The New Yorker Radio Hour - Has MAGA Lost Faith in Donald Trump?

Episode Date: October 16, 2026

A growing portion of the electorate appears to recognize the mayhem President Donald Trump has instigated since returning to the Oval Office. That segment includes some of the people who put him back into office, including Rich Baris, who goes by the People’s Pundit on social media. Baris runs Big Data Poll, and appears regularly on “The Charlie Kirk Show” and other right-wing outlets. But he concurs with nonpartisan pollsters that MAGA is fracturing, and he talks with David Remnick about how the President lost the trust of his base; the contempt MAGA voters have for the old Republican Party; and who might take the reins after Trump. Further reading:“The Week Republicans Finally Panicked About Trump,” by Susan B. Glasser“A Never Trumper and a Democrat on Beating MAGA for Good,” by Isaac Arnsdorf“How the Internet Fringe Infiltrated Republican Politics,” by Antonia Hitchens“Tucker Carlson’s Nationalist Crusade,” by Jason Zengerle“Does MAGA Have Ideas?,” by Joshua Rothman New episodes of The New Yorker Radio Hour drop every Tuesday and Friday. Join host David Remnick as he discusses the latest in politics, news, and current events in conversation with political leaders, newsmakers, innovators, New Yorker staff writers, authors, actors, and musicians. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. Denial has been one of the core traits, the default mode, you could say, of Donald Trump's presidency. Denial is the grease in the machinery that keeps it all turning, the abuses of power, the self-dealing, the bulldozing of our civic life. Donald Trump lives in a realm of alternative facts. But sooner or later, the actual. facts will impinge on Donald Trump, and it may be just a couple of weeks away in the midterms.

As I wrote in the New Yorker last week, a growing percentage of the electorate appears to recognize the mayhem that he has instigated from the Oval Office, and that percentage includes some of the people who put him in office in the first place. Rich Barris is a pollster. He runs an outfit called Big Data Poll. On X, he calls himself the People's Pundit. Barris predicted the 2016 election correctly, and Unlike many pollsters, he's now predicting disaster for Trump. But unlike many of them, Rich Barris has been an admirer of the president. He's sometimes identified as a MAGA pollster, and he appears regularly on the Charlie Kirk podcast and other right-wing outlets.

So when Barris tells you that MAGA is failing, that's not a prediction that he's happy to make. Rich, you've been labeled a MAGA pollster, and at places like the New Yorker. We usually cite polls from what we think or non-price. partisan polling organizations that try to be unbiased. So what exactly does it mean to be a maga pollster? Well, thanks for having me, David, first and foremost. I can't stand that label. I mean, I'd say I'd let you in on a secret, but in the industry, everybody, everybody knows that I can't stand that it's just something that got slapped on me, because I think it's fair to say that I did see the polling very differently than everybody else since 2016. And I thought, as a

pollster, and I still obviously do think this, that basically the pollster is the lobby for the voter. They don't have a lobby. Every other special interest has a lobby in D.C. and on K Street. So I pushed back a lot in the beginning of the Trump era on the media and university polls. I thought they were wrong. And for that, you know, you get labeled as while he's doing, he's really defending Trump. And I think most of MAGA now has found out the hard way that that's not true. Well, and we'll get to that. But just for everybody's bona fides here, you are, in fact, a, would you identify yourself as a MAGA voter or sympathetic to Trump? Yeah, I would say sympathetic. That's fair. Yeah. What attracted you to Trump? And is that attraction born the test of time?

I think Donald Trump was, he was able to exist outside of the typical, what I used to call the construct. And, you know, I'm a bit of a realist. So any of. who's going to take money from these billionaires in their packs and all of that, it's an IOU. I mean, it's an unfortunate reality of our system. And I thought Donald Trump was a rare opportunity for an individual to put himself august of that and to be able to make decisions using a different calculus. Are you suggesting that he's immune to the funding of the wealthy? Not totally immune, not totally, but to some degree, at least. a little bit more independent. And that's certainly less true in 24 than it was in 16. I think we're looking. I mean, we can go through the FEC, you know, records and we can tell that the 2024 Trump's campaign

very, very different than 2016. Now, the bond that many Trump voters have with him sometimes appear to be emotional as much as it is ideological. Do you think that is starting to fray? I do. I think that Rush Limbaugh gave the president. some of the best advice. He said that nobody can break the bond that Donald Trump or you have with your voters from external force. So the FBI coming after you for Russia or the media coming after you, whatever it may be. If it's perceived by the voter as an external force that's trying to take you out, then they'll perceive it as those same forces they blame for their lives being miserable. And they'll just side with you. It'll be a knee-jerk reaction, even if you're wrong, by the way. This time, Donald Trump did this to himself. And, again, sometimes it pains me to talk like this. What was the breaking point for you? I think the very first breaking point was when many of his voters were upset about the mishandling of the Epstein file situation, which was not a tremendous issue at the top of everybody's minds. But why it bothered them is that it was a bit symbolic

of the ruling class that they feel rigs the system at their expense. And Trump saying, if you care about this issue, I don't want your support anymore. was the first fissure. It was the first crack. Not January, January 6th did not have that effect. It did not. And I could name 15 other things, but look, we're here mostly to talk about polls. I think we can stipulate right away, Rich, that you and I probably agree on very little when it comes to Donald Trump. You voted for Trump all three times? I did. Yes. You regret it in any way? You know, I'm certainly more partisan than the average person. I'm more political than the average American. And it's, I can't say I regret it because I wouldn't have voted for Kamala Harris, but at the same time, I also have to recognize that most Americans aren't steeped into it the way I am.

And I'm trying to get people on both sides, but particularly the right now, to understand that not everyone is going to agree with us. In fact, a lot of people will not. Most of Trump's low propensity vote. They didn't vote for exactly this reason. They thought, no matter who they voted for, it didn't matter. We got war and we got inflation and we got a weakening labor market. It almost never mattered. It doesn't matter the party. It doesn't matter the person. So with Donald Trump being in the position he's in right now, the right ones, they want to

look at the average voter and see what they see in the mirror. And that's just not the case. It seems to me that the issues that have really damaged to support are the war in Iran, certainly prices, and also the grift. the degree to which the Trump family and people around Trump have just profited in the billions of dollars in the most open and really unprecedented ways. Yeah, I think it's a little bit amusing to me that here I am talking like you said, but we probably agree on very little. But you seem to understand the disaffection better than what remains of the average MAGA supporter. And I say what remains intentionally because it they've, they've.

undergone a purification through subtraction process where it's okay to start cutting off limbs of your coalition if they're not stepping in line with you. And that is the antithesis of what MAGA was all about and how it built a big tent coalition. And when I brought up the Epstein issue before, I used the analogy that it was almost like a boxing analogy. It was almost like a one-two punch. The Iran issue, the focus on foreign policy, that was the big overhand right. You know, the Epstein situation was the jab to the chief. chin that just tees you up a little bit for that big overhand right. And I've tried to phrase it like that because ever since that overhand right came, MAGA's been down and they're so out of it, they don't even realize they're on the map.

The ref's been counting to a thousand by now and they still think they're up fighting and their hands are up. It's unbelievable. And it's a little shocking to me that people on the outside can see it clear as day. And it's a loss of objectivity. And I think the Iran issue, of course, that's absolutely front and center. we're going to hear people who of course supported the Iran war say the losses weren't caused by Iran per se they were caused by unhappiness with the economy and gas prices what they everyone should understand is that of course the voters blame Iran for that they blame the focus on foreign policy for the the administration not being a domestic policy focused administration as it promised of course to be and I would argue Trump was in his first administration and then the grift what you

call it the grift. We did a focus group. It's almost, I guess, almost three months ago now. And we, we wanted to know out of what remains of that core support when Democrats take power, if and when, let's say if and when, they take power. And they are much more disciplined this time than they were the first time. It actually impresses me. They launch investigations into all of these stories you're talking about. We just talked to core MAGA. One, they didn't know. They didn't know about the pardons. They didn't know about the stuff. It's amazing how much they didn't know. And then two, once they did, a huge chunk of them were very, very upset. And I think this goes back to the point I was making about what Rush said. The only way to break that bomb

with these voters is if you do it yourself. And how? Well, I don't know, turn out to be just another politician. I've heard you talk about this a little bit elsewhere, and I want to drill down in a little bit. What you're predicting, you Rich Barris, the people's pundit, a MAGA supporter, and a mega-aligned pollster, you are saying that Donald Trump and the Republican Party are facing disaster come November 3rd. Yeah, I mean, that's fair. That's a fair characterization. I mean, they're going to lose states that were unthinkable that they would lose two years ago.

In the House, the House is gone. I'm not even willing to entertain this like some people are, that somehow the Republican Party is going to hold on to the House. We're seeing 15, 16 point swings in some of these districts away from Donald Trump. The problem is they're dealing with a different situation than they had in 2018. And by that, I mean, the base was still willing to crawl across broken glass to defend Donald Trump from potential investigations. And there was the Supreme Court issue back then. Can we get a Senate that can confirm Donald Trump's picks? There's disaffection right now at a level that I have never measured since we started measuring.

the Trump coalition. Even you brought up January 6 before. Donald Trump is more unpopular now than he was in the weeks after January 6. And that may be one of the few events where you can point to and say, okay, that drew blood a little bit. That hurt him a little bit. It was temporary, but it did hurt. Insurrection on Capitol Hill heard him a little bit. Yeah. I mean, at a time when we first started polling that, when a majority did agree with the characterization that it was an insurrection. Now, Democrats, they didn't hold on to that narrative and that disappeared over two years. And that was a big part of going into the 24 election, them drumming on about it. It wasn't working because Americans had kind of shifted their views on it a little bit. But right, at the end of the day, you could look at an event like January 6th and say, okay, that should have hurt him pretty badly. And why is he hurting now more than he ever was hurting after an event like that? And again, it's because it's personal. there's a lack of appreciation in the administration and supporters for how so many of these voters, especially young voters, how they felt about Donald Trump and vice president Vance.

You're saying they feel betrayed, I think, is what you're, I don't want to lead the witness here, but that's what I'm hearing. They're disappointed. And it's a level of disappointment that can only be understood if you understand how many of these voters really believed that Donald Trump was the only reason to vote. that Donald Trump was their last chance. I'm speaking with the pollster, Rich Barris. We'll continue in just a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and I've been speaking today with the pollster Rich Barris. Barris runs a firm called Big Data Poll, and he's co-author of a new book called Burn It Down, what the polls say young Americans really want. Although Barris politically identifies with MAGA and its goals, he's seeing a wave of disappointment, that's his term for it, among the president's voters.

And Barris agrees with nonpartisan polls that a blue wave is coming on election day. We'll continue our conversation now. You said that the House is gone. Gone. Yeah, the House is gone. Let's go to the crucial Senate races and break them down a little bit. Let's look, for example, we start on the East Coast and start moving west. Yeah.

Look at Maine. Yeah. We're going to have a poll in Maine soon. if it was conducted a week before, we may have had Susan Collins up. But let me just explain this because this will go to every state we go around the map. We end in November, we should have seen some tightening of the polling already if things were going to go somewhat back in the Republicans' directions. Normally, when Republicans start to take a chip away and Democrats have PTSD over this, every time they think they're in mid-September, they're going to win. By late September and early October, that polling lead has been chipped away.

and then Republicans gain and gain and gain, and then the election comes and they can't believe what happened. That's been the pattern. And it's a longstanding pattern. It's not just the MAGA era pattern. This is not happened. And what does that mean? Well, if that hasn't happened by now, what always happens is that the current trend accelerates

and pollsters have a hard time picking up that movement at the end. And I feel, and we saw this in 25, by the way, with New Jersey, with Pennsylvania, with Virginia. This feels to me far more, like 25 than 24. So when you look at Maine, I would have said Susan Collins was up a point or two a couple of weeks ago. It's slipping away from her now. I do. We're not just talking about Maine and Michigan. We're talking about Nebraska. Yeah. Kansas. Yeah. That is extraordinary. It is. And I think this, those two, which people view as deeply red states, they're ruby red. It's not really true. There's a populist aura that is always run beneath the electorate of these plain states, and it has not always favored MAGA. Yes, in state

level races like governor's elections, we've seen Democrats win in the past, especially if Republicans nominated bad candidates. But at the federal level, people got complacent. And they thought that these states could not go in a bad environment, they absolutely can. Alaska. Yes. excess even. That's right. Now we're used to this idea of Tala Rico potentially winning. And admittedly, I think he would agree his opponent is probably one of the worst candidates imaginable. He's definitely had some wounds from the primary. I think that's fair. Your habit is for understatement, Rich. I'm trying. I'm trying to be diplomatic here. I see. Look, $100 million in the primary spent against Ken to expose every one of those flaws. And it took a...

It did damage. And now Texas is almost single-handedly bankrupting Republican organizations. If Tala Rico even loses, let's say Ken Paxton were to eat this out. It's still a massive win because the rest of the map, you're going to see the impact of having to drop immediately $125 million to go and save Ken Paxton. Is Ken Paxton saveable? I do think he is. He's in a better position now. We'll have another Texas poll too. Did have Tala Rico up. Money does matter. And that amount of money is an obscene amount of money.

Will it be enough? We'll see. There are plenty of Republicans. And even with the slides and the swings that we're seeing with core demographics, key demographic groups. And in Texas, it's white suburbanites and Hispanics. They have swung hard against Republicans. There's still enough where if they were to go out and vote, then Ken will win.

They'll leak it out. However, that's a million dollar question, David. You mean, a lot of people may stay home. They're going to stay home. That disaffection may keep you in a chair in the house. I think we're going to see that in a lot of places. One of the surprises last time around in the general election was the swing of Hispanic voters in Trump's direction.

That seems to be, tell me if you agree with this general conception, that that has reversed to some great degree. I would argue it's at least reversed, at least. Wow. And Republicans, if we come out of Wednesday morning, we're all looking at the exit polls, And we're looking at Mitt Romney level support among Hispanics. I will not be surprised at all. Not in the least.

And we can already see evidence of that. Texas is a perfect example of this. I'm looking at some of these models, David, and they're all assigning respectable to almost Trump-level shares of the Hispanic vote to the Republican candidates in these states and districts. And that's insane. Donald Trump was able to do that. Republicans were not.

They have never been able to do that. And with Trump not coming through for them on a lot of these issues, that leaves no reason for them to continue to vote Republican. We've seen it in the primary. We can tell in the border counties that Trump did so well in. We can tell that Tala Rico got so much of the vote in a primary that it doesn't make any sense other than you realize that many of Trump's Hispanic voters actually just voted for James Tala Rico and a Democratic primary. when you're getting 60 to 80% of Kamala Harris's total vote in a general election, in a primary election, that's the only way the numbers make sense. And it wouldn't be unprecedented. We saw it in New Jersey and in Florida recently, too. And the reason for the shift back in the Hispanic vote is what, economic issues, or is it, and here I won't be diplomatic, the kind of obscene overtorking in immigration policy,

namely ICE on the streets and all the rest? How much has that hurt the president? I would say it's still 80-20 economic. They wanted... Really? Mast deportations don't compare to the rest. I think Donald Trump had he done or made a few changes on how mass deportations were being carried out,

it would have made all of the difference in the world. We have talked to countless numbers of Hispanic voters who tell us mass deportations were a problem for them, and then when asked what part of it was a problem, they'll tell you that it's because Trump wasn't going after

the employers. Not that he was also going after the workers and removing people. The voters didn't mind the spectacle of people being herded onto planes to El Salvador? There's no doubt some did. But people who voted for Trump in November were already okay with the idea of deporting large numbers of people. They really were. Now, what they weren't okay with was not knowing who ends up on this list. I mean, there were very, very clear things they were telling us. I don't trust the government just because Donald Trump is now. The president doesn't mean I trust it anymore. Why are these people ending up on these deportation lists? That was number two.

Number one was take off the mask you look like a stormtrooper. This is ridiculous. This is the United States of America. You're afraid about being doxed. That's absurd. That was unacceptable to the American public. Number three was that it stems from number two, where they were being told that it was criminals who were ending up on these lists.

But then we would see, of course, stories of what just appeared to be completely unnecessary, snatch and grabs and deportations, including. with children, which always gets Americans in an uproar. What can Donald Trump do between now an election day to change anything? He is surprisingly, and I think I have to say erratically, traveling the country in a way, I can't quite grasp. He can generate more turnout, but the problem with that is what I said before. This isn't 18 anymore.

And yes, you can juice your base turnout, but your base is smaller than it was before. the reality. Republicans hitched their wagon to Donald Trump, and that has always been for better or for worse. If you don't, you risk turning off what remains of that maga base. And contrary to what you hear, every election is a base election, even among independence. The more you can gin up your base, excitement among your base, the more you can gin up the excitement among your own independence. The truth is, independence, very small amount in this country are truly independent. They lean one way or the other. And when your base is depressed, your independent share is depressed. And it'll make the margin look even worse for you there, which we are seeing this right now for Republicans. Well, let's presume

you're right. And there is a blue wave on November 3rd and other pollsters are saying much the same. Where does that leave this presidency? Donald Trump, in your view, and now I'm asking you less as a pollster than as a somebody who has been with Trump since the beginning in terms of your politics. Is he a lame duck? Because he still has the power to do many, many things, independent of any sanction of Congress. Yeah, I think that'll depend on how big of a wave we're talking about. If we're talking about 55 seats in the U.S. Senate,

he's in real danger of even finishing his presidency. I don't know how people who live through the first administration at least can't entertain that as a real possibility. You mean, in terms of having an impeachment proceeding and even a conviction? I do. Part of what attracts someone like me to MAGA and other voters to MAGA is the realization that the Republican Party is a scam. It's a con.

They'll turn on Trump and a heartbeat. Let's drill down on that. Yeah. Rich Barras, MAGA supporter. Absolutely. is telling me the Republican Party is a scam. What does that mean? Their donors always win the fight between the donors and the voters. And no matter what you want to say about the Democratic Party, it does happen, but it happens a lot less. And that's because their donors are more in line

ideologically with their own base. That is not the case with the Republican Party. And Donald Trump rose to where he did and was able to take over the Republican Party because of that. that very real fact. Republicans let their voters down all the time. Seven-year campaign promises to repeal and replace Obamacare. It never happens. Infinite campaign promises to seal a border and stop the endless wave of immigration, illegal immigration. It never happens. Why? Because big agriculture and big hospitality donate to Republican senators and Republican lawmakers. Donald Trump was a different kind of Republican brand that represented not being a happy loser anymore. And without him even being popular, David, they're in dire straits. And I think

that's a major difference. Let's then look at the main drama that will follow is the presidential race. The two candidates that are most likely on the Republican side are Marco Rubio and J.D. Vance. But does Trumpism end with Trump? Are either one of these people capable of continuing that legacy, or will they run as conventional Republicans? How do you differentiate that? him. I really only think Marco Rubio would be worth talking about if the vice president doesn't run. Really? I mean, yes. Yeah, I really do. You think if advance runs Rubio does not. I do. And even if he decides, he just can't win. He gets, this is Ron DeSantis versus Donald Trump all over again. If the vice president were to win, he's going to, I don't want to stick my foot in my mouth here, but right now he's got a bigger lead than we saw in 24.

So it would be incredibly difficult for Marco Rubio to be able to make inroads with white working class especially because he's on the wrong side of certain issues. If Vance runs, Vance is a lock. Without a dark horse, yes. And I always keep in mind the possibility that a dark horse could rise because Vance has got a tightrope walk that he's got to pull off. There's a huge part of the Republican base who is very angry at the foreign policy wing of the party. Right. And he's got to win back the trust of the white working class in Appalachian and in the Ohio River Valley. But how does he possibly do that? He's the vice president of the United States. How is he not soiled by the grift, as we've called it in our conversation, soiled by the war in Iran that we're told privately he was against, but he was the vice president.

The numbers are telling us right now that for whatever reason, the voters are giving him the benefit of the doubt. and they're not blaming him in a way that I expected them too. Is Tucker Carlson a factor in this race or is he just playing games? I think he could drag people to the right. He will be a factor. I think this is a great part of the entire conversation. The Republican Party is trying to avoid right now. Yes, of course, going after the president in the short term is going to make you

unpopular with some people, including some people on the right. But in the long term, Tucker has won this fight already and many people just don't even know it. What do I mean by that? If you're a Republican who is 55 and older, maybe you agree with Mark Levin and Ben Shapiro, and maybe you're still happy with Donald Trump and maybe J.D. Vance's role in the administration won't bother you at all. But if you're below the age of 55 and your right wing, that which is the future, then you are much, much more in agreement ideologically with Tucker Carlson.

And that is something that the right is just going to have to accept. As somebody who supported MAGA from the start and now maybe, be with a certain sadness seeing its eclipse. When Trump ends, this Trumpism end. Republicans needed to understand from the beginning of this thing that this was all about him and his new ideas that he brought forward. Your platform was never popular. Donald Trump won these. What were his successes? And I'll just stipulate my disagreement even before you were. Before you answer, but if we ended the whole episode now, a decade-long episode, and it'll have two more years to play out, presumably, what do you count as his successes? Well, you know, shifting the Overton window on the issue of immigration, they have been enormously successful.

It'll be very hard for the Republican establishment to roll that back. I brought up the construct earlier in the interview. That construct is gone. And what it was was this like little box where we would have these elections in. And nobody ever left the confines of these boxes. We were only allowed to talk about issues in a certain way, and we were only allowed to talk about the impact of them in a certain way. And some people weren't allowed to say that maybe my experience with this policy hasn't led to the best results. But when it's tipped over into racism, when it's tipped over into racism, both a discussion of and the policy on immigration, did that give you pause?

Yeah, I think one of the sadder things, and I'm going to go a little, lot of phone calls after people on the right hear this. But I think one of the sadder things for me has been to watch parts of the right begin to blame others. Okay. Call it what you want. Arab Americans, Arab voters in Michigan in Dearborn, who just less than two years ago voted for Donald Trump. Well, we're angry now. So suddenly we need to round them up and throw them out. They just voted for you. Venezuelaans. in Florida after the Maduro raid. You know what?

They gotta go to. What are you talking about? So this is bothered. It has. I would be dishonest if I told you it hasn't. I have a friend. His wife is Arab. She voted for Trump.

They were, I mean, they were elated. I don't know a better word to use. They were elated to see how non-white Trump's coalition was, how diverse it was. It feels good when you somehow, increase your vote chair with both Jewish voters and Muslim voters.

That feels good. It feels like you're putting together a real coalition where people can start to come together and get things done. From my point of view, David, I'll just tell you, I think I would personally like to see the gap between urban and rural shrink because I think

they have a common opponent that is why their lives maybe aren't as good as they think they could be. It's a have versus have not thing. It's not a white Bruce Black. A lot of the voters from Bernie Sanders' coalition in 2016, they were Trump voters by the time we got to 2024. That could have continued. They could have kept expanding the appeal they were having with younger voters, with with traditionally even ancestral, democratic areas that we have been seen. They squandered. They squandered this opportunity. And unfortunately, and this has been my concern for over a year, it's always going to be blamed on somebody. And when there's failure and anger and disappointment, that people start to look for other people to blame. And that's tragic. It's just, it's, there's no other

work. Rich Barris, I know we have much that we disagree about, tons that we disagree about, but it's been a pleasure to talk with you and really talk through what's, what you think is going to happen, not only in the midterm elections, which are just around the corner, but beyond. I, I, thank you very much. Well, thank you for having me, David. It was a pleasure. All the best. Rich Barris runs big data poll, and his new book about young voters is called, burn it down. The midterms, do I need to remind you, are November 3rd. I'm David Remnick. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks so much for listening. See you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of Tune Yards,

with additional music by Louis Mitchell and Jared Paul. This episode was produced by Max Balton, Adam Howard, Erica Huang, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, Jared Paul, and Ursula Summer, with guidance from Emily Boutin. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.