Trump in midterm turmoil: Is Maga dead?

0:02The Telegraph.

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1:08Out now. Drowned in a blue tsunami, is Trump's MAGA movement finally dead? As the Democrats celebrate an historic midterm election victory after flipping both the Senate and the House of Representatives, where does the President go from here? Trump lost because he betrayed MAGA. If he was elected to do one thing, it was to stay out of foreign wars. Yes. And the key issue in this election was Iran. Even if people said to exit pollsters, I'm voting on the cost of living, that's a little bit about Trump's tariffs. But when people say cost of living, what they mean is the price of filling up the car.

1:49Gasoline. Gasoline. And that is up because of the Iran war.

2:02Tim, let's sum up the mid-turmoil, as I'm calling it, for Trump. Very clever. Thank you so much. I'm so happy with that one. It's gone disastrously badly, worse than he could ever have imagined. The Republicans have lost some key heartland states. They've lost Kansas. They've lost Texas. What? They've lost Michigan. They've lost South Carolina. They've lost their minds. It's all gone horribly, horribly wrong. Yes. You're feeling vindicated right now. I'm very vindicated right now because I said it would be a blue tsunami. And someone on Twitter last night before I went to Betty By said, when the results come in, and it's not nearly as bad for the Republicans as all these lefty wet pundits are saying, Tim Stanley should resign.

2:45Right. Well, I'm still standing. Yes. He's like Elton John, ladies and gentlemen, just not at a piano by a keyboard. When I last looked, the Democrats have won the House. That was to be expected. They've won the major governor races, for example, Ohio, very Republican state. They've beat Vivek Ramaswamy there. They beat our friend Steve Hilton in California, again, to be expected. But they've done really well in the Senate, winning states, as you said, such as South Carolina and Texas, where they've not only won a Senate race, the first time they've won an office like that in 30 years in that state, But they've also won the governorship against Greg Abbott, who was a good governor.

3:28And my suspicion is that Texas is going to go the way of California, run very well by conservatives for a long time. Outsiders move in because it's run well. The outsiders decide they want good services, so they vote the Democrats in and ruin it. I mean, that's part of the tragedy. You can mark the results thus far by this extraordinary list of firsts. the first elected Muslim senator, Abdullah Saeed of Michigan. Who some are suggesting is eye candy. Sorry to lower the tone. Yeah, kind of broke my stride there. Sorry. I can balance that out by saying he's incredibly short. Is he? Like a lot of buff people, looks good on telly.

4:06In real life, you could trip over him. He's already courted controversy in the UK by having a row with the man from Sky News saying, well, you don't represent any of my voters, so you can shut up. And by giving a relatively funny and I think tongue-in-cheek address in Arabic just to really annoy Trump and his fans. Yes. First openly gay senator in New Hampshire, Democrat Chris Pappas, who was there on Victory Night with his husband. First Native American female senator in Minnesota. First Native American female governor in New Mexico. First Latino governors in Texas and California. And first female governors in Minnesota and Tennessee.

4:42Is MAGA dead? No. And this is important. Trump lost because he betrayed MAGA. If he was elected to do one thing, it was to stay out of foreign wars. Yes. And the key issue in this election was Iran. Even if people said to exit pollsters, I'm voting on the cost of living, that's a little bit about Trump's tariffs, which have done some harm. For instance, spirit distillers are in trouble because of Canadian boycotts. So there's no disputing that. But when people say cost of living, what they mean is the price of filling up the car. Gasoline. Gasoline. And that is up because of the Iran war. So because Trump forgot what he was elected to do, that is why he has been hammered by the electorate.

5:31Having said that, this result is so bad. It's comparable to say, remember when the Tories were wiped out in the local elections? Yes. And a consequence of that is you just don't have a base anymore. You don't have an organization anymore because they've gone. Likewise, the similar scale of destruction in Texas, which I'm sure can be reversed, in the short term is so damaging that you're left wondering who would want to be the vice presidential candidate in 2028. Now, Donald Trump will still get to crown the nominee. By the way, another thing worth noting, Trump takes responsibility for this in part because he chose the candidates.

6:06He chose Ken Paxton in Texas, even though the man is dripping in allegations of corruption. He chose Vivek Ramaswamy, even though he's a very odd big tech guy. And made some really unsavoury remarks about his opponent. He ran this grotesque ad against his opponent who says she was raped by her stepfather. And he produced an ad which suggested that she might be lying by quoting her mother, who chose the stepfather over her own daughter. It's a mess. It was also, but the point is, these were his candidates. Yes. Well, he's been quite humble, hasn't he? He has. We don't know whether this will last, by the way, but in a series of interviews that he has given, although he's now said to be kind of hunkering down in the bunker and not speaking to anybody and aides are running around with their hands in the air in hysterics like headless chickens.

6:52But apparently he has said, well, listen, we're going to have to work with the Democrats. And rather than being really combative, he did post that picture of a MAGA hat with the words veto on it, which doesn't look that positive. but he seems to be somewhat embracing the spirit of collaboration because he's been forced to do so. He said that his name wasn't on the ballot paper, but that's not quite right, is it? Because we do need to reflect as well. Are there echoes of 2006? George W. Bush is in the middle of a very unpopular Iraq war. He's also mishandled Hurricane Katrina. Nancy Pelosi storms to become the first female Speaker of the House.

7:28The Democrats do really well and they paved the way for Obama in 2008, although it must be noted they had an Obama. The Democrats right now don't. They probably do. Similarly, though, we've seen midterms go the other direction, haven't we? 1982 recession, is Reagan finished? Two years later, wins an unprecedented landslide. But again, the Republicans don't have a Reagan to replace Trump. So is the consistent theme here on both sides a lack of a successor and therefore it's quite hard still to call 2028? There's two ways of seeing this. One is this is a Republican problem. Now, you mentioned George W.

8:06Bush there. As Matt Walsh, the conservative commentator, has pointed out, George W. Bush lost in 2006 and harmed his party for many years thereafter because of his support of an unpopular war in the Middle East. Donald Trump then got the nomination and was elected because he said, I reject Iraq and the politics of forever wars. And then he put himself into an unpopular war in the Middle East. So you could say there's something wrong with Republicans. They can't resist going to war with Muslim countries. And that is what makes them unpopular. On the other hand, we do have to acknowledge that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris lost.

8:49Yes. Right. We have to acknowledge that Hillary Clinton lost in 2016. There is a bigger picture, which has got nothing to do with either party, which is the decline of the great American middle class. In 2015, for the first time in many generations, the percentage of Americans who could be defined as middle class slipped below 50%. Now that happened, partly as a consequence actually of income growth, that the people at the top end grew in proportion in the population, but also the people at the lower end grew in proportion of the population. And otherwise, America became a much more unequal society.

9:29During this period, you have seen income growth. It's not true that Americans have just gone downhill all the way. Yeah. I mean, you've seen general economic growth in America compared to us and the rest of Europe. But the point is, it's been much faster at the top end. So what you've wound up with is an unequal society. Now, if you have people whose living standards are doing okay, but just kind of rumbling along, what then happens if you enter a period of inflation is that middle class is just totally chewed up. If suddenly they can't afford the gas, if they can't afford the food, if because Americans have similar problems with house prices as we have in this country, young people can't afford to get on the housing list, that middle class is squeezed even further.

10:09And you asked me at the beginning, is this a rejection of MAGA? Well, or MAGA. Well, accepting the very different cultural politics between the new socialist progressive left among the Democrats and the MAGA people, they do have a similar message on we're getting screwed over by elites. Yes. So there have been right wing populist attempts to speak to that shrinking middle class. And what we're now going to see is a left wing populist attempt to speak to that shriveling middle class. And as I said, they both really have the same message, which is you're getting screwed by rich people. And the problem is, is that Trump appeared to ally himself with the rich people, including on little things like how perversely reluctant he was to release the Epstein files.

10:53Yes, that's right.

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11:35But something wasn't right. We kind of started to scrutinise things a lot more. What exactly is going on here? Debbie was missing. We just looked at each other and said, so what's the next step? And it's like, police. He was a lovely little boy, but something happened to him to turn him into a monster. There's nothing off her, he just erased her. Missing Debbie, a new Bed of Lies podcast from The Telegraph. Out now. This message is brought to you by today's sponsor, Walden University. Set a course for change. Now is the time to make a real change in your life, career, and community. At Walden University, we give you the support and flexibility to get the W.

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12:42If the Wokorati claim it's a victory for them, you know, bring back DEI down with the culture wars, I don't think that's the fair interpretation because I remember going to that final Trump rally in Pittsburgh in 2024 and universally all the people at the rally who were there from all sorts of different backgrounds, different states, different creeds, colours, religions, whatever, were all saying that they were voting for this guy because they thought he would make them richer. That was the standard being born at that election. I don't think Biden has helped my finances and I've got hope in this entrepreneurial president to make me feel better, richer and bring down the price of eggs, whatever.

13:21OK, so clearly it is the economy stupid in regard to people now thinking that they are less rich, even though the economy has grown, even though wages have grown. because at the petrol pump and in the supermarket, they don't feel that they're getting as much bang for their buck. I get that. But there is also a personality factor at play here because the Trump of 2.0 versus the Trump of 1.0 are two very different men. I don't think it was the right political play to be giving that rambling speech at the reflection pool, which seemed, you know, increasing. The algae has completely gone. It's beautiful.

13:59You can see your face in it. I mean, he's holding up pictures. Yeah, look at that. I mean, it's just weird. On the inner mechanics of the tunneling that was required. It was senile. It was the mirror image of what Biden became. Yes. So isn't that an irony that Trump is slowly turning into everything he criticised in Biden? Yeah. Somebody who is making Americans feel poorer. Yeah. And somebody who isn't making very much sense on the world stage. Yeah. with the exception of the whole, I wasn't a warmonger and now I am and I can't seem to get out of it. Also, on a personality level, we've got to look at the next two years, wait for successors on either side.

14:37But to what extent does the Democrats' attempt to completely eviscerate Trump personally play into this? Because if they are now going to try and re-impeach and besmirch and talk about corruption and, you know, get the tech bros to turn against him and have a look at Elon Musk's Doge project and all the rest of it. That is, of course, going to tar the entire Republican project. And the two key successors right now, Rubio and Vance, they're going to be hit by that mud ceiling, aren't they? By the way, Elon Musk lost big as well on Tuesday. He spent nearly half a billion dollars to support the Republicans.

15:14So the world's first and only unattractive South African really came out of this very badly, too. On the point about the culture war, because it ties all these things you're saying in together, we have been through something called Woke One, which is where the left just came out and said, we're going to cancel everyone. Trans is great. We're going to destroy you. It's a cultural revolution. They realized that backfired with the re-election of Trump. They figured that out. They're not that dumb. So we're now into this thing called Woke Two, which is a subtle rebranding of woke, which is going to try to mainstream wokery.

15:46So if you look at the candidates they were running, for example, Tallarico in Texas, he went around talking about the Bible, about how he is a Christian. The Republicans tried to, with very coded language, imply he was a pervert. It didn't work. It didn't work. If you look at Georgia, I mean, you ask who is the Obama for the Democrats. It's probably John Ossoff, who's just been re-elected from Georgia. The bookies here, by the way, have slashed the odds on him becoming the next at least Democratic nominee. And he ticks so many boxes. He's white. He's male. He's moderate. He's from the Deep South.

16:22He's Jewish. So there's a little bit of minority in there if you want to have a minority story. My point is, is the left is recalibrating. They're focusing on the economics. They're trying to downplay the culture stuff. And there's evidence that the cultural repost from the right isn't working. Well, hang on, just very quickly on that. Does woke 2.0 work when we've had, in the last six years, what Eric Kaufman describes as the great awokening? You know, the stuff that they were trying to force down people's throats back in the pandemic is not going to wash now, or indeed in 2028, is it? No, it's not.

16:58And I'm hoping they know that, or it might be that they revert to ideological type and they just don't get it. And there'll be a lot of progressive Democrats elected in the House who will be trying to push a woke one-style agenda. My point is, I believe we're coming to the end of the period. I hope we're coming to the end of the period of the nasty right. And this is where I personally feel vindicated, because for the last six months or so, I didn't intend to, but I have entered a war with parts of the online right. Because what I've been saying to them is the public will reject nasty. The public doesn't like nasty.

17:33And nasty was tried in this election and it failed. They tried in Texas where they tried to suggest Tallarico was a pervert, failed. They tried it in Ohio, where they tried to suggest the candidate was lying about being raped by his stepfather. Failed. They tried it in Michigan, where they went around saying, this guy is a Muslim, so presumably he supports the Muslim Brotherhood. And they failed. Michigan elected not just a progressive, not just a Muslim, but someone who was very anti-Zionist and would actually frame it that way. So what that tells me is the public has had enough of meanness. Meanness works when it's Donald Trump because he's very funny and he owns the meanness.

18:11But he's had a toxic effect on right-wing politics, which is that people have tried to imitate that meanness. Very often people who don't have his charisma or his sense of humor. It's a bit like in the school playground. The saddest thing in the world is the kids who try to imitate the school bully in order to fit in. And they always make themselves look like idiots and weak men. And that's much of what's been going on here. And so the message, one message I would push strongly for British conservatives is look at what's been rejected here. Mindless war, obviously, but also the politics of going after the man and not the bull.

18:51Resist that because although online there is an audience for it who find it hilarious and get an almost sexual thrill out of seeing a little guy getting beaten up in public. The great public, when given a chance, will turn away from that. Also, I think the great public who are on the right don't like being associated with nastiness because it is possible, funny enough, even though the left can't quite get their head around it, to be right wing and not nasty. OK, there's nothing wrong with that. Ronald Reagan managed it. Ronald Reagan managed it. And what was his 11th commandment? Never speak ill of another Republican.

19:24That's something else which has died under Donald Trump. So also we have this strange situation that you and I were discussing. You know, the absolutely facile nature of the right in a circular firing squad, just letting the left get away with murder because they're too busy trying to kill each other. What a grotesque waste of time that is to literally have figures on the right in the UK arguing about the extent of right wingedness of people they agree with. Can we stop this absolutely ridiculous right-wing ideological warfare and actually train our guns, to use that analogy, not that I think it should be actual warfare, on the left and the idiocy of their socialist policies?

20:06This is completely frugless. There's no point Robert Jenrick coming on my GB News show and, you know, just being literally... That was an eerily good impression. Well, do you know what I mean? if you have to make it personal and become tetchy in every interview you do, is it that you're right and everyone else is wrong? Or could it be that there is a perfectly cogent line of journalist inquiry into reform, the Tories and anyone else for that matter? Are you actually able to govern anything? Well, I agree because if you can't govern yourself, it's reasonable for voters to conclude that you can't govern the country.

20:40But you take as a contrast the behaviour of Jacob Rees-Mott, someone who's respected by all the parties. Oh, yeah. What a wety he is, according to some on the right. And he's clearly absolutely not. He's as dry as a bone. Of course he bloody isn't. But he manages to conduct his politics without ever being personal or nasty about other people. In fact, on the contrary, he's gallant and he's chivalrous towards people. And I believe in the long game that wins. I know. But by the way, can I make one clarification here? While it might be the end of a certain kind of nasty, let's not just attribute nastiness to one side.

21:14Oh, absolutely not. Because I tell you who is the most nasty of all, the nasties on the left pretending to be nice. I mean, that is really poisonous. Yes. Nastiness. I am a progressive. Yeah. But I would like you to be cancelled for disagreeing with me. Oh, I completely agree. And I would like you as a Zionist to be taken out and shot. And oh, by the way, if you do support Israel, then you're a racist and I can be on my moral pedestal. No, thank you very much. I agree. And you mentioned earlier, one of the defining images of the night was outside the Senate victor in Michigan picking on a Sky journalist.

21:52Yes. Because he had the temerity to ask him a question. He's a foreign broadcaster. And he put his hands on him. It was classic bullying behavior. But what a lot of people called it was Trumpian. Yes. And this is the thing. The other side are capable of it. Within minutes of winning, they have become the thing that they hate. And what does Trump always do? he's always having a row with journalists. So I agree with you entirely, but I hope that, I believe there is a moral to be taken from these midterm elections. And it's guys to stay out of war and stop the personal attacks. And we'll have a PMQ's analysis coming up next.

22:42Thank you.