Trump's midterm circus

0:00There's just this sense that the dashboard is flashing red for Republicans right now. It's just a question, really, when you speak to them about how bad things are going to be.

0:10Hello and welcome to the State of It USA, the podcast from The Times and The Sunday Times that makes sense of Donald Trump's America. I'm Gerry Baker, columnist for The Times and editor-at-large of The Wall Street Journal. I'm Katie Balls, Washington editor and columnist for The Times and The Sunday Times. On this week's episode, we're now in the final stretch till polling day. on Tuesday next week voters will go to the polls in the midterms and we'll find out how true to life all the predictions and polls in advance are there's lots of fears on the Republican side still there's some talk they may be actually stemming the bleeding and Democrats are cautiously optimistic but one I think source of intrigue is Donald Trump's own schedule he has been on his big tour but he cancelled a few rallies and instead saying that he'd be doing telly rallies, which would be a better use of his time.

1:00He was asked by a reporter about this and whether it was down to his health and did not take the question very well at all. Now we're hearing he may do those rallies again. We'll also be looking at the state of play and what the Democrats want to do, impeachment or no impeachment, if they do succeed in taking back the House and potentially the Senate too. Now, Gerry, to begin, we have had these Trump rallies for several weeks now. Grueling tools. You see the president getting back to the White House often at one or two in the morning, talking to his fans about a range of topics. There's a particular focus on bottoms at the moment after Nicki Minaj appeared on one.

1:39But he also seems to be a little bit scrappy.

1:53Look at this guy. He's way out of shape. He said, you're not going to Kansas, sir. Are you feeling well? You've been following me for two weeks. I feel perfect. You are disgusting. Put yourself in shape. You look like hell. I told the people, they didn't know this. Here's a great S, very powerful S. By the way, I looked at one hell of a beautiful S before, Nicki Minaj. Jerry, what do you make of it? Is this a president who's just a little bit tired from touring too much? Or is this someone who is getting a bit worried about the result? Well, it's interesting, Katie. I mean, on the one hand, you know, as you said, this slightly curious and mildly entertaining fixation on various people's posteriors.

2:37There's just an element of the entertainer about Trump, right? There just always is. And one can't deny that he is quite entertaining. And I think he sort of lighted on this rather bizarre observation about one of the Republican candidates' backsides and sort of then decided this was kind of a funny meme that he was going to just go on about. But the other stuff you heard there, in particular, the tetchy kind of response to the reporter talking, by the way, does seem to have a bit of a fixation on people's physiques. And the way he responds to that reporter when asked it's anything to do with his health does rather suggest that, yeah, the internal messaging that the Republicans are getting, and I'm hearing this too, I'm sure you are, is very much the same as the external polls, which is next week is going to be bad.

3:21I've just been in Texas this week. I think that that race is also one where you speak to Republicans and they do worry that it is heading in a very negative place for them. And I think there's just this sense that the dashboard is flashing red for Republicans right now. All the things that they want to be looking for are not going in their favor. But yet, I think one of the things that we've spoken about before is even the Democrats in Texas do not want to get ahead of themselves because they feel as though they've been stung before in the past and the polls could be wrong. And therefore, you have a situation where I think, you know, it's a holding pattern.

3:59But the Republicans, it's just a question really when you speak to them about how bad things are going to be, as opposed to, you know, had they managed to stem the bleeding to the point that this isn't going to be this blue tsunami being the phrase and it's going to be something a bit more modest. And I think when kind of looking at how they're going to judge that, I think it's interesting, for example. So James Blair is the White House advisor. He's been sent to run the midterm campaigns. And there was a big piece this week with some of his colleagues saying, you know, how good he was, how effectively he'd come up with a campaign, but the Iran war had changed his campaign.

4:37So it does feel as though people are trying to get their excuses in early, ahead of what's going to play out probably on Wednesday, Thursday next week, which is going to be a blame game. I'll just enter one caveat. Well, there's the obvious caveat about the polling has been wrong in the past. And the other thing, to be fair, is that, look, the House, Democrats should win the House. I mean, in every midterm election, the party that's not in the White House makes advances in the House has only happened, not happened once in the last sort of 40 years. They should win the House by anywhere between, you know, a dozen seats and maybe 30 seats.

5:07And they probably will. The Senate is still, I think, really interesting and up for grabs, not necessarily because polling is wrong, but because almost all of those Senate races are still really tight. Texas is still pretty tight. Alaska is pretty tight. Ohio's maybe not so tight. Maine seems fairly close. Michigan seems fairly close. These are the key states now. And it's not impossible that Republicans could kind of pull it out in all of them. We should talk briefly, Katie, about, you know, talking about, you know, how these races, fine edge, knife edge races can be affected by, you know, kind of unexpected things.

5:41We should just talk a little bit about Alaska and the news that we had this week. Alaska is a Republican held Senate seat, again, usually pretty deep red, although Democrats have one there in the recent past. Alaska's incumbent Sullivan is a man called Dan Sullivan. He's being challenged by a House member called Mary Peltola for the Democrats. It's always been somewhat fishy that there's a that on the ballot in the primary and there and now in the general election is another Dan Sullivan, a man with the identical name, which looks suspiciously like an attempt by him or others to confuse some voters into voting for him and not for the incumbent Republican.

6:18Now, The New York Times, to their credit, reported this week that not only, you know, was this a plot by him, this was a plot by Democrats. Democrats actually recruited a man with the exact same name, Dan Sullivan, to get on the ballot to confuse Republican voters so that a number of small number enough, but in a tight race enough Republican voters would vote for the wrong man by accident, would vote for the wrong Dan Sullivan. You know, this is I mean, the Trump Department, Trump Justice Department, of course, inevitably is now investigating this and is calling on a judge to invalidate the result.

6:50If the if the Democrat does win and certainly if there are enough votes for the other Dan Sullivan that it might have made a difference. That's ridiculous. This is not not illegal. It's campaign dirty tricks. It's the kind of thing they do all the time. But to me, I think it's kind of stunningly stupid by the Democrats to have done this, Because if you're pitching yourself, as Democrats are, to the American people on the grounds that, you know, we've got to stop this terrible manipulation of our political system, this terrible abuse of our system by these terrible Republicans who are doing these awful things.

7:19and you then get caught doing something again, which to be clear is not illegal, but is incredibly cynical and manipulative and frankly, you know, dubious in terms of in terms of its ethics, then, you know, you could end up you could you could lose that seat and they could that, you know, in a close race, in a closely held Senate that could end up costing them the race. So I do still think the Senate is on something of an eye-fetched and very much vulnerable to these, you know, rather strange and, you know, potentially self-inflicted wounds. Yeah. And Dan Sullivan, you mentioned, the independent, also did basically no campaign events, is basically a hermit who, when journalists want to find him, have to travel to his very remote house and knock on his door.

8:03So there's little to suggest, even before The New York Times reporting, that he was embracing running as an independent. But I think you're right, Gerry. It's a sense of murkiness, which means, you know, as you say, this is not technically illegal. Is it going to be something which puts some voters off getting out to vote for the Democrat candidate? And also, is it going to mean that even if the Democrat candidate wins, there's a bit of a stink about it and the sense of, you know, because one thing, of course, that everyone is waiting to see is will Donald Trump accept the results of the midterms?

8:35are we going to see a drawn out process where votes are contested? I think Donald Trump has said he will accept them if he thinks the results are fair. How do you intend to work with Democrats if they have control of the House? We'll figure a way. Look, I have strong veto. I hope that that won't be the case. But if it is, that's happened before with many presidents. You have strong veto and you end up working in deals. And you'll respect the results, whatever happens? I will if they're on a selection. And Jerry, we're going to look at what the Democrats are planning. if things do go the way they want in the midterms.

9:08When we look at the midterm campaign, I mean, we have JD Vance, who's obviously been out campaigning. It does feel as though every other week or maybe every three days, there's an unfortunate clip of JD Vance being asked a question. So for example, this week, I think we can hear a clip. He was asked by a young male voter, you know, I voted for you guys in 2024. You, however, you said no more wars, no more forever wars and now we have Iran and J.D. Mutt's having to field that. While I understand the frustration about foreign misadventures in the Middle East I served in Iraq that's one of the main reasons why I got involved politically is because I was so sick of this stuff.

9:47We've been involved in Iran in some form for seven months the United States has been dealing with Iran for 47 years and I promise you that Donald Trump is not going to let Iran become a forever war. You also have Marco Rubio who seems to have been slightly forced onto the stage, traveling with Trump to some rallies as his national security advisor and then being called up. Do you think when we think about the prism of 2028, which Republicans are, if any, you know, have been upped or hurt by this campaign? Yeah, it's a good question. Look, the more I see events, the less impressed I am with him as a politician.

10:23You know, he's such he tries to be Donald Trump, and yet he's so obviously not Donald Trump. Again, you can love or hate Donald Trump. Most people probably watching and listening to this hate him. I'm not a big fan myself, but he has a unique qualities, a personality that is engaging, that enables him to say outrageous things and somehow get away with it, whatever that is. And then Vance does this stuff and he's just a really poor communicator, a really poor speaker. There was another incident, Katie, which I just heard about just last night when he was campaigning in Montana. This is classic, classic JD Vance.

11:01He was talking about and the capital of Montana is called Helena. Sorry, it's called Helena. And he kept and he referred a couple of times. He said, you know, all these politicians in Helena. And then apparently there was just like a big shout from the audience. It's Helena. He is from Helena. He led the largest income tax in state history. Sorry, he's not from Helena. Helena. Thank you. It's the kind of thing, again, Donald Trump could have got wrong and then made a joke about it, right? He didn't, he had vanished and sort of smiled and kind of, you know, corrected himself. I just think he's a really poor campaigner who does not connect with people.

11:40And I think that's going to, I think the Republicans are going to be in real difficulty because he is the front runner. They've never, ever an incumbent Republican vice president who sought the party's nomination has never failed to win it. He has huge advantages. He's going to have money advantages. He's got all his friends in Silicon Valley and everywhere else. But they're going to realize that this man, A, they're going to have the continuing problem of Trump's unpopularity and a vice president who is tied at the hip to the president is going to have real problems winning a general election.

12:09But B, they're just going to realize what a poor candidate he is and what a poor communicator he is. And I think that's been, again, one of the lessons of this campaign. Look, is Rubio going to run? We don't know. Are some of these others going to be out there? You know, Ron DeSantis is clearly going to run. Ted Cruz is going to run. Some of them have been campaigning. I think, look, the big question, Katie, is how much do they, obviously not Vance, but how much do the other candidates try to put a little bit of distance between themselves and Trump? That's going to be the trickiest proposition that I think any candidate has ever had.

12:40Because on the one hand, you know, they're going to be they are going to be running. They know how dominant he is in the Republican Party. If they publicly criticize him in any way, he can slap them down and just ruin their chances. But they also know that they have to be able to offer some kind of alternative to what is a very, very unpopular presidency right now and one that even among Republicans is getting, you know, is not getting the kind of spectacular marks you'd think. So that's good to me is going to be one of the most interesting things to watch in the weeks and months after the election.

13:07Yeah, because I think no matter what the result is next week, no one really doubts that Trump is still going to have the grip on his party. And we saw that in the primaries. And therefore you have this awkward dance that we're going to have to do. And even Kamala Harris, we know, found it very difficult as vice president. I think she said her biggest regret was when she asked, what would you do differently? And she said nothing. Even having said that, Joe Biden felt she was disloyal at points in that campaign, even though I think in retrospect, she was too loyal, not going after him at all. And yet Trump is going to be five times that, if not more, in terms of taking offense, if there's anything to slightly say, you're going off course.

13:48And I think it's notable that Trump now keeps being asked if Vance is the heir apparent and finding lots of ways to say that he's not making a decision yet. But with that, we'll be back after the break. We'll be talking about what the Democrats plan to do if they succeed in taking back the House and perhaps even the Senate. You save, you invest, you keep an eye on spending. So why do your finances still feel so complicated? Quicken helps you put the whole picture together and make sense of what to do next. Connect accounts from more than 14 ,000 financial institutions and see how all the different pieces of your financial life fit together.

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14:38Welcome back. Well, we're still a few days away from the midterm elections, and no one should assume anything. We have made those mistakes, mistakes like that before, but it would be something extraordinary, as we've said, if the Democrats did not take the House on Tuesday, and they have a pretty good shot of taking the Senate too. So the strong likelihood is that beginning on January the 3rd, assuming there are no attempts to nullify the elections, and we will talk about that a little bit too, on January the 3rd, when the new Congress takes office, there will be a Democratic majority in at least one House of Congress.

15:11And we're going to just spend a little bit of time exploring what that might mean. Katie, so, you know, again, much will depend on the size of the majority for Democrats and indeed whether it is in both houses. But at a minimum, they are going to pursue all kinds of investigations into Donald Trump, which, of course, has not been happening over the last two years because Republicans have controlled the House. They will have subpoena power committees. The various committees doing their investigations will be able, will have the lawful power to summon members of the administration, probably not the president, the president and vice president.

15:47That's they're constitutionally separate and protected, but everybody else will be called and will be required to give testimony under oath about everything from and we can expect investigation into the pretty well rampant corruption that we've seen, but also some important policy stuff. There will be doubtless serious investigations into the deliberations that went into going to war with Iran, into some of the other policy decisions that have been made, perhaps over immigration enforcement and things like that. So, you know, we can expect at minimum a an extended period of politically charged investigations led by Democrats with legal with to some extent legal enforcement potential.

16:28and as you said earlier, ultimately perhaps resulting in the president's impeachment. But I don't know, Katie, you're there in Washington, you talk to a lot of people. How seriously do Democrats plan to pursue these investigations? Are they worried about looking overly politically motivated? I think there's a live debate and there's definitely excitement at the prospect of being back in power in some form if it comes to pass. But there's also a little bit of trepidation because obviously then the attention's back on them. And do the Democrats look like an angry rabble who can't agree with what they plan to do?

17:04Or do they look organized and as though they, as you say, are speaking to the concerns of everyday voters? I think you look to John Ossoff in Georgia and all some of the things, for example, El Saeed in Michigan has been saying. And the way that they would like to do these investigations into corruption is you tie corruption to how people are feeling at home. So, you know, the feeling is you can go after, grift some of these, you know, eye-watering deals, money towards the White House ballroom, you know, is one of the ones where it might be harder to go for family members of Trump world. You could start by going for the donors for the White House ballroom, going for those companies.

17:43Lots of these companies are now consulting public affairs lawyers about how they should approach potentially being called in for an investigation to be subpoenaed. The thing where there is a big debate right now is impeachment. And everyone expects, obviously, Hakeem Jeffries to be the Speaker of the House if it comes to pass. And therefore, how will Hakeem Jeffries command his party? How will he speak to the different factions? Obviously, some of this comes down to the numbers. but certainly he's been doing an interesting dance on impeachment because there are a lot of democrats who don't think it is a good idea to waste time on trying to impeach the president largely for some of the things that you just said jerry which is does it actually do anything is it largely performative where did it get the democrats last time donald trump was re-elected but it's something which uh they think the republicans can weaponize and that's why when you hear about impeachment i think there'll be an effort to try and say to some of these Democrats, don't waste your time on it.

18:41But they are talking about a different person to impeach, and that is Pete Hegseth. The idea that the Secretary of War is an easier target. You can make it about lots of his behavior. You can link it to what's happening in Iran. And they think that this could be more fruitful for them. On the one hand, I think Democrats taking Congress and pursuing impeachments and doing all of that could be quite good news for Donald Trump. because for all the reasons we've said, it won't look like they're really dealing with the issues that the American people are concerned about and they're just pursuing their own political issues, which most Americans don't care about.

19:15Most of the controversial stuff Trump has done in his first two years has been done by executive order. He will continue to do that. If they pass any legislation, certainly if they do have control of both houses of Congress and they do things like, for example, Paul, one thing that's been talked about is maybe starving the military of resources to pursue the war in Iran. Trump can just veto that. So, you know, on one level, he can he can use the next two years, even though he presumably won't be running in 2028. He or the Republicans can use the next two years to say Democrats have spent two years.

19:49They had a great chance to sort of come together and do something great for the country. And they just absolutely they tried to, you know, take us down. And that, you know, running against Congress has often been a good thing for presidents or vice presidents to do in the past. Against all that, though, Katie, I think, and this is based on some conversations I've had with some people who are close to the administration, but also one or two Democrats who are planning to lead some of these investigations. I think some of this stuff that they will investigate will actually could look really, really bad.

20:18We know, again, some of the allegations that have been made about members of Trump's family or people close to Trump that we've seen recently, the Kimberly Guilfoyle stuff, the ambassador to Greece who was forced to resign, stuff that's come out about the Kennedy Trump Center with Richard Grinnell and Alina Haber, a big sort of Trump supporter and donor. we've started to get some of that as well as the the bigger stuff about allegations about um trump family members and wick costy wick cost family members and deals that they've managed to achieve miraculously uh at the same time as doing sort of middle eastern diplomacy and diplomacy with others all of that remember has come out thankfully largely due to journalistic efforts right it's mostly been reporting by journalists with no assist from congress which has power if Democrats do take control and they will have all the powers that Congress has with all of the staff and all of the legal authorities that they'll have.

21:16I think there's a lot more to come out, I suspect. There's a kind of, you know, iceberg theory of scandals, which is the stuff that, you know, the public sees initially is only a fraction of what there is. And look, there'll be to some extent there'll be an eyes glazing over thing. People are kind of familiar with the Trump stuff. They don't like it. They do think it's it's been pretty corrupt. But there'll be more of this. No, we don't. You know, we're not. It's not going to change the way we think about things. The stuff that could really change is whether or not there are national security implications that start to come out.

21:44And, you know, again, I want to be careful what I say because, you know, I don't want to defame anybody. But if there's if there's evidence, you know, again, this is this is some of the stuff that's come out around Kimberley Guilfoyle. If there's evidence that people got favors from the administration, foreigners got favors from the administration fundamentally in exchange for money or other things that those people wanted, we could start to see some really ugly stuff about what exactly administration has been doing for the last two years, wittingly or unwittingly, in terms of America's foreign policy and national interests in exchange for a number of people enriching themselves.

22:22And I think that's to me, that's the that's the real danger here, not just for Republicans and for Trump, but actually for the country. So, again, I'm not saying it's true. I'm not saying it's definitely happened. But that is definitely the kind of stuff that Democrats are going to be most aggressive about digging into. Yeah. And I think already just even in D.C., there's been many cases of, you know, friends of Trump world making money for advising foreign governments. and are they registering that in a correct way? And then obviously the higher you get up the chain when it comes to deals or cuts.

22:58Now, we know that the president is someone who likes to mix business and foreign policy. I think it's interesting that in the past couple of weeks, for example, Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, has become very active on social media because he's saying he's going to fight back against reports about him. And I think there is the level of scrutiny we're about to get aided by these things when it comes to the Trump family and how you have Donald Trump Jr. obviously with the Russian wedding. There's a story this week about him going hunting with that member in Putin's world. So if it starts to get to the national security point, maybe that is what is going to move the dial from just, oh, we didn't think they were in it for us anyway.

23:44Two quick things. One, we really, you know, we do have to raise the question of whether or not, you know, as he did in 2020, Trump will challenge the results and declare them, in fact, to be fraudulent, stop the steal too, as I refer to it in my column in the Times today. Look, I think we're seeing obviously some signs already that the administration, we talked about Alaska and the effort that they've made there. They've been pushing very hard on sort of legal channels to force states like California in other states to kind of, you know, aggressively police their voter rolls to make sure that illegal immigrants and things like that don't vote.

24:24So far, all that's legal. A little bit sort of, you know, leaves a slightly questionable taste in the mouth. The question really will be, if we get to Wednesday and the Democrats have won a big majority in the House and maybe a majority in the Senate, you know, do we see really serious efforts? There have been lots of hints, as I say, of this. I'm you know obviously we all must be hopeful that that doesn't happen but are you hearing anything about what you think Trump and his allies may do in the events of defeat in terms of maybe trying to negate the results? Well we know that we had one Trump ally so it's a childhood friend of Trump talking about how there would have to be martial law in the event of a rigged election We also know that the Save America Act has not been passed.

25:10So I think that you can see spaces where Trump could find the opportunity to. But until those results come in, we just don't know. But I think Democrats certainly think that there are going to be some tricks before they get to the result that they want. The other quick thing, just Katie, on and again, you know, you're there in Washington reporting, you hear this. All the indications seem to be, I shouldn't say all the indications, There are strong indications that after Tuesday, Trump may resume a sort of, you know, outright military hostilities with Iran now that he will no longer be burdened by any political risks of higher oil prices.

25:48That, you know, there's been talks of movement of troops there. We get these sort of warnings coming out from the Middle East. You know, there's been movement of there's been talk of Iranian attacks. and movement and warnings to American staff based in the Middle East to get out. Do you think, what do you think? Do you think we're going to see a resumption of hostilities? Well, there's definitely been a sense, and Trump even said this out loud, I think in his anger speech, he said, well, you know, they don't think I'm going to do anything until after the midterms, and after the midterms I might make a deal or I might bomb again.

26:21So he has spoken out loud about what his strategy is. So it does feel as though something's going to have to shift. But I think before we get to, you know, escalation, We know that the Trump administration often likes to float the idea. Sometimes there's a tactic to then try and walk it back. But so I think the most we can say is, you know, they will they will want to be doing something once this ends, because there has just been a sense that they weren't going to move the dial much. And yes, that could be escalation. It could also be trying to get around the negotiating table. Yeah, I've always thought that, you know, as we've talked about before, sort of second term presidents tend to do in their final two years, they tend to focus a lot on foreign policy.

26:59And I think he I think there's a lot of things he wants to get done, some of which might be good, some of which might be a little scary. So it'll be it will be an interest. And by the way, if he is kind of bogged down in domestic, you know, political stuff with investigations and impeachment and stuff, that's another, as we've seen in the past. Wag the dog, it's called, is another very attractive way of diverting attention away from domestic political stuff to national security. So wouldn't be so surprised if we see quite a lot of activity on that front. So we will be back next week, the morning after the night before the episode going through all the results of the results that we have and the results that have or have not been accepted.

27:38And, Gerry, just before we go, you've obviously a midterm veteran. in. What are your tips for those who are thinking of staying up or where to watch? Well, Katie, the first polls actually close quite early in the evening on the East Coast time. We should have a pretty clear idea of how the House is going because, again, Democrats don't need to make many gains. Many of the seats that are up where Democrats hope to win are in the sort of eastern time zone where the early polls close relatively early. Put it this way, if we don't know, kind of late evening, you know, late hours in the day on Tuesday night, you know, 9, 10, 11 o 'clock midnight here on Tuesday night.

28:21If we still are uncertain whether the Democrats have taken the House at that point, that will be pretty good news for the Republicans, because it will mean that Democrats are not making the kind of gains that they were expected to. But we probably, you know, by about midnight Eastern time, we probably have a pretty good sense of which way the House is going, especially if the Democrats are going to take it. The Senate, the competitive states, Maine, Ohio, Michigan, Texas, will start getting those results late in the evening. If they're close and all the polling suggests so far that they will be close, that could go late into the well late into the night, into the early hours of Wednesday.

28:57And possibly not. We may not know. And you've got Alaska, which we've talked about, is a swing state. You know, if it's really close, if it's kind of a 50-50 Senate scenario, it may be well into Wednesday before we actually know the outcome in the Senate. But again, if Democrats are having a really good night, that should be clear in the Senate as well as in the House by certainly by the early hours of Wednesday morning at the latest. Well, do join us next week for all of the above.

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