Do Republicans need to ditch Trump before the midterms?
Americast
The episode examines the political tension within the Republican party as candidates in Florida and across the US attempt to navigate Donald
Key takeaways
- Byron Donalds has significantly reduced references to Donald Trump on his campaign website to appeal to broader voters.
- Florida voters are increasingly preoccupied with rising costs for home insurance and gasoline.
Main topics
- Florida gubernatorial race
- Trump's influence on midterms
Notable quotes
Is he an asset or a liability in these midterm elections?
Conclusion
The episode illustrates the precarious balancing act for Republicans t
Transcript preview
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Speaker 1 (1:08) If Republicans are in trouble in Florida, surely that must mean they're in trouble everywhere. Of all the tight races we're following across the country, the one to replace Ron DeSantis as the governor of Florida is turning into a bit of a nail biter. And the Republican candidates been trying to distance himself from Donald Trump as a result. Anthony has been down in the Sunshine State to find out more about what's going on and how voters' concerns in Florida tell us about the key issues facing the party right across the country. What is Republican strategy to try and take on Democrats? And has Donald Trump's name become a millstone around his candidates' necks? Welcome to AmeriCast. Speaker 8 (1:50) AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. Whatever you want to talk about, Abdul, keep my wife's name the hell out of your mouth because she's way out of your league. The Speaker 4 (1:58) tide is coming, and this time we intend to win it all. Speaker 8 (2:04) See, he doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the Speaker 3 (2:14) Emir of Qatar. Speaker 3 (2:17) You're going to be broke. There's not going to be anybody to report on. Nobody gives a damn about anybody else. Speaker 6 (2:27) Hello, it's Sarah in the BBC studio in Washington. Speaker 2 (2:30) And it's Anthony right here next to Sarah in Washington, D.C. And Speaker 6 (2:33) we haven't seen each other for a while, Anthony, and partly because you've been off in Florida, which... Confused me when I first heard that's where you'd gone, because it's not exactly what you would call a swing state these days. Not since 2000, when the race came down so close between Al Gore and George W. Bush. Has it been considered in play at all? Has it, Florida? Speaker 2 (2:53) Yeah, not exactly a swing state. Republican dominated. If you remember back in 2018 in this midterm elections, when Democrats did really well, it was a blue wave that year, too. An incumbent, Senator Nelson, a Democrat, got ousted by Rick Scott, a Republican. So if anything, Florida has been in the face of some Democratic victories trending the other way, becoming more conservative. It wasn't really in play in the 2024 presidential election. So yeah, I didn't go there because it's a battleground state. I went there because polls do show that this governor's race there between Byron Donalds, the Republican, and David Jolly, the Democrat, is within the margin of errors. And I also wanted to get a feel for how... Republican candidates, even in supposedly safe areas, are pitching themselves to a voting block that is not happy with the way things are going, are worried about high prices, worried about affordability, worried about gasoline prices, all of that. So how were they able to sell themselves in this hostile environment, essentially? Speaker 6 (3:58) And what a fascinating place to go and find that the environment is hostile towards Republicans, because as you say, it is pretty solid. rare, but it's also, I associate any time I've been in Florida in the last few years with it being a real kind of MAGA heartland. These aren't just people who are interested in lower taxes, for instance. There's a lot of real dedication to Donald Trump, who of course does have his kind of southern White House in Mar-a-Lago right there in Florida, in Palm Beach, doesn't he? So it's of all the places to feel like they're... turning on MAGA candidates. It's really saying something about this election that it's Florida. Yeah, Speaker 2 (4:31) Florida is a blend of different things, right? You've got the more deep Southern traditional cultural conservatives in the Northern part of the state along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts heading down to South Florida, which is a wash in... various different types of Latin culture, big Cuban population, Cuban-American population, big Venezuelan, Colombian expat population, which have also trended, we saw in 2024, towards Donald Trump. He actually carried Miami-Dade County, where the city of Miami is, for the first time in decades, a Republican winning that area, representative of the inroads that Trump made with Hispanic voters. And one thing I found... not just affordability, not just the high price of gas and diesel, the high price of housing. They're really big on insurance on homes, which has been going up a lot. Homeowners Association fees, which apparently are really big in Florida because of insurance, because of all these other kind of influences, pressures on housing prices. But they also care among the Hispanic community a lot about immigration and immigration enforcement. You saw Maria Salazar, which I think we talked about in the past. She's a congresswoman from the Miami area, Republican, actually go on air and directly to the camera criticize Donald Trump for his immigration enforcement, saying that he was going too far. Speaker 4 (5:58) That's a president. Some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far. In July, 50 % of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. Be careful what your advisors are telling you about immigration policies. The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today. You can be for immigration when Lincoln was for slavery and Reagan was for communism. I'm not talking about giving them amnesty. I'm talking about giving them a dignified life in this promised land. And only you can do that. Speaker 2 (6:28) Over the weekend, Donald Trump pushed back a bit at that, started posting on True Social other people's comments, calling for her to drop out and calling her disloyal and saying that she betrayed him. But that shows the mood in Florida, even in this heart of MAGA, as you said, is shifting considerably. And well, here, let's play some clips of some of the folks I spoke with. These are Republican voters. This was at an event for Brian Avila, who is a lieutenant governor running with Byron Donald. in Tampa, Florida, and they're expressing some uneasiness. So let's hear from them. If Speaker 8 (7:00) you have a flip-flop state, with respect, you know, a swing state. If you have a swing state, say like in Ohio, where it's been a swing in recent times, or Pennsylvania, you're always going to have that battle, which side's better. When you have something where one party's been leading for so long, whether it's Alabama or Florida on the Republican side, California and Delaware on the Democrat side, if... People feel like affordability is a problem. They're going to have to answer those questions. Speaker 7 (7:25) Campaigns are won at the end by momentum. And the momentum is not, it really sort of changed about the last three days. But the momentum has been slow. It's not been really like, hey, I'm going to go run out there and vote right now. I see more African-Americans going with this race. Not that there's going to be a great turnaround, but I see them going that way just like myself because we're businessmen. I'm a businessman. And we are somewhat affirmatively conservative. And I'm hoping that the president comes down in the northern part of Florida and the panhandle where people are sort of iffy. But if I think the president comes down and just do one good grand rally up in the panhandle, this thing will not only be over, people will say, hey, man, it's done. Speaker 6 (8:09) That was Joseph Robinson there that you were speaking to. And he says if the president just came and did one rally in the panhandle, people would say, hey, man, it's done. Does he mean it's a done deal? the Republicans would win because Trump had appeared there or entirely the opposite? Because in a