The Daily Beast Podcast - Why Trump Is Dooming Himself with MAGA Candidates

Episode Date: August 30, 2026

Michael Wolff and Joanna Coles look ahead to the midterms and ask whether Donald Trump’s political dominance is finally starting to crack—or whether Democrats are getting ahead of themselves. They break down the unreliable polling, Trump’s unusual ability to bring hesitant voters back to his side at the last moment, the races that could determine control of the House and Senate, and the surprising Republican confidence that they can hold key states including Texas. They also examine Trump’s record of backing risky candidates like Ken Paxton, the enormous sums being poured into competitive races, and how Trump is already trying to shape the rules of the election through mail voting restrictions, redistricting and polling-place monitoring. But the most consequential question comes at the end: if Trump loses and declares the election rigged, will the people around him finally distance themselves—or once again follow him beyond the bounds of what is politically acceptable? #ad Head to https://Superpower.com and use code BEAST at checkout for $20 off your membership. Unlock your new health intelligence. 100+ biomarkers. Every year. Detect early signs of 1,000+ conditions. #superpowerpod  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're in a situation where the specter of Donald Trump is on the ballot and that's a negative, rather than Donald Trump in person being on the ballot, which turns out, inexplicably, to be a positive. The buffoons who are running in his name don't have the luxury of being the ultimate buffoon, as it were. The major thing that they have against them is Donald Trump. Donald Trump himself, but also Donald Trump and his particular strategies in this election. I mean, he has now a significant history of supporting unelectable candidates. Michael. Joanna.

The midterms, the midterms. Now is when this all begins to come together. James Tala Rieco has been paying attention. He's in my feed every day. John Ossoff in my feed every day. Well, they are people who do have a particular interest in this. Hussling, hustling. Their futures.

Every day I'm hustling. To be or not to be for them, it's existential. But for America and Americans, only now is there any real possibility of getting people's attention. Now we've got your attention. I'm just reminding you to please subscribe to the Daily Beast. Smash the subscription button, sign up to be a friend of the Beast or a friend of Michael or a frenemy of Michael because he has some of those too. We are independent media. And I actually have just downright enemies.

And he definitely has enemies, some of whom Stephen Chung. Stephen Chung says you're a blithering idiot and a piece of shit lying back. bag of shit, pea-sized brain, all of these things, all of these things. But I would just like to say that Stephen Chung is actually a nice guy and I have always had a very pleasant relationship with him. So this is performative. Performative friend. Whereas I have real enemies, not just performative enemies. Well, and you have feuds. We've had feuds. I mean, we've known each other, what, 27 years at this point, we have had feuds where we didn't speak for two years over what I cannot remember.

But that's also part for the course when you're with Michael Wolfe, who is the author of four books on Trump, if you are joining this podcast for the first time where we go inside Donald Trump's head thrice a week to find out what he's thinking. Or is he thinking? Is he thinking? Among many other books, just to add. Oh, I know. You've written many, many books. You're an author, but you've written four on Donald Trump, which turn out to have sold better than all the others put together. That's not true, actually. Not necessarily. I think it's true.

Well, the one of them was sold more than anyone has ever sold, except for Michelle Obama. Okay, and what about spare, Prince Harry's? But you're talking about fire and fury. No, mine sold more than that. Did it sell more than spare? It sold five million copies worldwide. It supported the book industry for a year. Well, that's a good reason to support this podcast too,

because perhaps we can support the podcast industry because there are other people that don't have the numbers of subscribers that we have, but are very good. And you could also vote for us, I suppose. If we were running for office, you could definitely vote for us. Do we want them to vote for us in any other way? Just with your subscription button. Yeah, you're supposed to subscribe some button,

some ringer. I like the ringer. The bell. I mean, I can't see any reason on the other one. That doesn't do anything for anybody. But apparently, if you push the ringer, you get notified. Yeah, you get notified that Michael is back with his opinions about Donald Trump. So we're talking about the midterms. It's Labor Day-ish. It's mid-terms. There's another point I want to make about the midterms, because this is all really a timing issue. Elections, it turns out, are finally all about timing. which is one of the points that Donald Trump always makes when he says that there's that there's been cheating in elections because elections have been extended. They've extended on the front end because you can vote early. Right. And they've extended on the back end because in some states,

your mail-in ballots do not have have to arrive until a good way is after the election itself. Well, they just have to be postmarked on the day of the election, right? This is a bone of contention. It's a bone of contention. So too are the polls, which we should talk about, because the polling is everywhere. Every day there's a new poll. The prediction markets have added a frisson, I would say, into political races. And it's unclear how manipulatable all these things can be.

Well, let's go to the polls, too, because in the Trump era, The polls have been notably bad, sometimes so off the mark that, well, we're in a situation. Donald Trump, Donald Trump, as you recall, was never supposed to be President Donald's. Right, not in 2016, nor in 2024. Well, no, 2024 was a kind of, that was sort of down to the wire. You know, that was, I mean, that was legitimately one up until this, to the two weeks before the election, then it was iffy. Then it became clearer during those final two weeks that it would probably be Donald Trump. One thing I've been thinking about a lot lately is how easy it is to go through life just assuming everything is fine until something isn't.

I feel like so many doctor's visits end the same way. Everything looks fine. Drink more water. See you next year. Meanwhile, I'm left wondering, am I getting enough nutrients? How's my metabolism? What should I actually be focusing on? That's why I'm excited about superpower.

Superpower takes a completely different approach. They send a licensed professional to your home or you can visit a nearby lab, and you get testing across more than 100 biomarkers. then everything shows up in one app with insights into your heart health, hormones, metabolism, vitamins, minerals, biological age and more. What I love is that it doesn't just give you data, it gives you an actionable plan and tracks your progress over time, so you're not starting from scratch every year.

Take control of your health with superpower. For a limited time, our listeners get $20 off to unlock their new health intelligence. head over to superpower.com and use code beast for $20 off your $199 superpower membership. And after you sign up, they'll ask you how you heard about superpower. So tell them inside Trump's head sent you to support the show. I can't remember it. It's all so fuzzy in my head at this point, but you're right. But in several instances, the...

Is that true? Wasn't Kamala riding around with two? in Walts and it looked like they were going to actually bring it home? In August. That was the August surge for Kamala. And then after Labor Day, it tightened up. I mean, it tightened. Yeah, it did tighten.

I knew right. He did the McDonald's skit. He did the Garbage Man skit, both of which were very good for him. And he was riding high on Butler, Pennsylvania, which also arguably changed the outcome. Yeah. And also you have Elon, which we should talk about in terms of the midterms. I mean, Elon put $300 million into Pennsylvania. And even that, so you had this tightening, but the polls did not, no poll indicated that he would,

he would win every contested state. Right, every single swing state. So, and then he would call that a landslide. He always calls it a landslide, win, lose, it doesn't make any difference. The title of one of your books. And it was not a landslide, but it was pretty extraordinary. Yeah, it was extraordinary. The comeback of all times.

All right. So now we're heading towards what may potentially be the breaks on Trump 2. Yeah, the stakes are extraordinary. I mean, this is either, I mean, we have had two years. in which Donald Trump has projected his dominance over everything. He has ignored, ignored the courts, ignored the law, ignored often common sense. And- Well, and he certainly ignored political tradition and political law, L-O-R-E, not just L-A-W.

Yeah, and political reality often. doing things, it's almost inexplicable. I mean, and we can get on to the large things, but then there are the small things, including killing the wild horses. What must they be thinking? I know the beautiful Mustang horses that they've been rounding up in the West,

shipping to some guy in, I think, Oklahoma, who then euthanases them and ships them abroad or ships them abroad to be euthanized. Slaughterers. them. It's so upsetting. I know of all the things that the Trump administration has done, that is one of the least feeling. So all of this is coming into focus now. And all of this is what is being voted on. I mean, this is, you know, I mean, Donald Trump is not on the ballot, but Donald Trump is all over the ballot. I was going to say he's on every ballot. I mean,

he is the subject. Now, curiously, Donald Trump said just this past week, I'm not on the ballot. but pretend I am on the ballot. And that brings up this interesting dichotomy. Everybody is going to, the expectation is that people will be voting against Donald Trump. But the experience is when he is literally on the ballot, they actually, that brings out people to vote for him. So we're in a situation where the specter of Donald Trump is on the ballot and that's a negative, rather than Donald Trump in person being on the ballot, which turns out, inexplicably, to be a positive.

Well, except in 2020, and as you're going to tell me now, you are an election denier and he actually won 2020. No, but I will say, and I was very much on the scene in 2020. Michael, when have you never been on the scene? Well, the past 10 years have been on the scene, and I would like to, look forward to lying down and getting off the scene. Well, that's not going to happen because he's not going to see. But at any rate, you know, 2020 was he came awfully close to winning, which is what people forget. And there was the thing. He was that was COVID.

It was, I mean, it was calamity after calamity after calamity after calamity. And yet, given another week in that election cycle, back to the, this idea of timing, he probably would have won. And, you know, which is back to there is, Steve Bannon has a theory about elections. And it's one of those things that's obvious and suddenly, but when he said it to me, I thought, Jesus, which is nothing matters except the last two weeks of an election. Right. That is when people's minds change, when they, when they waver.

the wavering people finally make a decision when that moment when push comes to shove, people have to come out. And that has always worked for Donald Trump. Always. People in the end come back to Donald Trump. Why? This is another, that's something history will have to deal with. Well, and also I think a lot of people don't want to admit that they support Donald Trump. They don't want to admit they like his party. So they don't admit it. And then right up in the final run to the privacy of the voting booth, they can finally admit they do like him. Or they would prefer him to the other candidate.

And there's a lot, an interesting pattern of men who won't admit to their wives that they are voting for Donald Trump and then they vote for Donald Trump. Now, again, the dynamic is different in this midterm election. because he's not on the ballot. So the buffoons who are running in his name don't have the luxury of being the ultimate buffoon, as it were. There are mini-miffoons. You might like to vote for the greatest buffoon of all time. But the mini-buffoons.

You don't really want. Ken Paxton, do you really want to vote for Ken Paxton? Well, that's going to be such an interesting race in Texas against James. Tala Rica, but can we just come back to the polls in terms of the polling having been so unpredictable and so wrong that it's driven certain people out of races that they've then come back and won and it's confused people. And also, do you vote on a poll? Does it impact voting behavior? Well, it certainly impacts the decisions that are made by politicians, whether to run or whether not to run, it impacts the party itself.

How much money do you invest in an election or do you sit it out? I mean, all of these things. So polls are a major factor in the nature of an election, of how you plot an election, the kind of strategy that you adopt. And for individuals in an election, do I do I do this or do I just give up? But it's strange that polls should be, it feels less reliable now than they have been before. Is that because it's just harder to find people to take part in polls? Well, I think there's many theories.

That's a theory. People don't answer their phones. There's the Donald Trump theory that people don't tell the truth about Donald Trump. But then there's this also, this other thing that polls are by their, the nature of many. There are many more polls and many less reliable polls. And one of the things that Donald Trump has done, and he's among the many things that he's undermined are polls. Because in Donald Trump's view, you bring him a poll.

He doesn't like the polls. He says, get me another poll. Again and again, you have this thing where the elections, the nature of the elections is based on polling, but the polling becomes less and less reliable. therefore the election is less and less reliable. And in Donald Trump's mind, that has been in in 2020, he looked at the polls, the favorable polls that were not reliable because he doesn't care about reliability.

He just cares about the polls saying what he wants them to say. So on the basis of these unreliable polls, he looked at the outcome of the 2020 election and said it was fraudulent because it didn't comport with these unreliable polls, which were themselves. Unreliable. Fraudulent. Let's just set the scene because right now the polls are extraordinarily quite clear. Let's not say quite rather than extraordinary. The Democrats will have a resounding victory. They will clearly take the House and they will have a very, very good shot at the Senate where X number of months ago they had almost no shot at the Senate.

That has changed. They are looking at at they have accepted. They're going to win the House. That's the Democratic view. Well, and let's just remind people there's three votes in it in the House. The Republicans have three more votes in the House than the Democrats. There are up to people think 40 seats in play. And we can come on to a couple of the more interesting ones in those.

But I don't want to ignore the issues because it's been such an energetic administration. And yet almost everything that they have done, every single policy appears to have rebounded. You mean bitten them in the ass. I do mean bitten them in the ass. I mean bitten them in the ass and chewed the ass up and spat it out on the pavement. so they are walking without one ass cheek. And possibly they'll lose another ass cheek in the Senate where there are four more Republicans

than there are Democrats. That is. I mean, you've just given the Democratic view that there is that this is Donald Trump, Donald Trump himself, who is abhorrent in every way to, from the Democratic point of view. Plus Donald Trump represents a series

of failed policies and unfulfilled promises. It's just been, it has been his dominance in his seizing of every possible initiative has only resulted in failure. Well, it's the Democratic view. Right. And actually. So therefore, how could you not vote against him? Real Canadian Superstore has everything you need this back to school season.

Save on lunchbox savers like Ziggy's slight. deli meat products for always 375 and get life brand pure Vita shampoo or conditioner for $8 each at Real Canadian Superstore. When you're ready, we're ready with a whole world and more. Well, and in a way, the information we have about his bedroom and that, you know, it's littered with old greasy wrappers of burgers and ice cream cartons. He's scooped out and candy wrappers is a good metaphor for his policies, just rubbish left around a bed. No, and you've seen this arc, this arc of him seizing control, seizing the political moment, seizing power in every way he possibly could, and all of his opponents shrinking before him.

And then you've seen in the past, and that was sort of the first year, and in the past six months, you've seen, you've seen people kind of come back to life and sort of say, hey, wait a minute, you know, this is a, this is a, this is a, this is a, a, shit show. I mean, the economy, the war, ice, ice, immigration, everything he's done. Health care. Health care. Measels. Measles. Everything. This should be the measles election alone. You know, like you're always saying we should just call him President Hormuz. We should make it the Hormuz War. We should make this the measles election. It's literally as simple as that. Do you want measles back or not? No parent wants the measles election. Or we could call him President. Natalie Harp. Well, no, except that your point, you know, week ago you made the point that Natalie Hart may

actually be a positive for the president. He's followed around by a gorgeous, blonde young woman. You don't know what is. Everything that you think from the liberal point of view is a dire negative. Somehow, in so many instances, has in the non-liberal mind become a positive. positive. Except for the war, the forever war, although very smartly there's no boots on the ground. Let's be upfront about this. We are, we are, we represent the liberal position here. We have TDS. We have very bad TDR. And the liberal position might win. And then we're like,

okay, you know, happy days. Let's not discount the rest of America. Who may want measles back? They may want measles? A few days ago, I was on the phone with people I know in the White House and asking them exactly this. And these are people, again, people I have known for a long time. They are, I think, largely straightforward with me, honest with me. We enjoy talking to each other. And there's at least a particular person in the White House who I'm talking to who has over the years now I have found been very reliable on election, on election results. So in situations where I've said, you know, God, he's screwed. And this person said, not so fast. And so this was, the conversation I had was sobering. So and the view was, so within the White House,

The view was, number one, the Democratic support has maxed out at this point. So all of the polls that we're seeing are, they're not going to get better for the Democrats. At the same time, the Trump support doesn't come into the forefront until just before an election. So it's, it is the hesitant support. as we've discussed, and there are reasons that people don't yet focus on this. And the Trump, the Republicans campaign, the Democrats, because they're in the opposition, have been waging this campaign for, you know, for the better part of two years now. The Republicans are now only beginning to make their argument.

So what we have is polls, which reflect maximum. Democratic support, and we haven't yet seen the maximization of the Republican side. Now, the White House view is that they will probably lose the House. Probably. Really? They're not confident they'll lose it. No. And they also will outline a path in which they retain the house.

And it's basically, basically to make an argument about the extremism of the new Democratic Party. Right. So leaning into the radical left, the DSA, communists. Exactly. Exactly. So does that work? I mean, again, from a Democratic, from a liberal point of view, that seems ridiculous. Although there are a lot of Democrats who are also going DSA, who are these people.

I mean, this is yet to, we don't yet know how that plays. And this could very well play enormous enthusiasm, young people, blah, blah, all of that stuff. You mean young people coming out to vote? Yes. But the other side of that could happen too, that sort of put a break on the Democrats' own enthusiasm and could bring out in those last two weeks, Steve Bannon's last two weeks, the Republicans. So that is... And what about the independence, the people that voted for Obama, voted for Trump and are now trying to figure it out?

Well, they're trying to figure it out. And so that's where... Which way does that break? Does the... Does the abhorrence of Donald Trump push them to the Democratic side? Or does the fear of the new extremism of the... I think what we're calling the progressives, push them either back to the Republicans or so that they sit out the things. I mean, these are all significant issues in play.

Now, the Senate, because more and more, the Democrats believe they are going to win the Senate, that they have a very, very good shot at this. a series of articles in the last week or so, Washington Post, New York Times, you know, this is, we're there. Now, this is all, remember, remember there, you know, you sell papers or whatever we, you sell digital subscriptions and you can subscribe to the Daily Beast.com. You just have to go there and you can get a full package. Yes, you'll get clicks by increasing the drama here. But nevertheless, there is, there's a giddiness, you can tell. So, so, and those states would be Maine, Susan Collins, the Republican, and up against Joy Jackson.

The Democrats need four seats. Four seats. Right. So they are hoping for Maine, which I think is a long shot at this point, but it's, well, maybe not a long shot. I think it's close, but Susan Collins is a popular candidate. She's distanced herself. Well, you have, Justin, you have Michigan, Maine, Nebraska, Iowa,

Texas, North Carolina, Alaska, and Ohio are really states in play. And they need, the Democrats need four of them. All right. And that's, and it's, that is, that is not impossible at all. I mean, that's the sort of the prevalent opinion is that, hey, this is kind of, this is kind of doable. The White House opinion is they are sanguine that they're going to hold the Senate. And it's...

Do they have specific states they think they're going to hold? Yes. They think that they will hold Michigan, Maine, Nebraska, Iowa, and Texas. They think that they will lose North Carolina and Alaska. And they think Ohio is a toss-up. But even in that, even if the Democrats win Ohio, North Carolina. That still doesn't give them enough. It's only three.

Right. And J.D. Vance, as the vice president, has the swing vote. Right. I mean, if it comes to things where the House is divided and the Senate is divided. So that is the, I mean, and that, you know, and that is, that's obviously wishful in part. on the Republican part. But as I said, that these, and the one person that I was discussing with

is pretty reliable. I'd say 65% in my experience. And they're based, they're basing that on the characters themselves, the candidates themselves. No, they're basing it on the numbers. I mean, so they're, remember, there are the polls that we see.

And then there are the polls within each camp which we don't necessarily see, but which they are, those are the serious polls because they have to make decisions about spending, really, most of all, on the basis of those. Right, so where the money goes. So they think they're going to lose North Carolina. They're going to lose Alaska. And what was the other one? Ohio's a toss.

Ohio's a tosser. But they've got Sherrod Brown there, former Democratic senator, very popular, who was eased out at the last election, who very much wants to come back. Ohio, which is traditionally a – safe – has become a safe Republican seat. Safe Republican state is now moved into a toss-up category. Your playlist might get you through the workday, but have you ever wondered how your ancestors spent theirs? What work helped them build a life?

How did they adapt as the world around them changed? With ancestry, you can search select historical occupational records for free for a limited time and discover the stories behind the jobs in your family tree. You've got questions. We've got ancestors. Search free until August 31st. Visit ancestry.ca for details. Terms apply.

So you've got also the ripple effect from Max Miller, the congressman there who's running. His father-in-law, Bernie Moreno, is the senator, senior senator in Ohio, who's saying don't vote for this guy. He's terrible. He hasn't got any character because he's in a, you know, long, protracted divorce, very ugly divorce battle with Moreno's daughter. There's accusations of domestic abuse of him breaking his daughter's collar bone. And Donald Trump, of course, called him. And as you predicted, people thought that Donald Trump was calling him to say, get out of the race. This is a close race. Just get out. Give it to someone else. was calling him to say, dude, you're going to have to buckle up for a bumpy ride. I did it. You can do it. That's what Max Miller told us. So great candidate there who refused to give his daughter back her little blue rabbit when she left it at his house. No, well, that's the other thing that you have in this. And the Republicans are well aware of this, that one of the things that they have going, actually, the major thing that they have against them, against them is Donald Trump. Donald Trump. himself, but also Donald Trump and his particular strategies in this election. I mean, he has now a significant history of supporting unelectable candidates.

Well, we're going to see whether or not Ken Pexton, who is a sort of, you know, Donald Trump want to be a monkei Donald Trump, if you like, in Texas impeached as Attorney General, Donald Trump's candidate because he wanted to punish the long-term Senator John Cornyn, who was very right-wing and had a very right-wing voting history, wanted to punish him because he dared to speak out against Trump on a couple of issues. No, and if, as I say, the White House is sanguine about Texas, but were they to lose... What are they sanguine on? Why do they possibly think that Ken Paxton, even in Texas?

They see their polling. Right. They just see the polling. The polling is, you know, gives them a certain degree. Let me just ask you something. So we're seeing polls which are unreliable, but they have access to secret polls that are more reliable. Yes. Well, why don't we have access to the secret polls?

I think that that's complicated because some pollsters would say we do, and they would argue that their polls are more reliable. And remember, within any given party, the bias is, well, the bias is going to be toward their own candidate. But that doesn't mean that they are bad polls. And it may well be, I mean, there's more at stake there. We need accurate polling because this is where we're going to focus. This is how we're going to make decisions about.

About money. about money or our resources and we know the polls we know the pollsters we know we just have more information about the polls itself so we're better able to judge what these polls are really telling us in theory but this is all all in theory and it very well could be even though the white house is saying we're sanguine about texas it very well could be that they will lose texas and then and the the responsible party will then, of course, be Donald Trump. And they will have sucked a lot of money into Texas because it's going to be arguably the most expensive race,

or it certainly looks like it from now. And James Talariko, the Democratic candidate, has, I think, already raised $65 million to fight what looks like it's going to be extraordinarily expensive. So it will suck a lot of resources. Yeah, completely. And that would be, so that would, be, in that sense, they could be fooling themselves, and that would be an expensive moment of

not being, of being, you know, of going in blind here, of trusting the polls, spending all of this money, and then losing. And then there would be recriminations about that. But again, they, they feel that they're going to win this, that this is, I mean, they kind of scoff, actually, at the idea that Texas would become a democratic state, which itself is fairly out there. So it could be Beto or Rourke all over again. Yeah. I mean, essentially, we go through this all of the time. Texas is going to flip, and it doesn't.

It resoundingly doesn't. It's firmly in the grip of Greg Abbott and possibly Ken Paxton impeached. There are very good ads as we played a couple of weeks ago. coming out of the Tala Rico campaign, calling Paxton the most corrupt politician in the world. They've taken a, you know, Donald Trump's playbook. Right. And that main, I mean, Ken Paxton has been the most corrupt politician in the world for quite some time now and has only seemed to prosper. Good times.

Good times and Texas. And then the other factor of this, which we should not discount at all. is Donald Trump's manipulation. The Trump White House's manipulation of the election and of the election procedures and of his Supreme Court. Yeah, well, there was just, yes, in the Supreme Court, in the Supreme Court, there was just a decision the other day, which, I mean, Trump has put into place an executive order about male voting limits. which is arguably not constitutional because voting rules are the Constitution gives that power to the states, but Trump seems to have overridden that. And the Supreme Court has just rendered a decision.

It's a kind of a kind of its... It's a somewhat confusing decision. Well, it's in its Trump procedure. They seem to have special procedures for Donald. Trump, which is we will do everything possible not to make a decision. So we will not make a decision and we will then implement a series of procedures that will let Trump do what he wants to do up to a certain point. And we will push this out. And we will try not to be on the hook for doing what would offend Donald Trump, but we recognize would otherwise be unconstitutional.

and immoral. Well, a little bit like what they did with the ballroom. Exactly. Yes. No, I mean, it's just in decision after decision after decision, put it off, don't confront Donald Trump. And that's what they've done now. So it's unclear what these male voting rules will be come election day.

But that's not the only issue that's there. I mean, he's, Donald Trump is putting, you know, hundreds of, of, of, of, you know, of, you know, of, you. Who are these people? Marshal, United States Marshals. Right. They're putting out a thousand marshals to monitor the polling stations. Right. What do they do? Do they, you know, what are they there for? What effect will they have? Will they, I mean, they're in a perfect position to kind of sew a certain kind of trepidation about going to the polls, certain kind of chaos, not clear. And then we have the fundamental, you know, jerrymandering. I mean, Donald Trump went out and contrary to all tradition, I mean, gerrymandering or the determination of congressional districts traditionally happens after every 10 years sentence.

Census. Thank you. And Donald Trump has forced to change this time around and said, do it now, basically. I need this. And a number of states have done that. They've given him a net gain of... Well, maybe up to 15 seats. Yes.

And so we don't know the effect of that. So that's an underlying thing here. How much will Donald Trump, how much has his... What advantage will his interference provide for the Republicans? And then there's a further question of if there are, if the election is iffy, then what will he do at that point? I mean, we have seen Donald Trump, certainly have seen Donald Trump try to interfere with the results of what we would assume to be fair elections. And so we don't go on vacation? We're here for it.

with kids who turned the backseat into a courtroom drama over whose tablet is louder, whose charger is faster, and while watching the same cartoon for the hundredth time is a human right? Yep, we totally have vehicles to handle that. Because whether it's a road trip or a business trip, where your flight's delayed, your phone's at 2% and your dinner is whatever is open, yeah, here for that too. Enterprise, we're here for it. So what happens if he decides, if he loses the midterms, or it appears, He is that he's lost them and he claims that he hasn't, that the election has somehow

been rigged, that the Democrats have been canny, whatever. Do the people around him, does J.D. Vance, does Marco Rubio and his crew, does Scott Besson, do they all play into that? Or do they think he's a lame duck? We're going into a lame duck period. Now we have to pull back from associating with him. We have to separate ourselves. I mean, it's a question of degree.

You know, Donald Trump is very capable of moving to a degree well beyond the palatable. And that certainly happened in 2020. Well, you would think that January 6th would be the degree of palatable, but in fact, people were pardoned, cockcars were left. But actually, there are phases in that. You know, came the election denial in 2020, and then January 6th, everybody deserted Donald Trump. Donald Trump was left with Donald Trump in some crackpots, a few crackpots, including Rudy Giuliani. And Stephen Miller. No, Stephen Miller, not Stephen Miller.

Well, I thought Stephen Miller stayed with him. No. Stephen Miller was at a, he also, everybody, but the out and out loony tunes had deserted Donald Trump. And then because the Republican, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the population of Republican voters did not desert Donald Trump. So that brought everybody back. But there was that moment in which leadership responsible or otherwise said, no, I don't want to get. Well, and you have the January the sixth investigation and the inquiry and Liz Cheney, who's completely disappeared, who's completely disappeared and being chewed up by doing the right now.

No, no, totally. So everybody is going to, everybody, even more so. So at this point, do you doubt Donald Trump? Do you question Donald Trump? Do you stand up to Donald Trump? And the answer is probably not. And probably, you know, these elections, it's more, it's much more plastic than the 2020 election, which was a straight up, Donald Trump versus Joe Biden.

Joe Biden got more votes. And you could sort of say, okay, this Donald Trump is. crazy here. But this is going to be much more complicated this midterm. So the possibility of chaos, there's the possibility of confusion, it's all concerning. All concerning. No. And also, but it will be, so in an ideal world, what happens, and this very well may happen, is that the wave is so great, Donald Trump is so unpopular, and the numbers would indicate that he is unpopular, unpopular like Richard Nixon was unpopular, unpopular like Jimmy Carter was unpopular.

I mean, he's really, really in a whole. That the numbers themselves mean that the Democrats mean that there's no ambiguity. It's just absolutely clear. No ambiguity is a good way to put. It's a blue tsunami. There is no ambiguity. But that's a hope and a dream. Well, we're going to be chronicling it every week, three times a week.

We'll be inside Trump's head right up until the midterms, figuring out what's going to happen. And we can zoom in and out on certain races. But as you say, as he says, actually, I'm on the ballot. Pretend I'm on the ballot. If you have been, thank you for joining us. Big thanks to our production team. John, who I'm looking at, Ryan, who is suspect. viciously not in the room.

But should be in the room. Heather, who is in shouting distance. Rachel, who I've, who is just a rumor. And Neil, our lawyer, is that everybody? That's everybody. That's everybody. We will be back shortly with another episode of Inside Trump's head monitoring this space. So the good news is we have so many Bee Beast tier members now. There are too many names to read out. And we really appreciate your support.