Can you buy the midterms?

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Republicans have a not-so-secret weapon in the mid-term elections. They're flush with cash. Republicans are heading into the mid-term home stretch with a huge money advantage. Estimates say that they have about $1 billion in spendable campaign money across several outlets. You can see I'm going to spend whatever amount of money necessary to try and help us. Elon Musk alone has spent more than $250 million of his own money for this year's mid-term elections. And overall, the GOP will be able to outspend Democrats to the tune of $400 to $500 million. But in a year where President Trump's approval rating has hit record lows and he's clearly dragging down his entire party, will all that money even matter? It's important, but it doesn't determine the outcome of elections. But it is more important the lower the election. Shang-goal, Marker, is a national political correspondent for The New York Times. And this week, he's here to help us think about all things money. When you talk about how many seats can the Democrats gain, the Republican money is seen as a real limiter on Democratic chances. Coming up on America actually, it's all about the Benjamin. Is the GOP spending its way to victory? Or are they setting a billion dollars on fire? Alright, let's be honest, Republicans have an uphill task this November. With less than three weeks to go until Election Day, voters are extremely upset about rising inflation, sky-high prices, and a war with Iran that nobody asked for. But if there's one bright spot for the GOP, it's an important one. Republicans have a lot of money between Donald Trump's war chest, endless spending from tech leaders like Musk, and Republican-aligned super PACs, the GOP has about a billion dollars to spend in this November election, almost twice as much as comparable Democratic groups. Where is all this money coming from? Where does it actually go? And what can we learn about the upcoming 2028 election when we look at the fundraising landscape of 2026? Shane, thank you so much for joining us. I appreciate your time. I'm glad to be here. A couple of weeks ago, we asked, like, what is the GOP strategy to try to win? Because it can kind of seem a little muddied. And one of the answers we got is they simply have more dollars than Democrats. Just talking about this GOP money advantage, but how big is it really and where is it coming from? I mean, it's bigger than I've basically seen in the last 20 years, and it's almost entirely coming from big donors. So right now, President Trump has a super PAC. It had about $400 million in it at the beginning of September. And there was no Democratic counterpart. And then the Republican National Committee, which is functionally controlled by Trump, had another $130 million more than Democrats because the DNC was literally more debts than cash. So just those two things, that's a half a billion dollars. I mean, you kind of alluded to this. I was like, is this a bigger edge than we typically see, but you're saying this is, this is kind of a historic edge. In recent elections, it's actually been the Democrats that had more money. So it's not just a huge Republican edge. It's a reversal, right? In 2024, Kamala Harris outspent Donald Trump significantly in the general election. In 2020, Joe Biden significantly outspent Donald Trump in the general, in 2016, Hillary Clinton, and in the midterms along the way, same story. And so this is a switch. And when you talk about how many seats can the Democrats gain, which is mostly what we're talking about, looking at the political landscape, given how unpopular Trump is, the Republican money is seen as a real limiter on democratic chances. I mean, big picture, I've covered money in politics for a long time. But it is more important, the lower the election, right? In a presidential race, normal people are paying attention. You might watch the debate. You were talking about it with your friends and family. People are not watching debates for like their local house candidate. They may not know that there's a local house candidate. They will know if there's mailers in their mailbox and ads that they see. And it's a bigger share of what they know. And so when you talk about the house, which is, the Democrats are trying to flip the house and then run up the score a little bit to have an actual governing majority, these are the races where I think this money can make a really big difference. Okay. I want to dig into that more. But before that, I mean, I'm just interested in how Trump has gained such an advantage. Do we know anything specific about the people putting in money to the Trump Super PAC and the RNC to give them such a leap? Yeah. I mean, most of these folks are disclosed and I mean, Trump has been pretty open about raising money from the very moment that he won. He was raising money for the Super PAC immediately and he never stopped raising money once he got into office. And he's been pretty clear that like he is in business to help people who are helping him. And so there are big crypto industries that are giving money that are expecting or hoping for favorable regulation from the administration. So it's a lot of big businesses. It's a lot of wealthy Republicans who generally support him anyway. And there are industry groups that see benefit to being in favor with a White House that is playing favorites. Yeah. I mean, that's when I was going to ask like, I will never forget obviously the scene from Trump's second inauguration when he had the Zuckerbergs and the Bezoses and the Elon Musk behind him. Is that how I should think about the people funding this donor advantage? Is it tech oligarchs? Is it tech forward? There's a lot of tech. I wouldn't say it's exclusively and Musk, by the way, is like an extra pot of money in it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's important. So we talk about like, you know, we're saying a half a billion dollars just those two groups. I can get up closer to a billion when you in terms of the Republican advantage. Yes. Like Elon Musk. Elon Musk, the world's richest person is said to be spending at least 200 million dollars. So that's a bigger chunk. He has given some money directly to the Trump super PAC. He's given some money to these congressional super PACs. There's so much money. It's hard to say all of it from any one group got it, but certainly their crypto industry in particular is again separate from these groups spending for Republicans. I mean, obviously this comes at Trump has hit his lowest point in popularity among public opinion. Is this just quick pro quo like is this just a group of businesses who think, hey, no matter how unpopular this guy is, it is worth investing in him and his party because they're going to, you know, regulate or not regulate in a way that's favorable for us. I think it's not quite just that. I think a lot of this money came in early too, right? Okay. He raised a ton of this money when he was not so unpopular. And like if you want to say something smart that he did, it was that right? He did it before. Yeah. It's down to another. 25. If he was raising all of this money, you know, and I don't want to overstate the Republican advantage. A lot of these Democratic candidates are raising a ton of money, the raising a ton of money online. James Talleriko sort of stands out as maybe the peak example of this, you know, the Texas Senate race is the most expensive race in the country right now. And Republicans are pouring $200 million to save the nominee there, Ken Paxton who has faced a bunch of scandals, so a big chunk of that advantage is going to Texas. And so the Democrats have put very little money from the outside groups in Texas. But Talleriko has like captured the imagination of these small Democratic donors. And he's raised tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars. I would be shocked if he doesn't hit a hundred million dollars by the end of the cycle. And like just to walk out for 15 seconds, he gets to buy cheaper television ads because of Texas because they're rules. If you were a federal candidate, okay. You can buy a TV ad that that super back pays more money for. And so that $200 million, he might be able to offset that with 75 million, right? Like there's, there's some advantages of candidate money. You mentioned how much the GOP is spending in Texas, which we should acknowledge is kind of shocking. Considering obviously Texas historical tendency to vote for Republicans, a map itself kind of tells us where at least the party thinks it's doing better or worse. He reported how the GOP is pulling back in North Carolina. So thinking about them dumping money into the Texas race, then pulling money out of the North Carolina Senate race, what should we take from that? in terms of how the GOP sees its own landscape when it comes to the federal races. - I mean, so in October, you can, to some extent, stop listening to what the political strategists are saying. - Yeah, I totally agree. - And just start watching what they're doing, right? So they say, "Oh, North Carolina's still about to go on." Well, if you pull all your money out of North Carolina, you have basically given up listening, right? - You do not think there's a win or a win. - So wherever Republicans put that money, they put it into South Carolina. - Interesting. - Next to protect a seat that was once thought on the Senate front to be safe for Republicans. - Yeah, this is the former Lindsey Graham seat that a sister is now running in. There's concerns about is she well-known enough, popular enough, it wasn't like the Graham name was golden in South Carolina. And then even more is gone to Kansas. So if you're the Republican party and you're pulling money out of a state in North Carolina that hasn't elected a Democrat since 2008, and then putting it into a place that hasn't elected once since 1932, that tells you where the bar is moving. The risk for Democrats right now is a little bit like the inverse of what happened in 2022, which is an election that you and I were covering together. That was a midterm where there was all this talk of a red wave, right? And it was a blue state red wave. And, you know, I spent time in Rhode Island where Republicans were gonna flip a Rhode Island seat and they were gonna flip these seats in New York. And they did flip, it seems they took the house, but that wave wasn't big enough to win those blue states. And I think the concern for Democrats right now is there might be a wave, but like, Kansas is a really, it's got a big red wall, right? Yeah. It's hard to beat that kind of institutional advantage for the Republican party. Yeah, there's a lot of places in which the backlash to Trump or how people are feeling about his unpopularity or Democrats feel that will give them over the standard. And then there's another standard for these places where the math expands, places they haven't won big Senate races for a long time, where these marginal money differences or the way the maps are drawn in house races could play a bigger role. Yeah, I mean, you talk about the money, right? The Kansas is a good example. Right now it's mostly Republican money there, right? Because there isn't enough Democratic money to spread and cover all the places the Republicans are playing. So if you're the only side advertising, that's also a really big advantage, right? And these races, if you only get mailers or TV ads from one party, it has a much bigger impact because it's not muddied waters of everybody, hates everybody. Let's stick with the GOP for a second. Is there any particular issue that they're highlighting with all of this money? I think back to 2024 and the prominence of Trump's kind of famous-lash infamous they-them-at that he ran against Kamala Harris. Amalist supports taxpayer-funded sex changes for prisoners. Are they running on that same sort of message? Is there something we can glean about there? Issue focus from where this money's going. There's definitely a lot of ads on exactly that same transgender issue. But I think that it's playing differently. And I think it's because the effectiveness of that ad is a little misunderstood. Yeah, laid out. I feel like people think this was an ad and it was effective because it was about transgender issues and they were unpopular in that hurt Kamala Harris. And I'm not disagreeing with that part of it. But the ad was actually about something else also. It was that Democrats felt like they were focused on the wrong things while your life sucked, right? Things were more expensive and they're for they-the combo. And not you because they're not focused on economic issues where you're struggling and they're ignoring that inflation is bad. And they're saying they wouldn't make any changes to how Joe Biden governed for the last four years. And so now Republicans are running those same ads, these same Democratic candidates are for they-them or different versions of biological men and women's sports. And the problem is I think that the mood music of the election has changed because if you are even paying moderate attention, you hear Democrats constantly talking about the economy. Literally always, we've heard Democrats all year, basically can see the argument that they were too focused on non-economic issues in 2024. And so what you're saying it sounds like is the Republicans are running those same ads, but they might not hit the same because Democrats have clearly changed their message. - Yeah, the effect, the power of that ad was the combination of the issue that it was about, but what was really about, which is they're focused on the wrong things. And so if you look at the totality of the television ads, I see Democratic candidates for House and for Senate, standing at a gas pump, standing in a grocery store, talking about cost of living. Now Republicans are doing some of that too, but they're looking for something to run on because when they talk about cost issues, this is the same Biden Democrats were in two years ago. - Absolutely. - They're getting the blame. - It's one of the great ironies of right now. I hear so many Republicans trying to talk people out of their concern about their economic situation. And I'm sitting there thinking, you sound exactly like these Democrats during the Biden inflation moment and Republicans understood how that was a losing tactic. - I mean, it's a sort of damned if you do damned if you don't situation, right? If you see some Republicans that are trying to create distance from President Trump on some of these economic issues in Michigan, you've got Mike Rogers, his Republican Senate candidate, who's sitting at a bar and cracks open a labat blue, which is from Canada and says, "We know the Canada is not our enemy. "We need to end this terror for now." The problem is it's October and it's not that hard to find that he was on the other side of that issue 12 months ago. He was on the other side of the issue of the war and around nine months ago. - They know the Republican party has supported Trump's actions. - In general, Trump has had such a hold on the Republican party that it is a really hard sell to convince a voter that you're a different kind of Republican 'cause there've been so few different kinds of Republicans. - Yes. - He's picked them off one by one. - One by one, one by one. - Here's about like the timing here. Like considering how close we are to election day, like what are they actually spending this money on? Like is it just more ads? Is it just more mailers? Like is it just a greater frequency of the things they've already been doing? Or does the money do something differently and different in the late stages? - I mean, it's mostly just more and more of the same. You know, I was in Pennsylvania this month and you know, trying to watch, I was trying to watch political ads on YouTube for various races and I was getting pre-roll of three political ads before I watched the political I was trying to watch. - I was like, you didn't even have the search. You were gonna come right to me. - And so again, so much of our elections has decided now by people who are actively trying not to consume political news. - Right, people who don't wanna avoid it on purpose. - Avoiding it on purpose, so it costs more money to reach people who are avoiding it on purpose, right? It used to be okay, you buy ads and you run on the local news at 630, right? Well, those people are probably already voting and they've probably already decided. You're trying to reach the young person who's like working in a mechanic shop who doesn't wanna see any of this. And so you have to find them on their phone somewhere. You have to find them in their mailbox. Look, there is some door knocking. There are some organizing things that happen, but most of the money is various versions of advertising. - Yeah, and we heard this in a lot of forums. We did an episode about Latino voters and we were talking about the amount of money that has to be spent to reach people not only in their own language, but how different people kind of consume, news and information. You can apply that across a lot of these demographic groups and these races. But you mentioned something I also had a question about, which is the ground game. Like we're obviously thinking so much about ads and mailers. I hear less people, maybe Sans, the kind of left DSA wing of Democrats talking about door to door knocking, the kind of original organizing playbook may popular by the Obama's or the Stacey Abrams of the world. Like are they off that? Like are we back to just TV ads? - I think that there is a lot of efforts at organizing. The truth is that when you think about a landscape where parties can pull their money out of North Carolina and put it into Kansas, you can do that quickly. You can't do that with organizers. And so a lot of the investment in these kinds of maps or things shift is things that are mobile. And so like, is there some more organizing in a place like Maine where everybody knew from the beginning and to the end that there's gonna be a competitive race there? And is there more mobilizing in a state like Michigan right now where the Democratic nominee has young people more excited? - Candidate dependent, state dependent. - State dependent, candidate dependent. I mean, we just did a poll of all the Senate races and my colleague Nate Cohn said that, I do what else I had in Michigan has a lot of weaknesses, but ran up one of the best scores he's ever seen among young people. So this is a candidate who might have the potential to organize people in college towns to pump up the vote there or go knock doors in other places. So it really, it's candidate and state specific. - After the break, how Democrats are playing the money gang? - Support for the show comes from ramp. To quote Benjamin Franklin, which I do with great frequency, time is money. Did he say that? He said that all the way back in 1748, says ramp. Well, 278 years later, old Ben might be appalled to find out how much time people spend on expense reports. I try to spend as little as humanly possible. Ramp can give you that time back. And in term, you get to save a little bit of cash. Who doesn't love that with ramp? Expenses submit themselves and isn't that ultimately the dream. Just text or email your receipt and ramp categorizes. Codes and submits it for you. Come on. When you book business travel with ramp, they find the best flights and hotels. You're actually allowed to book. What about the ones you're not allowed? Those are the most fun. Anyway, time is money. Save both with ramp. Newcastle.com. customers get $250 off at ramp.com/explain, go to ramp.com/explain, that's ramp ramp.com/explain. Are you tired of hearing about business, tech and finance from the bros? We are the Tiger Sisters, a top business podcast with the Vox Media Podcast Network. Tiger Sisters releases every Monday and we decode money, power and love. And who doesn't love all those things? We are the Internet's Wall Street and Silicon Valley big sisters. Tune in every Monday for late night sister talk meets boardroom strategy. Check out Tiger Sisters on YouTube, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the Tiger fam. Hi everyone, I'm Cara Swisher. The midterm elections are coming up in a few weeks in control of Congress, the courts, and so much more is on the ballot. I'll be preparing for this critical election by digging into the issues that matter most of voters and I'll be joined by someone who's been through quite a few historic elections herself, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be my co-host for this special series called Highstakes with HRC. Hi Cara, hey Hills, new episodes of Highstakes drop on Wednesdays, watch on YouTube or listen on your favorite podcast app, you won't want to miss it. On the Democratic side, like considering this GOP edge, what are the races that you've currently described as underfunded? Is it those marginal house races, maybe ones that are outside the battleground landscape? Are we talking state and local races? Like, where do the Democrats wish they had more money? Number one is governor races, actually, that when you look where do Democratic donors swoon? It's Senate races. Senate races, right? There are basically quasi anonymous Democrats who have run for Senate that the party has rallied behind and raised $100 million before. Even for races that are log shots. Yeah, right? Like Toleriko was raising a ton of money in Texas. One of the all-time greatest fundraisers in Democratic history on the internet was Jamie Harrison, Lindsey Graham in South Carolina. Any loss by 10 points, but Democratic donors were dreaming, dreaming of this particular candidate and this particular race at that moment. There are no candidates for governor who have made people swoon like this in recent years. So Toleriko was raising all this money, but in Texas also, Gina Hinoz says the Democratic candidate for governor does not have that kind of money and she's running against Greg Abbott who had $100 million. What should we describe that to? Is it just they love someone who can play a Trump foil? I mean, Senate candidates might be like folks who are more thinking about presidential races. So there's more of an eye towards the future. I mean, there's an undeniable importance to these governors races. I remember Democrats, I'm sure we both do kind of saying four or five years ago, we understand the importance of these state races or even when it comes to things like certifying the election, you sure want a Democratic governor, rather than maybe someone who would be more beholden to Trump on issues that matter to that party, like why then has there been such less of a focus on governor's races? I mean, I think it was actually a pretty simple answer, which is like if you don't live in the state, it doesn't impact you. Yeah. If you're a small donor and you live in California, you can be excited about a Senate candidate because like you want Democrats to control the Senate. Are you as excited about a Democratic governor of Georgia? Like probably not the same, but I do think it's interesting. Georgia, John Assoff has raised a ton of money on the internet and Keisha Lance bottoms of the Democratic nominee. She's getting crushed in the money race because she's running into a billionaire who's spending all of his own money. And for all the people who want John Assoff to be a candidate for president, one of the biggest factors for his ability to run is whether she wins. Because if there's a Republican governor and he would become the president, that governor would pick his replacement. And so there's some strategy for donors, but there's really, I think the basic thing on governor's races is you don't live in that state. So like, are you so excited about flipping a race in Iowa? Probably not. We just got back from the nominee was constant when we were following Democratic efforts to win and try to affect in that state. And they were making kind of the counter to your argument saying, you know, whether Democrats have control of the state legislature alongside the governor's mansion matters more than just to people here. It will matter in terms of, you know, proving a proof point about Democratic governance in the state or they said the point that I made about whether you're trying to certify an election or not. But as you're saying, like, those are dots folks have to connect that aren't as explicit as does my party have more than 50 senators or not. And so what it sounds like is that's a pretty big barrier in terms of getting the kind of investment they may need, which could matter a lot in the specifically races like that. I mean, it's hard to argue that the governors of these key presidential battlegrounds aren't some of the most important races on the ballot this year. And this is, by the way, a problem with both parties like the Republican national donors in these super PACs. They also don't fund these governors races at the same level. So it's not just a Democratic issue, but it's more acute because Democrats are so well-funded at the small donor level that that sort of falling in love versus practicality doesn't. Yeah. You mentioned the kind of way Democrats have grown their small dollar fund raising arm, which I know has been a sort of success of the Trump era. How has that impacted the party like, how do we think about the way the small dollar rise among Democrats has affected how they run, has it? I think it has the potential to affect it more than it has. I think that most candidates haven't dramatically changed how they're running. The number of people who run exclusively with online small donors remains pretty small. It's the Bernie Sanders' of the world. It's the Alexandria-Costio-Cortezas of the world. There's actually a barbell, which is you need all these small dollar donors on the internet. And you kind of need some billionaires to fund a super PAC, too. And the old-- Both not either or from most people. Yeah. Most of these people want both of these things because you don't want to be too dependent on either or, right? Like, what if you take a position that is out of line with those small dollar donors and they cut you off? Right. Just like you could take a position out of line with the big-- And they cut you off, too? Yeah, yeah. So a lot of people do some bed hedging there. I mean, there's sort of this hollowing out of the old, you know, bundler model of going, you know, there's a reason that every Democrat can say, "I no longer take corporate PAC money." Yeah, lay that out for me because they all say that, but still we're still talking about the influence of these big dollar donations. Like, how was that true? How was that true? Ish. I mean, the first thing is for most these people, yeah, they do not accept corporate PAC money because corporate PAC money isn't a big share of the money available. It is available if you're in Congress forever and you're in a safe seat and you don't want to work for it. And you go around K Street and they hold a little events for you and you raise a few hundred thousand dollars. That exists. But if you're really ambitious in your Democrat, you're like, that's not worth it. I can raise more online saying I don't take that money. Yeah. But there's still money. And by the way, you might not want to raise some of these money. You might want to neutralize the money coming in, right? I think about, you know, the new players each election cycle, you've got the AI industry that's come in hundreds of millions of dollars. There are real concerns Democrats and Republicans for saying something that's going to anger a particular set of donors who they can spend so much money to drown out your message. Yeah. Yeah. It does feel like a particular clash on that issue itself, because you know, we've been tracking the kind of grassroots backlash to the rise of AI. You know, certainly things like data centers and that's been really clear even in rural communities like when we were in monomony. But at the same time, the money is flowing in ways that have clearly impacted the political landscape. Like, is that the clearest tension point that we can see from the kind of big donors to where the basis of parties are? Because it's not even just Democrats, but some are Republicans who are now kind of coming up against what seems to be a grassroots backlash to some of that support. I think data centers is scrambling the regular partisan coalitions. And I think voters don't know which parties are to blame or where they stand on this issue. And so you see Republican governors flipping the position to become more anti-data center. Yep. Greg Abbott's a good example. And you see Democratic governors flipping the position to become more anti-data center in Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro. There are numerous races where both parties are running anti-data center ads in the same race. And I think a lot of these things are, well, do voters just intuitively know that one parties for this or not. They don't, other than Donald Trump right now, is outspoken for data centers. But his whole party is not actually aligned with him on this yet. And so I think you see the specter of big money in that. I think that when you look long-term, I think politicians have no idea where it's going. Data centers is like the issue in 2026. But that's like the table stakes to does this change our economy. Does this change how your life functions? And you don't want to be on the wrong side of that. It doesn't matter if one side has money and everybody else lost their jobs and blames the people with money. So there's a real risk aversion right now. And I don't think that it just feels really fluid. I wanted to ask about a pack, you know, those donations were such a huge flash point in the primaries. What's that group doing in the general election? Or was that more of a story that's from the factional fights, you know, thinking about Michigan, thinking about others? their places. What's their general election impact is their one? I think their impact in the general election is really to be seen. They have not been loud about where they're spending money. They weren't necessarily loud in advance of some of these Democratic primaries. They tried to keep a little bit hidden. They were a big factor because the shift in perspective on Israel among Democratic voters has been profound. Also, else I had made them a factor too. They spent a ton of money and he made them a centerpiece of that race. If they're spending and missing in the general election, they haven't done in a way that we've seen it publicly yet. They're not a driving force of how we're describing these races. I think the bigger fight for that community was, can you not lose the Democratic party? That was the big fight this year. That'll be the fight next year too. Fundraising is a huge part of what sets the presidential candidates apart from one another. We know this. The money game among those candidates has already started. Is there something you can tell us about what they've been doing in the midterms and advance of an open presidential contest? Is there anyone who's quietly built some donor network that's worth thinking about? Is there someone who stood out as a particularly effective fundraiser when we think about the 2028 crowd? Let me give you my favorite stat from the last Democratic primary, which is that Mike Bloomberg spent twice as much as Tom Steyer, who spent twice as much as Bernie Sanders, who spent twice as much as Joe Biden, who became the Democratic nominee. Yep. Yep. And so, money isn't going to determine who wins the next Democratic presidential primary. I mean, one person who has unlimited money functionally is JB Pritzker. Yep. He's a billionaire, the governor of Illinois, and he is spending his money right now to help other Democrats. There's a good way to make friends, right? If your money is helping elect people and making various constituents or groups feel heard and felt, that's happening online. I don't know that you're seeing it in the midterms, but you saw it last year with his prop 50 Gavin Newsom was able to raise a ton of money online. And we mentioned to our already, Alexandra Acosta Cortez continues to have the ability to raise money online, unlike any other member of the house and really, unlike anybody else at national politics besides Bernie Sanders. Yep. My last question is kind of like just an open one, like, what's an under explored story that we should be following going forward when it comes to campaign cash or both parties relationship with money? One of my big questions is what happens to Republican small dollar fundraising in that post to Trump era because there have basically not been any other Republicans who have excited donors for a decade. Not JD Vance. I have not seen evidence. JD Vance was not a good fundraiser before he was joining the ticket with Donald Trump. His primary run was funded chiefly by Peter Teele through a super PAC when he ran for Senate. You know, there are candidates who raised some money, but nothing on the scale of what these Democratic candidates have been able to raise online. When you talk about that Trump era turning of a page at some point, are there others who are going to get Republican small donors excited? We don't know. We haven't seen it yet. Yeah. That is such an interesting question. We always think about it from the vote, like enthusiasm point. Like is there anybody who reaches that same type of voter who's distant from politics? We know that there's a type of voter who literally only comes out if Trump is on the ballot. But you're talking about a related point, which is we haven't really seen evidence. That another type of candidate drives the financial backing of Donald Trump, particularly from the small donor side. And that's a big open question because Democrats have shown that ability to really get behind someone from the bottom of people. Yeah. Like if you look at how all of the Republican Party committees raised their money, it's Trump Trump Trump messaging. Almost even as Trump has fallen in popularity. Yeah. There's the doner base online. It's still pro-Trump. That is interesting. Shane, thank you so much for coming in. Thanks for having me. Okay. So a couple takeaways after talking with Shane. One, money isn't everything, especially in a race that's become so nationalized. People know who's responsible for high inflation. They know who started the war with Iran. And no amount of TV advertisements calling Democrats socialist and communists is going to change that. Second, I think the GOP's big spending advantage speaks to some of the reasons why Trump has gotten so impopular in the first place. This was supposed to be a president for the working class, a president who bought prices down. And in fact, the opposite has happened in his second term. Trump has made this administration a safe haven for crypto companies, prediction markets, and tech oligarchs. Trump and the elites around him are having a blast this presidency. That's why they're giving them so much money. It's the rest of us who aren't having fun. And that's why he's facing a midterms backlash. America actually will be in your feeds every Saturday with an interesting interview and politics or culture. And you can also listen to America actually wherever you get your podcasts or in the today explain feed. If you enjoy our reporting and you want to learn more, sign up for our weekly midterms newsletter. It's called midterms actually. Call the vox.com/midtermsactually to sign up. That's vox.com/midtermsactually. See you next week and cue the music. America actually will be in your feeds every Saturday with an interesting interview and culture or politics. You can also watch these episodes on the vox YouTube channel. Just go to youtube.com/vox or click the link in the show notes. If you enjoy our reporting and you want to learn more, sign up for my weekly newsletter. Midterms actually. Go to vox.com/midtermsactually to learn more. This show was edited by Kasha Brasalian, fact checked by Esther Gim and mixed by Vaz Phatopoulos. Christopher Snyder is our video editor and Koon Nui is our senior art director. Our executive producer is Christina Valis and our theme music is by break master cylinder. Additional support from Miranda Kennedy, David Tatashore and Nisha Chattal. I'm Aesthet Hervent and this is America actually.