Trump Is Caving to Xi: Will Maga Turn on Him?

The Rest Is Politics: US

The episode examines the growing political volatility in the United States as Republicans begin to distance themselves from Donald Trump amid

Key takeaways

• Recent polling shows Democrats leading Republicans on critical issues including inflation, gas prices, and immigration.
• Republican strategists are concerned that Trump's high performance in battleground states does not necessarily translate to success for down-ballot candidates.

Main topics

• US Midterm Election Polling
• Trump-Xi State Visit

Notable quotes

Xi is holding all the cards here.

Conclusion

The episode highlights a period of intense political transition where

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:00) Republicans are starting to distance themselves from Trump and the president is seriously panicking. His attempt to ban and distract the media has failed disastrously. Why? Because all they can talk about is his terrible approval ratings. Could the Dems be heading for their biggest congressional win in 50 years? Meanwhile, Donald Trump can't stop complimenting President Xi during his visit to the United States. Xi is holding all the cards here. I'm going to explain why Donald Trump will be relying on China for years to come. This episode is brought to you by eToro. A Speaker 1 (0:43) tariff, a spending plan, a regulatory change. It can all start just as the first line of a speech, but it sets in motion things that can reach far beyond Washington and unfold for years to come. That's Speaker 2 (0:56) right, Katty. Markets move on expectations, not just events. Investors are constantly weighing what a decision could mean for company sectors and the wider economy. Speaker 1 (1:08) So eToro is an investing platform where you can access a wide range of markets and explore how political and economic developments could affect them. You Speaker 2 (1:18) could also learn from the global community of investors and see how people around the world are interpreting the same news. As Speaker 1 (1:27) with all investing, your capital is at risk. See eToro.com forward slash TripUS for full terms. Speaker 1 (1:40) Welcome to The Rest Is Politics US. Anthony, it was very nice to see you last night in Washington, D.C., the nation's fair capital. I Speaker 2 (1:48) had a great time, Katty. Thank you for coming to Politics and Prose. And we had a nice turnout and got a chance to talk to some people about my book, which I have been doing for the last 10 days, Katty. Everyone wants to kill me, but that's fine. Keep Speaker 1 (2:01) the good fight going. I know how happy you were to see all of, you know, the way that Donald Trump has beautified. Washington, you hadn't been down for a while, so you'd not really seen the big pictures of him on all the buildings and, you know, the Kennedy Center and all of that. Speaker 2 (2:16) Washington looks strained. To use Graydon Carter's line, Trump is a short-fingered Bulgarian. It's like two short-fingered Bulgarian hands have compressed the city. Washington looks strained to me. I was bummed out yesterday when I flew back. I was like, the city doesn't look right. That has typically been a tranquil. Speaker 2 (2:39) conformist, easy city. And it is tense in that city right now, Katty. And that's the facts. I Speaker 1 (2:45) mean, I don't feel, I'm going to say I don't feel it walking around the city. It feels where I live in my neighborhood feels pretty normal. But I do feel it when I go downtown because you notice all the pictures and changes. You Speaker 2 (2:55) live there. So I came in, I get hit with the impact. You know, like, listen, New York is booming. You come up to New York. Everyone's mad at me for saying positive things about Mondani, but I'm an objective person. New York is booming. You go to Washington, there's a tenseness in that city right now. And it's not great. And the surrounding thing going around in the White House, I was really disappointed by. Speaker 1 (3:20) All the fencing around it. Anyway. Do Speaker 2 (3:22) we have a blue wave coming? Speaker 1 (3:23) Well, I mean, I wanted to look at that this week because we have now had, since Labor Day, which was September the 7th. Now, a couple of weeks after Labor Day, this is the traditional kickoff of the midterm election season. And we have had about two dozen major polls have come out around the midterm elections that I am told by people who spend time in the White House are freaking people out in the White House. You texted me earlier this week, Anthony, which made me think of doing this segment on this because... the numbers are dropping out of the president's approval rating. And if you look at all of the four major issues, this is just one of the polls. This is the NPR Marist poll on gas prices, inflation, immigration, and foreign policy, which are basically, that's the war. Democrats are ahead on all of those four issues, even on immigration. Remember how far ahead the Republicans were on immigration? That's largely why Donald Trump got elected in 2024, that and prices. Well, that has totally flipped. Now Democrats are ahead on all of those issues. I remember when we were talking about the election and I was predicting that Donald Trump was going to win, it was because he was consistently ahead on the issues people cared about. Well, this time around, Democrats are consistently ahead. on the issues people care about. So what is a wave? A wave is a big movement. That's what political scientists tell me is a big movement, unexpected big movement in one party's favor. But you also have to compare it to the previous midterm elections. So do the Democrats do noticeably better in the last time that Donald Trump was president in the 2018 midterm elections? And that would give you some sense of whether it's a wave. Everyone I'm speaking to is now talking about a big wave where the Democrats take something like, 20 seats in the House and where they take potentially seven or eight seats in the Senate, not just the four that they would need to win the Senate, but they take more than that, take seven or eight seats. Things can change between now and the midterm elections, but those gas prices and those diesel prices for people who have trucks are really hurting the Republican Party. So what are you hearing, Anthony, on this? Well, Speaker 2 (5:43) I... I'm worried about a couple of things. The main one is the electioneering around the polling. I'm worried about that because prior to seeing you at Politics and Prose last night, I did a little bit of reconnaissance. I met with some reporters I'm close to. I met with some Republican operatives that I'm close to. I had lunch with a Democratic operative that used to work for both Joe Biden and President Obama. And I'm worried about... Trump is going to lose so badly that they do something deus ex machina on the election. That's what I'm worried about. Just quickly, Speaker 1 (6:19) what does so badly mean to you? What do you compare this to? What do you think the numbers are going to be? Let's gamify this. Speaker 2 (6:27) Okay, so he gets shellacked the way President Obama got shellacked. I'm using that word because that was the word that President Obama used in 2010. And so he loses the House. He loses the Senate. He loses the Senate where it's like it's like 52-48 or something like that in the Senate. And now he's got bicameral investigations going on on both sides. Caddy, you know this because you live in that town, but the corruption is out of control. OK, described to me by three or four different people that I met with yesterday, mafia style corruption. family members going to people in the Middle East prior to the inauguration and saying, hey, how are you? Fire in a couple billion. Oh, by the way, it's totally legal because, you know, my family member is not the president. So just fire in the couple billion and mafia style like threats, mafia style like intimidation. Okay. And Why on God's earth did Hakeem Jeffries meet with Jared Kushner? And what on God's earth is Hakeem Jeffries' plan? Should he ascend, which is the most likely thing that happens, he ascends to be the Speaker of the House. Is this kid tough enough to handle these people? And is this kid evil enough? And let me just explain to you. about evil, okay? If you've got evil people that you're fighting with, you have to understand evil people. You cannot be naive. You know, you remember that scene in Private Ryan where Tom Hanks figure lets the German guy go and then the German guy comes back in a secondary battle and kills him before the end of the movie, okay? You cannot let that happen right now. Okay. And there has to be a wave of accountability for what these people are doing. It's one thing for the court to say, hey, you got to let CNN and Politico and MSNOW back into the White House. That's one thing. He'll challenge it because he's the dope that he is. But I'm talking about anger in the streets. about what these people are doing to the Republic. And last but not least, and you'll laugh at this, but you can ask Holly, okay? I came on to the plane last night flying home. There were three or four people on the plane. They all looked over at me and they were like, hey, I got to tell you this, or I got to tell you that, or could you speak out more about how bad this is here in Washington? So my thing is, okay, great. You're going to get a blue wave. You've got a 22-point gap on economic approval, okay? People are going to forgive a lot of things, but when gas prices go from $4.50 to $7 by November, because we're entering the winter, okay, Trump is going to get blown out in those two houses, okay? So what are you guys going to do? What's the plan? What's the plan for accountability? What's the plan for right-sizing the economy? What's the plan for shoving the administration to get out of the Iranian war? Those are the questions that I have, Katty. Speaker 1 (9:44) Well, let's dig a bit more into the polls because I think we've got to get to the midterms first. And I think it is worth, there are a couple of things that people have told me this week that make me think that you're right, there could be some kind of a... blue wave coming. One, a Republican strategist pointed out to me that when Trump is on the ballot, he wins. He keeps telling us that, right? He's going around telling all these voters, please pretend that I'm on the ballot. But actually, this guy had looked into the 2024 data. And what he found is that when Trump is on the ballot, Trump does well, but actually other Republicans don't do well. being on the ballot doesn't confer to other Republicans. Back in 2024, Trump carried Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, and Wisconsin, but Democrats actually won the Senate race in all four of those battleground states. I think that's what Republicans are also worried about, and that's why I think you're seeing Republicans this week start to distance themselves away from Trump. It's not a massive wave of people, but you are seeing Republicans in Michigan, Republicans in Kansas, Republicans in Iowa, all three of those states now looking more favorable from Democrats than they were even two weeks ago. And they're starting to say, you've got to end the war in Iran because it's all about the gas prices. And you point out that polling he has on his economic approval ratings. He's 22 points below his September 2018 mark. That's the problem. That's where people are talking about a wave. Speaker 2 (11:17) Tell us about the Latinos, Gadi. Tell us about the Hispanic vote. Give the numbers on the Hispanic vote. Yeah, so this is another Speaker 1 (11:22) of the polls that's just come out, and Pew found that only 66 % of Hispanics who voted for Trump in 2024, and remember, it was Hispanics who helped Trump win the White House in 2024 because he did much better than he had done previously and better than Republican candidates had done previously. But today, only 66 % of those Hispanics who voted for him still approve of