Sorry, Republicans, Trump Doesn’t Love You Back

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0:31This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it.

0:50Robert Siegel:Hi, I'm Robert Siegel in conversation about politics with, as always, New York Times opinion contributor E.J. Dionne.

0:58E.J. Dionne Jr.:Always fun to be with you.

1:00Robert Siegel:And returning this week, Mona Charon, policy editor of The Bulwark and host of The Mona Charon Show. Welcome back. It's good to see you. I'm delighted. Great to have you here.

1:11Robert Siegel:When it comes to politics, we are not short of material this week. The biggest news was the Texas primary, above all John Cornyn's defeat in the Republican runoff for what would have been Cornyn's fifth term in the U.S. Senate. He was beaten by an opponent with enough political baggage to weigh down a battalion of red caps. But Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton had Donald Trump's backing, and that proved even weightier. E.J., what are the lessons there for Republicans in the Texas primary results?

1:41E.J. Dionne Jr.:Well, I think the first is a lesson they should have learned long ago, which is Donald Trump's loyalty only goes one way. John Cornyn went out of his way to be supportive of Trump. He even had a picture of Trump's book, The Art of the Deal, that he was holding, and it did him no good. I think, by the way, Trump saw that Paxton was going to win and jumped on the bandwagon at the end. But in any event, Corning got killed. But I think there's a larger message for the Republican Party, which is, yes, this party is magnified now. For something I'm writing, I've been looking at this great series of economist YouGov polls, and they followed this closely.

2:20E.J. Dionne Jr.:In September 2022, only 38 percent of Republicans identified as MAGA Republicans. As of May, the proportion had risen to 62 percent. So this party is MAGA-fied. But in the electorate as a whole, the only people becoming MAGA are Republicans so that Americans who call themselves MAGA rose from only 11 percent to 19 percent. So MAGA is a really small percentage, and what I would call the MAGA gap between the Republicans and the rest of the country has gone from 27 to 43. And one of the places you're seeing this is in sharp turnout declines in the Republican primary. In the first round of the Texas race, there were more people who voted in the Democratic primary than in the Republican primary.

3:08Robert Siegel:200 ,000 more.

3:09E.J. Dionne Jr.:Yeah. And then in this runoff, the total turnout was 1.4 million. Donald Trump got 6.4 million votes in Texas in 2024. This is a dispirited party, and the part that's dispirited is the non-MAGA part. And I think this is a real problem going forward for the Republicans. Mona? Yeah, it's really interesting in those numbers that if you look at Paxton's performance in the initial round and then look at how he did in the runoff, it's almost the exact same number. Which means those MAGA people are going to be there no matter what, even in this kind of an environment. The primary also shows us that this is unlike political parties in the past.

3:56Political parties in the past where you had an unpopular president, which is the key to how things are going to go in a midterm, the president would understand that his party needed to put some distance, needed to show some independence from him in order to hold on to their seats in a rough year. Not in this party. In this party, Trump has managed to spray his musk over every single candidate so that they cannot escape it.

4:24E.J. Dionne Jr.:I'm shuddering at that thought, by the way. And so they have no choice. They are going to be victims of Trump's unpopularity. And he's leaving them really hanging out there, showing that he had, well, we knew this, but he never had any interest in Republican success except in so far as it enhances Trump's power. So he's not concerned about Republicans who might have been like Cornyn would have been a better general election candidate. This is universally acknowledged. He doesn't care about that. He wants the party to be 100 percent MAGA and loyal to him. And you know what's interesting about that?

5:04E.J. Dionne Jr.:I'm not in the habit of comparing Newt Gingrich favorably to others. But when you go back to Newt Gingrich as speaker, he understood that his majority was built in part by Republicans who were way more progressive than any Republican out there now. People like Chris Shea is in Connecticut, Jim Leach in Iowa. And Republicans then understood that if you lost all these seats, you wouldn't have a majority. Now, in a much more conservative party, they're willing to throw over the side very conservative people who just aren't loyal enough to Trump. And that's so dangerous. That is exactly right. By the way, they call those people in those swing districts majority makers.

5:43Right. And that is something that both parties used to understand. I also have some questions about whether Democrats sometimes put purity tests and don't think about matching their candidates to the districts. But that's maybe a topic for another day.

5:59E.J. Dionne Jr.:The problem now, there are some districts where there'll be primaries, but mostly they, for what I can tell, they've been pretty good at matching the right. Yeah, I'm worried about Michigan Senate race.

6:10Robert Siegel:Let's talk about the lessons of Texas for Democrats. I mean, is one lesson for the Democrats, Mona, your opponents are suicidal, do not get in the way? Right. Never interrupt your enemy when he's in the process of destroying himself. Yes, sure. That is one lesson. But another lesson, I think, is, look, the Democratic primary was interesting because there you did have voters, I think, looking ahead and being kind of smart and saying, do we want Jasmine Crockett, who's a little more polarizing, who's much more appealing to the, even though they may not have been that different ideologically, just stylistically, she was much more appealing to the progressive side of the Democratic Party.

6:52And they went with Tallarico, who has more crossover appeal. And so that was, I think, smart and looking at the future. And Democrats are being handed. Look, is it the first time in 25, 30 years that they might possibly win a Senate seat in the state of Texas? And it's very important that Democrats use this opportunity by remembering that they can't win just with the Democrats. They need those independents desperately.

7:23E.J. Dionne Jr.:And, you know, I think something interesting is going on in the Democratic Party with Tallarico. Also, I would say somebody like John Ossoff in Georgia, Greg Sargent in the New Republic had a really interesting line where he said, Trump, if there's a realization that Trump and Trumpism are wrecking our common life at a very profound moral and spiritual level. And I think you're hearing Tallarico, you know, and yes, they're going after some of his theological statements from the past. But Tallarico is putting not simply people's interests at the heart of the campaign, although he talks about those.

7:59E.J. Dionne Jr.:I mean, you always talk about people's interests in a campaign. But it is really a moral critique. Obviously, Paxton gives him a lot of room for that. So does Trump. But it's a moral critique for how the economy works. And we're not going to say much about it today, but I think you see in the response to Pope Leo's encyclical on AI a real longing for something that's not just political, not just economic, but a kind of moral view of how are we behaving toward each other and in our economic life. And Tallarico really nails that home in just about every speech he gives. Yep. And he's shown some graciousness toward opponents, which is a desperately needed tone in American politics.

8:41So that's hopeful, too.

8:42E.J. Dionne Jr.:No, it was ironic because he was ready to rip up Cornyn as an establishment Republican. But he instead put out this, you know, when Cornyn lost, he said that we both appreciate public service. Yes. Just a nice little tweak at his opponent.

8:57Robert Siegel:John Cornyn is a member of the Senate Republican leadership team, but having lost his re-election bid, he's now eligible to join Louisiana Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, who lost his primary in the, it's not quite a caucus, but the YOLO Republicans. YOLO stands for you only live once. The idea is you've been loyal to Donald Trump in nearly everything, but now that you've been defeated by a MAGA-backed opponent, you're a lame duck. You can actually vote in accordance with your real principles, assuming you can remember what those were. Mona, can the YOLO Republicans actually influence events now that their spines are out of storage?

9:37I like that. So the numbers are very close, right? So you would need more than two or three Republicans to really affect things in the Senate in particular. And it is it has been the case that Republicans, even after they have lost their races, even after they've announced their retirements, have proven less courageous than one might hope.

10:05Robert Siegel:You could still become ambassador to Liechtenstein. I guess. Pretty little place. But there has been a burst of frankness that's come out of this, what you call the YOLO caucus, which includes Tom Tillis, who is not running again. From North Carolina. From North Carolina. It includes Mitch McConnell. It includes several others. And they are making some pretty forthright statements. Tom Tillis, for example, said regarding this slush fund that Trump proposes, he said, I call it a payout for punks. Now, that is the kind of language we haven't heard. You even heard people like Senator Mitch McConnell saying, this is a quote, so the nation's top law enforcement official is asking for a slush fund to pay people who assault cops.

10:54Utterly stupid, morally wrong, take your pick, he said. Those are the kind of words you did not hear from most Republicans for the past 10 years. But I'm not sure there's going to be a legislative impact. But what we are getting now with these newly freed YOLO Republicans is insight into what they have been saying behind the scenes all this time. And any dose of honesty is healthy.

11:22E.J. Dionne Jr.:You know, I think there are two issues here. One, to go where Mona left off, it is clear that there is more dissidence publicly now than there was even a month ago. I think his endorsement of Paxton and turning his back on Cornyn actually played a role in this because Cornyn was very popular among his colleagues. He almost became the leader. And he raised a ton of money for them. Yeah. And so I think a lot of them took that badly. And so they become dissident. This slush fund is a step or five steps or 100 steps way too far. Even for them, the war itself is starting to split Republicans with some of the most hawkish Republicans, Roger Wicker from Mississippi, you know, who is not known as somebody who's going to run out there and attack Trump.

12:12E.J. Dionne Jr.:I mean, a very strong statement about the possibility of he didn't use the word sellout, but it was along those lines. So you are seeing this dissonance. The magic number is three plus one. The question is, if these YOLOs vote together, YOLO is a new term. I use it respectfully. If the three of them vote together, you know who that puts a lot of pressure on is Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. Susan Collins of Maine, who's up for re-election, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, because they have been publicly dissident. But they could cast no votes up to now that had no actual effect on what was happening in the Senate.

12:53E.J. Dionne Jr.:If these three vote no, then the Collins and Murkowski votes become very significant because they are, in another sense, to pick up your earlier term, majority makers. They get them to 51. Now, I'm still skeptical that John Cornyn, who is a party loyalist deep all the way down, is going to break as much as I think Cassidy and Tillis might. But we'll see. You know, John Cornyn reminds me of that great novel, Darkness at Noon, you know, where this, you know, communist is arrested by Stalin and he for untrumped up charges and he knows he's innocent. But after a while, he just comes to embrace that if the party has arrested him, he must be wrong.

13:33He must have done something to deserve it. And I had that vibe from Cornyn a little bit. You know, I always hear he has been defeated by somebody that he himself described as a moral abomination, which Paxton is. We haven't gone into that. We could. It's it's the whole segment. Exactly. Exactly. So he's beaten by this guy with the help of the leader of his party. And he says, I always, you know, support the Republican ticket. And I plan to this time. I mean, it was really kind of pathetic.

14:04E.J. Dionne Jr.:Yeah. I mean, he spent tens of millions of dollars saying what a morally flawed, to put it gently, person, you know, going after his divorce. I mean, those were really remarkable ads. He was impeached by his own party, Paxton, in Texas.

14:20Robert Siegel:Is it overly cynical to say that a lot of Republicans have done well by there being this constant buzz that behind closed doors, when they're not on television, when they're speaking off the record, they're expressing the same condemnation of Donald Trump that you, the center Republican, maybe even Democrat, that you're feeling. A lot of Republicans have managed to imply that they do share this critical view of Trump. They just are not saying it in public, which we may fault them for. But in a way, it's a survival strategy. It is. But those people, I think, are more morally copable than the true believers because they're so dishonest.

15:03Right. I mean, the true believers, at least, are saying what they think. And, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene believes what she believes, crazy things. But the others, you know, who kept silent, the Mitch McConnells of the world, you know, who in private are so critical, but in public not, although that's now changing. I think that's actually worse.

15:23Robert Siegel:OK, well, on to familiar territory in these conversations. Part of the backdrop of this political season is, of course, the war with Iran, which marked a break with two Donald Trump campaign promises. First, given the blockades in the Strait of Hormuz, gas prices at the pump have gone up instead of down. And while going on three months may not count as a forever war, the U.S. is finding it very hard to exit from this war without at least appearing to concede the Islamic Republic's right to rule in Iran. Mona, how do you think voters are going to perceive the war and its relation to the election in the midterms?

16:04I promise I'm getting to the war, but I have to introduce it by saying, have you all seen this structure that they are now building on the White House lawn? It's this enormous scaffolding for a big MMA dome where they're going to have this thing in honor of Trump's birthday or whatever. Okay. So it occurred to me.

16:25Robert Siegel:I can't wait for this. So Trump is like a good dictator, is trying to present his people with bread and circuses. So he's got the circus. It's right there on the White House lawn. The bread, though, he has not produced. And that's going to be critical. Now, regarding the Iran war, it not only violates, Robert, his promises that he would not get involved in foreign wars, But it undercuts his image as I am the strong man. When I say something, it happens. Nobody can gainsay me. Nobody can stand in my way, both domestically and internationally. I know how to throw my weight around and watch me. And what voters have seen is that this supposed strongman has marched himself straight into a box canyon in Iran.

17:22He is unwilling to send ground troops, because that would be catastrophically unpopular, to actually topple the regime. And so he has to deal with the regime. Yet they have been able to withstand all the pain of repeated bombings. And on the other hand, they have discovered all kinds of leverage that he did not anticipate because he's not very bright, that they would close the Strait of Hormuz and that the instability and the high prices would bounce back on the American public, who, having not been prepared at all for this war and having had no buy-in to this war, are saying, you're imposing costs on us without ever having asked our approval.

18:03and now he appears to be walking into a situation where he's going to have to accept a humiliating climb down and some sort of deal that they will attempt to package as a victory. But everybody can see that it really is an American defeat.

18:20Robert Siegel:E.J.?

18:20E.J. Dionne Jr.:My head is still swimming that you actually landed that intricate MMA fight metaphor. I salute you for that. I've been thinking of variations on Donald Rumsfeld's line all through this war. You go, in my version, you go to the war with the president you have, not the president you wish you had. And Mona and I were talking before. Mona's pretty hawkish in her views on foreign policy, it's fair to say. And yet she's taken some grief because she didn't have faith in this war where others said, oh, great things are going to happen from this, we'll topple the regime in Iran. But all those expectations depended on a long-term strategy.

19:05E.J. Dionne Jr.:And I think they were foolish from the beginning and they weren't going to happen. But let's assume you believed in them. You also had to believe that Donald Trump knew what he was doing in the war. The fact that he never felt an obligation to make a case to the American people for why he was doing this. The fact that the rationales at the beginning changed day to day and hour to hour. And the fact that he just never gave a sense that he thought this was anything more difficult than throwing out the government in Venezuela, which he didn't actually do. He just has a new ally. It's still the old regime, but now sort of paid off.