Do Republicans need to ditch Trump before the midterms?

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0:30businesses that join Odoo per month. Join Odoo today at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. If Republicans are in trouble in Florida, surely that must mean they're in trouble everywhere. Of all the tight races we're following across the country, the one to replace Ron DeSantis as the governor of Florida is turning into a bit of a nail-biter, and the Republican candidate's been trying to distance himself from Donald Trump as a result. Anthony has been down in the Sunshine State to find out more about what's going on and how voters' concerns in Florida tell us about the key issues facing the party right across the country.

1:08What is Republican strategy to try and take on Democrats? And has Donald Trump's name become a millstone around his candidates' necks? Welcome to AmeriCast.

1:21AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. Whatever you want to talk about Abdul, keep my wife's name the hell out of your mouth because she's way out of your league. The tide is coming and this time we intend to win it all. See, he doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Emir of Qatar. When I'm not around you're going to be broke. There's not going to be anybody to report on. Nobody gives a damn about anybody else.

1:58Hello, it's Sarah in the BBC studio in Washington. And it's Anthony right here next to Sarah in Washington, D.C. And we haven't seen each other for a while, Anthony, and partly because you've been off in Florida, which confused me when I first heard that's where you'd gone, because it's not exactly what you would call a swing state these days, not since 2000 when the race came down so close between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Has it been considered in play at all? Has it, Florida? Yeah, not exactly a swing state. Republican dominated. If you remember back in 2018 in those midterm elections when Democrats did really well, it was a blue wave that year too.

2:34An incumbent, Senator Nelson, a Democrat, got ousted by Rick Scott, a Republican. So if anything, Florida has been in the face of some Democratic victories, trending the other way, becoming more conservative. if it wasn't really in play in the 2024 presidential election. So yeah, I didn't go there because it's a battleground state. I went there because polls do show that this governor's race there between Byron Donalds, the Republican, and David Jolly, the Democrat, is within the margin of errors. And I also wanted to get a feel for how Republican candidates, even in supposedly safe areas, are pitching themselves to a voting bloc that is not happy with the way things are going, are worried about high prices, worried about affordability, worried about gasoline prices, all of that.

3:23So how were they able to sell themselves in this hostile environment, essentially? Yeah, and what a fascinating place to go and find that the environment is hostile towards Republicans, because as you say, it is pretty solidly rare. But it's also, I associate any time I've been in Florida in the last few years, with it being a real kind of MAGA heartland. These aren't just people who are interested in lower taxes, for instance. There's a lot of real dedication to Donald Trump, who, of course, does have his kind of Southern White House in Mar-a-Lago right there in Florida, in Palm Beach, doesn't he?

3:55So it's of all the places to feel like they're turning on MAGA candidates. It's really saying something about this election that it's Florida. Yeah, Florida is a blend of different things, right? You've got the more deep Southern traditional cultural conservatives in the northern part of the state along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts heading down to South Florida, which is awash in various different types of Latin culture. a big Cuban population, Cuban-American population, big Venezuelan, Colombian expat population, which have also trended, we saw in 2024, towards Donald Trump. He actually carried Miami-Dade County, where the city of Miami is, for the first time in decades, a Republican winning that area, representative of the inroads that Trump made with Hispanic voters.

4:46And one thing I found, not just affordability, not just the high price of gas and diesel, the high price of housing. They're really big on insurance on homes, which has been going up a lot. Homeowners Association fees, which apparently are really big in Florida because of insurance, because of all these other kind of influences, pressures on housing prices. But they also care among the Hispanic community, a lot about immigration and immigration enforcement. You saw Maria Salazar, which I think we've talked about in the past, she's a congresswoman from the Miami area Republican, actually go on air and directly to the camera criticize Donald Trump for his immigration enforcement, saying that he was going too far.

5:29Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far. In July, 50 percent of the 50 ,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. Be careful what your advisors are telling you about immigration policies. The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today. You can be for immigration when Lincoln was for slavery and Reagan was for communism. I'm not talking about giving them amnesty. I'm talking about giving them a dignified life in this promised land. And only you can do that. Over the weekend, Donald Trump pushed back a bit at that, started posting on True Social other people's comments calling for her to drop out and calling her disloyal and saying that she betrayed him.

6:09But that shows the mood in Florida, even in this heart of MAGA, as you said, is shifting considerably. And well, here, let's play some clips of some of the folks I spoke with. These are Republican voters. This was at an event for Brian Avila, who is a lieutenant governor running with Byron Donalds in Tampa, Florida. And they're expressing some uneasiness. So let's hear from them. If you have a flip flop state with respect, you know, a swing state. If you have a swing state, say like in Ohio, where it's been a swing in recent times, or Pennsylvania, you're always going to have that battle, which side's better.

6:44When you have something where one party's been leading for so long, whether it's Alabama or Florida on the Republican side, California and Delaware on the Democrat side, if people feel like affordability is a problem, they're going to have to answer those questions. Campaigns are won at the end by momentum. And the momentum is not, it really sort of changed about the last three days. But the momentum has been slow. It's not been really like, hey, I'm going to go run out there and vote right now. I see more African Americans going with this race. Not that there's going to be a great turnaround, but I see them going that way just like myself.

7:19Because we're businessmen. I'm a businessman. And we're somewhat African Americans are conservative. And I hope that the president comes down in the northern part of Florida, in the panhandle where people are sort of iffy. But if I think the president comes down and just do one good grand rally up in the panhandle, this thing would not only be over, people would say, hey, man, it's done. That was Joseph Robinson there that you were speaking to. And he says if the president just came and did one rally in the panhandle, people would say, hey, man, it's done. Does he mean it's a done deal? The Republicans would win because Trump had appeared there or entirely the opposite?

7:54Because in a lot of places, he's not necessarily considered an asset. Yeah, no, but in the panhandle, I think, at least according to Joseph there, he would be an asset. And I think that's true, that what he sees is a lack of enthusiasm, a lack of interest in Donald Trump's base going out and supporting him, and that if he just showed up and held a big rally, that would get people to the polls. Now, whether that's the case or not, that's the big question. But I think he has identified something that we're seeing all over the country and showing up in polls as well, that Republicans, particularly Donald Trump's base, the people who helped him win in 2024, just aren't that excited about this election.

8:32They're unhappy about the Iran war. They feel like this is the kind of Middle East forever war that they were promised wouldn't happen. They're unhappy about high gas prices, high prices at the grocery store. All of this is combining to tamp down their enthusiasm, and they've got to try to find some way to juice that up. Now, Trump is going to Alabama later this week, which is close to the panhandle of Florida. And I think maybe there's some hope that that will bleed over into Florida. But it is noteworthy that at least not yet, he hasn't announced any kind of trip to the heart of Florida to stir up his base.

9:04And it was interesting listening to Byron Donalds, the candidate himself speak. He mentioned Trump not at all during his stump speech. It came up a couple times in Q &As afterwards, but he was trying to draw his own distinctions from Trump and not make this into the kind of national race that I think Trump may want it to be. So here's a clip of Donald's at a Hispanic church near Orlando, Florida on Monday. On the weekends when I didn't have a shift, I was moving furniture into hotels on Sanibel Island in Southwest Florida. My wife and I, we struggled. We think we had to work hard together as a family to make ends meet.

9:43This was right after 9-11. That recession was not good. And we had to work our way through it. And it was hard. But we stayed together as a family. And we built together. We grew together. And we've been able to build the Florida dream in our life. We want every child in this state to build the Florida dream in their lifetime. That's what we want.

10:08And of course, the question facing voters is whether or not they believe that Republicans at the moment are in a position to be able to provide that Florida dream for them. But we should dive a little bit more into Byron Donaldson himself, because he is a really interesting candidate, isn't he? Longtime Donald Trump support, very enthusiastic Donald Trump supporter who was endorsed by Trump as well, which I think really helped him initially, didn't it? Yeah, that governor's primary race was contested. There were a lot of different candidates there. Donald Trump jumped in early and backed Byron Donalds and Donalds played that up for all it was worth in the primary to ride that endorsement to a primary victory.

10:48You mentioned he had been an enthusiastic supporter. Absolutely. He's been in Congress several terms. And after Donald Trump left office in 2021, where there were a few people who were willing to stand by him and rally around him, Donalds was one of the first to really jump back and advocate for Trump. He was a surrogate during the 2024 presidential election on TV all the time, particularly on Fox News, which we know Donald Trump likes to watch. So he has been about as MAGA as any high-profile member of Congress has been. And yet here he is not talking about Trump, talking about affordability issues, trying to tell his personal story.

11:28There was a big news report last week about how his campaign website had removed almost all references to Donald Trump. Some of that's understandable. He's pivoting from a primary to the general election, but it still speaks to the political mood where a Republican running in Florida, Donald Trump's adopted home, is not really talking about Donald Trump at all. Yeah, he's taken down photographs of himself with Donald Trump and the big banners that said he was a Trump-endorsed candidate. I mean, these weren't sort of incidental mentions of Donald Trump. He was very front and centre on that website and he appears to have been removed.

12:06He responded to that as well on Truth Social, saying that it was all a lie, that it was made up by the mainstream media. But you only have to log on to the website to see that it is absolutely true. And you mentioned Representative Maria Salazar as well, who did this video criticising the way in which Donald Trump's immigration policies have been enforced. Not the idea of removing people who are undocumented migrants from the United States, but the way ICE have been going about doing it, which has, of course, raised concerns all over the country. So this is part of a wider issue, isn't it, Anthony, where here we are, two Republicans in Florida, of all places, trying to distance themselves from President Trump, while at the same time, he is the one who in Texas at that Republican rally said, pretend I'm on the ballot, which I think was music to Democrats years, wasn't it?

13:00They want people to pretend he's on the ballot as well. So it's a fundamental question. Is he an asset or a liability in these midterm elections? History is any guide. In midterm elections with an unpopular president, the voters tend to turn against the incumbent party. And whether the president says pretend I'm on the ballot or not, that's the way they vote. It's a referendum on the White House and the presidency. see. Now, usually also what you see is a lot of candidates trying to get some separation from the unpopular president. In this case, however, it's a little more dangerous because this president pays attention to who is separating or not.

13:40And people like Salazar, who are pointed in their criticism, have really caught it on the chin. And maybe this is a warning that Trump's sending to anyone else thinking about putting some distance between them and everyone else. In the newsletter, My newsletter today, I ticked through a whole list of different candidates who are starting to criticize Trump on things like immigration, like Salazar did, and the Iran war and high prices. You see Ashley Hinson in Iowa, where you're going to go just in a couple of days. She has criticized Trump's Iran war policy. There are actually two members of Congress, Republican members of Congress in Iowa, who voted to curtail Trump's war powers recently in Iran.

14:22You see John Husted, who is running for re-election in Ohio, also say things about the Iran war needed to be wrapped up quickly. Mike Rogers in Michigan, another one. It is interesting to see how quickly they're breaking. It's fascinating to see how quickly they're breaking. But also, I wonder if it's not too late. I mean, there's a question about whether it's too late to change voters' minds on all sorts of things like the economy. But this idea that this bunch of representatives, as you say, a lot of them in the Midwest, changing their vote on the War Powers Act in Congress and coming out and saying the war needs to end now because the high prices are hurting their voters.

15:01Some of these people, like Mike Rogers, who's running in Michigan against Abdul El Saeed, he was a real champion of this war for months and months and months. You can't just turn around now, a few weeks before polling day, and say you're against it, can you, and expect voters to give you the benefit of the doubt. It's tough. He's been a foreign policy hawk. He was in the House of Representatives, ran for Senate a couple of years ago, lost narrowly, is running again. So, yeah, it's hard for leopards to change their spots, as the saying goes. I actually was talking to Mark Short, who was the chief of staff for Mike Pence, vice president in Trump's first term as a senior Republican strategist, but also not a big fan of Donald Trump, as one might imagine, given everything that his former boss has been through.

15:45But he drew distinctions of who can who can criticize Trump, who can run on that and who can. And it's exactly as you say, it depends on your track record. He did say, however, that overall Republicans are facing hurricane force winds this midterm. And he thinks that while there's still a few weeks left before before polling day, they've got a tall task ahead of him. Let's let's hear what he has to say. I think the candidates who have their own identity have been the ones that are most successful. And I don't I don't really put that on like an ideological scale. I just see that more as, you know, she looked at Susan Collins in Maine.

16:30She's always somebody who's been able to, I think, run against some of the headwinds. But I think clearly this year, I think she's probably the most successful Senate candidates. But, you know, somebody who's getting a lot less attention that I would point you to is Kelly Ayotte, running for re-election as governor of New Hampshire. you know she's just kept her head down not been in the national conversation and uh you know she's running double digit points ahead of a democrat opponent in a year that is uh decidedly democratic so um that's probably yes i think those candidates you know who have an identity that's distinct from the president i think are faring better right now some people are just going to be joined at the hip whether they want to or not and i think for them it's it's almost disingenuous now to try this create separation like i don't think that really helps you i think if that's been the course you've charted it's pretty hard to change course for five weeks to go um so i would i would encourage candidates to be genuine and true to who they are and um uh again i think that the people like collins and ai have their own record and and so they're not joined at the hip but those candidates there are, it looks opportunistic when you're trying to, I think, create distance at this point.

17:50Looks opportunistic, yes, but it may be essential. I mean, we know some candidates skipped the convention that Donald Trump had a few weeks ago in Dallas, Texas, because they were worried about the optics of being seen with him for precisely these reasons. But some of the more enthusiastic participants are obviously worried about it now. Ken Paxton, who's running in the Senate seat in Texas and who got that nomination because he was heavily backed by Donald Trump. Audio has been leaked and published in the New York Times that at a private fundraising event, he said after that convention, it took a real hit to their numbers.

18:28It dropped our numbers. He said everybody's numbers dropped as a result, basically, of Donald Trump drawing more attention to himself and associating himself with the midterm campaigns. So, I mean, that tells us something, doesn't it? Yeah. If Ken Paxton is worried privately, of course, but is worried about what Donald Trump's advocacy and support are doing for him in Texas, I think that that speaks volumes about the political climate. And honestly, I mean, I'm sure you look at these these analysis and projection websites and experts as well. People like Larry Sabadeau at the University of Virginia, who has a crystal ball and the Cook Political Report.

19:06And every week I get updates from them. And every week they're moving more and more races towards the Democratic column. Now, that doesn't mean that they're saying the Democrats are going to win, but they tend to categorize them as solidly Republican, leans Republican, toss up leans. And they're moving things from solid to to leans, leans to toss up, toss up to leans Democrat. Everything is trending towards the Democrats. And while we still have five weeks till the election, the trend lines are pointing in a way that has to be very concerning for Republicans and and has to be something where they start looking at damage control, where to shore up places that they don't want to lose.

19:48Places like, say, the Kansas Senate race, where the Republican incumbent there is apparently in a dogfight. The Iowa Senate race, where they're trying to hold an open seat. But that one was coming into this year, not considered a battleground. We talked about all of these states, too. Ohio, Alaska, Maine has always been kind of a focus. But even Florida, there's a Senate race that a lot of people have been dismissive on. But polls show is close. This is going to be, I think, Hurricane Force is right when Mark Short says that. This is right now shaping up to be a very difficult environment for Republicans.

20:27And we could be looking on the day after Election Day, looking at exactly how many of the tall trees get blown over by this gale. Well, I'll tell you who else is worried about this, though. and this might sound a bit counterintuitive, but I had dinner not so long ago with a big Democratic fundraiser. And I wanted to talk to him about the disparity in the money there is, because Republicans unusually have a huge financial advantage this year. And how worried was he about that? Not very, actually, was the answer. What he and a lot of other party strategists were most worried about were exactly these polls and these trend lines that you're talking about, that people will take for granted that the Democrats are going to win, that it is going so well for them in some races that they just don't think they're going to energise their vote to get out there because it looks like a done deal.

21:19And they actually think that one of the very biggest problems in some of these races is that their opponents are messing up, their candidates are doing brilliantly. It just looks too good. And we're also in a position, aren't we, Anthony, where you and I could be sitting here the day after the election and saying, oh, well, you know, Democrats flipped the House but with them, you know, they don't have double digit majority and they didn't quite manage to flip the Senate. Therefore, they didn't do very well because they haven't met our expectations. Yeah. And that's on us, right? We have to be able to step back and say, whatever the results, this is how it's going to affect American politics going forward two years, whether it meets expectations or goes below them.

22:01It's still, if the Democrats take the House of Representatives, that would be a major change and still a pretty significant rebuke of Donald Trump. I did talk to another Republican strategist, someone who is much more closely tied to the White House, and he said they are not panicking in the White House yet. They're counting on the fact that they do have that big financial advantage and that all of these advertisements are going up all over the country. That is going to start eating into Democratic support. The one thing I did here in Florida and I'm seeing elsewhere is they're not necessarily just running on affordability.

22:33They're also running on, it would be so much worse if the Democrats take control. They point to the Democrats and say they're radical socialists. And they warn that while you may have misgivings now, you cannot put the other folks in charge. Remember what it was like two years ago, four years ago under Biden. That is a more nuanced, a more difficult pitch to make. But they're thinking that with enough money behind them, it will push it over the edge or at least keep them competitive in these races that are toss-ups. I think one thing that's really interesting when I've been speaking to voters, when I have managed to get out and about a bit thus far and will do much more in advance of the elections, is how clear in their minds the cause and the link between the high prices they're paying and decisions Donald Trump made, principally to attack Iran and everything we know that happened to the price of oil, diesel, fertilizer, everything as a result of that and what it's done to grocery prices.

23:31It's not like he was hit with a global pandemic That he just had to try and do the best with Or that this is some kind of worldwide recession This is just a clear red line from a decision he made at the end of February To the fact that people are struggling around the dinner table every day at the moment And it just seems very difficult to imagine how seeing more Donald Trump Is going to persuade any of these people to vote Republican Normally we say, well, you know, the economy is what the economy is and presidents get blamed for it, but they don't really merit it one way or the other. They should get credit for a good economy or blame for the bad one.

24:09But as you say, in this case, a lot of what's going on right now, whether it's tariffs that are driving up the price of imported goods or the Iran war, which is driving up the price of groceries because of diesel and the price of gas, which you see out at your station every single day, whether it's immigration. enforcement, which is also driving up labor costs, particularly with agricultural and meatpacking, for instance, the price of beef, all of this, you can draw direct lines back to Donald Trump. And I think the American public knows this. And if you look at public opinion surveys, I think there was a Marist one just the other day.

24:47Donald Trump is underwater on immigration, on trade and tariffs and on handling of the economy and on the Iran war. All of this is not a good look for him. And I think this is a drag on Republicans. And the first three that you mentioned there, the economy, tariffs and immigration, that's what he won the election on just two years ago, of course. So it's an amazing turnaround. The other thing I've found people bring up unprompted, and I was surprised by this, is the White House ballroom and the arc to Trump that he wants to build near the White House and the bridge over the Potomac. These kind of vanity projects voters see them as are expensive.

25:33I mean, not in a way that would actually bankrupt the country, but it's the fact that he spends so much time and attention on these and talking about them at a time when they're struggling to meet their weekly or monthly bills. People are angry about that. Yeah, I don't hear it as much as you, so I'm interested that that is coming up. But I could understand why it would be, right? It's the, like you say, vanity projects. He talks about it all the time, and it keeps him from talking about the things that voters care about. So if they feel like their leaders and their president is out of touch with their issues, then yeah, talking about a ballroom incessantly, which he does a lot, that could really rub them the wrong way.

26:18I'll be curious to see how many Democrats go up on air with ads hitting him on that, or if they are still focused mostly on the price of gasoline and economic issues, because that could tell us more about what they're seeing is that this is moving voters. You mentioned the Cook report. I heard Charlie Cook, who founded it, saying that we shouldn't look at this as a blue wave or a blue tsunami, as lots of people are now predicting. It's a red undertow. The Democrats are not being propelled forward by people being so keen on their candidates or policies. It's the drag that's coming from President Trump and what's going on now that's causing Republicans so much trouble.