is your unfiltered connection to American democracy. | ||
| Advance the mission. | ||
| Donate today at c-span.org forward slash donate. | ||
| Together, we keep democracy in view. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| Joining us this morning is Bob Cusack, Washington Examiner Executive Editor. | ||
| Bob, thank you so much for being with us this morning. | ||
| Jasmine, thanks for having me. | ||
| All right, let's talk about the president's first year in office of his second term. | ||
| He was inaugurated just a year ago today, the only president since Grover Cleveland to leave the White House and return for a second term four years later. | ||
| Talk to us about what the president's most notable successes and achievements have been. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Just a minute. | |
| Well, I think you've got to start with the border. | ||
| That has been a big success. | ||
| He promised to close down the border. | ||
| It was a big issue in the 2024 election, and he has largely done that. | ||
| He's been very aggressive on that. | ||
| It's been obviously controversial. | ||
| President Trump is a very controversial president. | ||
| Though on the economy, it's been more mixed results where inflation has been stubborn. | ||
| The administration is saying, we're going to fix this. | ||
| But it's going to take a little time. | ||
| So wait. | ||
| Now, Republicans on Capitol Hill, at least some of them, want to do another reconciliation bill to address the economy. | ||
| So there's a bit of a split there. | ||
| But I would say one of his biggest achievements, and he's done a lot. | ||
| He's a very active president, has been the border. | ||
| Now, one thing that he was able to pass was that first reconciliation bill. | ||
| I know you said yes, Republicans wanted to do another one, but the first one passed last summer, the One Big Beautiful Act law, now they call it, which expanded those 2017 tax cuts. | ||
| Do voters perceive that bill as beneficial to them? | ||
| I know that the White House has said that they're going to see really a lot of the benefits this year in 2026, but what about in the last 12 months or since it's been passed? | ||
| Yeah, first of all, it was a monumental achievement to get it passed, especially with their narrow majorities in the House and Senate. | ||
| And I didn't, President Trump kept saying, let's get it done by July 4th. | ||
| I didn't think he was actually going to get it done by then. | ||
| I thought he would get it done, but it would take a little more time maybe before the August recess. | ||
| He really leaned on members to pass it. | ||
| It's a big bill. | ||
| It has a lot of provisions on. | ||
| Obviously, tax cuts is at the heart of it and extending them. | ||
| However, the problem for the administration is that the now law isn't popular. | ||
| So a big part of the midterm strategy is to make it more popular. | ||
| And we've seen this with big sweeping bills where President Obama passed Obamacare and it wasn't easy. | ||
| It was very tight. | ||
| I was on Capitol Hill covering that and it got done. | ||
| That said, at least initially, it wasn't popular. | ||
| So Trump has a similar type of problem. | ||
| They've got to sell it. | ||
| The Treasury Secretary Scott Besson says it's going to be popular, especially when people feel the effects of 2026. | ||
| But remember, there are also Medicaid cuts. | ||
| They don't go into effect in that now law until 2027. | ||
| Those are not popular, but Democrats are going to be targeting them throughout this election year. | ||
| Yeah, Democrats will be messaging that, messaging more on health care, particularly if those ACA subsidies don't get expanded or something doesn't happen on health care. | ||
| I want to turn to this poll that we talked about at the beginning of the show from CNN that was released a week ago, where it showed that 58% of those surveyed believe that the president's first year in his second term is a failure. | ||
| Just 42% say that is a success. | ||
| What do you think of when you see numbers like that that are pretty large? | ||
| They are. | ||
|
unidentified
|
They are. | |
| And it's troubling for the White House. | ||
| When you think about a year ago, President Trump came in maybe as the most powerful president since Obama. | ||
| Obama came in with 67, maybe 70% approval rating. | ||
| President Trump won all the battleground states. | ||
| He won the popular vote. | ||
| He not only won, but he exceeded expectations. | ||
| He had this enormous power. | ||
| He went after the media. | ||
| Corporate media was scared of him, and they were cowering, as well as foreign countries. | ||
| He used a lot of political capital to do a lot of stuff, including the Big Beautiful Bill. | ||
| But a year later, his numbers are not good. | ||
| They are in the low 40s. | ||
| Some, depending on the poll, would be high 30s. | ||
| That poll is not good. | ||
| Now, President Trump would tell you he would give himself an A, but that's kind of what he always says. | ||
| So overall, President Trump and Republicans have some serious issues going into 2026 and the midterms, especially with the House really being up for grabs. | ||
| The Senate, I think, is safer for Republicans because of the map, but you never know what's going to happen in elections, and conventional wisdom is often wrong. | ||
| Now, before we continue this conversation, Bob, I want to invite more of our viewers who join in on the conversation. | ||
| Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, your line is 202-748-8002. | ||
| Now, I want to take a look at this headline from the Wall Street Journal talking about inflation. | ||
| It says, the pace of inflation held steady in December, consumer prices up 2.7 percent on the year. | ||
| In a speech last week, the president said inflation is defeated. | ||
| You said that inflation has stayed pretty stubborn. | ||
| We see that number up there. | ||
| Is the president off base with his estimation, or is it just kind of a wait-and-see type of thing? | ||
| Well, we do have to think of when did inflation really start to increase, and that was during the Biden administration. | ||
| And that's why President Biden, well, there are a lot of reasons why President Biden didn't get a second term, and obviously he was shelved by the Democratic Party, and Harris was the one who lost to Trump. | ||
| So, it really did start in the Biden administration. | ||
| However, promises are promises, and Trump said he was going to eradicate it. | ||
| At times, he said issues like affordability are a hoax, and then sometimes he backs off on that. | ||
| Lisa Murkowski, a Republican but very independent-minded Republican, has said it's not a hoax because members are hearing this back home, that too much is unaffordable, whether it's groceries or housing or anything else, or buying a car. | ||
| So, now gas prices are down. | ||
| So, it's a mixed view, but if Republicans are going to have a good election, there's going to have to be, those type of polls are going to have to change. | ||
| Otherwise, Democrats are going to do quite well. | ||
| Is there something that the president has enacted within the last 12 months, or what you think that the White House could try to enact to try to bring down some of these prices that we know that folks are reacting really negatively to? | ||
| It's very difficult. | ||
| There's no magic wand. | ||
| If you're the president, it's kind of like a football coach. | ||
| You're going to be judged on wins and losses, and inflation is still there, but there's no easy way. | ||
| You can lower taxes, you can do a number of things. | ||
| Democrats would do different things, but it's stubborn, and sometimes it's cyclical. | ||
| But Republicans want to be more, some on the Hill, they want to be more active. | ||
| They just don't want to say, well, it's an election year, we're not going to get anything done. | ||
| Let's do things that will help the economy. | ||
| Obviously, Democrats mostly don't agree with those, so don't expect a lot of bipartisanship. | ||
| Trump has leaned on health care executives to get the price of health care down. | ||
| That said, you mentioned the Obamacare subsidies. | ||
| That's where health care is going up. | ||
| A lot of Republicans have been trying to eradicate Obamacare. | ||
| They've not been successful in that, and they want these subsidies to end. | ||
| But that has and is having an effect on what consumers are paying for health care. | ||
| And those voters, while they're likely to show up at the polls. | ||
| One thing that the president in the White House has been focused on is this idea of executive power, expanding the power of the presidency from a number of executive orders that they've done, from a number of court cases that they've defended in his executive orders. | ||
| I wonder how do you see the president coalescing power within the executive in a way that has been different than presidents before him? | ||
| It is different, but in some ways the same. | ||
| I've covered Congress since 1995, and the executive branch has taken so much power from Congress in those three decades. | ||
| And it certainly has, the pace has increased with President Trump. | ||
| Sometimes I think he thinks Congress is a nuisance and a big obstacle of what he wants to get done. | ||
| So he's, like President Obama and President Biden and all the predecessors, have done a number of executive actions. | ||
| Trump's executive actions have been more encompassing. | ||
| And there are Republicans on Capitol Hill who don't like that. | ||
| They don't like when the power is being taken away from them. | ||
| Washington is a city of power, and theirs is less now because President Trump has usurped a lot of authority from Congress. | ||
| I mean, just to go over just a list of some of the executive orders within the last 12 months, securing our borders and a national emergency declaration, of course, talking about immigration, establishing the Doge Department, Department of Government Efficiency, unleashing American energy, which encourages energy exploration of production on federal lands and waters, pardoning the January 6th rioters, ending federal diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. | ||
| That's just one half of my long list that my producers put together. | ||
| I mean, the president has been extremely active these last 12 months. | ||
| And a lot of these things, like you said, he doesn't go to Congress on. | ||
| No, he doesn't. | ||
| And the Doge was not successful. | ||
| It was really a missed opportunity because Democrats agreed government's gotten too big. | ||
| We need to streamline it. | ||
| And Elon Musk came in, and he's a very smart guy, the wealthiest man in the world, but he really didn't understand government. | ||
| And he came in and was not really assessing and then acting. | ||
| He was acting before assessing. | ||
| And then they fired a number of workers who they had to rehire. | ||
| So some of these initiatives have been successful, but certainly not all. | ||
| And Doge has really faded from the headlines. | ||
| But overall, initially, remember, Jasmine, it was said, I think it was Musk who said, we're going to save $2 trillion. | ||
| And that's one thing both parties are not dealing with. | ||
| The debt is a serious problem. | ||
| President Trump adds. | ||
| $38 trillion. | ||
| He's approaching $40 if it's not there. | ||
| And obviously, COVID added to it. | ||
| But the debt is a problem that Congress is going to have to deal with. | ||
| Because if you look at Medicare and Social Security, they're headed for bankruptcy. | ||
| And neither party has done much about that. | ||
| And it's interesting, Trump and Nancy Pelosi don't believe a lot of things, but they have both said we can grow out of the debt. | ||
| That's not the case. | ||
| There's going to have to be some major structural reforms to entitlement spending. | ||
| Democrats want some tax cuts, tax increases as well. | ||
| So there's going to have to be a big deal, but it's not going to happen this year. | ||
| One more question for you before we turn to some calls. | ||
| I want to talk about tariffs, something that the president has done when we're talking about an expansion of power, Something that he has done unilaterally, I think sometimes to the annoyance of some members in Congress on both sides. | ||
| Your company this morning has a piece out. | ||
| Trump's tariffs aren't raising prices, but they are shrinking Americans' manufacturing workforce. | ||
| That's from January 15th, excuse me. | ||
| And Christian writes: President Trump's tariff agenda hasn't increased inflation as predicted by many economists, but it does appear to be having one intended consequences: shrinking America's manufacturing workforce. | ||
| There's also been a recent article, I think it was in the Wall Street Journal, about how Americans are taking more of the burden of those tariff coughs. | ||
| I wonder tariff costs versus companies. | ||
| I wonder what you make of the president's tariff agenda and how that has impacted the view of his first year in office. | ||
| Well, as Christian wrote, it hasn't been, the sky hasn't fallen. | ||
| A lot of people did predict that. | ||
| However, if you look, talk to some economists, there have been some negative consequences. | ||
| But it's certainly gotten the attention of a lot of countries. | ||
| And I think it's a fair point that the President raises is that a lot of trade policies were not fair to the United States. | ||
| And President Trump, I first interviewed him in 2015. | ||
| He's been talking about this well before then, about how the U.S. was, in his words, getting screwed. | ||
| And so we need to fix that. | ||
| So he's applying the power of the United States and all the consumers of the United States to get deals. | ||
| Has he gotten some deals? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Republicans on Capitol Hill, they're not. | ||
| Trump has changed the Republican Party because tariffs used to be just the worst thing to the GOP. | ||
| And now the leader of the GOP is leading the charge. | ||
| And leaders like Senate Majority Leader John Thune wanted these tariffs to be short. | ||
| We're still talking about them. | ||
| That was last year, the beginning of last year. | ||
| He wants them to be short-lived. | ||
| We're still talking about it. | ||
| He is not abandoning it. | ||
| We're waiting for the Supreme Court to issue a huge ruling on tariffs. | ||
| The betting is, you never know, but the betting is, is that the court is going to reject his authority on tariffs. | ||
| Now, what will Trump do then? | ||
| It depends on the ruling exactly, but then he can rely on another law and still go forward. | ||
| But he doesn't want to lose this case. | ||
| And he's won a lot of cases with the conservative-leaning Supreme Court. | ||
| He might lose this one. | ||
| Yeah, he's true socialed a lot in the last few days about how those tariffs are necessary and bringing great, tremendous change, he says, to the American economy. | ||
| One place that he's also used tariffs, though, is to bend nations to his will in a way. | ||
| I want to take a listen to the soundbite from yesterday night on the tarmac when the president was asked about Greenland before he heads to Davos. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What do you point to many European leaders in Davos when they push back on your Greenland plan? | |
| Well, I don't think they're going to push back too much. | ||
| Look, we have to have it. | ||
| They have to have this done. | ||
| They can protect it. | ||
| Denmark, they're wonderful people. | ||
| And I know the leaders, they're very good people, but they don't even go there. | ||
|
Trump's Tariff Strategy
00:02:22
|
||
| And you know, because the vote went there 500 years ago and then left, that doesn't give you title to property. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So we'll be talking about it with the various people. | |
| We've had tremendous success. | ||
| And we've, you know, I've done more for NATO than anybody else. | ||
| I don't think you'd have NATO right now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I got him to go 5% and pay as opposed to 2% and not pay. | |
| I've done more than any other American president for NATO by far. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And we'll see how that goes. | |
| But Greenland is very important. | ||
| Now, the President there says he's done more than any other President for NATO, but now he's also threatening to increase tariffs on NATO-aligned countries if they don't support his move on Greenland. | ||
| Why is President Trump using tariffs in this way and really pursuing this issue? | ||
| He's using tariffs for a number of reasons. | ||
| It's multifaceted. | ||
| He wants to change some policies that countries have on immigration. | ||
| He wants to improve the economy. | ||
| Obviously, a lot of people think that it hurts the economy. | ||
| And he also wants, and he's done, I think, a successful job in convincing other countries to step up their defense spending to 5% of their budget. | ||
| And a lot of countries have responded. | ||
| And basically, Trump is saying we can't be the policeman everywhere. | ||
| So you guys have to defend yourself. | ||
| Now, the Greenland issue is one of these issues that comes across every, I think, 25 years. | ||
| I don't know how this is going to end because a lot of people think he's just using this to get a deal. | ||
| But in Greenland, he already, there's a U.S. presence there. | ||
| It does make sense for us to be there because Russia and China have interest there. | ||
| He could move to expand the base. | ||
| And he could move to expand the base. | ||
| But Trump is certainly doubling down. | ||
| After the successful operation in Venezuela that got Maduro, I think that's emboldened him. | ||
| But Republicans, I mentioned Thune before, Speaker Johnson has said, oh, we're not talking about militarily taking over Greenland. | ||
| Trump and the White House have not taken that off the table. | ||
|
Bread and Butter Issues Missing
00:02:26
|
||
| So I don't know how this ends. | ||
| It is a fascinating issue. | ||
| It's not a popular issue. | ||
| So Republicans want it solved or to go away very soon. | ||
| They don't want to be talking about this in the fall of 2026, a month or two before the election. | ||
| Right, because when we're talking about Greenland, they're not talking about all of the positive things happening in the economy. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And you're not talking about bread and butter issues. | ||
| And that's where Democrats fell down in 2024. | ||
| They said democracy will die if Trump gets elected. | ||
| They weren't talking about bread and butter issues. | ||
| They're talking about transgender issues a lot. | ||
| Trump used that against them. | ||
| And he was just a better candidate than Kamala Harris. | ||
| Now, Harris may run again, but remember, that's why Trump got elected, is that people were upset with the Biden economy. | ||
| Bidenomics ended up not working, at least according to people. | ||
| And President Biden and certainly Harris were defensive on the economy. | ||
| Sometimes Trump can be defensive. | ||
| So in some ways, I think Trump is making some mistakes that Biden did, where, no, you got to have some empathy. | ||
| It's tough out there. | ||
| People are hurting. | ||
| So have some Bill Clinton in you say, you know, I feel your pain, but say we're doing some things. | ||
| We've done some things successfully, but we need to do more. | ||
| What exactly that more is, we don't know yet. | ||
| Okay, Chris from Virginia, Democrat. | ||
| Your line is open. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Chris, are you on the line? | |
| One more time. | ||
| Chris, are you there? | ||
| Okay, Nancy from Bowling Green, Kentucky, an Independent. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hey, good morning. | |
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sir, you keep touting that President Trump got the popular vote and got the battleground state because, sir, he got it through deception. | |
| Everything that he said that he wanted to do for we, the American people, he has not done. | ||
| And I don't know why Congress cannot really mean a little bit. | ||
|
Border Debates Divide Biden, Trump Support
00:05:46
|
||
|
unidentified
|
But, sir, I suggest you watch yourself this video five times and then go look in the mirror and see what you have said. | |
| I hope you can have a good day. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I wonder if you have any sort of requests. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, listen, both parties play a lot of political games with ads and stretch the truth. | ||
| And you certainly could say that Trump did that. | ||
| And you can also say that Biden and Harris did too. | ||
| It comes down to, honestly, I think elections come down to more personality than policies. | ||
| When you're electing a president, you're going to have somebody in your living room for four years. | ||
| They've already, the voters rejected Trump in 2020, and then they brought him back because they were more comfortable with Trump deciding things than Harris. | ||
| And now we'll see what happens in 2028. | ||
| Now, one place that multiple of our callers have talked about when we asked them to grade the president was his efforts on immigration, saying that that has been a positive in the last 12 months. | ||
| I want to point to an analysis from the New York Times that was out a few days ago. | ||
| The headline is, how many people has Trump deported so far? | ||
| Over the past year, President Trump's administration has deported about 230,000 people who were arrested inside the country and another 270,000 people at the border. | ||
| A New York Times analysis of federal data shows they have a graphic here showing how deportations under Trump have eclipsed those of even former President Barack Obama a couple years ago. | ||
| And so I just wonder, you know, that is happening at the same time. | ||
| People are saying they approve of that job while we're seeing a growing number of folks within some of these recent polls disapproving of how ICE is tactically doing the job of deporting so many people. | ||
| How do you square those two? | ||
| And is this an opening for Democrats going into the midterms? | ||
| It's interesting. | ||
| The first point I want to make is that people forget that President Obama actually was tough on the border. | ||
| Members of his own party called him, including Luis Gutierrez, a Democrat from Illinois, one of the first lawmakers to support Obama over Hillary Clinton when most members were certainly backing Hillary Clinton. | ||
| He was called the deporter-in-chief. | ||
| I mean, he's deported, just going back to this graphic, more people than Trump and Trump's first term and Biden, of course, and the last term. | ||
| And since then, the Democratic Party honestly has gotten soft on the border. | ||
| And Biden was not tough on the border. | ||
| Biden allowed a fair amount of immigrants. | ||
| I don't know what the number is, but that's how Trump won. | ||
| Now, you mentioned ICE. | ||
| This is cutting into Trump's advantage because most people, as you say, think, listen, we need to have borders. | ||
| As President Trump says, if we don't have borders, we don't have a country. | ||
| Okay, but the tactics of ICE are seen, according to polls, as heavy-handed. | ||
| Now, Trump's supporters, a lot of them say, listen, this has to be done. | ||
| It's uncomfortable, but it is a crime if you come into this country illegally. | ||
| So now, what do you do with people who have been here 20, 25 years? | ||
| They're parts of the community. | ||
| There's a split in the Republican Party. | ||
| Some people say, listen, they committed a crime. | ||
| They're not here legally. | ||
| And we're also having a debate about birthright citizenship. | ||
| And that's another one that the Supreme Court is going to decide. | ||
| Everything is now decided one way or the other by the Supreme Court. | ||
| And they're going to weigh in on that one as well. | ||
| As is by the White House's kind of own doing. | ||
| They want the Supreme Court to weigh in on some of these bigger issues that they know that federal courts or lower courts would decide potentially against them. | ||
| I want to turn to some calls, though. | ||
| But before we do, I want to invite more folks to join in on this conversation. | ||
| Again, Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, your line is 202-748-8002. | ||
| David from Ohio, an independent, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Hi, David. | ||
| You're on the line. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, how are you this morning? | |
| I'm doing well. | ||
| Well, as a former Trump supporter and former Republican, now independent, I just, you know, his first year has just been disastrous. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is just crazy. | |
| He'll hunt down people in the streets. | ||
| And, you know, I'm all for immigration and get rid of the illegal immigrants and everything like that. | ||
| But, you know, treating human beings like animals is just really not the way to do that. | ||
| And another thing, you know, he brought up a little earlier about the Biden administration's economy, and they keep saying that it was a bad economy. | ||
| I'd like him to present some evidence that it was a bad economy. | ||
| The markets seem to set several records, things like that. | ||
| They always go to the stock market when they want to say how great the economy is. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, it was just as great under Biden. | |
| My 401k did fine. | ||
| But that's really about all I just had to say there. | ||
| But David's an independent, and Trump won independence when he got elected for the second time. | ||
|
Trump's Foreign Policy Shifts
00:04:24
|
||
| And now he's losing him. | ||
| He's lost David, it seems. | ||
| And that's a problem, the fact that those are the swing voters. | ||
| And I've talked to a number of Trump supporters who say, who maybe still support him, but say he's doing so much. | ||
| He may be doing too much. | ||
| He's involved in golf courses in D.C., obviously, has upended foreign policy, but that's part of the core job. | ||
| But then he's renamed the Kennedy Center, Trump-Kennedy Center. | ||
| I don't know if anyone proposed, hey, let's do this alphabetically, where Kennedy would come before Trump. | ||
| No, no, no, we're going to do Trump Kennedy. | ||
| Most of people bring up the ballroom. | ||
| The ballroom. | ||
| So there are just so many things. | ||
| The Olympics, he's just involved. | ||
| He was at the college football championship last night. | ||
| He is in the news. | ||
| He loves being in the news. | ||
| As you know, if he's not in the news, he makes himself go in the news. | ||
| Now, as far as the economy, I was saying that people just didn't think that it was good. | ||
| There were some good indicators under Biden, and the stock market's won. | ||
| But at the same time, the stock market has been going up for all presidents recently. | ||
| And that's fortunate for all Americans because our retirement savings are going up. | ||
| And remember, Trump did say if Biden got elected the first time in 2020, the stock market was going to crash. | ||
| That prediction was wrong. | ||
| It did not. | ||
| It kept going up. | ||
| And under Trump, it's going up even more. | ||
| And we're looking at record highs. | ||
| Can we get into his foreign policy a little bit? | ||
| We know that he has attacked Iranian nuclear facilities. | ||
| You know, there's TBD on what happens now that the protests are happening over there. | ||
| The bombing of alleged drug boats, seizing of oil tankos, Maduro's captures, we talked about now the threats to Greenland. | ||
| What is driving all of this foreign policy kind of expansion? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| It's a different Trump than in the first term. | ||
| We knew that Trump 2.0 was going to be much more aggressive than Trump 1.0, but this has been really off the charts, especially on foreign policy. | ||
| And we've been talking a lot about the economy, but when it's all said and done, Trump's second term may be remembered more for foreign policy. | ||
| Whether that's good or bad, I'm not sure. | ||
| Because of these challenges, he's been a lot more aggressive on Iran. | ||
| He's certainly, the military operation in Venezuela was just stunningly effective and just an incredible feat. | ||
| Now, what happens now, that's the big concern. | ||
| We saw, obviously, Quagmars in Iraq and Afghanistan. | ||
| So his foreign policy is something to watch. | ||
| And the other thing that people, I don't think, talk enough about, but it's been in the news, but it's really going to be in the news, I think, the next couple of years, is that it appears that China is going to invade Taiwan. | ||
| And what is the U.S. going to do about that? | ||
| Taiwan is very nervous about the Trump administration compared to the Biden administration. | ||
| Will Trump commit U.S. troops to defending Taiwan? | ||
| That is one to watch. | ||
| Now, Trump says that President Xi is not going to do that while he's in office. | ||
| President Xi hasn't said that, and the CIA and other intelligence agencies think there will be some type of invasion by 2027, if not 2028. | ||
| And of course, some of the criticism from Democrats after the Maduro capture was that this emboldens folks like China's President Xi to invade Taiwan or emboldens someone like Vladimir Putin of Russia to try to carry out the same action against Zelensky. | ||
| And same thing with Greenland, too. | ||
| Yes, yes. | ||
| But I want to take a listen to Chuck Schumer from last week on Tuesday, when he kind of spoke to something that you said, which was that all of this foreign policy effort is taking away from what should be, he says, the president's focus. | ||
| Let's take a listen. | ||
| When families are paying more, getting less, when grocery bills and energy costs are squeezing household budgets, Trump's focus is dangerously, dangerously off track. | ||
| Just this morning, we learned that inflation climbed again, driven by rising prices for food and energy, a clear sign that the affordability crisis is still biting working families and that the administration bears a large share of the blame for it. | ||
|
Democrats' Midterm Strategy
00:03:05
|
||
| What's Trump's response to Americans struggling to make ends meet? | ||
| More global adventurism, not relief at home. | ||
| Trump is saying that we may be stuck in Venezuela for years. | ||
| He's not afraid to put troops on the ground there. | ||
| That's not what Americans want. | ||
| That's not what he campaigned on when he said America first. | ||
| I mean, this is clearly something that the Democrats will be using in the midterms. | ||
| Now, the president has said that he doesn't want boots on the ground in Venezuela. | ||
| Just to correct Chuck Schumer there on that. | ||
| But still, you know, does Chuck Schumer and other Democrats have a point that Americans want the president to focus more on the interior of this country versus outside of it? | ||
| There are parallels to 20 years ago. | ||
| In 2006, Democrats were in the minority as they are in now. | ||
| And the Iraq war had gone south. | ||
| President George W. Bush had lost support for that war. | ||
| There were other issues that were not good for the Republican Party. | ||
| There were ethics controversies. | ||
| But Schumer back then was saying something that he said back then, as he's saying now, is we're focusing on Iraq instead of America. | ||
| And now it's on foreign policy, whether it's Venezuela or Greenland. | ||
| It was an effective strategy in 2006 where Democrats not only won the House, but they also won the Senate. | ||
| Now, Chuck Schumer has raised expectations for winning the Senate this year. | ||
| He has said they're going to win it. | ||
| Chuck Schumer has been criticized by a lot of members of his own party on his leadership in 2025. | ||
| And he could face it, very likely will face a primary challenge should he run in 2028. | ||
| So the stakes for Schumer are enormously high. | ||
| If he has raised expectations by saying he's going to win the Senate and he wins races, he's done a great job in recruiting candidates, but it is an uphill battle. | ||
| He's going to have to pick up four seats, and that's going to be difficult with the map. | ||
| They're going to have to win in red states like Iowa and or Alaska, meanwhile winning in a lot of purple states, running the table in defending Democratic seats. | ||
| So it's going to be tough, but that is the strategy, is that Democrats who lost on the affordability issue in 2024 now want to win on that issue in 2026. | ||
| However, I think they've been pretty light on details of exactly what they would do. | ||
| Certainly the Obamacare subsidies, clearly they want to extend, and that remains to be seen whether they're going to be extended. | ||
| Right now, it doesn't look that way, but they don't have a detailed agenda. | ||
| And the interesting thing that I don't think got enough attention in the media is that the Democratic National Committee put together an autopsy report of why they lost the 2024 election. | ||
| And we, at the examiner, asked a number of members because they're not releasing that report. | ||
|
Pat Idaho's Leadership Worry
00:15:46
|
||
| We asked a number of members, what do you think about that? | ||
| And a number of them, including Senator John Fetterman, Democrat from Pennsylvania, said, Yes, he should release it. | ||
| We need to learn those lessons. | ||
| So, yes, Democrats had a very good year in 2025. | ||
| In the 2025 elections, they won New Jersey and Virginia. | ||
| They had to win both those races anyway. | ||
| But down ballot, they did very well. | ||
| But where do they stand? | ||
| It remains to be seen. | ||
| Both parties have major issues in this election year that they have to, I think, they have to fix. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, some recent polls showed that Democrats only had an 18% approval rating from their base. | ||
| Obviously, that's a pretty low number. | ||
| William from New York and Independent, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I just want to state that I think a lot of people go by whether they like Trump or not, whether he's doing a good job or not. | |
| And he's definitely doing a good job as far as I can see. | ||
| And he's got to use, you know, deficit and stuff, solve the problems. | ||
| But I was wondering, pretty guest, is the border absolutely closed? | ||
| Nobody's coming across. | ||
| Is that what's going on with the border? | ||
| And like I say, I really don't like Trump, but I like what he's doing for the country. | ||
| I think he's doing a fantastic job for the country. | ||
| And I think people should not worry about whether they like him or not. | ||
| It's what he's doing. | ||
| And look to that. | ||
| If you look at the data, the numbers are way down. | ||
| Are they way down to zero? | ||
| No. | ||
| But the emphasis now is the first goal of the Trump administration in the second term was let's close down the border and really give those officials at the, especially the southern border, the tools they need. | ||
| It has worked. | ||
| The numbers are way down. | ||
| But now the focus is on getting people who came to the country illegally and getting them out. | ||
| And that's been more controversial. | ||
| We saw ICE in Minnesota and the tragic death. | ||
| And that has split the country. | ||
| So those type of raids and those type of protests are going to be continuing. | ||
| And that is a bit chaotic. | ||
| Now, some people think chaos is a bad word. | ||
| A lot of Trump supporters like chaos. | ||
| They like upending Washington. | ||
| They like upending the Capitol. | ||
| They like upending the establishment. | ||
| And that's why he got elected twice. | ||
| Lou from Houston, Texas, and Independent. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Hi, Lou. | |
| Are you on the line? | ||
| One more time. | ||
| I am. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Sorry about that. | ||
| All right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I almost up on you, Lou. | |
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Go ahead. | |
| Hello, everyone. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
| So I was listening to your opinion, sir, and I get what everyone get that everyone has an opinion. | ||
| You know, if they like him, they dislike him. | ||
| And right now, where the country is going and what everyone is seeing on TV, it's not healthy. | ||
| It's concerning. | ||
| We have conflict outside of America where we're supposed to be focused on America first. | ||
| That was his whole agenda. | ||
| That was the whole MAGA agenda. | ||
| America First, focus on domestic policies. | ||
| Now, I did have concerns about our immigration policy. | ||
| I did worry about there was too many illegals come into the country. | ||
| But again, just like how the other gentleman Brought it up before, it's how we treat them is decency. | ||
| Right? | ||
| We're all still human beings. | ||
| Watching a woman that has autism get pulled out of her car was heartbreaking. | ||
| And I know every American that has a heart that feels for someone, their neighbor, white, black, brown, doesn't matter what color, we're all human beings. | ||
| We're all the child of God. | ||
| So for us to be treating each other like this is despicable. | ||
| And then you have our president going national. | ||
| Lou, I wonder if you have a question for Mr. Cusack, though, right? | ||
| He's here talking about the first year. | ||
| I wonder if you have a question on the first year. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All right. | |
| My question is, is as we move forward going into the midterm election, right, and we have this president that says we need to take Greenland, we need to control Cuba, we need to start all these foreign policies. | ||
| When is he going to focus on America first, right? | ||
| While things are still, while inflation is still uprising, groceries is going up, we're removing immigrants from their jobs. | ||
| When are we going to focus on America? | ||
| Well, if Trump doesn't focus on America this year, then it's going to be a long year for Republicans. | ||
| Now, obviously, he views himself as more powerful than his first term, where he said recently he's running Venezuela now. | ||
| He views himself more as a global leader than just leader of the United States. | ||
| Obviously, the United States is a superpower, but he does want to increase defense spending. | ||
| As far as the argument about immigration law, some people will say, yes, these tactics are way, they're going way overboard with ICE. | ||
| Others say, listen, the rule of law is the rule of law. | ||
| And Trump's border, top border person, Tom Holman, has said, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but it may be inconvenient, but these are the laws that Congress passed. | ||
| And so don't criticize us. | ||
| And people are also attacking ICE agents. | ||
| That said, because everyone has a phone and we're seeing all these confrontations, it's a lot more powerful. | ||
| And that, and it's kind of like a Rorschach test. | ||
| Some people are seeing Trump's view on what happened in Minnesota. | ||
| And then obviously half the country thinks, or maybe more, I don't know, but thinks another thing. | ||
| So it's really polarized the country in a way I've never seen before. | ||
| Yes, Congress did fight 15, 20 years ago, but it's gotten more intense. | ||
| The partisanship has gotten worse. | ||
| And, you know, I'll say that's not a good thing. | ||
| But it started before Trump. | ||
| So it's not been all Trump. | ||
| Pat from Idaho and Independent, you're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for having me on. | |
| Am I on? | ||
| Yep, you're on. | ||
| We can hear you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, okay. | |
| I'm sorry. | ||
| I really feel that Trump, overall, for his first year, has done a great job. | ||
| I know he's opened my eyes to a lot of things that I wasn't even aware that took place. | ||
| But I also believe that the reason he doesn't go to Congress, because Congress is not in his side. | ||
| I don't care if what he does, they're going to vote no to whatever he puts out there. | ||
| So a lot of this stuff, he does it independent. | ||
| As far as ICE, ICE is trying to do a job. | ||
| I see more violence on the protesters. | ||
| And I do believe they're getting paid to do that because there's a lot of people. | ||
| I just wonder, isn't anybody working? | ||
| You know, and where are they getting their money? | ||
| But I feel that they're disrupting ICE from doing their job. | ||
| And I think, you know, he's doing the best he can to this country because I truly believe there's a lot of corruption that is very deep, and he's trying to do everything he can. | ||
| That was Pat from Idaho. | ||
| She mentioned two things I want you to address. | ||
| One, Congress. | ||
| She said that she believes that Congress is not on the president's side and that they would not vote with him. | ||
| And then we'll get to the second question. | ||
| Yeah, and Congress has, this Republican Congress, both the House and Senate and Republican hands, have mostly been on Trump's side, but there has been some weariness, especially on Greenland. | ||
| My colleague Ramsey Touchberry at the Examiner wrote a piece about Democrats, how they're going to, they lost this War Powers Act recently, but they're going to keep bringing it back. | ||
| And that mostly had to do with Venezuela. | ||
| Maduro, everyone agrees, was a bad guy, but how they went about it, not getting congressional approval. | ||
| Now, Mark Arubio, who used to serve in the Senate, said we couldn't get approval for this because it was so secretive. | ||
| And certainly Congress was not aware of when Obama went after bin Laden because of that issue. | ||
| But watch the Greenland issue because more Republicans are not going to support Trump on Greenland. | ||
| And then the second comment that she mentioned was on protesting. | ||
| She said that she believes that these protesters in Minneapolis are paid. | ||
| Something that the White House has said that they're paid agitators. | ||
| Is there any evidence to support that? | ||
| You know, reporters, including us, have been looking into that. | ||
| But in the past, certainly protests on both the left and the right are funded. | ||
| And to make them look bigger, now, they can't start without some type of fire. | ||
| Where there's smoke, there's fire. | ||
| But have in the past protests been paid? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| John from Brooklyn, a Democrat? | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
John from Brooklyn, John Saltis, number one. | |
| Jasmine, how you doing? | ||
| Good to see you. | ||
| Good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, Beef Span. | |
| I want two or three questions. | ||
| Number one, Biden's infrastructure. | ||
| I Google it. | ||
| And Trump administration in the red states is making money off of Biden's infrastructure, the bridges, the buildings, and a lot of things he did. | ||
| If you Google it, you will see right now, Biden's infrastructure is making billions of dollars for red and blue states. | ||
| Number one. | ||
| Number two, Putin and Trump are together to destroy democracy. | ||
| Trump wants to destroy democracy because he wants to be a king. | ||
| And he's helping Putin destroy NATO. | ||
| It's just heartbreaking that Trump would try to destroy NATO. | ||
| Number three, Trump money. | ||
| Do anybody know how much money him and his family made or do they care? | ||
| Number two, number four, last one, Trump. | ||
| Congress got to go along with him. | ||
| He gets everybody together and vote the Congress members out. | ||
| They want their jobs. | ||
| They make good money off them under the table in this trading they do. | ||
| It's a lifetime job they can run. | ||
| And they're scared of Trump because he primarily them. | ||
| Dad, make sure these things are addressed. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| All right, John. | ||
| Let's get a quick answer to all four of these points, and then we'll turn to Treasury Secretary Bessett. | ||
| First, on transportation, Biden passed that law. | ||
| It was bipartisan law. | ||
| Now Trump is implementing it. | ||
| And members love bridges and anything that fixes things in their district, transportation-related or states. | ||
| Is the Trump administration making the implementation a high priority? | ||
| No. | ||
| Is he favoring Republicans? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| There was a recent controversy. | ||
| I can't remember all the details, but Schumer's pressing Trump to deal with some bridge. | ||
| So that's one thing. | ||
| As far as Putin, Trump, you know, listen, Trump said he could end the war in one day. | ||
| That was obviously not realistic. | ||
| We're seeing the war continue on. | ||
| And what were the other things? | ||
|
unidentified
|
One of them was on Trump money. | |
| Yes. | ||
| Trump money. | ||
| Well, the Wall Street Journal has done some really good reporting on how the Trump family is doing quite well because of cryptocurrency. | ||
| And that is something that Democrats are investigating. | ||
| But that is a big issue for Democrats on Capitol Hill. | ||
| That said, Democrats have been fighting Donald Trump since 2015, 2016, certainly, so about 10 years. | ||
| They need to come up with, and Democrats say this themselves, they need to say what they're for more than what they're against. | ||
| We know they're against Trump, but calling him a fascist hasn't worked because he's been elected twice. | ||
| Let's turn to Treasury Secretary Scott Besson in Davos this morning on stage with Fox Business hosts talking about news of the day. | ||
| And we're seeing a substantial drop in protecting the American people. | ||
| On October 8th, the Chinese government announced rare-earth export controls on the entire world, not just the U.S., which would have caused an industrial meltdown. | ||
| President threatened 100% tariffs on China if they did this. | ||
| My Chinese counterpart, who's been a very good interlocutor, had gone quiet for a couple of days. | ||
| Chinese immediately came to the table and they rolled the export controls out a year. | ||
| And President Trump insisted that I negotiate on behalf of the whole world. | ||
| So in terms of the U.S. leading, this is what U.S. leadership looks like. | ||
| He was able to use IEPA tariffs to negotiate for the entire industrial world. | ||
| So I think it's very important here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm glad you mentioned China. | |
| I'm going to come back to China, but while we're here, what is the latest timetable on the much anticipated bilateral trade deal with China? | ||
| I had a meeting with my Chinese counterpart here in Davos last night, Vice Premier Hu Li Feng. | ||
| He told me that just this week they have completed their soybean purchases, and we're looking forward to next year's 25 million tons. | ||
| I suggested maybe he'd want to buy a little more because President Trump always brings that up with party chair Xi when they speak. | ||
| And they've done everything that they said they're going to do. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Are they having rare earth magnets flow or are they putting restrictions on? | |
| That was Treasury Secretary Scott Besson in Davos talking about the president's efforts to negotiate trade deals with China, saying that China has basically fallen through on all the things that were required under those initial stages of the deal. | ||
| I wonder what you make of that. | ||
| Well, Treasury Secretary, I think, was a great appointment by, obviously confirmed by the Senate, by President Trump. | ||
|
Can't Lose the Base
00:00:52
|
||
| He has an enormous amount of power. | ||
| There was speculation he could be the next Federal Reserve chair. | ||
| That is apparently off the table. | ||
| I continue to hear whispers that that could, if it doesn't happen this time, it could happen down the road. | ||
| But farmers are upset. | ||
| Farmers who supported Trump, and a lot of them still do, they're upset with China and not buying more soybeans. | ||
| So there has been a fund set up, some would call it a bailout, for the farmers because they're hurting now. | ||
| And that's the real Trump base. | ||
| He can't lose that base, especially in the midterm. | ||
| And the biggest problem, remember, Trump lost the House in 2018 in his first term. | ||
|
Three-Way Governor Race in Maine
00:14:54
|
||
| And conventional wisdom is he's going to lose the House again. | ||
| And part of the reason is that Trump's not on the ballot. | ||
| So how are they going to deal, how are they going to get people out and get fired up for a midterm when Democrats are the ones hungry now? | ||
| Because they're out of power. | ||
| And that always happens, is that the party in power usually gets a little complacent, and the party out of power is hungry, and they're going to show up. | ||
| And if you look at polls, Democrats are going to show up. | ||
| It remains to be seen if Republicans will. | ||
| Yeah, and the president has said that if Democrats do retake the House, he believes that they would try to impeach him again, or at least he's afraid of. | ||
| I wonder if you think just quickly that could happen. | ||
| I think it's a distinct possibility, but it's interesting this time. | ||
| Republicans are talking about impeaching because I think there's impeachment just people are just tired of impeachment. | ||
| They know it's not going anywhere in the Senate. | ||
| Even if they won the Senate, they don't have the votes to do that. | ||
| But that's where the Democrats are split. | ||
| And I think a lot of Democrats who are running in purple seats are going to have to answer the question: would you impeach the president? | ||
| Because a lot of Democrats said he's breaking the law on so many issues. | ||
| And then in the backdrop of the 2028 race, where a lot of those Democrats are going to say, yes, he should be impeached, leaders don't want to impeach because they know how that ends. | ||
| We've already seen that twice. | ||
| So in 30 seconds, as we close, what are you looking forward to in the next month, two months, and obviously the next 12 months? | ||
| I'm looking forward to the State of the Union, how President Trump talks about his first year in office and where they're going and if he unveils any new initiatives. | ||
| Does he want 2,000? | ||
| He's talked about passing legislation that would give everybody $2,000 or a lot of people $2,000 in their back pocket. | ||
| Remains to be seen if that could be passed. | ||
| And then the landscape as the campaign takes shape. | ||
| A long way to go between now and the election, but right now, I've talked to a number of people and they think the House, if the election were today, which it's not, the House would flip back to Democrats and the Senate would remain in Republican hands. | ||
| So we could be looking at divided government in 2027. | ||
| Bob Cusack, Executive Editor of the Washington Examiner. | ||
| Thank you so much for your time this week. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I really enjoyed it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
A live look this afternoon at the White House briefing room where we're expecting President Trump to come to take reporter questions. | |
| We'll have live coverage on our companion network, C-SPAN 2, when it gets underway. | ||
| Welcome back. | ||
| Joining us now to talk all things Senate is Senate and Governor's Editor for Cook Political Report, Jessica Taylor. | ||
| Jessica, thanks so much for being with us this morning. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| All right, let's dive right in. | ||
| Obviously, this is going to be a busy year for the Senate, midterm elections, and the House. | ||
| Remind our audience, though, what control of Senate currently looks like, and how many seats do Democrats need to win to take back control? | ||
| Right now, Democrats, or Republicans rather, have a 52-48 majority, and they need four seats in order to flip that. | ||
| And the number of seats that are up, Republicans have more seats up, but they're in safer seats. | ||
| And so that four is really difficult to do because there's only one Republican-held seat that is up in a state that Kamala Harris won, which is Maine Susan Collins. | ||
| And even though she sits in a blue state, she has won election after election despite that. | ||
| The next possible pickup that we rate as a toss-up is in North Carolina, where Chuck Schumer successfully recruited former Governor Roy Cooper into the race. | ||
| You have former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Watley running there. | ||
| And then beyond those two, you have to go into double-digit Trump states. | ||
| So they are looking at states like Ohio, where they did get former Senator Sherrod Brown to run, or Alaska, where just last week former Congresswoman Mary Peltola announced. | ||
| But then Democrats also have their own states that they're defending. | ||
| They're defending an open seat in Michigan that has a very crowded and potentially contentious Democratic primary that's not going to be decided until August. | ||
| They're defending Georgia with John Ossoff. | ||
| I was going to ask you about Georgia here. | ||
| That seat held by Democrat John Osoff. | ||
| Who is challenging him and what are the risks to Offsoff in that seat? | ||
| Obviously, we know he won it during a special election, I believe, before. | ||
| Walk us through that race. | ||
| Yeah, so this is a place where Republicans didn't get their number one recruit that they wanted, who was former or current governor Brian Kemp, who is term limited. | ||
| So there is a three-way primary right now happening between two congressmen, Buddy Carter, who represents the Savannah area, Mike Collins, who represents the Athens area, and then former University of Tennessee football coach Derek Dooley. | ||
| Now Dooley has Kemp's endorsement, but he's a newcomer to politics. | ||
| Carter's put in a lot of his own money. | ||
| Collins has gotten a lot of county chairman and different things across the state. | ||
| So this is the primary is still pretty up in the air. | ||
| Trump has not weighed in here. | ||
| And as we see in most Republican primaries, that can be really determinative if he decides to. | ||
| Now, how much did Trump win Georgia by? | ||
| And what is the risk to Osoff, no matter who wins the Republican primary on his side? | ||
| Osoff is obviously running in a very Trumpy state. | ||
| Yes, he is. | ||
| But I mean, again, you know, Trump lost it in 2020 very narrowly, won it again in 2024. | ||
| But this is in a midterm election like we saw, like we saw with Raphael Warnock that won that seat in 2022. | ||
| It went to a runoff. | ||
| That could happen again. | ||
| They've still got to get to 50% plus one if there's more candidates in that race. | ||
| But Osoff has amassed a massive war chest. | ||
| He's been able to do that because he doesn't have a Democratic primary challenger. | ||
| He's been a prodigious fundraiser. | ||
| So Osoff, I think, is sitting better in this position than we believe that he might have been, say, at the beginning of 2025. | ||
| So this seat, I think, is looking better for Democrats in that regard because Republicans have a messy primary still. | ||
| Osoff has been able to amass money. | ||
| In midterm years, we do see potentially higher black turnout in the Atlanta area and things to all things. | ||
| And if that Trump base stays home in a midterm election, if they're very frustrated with him, as we see polls indicate, that can certainly help Osoff. | ||
| Now let's turn a little bit further away from Georgia to Michigan. | ||
| The current Democrat in that Senate seat, Gary Peters, is retiring, creating an open seat. | ||
| Who is running to fill it and what is the current polling there? | ||
| So right now you have really a reverse of what happened in 2024, which was also an open seat when Deby Stabenow retired. | ||
| And Democrats coalesced behind Alyssa Slotkin versus Republicans had a primary there. | ||
| The opposite is happening right now. | ||
| The 2024 nominee, former Congressman Mike Rogers, is running again. | ||
| Now he narrowly, very narrowly lost that seat, but it was at the same time that Trump, of course, won Michigan. | ||
| So he underperformed Trump. | ||
| So he needs to get back out Trump voters that is typically more difficult in a midterm environment than we have seen in Michigan. | ||
| But he is currently very narrowly leading the Democratic challengers in polls. | ||
| But Democrats have a three-way primary that, again, isn't going to be resolved until August. | ||
| And so you have current Congresswoman Haley Stevens running. | ||
| She's seen as the choice of the Democratic establishment. | ||
| She formerly worked on the auto bailouts and things. | ||
| And then you have State Senator Mallory McMorrow. | ||
| She sort of went viral for a House floor speech. | ||
| So she's sort of running a sort of a new progressive in a way. | ||
| And then further left in the progressive lane, you have former Wayne County health chief Abdul Al-Syed. | ||
| He's been endorsed by Bernie Sanders. | ||
| You know, I think that Stevens and probably McMorrow would not endanger this seat, but I think that Al-Syed, if he were the nominee, that could really pose a problem for Democrats. | ||
| And I know we talked a little bit about Maine before. | ||
| Obviously, Susan Collins has won statewide time and time again, despite difficult races, despite people really doubting her in some of those races, a moderate there. | ||
| She also is running right now uncontested, though it's said that Trump has advocated for folks to jump in on that race against her. | ||
| But she's facing two Democrats in the residence, or there are two Democrats running in the primary over there. | ||
| Can you break down that race for us? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| This is another place where Chuck Schumer got his favorite recruit in the current governor, Janet Mills, who's seen as more of a moderate. | ||
| But Graham Plattner, an oysterman there in Maine, also running Bernie Sanders' endorsement, running as a full-throated progressive, has really sort of captured lightning in a bottle there in Maine. | ||
| Now, there's been a lot of things that have come out against him. | ||
| He had a Nazi-inspired tattoo. | ||
| He made a lot of questionable Reddit posts. | ||
| I think in a pre-Trump era, a lot of these things would have sunk candidates, but that has not happened with him. | ||
| I think he still has a lot of support in the Democratic primary. | ||
| We've sort of seen competing polls. | ||
| Some polls, his own internals have him up in the primary. | ||
| We've seen polls with Mills up. | ||
| We've seen polls with him very close. | ||
| I think that, you know, once we get closer to the primary this summer, I think that we'll see better polling, really. | ||
| You know, there's sort of a question of who would run better. | ||
| I think the National Democrats obviously want Mills to be the nominee there, given that she has won before, that she's won independents in those places. | ||
| She was a well-liked governor. | ||
| Right. | ||
| She is. | ||
| I mean, again, she's more moderate, certainly, but she's been able to win those independents that Collins has been able to win. | ||
| And really the funny thing is, is they're friends. | ||
| I mean, you know, that they get along very well. | ||
| I think, you know, she really got a lot of criticism from Plattner even for saying, you know, that at one point Collins was doing the best job that she could. | ||
| Now she's begun to criticize her more there. | ||
| But so I think there's really a question of do they need sort of this progressive enthusiasm to kind of unite Democrats and even pull over independents to finally beat Collins? | ||
| Or do they need sort of that more moderate candidate to unite independents and even perhaps pull over some Republicans? | ||
| And of course, Trump has, as you mentioned, criticized her over the Venezuela vote and different things. | ||
| There's kind of competing theories over whether that hurts her or helps her. | ||
| I think it helps her in a way that you can point toward with Democrats that have voted for, that she can point toward and say, look, I'm not in lockstep with the president, even though she voted for a lot of his nominees, which is the criticism that they will use against her. | ||
| And listen, she, you know, her Supreme Court votes and things too have not really been litigated in a post-Dobbs world. | ||
| They used that against her in 2020, but that was before the Dobbs decision in 2022. | ||
| So this is the first time she's on the ballot in a post-roe being overturned world. | ||
| That's a really interesting point, specifically because Maine is a very, you know, interesting state. | ||
| It kind of has a similar political makeup as, say, like New Hampshire, obviously. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| They're in a similar area. | ||
| I wonder: are there issues in the state in Maine that differ from kind of a national conversation about affordability and those other issues that we know that Democrats are going to run on? | ||
| Well, I think you have trade issues with Canada as well because of their proximity to the state and being a border state. | ||
| You have Lobsterman issues. | ||
| You have kind of trade issues as well with Canada and with European countries. | ||
| And so I think that those tariffs are also a concern as well in Maine. | ||
| Okay, Jessica, before we continue, I want to invite our viewers to join in on the conversation. | ||
| We are talking all things Senate Rays 2026. | ||
| Democrats, your line is 202-748-8000. | ||
| Republicans, your line is 202-748-8001. | ||
| Independents, your line is 202-748-8002. | ||
| Join in on us when we're talking about the Senate. | ||
| Okay, I want to talk about North Carolina, another place where Chuck Schumer got one of his picks. | ||
| The current sitting senator, Republican Tom Tillis, who has criticized Trump repeatedly, more so now that he's announced that he is retiring. | ||
| Who is running for this race? | ||
| And does it is who is running for this race change what happens in November? | ||
| This is a place where the candidates have virtually been decided now. | ||
| Michael Watley is the former RNC chairman. | ||
| He's the former North Carolina Republican Party chairman, but he's never run for office before. | ||
| Being an operative and being a candidate are two very different things. | ||
| He's also facing a lot of criticism because Trump named him, of course, Hurricane Helene hit in the fall of 2024 and really hit Western North Carolina. | ||
| He was sort of, he was named as the recovery czar there in Western North Carolina. | ||
| He's faced a lot of criticism for not acting quickly enough to deliver federal funds to that area that is still very much hurting. | ||
| And then you have former governor Roy Cooper. | ||
| He was just termed out. | ||
| He was elected twice on the same ballot as Trump. | ||
| I think this is really important to point out because most governors are elected in a midterm year. | ||
| But North Carolina elects their governors concurrently with presidential. | ||
| So he was elected in both 2020 and in 2016 and in 2020 when Trump won. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You can continue watching this event if you go to our website, c-span.org. | |
| We're going to leave it now for live coverage of the U.S. House here on C-SPAN. | ||
| Prayer will be offered by Chaplain Kibben. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Would you pray with me? | |