The 2026 Midterms Preview, with Ned Ryun | Episode 195

0:00Hey everybody, welcome to Vince. So good to have you with us. It's Christmas week. I hope you're getting a chance to spend some time with the ones you love. It's really such a wonderful time of year. So glad to have you spend some time with us. I've got a big show for you today. Obviously, we're closing out 2025, and we're looking ahead to what 2026 has in store for us, including how are we going to win these midterms? I'll discuss all of that coming up with our friend Ned Ryan, who joins us on this special edition of Vince. I'm glad you're here, too. But first, you should know we have a great sponsor called Patriot Mobile, and they've got a limited time offer for you right now.

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3:02Well, here we go. We've got Christmas any moment now. And we also have 2026 any moment now. As 2026 is arriving, it is worth thinking about what do we need to do to win it? And there are few better on this subject than Ned Ryan. He's the founder of American Majority, and he joins us now. Ned, Merry Christmas to you. Good to have you with us on the show today, sir. Yeah, same to you. Merry Christmas, Vince, and great to be with you. Ned, you know, it's funny. We've all become so accustomed to seeing you through the years, seeing you on television, seeing you all over the place, talking about politics.

3:36Where did you come from? Where did Ned Ryan come from? It seems like he came out of nowhere. You're like talking to President Trump all the time. You're working all the angles. You're trying to figure out what's going on in politics, trying to help us win for the country. Where did you come from, Ned? Still out of Kansas. Came from Kansas. My dad was in the house from 1996, 2006. Obviously, the older generations will recognize the name Jim Ryan, three-time Olympian, world record hold on the mile. I'll tell you a quick story. He was running the Olympic torch through his hometown of Wichita, 1996.

4:11And at that point, Bob Dole was running for president. Sam Brownback was vacating the second congressional district in Kansas to run for that Senate seat. And all of a sudden, about three weeks before deadline, Republicans were kind of scrambling as to who would be a strong candidate for the second congressional district. So Congressman Todd Teahart and his chief of staff, Matt Schlapp, came over to my dad after the torch carrying event and said, hey, Jim Ryan, how are you doing? Great. Have you ever thought about running for Congress? And my dad had said I made two pledges in life. I'd never be a track and field coach and I'd never run for public office.

4:45But on the way home, he and my mom were talking about it, prayed about it, talked with us. Three weeks later, he files to run for office. He comes into Congress. He's there for five terms. I came back to D.C. in 2000 thinking, I'm going to try out D.C. for a year or two. Here we are 25 years later, married, four kids, had quite the adventure along the way, started multiple nonprofits, obviously did commentaries you refer to, do a whole host of things, but it's been quite the ride. I would like to think of myself, Vince, as even though I've been in the D.C. area for a very long time, I'm an insider with the outsider's perspective.

5:26Yes. Know a lot of how the town works, whether it's Congress, whether it's the White House. And I would like to think I've been as pretty consistent, as consistent as imperfect human beings can be over the last couple of decades in regards to what we need to do to be successful. So an insider with an outsider's perspective, that's definitely what I think of you as. Thank you. In other words, a guy who knows what's going on in the inside, but has a as a MAGA focus on like how to how can we achieve the things that Donald Trump was elected for in the first place? Right. How how did you arrive at those opinions?

5:58In other words, like how did you resist the gravitational pull of sort of the sclerotic corrupt establishment Republican forces in D.C.? You know, it's interesting you bring that up. I was thinking about a piece I used to write for the American spectator and wrote a piece. I want to say this is back in 2011 about Americanism, that we were in pursuit of Americanism, not Republicanism, not corporatism, obviously not Democratism. But but what does it mean to truly represent and prioritize the American people? It was something that I always I'd been thinking about for a very long time. And then all of a sudden, this guy named Donald Trump started talking about it about four years later.

6:34At first, the thing that's funny, Vince, when this brash billionaire from Manhattan started talking, came down those escalators, it didn't click with me initially that this might have been the guy I was writing about that would be in pursuit of Americanism. What does it mean to have a government of by and for the people that every day actually prioritizes the American people, which I think in many ways encapsulates America first? It clicked with me in February of 2016 around the Virginia primaries that this might be the guy I've been looking for. But when you're in D.C. and you're looking at how it's operating on the inside, again, my dad, his last year was 2006 in the House.

7:11He was voted the most conservative member of Congress that year. I think it was Congressional Quarterly that voted him that, I think, honor. I really look at my dad as being really an example for me where if you come into D.C. with your principles firmly in place and you do not waver on those principles, but use them as the lens by which you view everything that you're experiencing and having to deal with, you have the ability to take strong stands, be able to make as many of the right decisions. Again, we're all imperfect. We all make mistakes, but be able to make a lot of those right decisions.

7:48But I will say this, there are a lot of temptations, Vince, to a lot of money to change your views on life. So I think you have to go in and realize, yeah, there's going to be hard decisions that have to be made. You're not going to make as much money. That's fine. But the ultimate goal is, for me, how do you actually restore representative government in this country? How do you restore the republic? How do you actually start to break apart that administrative state? So a lot of the stuff I've been thinking about, writing about for a very long time, but I think a lot of it's due to my dad's influence, but also just that insider's perspective in watching this and going, this has nothing to do with how we were actually founded.

8:26How do we get back to that? Yeah, no, that's super important. You got to be raised right. You got to raise your kids right. You got to implant in them a sense of right and wrong. And hopefully when they're out in the world and they're doing their thing, they're constantly reflecting on that moral compass, you know? And as much as anything, Vince, it was not only the conversations that I had with my dad, but it was an example. It was an example by, I'll share a quick story. It was 2003, the whole Medicare Part D situation in which the White House really wanted that. And I would remind people again, Republican White House really wanted Medicare Part D.

9:00And there were about two dozen Republicans in the House that said, absolutely not. We don't think this is the right thing. The incredible pressure that was put on my dad, not only calls from the president while he was overseas, visits down to the White House for them to basically have their arms twisted by Dick Cheney. And then that night of the vote, literally basically being promised anything and everything they wanted if they would just give that vote to the president because that's what they wanted leading into the 2004 re-election. Watching that and knowing the incredible pressure that was put on him and him being able to do the right thing and incredible pressure.

9:36I'm understating all the pressure that took place and him being able to do the right thing in those situations. I find it pretty awe-inspiring, but also just one of those examples where you're like, yep, he could do it. I can do it too. Yeah. Amazing. So this gets to a question I've wanted to ask you for a while. And I'll ask you here, how often do you speak to President Trump? Because I feel like I've often either in conversations with you, interviews with you, you've mentioned, you know, I was talking to the president, I told him to do this, or I suggested doing this. And so how often do you get a chance to talk to the president?

10:10Can you even count the number of times you've had chats with the guy? I can't. I try to be strategic about it, Vince. There are times where I feel like it's very necessary for me to insert myself into the conversation. So it's one of those things. He'll call me after TV hits. I love it. I even told him the last time he called, like, sir, I love when you call. And it's obviously a great privilege that you would call me. You don't have to. I'm with you, right? I'm with you. I've been with pretty much almost day one, not quite, but almost. And I try to be pretty strategic about events. I wanted to go in a couple of weeks ago and have a conversation with him about what I thought the midterms were about.

10:49And it's not, it's not about running against socialism. It's not about foreign policy wins, though. I have to tell you very impressed by his, his approach on foreign policy, where I think it's been absolutely the right approach, whether it's dealing with Iran. I love the resurrection of the Monroe Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere. But that's not going to win the midterms for him. It's about affordability and health care. And so I wanted to have that conversation because, you know, I'm in Virginia. I watched this disaster of a gubernatorial race here in Virginia where Winsome Sears never once really mentioned what her economic plan was when half the electorate in Virginia said, the number one issue for us is the economy.

11:26She didn't even mention it. She lost that demographic, again, half of the entire voting demographic in virginia by 27 points i'm sorry i mean i just want to reflect on this just because the implications it has for politics everywhere else but in virginia specifically given that you and i both know it so well winston sears ran a lazy campaign terrible winston sears she didn't even like really get out that much she just three campaign managers very poorly run listen i'm all for not having boys in girls bathrooms or boys competing against girls in sports but even on that issue. She wasn't aggressive.

12:00She showed up to one school board meeting. It wasn't like she was out on the road all the time on that issue. She could have actually gotten a lot of support there, but she just didn't. Even the easy stuff, she didn't. And it just reminded me, you can get all the policies right. You can be totally right. But if you don't put the work in, you're not going to get the win. You know what I have found? Again, I'm involved, pretty involved in politics, helping identify and then obviously consulting with and encouraging endorsements and working with candidates along the way. I have noticed a very consistent pattern among people that lose.

12:37They don't view their campaign as a full-time job. When you run for office, and this is, I will say this to anybody that's listening that's thinking about running for office. If you do not view the campaign as at least six days a week and at least 12 hours a day for those six days a week, don't even bother. Don't even think about running for office. This is a full time job in which you are constantly either on the road speaking or you're constantly raising money. And if you can't commit to that, please don't waste my time or anybody else's time, because there was a lot of money wasted in Virginia when someone made it very clear she was not that interested in running a hard campaign, went through three campaign managers, and at the end of the day, not only sank her own campaign, but everybody else, including pretty devastating losses in the house of delegates so yeah there were there were mistakes made Vince there were also things a little bit outside of her control just to add a little bit of fairness at the end the government shutdown absolutely hurt Winsome I thought she was going to lose by five to seven 30 days 35 days out the bottom dropped out on her campaign and you can look at the government shutdown about 20 percent of the the voters in in Virginia were either directly impacted or had a family member directly impacted by the government shutdown right 20 30%, one out of five.

13:53Of that demographic, Abigail Spanberger won at 88 to 12. So there were some things outside of her control. And it's a blue state. It's a blue state in real life. It's a lot of government workers. No question about that at all. But still, in a world where one of the candidates running for attorney general was a murderous psychopath, and the other was Jason Miara's with a good record as the incumbent, there's no excuse for Jason Miara's losing, but Winsome Sears proved to be a drag on him. So it's just the whole thing is just like it's just sad to see. But but there was a there were a lot of people who looked at what happened in Virginia and in some of these other races around the country.

14:29And they instantly, as they always do, they instantly turn them into, well, this tells us what the midterms are going to be like. This is a huge bellwether for the midterms. Give me your sense right now, Ned, of of how you think. What are how is our what does our hand look like going into the midterms right now? How are we faring at this moment? So I want to make a couple of points really quick. Virginia, there's about a quarter million. We don't do partisan registration here, but there's about a quarter million more Democrats than Republicans inside of Virginia. So you're playing you were playing a stacked a rigged game stack deck.

14:59New Jersey, I think it's 600 to 800 ,000 more Democrats registered than Republicans. Again, rigged game. So when people say we should draw, you know, take lessons from 25 and apply them to 26, you can't really. But the lesson that I was trying to really want to communicate to President Trump was this, and I think it's the most important lesson coming out of Virginia. in tough economic times brought on by Biden, just so we're clear, brought on by Biden administration for the last four years, still coming out of it. People need to hear the message of we get it. We know that you're still having, you know, you're suffering economically on the affordability cost of living from.

15:38We have a plan and we are going to fix this for you. So having to address, at least address that issue, something Winsome didn't do that Trump, Trump and his team are starting to do, which I love. I mean, JD's out there, Besson's out there, Trump's even talking about it now, in which I think they're having a meaningful conversation with the American people saying, we acknowledge that this is an issue, we didn't cause it, but we are going to fix it. And I think you're seeing a lot of his policies, the underlying trends that I'm looking at, I think people need to feel it by the summer, next summer of 26.

16:11I think you're going to see people starting to feel it in the grocery prices. They're already starting to feel a little bit in the gas prices. But again, the point I made to Trump and to others, keep domestic energy production cranked up, already increased by a million barrels of oil a day since he came into office. Can we get it to two million? Because you and I both know this, and I feel like I'm stating the obvious. If we can drive down the cost of energy, it drives down the cost of gas, it drives down the cost of transportation for groceries and other goods. It's going to have that ripple effect through the economy.

16:43So I think that's going to be a huge issue. So now directly to the midterms. I'll be honest, if they were held right now, we'd lose. I really do believe that, Vince. The good news is, I think by the time we hit November of 2026, there's going to be a couple of things that are working in our favor. not only I think we're going to be in a better place on the economic affordability issue, I think we're going to be a pretty good place structurally. And by that, I mean, we're going to win the redistricting wars. I think we're going to be plus nine, plus 11. Indiana was extremely disappointing. I hope all the state senators get primary, by the way.

17:20Also, Cam Savage should be dealt with, who's the consultant that brought that about. By the way, just in case anybody missed this, Cam Savage is also Senator Todd Young's consultant. I'd like to have a conversation about him getting a primary challenge in 2028. That all to say, I think we're going to be plus nine on the redistricting. And then people should be aware of Louisiana versus Calais, the case in front of the Supreme Court that would weaken Section 2 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. That would allow us to do even more redistricting, especially in the southern part of the country. I've heard six seats at a minimum all the way up to 19.

17:57I would say another six seats. So maybe we have 13 to 15 seats that are in our column by the time we hit the midterms. That's a good thing. The other thing that I think is also going to have an impact on the midterms is people investing in the right numbers before the elections. I'm a huge believer in this, Vince. We need to spend a lot more time and money on voter registration and generating ballots among mid to low propensity Republicans. It's something we did very successfully in 2024 with American Majority Action. We need to redouble our efforts in targeted House districts. because 2026 to me is really about the House.

18:31I feel good about the Senate map. The House is going to be a just absolute dogfight. But Trump's going to be out there doing rallies. Elon Musk is back in the fold. Trump's not only going to have to be rallies. Spending money. Spending money. Rallies are going to be great, but Trump's going to have to spend probably three, maybe 400 million out of MAGA, Inc. I know other big donors are thinking about making significant investments. So structurally an investment, we need to make sure we're working on the right numbers. and then fully fund these efforts in really tight House districts. So I'm not overly bullish, but there's a hint of bullishness about me in regards to the House elections next November.

19:10So it's remarkable the extent to which the map is rigged for Democrats right now. Totally. Because when you talk about if the election were held today, we would lose, Democrats win the House. I think that's right, but it's not because they earned votes. It's because they have ill-gotten seats. The way the maps are drawn are just to their advantage. And there's all these illegals that are living in the country that they use the census. I will talk about that with you in a moment because I know you know you know a lot about this subject. But they've used the census and concealed the number of illegals within it in order to pad the number of congressional seats that they have, even though they don't deserve them at all.

19:44So there's there's clearly election rigging going on. But here here's my big picture about going into 2025, what we have in front of us. We've got America 250. I think people are underappreciating how big the patriotic celebration of the country is going to be this next year and the role that Donald Trump is going to play as master of ceremonies. We've got a big midterm convention coming. Unusual, never done before. President Trump is going to do it to try and turn this into a presidential election. The White House, Susie Wiles and the president want to make this a referendum on Trump. Normally, it's the party out of power that's trying to do that.

20:16Instead, this time it's the party in power because low propensity voters you just mentioned, they show up when Trump's name is on the ballot. And then finally, as we get to the midterms, my prayer and my expectation, I want to see if this is yours, too, is that a lot of the Republican infighting that we are seeing at the moment, much of which is sort of a proxy fight for the presidential election in 2028. There's a lot of like, I don't really like J.D. I prefer Ted Cruz, but nobody really wants to say that. So they're all fighting about other things to pretend it's about something else. And I think as we get closer to the midterms, some of the some of the BS is going to slip away, at least for a little bit, because people are going to realize as we get closer what the stakes are.

20:56So my expectation is unity, patriotism, a Trump referendum, and then cartoonish candidates on the other side. If Jasmine Crockett is the actual nominee in Texas or if you get more characters like Afton Bain, who just ran in Tennessee, running all across the board for the Democrats, who, by the way, have a rock bottom approval rating. Their approval rating sucks. It's awful. If that's the case going into the midterms, I'm not blackpilling on this information. No, I think you made a couple of good points there. One, let's not underestimate their ability to implode and self, you know, light themselves on fire.

21:32I mean, they have historically low approval ratings. Democrats do. I think you made an interesting point, too, that I want to highlight to people. I've been in politics again a long time Not too long ago It was we hoped for low turnout elections Because that's how we would win Completely changed under Trump Trump brings out the mid to low propensity voters And we have to have high turnout elections to win When Trump's on the ballot That's a dynamic we see And the thing that guys like me are trying to solve for the midterms How do you make those mid to low propensities more reliable voters Well, if you can get them to request a ballot, Vince, which is not easy and it costs you money, but if you can get them to request a ballot, we can turn anyone that requests a ballot that's a mid to low propensity voter into about an 80 % chance that they'll vote in that next election.

22:22And so when I talk about the underlying numbers, this is a key part to us being successful in the midterms for Trump-only voters or mid to low props actually becoming more consistent and turning up in 26. So I love the theme that Susie and Trump are saying this is going to be a referendum on Trump and the success. We haven't even talked about his legislative successes, his policy agenda and the triumphs this year, which have been significant. But, yeah, let's put him front and center because this really is about are we going to take it all the way to a meaningful conclusion with the Trump second term and really having a lot more policy wins?

22:59You can't do that without the House. OK, let's talk about more of this in just a moment with Ben Ryan. And the midterms are huge. And Ned is going to be right at the center of helping us get some big victories, I think. So more ahead with Ned Ryan. But first, I got to tell you about Helix Mattress, which is like the best thing. It's one of the best things that's ever happened to me. During the colder season, I'm spending a lot more time inside. And honestly, my bedroom, well, it constantly is calling out to me. That Helix Mattress, it's like that's the place to be. You know, before Helix nights were rough, I'd wake up too hot or I'd be tossing and turning for hours, dealing with back pain all the time and thinking there's no chance a mattress is going to change my life boy was i wrong i took the helix sleep quiz and then i got matched with the perfect mattress and everything changed and now i sleep so much better cooler deeper i wake up feeling refreshed ready to take on each new day and i feels like you know every every week or so i turn my wife and i turn to each other like this mattress is pretty great isn't it yeah it's actually wonderful but the holidays around the corner not just around the corner here the holidays are here Good sleep matters more than ever.

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