"Not the warmest welcome for their party leader"

Deadline: White House

Hosts and guests analyze Donald Trump's late-stage midterm campaign tour in traditionally Republican strongholds like Alabama, Oklahoma, and Nebraska, highlighting a dramatic shift as GOP

Key takeaways

• Trump's approval rating sits at a career low of 31% per an AP poll, forcing Republicans to court unaffiliated voters in states like North Carolina where the top Senate super PAC canceled all remaining ads.
• The war with Iran has caused diesel prices to exceed $6.50 per gallon nationwide, severely impacting truck drivers and small businesses who are now openly criticizing Trump's economic policies.

Main topics

• 2026 midterm election dynamics in red states
• Economic hardship and Iran war impact on voters

Notable quotes

"He has broken nearly every campaign promise and I can no longer support this guy."

Conclusion

The episode underscores a rapidly shifting political landscape where economi

Transcript preview

Speaker 7 (0:00) Ever since I was young, I've watched people working hard, chasing opportunity, making sacrifices, doing everything they can to build a better life. And now we're shining a light on what matters most. Our economy, our national identity, our democracy, our future. The stakes have never been higher. It's all on the line. Speaker 6 (0:19) On the Line with Alicia Menendez. Weekdays at 12 p.m. Eastern on MSNOW. Speaker 6 (0:33) There arguably could be some similarities between the 06 cycle and the 2026 cycle. Think about the condition of the country back in 06, an unpopular war. Six in ten Americans opposed the Iraq war at that point. Gas prices had doubled. Does this sound familiar? Speaker 6 (0:54) And we ended up losing six seats. Speaker 2 (0:58) Hi again, everybody. It's five o'clock in New York. A valid point and question from a Republican senator there. Will we see a repeat of 2006, 32 days from today? Donald Trump has now embarked on a blitz of campaign stops ahead of the November 3rd midterms, ostensibly in hope of shoring up support for members of his party, even though he doesn't really have that effect. But for many Republicans in tightly contested races, they are not embracing their party's leader. They don't want him. They're instead choosing to distance themselves from him and his unpopular policies and dismal poll numbers. Trump's approval is now at career lows. The latest poll from the AP finds him at 31%, meaning that Republicans need to go beyond Trump supporters to win their races. But as retiring Senator Tom Tillis points out regarding his state of North Carolina, quote, 40 percent of our electorate is unaffiliated. You can't win with just a pure MAGA base. In fact, the race for Tillis's seat is looking so bad for Republicans that The New York Times today reports this, quote, the top super PAC for Senate Republicans is canceling all the remaining ads it had booked in North Carolina as of Friday, shifting away tens of millions of dollars in a move that signals that Republicans. no longer see a path to winning the state this fall. At the same time, the super PAC called the Senate Leadership Fund is making its first investment of the cycle in Kansas. a sign of rising concern among Republicans in red states with a new ad attacking the Democratic nominee there. It is like what we're seeing when it comes to Trump's campaign tour, putting a focus not on any swing states or battleground states, but on typically reliable ruby red states. Trump yesterday went to Texas and Oklahoma. On Monday, he's going to Nebraska. Tonight, he's stopping in, we need a new word for ruby, but ruby red Alabama, a state he won in 2024 by 30 points. A remarkable place for the GOP to be just one month out from Election Day, forced to put time and energy and focus and money into races that in any other moment, in any other midterm cycle, we wouldn't even be covering. The GOP is on the defensive, having handed its entire set of morals and principles and policies and ethics and standards over to Donald Trump. who, aside from not making good on any of his promises to improve the economy or never start a forever war or, say, turn over the Epstein files, has also proven to be indifferent to people's tales of suffering and struggle. Here are some Trump voters in Alaska, another red state Republicans are scared they might lose. Speaker 6 (3:40) If you could talk directly to President Trump about these prices right now, what would you tell him? Speaker 8 (3:46) I would tell him what he initially told the voters is BS, that these prices weren't supposed to be so high, and look what's happened. I Speaker 4 (3:53) have a lot of people that I've seen there. They used to be Trump voters. They're not. They're not anymore. Some of my family are turning their back. Speaker 6 (4:03) Plain and simple. Dad, you look in your wallet and watch it get empty every time you do this and fill up your car, you know? Got to do what you got to do, but I wouldn't vote for him again. No way to hell. Speaker 2 (4:12) It's where we start today with some of our favorite experts and friends. Media Matters for America President Angelo Carasone is back, also joining us, former Deputy White House Press Secretary during Donald Trump's first term. Now the spokesperson for the Home of the Brave campaign, Sarah Matthews, is here. And with me at the table, host of Politics Nation, founder of the National Action Network, the Reverend Al Sharpton's here. Rev, I don't think he cares. He's got his immunity from the Supreme Court. He likes thinking I alone can win elections. None of these Republicans can. And I think the joke is on the Republicans for sacrificing everything and anything in service of his corruption in a second term. Speaker 4 (4:47) When they saw him as an egomaniac, that was an understatement. He's a narcissist. And he will find, in my judgment, joy in being able to say to them. If I was on the ticket, you'd want to look at you guys. You were nothing without me. I had to resurrect you twice. And I think that he looks at the fact he gives himself immunity. Even if he goes through impeachments, he feels that they can't do anything to really put him away. He has to be concerned about the state charges in New York, but he thinks he can get by that. And he walks away saying, I was the one that brought everybody back and they couldn't hold it. They're clumsy. They don't know what they're doing. They're not Trump. That's how he thinks. And I don't understand how people feel that they were playing. a football game when he was playing boxer. It's him, one in the ring, not them. And I think that at the end of the day, it's going to be something that they take a bloodbath and he'll be privately saying, these guys are nothing without me, nothing. Speaker 2 (5:54) Yeah, I mean, Sarah, you can probably shed more light on this, but my sense is that he's never viewed himself as a leader of anything other than, you know, of his own family and their efforts to get rich. But I don't think he's ever seen himself as the leader of one of the country's two political parties. Speaker 3 (6:09) No, Trump has never. given a damn about the Republican Party. He only cares about himself and amassing as much power as he possibly can. And if he were smart, he would know that then he would want to help Republicans and elect them. But he keeps going out on the campaign trail and saying things like, vote as if I'm on the ballot. And that is probably a message that is endorsed by the Democratic Party because people feel bamboozled by Trump. There are three-time Trump voters that I've talked to who are saying enough. is enough. He has broken nearly every campaign promise and I can no longer support this guy. And so he is not making it easy for Republicans by saying things like that, because anytime voters are reminded of him, they think of the failed economy that we have. They think of his failed war of choice with Iran and this failed presidency. But Trump. really doesn't care about the Republican Party, but he should because it's going to come back and bite him later on when Democrats, I believe, most likely take the House and the Senate this November. And then he's in for a world of hurt for the next two years, probably facing lots of investigations and accountability for his corruption and his failures of this second term. Speaker 2 (7:24) Angelo, I want to show you where he stands right now with the American people. Among independents, 76 percent of independents disapprove of him. His approval rating on the cost of living is 17 percent. That is a fraction of his own supporters. The disapproval on the economy is 73 percent. And the blame that they give to Trump is 65 percent of Americans blame Trump. directly. He's also got some troubling data in today. CNBC reported that the labor market faltered in September as jobs increased by just 29,000. Unemployment rose 4.2 percent. This is obviously baked in now. There's nothing he can do to change how people perceive what is very real, which is the economic hardships right now under his presidency. Speaker 5 (8:18) Yeah, that's true. And so we can ask ourselves then, so what? Or what next? And you sort of got there at the beginning. Because it's so baked in, it's not like he's going to try to fix that. He's not going to be more responsive to where the population is, where his supporters are, where the base is. He's going to move in the other direction. is going to be worse, which is what they've been telegraphing. Not just this recent reporting about waiting until after the election, his most diehard members of the right wing media have been saying for a month now and promising. all kinds of escalations in Iran, indictments to come, all these promises about more indictments, all these big bad things are going to happen right after the election. And even if he only does a fraction of them, he is going to intensify the things that make him feel good, which is spite and revenge, and at the cost of all the other things that we desperately need. And as much as we want to make this about Trump, and I'm glad you put that clip in the center at the beginning, but the reality is they've paved the way for him. They could stop him from doing these policies that are not just bad for the country, but are bad politics for them. But they don't. And every time they get a chance to vote on it, they still vote for Trump. So it's weird. His own people, I think, I even thought this too, that if his own supporters at some point defected from Trump, as all those numbers show, that the rest of the Republican Party, the actual people with power to stop him, would start to change as well. But they're not. They're willing to go down, not with the ship, because he's not going down. They're willing to sacrifice. for no apparent reason whatsoever except to avoid the ire to hopefully get some favor from him in the future. It's unclear to me, but that's the part that I find so flabbergasting and concerning about where we're going. Speaker 2 (10:00) We're like out of analogies, Rob, but one that I always think of is like the Wizard of Oz, like the curtain comes down and he's sort of like weak and flabby and not all that. I mean, the curtain's been down on this entire second presidency. He's asleep every time the cameras are rolling on him in his own press events, right? They're not catching him in gotcha moments. The press pool is brought in for his events and he's sleeping. He said unexplained medical issues. Speaker 2 (10:29) He said unexplained bruising. His appearance and his cadence and his speaking is a fraction of what it was when he sort of burst onto the scene in 2016. His whole political brand is so flaccid. What explains the political loyalty? Speaker 4 (10:45) I can only explain it by saying that I think that some of these people were so intimidated that they are still feeling that he has his punch that he doesn't have. You have to remember. He talked about Marco Rubio's family. I mean, he said things about people that you take them