Has Trump lost control of his own party?

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0:33This is a Global Player original podcast. That Iran would probably say, you know, we understand that America's sensitivity point is a certain price of oil. But I think if the elections were today, it'd be a bloodbath for Republicans. I kind of get the impression that there are a few people around Donald Trump who are making large sums of money out of this. It seems that there's been an extraordinary amount of corruption in the second administration that I don't recall from the first administration. That is Mark Short, who was Donald Trump's Director of Legislative Affairs in the first term, and a very senior and thoughtful Republican who thinks that everything right now is going wrong.

1:12If Republicans are looking at a bloodbath in the midterm elections, are they about to start turning against their president? Welcome to the News Agents USA. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel. It's John. It's Maitlis. And a little later on, we'll hear a lot more from Mark Short as he sits down and talks about the problems facing the Republican Party and how to deal with Donald Trump and the widespread corruption that he now sees taking place before his eyes with the Trump family enriching themselves off the presidency. and how he just feels the Republican Party has completely lost its way under Donald Trump.

1:57And as I say, this was someone who was very close to the president in the first term and was Mike Pence's chief of staff on that fateful day of January the 6th, 2021. But it's the consequences of Donald Trump and the war in Iran that we need to talk about now. Because is it fair to say that real cracks are now appearing in what the Republican base think is acceptable from him, given the recent posts that he's made about, you know, effing and blinding about during Easter weekend. And then again, of course, that fateful kind of statement the other day about he was going to wipe out a civilization in one evening.

2:40I think it's so interesting because when that attack on Iran first happened 40 days ago, we thought that the argument would be about military intervention, about foreign interference, about the forever wars. And I think Trump certainly hadn't anticipated how quickly this would just become a domestic issue. As soon as the Hormuz Straits were closed, what became abundantly clear to everyone, it seems, except him, was that Iran was controlling a fifth of the world's oil supply. And suddenly this is not just about a foreign war. It's not about your foreign affairs. It's not about something that voters at home can say, oh, well, I haven't really understood the details on that.

3:27I'm not going to get involved in it. I haven't really been following it because they have to follow it. at the petrol station, at the gas pumps. They are now looking at$4 a gallon petrol. And this is a world in which Trump never imagined he would find himself. At the beginning of the year, they were arguing that they'd turned the economy around, they'd saved it from Biden, they were finally on track, everything was going in the right direction. And an absolute schoolboy era, an absolute own goal, has made the one thing that all Americans care about, which is affordability, which is the price of everyday goods, much, much harder to bring down.

4:11Well, Emily, you say that. It's kind of interesting. I've just been watching Fox and Friends. It's eight o 'clock in the morning here in Washington. And Fox and Friends was the reliable echo chamber for Donald Trump, where he would hear his own views coming back to him in the White House. It's his favourite morning listening. And today they've been talking about, well, does this Iran ceasefire add up to anything? Does it mean anything? What have we got from it? How do we make it? You know, Iran has got no, they were saying, look, Iran is broken, it's beaten, it's lost, it's got no leverage. But it does have the Strait of Hormuz.

4:45Oh, yeah, it's got the Strait of Hormuz. And, you know, the fact of the matter is that four ships passed through it yesterday. A hundred should pass through it daily. And so now on Fox News, which is kind of so close to the president, you're starting to hear commentators and presenters asking the question, what has Donald Trump done for us? But I will say that the president demands we have not reached any of those objectives. I have full confidence that the president is going to find some way to make this happen. But he said that we want to dismantle all major nuclear facilities. That has not happened.

5:22The end of uranium enrichment on the soil, they're still enriching. The transfer of the enriched uranium stockpiles out of Iran, that hasn't happened. The acceptance of intrusive international inspections, they're still not willing to do that. And they have not suspended their ballistic missiles program. They're still firing them off to stop the production of the long-range missiles. That's just a few of them on the president's proposal. The question is, is the president using this two weeks to give our soldiers a break, a rest to see if we can get this ultimately done? We'll see. So there you have kind of Fox News saying, what have you done?

6:02What have you achieved? What is this all about? And, you know, as you say, Emily, marry that to the affordability problems that were there beforehand. I should say in Washington, D.C., it's over$5 a gallon for petrol right now. So, I mean, you know, there are real issues now that Americans are facing where they're thinking, hang on, you're making this worse. And then there's the separate issue of the temperament of Donald Trump. And, you know, so often we have debated what is the line that Donald Trump has to cross before people will say, whoa, enough is enough. And it turns out, finally, that if you promise to wipe out a whole civilization in one night that's been going for 6 ,000 years, that seems to be the line.

6:47Yeah, maybe we should hear from a former pretty close Trump ally, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. He heard what Trump said and he was pretty quick to speak out. I am hoping and praying that President Trump is this really is bluster. I do not want to see us start blowing up civilian infrastructure. I do not want to see that. We are not at war with the Iranian people. We are trying to liberate them. Yeah. And I guess the question this takes us to now is whether Republicans who are looking at what several strategists are now talking about as a November bloodbath in electoral terms are starting to think that they are better off if they move away from Trump, if he is not part of their campaign, if they're not talking about him, if they're not really referencing him or his face even on the doorstep when they're talking to people.

7:43And if you look at what's happened just this week in Tuesday, you'll remember that Marjorie Taylor Greene, who set herself against Trump last year over her calling for the release of the Epstein files, which he was blocking. She then stepped down. She relinquished her seating in Congress in Georgia, and they had a special election there this week. And whilst the Democrat was defeated there, the Democrat is Sean Harris, and he lost the election for that seat. The Republican who won it, Clay Fuller, did so on a very small margin. OK, so just to put that in context, Georgia started to look like it was back in the sort of red Republican zone in 2024.

8:32Trump won it by 37 points and Clay Fuller only won it by 12. So it didn't affect this race. But if you start a sort of read across, every Republican who isn't looking at a whopping margin might be looking at losing their seat. So then I started to think, do I increase my chances by speaking out against Trump? Do I just blank him? You know, there was a time when if a Republican crossed Trump, he would make sure that they were primaried and they would never see the electoral light of day again. I don't think that's true anymore. And I think Republicans are starting to come to a new understanding, which is that their president is a hindrance, not a help.

9:21I still think there's an awful lot of fear around among Republicans that if they say something against Donald Trump, then they're going to be in big trouble. I thought what was really interesting about Senator Ron Johnson saying what he said was that he was one of the very few voices to have come out and said this. but i often think that in republican politics it's silence that is often more telling than noise and from mike johnson the speaker of the house john thune the leader of the senate i think they could find their way to a television camera if they wanted to say something they could find themselves before a microphone if they felt they needed to make a you know their comments on what Donald Trump has said silence not a word from them and I think that is the telling bit when the Republicans go quiet you can be absolutely sure they are really unhappy at what Trump is saying because it's very easy to cheerlead and say yeah Mr President you're so right you're absolutely on this we back you 100 % which is what the default position is you haven't had that they've been very, very quiet.

10:27And I think there is a real unease now among Republicans about he's an absolute bloody liability. But what do we do? What do I do when he can cause me still so much damage? Look, there are many Democrats who are now talking about invoking the 25th. In other words, the special clause that you can trigger to get rid of a president if you think that he is, I guess sort of unhinged or mentally unstable or not fit for office. I suppose it's not a surprise that there are so many Democrats, I think there's about 70 who have now sort of signed a petition to invoke the 25th. What is more curious is that there are the start of Republican voices too.

11:09We don't often play you, Alex Jones, on this show for very good reason. He's a conspiracist. He is a vile, vile man, actually, who made the families of the Sandy Hooks victims' lives absolutely intolerable and had to pay huge sums of money for his misinformation and his libel around that. But we are going to play you a clip of him in a very unusual place, which is being one of those voices who is outwardly calling for Trump to be removed. How do we 25th Amendment is that? The problem is to get the 25th Amendment is harder than impeachment. You have to get two-thirds of the House and two-thirds of the students.

11:53So what do we do? Tackle Trump and let him pretend he's president and publicly report that he's going through a health issue and Vance takeover. It literally needs to be something like that. It's that bad. I've known in a long time you've never called for an internal coup before. Ever, ever, ever. But that's how dangerous this is. That's how risky it is for the whole world. Yeah, but I was the Democrats. I'd stop poking Trump and messing with him. That only makes it worse. Like, you guys need to watch out. This isn't a guy acting like he's crazy. This is real. Well, what's there going to be to take over in 2026 or 2028 if this hits the fan?

12:28If we get to that? He's threatening an extinction-level event for the people of Iran tomorrow. Does nobody think there'll be any blowback from that? If he follows through on that, the whole world is screwed. You were saying during the break there's other ways to do this. people need to just not just tell him the truth, like Susie Walsh said, it's time to just not, I mean, say what you said. Yeah, well, legally and constitutionally, the vice president is an independent elected official. That is an extraordinary exchange for Alex Jones and his guests to be having live on air. How do we 25th his ass was how that conversation started.

13:04And what they're doing is basically trying to give tips to the Democrats to tell them, to instruct them that if they don't get rid of Trump, that will be the end of the electoral system as America knows it. I mean, the world is already upside down. But when you add into that Alex Jones, who is now sitting alongside the 70 or so Democrats who are saying, how do we literally get rid of this man? I mean, it's like something from, you know, Dave, the film, where they just want to kind of lock Trump in a room and send out some body double. I don't know. But we are now at an extraordinary place where they are openly, outwardly saying this has gone too far.

13:46What do we do? Yeah, I still think that the cabinet is terrified of him and is not going to make any move unless things get a whole lot worse. And, you know, they'll try and forgive it as just that's Donald Trump's negotiating style. You know, take it to an extreme and then bring back people back from the edge. look i don't think it will happen but the fact that you know it is starting to be talked about and not just as a sort of wild-eyed piece of madness but people are seriously starting to question this man's sanity right now and it you know maybe in the past it seemed like an illegitimate question it now feels it has a degree of legitimacy in a moment we'll be speaking more to mark short the former director of legislative affairs for donald trump and who was mike pence Chief of Staff.

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15:57The News Agents USA. We're joined now by Mark Short, who was director of legislative affairs during Donald Trump's first term as the key person, that is, who kind of is trying to make sure that Donald Trump's agenda gets enacted by Congress and then went on to be Mike Pence's chief of staff. And we all know how the first term ended. Mike Pence and Secret Service and being holed up in the Capitol. And maybe we'll talk about that in a moment. And you are now in charge of the Advancing American Freedom think tank. And we'll also talk about that as well. Marshall, thank you so much for talking to the newsagents.

16:36We're delighted to have you with us. When you read what Donald Trump posted, that a whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. What did you think? Well, John, first, thank you for having me. Congrats on your success. I think that the president has often used Twitter or social media posts to try to take negotiation stands, where he'll say something that's viewed as outlandish as a way to try to reach a closer settlement. Having said that, I think there are certain things that are just beyond the pale. And obviously, it's not in America's interest to talk about wiping out civilizations.

17:16And I think if we're trying to encourage that the Iranian people stand up to the authoritarian dictator, theocratic dictatorship that they've endured for 47 years, if we're talking about wiping out whole civilizations, it probably does not do the best to encourage them in that moment. It probably encourages them to stay coward in their homes, fearful of the Iranian government. So I think it can be counterproductive is the short answer. But when you also couple that with what he posted on Easter weekend about with an F-bomb in a tweet and calling them bastards and whatever else, is it fair that people start questioning?

17:57Is he OK? Hey, I think it's fair to question it. I personally think, again, that it's intentional on his part. Like, I think people think, oh, is this is this deranged? I think in his part, he feels that making those sort of statements will push Iran to feel like, hey, this guy's fanatical. We better strike a deal. But again, John, I feel like often that can be counterproductive. I think that from America's standing in the world, as you say, particularly that sort of expression on Easter Sunday, in which so many Americans, so many people across the globe are celebrating the resurrection of our Savior, I don't think is the appropriate time and place.

18:33But then is it just a negotiating tactic or is there an element, okay, maybe he's not deranged or whatever, but no one is checking his impulses. No one is saying to him, whoa, you sure about that? Stop it. Well, two things. One, he's always negotiating. to the extent that there's nobody checking his impulses. I think the reality is that the first time the president was in this role, there were plenty of things that he tweeted out that you'd still have. Maybe that was beyond the pale. But I do think that it was tempered, honestly, John, because I think he was still learning his ways around Washington and he trusted the advice of people around him.

19:13My sense in the second administration feels like I've done this. I've been here for four years. I've withstood my enemy's best attacks, whether or not that's impeachments or the lawfare, the Biden administration. And so I don't need people to tell me how to do this anymore. And so I think there is sort of a feeling of invincibility in what he says. Do you think he still feels that given the way the negotiations have turned out with Iran, where it looks like America was the one that was desperate to get a ceasefire? America was the one that was desperate to kind of find a way off the hook that he now found himself with Iran controlling the Strait of Hormuz and no amount of bombing was going to change that?

19:52Well, I think to answer your question, yes. I think he still feels that, look, my political opponents have come after me and they've been unsuccessful and I know what I'm doing here in this role. And so, yes, I think there's definitely a, there's not much of the humility side of that. So, yeah, I think he's very confident in his approach. As far as, you know, to the extent, I have concerns about this final so-called deal. I don't think that prior to this engagement, Iran had control over the Straits or was assessing tolls to ships going through the Straits. And so if that's where we end up, to me, that's very concerning.

20:28Having said that, John, I've been supportive of the president's actions militarily because I think Iran has been a thorn in the free world side for 47 years. They've massacred and killed a lot of innocent people. And I think the world changed on October 7th, 2023, because much of Iran's proxies are the ones who carried out that massacre in Israel. And so the world has changed. And I'm in support of the military action, but I think what was confusing for a lot of Americans is, was the objective regime change? Was the objective to get the uranium out of Iran? Was the objective to limit their military capacity so they couldn't create as much damage across the Middle East?

21:08It's been unclear. And if you don't have clear objectives from the start, then that makes the end goal more difficult as to what is our end goal and how do we then get out? Well, okay, using that as an example and the questions you raise. So there hasn't been regime change. The£970 of highly enriched uranium is still under the ground. They're still committed to enriching uranium. There's been no deal on their ballistic missile program. And the Strait of Hormuz was meant to be open, but as I'm sitting here talking to you now, it sounds as though it's firmly shut. And you think, well, what has America got?

21:45Well, again, I've said that I think that this is incomplete at this point, but I do think that if you were able to say that you could have eliminated the Ayatollah and his entire leadership team the way that we were able to, the way that the military had success in eliminating so much of Iran's capabilities without, in many cases, reciprocal damage to the United States, I think that there was significant military achievements. But politically, I share concern. I share concern that if our goal could be stated clearly, then how have we attained that at this point to be pointed out? And it does appear that Iran would probably say, you know, we understand that America's sensitivity point is a certain price of oil.

22:28And that gives us leverage over the president in future negotiations or future military conflicts. You talked about the first term and that Donald Trump was finding his way and he now feels much more invincible. When you see Pete Hegseth and you compare him to Jim Mattis, what do you think? Well, look, I think that Jim Mattis is an American hero. I think that Jim Mattis has served, obviously, our country in combat and was awarded for that and rose up through the ranks. I think that there's, at the same time, there's a great contrast with Pete. But if you look at what's happened in Pete's tenure, despite the rhetoric, I think you see success in Venezuela, success in the first strike on nuclear capabilities.

23:16And again, I think there's been military success in Iran in this operation. I think politically, what's been left is uncertain. And so while I can, perhaps many can criticize Pete's persona at a press conference, I think the success of the military has been pretty good. I too, though, have said I think General Cain should be doing a lot more of the press briefings because I think General Cain has a certain command and certainly has obviously the heroism as well in combat. But it's probably because Donald Trump likes it. Donald Trump loves the bombast. You know, Hegseth saying a historic and overwhelming victory in the battlefield, as he said, it is newscombe.

23:54Well, John, but it's the president's choice. And if that's what he wants in his secretary of war or secretary of defense, then that's what he gets. Did you like the re-badging of the Pentagon as the secretary of war or did you just think, oh, this is silly? I don't think that many Americans spend a lot of time thinking about it. I think most Americans still view it as the Pentagon's secretary of defense and probably will be again at the next administration. You've been critical of the way the White House has communicated the campaign in Iran. Look, no one can look at the Iranian regime and think they're anything other but brutal in the way that they've handled protests and the way they have their influence across the Middle East, a destabilizing force.

24:37But you've been critical of the way the White House has communicated what it's doing. Do you think that might change now or is it just unchangeable with this president in a second term? My worry is the reverse, that actually the president got into this, has had military, I think, success, and I think is concerned with the global economy. I think that as we head into our midterm elections this November, John, you know the number one issue for voters right now is affordability. And so you already have as a backdrop, I think you have a trade agenda that has gone awry and has continued to elevate prices in America.

25:15And then you add on to that, oil prices going through$100 a barrel and you have oil shortages beginning in Asia, the expectation was they were soon to begin in Europe and may still, depending on whether or not the straits are open, and a few weeks down the road, potentially the United States, nonetheless, prices going up. I think in that backdrop, the president is anxious to find what is my off-ramp here. Right. So let us talk about the midterm elections. And let's assume that Donald Trump has found some kind of off ramp. You were worried about the midterm elections for the Republican Party before this, before the Strait of Hormuz got shut because of affordability.

25:54And we've now got, you know, oil kind of at least over four dollars a gallon in D.C., over five dollars a gallon. I mean, it's expensive. And people I speak to think life is tough right now. John, I think that seven months is a long time in politics, as you know. But I think if the elections were today, it'd be a bloodbath for Republicans. I think you saw even last night that in Wisconsin, a typically competitive state, a Supreme Court judge, a liberal won by 20 points. You saw in Marjorie Taylor Greene's district, a district that had been safely Republican by 25, 30 points for President Trump, is won by single digits.

26:32If you add on to that in the special elections that have happened so far this year, in deep red states like Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, we've been losing seat after seat in special elections in state house seats. And so the trend is already there. I think a lot of Americans elected Donald Trump because they wanted the border secure and they wanted the inflation that occurred during the Biden administration solved. They wanted the economy fixed. And they felt like his first administration, he did that. I think the president's economic policies have been a dramatic contrast to his first administration.

27:06His first administration, he lowered taxes and he focused on deregulation. There's a lot of rhetoric about tariffs, but really it was focused on China and isolating China. This time around, there's been indiscriminate tariffs across the globe. It has not solved the affordability issue for Americans. You have a Republican administration basically advancing state-owned enterprises. of the government taking over private enterprise companies. You have a Republican administration suggesting that the government's job is to set a cap on credit card rates. You have a Republican government saying how many homes, entities, private equity can purchase or not.