Breaking News from Pod Save America - "This like the Gestapo." Lifelong Republicans Turn On Trump

Episode Date: August 7, 2026

Lifelong Republicans and Trump voters are turning on the president after feeling betrayed by his latest actions. Jon Favreau and Jon Lovett break down the growing backlash and what it means for Trump. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Let's get to Lauren with the numbers. Go ahead, Lauren. Minus 23,000. No rebound for the July jobs report. Negative 23,000. Revision's for June, Maria, down by 37,000. May down by 66. Combined, 103,000 fewer jobs created in the months of May and June, Maria. The weakness in this number were really just two things, government workers and a sort of rebound from all the employment we got from the World Cup because the World Cup was ending. It's if you throw out the World Cup of the government workers, we actually had a number that was about plus 100,000. Well, 50,000 fewer government jobs. Did the Doge savings have anything to do with that? There was some of that, but it was also one of these weird seasonal things where because there was a lot of snow in the winter, a lot of schools, had to stay open longer to make up for the snow days. And so the teachers got laid off in July and said to the end of June.

It's one of those weird things. So I was Kevin Hassett, Trump's top economic advisor, who's always a delight to see on television. That's not what happened. No, it's not, I would just say, it wasn't because it was a snowy January and there was a World Cup. That is not what is happening.

No. Because there were, the last two months were revised down. That's 103,000 fewer jobs. over the last three months then reported. Also, the unemployment rate only went down because people stopped looking. People stopped looking. Whole bunch of people just dropped out of the labor force. I do think it's funny for the Fox News to be like, is this because of Doge?

And has to be like, no, no, of course not. That was fake. No, no, that was just getting rid of a bunch of funding for foreign aid that will ultimately cost us more money in the end because of all the lawsuits we're going to be dealing with for the next 10, 15 years. No, we didn't actually save the money we claimed. There was a new report out today from GAO that of the 110 billion or whatever that they were claiming they had saved that it was mostly just a mirage anyway.

No, maybe it's not because it was a blizzard in January that we lost jobs in April, May and June. It might be because of tariffs, ongoing war in the Middle East, economic uncertainty, rising costs, gas prices. This is a tough one. It's a tough one because the Fed at their last meeting. decided not to cut rates and there are actually three members of the board who voted to raise rates, which is an unusual disagreement.

And this is going to make that even tougher because usually like now we have, we're heading towards stagflation at this point, which is both unemployment or losing jobs and inflation remains high. So that's very difficult because the tools that you would use to deal with the unemployment employment will have, and the tools you use to deal with rising costs are intention, and it's a real, you know, sticky wicket. But I'm sure, I'm sure they got their top guys on it. A lot of long faces on that Fox panel. Yeah, watching Maria Bartoromo try to scream, shout, cope for it. Like, we're in the Goldilocks zone. You know, the Goldilocks zone.

The Goldilocks zone. That's when nobody has a job and prices are going on. But a little bit of both. And then I guess everyone has some porridge. a little bit of just, you know, perfect temperature porridge. Now, that jobs report was obviously not helpful for Republicans who are trying to keep their seats. But at least they have Trump in their corner. Trump spoke to Jake Sherman of Punchbowl about the midterms. He actually, before this answer that you're about to see, he was asked about his super PAC. And Jake asked him, you know, there's all this money that your allies have raised. He goes, not my allies, me.

I control it. I control it, which is interesting. But he was asked about Republican challenges in the fall and here's what he said. The question is, will they vote? Because a lot of them are very angry at Republicans, to be honest with you. Why is that?

I don't know. I mean, they're angry at Republicans, but they're not angry at me. Why? They're not angry at me, but they are angry at Republican. I saw that this morning and I was like, this is, what a gift. It's awesome. He really is trying.

He's like, leave no stone unturned and things that I can say to help lose the election. I want to call affordability a hoax. I want to say that I don't care about the midterms. I want to say that I might have to send the price of oil up again. He's like, what else haven't I said? Oh, right. Oh, right. It's that people are really pissed at Republicans in Congress.

He also, Jake asked them about the midterms and people saying he doesn't care enough about them. He's like, I'm busy and I'm still campaigning. I don't have to do that. I don't have to be campaigning. I'm gracing people with my presence. But what I really love about this, yeah, this is bad for, this is obviously not helpful to the Republicans, but it is also watching him in real time explain why they lost. This is really about him anticipating a loss of at least the House.

Because the lead up to this, he says, look, I got record numbers of votes across all these different states. And so for him, he is already viewing a loss in the midterms as like a boon to him. And as like, just as his ego. Like, look, I am the one. I am the thing that holds this coalition together. I know. And I thought, I thought this was interesting for a couple of reasons. Like that clip in itself is great, but also his heart's not going to be in campaigning this fall.

No. And imagine what he's going to be like in 2020. When there's some bad polls for JD or Marco or the team or whoever, it's like he's, everything is about him, always. Like you said, he's got $400 million that do you think he's going to spend it to help? Probably not if it looks like things are going badly. Yeah. Pod Save America Breaking News is brought to you by ZipRecruiter with everyday interactions becoming increasingly impersonal. Someone going just one extra step can be huge.

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and Maga Republican named John Gannon out of Texas, who spoke about what happened to his family. I voted for Trump. I am saying that they are picking up law-inbiting citizens. They're destroying families, jobs. John Gannon is a 75-year-old businessman and lifelong Republican who supported President Trump in 2024. Yeah, I wouldn't do that again, not after this fiasco.

This is like the Gestapo. His fiance, 45-year-old Venezuelan immigrant, Yasmin Suarez Regis, was detained by ICE at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston in late July. Eight ICE agents swarmed Jasmine and detained her, didn't tell us why, and rustled her off into a car. Well, I was just in total disbelief. nothing like this has ever happened to me. You know, I have several businesses. I'm law-abiding, and I pay a lot of tax. Back in Texas, Gannon says he deeply misses his fiancé,

who will remain tonight's custody facing deportation. Jasmine's good as gold. Love Jasmine. That's it. It's a tough story, very awful for him. I think it's, you know, I saw a lot of people. I understand the impulse, you know, like, well, man, you, oh, your law abiding and you pay tax. It doesn't happen to people like you.

Well, you've now met the government that is doing to a lot of people that don't look like you, what you thought could never happen to somebody like you. But I do think, like, stories like this are important because I do think there are people that think about politics the same way that he did, which is this is something that's going to happen to the other people. This is something that happened to the bad people. And even though Trump said both things at once over the course, of that campaign and on purpose, right, there were people holding up signs saying mass deportations.

They were talking about the numbers. They were trying to hit. This person and a lot of people like him heard what they wanted to hear, which is they were going to go after the criminals. They were going to solve the border, et cetera. What was your reaction to it? Well, it's also the difference between Trump and a Stephen Miller, you know, because there's been these moments when Trump is pressed on this and like, what about the legal people? What about the dreamers? And he's like, I love the dreamers.

I want people here legally. And Stephen Miller's like, no, no, I want to get. rid of everyone who's not white and all the immigrants. And look, she did everything the right way. I think that's important here too. It is one thing for people to see someone who voted for Donald Trump and has been a Republican all their life say this, but it's also about someone who entered the country legally. She had a timely asylum application, work permit, driver's license, all the things you're supposed to do, literally everything that you're supposed to do. And they still grabbed her.

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Yeah, I do think to your point, like Donald Trump seeing this, this is the kind of thing. You know, there have been moments in the past where he gets calls from, you know, somebody connected to the sort of ag sector or whatever. And they're like, hey, they're making it so we can't, you know, butcher the meat chickens. And they're making it so that we can't harvest the crops or taking away the good people. And he's like, well, that's ridiculous. I'm going to deal with that. You know, I'll talk to Brooke Rawlings about it.

We're going to fix it. And then Stephen Miller gets back on the controls and it's undone. But I do think this is why Donald Trump is underwater, even on immigration, which was meant to be his bulwark and his sort of like proof of why he was elected in the first place. There's also, I mean, this is not like isolated case here. I mean, ICE took more than 46,000 people into custody in July. That's a second term monthly record. So immigration judges ordered 79,000 removals in June. That's triple the December 2020. four pace. So this, the, the machinery is, is not quieting down at all. It's only ramping up. Yeah, they've moved away from the Christy Knoem, Greg Bovino, shine a spotlight, drop from a helicopter, really kind of, I don't know, luxuriate in the cruelty. But they've then dispersed what

they've been doing and done it more quietly, but actually probably under Homan. have been more successful at achieving the ends they were beginning. Yeah, and it's more politically effective, which is why they probably got rid of Nome and Bovino because they were dunces who were doing their jobs, but in a way that hurt the administration politically. Now, one final story, just before we came into record, a panel of appeals court judges in D.C. ruled against the construction of the ball removes a two-to-one ruling, two Democratic appointees versus a Trump appointee. But what they found is each president is a temporary tenant, not the owner of the White House and its executive

residents, pointing out that there was no precedent for the president tearing down substantial portions of the White House, quote, unilaterally and using privately collected funds, that they said this is for Congress to decide and not a matter for executive self-help. They also did freeze the ruling. So it now has 14 days to play out. through the Supreme Court. Trump's obviously pissed about this. It wants to continue building it. At the same time, he has been building that helipad for the new Marine one.

And apparently the helipad was completed or near completed. It was a big granite seal as tacky as fuck. Of course. And then he apparently didn't like how it looked or maybe there was a slope to it. Do you know this? No. So they finished it. They basically finished it and then ripped it out.

It was basically done. By Tuesday, it was ripped out again. And something about it he didn't like. There's some suggesting that it maybe had a slope that he didn't approve of. And so now they're going to rebuild it. Do you know why he's in such a rush to build this thing? Why? He wants it done for when President G arrives.

Priorities. And what's amazing about that is... Priorities are in line, folks. President G, what do you think of my new helipad? It's like... Pay no attention to what's happening over there where we've torn down half the building. But look at my beautiful new helipad, President G. So this one's headed for the Supreme Court.

And I looked at Rouse dissent. That's the Trump judge, just to see what the conservative justices would be looking for. And it does seem like if they don't uphold this decision, then it'll be based on standing because there's a question of like who is injured by this. Right. And Rouse basically, Rouse is not arguing that Trump isn't breaking the law here. Just arguing that the national trust doesn't have standing. And part of the standing argument is when the person at the trust walks by, they have to see this demolition and stuff like that. So it's I wonder, I wonder if it'll survive or not.

Yeah. And look, in fairness, there is a way in which all of this is testing powers that no president has ever considered using before because no president was so disrespectful. and sort of like egotistical. I mean, they were all incredibly egotistical, but egotistical in such a shallow way as to decide as a tenant to tear parts of the White House down without Congress and to get around needing congressional funds by raising private dollars. Like that's a deeply kind of strange things to do in a democracy because it's not your fucking house. And the idea like we all understand that the White House belongs to all of us. Like we not only as taxpayers, but as sort of citizens and this is our kind of the seat of our government and its like kind of beauty and history kind of belongs to

us. But whether or not that means each of us has standing is a complicated question. Right. No, the majority had a good answer, which is like on that theory, nobody would have standing to challenge someone who's going to raise the Statue of Liberty or, you know, obscure the names on the Vietnam Vet Memorial or put a billboard on Mount Rushmore because then everyone could just look away. Well, but like, yes, of course, and I largely agree with that. But the response to that is, well, of course, but there are all kinds of ways in which we rely on the president to execute powers thoughtfully, carefully, with respect for the country. And if they don't, there are other checks, right? That's what impeachment is for.

That's what impeachment is for. That's what elections are for. But we just don't have those doing their job right now. Yeah. You know? Once again, it's tough for the court to step in where Congress is supposed to do its job and has declined. Which, of course, is why people are so mad at Republicans. Yes.

Ironically. Which is back to where we start. And I'll tell you where you shouldn't be looking away. Our YouTube channel, do us a favor. Subscribe to Pod Save America. It helps us build a pro-democracy, independent media company to get more good information in front of more people, especially when there's so much right-wing noise out there.

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