Trumpapalooza: the risky Republican midterm strategy

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1:44Hello, welcome to the State of It USA, our Times and Sunday Times weekly podcast on American politics.

1:51Katy Balls: I'm Gerry Baker, columnist for The Times and editor-at-large of The Wall Street Journal. I'm Katie Bowles, Washington editor and columnist for The Times and Sunday Times. And this week I'm speaking to you from Dallas, where the Republican Party has gathered for its first ever midterm convention, which has also been given the name Trumpapalooza, not an official name, but one that I'm already hearing in the various bars. It's Donald Trump's world, as they say, and we just live in it. Let's start with this Trump up a loser down there in Dallas, Katie. It sort of fits into the story that we, you know, everybody just continues to be absorbed with, which is the combination of the midterm elections coming up in two months and Donald Trump.

2:30Katy Balls: This is a very unusual event. I've been in America for 30 years, never seen a midterm convention before. It's all about Donald Trump. Tell us what the expectations are. Tell us what's going to be happening. Yeah, so this is a two day event. And I think it's about trying to G up the troops, even though we know some Republicans are giving it a miss. Donald Trump has taken to True Social to tell us that it's gonna be packed and sold out. And I think it will look very busy. And then it's about ultimately getting the party in the right space for the midterm elections. Also, when it comes to fundraising, and how they're going to position themselves.

3:07And I think that you just need to take a little look at the schedule for the next couple of days to have a sense of how Donald Trump wants to fight the midterms, which is with Donald Trump front and centre. Initially, we were expecting J.D. Vance to speak one night, Donald Trump to speak the other. And then you have other cabinet speakers earlier on in the day. Caroline Leavitt, the former White House press secretary, for example. But then we got an updated schedule through, and it is Donald Trump followed by Donald Trump. J.D. Vance does get one slot.

3:41Katy Balls: Yeah, it's a high-risk operation, this. I've covered midterm elections over quite a long period of time. When the president is unpopular, especially as unpopular as he is now, Trump's approval ratings we know are in the basement, the party whose president is very unpopular generally sort of tries to play down the president a little bit. I can remember very, very well George W. Bush in 2006, which was right in the middle of the sort of disastrous phase, particularly disastrous phase of the Iraq war. Bush was enormously unpopular. And Bush kind of kept a very low profile in those midterms. They tried to make the elections, you know, to some extent an election about the Democrats, to some extent an election about local issues.

4:21Katy Balls: They did not nationalize it and certainly didn't make it about the president. Obama wasn't very popular in 2010. Then same thing happened there. The party doesn't want the president out in front because it can be so damaging. This, of course, is Donald Trump. And anybody telling Donald Trump not to be out front and centre is going to get their head chopped off, metaphorically speaking. So they're stuck here. But not only are they doing something risky and unusually risky by making Trump very much the face of the campaign at a time when he's very unpopular. They're doing this very rare event, this thing down there in Dallas, which nobody's done before, which is only going to reinforce the sense that this is Donald Trump's party and that this is a referendum on Donald Trump.

5:04Katy Balls: And if it's a referendum on Donald Trump in November, the Republicans are going to suffer. The counter you hear is, well, what else have the Republicans got to talk about? Is there a story on the economy they want to tell? Not so much at the moment with the Iran war. Look at the price of gas and so forth. Obviously, there are some figures that they can point to if you want to. But you look at polling, I think people are feeling like the economy is in a place where that's going to massively help the Republicans. And then you have Trump in a recent meeting of his advisers where they're talking about, you know, for example, all the money they have, this war chest they have to spend on the midterms and what they should spend on.

5:41And again, Donald Trump thinks it should be spent on adverts about Donald Trump. So he is forcing himself on the party as the face of it. But then I also think, you know, there are some who say, well, we don't think Donald Trump's particularly popular right now. But then what else should the Republicans be saying when it comes to their message? And one of the things probably, well, Donald Trump, I think, just does what he wants. And there was an interesting piece today, you know, saying many Republicans have given up even trying to get him to do other things. But if there was a convincing other argument out there, maybe it would be a slightly different place.

6:16Yeah, I take that point. And look, also, you're dealing with Donald Trump. We're going to talk a little bit about his increasingly, shall we say, eccentric behavior. It's not, as you say, Katie, just the the the unpopularity of the Iran war, you know, grave dissatisfaction about the economy.

6:35Katy Balls: general dissatisfaction about the state of the country is that Trump keeps sort of, you know, just just keeps making everything about him. And with these sort of these these increasingly weird social media posts on Truth Social, you know, he's done this for a while, but this the pace of this seems to be accelerating and the kind of lunacy seems to be accelerating, you know, whether it's now sort of, you know, we've had obviously renaming Lake Ontario, Lake America. Now we're getting, you know, renaming New Mexico, New America. I mean, where on earth that comes from? I have no idea the posts of him, you know, as a war hero or, you know, fighting these sort of science fiction sort of battles.

7:12I mean, you're right. I mean, I suppose, you know, what are they going to do? Are they going to pretend Donald Trump's not president somehow? Are they going to sort of, you know, going to say, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's the kind of sort of crazy old uncle in the attic. Don't worry about that. We'll come out and vote for Ken Paxton in Texas or come out and vote for for Susan Collins in Maine. You know, he is the 800 pound gorilla in the room. I'm not sure you can really escape him and particularly not now. Yeah. And I think just to that point about the number of true socials, I mean, he always obviously puts up these true socials, but it feels more and more overnight you wake up and there's just been a blizzard of them.

7:49and you know the recent one which I saw some MAGA influencers sharing recently but now Trump himself shared of all these leaders including King Charles seemingly and actually not accurately in King Charles's case at least tend looking as though they're not helping people who are in trouble because you know ordinary workers are falling over and they're ignored by the leaders and then Trump looking like you know he is with the common man so he's clearly trying to do his own PR. I'm not quite sure the truth social is going to do it this time.

8:21Katy Balls: Trump will say, with some justification, he's the man that people come out and vote for. He'll make the case that when he's on the ballot, people vote Republican. They voted for him in 2016. They voted in significant numbers for him in 2020, although not as many as he claims and not enough for him to win. And they voted for him again in 2024. When he's not on the ballot, 2018 midterms, The Republicans did disastrously. 2022, actually, they did badly, even though Joe Biden was president. So, you know, again, he is. Look, he's very good at energizing his enemies, but he is very good at energizing supporters.

8:56Katy Balls: The problem is the people who support it, that the number of people who are fervent supportive as his is dropping. I mean, some of these polls have been fascinating, Katie, that not just his overall approval ratings, but his approval ratings among Republicans. And that's the danger is that a lot of Republicans are just not going to come out and vote. they're not going to vote Democrat, they're not going to vote for many of these Democratic candidates. But in a midterm election, when turnout is usually low, the Republicans currently are just very demoralized and are just not going to vote. Yeah, it's not quite clear the party can can live without him either right now.

9:27And also in terms of succession, it still feels like he has command over it, which makes it harder to even try and distance yourself.

9:34Katy Balls: There was an old saying, forgive me for saying this, but the joke was in Texas, you know, women can't live with them, can't live without them. I once saw a bumper sticker in Texas where you are, Katie, with a bumper sticker that said women can't live with them, can't shoot them. So the Texas approach to politics. Yeah, I think he's, you know, they can't avoid him. And he's going probably to cost them a lot of votes. Talking of things Trump has said this week, this is not on his true social, but We are, of course, in the 25th anniversary of 9-11. And let's hear a clip of part of Trump's speech that has suddenly created some controversy and debate online.

10:13I'll never forget two firemen. We thought it was coming down on top of us and two firemen, big, strong guys. And I'm not the smallest guy in the world. They grabbed me under the arms. They got to get out of here. And they literally lifted me up. This is not easy to do. I'm big. They lifted me up and they started running with me. I said, fellas, I can run myself. Gerry, you have some people effectively saying this is garbage. Trump is exaggerating his 9-11 credentials. You have others, including Trump, posting to his true social photos to appear to back up what he is saying in the story. What do you make of it?

10:51Well, look, there is, you know, it's not always easy to give Trump the benefit of the doubt or adopt a charitable interpretation of what he's saying. It's true that he went down to ground zero in the days after 9-11 and he took some Trump organization employees and they did help to some extent with the search and rescue and the cleanup.

11:14Katy Balls: So there's an element of truth about it. And again, to give Trump further benefit of the doubt, he's an 80-year-old man. This happened 25 years ago. I'm not 80 years old, But if you ask me to sort of recount something in some detail of something happened 25 years ago, even 9-11, I'm probably going to get some of the details wrong. I think, you know, the sort of the colourful embellishment that you heard there of him being picked up by a couple of burly firefighters that we have to put down to, I think, just a combination of Trump's kind of narcissistic self -delusion. He's repeatedly said things over the years about 9-11, about what he did on 9-11 that have not that were not borne out by any evidence or whatever.

11:57And the other thing people are reminded of, and this I can actually remember seeing this in the days afterwards. I wasn't in New York on 9-11, but I do remember seeing clips of it afterwards that Trump was interviewed as the sort of just within minutes, I think, of the towers falling. and one of the first things he noted was that, you know, he used to have the second tallest building in New York, which used to be a Trump building, but since the towers had fallen, he now had the tallest building in New York, which was perhaps the, you know, won the prize for the strangest, the most inappropriate observation about what was happening down there.

12:29Katy Balls: Yeah, look, and then there's this other whole question, Katie, about, you know, he's not going to the memorial event. All the other former, all the former living former presidents are all going to the big 25th anniversary memorial. He's not going. He's going to the Pentagon. Sorry, the Pentagon. Yes, it is said that he's not going because he wanted to give a speech and no one's giving a speech. But he says, no, no, no, he's not going because he's giving speeches elsewhere or whatever. I mean, do we know? Is this another example of Trump's desire to have all the attention not being met and that's why he's not going?

12:58It's probably one where it's somewhere in between. So he has done a furious kind of fake news rant about the New York Times suggesting that he just wanted to give a speech. But at the end of the day, J.D. Vance is going to this event and Trump will be at the Pentagon. And there has to be some kind of reason as to why he doesn't want to do what is convention. But I think it also just shows you how, you know, with Trump, even this anniversary is becoming so politicized. And Jerry, bigger picture, I know you wrote an essay for the weekend, the Times on this. But stepping back, what do you think the lessons or the mood is when it comes to the 25th anniversary of 9-11?

13:38if we step away from some of these, you know, more political, who's doing what fights that are going on?

13:44Katy Balls: Yeah. Well, Katie, I think the fact that there is, you know, the 9-11 is becoming, as you say, increasingly kind of politicised is a sort of fairly sorry reflection on the way the country's changed in 25 years. I remember the days after 9-11, the weeks after 9-11, there was this extraordinary coming together of the country. President Bush had a 91 % approval raising at one point. There was unity. I remember, you know, members of Congress gathering together on the steps of both parties, both on the steps of the Capitol singing God Bless America. You know, there was a real sense of unity, purpose, you know, cohesion in what had been a pretty polarized time then.

14:22Katy Balls: If you remember after the 2000 election, which the Al Gore v. George W. Bush election, which was incredibly polarizing. So here was this sense that the country was coming together. And the fact that, you know, we now argue about we now have political arguments about 9-11 is just a sense, just I think a rather sad reflection, as I say, of of what's happened in the last 25 years, which is a series of, I mean, frankly, terrible, disastrous foreign policy decisions by successive administrations, not just obviously Bush with the Iraq war, Biden with the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. But even, you know, Obama with the flawed and failed interventions that he did in the Middle East, the financial crisis that we had, COVID, the dramatic collapse in trust that we've seen that Americans have in all their institutions.

15:10Katy Balls: Was 9-11 responsible for all of that? No. But was the way in which the U.S. government and politicians of both parties responded to 9-11? Did that create the conditions that we're in now? Yes, very much. I think it would be, you know, especially on this coming up to this anniversary, it would be very, you know, impolitic and then indeed insensitive to say that, you know, Al Qaeda with that terrible attack kind of achieved something which they were perhaps not expecting to achieve, but achieved something either, you know, that the traumas that America has been through in the last 25 years being politic perhaps to say that.

15:45But I can't help but I can't resist the conclusion that it's true that what they achieved on 9-11 with all that destruction and all that savagery and loss of life was to turn America into this sort of kind of boiling maelstrom

16:01Katy Balls: of domestic dissatisfaction, international loss of reputation, terrible foreign adventures, terrible domestic political partisanship. And, yeah, it's been a rough 25 years for America. And, you know, we shall see perhaps after Friday whether there's any indication the next 20, 25 years will be any better. And, Jerry, just on that, I mean, you've been in America through that entire period. Do you think that 9-11 changed the psyche of Americans in terms of how they kind of viewed risk or threats to them? Yeah, I do. I mean, look, in those early days after 9-11, you know, sort of all kinds of things.

16:39Everybody was terrified that there would be another attack. The government was able to, with bipartisan support, pass some pretty draconian laws about the Patriot Act in particular, which imposed all sorts of restrictions on traditional cherished freedoms that Americans had, particularly with regard to their rights, with regard to investigation and prosecution. And that law is still on the statute book. That psychological change, exactly as you describe it, is still, although Americans gradually came to be less fearful that there would be another attack, the framework, the conditions that were set in place after 9-11 of a kind of a security state that was emphasizing its

17:24Katy Balls: need to defend itself against actual and potential threats, that framework is still very much in place. And I think it is still part of the mindset of Americans and contributes to the, you know, again, the kind of the hostility that Americans have toward each other, the suspicion that Americans have towards each other, the again, the increased polarization that we've seen. So, yeah, I think that psychological impact has very much changed America too. And we're going to take a break. And when we're back, we'll be talking about the UK sanctions on Israel and what this might all mean for US-UK relations and even the Falkland Islands.

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19:44we're back now jerry you're writing your times column this week on the uplifting topic of a sense of doom tell us a bit more well i mean yes uh you know hope you had a good summer now welcome

19:55Katy Balls: to world war three i mean i look i just feel that we are and this could pass but we are in a very fragile and dangerous time in which things pretty well everywhere seem to be sort of spinning out of control and escalating. And the war between the US and Iran looks as though it's probably escalating. Iran is picking up its attacks on US targets. And I fear one day is going to get lucky and that could lead to further escalation. Russia, Ukraine, despite latest diplomatic efforts, that seems to be escalating. Russia seems to be increasingly in a mood to threaten NATO countries. But it's more than just those immediate conflicts, Katie.

20:34It's the wider sense of things falling apart we're all very very familiar with with the great wb yates poem the second coming and it sort of it really does feel 100 years on more than 100 years on very very sort of resonant this sense of the center not being able to hold you see it in politics you've just seen these german elections in saxony with the victory of the afd i was in europe at the weekend and speaking to politicians there in Jordan Bardella from the National Rally in France was there, the new Italian populist was there, this sense in Britain you've got

21:12Katy Balls: two of real tensions, political tensions, political concerns, even with a new Prime Minister you've got bond markets what's happening in the markets, people are nervous you've got Trump declaring war on allies like Canada or South Korea it just is very sort of, it seems, we're getting to a point again, keep quoting that that poem by Yeats, The Widening Gyre, that sense of things getting more and more out of kilter. And yeah, again, I don't want to overdo the gloom. And as I say, we've been through crises before. It just all feels as though there is a loss of control among people who should really be exercising restraint, should be trying to de-escalate, should be trying to bring some calm to the world when everything seems to be just, if anything, sort of accelerating in the other direction.

22:02Katy Balls: So, yeah, it feels like a very dangerous time. I'm not suggesting, again, we're going to have World War III, although to some extent some people argue we're already kind of in the early stages of that. But in a relatively long time I've been a journalist, I haven't really felt this sense of accelerating peril that I think the world now finds itself in. Well, if we're going to zone in on some aspects of this potential peril, One development over the summer has been the Falkland Island debate has come back up on the agenda. Now, we knew about this from, you know, I think a couple of months ago, routers were one of the first to report.

22:43I remember at the Times we were reporting that the US was looking at ways to potentially do this nice and naughty list of NATO countries where they would effectively do an audit. and then after that Rita stood a story saying that one of the things that could be a punishment or you know a potential rather than carrot the stick would be you know where does the US stand on the Falkland Islands obviously they've had a position in the past of neutrality but ultimately not contesting the UK's claim on it and could this move then this was resurfaced again over the summer the Telegraph are reporting on this.

23:26And then Trump was asked about it. And here's what he had to say. Are you reviewing the US position on the Falkland Islands? I always review it. Every position. That's just one of many. Steve? Do you want the UK to cut its... The UK's got some problems, but they'll get solved. Now, Jerry, I suppose the other thing to throw in here is the big story in the UK this week is Andy Burnham's government announcing sanctions on Israel over settlements when it comes to trade. And this has had a mixed response in the US so far. We've had criticism from Republicans, but nothing yet from the White House. But it has had a very bad response from the Israelis who effectively have announced various punishments.

24:09And the Israeli side have also been pushing this idea that perhaps they could officially, which they haven't done yet, but could officially say that they believe that the Falkland Islands are Argentinas. What do you make in terms of this rap?

24:24Katy Balls: It's interesting. I did see a clip of Marco Rubio speaking in which he was asked about this, and he gave a very interesting answer. He did not condemn Britain, actually. Obviously, we're not going to do what the UK did. We saw their announcement today, but I don't have any comment on it right now. I thought that was quite interesting. So I'm not sure we're necessarily going to see, you know, Trump can obviously say anything, but I suspect that, you know, you saw just a few weeks ago Ambassador Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, strongly condemn the violence of some of these West Bank settlers.

24:53Katy Balls: So I actually think on that one, although I do believe that obviously the US is certainly not going to follow the UK and impose limited sanctions in that way. And I think probably there'll be a slight bit of frustration among American policymakers that, you know, they are as unhappy with what's going on on the West Bank as the British are. And that maybe by doing this, the British have just actually risked kind of escalating, back to my earlier point about escalating in a way that may be unhelpful. But I don't think they're miles apart on that. Yeah, my sense of the sanctions is this isn't a policy that's popular with the Trump administration.

25:29I've spoken to State Department officials who effectively think this is the wrong direction, it sends the wrong signal. And, you know, teaming up with Canada, France and other countries is again just adding to that I think a sense and something we perhaps will see at the United Nations General Assembly later this month this clash where America thinks these countries are going in the wrong direction and I've spoken to other Trump officials who basically said they hate the policy but I think there is a difference between something like we know this isn't a policy that the US or this administration would be supportive of but it's different thing to make an intervention over it.

26:09And so far, it just doesn't look like Trump is trying to have a fight on it. And we reported in The Times on Monday, we had it confirmed that, you know, Andy Burnham had brought it up on the call. At the time, we didn't know how it landed. There have now been reports that actually Trump didn't object on it. But this is also a US president who's always trying to find leverage. So Chagas Islands was not a problem for a long time, even though the press kept saying, oh no you know he doesn't like it and lots of republicans were saying oh oh you know we hate it trump held the line rubio held the line and then obviously all of a sudden it was a problem because it became with the iran bases and it became an active issue and also there was a sense of you're not helping us on these things why are we going to go along with it so i i still think this has the potential to blow up at a later date um it just it kind of depends how it wears out you in terms of the general UK-US relationship.

27:04And we have Andy Burnham potentially having his first in-person meeting with Trump later this month, and for now quite a lot of effort going in to keep everyone on good behaviour for that. That sounds really interesting, Katie. I do agree with all that. I don't think they want to make this to be a big rift, but there probably is some unhappiness with what the UK is doing.

27:22Katy Balls: Just briefly on the Falklands, look, British people, especially British Conservatives, tend to sort of look back to the kind of Reagan-Thatcher period, British Conservatives. look back to that Reagan-Thatcher period with sort of misty-eyed sentiment and, you know, think it was great that America stood by Britain, you know, during the Falklands. It did eventually, but it took an awful long time to get there. And America, you know, has always had this. I mean, first of all, you know, America has the Monroe Doctrine, which basically says, you know, European nations should keep their noses out of Latin America.

27:58And last time I looked, sort of Falkland Islands are in that general region. So there's always been that kind of, you know, unease about British colonialism for obvious reasons here in the United States.

28:11Katy Balls: And if you go back to that 1982, the Falklands, and again, I'm old enough to remember this in some detail, and I've looked at it in more detail and gone through some of the historical records. The United States came very close. I mean, the United States tried to broker that in a very even-handed way for a very long time. Reagan, yes, it's true, was getting advised by his defence secretary, Caspar Weinberger. we've got to support the British, we can't let the Argentines do this, this is a terrible breach of international law, let's support the British, they're our ally. He was getting pressure from the other side, from his ambassador to the United Nations, Jean Kirkpatrick, saying Argentina's a key bulwark in the fight against communism.

28:46Katy Balls: You know, they may be, you know, son of a bitches, but there are son of a bitches, as the old, you know, saying had it. And Al Haig, the Secretary of State, spent a long time shuttling back and forth between Buenos Aires and London and actually came up with a proposal that would have been politically disastrous for Margaret Thatcher, but pressured her to accept that proposal initially, which would basically have been some arrangement whereby Britain would have leased back the Falkland Islands, lost sovereignty over the Falkland Islands. We don't need to get into the detail, but it would not have been good for Thatcher, but Thatcher felt pressured to accept it.

29:20Katy Balls: The only reason it wasn't accepted is the story is that General Galtieri, the Argentinian leader, was drunk when Haig went back to see him back in Buenos Aires and was completely off his head and refused to accept it. And weeks later, the task force got there and the war happened. So look, I don't find this, oh my God, America may adopt neutrality between Britain and the Falklands or even lean towards Argentina, between Britain and Argentina, or even lean towards Argentina. It's not historically at all out of line for America to think in that way. and it wouldn't surprise me at all if Trump did lean in that direction.

29:57The only final thing I'll say on it, however, is that I don't think Argentina is the only kind of military state to retake the Fulgham Islands, so some of the hysteria is overdone. But on the point about whether the US is outrageous

30:09Katy Balls: that the US might consider siding with Argentina, I think that's a little bit overdone. The US has handled that issue in a very, very careful way over the years. that has certainly not been an absolutely reliable staunch defender of the UK. Yeah, I think from my conversations, I feel that there are figures in the administration, the State Department, who almost see it as a way to, I would say they see it as almost like trolling of the UK when they talk about the Falkland Islands. And it's definitely a bit of a stick. But at the same time, I think they see it as a way to make a point to potentially push the UK into doing stuff or even just trigger the UK sometimes and they don't like things.

30:52But I don't get the sense this is, you know, number one on the geopolitical priority list of this administration. And even speaking to some members of the administration who have been to Argentina recently, you know, you do need to look at in the sphere of, you know, you mentioned the Monroe Doctrine, this Western Hemisphere pivot that is, you know, number one in the national security strategy that was published last year. it does mean and I had someone I had a dip the mat say this to me that they care more they well they put it like this is that it is more strategically important for the US to keep some of these countries on side and have them in the right direction than it is to help the UK out of a sense of nostalgia however I still don't get the sense that you know even when Trump is asked about in that clip you know it the answer it almost feels like it could be maybe this is uh thinking about my own experiences, it could be that he's really reviewing it.

31:48But when he says, I'm reviewing it, I review every position. It's also the type of thing someone might say, you know, in a university tutorial when they don't quite know the answer.

31:55Katy Balls: Yeah. And look, I completely agree. And the thing with Trump is, one, you just never know. He's so unpredictable. I mean, Andy, you know, you could take a liking to Andy Burnham and say, you know, no, I'm with Britain on the Falkland Islands. Or, you know, Javier Millet could say, you know, actually, we've discovered even more oil in the, you know, off the Falkland Islands, and you can have 30 % of it if you support us. So it, you know, it's just so hard to say with Trump. But I take your general point that this is that there's a kind of they like sort of trolling people, especially their allies, you know, see Canada right now.

32:30And yeah, I suspect this isn't, this does not represent a massive strategic change by the US. Yeah, though we obviously keep the option that Trump is very angry at the UK about something else. And then you can see him suddenly being like, you know, this is the lever to pull to make the point.

32:51Katy Balls: Just about wraps it up for this week, Katie. But so other than spending a couple of days in delightful, the Lone Star States and following the Republican Midterm Convention, have you, what's on your agenda now that America is back in full swing after its long summer break? Yeah, well, I was in DC last night. I'm now obviously in Dallas. And I went to the GB News two-year anniversary party, which had Nigel Farage as the guest of honour, along with Tom Homan. He was a guest speaker who obviously is working on the border policy for the Trump administration. And it was an interesting crowd because obviously quite a lot of people had already got to Dallas.

33:34So it wasn't quite as starry as the year before where you had Howard Lutnick, Caroline Lever and others in attendance, but there was an admin presence. And I think in the messages, it felt as though one of the things Tom Homan, Trump's borders are, was making the point on was he was saying that he thought that immigration, border policy, success, bringing down border crossings is probably one of the big achievements for the Trump administration to date. But his concern was so much of it has to be done on executive orders, that if they lose, you know, Congress, if the lawmakers get their way, so much as this is going to be undone.

34:15And therefore, I think just the sense of, obviously, it's the midterm convention this week. But I think in lots of the things kind of we're going to in the events we're seeing, just this growing sense that perhaps the party, you know, the peak of this Trump second term is passing and they're going to be coming up with a lot more problems in the next two years, which will be, you know, losing that grip on power. But with that, do join us again next Wednesday.

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35:52We'll see you next time. new. Go to shipstation.com and use code audio and get 30 days free.