Larry Sabato analyzes the economic risks of a prolonged Iran conflict, noting 80% to 90% public opposition to ground troops and linking rising gas prices to potential Republican midterm losses. He debunks claims about Christian founding values by citing Masonic influences and religious discrimination against figures like JFK, while dismissing Trump's impeachment conviction as virtually impossible due to Senate polarization. Sabato also addresses the tight race for Virginia's redistricting referendum, critiques third-party electoral barriers despite Ross Perot's 1992 success, and concludes with Trump's Easter egg roll speech celebrating the nation's 250th birthday and military rescue of pilots. [Automatically generated summary]
At the beginning by some people in the administration, not all of them.
I think people thought it would be over relatively quickly.
If it goes on much longer, yes, it will become a burden, maybe not as equal to affordability and prices and gas and the rest, but it will be a major factor that correlates with prices and what's happening with gas and so on.
So I think that's a real worry for Republicans, which is why probably it won't happen.
You mentioned ground troops.
This has been fascinating to me because normally partisan identification determines these things.
And yet, a large majority of Americans that I meet large, sometimes in the range of 80, 85, even 90% are opposed to sending ground troops.
They don't want ground troops in.
I've seen the number go as low as 7% in favor of ground troops.
So I understand why it may need to be done in certain isolated situations, but the danger signs are all around.
If that's done and we get sucked in to a long conflict, good luck.
And the Republicans are the ones that will need the good luck.
That means that both Republicans and Democrats are disapproving that, right?
You don't get to 80 just on one party alone.
I wonder, just because you mentioned gas prices, just quickly there, a new CBS YouGov poll found that a third of Americans now predict a recession in the next year.
Gas prices are just over $4 for the national average, a gallon.
How does that factor into midterm elections?
You said that the Iran war does not outweigh affordability, but when does gas prices become a part of that conversation about affordability?
And in that sense, the Iran war is very much a part of the election already.
And we'll see what happens with the prices, whether they continue to go up, which would be frankly a disaster for the Republican Party, or if they tumble after some agreement is reached, one presumes in the next few weeks or certainly months.
We'll see what happens.
But gas prices really crystallize what Americans are concerned about in prices and affordability.
And remember, the gas prices are going to add to the food prices and really the prices of everything that has to travel from place to place.
And the airlines are adding surcharges and the various overnight mail delivery services are adding surcharges.
You better believe it adds up for average Americans, even for everybody, I would say.
So that's going to be a factor.
And again, it will cut against the Republicans if it's still existing by the fall.
One last thing on this before we turn to some calls here, Larry, is that last week the Democratic-Aligned Vote Vets Action Fund released this ad targeting GOP Congressman Derek Van Orden of Wisconsin, a retired Navy SEAL whose district crystal ball rated a toss-up.
Let's take a listen to that ad very quickly.
unidentified
Look at that gas pump.
We're paying the cost every damn day of this war in Iran.
But for Congressman Van Orden, we're not paying enough.
He's going for another $200 billion to spend on Iran.
This is the same guy who backed big cuts to VA care for vets.
Look, vets like me, they understand the cost of war.
But if we don't have the money to take care of our veterans, we damn sure can't afford another war.
So that ad, it said that Van Orden supports that $200 billion Amount that would theoretically be asked of Congress to fund the Iran war effort, opposed VA funding that ad said.
It said we can't afford another war.
Should Americans expect more of these types of ads targeting Republicans if this war goes on much longer?
And I'm sure that the Van Orden campaign has got, you know, 10 different arguments disagreeing with phrases or sentences in that ad.
And that's the way politics works too, the debate between the candidates and sometimes the ad makers.
The point is, though, what good advertising in politics does is tap into feelings and beliefs that are already present in the electorate and especially the part of the electorate that can switch or that can be motivated to turn up that might not vote otherwise in this particular election.
And that's a powerful ad.
It will have an impact.
I'm sure there will be an answering ad, though, a response ad from the Van Orden campaign saying, you know, whatever his arguments are opposing this ad, for example, the $200 billion, that's a proposal from the Trump administration.
Maybe Van Orden has already taken a position on it.
I don't know.
But if he hasn't, then he'll point that out.
Congress hasn't worked its will on this.
And the last time I checked, they did still determine spending and taxation and other matters in the United States.
I got a quick question here, or a quick statement, then some questions for the C-SPAN audience.
When I was 17 back during the Vietnam, because you mentioned that, I had to register for the draft.
I couldn't buy alcohol nor vote, but I had to join up basically to see if I could kill or be killed by communists.
So why don't y'all just ease up on that?
If you don't want us to call you fascists, don't call us communists.
Now getting to my statement while you're here.
Yesterday, they had the show that was about more religion and politics.
And to me, politics is basically scheming among a group to get what they want.
So one of my questions is: do you know in the Bible where there's a political exception to violating the ninth commandment of bearing false witness, which politics is?
And the second question here is: personally, I'm probably one of the few people in America who believe government is working perfectly.
I don't, now stop laughing.
I don't care about, you know, that it's not that I don't want, but the government was elected in.
My concern is from November to January on the transitional period.
If I can make a point before answering his question, he mentioned Vietnam, and he's absolutely correct.
I remember getting my draft card at that time, too.
I actually was in the lottery by the time I came up for a potential draft.
We had the lottery under President Nixon, and I got number 355.
It's the only time I've ever won a lottery.
But this gentleman mentioned he couldn't vote and he couldn't drink, but he could go and fight in a war and kill.
That was such a powerful argument that it produced the 26th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Most Americans, a large majority, agreed with the point he was making and thought that young people should be able, or young men at that time, should be able to cast a ballot if they were going to go to war in a foreign conflict.
So it worked.
Politics can work under certain circumstances.
Now, he mentioned a number of items.
I think he was focusing somewhat at the end there on the transition period from the November election to, say, January 20th when the new president's sworn in or January 3rd or so when the new Congress is sworn in.
Is it ideal?
Well, I always tell students, you know, the British managed to do it overnight.
When they vote out their prime minister and his party, the moving van comes in the middle of the night and removes every scentilla of evidence that the other prime minister ever existed there.
So they can do it overnight.
We can't do that.
We don't have a parliamentary system and a cabinet has to be appointed.
We don't have shadow ministers.
But it's better than it used to be.
I sound like I'm just pushing the positive, but people don't remember this.
All of us weren't alive at that time.
But we used to have a much longer transition.
The president used to be sworn in March the 4th after having been elected in early November.
And the Congress came in at that time as well.
So we've actually moved it back.
And that happened after the Great Depression began and FDR was elected to succeed Herbert Hoover.
And FDR couldn't carry his program through because he wasn't in office for so many months.
So the amendment to the Constitution was ratified.
And in 1936, we converted to early January for Congress and January 20th for the swearing in of the president.
So again, we can change.
Our system can work.
And let's focus on the positive as well as the negative.
One of the things I want to bring out to especially the Christian right is we do not need, will we not accept a theocracy, first of all?
Second of all, they keep spouting how this is, this nation was born on Christian values.
If they look at their history, they will see that our forefathers, who they call, you know, George Washington, Jefferson, Madison, et cetera, you look at what they listed as their religion, Masonic.
They were Masons.
Even the ones that put down their Christians, they were still Masons.
It was the Mason theology, kind of, in a way, which they accept all religions.
All they ask is that you have a divine creator you believe in.
And the thing is, is our country was founded by people that believed in Masonic values.
So, Greg, I wonder if you have a question for Larry about it or the midterm.
unidentified
Do you agree with me or you disagree with me that actually the Masons has more influence on the starting of this country than Christianity did because they were the leaders?
Well, I'm not going to get into the debate about Masons, and it's a long debate as going on through American history to a certain degree.
But the gentleman is correct in that we don't have a theocracy.
We didn't then.
The founders wanted to avoid it.
Although I must say, it wasn't perfect in the beginning either.
Despite the supposed separation of church and state, there were states that had local and sometimes statewide restrictions relating to religion and serving in public office.
Certain religions were discriminated against.
I happen to be Catholic, and I can remember in 1960 quite well everything that was said about John F. Kennedy and all the cartoons that were passed around about the Pope calling him every morning to give him his daily instructions and all of this.
And I also, I'm here at the University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson.
I'm living and broadcasting to you from a building designed by Thomas Jefferson, Pavilion 4 on the lawn.
And Jefferson tried to appoint someone of a minority religion to the faculty at the University of Virginia right in the beginning.
It was founded in 1819.
Jefferson died in 1826.
And the religious leaders in Virginia, who were of a different Protestant sect, were so outraged that someone from a minority sect was being selected that they protested endlessly, and Jefferson had to let the faculty member go.
So we've never had perfection.
We've never had perfection, anything close to it.
And it's a constant battle that we as citizens have to wage.
That's a battle that's domestic, but it's one that we have an obligation to wage ourselves.
They're summarized by 0.000 that he would actually be convicted.
Now, getting impeached is a serious matter, but it's relatively simple.
You only need a majority, a simple majority of the House of Representatives to impeach a president or other officers of the federal government.
And that could happen.
There's already a subterranean debate among Democrats about whether Trump should be impeached again for what Democrats consider to be crimes committed by Donald Trump, even in this term.
I don't know how that will turn out.
You can make a good argument either way, depending on your point of view.
It would certainly send a message to future presidents.
At the same time, it would also prove again that it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to impeach and convict a president given our party polarization.
It's just not going to happen.
So it would go to the, if Trump were impeached with a simple majority of the House on even one count, that would go to the Senate for an automatic trial presided over by the Chief Justice.
I suspect it would be a short trial because it would be obvious from the beginning that there was nowhere near the vote, the extraordinary majority of the Senate needed to oust a president.
And so it's pointless to waste all that time in the Senate.
And we know it's particularly valuable in the Senate.
So, you know, on that issue, I would suggest that while it's a consideration and people will debate it, for all I know, Trump will get impeached in the next term if Democrats take over.
I question that in another way because it's guaranteed to fail, guaranteed.
One thing, since we're talking about President Trump, Larry, his approval rating among independents is 31%, with 69% who disapprove, including off-year elections.
Last year, Democrats have flipped 30 Republican seats since the start of 2025.
Republicans have not flipped one state legislative seat.
Can you talk to us about why?
Run through these numbers about independence.
And is this an anti-Trump sentiment that's kind of pervasive across the country?
Independents often call themselves independents because they dislike the Democrats because of ABC issues, and they dislike the Republicans because of XYZ issues.
However, in each election, at least the ones who vote will have to make a choice.
And so we look at these people.
They're sometimes called double haters.
I don't consider them haters.
I think double critics would be a better term.
And so we look at them to see which way they're leaning.
Well, guess what?
Trump carried the double critics in 2016.
In 2024, he carried them again.
But this year, right now, there's the largest gap that those of us in this field have ever seen.
There's a 31 percentage point advantage for Democrats among the double critics.
That should really send flares up to Republicans about what's happening under the surface.
Again, seven months to go, and these numbers can change, but the early indication there is suggestive of a strong Democratic vote.
And the special elections, what they're about is enthusiasm and energy.
Which side has the enthusiasm and energy?
And which side may be a little bit disillusioned or a little less inclined to show up at the polls because of what's going on in the world or in the country?
Well, it's perfectly obvious.
The Republicans haven't switched a single Democratic seat anywhere, whereas the Democrats have switched several dozen seats that the Republicans had in the state legislature and local offices significant local offices and so on.
Does not absolutely predict the results in November, but again, should be a flare or many flares sent up high in the air, warning Republicans about what's happening.
Well, first, I hope that I gave him an A, because if he can remember my slogan after all these years, politics is a good thing.
I wish I had given him an A. If I did, maybe I can still change his transcript.
I'll look into it, but he'll have to write me a letter.
In any event, thank you for your comments.
I appreciate it very much.
Yes, we are the latest in the re-redistricting gala that's going on throughout America.
It started in Texas when Trump, and by the way, I've had a lot of Republicans in Virginia tell me, even senior Republicans say, what was he thinking?
What were the people around him thinking?
Did they believe that the Democrats wouldn't respond to the effort in Texas to grab five Democratic U.S. House seats?
And the answer, of course, is no.
So we've had some states like Texas and there are others redistrict to give Republicans additional seats in the upcoming Congress.
And we have had states that are Democratic, starting with California.
And now it's reached Virginia, trying to do the same thing to even out the playing field nationally.
Now, I've got to tell you, I'm opposed to re-redistricting everywhere.
On the other hand, I think it's unfair to expect one party to unilaterally disarm.
That's why it was such a terrible idea to begin with.
That's why I regret tremendously that President Trump did this, because it is increasing polarization and fighting between the parties.
And that's the last thing we need.
So in Virginia, Virginia is not California.
It does lean Democratic.
The Democrats have been carrying Virginia presidentially since President Obama did in his first election in 2008, which is a complete switch from the prior heavily Republican tendency of Virginia.
And so you have to give at least an edge to this referendum.
Now, how much of an edge?
There was a recent survey in the Washington Post that had it relatively close.
I think it was five points among those likely to vote.
Among all registered voters, there was a nine percentage point difference in favor of the re-redistricting.
So you have to give it an edge.
But, you know, that's close enough so that even between now and April 21st, you could have a switch.
Many people are voting by mail.
That's what I did.
And by the way, mail voting is completely safe.
This is the most ridiculous debate ever.
And both parties use it and like it.
So we'll see what happens between now and April 21st.
But I would say it's favored, but not by all that much.
Well, one thing I want to say real quick about the war.
I'm 78, by the way.
I grew up during the Vietnam era.
I had asthma.
I didn't have to go.
God bless the people who served there and made the sacrifices for that mess.
I've got to tell you, I've learned that over the years, when a country invades another country on their soil, they always, always, without question, underestimate the resilience of the country they're invading.
We're against that right now.
I can give you Ukraine and Russia, Russia and Afghanistan, Korea.
I mean, King George III, if he had to think over it, he said, we shouldn't have invaded the college.
Just give them the dadgum freedom and be done with it.
I mean, it's always that way.
They always put up a good fight, which typically we think we can go in and take over.
And all of a sudden, we have a prolonged conflict.
That's going to hurt the Republicans, I think, because I think it will be a prolonged conflict.
I think the imminent threat was not there, just like George Bush's weapons of mass destruction when he forced Colin Powell to go make a case for the war in Iraq.
By the way, Brent Scowcross told Bush, the senior, don't go in, don't follow.
Don't follow those troops in Iraq.
It's going to upset the region.
What did George Lesser do?
With exactly that, and we've had a mess ever since.
Okay, real quickly, gas prices.
I was a logistics manager until I retired.
Gas prices affect everything.
It runs through the economy like a laxative.
First, very first thing it hits, and I know this firsthand because I used to have to deal with contracts, fuel surcharges, which affect the cost of everything.
It affects the cost of manufacturing.
So you say, well, I'm just buying paper.
Well, the people who produce the paper for your office job, it costs them more.
The people who, FedEx is going to charge you more to ship it.
Everything is going to cost.
The guy that comes in and changes the light bulbs at night in the factory, I got to charge you more because it's costing me more to buy the light bulbs, and I've got to pay my people more.
They're asking for raises.
It's just nuts.
It's racist through the economy.
Real quickly about politics.
Okay, you're from Virginia.
The two-party system we're trapped into is a mess.
He was my congressman for a number of years and was in the state senate before that.
But look, here's the problem.
And I've heard this all my life or adult life, and I suspect most people who are listening or watching have.
We need a third party.
We've got to have a third party.
I want to vote for someone who's not a Democrat or Republican.
And very occasionally, very occasionally, these independents or third-party candidates can win.
But it's even rarer than the blue moon.
And that's because the two major parties are so entrenched in the campaign finance laws, in the electoral laws, and for the reason the gentleman mentioned, which is an incumbent. from a political party, especially if that party is in the majority, can probably get some goodies for the state or the district.
And of course, that adds a point or two or three in an election, and many of our elections are very close.
So every now and then, it can happen and change things.
Ross Perot is the one that I'll always remember in 1992, who ran a strange campaign.
You know, he dropped out in early summer, and then he came back in in early October, and he still got 19% of the vote, more than any independent has ever gotten other than Teddy Roosevelt, who was a third-party candidate, but had been president for nearly eight years.
So Perot proved you could do it.
Now, he spent $60 million of his own money.
He was a billionaire.
He also asked for people to put skin in the game.
Everybody who supported him was told to send him $5.
And people who never thought they would be sending $5 to a billionaire did so.
He got a lot of money that way as well.
So you need a groundswell.
You need a populist candidate.
You need dissatisfaction with the two major parties, which you had in 1992.
And even then, while you can make history get more votes than any independent's ever gotten before, you can't come close to winning.
It's 19% of the vote, and Ross Perot didn't get even one electoral vote.
Populist Candidates and Groundswell Support00:04:47
I don't think that's going to get me in trouble with anybody.
But look, the gentleman is making an important point about corruption, and nobody can dispute what he said.
There's way too much corruption from the White House to the courthouse, and it seems to get worse with each passing day.
And we have to root it out.
And also, we the people have an obligation to do our research, to do our voter education, to find out who these candidates are in conjunction with the press, whether you dislike them or like them.
You must like some of them.
You must get your information from somewhere.
And you have to elevate it in your list of issues when you're deciding who to vote for and who to vote against.
Because that's the only way we're going to have change in elections is if people, the voters, the electorate does a lot more research and works with groups that uncover unethical activity in government.
And there are quite a few of them, ProPublica and the various ethics groups.
You can Google that.
And they try to give us information and people don't pay attention.
We need to pay closer attention.
We also may need more than occasionally to abandon whatever our party label is to vote against even our party or vote against the candidate of our party if that person is shown to be corrupt.
Brittany from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, a Democrat.
Good morning, Brittany.
unidentified
Good morning.
So I have a question, and my question is, do we think that some of these seat changes are being affected by the American people's views on politicians' views about how they handled the Epstein files?
And what I mean by that is, do we believe that people are voting based off who's complacent in trying to like sweep them under or not talk about them anymore?
Do we think that people have watched how something so important kind of got hushed and it created a fear in believing most politicians are honorable to be in charge of the laws and decisions of our nation about all things?
My question is, do we think the handling of the Epstein files is trickling into, you know, who's getting to be replaced in these seats and furthermore?
Well, the answer is that it is a factor with a minority of voters.
And you could really split them into two.
There are a lot of MAGA voters, a lot of Trump supporters who have felt very unhappy, very upset with the way the Epstein controversy and scandal has been treated over the years.
This has dragged on for years and years, but particularly with the release of the files, which is still, I believe, not complete.
And who knows what was destroyed along the way?
You know, I've looked at that in a number of controversies, and sometimes you'll never find out because little fires were held here and there back when they had paper.
And it's still possible to extinguish real facts, even on computers.
But in any event, there are groups, and there are Democrats who feel very strongly about it.
And you've had some bipartisan efforts in Congress.
Thomas Massey, a Republican from Kentucky, and Roe Conna, a Democrat from California.
They have championed this issue.
unidentified
and First Lady Melania Trump, accompanied by the Easter Bunny.
Master Gunnery Sergeant Kevin Bonilla, accompanied by the President's own United States Marine Band, will now honor America with the singing of our national anthem.
Rules but right and bright stars rule the perilous fight.
Or the Rampart were so gallantly screaming.
And Lord of his friend of obspuring in air gave proof to the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, save us as far as fighting and earth and wave for the land of the free and the home of the fave.
And it's an honor to be the President of the United States.
Our country is doing so well like it has never done before.
You'll see that very shortly.
And things that we've done have not been done before.
We've broken every record on the stock market.
We've broken every record in our military.
And what about the rescue that took place yesterday?
It's something that you rarely see.
You know, they were giving me a briefing about that.
And they said, normally when you're in very hostile territory, I don't think it gets much more hostile than Iran.
They're capable fighters.
They're very tough people.
And there are others like that.
You don't mind when the enemy is weak, but that enemy is strong.
Not so strong like they were about a month ago.
I can tell you, in fact, right down there.
Not too strong at all, in my opinion, but we're soon going to find out, aren't we?
But when a thing like that happens, where a pilot's shot down, in most instances, you're really not able to go in because you'll go in with 200 people and lots of jet fighters and helicopters and you really don't have a chance.
They get shot down.
You lose 200 in order to pick up one.
It's a horrible thing, but it's very rare that you can do it.
And what we did yesterday is we picked up not one, we picked up two.
We kept the first one quiet.
And we were able to keep it quiet for about a day, which made it a lot better.
But those two pilots were incredible, brave, and we thank them.
And we're going to be having a news conference today at 1 o'clock at the Oval Office.
And we look forward to it.
But I just want to say we have a great military.
We're the greatest military, the most powerful military any place in the world.
You saw what happened with Venezuela?
And it's an honor.
I built it in my first term and I didn't know I was going to be using it this much in my second term, but it's my honor and they're the greatest people on earth.
Our warriors are the greatest fighters on earth and they very much appreciate you and love you and that's why they do it.
So this is all about today, I must tell you.
I came out and I expected we were going to be talking about farmers and we love our farmers.
We were going to talk about so many different products.
Because we have the egg farmers of the entire country here and they are unbelievable.
And if you remember when I first got elected, my first news conference with the fake news, a lot of fake news here today.
But I had a news conference and the first question, what are you going to do about eggs, sir?
I said, what's wrong with eggs?
I just got this.
It's my second day in office at a news conference.
And they were screaming at me, what am I going to do about eggs?
And I said, well, it's like, tell me what's wrong with eggs.
The price was so high, it was four times higher than it was a year before.
I said, well, that sounds like a problem.
Let me think about it.
And Brooke Rollins, our great Secretary of Agriculture, she got involved.
We all got involved.
They didn't want me, as you know, just last year, it's hard to believe, they didn't want me to order eggs for the Easter egg roll, the Easter egg hunt that we have here every year.
They wanted me to use plastic.
I said, I'm not using plastic.
We'll get it solved.
And within a short period of time, eggs came down.
They came down 40%, 50%.
And by the time we got there, we had so many eggs we didn't know what to do with them.
And today we have more than 40,000 eggs supplied by all of the great egg farmers that are with us.
So eggs is a big thing, and it was a big thing to our great First Lady who's here someplace.
Let's see.
I think this is our First Lady.
What do you think of our First Lady?
She's a movie star.
I don't know.
Do we call her First Lady or a movie star?
She has the biggest movie.
Can you believe this?
And she deserves it.
Would you like to say a couple of words to your friends?
And she worked very hard with her staff and the staff of the White House on really just making it nice.
This is the nicest I've ever seen.
And so this is my fifth, and I will say that this is, it gets better every time, right?
It gets better every time.
You notice the fencing, it's all brand new.
I said, you know, we could have bought used fencing and saved a lot of money.
They said, this is for the, this is for Easter, and this is for our egg farmers, and we're going to get new fencing.
Everything's new, and everything's beautiful, and the White House never looked better, and our country never looked better.
So I just want to thank everybody.
It's been a special period of time.
One year ago, a little bit more, our country was dead.
We had a dead country.
We had an administration that didn't know what the hell they were doing.
Today we have the hottest country anywhere in the world.
We're respected by everybody, and that's the way we're going to keep it.
That's the way we're going to keep it.
So again, I want to thank all of the associations and the egg farmers and all of the people that are here.
We think we could have 50,000 people coming all day long.
It's open, and they expect between 30 and 50,000 people, so that's great.
And most importantly, I want to just say happy Easter and God bless America.
We have the greatest country on earth.
God bless you all.
You are very, very special people.
Thank you, everybody.
good time.
Easter Greetings at the White House00:00:33
unidentified
President Trump speaking at the annual White House Easter egg roll.
Later today, the President scheduled to hold a press conference to recount the recent rescue of a second U.S. airman who was shot down in Iran and to respond to concerns about rising gas prices related to the military operation in Iran.
Watch that live starting at 1 p.m. Eastern here on C-SPAN.
Also on C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, online at c-span.org, and on our YouTube channel.