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In this wide-ranging conversation, Don Lemon and I broke down the unmistakable message voters sent in the 2025 elections: Trump is weak, MAGA is eroding, and the Republican coalition is fracturing under the weight of its own cruelty and incompetence.
Across Virginia, New Jersey, New York City, Georgia, California, and Mississippi, Democrats posted sweeping victories driven by double-digit swings among women, Black voters, Latinos, young voters, and suburban constituencies. These weren’t isolated blue-state quirks - these were structural political shifts that mirror the bellwether patterns we saw ahead of the 2018 midterms.
We discussed how Trump’s core promise of affordability has fully collapsed under the reality of his own policies: rising prices, retaliatory tariffs hammering farmers, supply chain disruptions, and vindictive shutdown tactics that hurt his own voters. Meanwhile, the images emerging from ICE’s escalating tactics—masked agents tackling migrants, a man having a seizure while holding his child—are cutting through the propaganda. The authoritarian spectacle Trump is staging is being met with moral revulsion, not admiration, and it’s reshaping public opinion rapidly.
Don and I also explored why this moment feels like the breaking of the MAGA spell. Trump’s approval is in the 30s. His demographic gains from 2024 have evaporated. Voters in counties across the country shifted left. Even within Trump’s own coalition, cracks are showing—Republicans in Kansas, Nebraska, New Hampshire, and Indiana are resisting his gerrymandering push, and figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene are transparently repositioning themselves for a post-Trump GOP. Authoritarian bluster can only hide political fragility for so long.
Ultimately, these election results validated what many of us have been saying for months: the Trump movement is hollowing out, and voters are rejecting both his cruelty and his corruption. The 2025 map shows the contours of a potential 2026 blue wave.
If Democrats keep their foot on the gas, stay disciplined on affordability, and continue calling out Trump’s failed, dangerous authoritarianism with honesty and clarity, the trajectory of this country will change dramatically in November 2026.
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