Show full transcript 1:17 and Kansas. 1:18 So how did Donald Trump go from winning his first popular vote victory ever to in less 1:24 than two years when it now looks like it could be an electoral wipeout for Republicans? 1:28 Sarah Longwell is a political consultant and the founder and publisher of The Bull Work. 1:32 And since the 2016 election, she has conducted hundreds of focus groups with thousands of 1:38 voters across the political spectrum, which have become this really extraordinary source 1:43 of qualitative evidence of how voters have evolved in the Trump era, particularly voters 1:47 who have leaned towards Trump and maybe now don't. Longwell is also the host of the Focus Group 1:53 podcast. You can hear some of these groups there, an author of the recent book, How to Eat an Elephant. 1:59 She joins me now. Sarah Longwell, welcome to the show. 2:09 Thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here. 2:11 All right. So Donald Trump takes office again in 2025, January. His approval rating is 2:16 above 50%. He has his biggest electoral victory ever. He's now at 37.5%. I think you've probably 2:25 personally done more focus groups with Trump voters of different flavors and variants than 2:30 anybody else in America. So what happened? 2:35 It's easy. Actually, this is like, this is the easiest question in politics right 2:39 now, which is Donald Trump made some very specific choices and they were his choices 2:43 and everyone knows they were his choices. The first one was when he did all of the unilateral tariffs, 2:48 didn't consult Congress, just got into trade wars with a whole bunch of people, and the second 2:55 thing was starting the war with Iran. And so those two things, voters identify completely with 3:02 Trump. You can't say Joe Biden did that. You can't say it was someone else, Congress, there 3:08 There was nothing else. 3:09 Each state went to war on Iran. 3:10 Donald Trump made these choices, and voters know it. 3:14 And the consequences of both have been to raise prices for the American people at a time when 3:19 they elected Donald Trump to do one thing, which was lower prices. 3:24 And as a secondary matter, they said, no more stupid wars. 3:28 And so the voters right now recognize that their life's not getting better and that 3:33 Donald Trump has broken his promises. 3:35 And so that is the easiest way to explain what's happening right now tariffs were a promise from Donald Trump 3:40 I mean he ran for office saying again and again and again tariffs on everyone tariffs in all directions 3:46 I can imagine if you're him you look at your tariff policy as promises kept 3:52 So when you know his supporters tell you what they don't like about them. What do they say? Well the thing about 4:00 voters is that they are often not interested in the policy minutia of how one gets to a place. 4:08 They're just saying, what are we going to do to lower prices? You know, the thing 4:12 I find has changed my relationship with voters is that the first thing we do is we ask people, 4:18 how do you think things are going in the country? Every focus group every single 4:22 time doesn't matter. Left, right or center. People say bad. And then the immediately 4:27 They start talking about the prices of something they talk about the prices of gas the prices of beef 4:33 But they talk about something they did I walked into the store today and the beef cost 4:38 X dollars and that's two dollars more than it did and it wasn't even the good stuff like Americans don't necessarily connect 4:46 Policy rhetoric to the outcome. They live through something see the outcome and then they decide how they feel about it 4:52 I'm not point about the ground beef 4:53 if I wanna play a clip that your team shared with me 4:56 from one of the focus groups. 4:57 This is someone who voted for Trump in 2024. 5:00 I gross reshop every week. 5:03 So like, I know when prices are going down and up 5:06 and like, I'm like, he's lying. 5:08 Like, nothing has changed. 5:10 Okay, maybe the eggs like have gone down, 5:13 but like that's it. 5:14 I've never paid $9 for ground beef before ever. 5:18 You know, like even the good kind. 5:20 So that that is really, really crazy and getting very scary and it's just like I really thought that it was going to be about us here at home. 5:30 When that woman says to you, I really thought it was going to be about us here at home. 5:35 What did she think? What did the people who swung towards Trump in 2024 see in him that they hadn't seen maybe in 2020? 5:43 This is the promise of America first. 5:46 America First has a lot of sort of racist origins, but for the voters, America First is 5:55 an idea that the president is going to prioritize them, Mr. and Mrs. American, and they like that 6:01 promise. They like the idea of we are not going to send all this money to other places. And I 6:06 hear versions of this in basically every group that I do, which is we want to be taken care of, 6:13 we want money spent on our schools. 6:15 It's interesting actually watching Abdul El Sayed 6:17 because he's doing a version of this right now, 6:20 his own version of America first. 6:22 Often when he gets asked the question about Israel 6:24 is to say, I don't want our money going overseas. 6:27 I want it spent here in Michigan. 6:29 I want it spent on our schools 6:30 on taking care of our people. 6:32 I'm opposed to unconditional military aid for any country. 6:36 That is Israel, yes, but that's also Egypt 6:37 where my family immigrated from. 6:39 That's Pakistan, that's Saudi Arabia, that's UIE. 6:41 That's not because of a focus on what's happening anywhere except for a focus on what's happening here. 6:47 We've got communities in my state where the median income is $14,000 and I believe they have a right 6:53 to their tax dollars. That is something that appeals to Americans deeply. They say, yes, 6:59 we want to be taken care of. They feel like in the big maelstrom of conversations that so often, 7:05 whether it's sort of the weird social issues that people get wrapped around the axle about 7:11 or whether it's the big geopolitical questions that politicians are always talking about, 7:16 really what they want to know is, what are you going to do for me? And I think that that disconnect 7:21 between people that we talk about as elites, but let's just say you and I, we should admit this. 7:29 We do not walk into the grocery store and say, I can't buy this now because it's two dollars 7:35 more expensive. Nobody in Congress has that experience. Nobody who is in a lot of decision-making 7:41 authority has that experience. And so it is so easy to forget that that is the thing everybody wants. 7:48 I think this is a problem that ends up afflicting both sides. It happened to the 7:54 Biden administration, you know, in their term now it's happening to Trump, which is it 7:58 You get elected, and the voters who crucially put you over the top, not your kind of big 8:06 base of voters who are always going to vote for you, but the people who made the difference 8:09 in the election, they hire you to do often a job that is maybe not the job that you're 8:16 most excited about doing, you know, voters want lower prices. 8:20 They're maybe not as bought in on climate change questions as Democrats are. 8:24 And there are all these people around you who have your ear, who in fact do not have 8:30 problems buying groceries in the grocery store. 8:33 They have things they're much more excited about doing. 8:36 And so you have this like constant pressure to like get off the course of what the swing 8:42 voters wanted from you. 8:45 And that seems to me to be a lot of the Trump story here. 8:48 He won because inflation was high, but he didn't really care about inflation. 8:53 Like, that's not what gets him out of bed in the morning. 8:55 No, what gets Donald Trump out of bed in the morning is Donald Trump's interests in enriching 9:01 himself. 9:01 And this, though, goes back to the earlier question of why do Americans think that Donald 9:08 Trump is in it for them? 9:11 The way that I heard so many voters characterize it is that the process was so slow and sclerotic. 9:19 They felt like nothing was changing and the way that politicians talked all sounded the same 9:24 but mostly they thought 9:26 this guy is a businessman and 9:28 This is what Donald Trump pitched all the time. I'm gonna cut deals for you. I know how this system works 9:34 It's rigged against you. I'm going to unrig it and 9:37 Voters really did think whether it was because of the apprentice and I cannot tell you how important the apprentice is 9:43 And was to the lore that sort of system by 2024. It was so important 9:47 And he lived in their living rooms at the top of a board room where he made decisions 9:53 about business. 9:54 And that is what voters really internalized about Donald Trump. 9:58 And so when inflation was high, they thought he was going to come in and in some way that 10:02 is magic from him, like the Kool-Aid man bust through the window and say, here I'm 10:08 going to lower grocery prices on day one. 10:10 They think he sort of has some secret sauce that allows him to do that when, of course, 10:15 it is just a lie. 10:16 Why? 10:17 He couldn't do it. 10:18 There are a lot of ways that I think the people who interpret politics publicly, my job, for 10:24 instance, end up having a lot of trouble understanding voters. 10:30 And one of the ways, I think, is that we think of the primary divide in the electorate 10:35 as left-right. 10:36 But the primary divide in politics, I always think, is between interested and uninterested. 10:40 it. 10:41 The hardcore left and the hardcore right, MAGA, the liberals, resistance, whatever it is, 10:46 they're all interested. 10:48 They're all following some kind of media source constantly. 10:52 But a lot of voters don't like politics and are not that interested. 10:56 And so I like that you talk about the different ways that people who decide elections but do 11:08 difference in the electorate and how they then understand what is happening. 11:13 We talk in political science terms always. We're always slicing and dicing the electorate, 11:20 and we often talk about low information voters. And I always think that that is 11:27 an unfair term to people who are just not sick in the head like us, right? Who are not 11:33 following everything who don't let their nervous systems be hijacked on a daily basis by the 11:39 vicissitudes of the political wrangling. Low neuroticism voters. Yeah, that's right. I think 11:45 it's a perfectly acceptable thing to be like, actually, I'm going to focus on my family and 11:50 getting my kids out the door. And then I've got to go to a job that's quite demanding and both 11:55 parents and the household are working. So one of the things we talk about in the focus groups 11:59 all the time. We always ask where do people get their information. And it is unsatisfying I think 12:06 now because it used to be people would be pretty clear. They're like, I watch Fox News or I watch CNN. 12:11 I read this newspaper. I read The New York Times or I read my local newspaper. And the majority 12:16 of people often actually would say that they watch their local news. But now what people 12:20 mostly say is I don't know where I saw that. The way that they scroll on Instagram or TikTok 12:26 talk is like an algorithm driven information environment where they mostly wanted basketball 12:33 or sports. But you know, then there's Stephen A Smith is talking and he's talking about politics. 12:38 And so this is why when people said the left needs its own Joe Rogan, they tend to reach for 12:45 people who are actually political pundits. But that's not what Joe Rogan is. Joe Rogan is a 12:50 comedian who mostly, I mean, I don't watch a ton of his content, but I do think there's a 12:55 fair amount of like getting stoned and figuring out like who would win a shark or a gorilla 13:00 if they fought each other. And then they have a guest and the guest says whatever and 13:04 Joe Rogan really doesn't challenge him because he's not a subject expert matter in much 13:09 because that's about culture. There are cultural people all over the place where 13:14 politics is injected, you know, there used to be this phrase, politics is downstream 13:19 stream from culture. And I think increasingly the overlap between politics and culture combines 13:25 into something that is a deeply non political science term, which we would call a vibe. 13:31 And that vibe is what a lot of the low information voters are getting, something that washes 13:38 over them, that is sort of algorithmically injected into the cultural things that they 13:43 imbibe. 13:44 See more about that. 13:45 What changes in politics or what have you watched change in politics as it's become more in 13:52 your language here, vibe-oriented? 13:54 I think it's the big difference between news seekers and news receivers. 14:01 I think we used to live in a world where you spent time with the news and it was a 14:06 specific time. 14:07 You sat down at the breakfast table and you read a newspaper. 14:09 You watched the evening news. 14:11 You made sort of time for the news. 14:13 And I just think that the news receiver means 14:18 I didn't sit down to find something out. 14:20 Information just washed over me. 14:22 And there was no mechanism to verify it. 14:25 There was no, is this true? 14:28 Does it even matter to me? 14:29 I just, it just like flashes over them. 14:32 And so they wake up with an opinion 14:34 without any idea of how it was formed. 14:37 So I want to talk about something that seems to have begun breaking through. 14:40 through. And I don't really know why it's finally breaking through now, but it is. Corruption. 14:48 I want to play a clip from a Trump voter talking about corruption and how it's sort of changed 14:54 in his view. 14:55 I'm a Republican. I'm just saying he's front and center now, right? And he's just blatant 15:01 with corruption. But like, we tolerated corruption in a way or looked the other way, even their 15:08 their own politicians look the other way at each other but because it was more minimal or more 15:13 obscure every now and then you heard of a big corruption thing here or there whatever a pay 15:16 for play but now it's just like bang like he just doesn't blatantly he just says he wants to do 15:23 you know he's investing in crypto his sons are invested in in drones you know with the war before 15:29 just before the war started with iran it's just like it's ridiculous it's so obvious and blatant 15:35 know. See this Fox News poll from October, asked voters how concerned they were about key issues. 15:41 More expressed concern over corruption in government than any other issue. It came out 15:46 higher in this Fox News poll than prices and healthcare, the war in Iran and immigration. 15:51 Why is corruption, which has just been constant in the Trump administration? 15:57 And I was watching corruption in polls through the whole administration waiting for it to 16:01 attain salience. And it was just like, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. And then 16:06 suddenly, like, we get to it being a top issue. What broke through? 16:09 It's prices again. So everything comes back to people's relationship to the economy, 16:15 which is, and this is a bummer, actually, of an observation. But the American people, 16:23 especially Trump voters and more low information voters, would probably let Trump get away with. 16:29 And in fact, we know they would. He was doing a lot of corrupt things in his first term. 16:33 People didn't really care. You couldn't get them to care about how much he was spending on golf or 16:37 having big meetings at all of his hotels. Or the insane crypto stuff during the 2024 election. 16:42 That was the one I always thought was crazy, the Trump family getting involved in crypto 16:47 scams, meme coins during the election. They don't care. In the kind of like post-electoral 16:53 period. But again, it comes down to people's relationship with their own 16:57 money. Whereas they thought Trump could do something for them. And you can see this, 17:02 especially with really people who are super engaged on the crypto stuff that they think 17:05 they can make some money off of Trump. They don't care about his corruption. The reason 17:10 that corruption is breaking through right now is for two reasons. The first is people 17:15 are suffering economically. And so all of Trump's focus on his ballroom on the reflecting 17:21 pool, it strikes voters as they're frustrated that he is not focused on them, he's focused on himself. 17:28 But also the enriching themselves, which is becoming difficult to ignore because it's so out in the 17:32 open, when people are not doing well, they're angrier about it. The second reason though that 17:37 corruption has gotten so is now like a very high salience issue. It's the same reason that 17:42 democracy became a high salience issue. So then this is, I think to some of your work on 17:48 polarization is that there's a backlash effect that happens when Democrats start accusing 17:53 Republicans of being corrupt because Donald Trump is doing this brazen corruption. 17:59 The thing that happens for Republicans is that they do the what about. 18:02 And so they say, no, Democrats are corrupt, or they're all corrupt, right? 18:06 And so part of what happens is there's this national conversation where one side 18:11 is accusing the other of something, and so the other side does what about and then 18:14 quickly it becomes a dominant issue. 18:16 So, democracy was another thing where Democrats were accusing Republicans of being a threat 18:23 to democracy after January 6th, but Republicans were accusing Democrats of having stolen 18:27 the election, and pretty soon, democracy is the number one issue. 18:31 And Democrats think, oh, look, everyone cares about democracy, and I'm going, no, no, no, 18:35 no, no. 18:35 They don't care about it the way you want them to care about it. 18:38 The Democrat, who it seemed to me, really figured out how to make the corruption case 18:42 against Trump and get people to pay attention to it, the cycle is John Ossoff. And Ossoff 18:48 in Georgia is fascinating because that should be, in theory, a swing state, it's a close 18:56 state. We don't even talk about it as a swing state the cycle. It's like, is he 19:01 going to beat his opponent by eight points, by 10 points, by 12 points? There's more 19:07 interest in whether he's going to run for president than in whether he's going 19:10 win in Georgia. So what worked there? 19:14 Well, first of all, John Ossoff has the thing. He is a very talented person. He writes those 19:20 speeches himself. He appears to believe it deeply. But he understands something about 19:26 storytelling that I think oftentimes Donald Trump's scale of corruption, scale of venality, 19:36 leaves Democrats sort of sputtering to make the longest list that they can make 19:42 of all of the horrible things and it leaves people just with their arms up. 19:47 John Ossoff, he's taken it slow. He's taken it one bite at a time and he is 19:53 writing to say, hey you've heard about this. Now maybe you saw Trump so desperate 19:58 he's begging Putin for diesel. But listen to this. Maybe they have, maybe 20:05 Maybe they haven't. 20:06 He's inviting them in to a story that he's going to tell, where he's going to give them 20:09 information about what Donald Trump is doing. 20:12 Y'all remember Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, the so-called special envoy responsible 20:19 for diplomacy with Russia and in the Middle East? 20:23 Do you remember the other special envoy, Steve Witkoff, who co-founded the president's 20:27 crooked crypto business, World Liberty? 20:31 Okay, so follow me through on this. 20:32 What Jared and Steve are doing right now is negotiating with Putin to sell 20:40 billions in Russian oil fields and refineries and gas stations to the 20:45 president's friends. You've got Sheikh Tanun, the Emirati spy chief who paid 20:51 half a billion to the Trump-Whitcoff crypto business. Then you've got the 20:56 All-Kyat brothers, two Syrians who are financing Jared and Ivanka's 21:00 multi-billion-dollar Albanian resort project. 21:04 And then the third partner, 21:06 a billionaire mega donor to Trump's campaign. 21:10 Oh, and the U.S. government would take a 15% stake, 21:12 by the way. 21:13 Are you getting the picture? 21:14 He's just very adept at saying, 21:16 I'm gonna walk you through what's happening. 21:19 Amidst a global energy crisis, 21:22 the president's son-in-law 21:24 and the president's business partner 21:26 are brokering the sale of Russian oil fields 21:29 to the first family's friends. The same friends who have poured hundreds of millions of dollars 21:35 into Trump family businesses. They are literally the elites they pretend to hate. 21:42 And more Democrats need to figure out how to talk about this because I do think Americans, 21:47 whether it is all the court cases, like all the lawsuits against Donald Trump, 21:51 I watch it when there is scale, how they get lost in it becomes white noise. It's why 21:58 Hunter Biden, the specifics of it. Republicans can make a meal out of it. But the level of 22:05 Donald Trump's corruption is so big and so multifaceted and so difficult to follow that it can 22:11 become white noise if you don't lay it out step by step. And that's what he's doing. 22:24 If you're not a subscriber to The New York Times, we have some news for you. 22:28 You can now explore The Times for free without any paywalls at all during your first month 22:32 in the New York Times app. 22:38 This podcast is supported by Chevron. 22:40 We rely on energy every day, whether it's the first cup of coffee in the morning, a 22:45 flight home to family, or the lights that come on when you flip a switch. 22:49 But have you ever wondered what it takes to make sure it's there when we need it? 22:53 I'm Tanner Faust and the Energy Tailgate is back with straight talk about the energy 22:58 our lives and world depend on. 23:00 No boardrooms, no jargon, just real conversations. 23:03 This is the Energy Tail Game, new episodes available on Spotify and YouTube. 23:10 This podcast is supported by Edison Electric Institute. 23:14 As a new season starts, the air begins to chill and we set our sights on holiday preparations once again. 23:22 America's electric companies are working safely and responsibly behind the scenes to provide our communities with reliable energy 23:30 that will keep us all safe, warm, and ready for the moments that matter most. 23:36 America's Electric Companies, powering the energy of every day. 23:42 Hey, it's Anna Martin from The New York Times. 23:44 What if I told you you'll never have to hear this line again? 23:48 Wherever you get your podcasts. 23:50 Yeah, no, I actually can't tell you that, but you know what I can tell you? 23:54 A place I think you might want to go. 23:56 It's the Shows tab in the New York Times app. 23:58 The place to listen to and now watch full episodes of New York Times shows. 24:03 The Shows tab. Find it in the New York Times app. 24:07 Explore the Shows tab and follow a show today. 24:12 How much did Epstein matter here? 24:14 I think it mattered in terms of setting up Donald Trump to fail his base immediately. 24:22 One of Donald Trump's promises to his voters was that he was going to be the most transparent 24:29 president in history. 24:31 And this is something that I think people miss about Trump voters' relationship with 24:35 Trump is that they think he's their guy on the inside. 24:39 There's the deep state, there's the elite cabals, and he is there to take it all and 24:45 show it to the American people. 24:46 He's going to share it with you. 24:47 And so they thought Trump was gonna come in and he was gonna open the JFK and the aliens and 24:54 Epstein and he was gonna lay it all bare for the American people and 24:58 For him to not do that not come through on that 25:01 broke trust with a specific strain of Trump voter and many of them were 25:08 Swingier kind of voters. This is one of the early fights 25:11 I had both in the bulwark and other places where people said Epstein's not gonna matter and I was like disagree 25:16 I agree. I hear voters, especially young men, male voters of Donald Trump, talk about it all the time, how mad they are that he has not made them available, and it still comes up now. 25:27 There is a, I think, an analogy here to something you were saying right at the beginning of our conversation, which is that Trump has made a series of decisions, war on Iran, tariffs, and everybody knows it's him. 25:38 And one thing that it has always seemed to me is meaningful about Epstein and has been 25:43 harder for Trump in the second term is that in his first term, Trump did this slight magic 25:50 trick, but there was also some truth to it where he was the president, but he was up 25:56 against the deep state. 25:58 And there was a reality that he didn't really quite have control of the government he led. 26:04 And it wasn't a deep state in the way he put it. 26:07 But the sense that Trump could somehow be the president and still be anti-establishment 26:11 was real. 26:12 And like the Epstein moment, I think, had a like in that world where Epstein has become 26:18 this kind of synonym for a corrupt, pedophilic, untouchable elite. 26:23 And the fact that it seemed to people that Trump was more on the side of whatever 26:27 that was than on their side seems to me to get to this like larger reality of 26:33 that he's the establishment now. Maga is in charge. He can't say it's like these guys over here 26:39 stopping me from doing it. It's all just him. I think that's right. And I talk a lot about 26:45 the schism that I see between the Maga establishment and the America firsters. 26:52 There is this new kind of break in the party and the America firsters are sort of like 26:58 Real America first has never been tried. And this is your Marjorie Taylor Greene's. It's your Tucker Carlson's 27:05 These are the people who are anti-Israel. They think that Trump really broke faith over the Iran War 27:10 that's the thing that caused them to go out on him and to really start taking him on and 27:15 the MAGA establishment though is 27:18 Trump now it's Rubio it's Mike Johnson and these are people for whom 27:25 Trump is the sun and the moon, and whatever their public policy is, is going to be dictated 27:32 by Trump. 27:33 So, you know, you get somebody like Cash Patel and Dan Bongino. 27:36 Why is Dan Bongino back out after being the deputy at the FBI? 27:40 He's back out because he can't release the Epstein files, and it was ruined in his 27:43 street cred on his podcast. 27:46 And Cash Patel is not really doing the job. 27:49 He just runs around and hangs out with his girlfriend. 27:51 And that's how Donald Trump wants it because he wants a heat shield. It's why Pam Bondi had to go, right? 27:58 He needs these heat shields for why he's not releasing the Epstein files, and I think his voters are hip to it 28:04 They know there's no reason this shouldn't be coming out. Why is Pete Hexeth still there? 28:09 Well, I do think that Donald Trump 28:13 Needs somebody to take the fall for the war. My guess is that Pete Hexeth goes but nobody buys that it was Hexeth's war 28:21 Yeah, I mean, Pete Hexeth would like it to be Pete Hexeth's war, and so he's out there 28:25 stomping for it pretty hard. It's difficult to change course in the middle of this. Actually, 28:30 I don't even know why I'm trying to explain this because it's preposterous that Pete Hexeth was in 28:34 that role in the first place. It's preposterous he's still there. What do you do when you're 28:38 losing a war to Iran and then you give these weird patin-esque speeches where you talk about 28:42 no, what, trannies, fatties, beardos and weirdos? You're gonna live stream an execution 28:47 We shouldn't have a paralyzed guy. 28:48 I mean, it's all preposterous. 28:49 We should not become numb and treat it 28:52 like it's regular analysis here. 28:54 Like, I have no idea why he's still there. 28:55 He shouldn't be. 28:57 But also, that also then tries to take into account 29:00 that Donald Trump is some rational actor 29:02 and not just somebody who thinks, 29:04 he still looks good on TV 29:06 and he's out there defending me on this. 29:09 I wanna go back to something 29:10 you were saying a few minutes ago, 29:11 which is that there's this portion of MAGA, 29:15 the real America first has never been tried portion of the Tucker Carlson's and Marjorie 29:19 Taylor Greene's who began a break with Trump over the Iran war. Maybe let's start this way. 29:26 The Iran war has been going on for a good number of months now. 29:30 What has been the trajectory of people's interpretation of Trump in the Iran war 29:35 over the months since it began? 29:38 The first thing that happened was Venezuela and Maduro and because that was such a, 29:45 again, sort of a smash and grab job, right? We went in, we grabbed him, we walked away. 29:51 Voters thought Iran was going to be like that. And Trump thought it was going to be like that. 29:56 Sure it did. 29:56 And so one of the things that you hear from voters, what they'll say 30:01 is, I thought it was going to be like Venezuela. It's going to be short, 30:04 he's going to get in, he's going to get out. But now that we're so deep in it, now they look back 30:09 and say, I think Trump thought it was going to be something he could do in a short period of time. 30:14 But it's getting away from him. Like voters know that it's gotten away from him. In part, 30:19 if you think about it from their perspective, they care about it mainly because of gas prices 30:25 and because they don't want us to be at war. But the thing that they have seen 30:30 is Trump over and over again say that it's over and then have it definitely not be over and voters 30:38 have noticed that it continues to not be over. Why do his voters think he he did it? I want to play 30:45 a 2024 Trump voter from one of your focus groups who's saying something that that I've heard a 30:49 lot of people say. My main concern is the wars war with Iran and everything and I think it's 30:55 very saddening because in my opinion, I think actually there's like, I mean, conspiracy theories 31:01 here and there, but I think that realistically, Israel controls President Trump and a lot 31:06 of the decisions that are made for Americans, and I think that's a hard reality that people 31:11 are slowly coming to realize. 31:12 I've heard that a lot, like how present, I mean, that's from one of your groups. 31:16 How present is that? 31:17 It's incredibly present, but it goes to, I can tell that person is on the younger 31:22 countryside, and that really tracks with Trump voters who are under 35 who have a very different 31:30 perspective on Israel than people who are older, and they believe that Netanyahu walked 31:38 Trump into this war. 31:40 I think there are two ways to have that belief, right? 31:42 One is to say that Trump and Netanyahu are allies, and Netanyahu persuaded Trump 31:49 that this war was a good idea, the Iranian regime would fall easily, smoothly. The second one, 31:56 I mean, the way it was said here by this woman, Israel controls President Trump is different 32:02 than that. And what I see happening on the right, and not only on the right, but on the right, 32:10 that maybe Trump is holding back a little bit, but is a real pressure for a story that like 32:17 Israel is in control, and that's why all these things are going wrong in American politics. 32:22 In a way, that's actually quite dangerous, but it just, it feels like it has stuck as a kind of 32:29 interpretive frame that I suspect is going to outlast Trump. 32:34 It has stuck. And it's a big part of the conversation right now in both political parties. 32:40 You know, the left is dealing with this anti-Semitism problem. There's this schism 32:45 between old school Dems who want to support Israel and a rising tide of folks on the democratic 32:52 side who want to reevaluate America's relationship with Israel. There is the anti-Israel faction, 32:59 but then there's also just the people who've now become convinced in part because of Iran 33:03 that say, I don't want to sending money to Israel or why are we doing so much? Why are we 33:09 so involved in their foreign policy? So I hear that a lot on the left. On the right, though, 33:15 what I hear especially from younger voters, it is closer to a very blatant kind of anti-Semitism. 33:22 It is related to Trump can never fail. He can only be failed. And so you have to have a, 33:29 and I use this term advisedly, scapegoat for why Trump is failing. And so it's funny because 33:35 in part it's a dual admission because you have to also say Trump is so weak and so 33:41 So, not smart that he can just be dog walked into a war with Iran. 33:47 But that frame really has stuck among younger people on the right who share basically their 33:54 counterparts on the left's suspicion of the role that Israel is playing in American politics 34:00 right now. 34:01 There's also just the reality, and I think this is like the other main way that the 34:06 war in Iran has become a bigger problem than just a failed war for Trump, which 34:11 is that it's another example of him raising your prices, doing something you didn't want 34:16 him to do that has been bad for, you know, the price of the pump that seems like a distraction 34:22 from what you elected him for that it often think that people connect to issues sometimes 34:28 not so much about the issue itself, even if it's failing, but because it reveals 34:32 something larger. 34:34 And to me, the war on Iran seems like it has become like the ultimate like Trump 34:38 is doing his own thing, not your thing. 34:40 Yeah, I mean what really activates voters is when an issue hits them in several different places and so the Iran war 34:48 Both is Trump getting into a war in the Middle East and let me tell you Americans 34:52 Do not want to be at war in the Middle East. That is like they remember 34:57 This is like this activates something deep inside of them 35:00 Do not get us into a forever war in the Middle East indeed Trump ran on that 35:04 It was literally how he ran against Jeb Bush in 2016 the war in Iraq 35:09 We spent $2 trillion thousands of lives. We don't even have it. Iran is taking over Iraq with the second largest oil reserves in the world 35:17 Obviously it was a mistake. So George Bush made a mistake. We can make mistakes, but that one was a beauty 35:23 We should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East. So that is one part of it 35:29 then the other part of it is the 35:31 when voters are experiencing direct negative personal consequences and that is 35:38 obviously at the gas pump, and they can connect. 35:40 I listen to voters all the time. 35:42 They can't quite pronounce or even conjure straight-of-form moves, 35:46 but they know about it. 35:48 They know there's this reason that gas isn't getting here, 35:51 and that's why everything's more expensive. 35:53 They also understand that gas prices aren't just about gas, 35:58 especially in a place like Iowa and in the Midwest right now. 36:01 And so none of these things are in a vacuum. 36:03 You get these higher gas prices 36:05 that are also raising food costs, 36:08 that are also raising farmers costs 36:09 that are having an effect on supply chain 36:13 and the trucks that drive it. 36:14 Americans actually understand more of that type of thing 36:17 than they do a lot of the complexities 36:19 around healthcare or other issues. 36:22 They understand that prices are rising across the board 36:26 in a lot of different ways that are squeezing them. 36:28 They experience it like a cavalcade, 36:30 like of prices going up across the board 36:33 that make them feel, 36:34 And then they look and they see the war and it gives them a place to say 36:39 That's the thing doing it 36:40 I think we're in an era of price politics that we were not in for a very long time because inflation was so low for so many years in 36:46 America, yeah, and if you look at inflation statistics during the Trump era, right during Trump's second term 36:54 It's not actually that high. I mean, it's a little bit higher than would be the ideal trend 36:59 It's you know more three than it is two 37:00 But I do think one of the things that is just going to be very difficult for politicians 37:06 of all parties for an extended period is that prices went up so much over the past couple 37:12 of years that now every incremental increase is just agonizing. 37:20 Because what they are not doing ever is going down. 37:23 And this feels to me like something that he has not internalized. 37:27 it's going to be very interesting for me to see whether or not Democrats have actually 37:31 internalized it because right now like you need to treat prices as a kind of emergency and anything 37:37 you do that seems like it is raising prices is going to infuriate people. Trump is endlessly saying 37:43 you know the affordability thing is a hoax prices are a hoax and are being generous to what 37:47 he's saying. Like from what we are discussing you would think inflation was seven percent 37:52 right now. It's not. But he came into office promising to bring down prices and instead 37:59 they are going up and he is doing things to drive them up and gas has been particularly bad. 38:03 And I don't think people have internalized that the price level we are now at, like the baseline 38:10 of prices has just completely changed pricing as a political issue. 38:17 I think that something that Democrats are going to have to start thinking about 38:20 is because I think that Democrats have internalized it from a messaging standpoint. They know that they 38:25 need to talk to people about affordability. They know that they need to talk to people and they 38:30 know how to go on offense against the Trump administration, against the tariffs, against the 38:34 things he is doing to exacerbate people's affordability woes. What they have not done yet 38:40 is said, here's what we're going to do about it. I mean, you hear about healthcare costs in 38:48 the time. And so Democrats, I think, are going to come in and say, OK, the first things we're 38:53 going to do is we're going to Trump's cuts to Medicaid, your Medicaid, you know, we're 38:57 going to get rid of those. And we're going to try to make health care more affordable. 39:00 We are going to get rid of the tariffs, right? It's all like the things that Trump did to 39:03 exacerbate it. We're going to stop. We're going to get rid of the war. But I think 39:08 we will be in a vortex of backlashes if one party doesn't figure out a way of 39:17 explaining to the American people that you can't just press a button and lower costs, 39:22 that there is a series of choices that we need to make and that the debt, it is $40 39:28 trillion now. 39:30 And interest rates are very high. 39:30 And interest rates are very high. 39:32 And that matters when you go to buy a home or buy a, you know, get a car loan. 39:35 This is why if a Democrat wins in 2028, it is not a small task what they are 39:40 up against. 39:41 And if they're not able, and this is one of the things I really was frustrated 39:44 with Joe Biden about because he wasn't in a position to communicate well or strongly with 39:50 voters, he wasn't able to frame the economy as a recovery. And to talk all the time about how 39:57 we were recovering well, but it still wasn't good. It wasn't good enough. Instead, they were trying 40:02 to tell people, no, things are fine. Things are good. Trump is doing the exact same thing 40:06 right now. And I think whoever comes next is going to have to level with the American public 40:10 about where our economy is. 40:13 I also think that something Republicans 40:15 are not preparing for. 40:17 I don't see them preparing for it. 40:19 It's going to be central in politics in 2028 40:25 is the Medicaid cuts haven't hit yet. 40:28 The Medicaid cuts are enormous. 40:32 They're gonna throw millions of people off of healthcare, 40:35 millions of Trump voters off of healthcare. 40:37 The way the big beautiful bill was constructed, they delayed it all after the midterms. 40:43 But every state agency in the country and I was preparing to implement these cuts because 40:47 it is statute, it is law. 40:50 And so the Trump administration has sent Obamacare into a spiral. 40:55 They've like destroyed the expanded subsidies and a bunch of things that were keeping 40:58 those markets stable. 40:59 So the individual markets are moving into chaos. 41:02 You have Medicaid being thrown into chaos. 41:04 us, Medicare for all is polling higher than it has ever 41:07 pulled before. Meanwhile, like the left of the Democratic 41:09 Party has moved off of the idea that Medicare for all means 41:12 abolishing all private health insurance, right? So they've 41:14 like, moved off of the, like more dangerous political 41:17 position. I think we're moving back into a period of 41:20 healthcare politics. And I don't think the next thing is 41:22 just gonna be repatching Obamacare. I think that 41:24 we're past that now. 41:25 I 100% agree with this. And again, this is not this has 41:29 nothing to do with any of my own personal political 41:32 beliefs, but only what I hear from voters, which is I think that some kind of universal 41:36 healthcare is just an idea whose time is going to have come because of a variety of factors. 41:41 All I hear about in focus groups from voters across the political spectrum, and this is where 41:45 I do think some of the reasons that the DSA types are a little more ascendant, 41:50 and they believe that there is a sort of new coalition out there is that 41:54 they hear Trump voters talking about wanting something to be done about healthcare. 42:00 We're not talking about country club Republicans who you know want to talk about different insurance markets 42:05 You are just hearing rural voters working-class voters non-college voters for whom 42:12 Healthcare is an enormous expense and also an enormous burden from a complexity standpoint and how they interact with their insurance companies or the healthcare systems and 42:23 Voters want something that is more simple 42:25 less expensive, and is higher quality. And I get that sometimes people say things to me like, 42:32 well, we could never have comprehensive immigration reform or we'll never have universal 42:36 healthcare. We had these debates and they lost. And I'm like, guys, the world has changed in ways 42:41 that are making people more open than ever to the idea that we need some kind of universal 42:47 system. Because one of my pet theories is that actually in 2028 in the debates, 42:53 You're going to see some Republicans starting to talk about universal health care because it is going to be such a popular 42:59 Thing they may talk about it both. They never actually want to do is do it. They will not do it 43:11 This podcast is supported by Chevron 43:14 We rely on energy every day 43:16 Whether it's the first cup of coffee in the morning a flight home to family or the lights that come on when you flip a switch 43:22 But have you ever wondered what it takes to make sure it's there when we need it? 43:26 I'm Tanner Faust and the Energy Tailgate is back with straight talk about the energy 43:31 our lives and world depend on. 43:34 No boardrooms, no jargon, just real conversations. 43:37 This is the Energy Tailgate. 43:40 New episodes available on Spotify and YouTube. 43:44 This podcast is supported by Pharma. 43:46 Large non-profit hospitals are winning the Medicine Markup game. 43:50 340B markups generate $142 billion in profits for big hospital systems in their 43:55 for-profit partners. But there's little oversight or guardrails on how program 43:59 profits are used and no clear evidence that patients benefit. While hospitals win big, 44:05 patients lose. It's time for Washington to hold hospitals and clinics accountable 44:10 and fix 340B. Visit phrma.org slash 340B markup to learn more. 44:18 Hi, Sarah Koenig here, asking you to check out my new show from Serial Productions and 44:22 The New York Times. 44:24 It's called Metro with Sarah Koenig. 44:26 Stories about New York City 44:27 and its most fascinating raw material, New Yorkers. 44:31 The sheer size of New York 44:32 means that every kind of person is here. 44:34 Every kind of American weirdness, 44:36 every kind of American conflict, 44:37 every concern, so many stories. 44:40 Each episode, Metro takes the bigness of New York 44:42 and makes it human scale and relevant 44:44 no matter where you live. 44:46 Find it wherever you listen to your podcasts. 44:51 Healthcare is usually the strongest democratic issue. 44:53 immigration is traditionally Trump's strongest issue. It is an issue where 44:57 his administration under the leadership of Stephen Miller has been more 45:01 aggressive, more thought-out, more planned on immigration than on any other 45:05 single issue, right? It's been the place where they've been the most proactive. 45:08 What do you hear from Trump voters about immigration? 45:11 So Trump voters are a wide, they can be a wide range on this and it is still 45:17 Trump's highest polling issue, but he's still, I think, around 43% on immigration while he's 45:25 in the 20s on affordability, inflation, the war in Iran. So it is still one of his better 45:31 performing issues because he has, and I think he will get some credit from voters on the right 45:37 in the focus groups, is that he has closed the border. That is the popular position broadly 45:42 for people. They want the border to be closed. There are people who I would put as Trump's 45:48 hardcore base who still think he's not deporting hard enough. And so you do hear that from Trump 45:52 voters. But I would say the majority, especially the more independent voters who might not seem 46:00 like traditional Republicans, but have always been Trump voters because they find him to be 46:04 a more populist heterodox person. These are the voters you hear say, I thought he was 46:10 just going to deport criminals. The masked agents in the streets are crazy. I talk about 46:14 the last in first out voters, young people, Hispanics, and Hispanics, a lot of Hispanic 46:21 voters will be very tough. They have tough immigration policies. They do not want people 46:27 to come here illegally. On the other hand, they live in the communities where ICE is 46:33 showing up at schools and dragging parents off. These are voters who know people who 46:39 were showing up for court, they're doing it the right way, 46:43 and that's where ICE is apprehending them. 46:45 And so there is an enormous frustration 46:48 in the inhumane way that the deportations 46:50 are being carried out, and there's a lot of criticism 46:53 in the focus groups over the excesses. 46:55 I wanna play a clip from some of his voters 46:58 talking about this in some of these groups. 47:01 Border control for me was a very big thing, 47:04 as though I was one of my biggest concerns 47:07 with this election was cleaning up the country 47:09 getting these these dangerous illegals out but I don't like how innocent people, professionals have 47:16 been incarcerated or taken. I don't like the way immigration is going it's like this seems like 47:23 there's no rhyme or reason or system going are they just grabbing people and you know putting 47:29 them in camps. I do agree that we should stay on top of actual illegal immigration 47:37 and criminals, but there's plenty of criminals already here that we could do a better job 47:44 with instead of focusing on people that are even if illegal working and kind of mining 47:51 their own business. 47:52 What I hear when I hear that, and I've heard a lot of this also on podcasts like Rogans 47:59 and some of the people who like swung towards Trump on this issue in 2024, Democrats always 48:04 have this problem where they don't like to deal with the fact that the public has ideas 48:11 of like the deserving and the undeserving poor. 48:14 Democrats want to say like there's no distinction and like everybody deserves help and that's 48:19 not where the public usually is, right? 48:20 They want people to work and to show up and and it often gets Democrats in trouble. 48:26 Republicans have this on immigration. 48:28 The right, the MAGA right at this point, it doesn't have like good immigrants and bad 48:35 immigrants. 48:36 It doesn't have good illegal immigrants and bad illegal immigrants. 48:38 It just really has an antipathy towards immigrants, right? 48:42 And now you see this like spilling out into these crazy things like there are too many 48:46 Indian American students at a college football game and what is it's going into crazier 48:52 and crazier places. 48:53 There's more and more racist places to be blunt about it. 48:55 But Trump always sort of merged these ideas. He would sometimes talk as if he was just talking about the bad illegal immigrants 49:02 He was going to be discerning and then sometimes just promise mass deportation 49:08 And he's been much more on the mass deportation side 49:11 And people don't seem to like it 49:15 No, I actually really try to speak up for the American people on the issue of immigration 49:21 Sometimes because I do think that people think 49:24 And everyone who is Trump voters just profoundly racist, and that that's where their desire 49:30 to see immigration curbed is coming from. 49:32 And again, there is a spectrum of Trump voters on this. 49:37 And there are racist people, and there are people who are just like deport harder, get 49:41 every single person out of here. 49:43 That is not the majority of Trump voters. 49:45 The majority of Trump voters make a couple distinctions. 49:47 One is the one we've talked about, where they say dangerous criminals should go. 49:51 but the person who's paying taxes and has been here for 25 years, who lives down the street, 49:55 like leave that guy alone. That's part of it. The other distinction they make though, 50:00 and I hear this all the time from voters, is it's a sense of fairness. They say, 50:04 I want immigrants to come here, but I want them to come. And this is the key phrase you 50:09 hear, the right way. And what they mean is, and this is very important for people to 50:14 understand, Americans have no idea what it is to go through the immigration system. 50:20 So when they say come the right way, they assume that there is some easy process by which one can become a naturalized citizen 50:28 They just they have no idea what it looks like though 50:30 So when they see people coming across the border illegally they say hey somebody's standing in line 50:36 Over here who's trying to come the right way and this person's breaking the law coming in 50:41 They do not want a country in which immigrants don't come here Americans actually are quite good as soon as you start 50:47 talking about immigration, one of the first things they will tell you is their own immigrant 50:51 story when their grandparents came here or the immigrant that they know or the person 50:55 that they're married to who is an immigrant or their family. 50:58 And so Americans are not as hostile to the idea of immigration. 51:03 They are hostile to the idea of coming here illegally across the border. 51:07 Is this another example of where people perceive Trump's priorities diverging from 51:13 their own because because there were two sort of instrumental arguments I would hear Republicans 51:18 including Trump make one was the dangerous criminal illegal immigrants. And the other 51:25 was that immigrants were taking your jobs. They were buying your homes. They were pushing 51:30 up prices in different places. And both those things sort of fit into a sense of disorder 51:37 under Joe Biden. I mean, I heard a lot of New York City was a place where there's 51:41 a big swing towards Trump in the election. And something I just heard from a lot of people 51:45 in New York City was like, they, they just didn't like seeing the disorder around them. 51:49 They don't like a sense that their government is not holding order. People prize order 51:53 very highly. That is a job they entrust government with. 51:57 Trump comes in what he like law and order Republicanism, right? There's a reason 52:02 order is in that phrase. But he and Stephen Miller and Greg Bovino, they created 52:11 disorder. When people looked at what was happening in Minnesota and Americans getting shot by 52:17 government agents, when they looked at these deployments and all that, like the Trump administration 52:22 seemed to be creating disorder. They were creating violence. They were creating frightening 52:27 visuals. What instead seemed to be happening was things were getting all the more out 52:31 of control, just in the other direction. 52:34 This is happening where they live. This is not abstract to them. When you talk 52:39 of voters in the focus groups, they're the people living in the places that we're talking about 52:44 on the news. And so they will say, I took my kid to school and there were ICE agents that showed up 52:51 at the school and they had masks on and there are kids there. Like, what are we doing here? 52:57 And yet they're seeing images on their TV of masked agents shooting an ICU nurse in the back. 53:05 I can't tell you how much the agents covering their faces is a problem for voters. They don't understand 53:12 Why their faces are covered? That's not something they're used to I don't agree 53:16 I think people understand exactly why their faces are covered. Well, I think that's true 53:19 I think what I mean is they don't like it. They don't like their faces being covered 53:23 They that's not something they normally see from law enforcement and when people say well 53:27 They're worried about being targeted people are like that's not a thing 53:30 We have accountability in this country. The police the police go without face covers, right? I've heard this too and 53:38 It drives me insane. Like everybody knows what it means. Yeah when the government begins sending people and masks after you 53:45 Yeah, and it means two things 53:47 It means first of the thing they're doing is bad enough that maybe yeah, they are worried about being targeted 53:52 It also means that the government knows that the thing they're doing is bad enough that it is a problem for faces can be seen and 53:59 And when the government starts doing that, they are creating a zone of action 54:05 that is wider because they're creating anonymity. They are shifting the relationship between the 54:11 agents and the public, right? There's not a normal face-to-face relationship between them. 54:15 Everybody knew what it meant. And God bless, like the people in Minnesota who stood up and, 54:20 you know, Alex Pretti and Renee Good lost their lives doing it to push back on this. But 54:26 But I recognize, I've talked to many political consultants, you'll probably tell me the same 54:30 thing that this was not the most salient issue to most of the American people, right? 54:34 As you say, Trump is still doing better on immigration as an issue than he is doing 54:38 on say trade or prices or a million other things. 54:42 But as a signal that the country was falling into a different regime, like an equilibrium 54:49 that is more like fascist takeover. 54:52 However, that was a profound signal because like a midterm is not just like where people 54:57 are in the polls. 54:58 There's the polls and then there's who's actually going to come out to vote. 55:02 And the people who had reactions to the masked men in the streets, they're going to come 55:07 out to vote. 55:09 When I listen to Trump voters in focus groups, they're sad. 55:14 Like they're bummed out. 55:16 They don't like their candidates. 55:18 They think they're lame, often in a bunch of these places, Georgia, for example, 55:23 hardcore Trump voters aren't voting for John Ossoff, but they understand that 55:26 everyone else seems to be voting for John Ossoff, and that makes them annoyed. 55:30 And it's one of the reasons, actually, I like qualitative work more than I like 55:34 polling because you can gauge a kind of energy and the absence of 55:40 enthusiasm among Republicans right now for Trump, and some of them will 55:45 still defend him because it's sort of deep in their bones to do that. But they know things 55:50 aren't going well and that he's not doing a particularly good job. And so they stay home. 55:56 But then what animates people to come out and vote? So are they animated to come out and vote 56:02 because they want to lower prices? I'm not sure people actually think that a Democratic 56:08 Congress is going to do something about prices. But the thing that animates them are things 56:12 like America is betraying its relationship to the world. Donald Trump is cozying up to all of 56:19 these dictators. They're shooting Americans in the streets. Like, I think that the anti-ice sentiment 56:25 is a motivating factor for people that gets them to turn out in a way that immigration 56:32 has been a turnout mechanism for Republicans in the past and will not be now. 56:37 now. 56:37 We've been mostly talking here about things where Trump is the central driver, right? 56:43 He drives the war in Iran. 56:45 He has a lot of space of action on prices and tariffs, immigration. 56:50 We've been talking about corruption. 56:51 The other thing that has seemed to be driving races all across the country, but doesn't 56:58 seem like to be directly emanating from Trump is data centers. 57:02 I mean, when I look at a bunch of the key Senate races, you know, Bill Sayed 57:05 in Michigan, Josh Turek in Iowa, you see a lot happening around data centers. So I'm curious 57:13 in your focus groups how those have begun playing into what you're hearing. 57:18 So the data center issue started to come up in 2025 in the off season races where you had 57:24 Mikey Sherrill, Abigail Spanberger, and that's when, and this is again why I love focus groups, 57:29 it caught me off guard. It was the dominant thing that voters in those races were talking 57:34 about. Like immigration, AI is one of these issues that activates people across multiple vectors, 57:41 where it is both their energy prices are going up, they think that the data centers themselves 57:47 are a blight or are disruptive in their communities in some way. And then the third thing is they 57:54 say, are we building these things in our communities that are ultimately setting up to 57:57 take our jobs from us? And that first started coming up in 2020. 58:03 And these are like maybe maybe that's right. So in 2025 it was coming up entirely organically as 58:09 a dominant issue mainly around energy prices then. But then I have watched it just go up and up 58:15 and up in salience in terms of what voters are talking about. And it is dominant in 2026 in fact 58:22 in Ohio, who stead who is running against Sherrod Brown. That's another race where it's been 58:28 central. It's been really central. And as much as Donald Trump can talk about his rear end, 58:34 he likes talking about who's dead's ass. He's on a weird bender about men's bodies right now. 58:40 It's been for a long time. Yeah, I know. I think people say we're not ready for a gay president, 58:45 but I disagree. I think we've already kind of got one. Yeah, that's right. So, but this is, 58:50 who's dead, his big liability is that he had helped secure funding for a bunch of new data 58:56 centers and so that has shall Sherrod Brown is defining him. He was the guy who was the point man 59:02 for the 200 plus data centers in Ohio, two and a half million dollars in tax breaks, 59:07 higher electric rates were some of the highest electricity rates in the country now, 59:12 and did this without anybody without anybody locally having any inputs. It really is part 59:18 of the part of the the rigged system that John you said has been part of and tried to 59:24 increase frankly and make it even more rigged through his whole political career. 59:29 When I go home to central Pennsylvania, in the more rural areas, this is where you see 59:33 the no data center signs. 59:35 And so it's another thing that is, I think, taking the rural voters who usually show 59:40 up in enormous numbers for Republicans and it is diminishing their enthusiasm for Republicans 59:44 because they don't want the data centers. 59:47 It is in the rural communities where there's lots of land that these are actually happening. 59:51 And the other reason that I think the data centers are frustrating people is that they're turning out in their local communities to vote against them, and then they're often happening anyway, which is creating a real sense of frustration among voters that this is a thing being done to them. 60:06 We were looking at some clips of voters talking in your groups about this and you really get at this sense of power. So I want to play them. 60:13 people are voting here in Pittsburgh in these old mill sites and they're putting 60:16 these data centers and people are saying we don't want them we don't want them we 60:20 don't want the pollution we don't want this we don't want this anymore but yet 60:24 they just keep coming and then there's no stopping and then it's just like 60:27 doesn't matter who the governor is who the mayor is they're all on board 60:31 because it's job creation and it's just it's not job creation it's short 60:37 term for long-term pain. 60:40 We're actually having one right now in our town. 60:43 Everybody voted no on it. 60:45 And then it turns out it came out that it was already in the process 60:49 and a done deal thing like the farmers had already sold their property 60:53 and everything for this to start being built. 60:56 So basically, yeah, like our everybody that showed up to the city hall, 61:00 it was for nothing. 61:02 Trump, I've always thought of one of the things he really understood 61:05 is how powerless people felt in politics. And he sort of presented himself as an answer to that. 61:10 Like, you might be powerless, but I am powerful. I know how the system works. I have worked it. 61:16 I have bribed these politicians before. Totally. And then this happens. And where's 61:20 Trump? Trump is completely pro-data center, right? He calls into the, you know, he calls 61:23 it Jensen Huang during the all-in conference. And like, they're all just talking about 61:28 how Trump isn't going to fall for this anti-data center hoax. 61:31 Google wants to build a big one in Finland, which I'm not happy about, because they weren't 61:36 able to get permitting. And I'm telling you, it's all a hoax. The data centers are great, 61:41 and they make people wealthy, and they make states wealthy. And it's the oil of the 61:46 next 20, 25 years. It's bigger than the internet and the AI, you know, much more 61:51 so. 61:52 Yeah. I mean, look, Trump is not an ideological person, and he certainly doesn't care 61:56 about regular Americans, he does care what the all-in podcast guys say about him. 62:01 He cares what the donor class that he is talking to, how they talk to him. 62:05 And those are the people who stand to benefit the most from the data centers and he is 62:09 on their side. 62:10 And look, I'm sure that there are a lot of those people are coming in and explaining 62:14 to Trump all of the long-term benefits and how we have to compete with China and 62:18 that competitive instinct I do think is something that Trump gets into. 62:22 But what's interesting about Trump is that, for all the credit he gets for being a good communicator, 62:28 he's not trying to have a conversation about this with the public at all. 62:31 He's not trying to explain what the benefits might be or why long-term. 62:37 I mean, he throws a couple of things here, but mostly he just tells voters, 62:40 stop caring about this, you know, affordability is a hoax. 62:43 We're going to do data centers. They're great. 62:45 The data centers, you want to pay a little in the right location, 62:49 But if you want to get rich as a state or as a town, and if you want to pay lower taxes, 62:55 if you want to create tremendous wealth, if you want your house to be more valuable and 62:58 everything else, you're going to want a data center. If you want to go through poverty, 63:02 crime, and squalor, I would say don't approve data centers. You have your choice. 63:07 And people give him credit for his instinct for understanding Americans, but people are 63:12 extraordinarily anxious about what's coming because of AI. Is this technology going to 63:18 replace me is something now that I hear all across these focus groups. And the way that Democrats, 63:24 if Democrats come in and just say, we're anti data centers, we're just going to take the opposite 63:30 role of Republicans, I think they will miss an opportunity to demonstrate that they can talk to 63:35 the American people about a complicated thing that is changing in real time. And what voters 63:42 really want is someone to take them through it. How should we feel about this? 63:45 The problem is, I will say this, I've talked to many Democrats, I've talked to Republicans 63:48 about this, like people in office, one thing is, none of them actually know how they feel 63:51 about it. 63:52 It is the hard thing about AI, and the interesting thing about it is a political issue. 63:57 It is unsettled, it's non-polarizing. 64:00 I mean, the data center, if you look at the polling, it's not like Democrats opposed 64:04 data centers and Republicans don't, or Republicans do, and like, I don't think yet you 64:08 see politicians who really know what to say on this and know how to take people 64:12 through it because I don't think they do know what to say. And I don't think they know what 64:17 through it even means because we're so in the first innings of it. 64:22 This is why I'm so obsessed with finding a Democratic candidate in 2028 who is a good 64:28 communicator. And by that, I don't mean somebody who knows all the answers and is like has a 64:34 even a firmly held opinion on this. Americans will let you say, I don't know, 64:40 but I'm working to figure it out and I'm going to figure it out in a way that doesn't leave you 64:44 behind. I'm not going to side against the American people on this. I'm going to figure out what is 64:49 in the best interest. I am convinced that we are in a new moment of communication, which isn't 64:55 just go on more podcasts, you know, be like Joe Rogan. It is that the American people are hungry 65:01 to trust someone who is going to walk them through what is a incredibly complicated world now 65:08 with a lot of things that are changing with an economy that they haven't seen before and it's one of the reasons that 65:15 I think people want younger candidates too because they feel like there's a new generation of problems 65:20 That they don't understand that are coming fast and they want people 65:24 Who live in that world too one of the things that voters especially people under 40 say about the economy all the time 65:30 Is there like I would like a politician who understands that I'm not gonna go get a job and then be at that job for the next 65:37 35 years. That's not the economy we're living in anymore. Like will somebody talk to me about the 65:42 world that we actually live in as it is? And that is why it's not that I think that Dems need 65:48 better messaging around their issues. It's that I think people desperately want somebody who's 65:54 going to level with them about the problems America's facing and is going to be open-minded 65:58 about the solutions. Who are the Democrats that the more Trump-leaning voters in your 66:05 focus groups actually like? 66:06 Oh, I mean, John Ossoff right now couldn't have more juice with voters. 66:11 And in fact, you know, when I do the focus groups in Georgia, even if people 66:15 aren't voting for him, they want to talk about how he's clearly sort of winning 66:21 people over. And a lot of that, too, is constituent services. 66:26 Constituent services are his bread and butter. 66:29 They all these Trump voters say, I call his office and they talk to me 66:33 somebody helps me out. Josh Shapiro, when I was doing focus groups in Pennsylvania the first time 66:38 he ran for governor, they all had stories about dealing with him in his office personally, where 66:43 he helped them. Josh Shapiro is about to win by unreal margins in the largest swing state in the 66:53 country. And I think people should take a serious look at him. I think that Pete Buttigieg 66:59 is doing something very interesting. He's walking into every red state and he's holding these big 67:03 town halls and he's refusing to say that there's such thing as a permanent red state. 67:08 You know, one of the things I like about Ossoff is obviously that is a 67:12 redder state. He is around. This is why I'm so suspicious of California politicians 67:17 who run for national office is I think you have to be surrounded by the people 67:20 who live in the swing states to have an instinct for what matters to sort of a median 67:27 If you've cultivated your political career in California, you simply don't have like a gut level instinct to be around like a Georgia swing voter or Pennsylvania swing voter or a Michigan swing voter. 67:41 And so I am looking at the politicians who both have that gut instinct. 67:46 And so they come from these places, their political careers were forged in these places. 67:49 And then are they good at talking to people and do they have a record of good governance? 67:54 People want a candidate who feels like they care about them. 67:59 And Donald Trump conned people into believing that he cared about them when he didn't. 68:04 But people are so desperate for it that they were willing to be conned. 68:09 We've talked a lot here about, you know, people voted for Trump and were maybe souring on him. 68:14 But obviously he maintained support from a huge number of his voters, from a lot of Republicans. 68:19 So when you hear from the people who are still very pro-Trump,
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