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On Saturday, I once again joined Antonia Hylton on MS NOW’s The Assignment alongside Adam Mockler, Jake Lahut, and Jake Conley. Antonia’s show is only about a month old, and it’s quickly becoming one of my favorite shows to appear on. Her whole team is super kind, and Antonia knows how to run a panel with the best of them.
Antonia opened our conversation with a striking number from the Pew Research Center. Only 67% of Trump’s 2024 voters approve of the job he’s doing, down from 95% early in his second term. His overall approval sits at 30%. In other words, about a third of the people who put him back in office have now turned on him. And this will have major impacts on the midterm election results.
There’s a reason Donald Trump has never won an election as an incumbent. In 2018, Republicans lost the House. In 2020, he lost the presidency. When he’s in power, he owns the problems Americans face, and right now that means higher prices from his tariffs and the Iran war. He also embodies everything he promised his 2016 voters he would take down. He promised to take down the establishment, and now he is the establishment, governing for the elites while the working class languishes. He promised to drain the swamp, and he became a creature of it and expanded it dramatically. Americans see right through it.
The con is collapsing. What we’re witnessing is the failure of a political movement, and people are heading for the exits.
When the conversation turned to reports that Kimberly Guilfoyle pushed a Trump donor to cover a $100,000 American Express bill, I said this is the modus operandi of the Trump administration. They are the personification of the top of the K-shaped economy. Trump grifts. We pay. Corruption is a tax, and Americans can feel it: Navigator Research finds 81% of Americans say corruption is raising their personal costs. Clearly, this is a message that Democrats should push.
That’s why Republicans spent last week’s Senate debates trying to distance themselves from Trump. What did they think was going to happen? That they could enable a reckless, egomaniacal authoritarian for a decade, and he would play by their rules? Now, even Iowa Republican Senate candidate Ashley Hinson says she’ll stand up to Trump when it matters, in a race that shouldn’t even be competitive. Mike Rogers says he opposes the militarized immigration crackdowns.
Meanwhile, Jon Ossoff told Mike Collins that if John Lewis were marching from Selma to Montgomery today, Collins would be grabbing a billy club. The camera panned to Collins, scribbling furiously, with no comeback to give. Republicans are flailing in these debates while Democrats are winning on substance and style.
With three weeks until the midterms, Republicans want distance from the monster they created. It’s too late. They own this.
You can watch the first two full blocks of the appearance and get more from our discussion on YouTube below. Thanks again!
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