transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:10] This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by The DSR Network. I'm your host, Greg Sargent. Is MAGA shrinking before our very eyes? In recent days, Donald Trump unleashed more tirades about ex-allies in the MAGA movement who've criticized them over the war and other things. Trump's own pollster added more in a new interview with both saying Trump's critics don't count as MAGA anymore. In a sense, they're both saying that you will get excommunicated if your devotion to Trump is not absolute. The real message here seems to be quite clearly that MAGA really is a cult. This captures so much about this moment. Trump's deepening on popularity, the fracturing of his coalition, and the tenuousness of MAGA's future as it keeps throwing out big voices. We're talking about all of it with New Republic staff writer Perry Bacon, who has a great new piece on the global right turning on Trump. Perry, good to have you on.

Speaker 2:
[01:18] Good to see you, Greg. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:
[01:21] So Donald Trump exploded in self-pity and megalomania on Truth Social, and this one had something special. He said this, quote, I have among the best poll numbers I have ever had, and why shouldn't I? All the country does is win, close quote. Then Trump attacked MAGA critics this way, quote, I hear Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens are fading fast. Their numbers are terrible. They were fake MAGA and now they've been exposed. Perry, we used to joke that MAGA is whatever Trump says it is, but here he's making that really clear. Anyone who dares to criticize him is fake MAGA. What do you make of that?

Speaker 2:
[01:59] I mean, very explicit. As you said, we've been talking about whether MAGA is a movement or an ideology or something else or just Donald Trump. I've written and used that phrase to mean other things, but Donald Trump is saying what I've always thought, which is that MAGA is Donald Trump and will be gone the moment he's off the seat, whatever that is.

Speaker 1:
[02:22] Yeah, absolutely. By the way, on Trump's claim that his polls are as good as ever, guess what? That's not true. One set of polling averages that you noted in your piece has his approval at 38% to 58%, some 20 points underwater. He's worse on the economy in many polls. CNN had it at 31% and his approval on inflation at 27%, which is just extraordinary. That's the issue voters care most about. Perry, what's your general sense of where public opinion is on Trump right now? As we record, he seems to be announcing some sort of deal with Iran, I guess. I think maybe he gets a couple of points out of that or maybe not. What do you think?

Speaker 2:
[03:03] I think the question for him is like there's a core of Republicans who are at probably 35% to 40% elected, people who are hardcore Republicans, always vote Republican. Can you get below that norm number in this era? If you remember, there's two times this happened where a president got below that. George W. Bush got to the high 20s, low 30s at the end of his administration. It's that to Hurricane Katrina after the Iraq War and after the economic meltdown. So those were the big events that happened. Trump got to low 30s right after the January 6th insurrection, when pretty much everybody in the world, including Mitch McConnell, lots of Republicans were criticizing him. So can he get below 35? I don't know. I would have said a war that goes poorly and lasts a long time, this war maybe is not that long and is maybe going to end soon. But I think that's the one thing that, you know, he's probably, I think he's probably getting near his lowest peak, which is the lowest possible number, which is probably in the 36th to 38th range.

Speaker 1:
[03:59] Well, I want to highlight some quotes from Trump's pollster, Jim McLaughlin. He talked to Politico. I'm going to quote one of them. He said this, The base doesn't consider a Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly or a Candace Owens a conservative anymore. Close call. Perry, that's so revealing. These are people, I want to stress this, who criticize Trump for going to war, which absolutely does betray his promise to voters. That's what Trump was supposed to represent to Trump voters. No more wars. Whereas Kamala Harris was supposed to be the Liz Cheney shill or whatever, and the candidate of the globalists and the warmongering establishment in DC. But for pointing that out, they've been declared non-MAGA. I think that's a window into what Trump and his pollster actually think of his voters. They really believe that those voters will think whatever thought Trump tells them to, right?

Speaker 2:
[04:54] Yes. And to be fair to them, they have some evidence of that. That's true. Remember there were polls in 2016 that showed Republicans used to pretty much be opposed to Russia. And then a lot of them started approving of Russia once Trump. They used to say, we don't want an adulterer as president. And then they changed their mind about that. So the idea that the base is Trump supporters and the base believes whatever Trump said that day is pretty, what's happened the last 10 years, most days, Republicans rewire their opinions about policy. You know, not the sort of moderate Republican part of it, that sort of 10% of people vote Republican but are not MAGA, but that sort of core base has moved wherever he's gone. When he endorsed to make the primary, they immediately go up in the polls like this has been a bit of a cult-like support for him. So his pollster is saying something that I think is maybe, I'm sure the average Trump voter would not say, I do whatever Trump says, but they have acted that way for the last 10 years.

Speaker 1:
[05:53] Yeah, and of course, as we all know, people who cover this stuff as relentlessly as you and I do, unfortunately for us, I guess, this is not exclusive to Republican voters by any means. Voters tend to develop their allegiances on identity grounds, policy isn't that important to them. They say that they support this or that policy, sometimes as a statement of identity and allegiance. You're aware of this. But this does look like something a little different to me. I think it's fair to say that it's as bad as it's ever been with this group, don't you think?

Speaker 2:
[06:28] Yeah, I mean, to give an example, people often follow the guidance of their political leaders. A good example was in 2012, I think, I think the majority of African Americans oppose gay marriage. Then this Barack Obama, a respected person who's president, but also is very respected among African Americans, says, I'm for gay marriage, and immediately the majority of this shifted people's views. They rethought the issue because of a leader in his case. I'm making this point only because you've talked about the political science of this, but I don't think Barack Obama ever said, whatever democratic beliefs are, whatever I think that our, the democratic base is whatever I think. He would never have said Rachel Maddow, Chris Hayes and Joy Reid are not part of the democratic base, which is essentially what you're saying if you're saying Tucker and so on don't count. And so you've never, again, democratic voters, a lot of my friends, will follow what a Biden or AOC or a Bernie or a Warren says. I won't deny that, but that said, those people also tend to speak in terms of accuracy and normalcy and so on. So if you're a democrat, you might be modeling yourself after people, but those people believe in democratic norms, election results and so on.

Speaker 1:
[07:39] That's such a good point. I hadn't even thought of it. But obviously, you know, Barack Obama feuded with his progressive critics a lot during his two terms. I mean, we remember all that. They would rip him apart over all kinds of things.

Speaker 2:
[07:51] And he would defend himself, but he would not usually sort of go on, he would never go on Twitter and trashed him and say, they're not real liberals, which is what we're just seeing now.

Speaker 1:
[08:00] Right, he would never say, I am the movement, whatever the equivalent of MAGA is on the Obama side. And there's an irony here that's probably worth highlighting, which is that Obama's Republican critics absolutely portrayed him as a cult leader to his followers fairly relentlessly. It was a really big refrain during the Obama years. And in fairness, there was a lot of adoration for Obama, no question. But it's just sort of weirdly ironic that they lobbed that criticism at Trump. And Trump is explicitly saying that, I tell my voters what to think, period. End of story.

Speaker 2:
[08:40] He's invoking the idea that he should be compared to Jesus Christ. This is something I never would have thought Republican voters would have been for before. So, yes.

Speaker 1:
[08:49] I would love to see some polling on that. How do you how do you anticipate that shape? I think probably what we'll see is that evangelicals overwhelmingly support it, him trashing the Pope, maybe. Catholic voters, I'm not so sure. What do you think?

Speaker 2:
[09:02] I mean, the fact that JD. Vance, who is not usually conciliatory, has been giving some comments that I respect the Pope, but we disagree. His comments have not been as sharp as usual. These people are very conservative and attack everyone, but I think they're aware that attacking the Pope is probably not smart, in part because that doesn't just offend Catholics in the United States. It also offends Catholics in Europe, many of whom are Trump's allies, leaders in places like Italy and Germany. The far right and the conservatives in Europe that Trump wants to be aligned with also do not want to see him bash the Pope because the Pope is fairly popular in many European countries.

Speaker 3:
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Speaker 1:
[10:34] Right, and we should probably add that among those constituencies, that these far-right leaders in Europe rely on, Trump himself is very unpopular.

Speaker 2:
[10:43] Yes, this is a key thing. We're seeing more, you know, there was a piece in The Financial Times in which Boris Johnson was criticizing Trump, in which Nigel Farage was. I think we're seeing for the first time that the far-right leaders who agree with Trump on immigration, they're politicians first, and they want to win elections, that's their job. And they're seeing that, oh, Trump is very unpopular in my country, I have to distance myself from him. So I think that's happening more and more abroad.

Speaker 1:
[11:12] Yeah, and your piece made that point really well. I want to get to that in a second. First, I want to highlight one more quote from Trump's pollster, John McLaughlin. He says, there are no real divisions among the GOP MAGA base. They overwhelmingly support President Trump and his policies. Close quote. Perry, I just don't understand this spin. His people keep saying that the MAGA core is with Trump. So there, but so what? What about the young voters and non-white working class voters, the voters that Trump won in 2024? What about independence? He's losing these groups in huge numbers over the war and other things. How does MAGA elect people without those voters? They're not exactly MAGA, but MAGA needs them, right? I guess the question is this. Can MAGA survive if it keeps getting whittled down to a more and more fanatical core?

Speaker 2:
[12:01] Right, because part of this is a lot of pollsters will ask, first of all, are you part of MAGA? And then they will second ask, do you approve of Trump? So in some ways, and so the people who say they're part of MAGA, that means they're a Trump voter. So it's like saying, it's not really telling us more than that. And what we're seeing is that if you're in the core 30% of people who say, I didn't know if I was MAGA, Trump's approval was 90% of them. But remember, Trump got 50% of the vote. The MAGA group is 30, 35%. There's that big 15% of, as you're referring to, some Latinos, some African Americans who moved from the Democrats to Republicans, some people who are independents. Right now, if you look at the polls in North Carolina, look at the polls in Ohio, look at the polls in Alaska, that's the problem is you have these people who are Republican voters, or were in 2024 at least, who are not MAGA and who do not like where the prices are going, do not like inflation, do not like this Iran war, and do not like all the madness of Trump being himself. I think that's the core of it that you got to be worried about. The pollster I think is only saying the base is with us, but neither party's base alone can win elections. You have to have those other people in it.

Speaker 1:
[13:19] Well, that's a really good point about the Senate map, and I want to ask you a little more about it. Obviously, the Senate map is tough for Democrats. They need to flip four of these seats, basically, that are in really tough territory, but as you point out, for Republicans to hold on to those seats in some of these states, they need a large chunk of non-MAGA, and in these states, it looks like there's really a fairly strong desire for a check on Trump. It doesn't take much for a non-MAGA voter who voted for Trump because of inflation to say, you know, this guy isn't delivering on my stuff and he's out of control, and okay, this Democrat who's running here has a strong personality and has distinguished him or herself from the national party and has deep ties to the state and so forth. It's not that hard for that group of voters to get over to supporting that Democrat, right? Can you talk about this dynamic?

Speaker 2:
[14:18] Never gonna say Democrats are gonna win Texas because people say that all the time, it never happens, but that's it. Even in a place like Texas, Trump is a pretty is net unpopular. And so therefore, if you're Talarico, you probably aren't gonna win, but there's room to go there because if Trump is, if 55% of Texans disapprove of Trump, that's your potential electorate. You know, a lot of them are Republican voters. Like if you look at Alaska, Ohio, Texas, the Democratic candidates are gonna have to win some actual Republicans. In Maine and North Carolina, you can probably just win the election on Democrats alone. North Carolina is very narrowly between the parties. But I think in those three places, Democrats have to win something like Ohio, Alaska, Texas, probably two of those. And those are gonna be tough. But if the election were today, I think it would be really close because this Iran story, most Republicans, a lot of Republicans don't support this either. If we had election today, I think the Republicans will be in danger because they have not only messed up the economy, but they've went into foreign policy in a way voters don't agree with. But I'm assuming Trump is going to get out of this war in part because he sees the same poll numbers.

Speaker 1:
[15:27] Yeah, and there are strong Democratic candidates in a number of these states. And North Carolina, I think, is a really interesting tell. The fact that it really does look like Democrats are on track to win there. It's going to be super tight. It's North Carolina. But that is a key tell, don't you think?

Speaker 2:
[15:45] Yeah. And I think one thing to keep in mind is we really are talking about, is there a Democratic majority in 2029? That's the really key. My hope, at least, would be there's a Democratic president, a Democratic house, a Democratic city in 2029. If that was in 2027, that's not big for policy. So if the Democrats get two or three seats, this in 2026 and then one or two more, that ends up getting you the 50, 51, and that's the key thing here. So that's kind of what I'm looking for. I'm curious, I'm main, I'm curious about, I'm a little nervous about, I agree with Platner on issues, I'm a little nervous about his bio if he's ready for primetime, but people like him up there so far.

Speaker 1:
[16:27] So this is why it's so baffling to me that Trump and his people keep spinning, oh, MAGA is with him because like, so what? That's not gonna matter for the battle for the house and the battle for the Senate. Anyway, onto your piece, you looked at how some of the leaders of the global right are now distancing themselves from Trump. And I guess the main factors of the unpopularity of the war are pretty much everywhere, the rise in energy prices, the feud with the Pope, and so forth. And you made this great point, which is that this will impact domestic politics here, lending a boost to the opposition to Trump in the US. As you put it, Trump is now isolated and diminished. Can you talk about that?

Speaker 2:
[17:07] Well, I think the key thing is like, we're 10 years into this. So if you're a liberal, if you're Perry Bacon or Greg Sargent or Nancy Pelosi, of course you criticize Trump. They have a phrase for it. You have Trump Derangement Syndrome. I think that's all silly, but that's it. Those of us who've been correctly criticizing Trump for 10 years, we're not saying anything new. And so in a certain way, we're repeating ourselves. But when the Pope or when a leader of the Reform Party in the UK or when a leader of the AFD Party in Germany, when these people who are conservatives who don't like, who unfortunately oppose immigration who like a lot of Trump's policy ideas, when these people are criticizing him, it's a different story entirely. Because those are not like predictable liberals. Those are conservatives. Like we have a Republican Party in the United States now where you never hear any criticism of Trump because being a Republican functionally means liking Trump. But conservatives abroad do not have to behave that way. And they're not. And I think that matters. And look, there's no way to say this. Whatever the Pope says is news. And so in a certain sense, the Pope criticizing you is a big story. And the fact the Pope is repeatedly criticizing Trump is a very important dynamic of politics.

Speaker 1:
[18:20] Well, let's tie this all together. If Trump is already losing huge swaths of the coalition that elected him in 2024, and he and his top generals are going to expel everyone who disagrees with him or doesn't grant him unquestioned loyalty, where do they go from here?

Speaker 2:
[18:37] I mean, I guess you can probably win the governorship and the Senate races in 25 states just as a Republican base, so I think that's part of what it is. It's just they don't seem to really... I mean, part of it is like we've credited them a lot, but it's not clear to me that Donald Trump's staff actually exactly knows why they won those Latino, younger and Black voters in 2024. I think that was kind of an accident and kind of like an anti-incumbent wave, and so I don't think those voters were ever in their coalition really in the first place. And so I think that they don't know how to keep those people because that's not really what they were doing. They sort of accidentally won some new people. And Trump for most of these last 10 years has governed as if the base is the country, and so he's just doing what he does. He's not actually a great politician. We saw in 2018, anytime he's in office and people are paying attention to him, the Republicans lose.

Speaker 1:
[19:31] Absolutely right. And by the way, the war is really, really the type of issue that's driving those groups away from Trump really, really fast and really, really hard. Folks, make sure to check out Perry's show over at tnr.com. It's called Right Now with Perry Bacon. Perry, great to talk to you. Thanks for coming on.

Speaker 2:
[19:49] Thanks for having me, Greg.