Did JD Vance Just Break With Trump? The Clash Over the GOP Midterm Wipeout

Tuesday night the blue wave came and then some. Democrats flipped both chambers of Congress, picking up Senate seats in Texas, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, Maine, and both Carolinas. James Tallahrico became the first Democrat to win statewide in Texas in 32 years, and Susan Collins lost the seat she's held for nearly three decades. The blame game is in full swing. Ted Cruz calls it a "watergate level repudiation." JD Vance blames the war in Iran. And the president says he wasn't on the ballot, and that if he had been, Republicans would have won in a landslide. But ballot initiatives bucked the trend, with voters voting for many conservative policy issues up and down the ballot, including protecting women's sports and locker rooms, rejecting well-taxes and other tax increases, and new requirements for voter ID. The big loser, AI data centers, which were rejected in 40 votes across 10 states. House Speaker Mike Johnson is stepping aside, setting up a showdown between Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan over who will lead a thinned-down house minority. In Alaska, the race between the two Dan Sullivan's and Mary Peltola comes down to a few hundred votes, and the rank choice count is still almost two weeks away. In Michigan, Abdul Al-Sayed becomes the first Muslim elected to the Senate, even after Hailey Stevens crossed party lines to back Mike Rogers. And Chuck Schumer promises to install legislative razor wire for the final two years of the Trump presidency. After a short-lived post-election bounce, the stock market sank precipitously, shaving trillions in value. Divided government is here. What does it mean for a divided nation? This is the District Club. Welcome to another episode of the District Club. I'm Mary Margaret Olehann, and I'm joined by my co-host Tim Rice and Ben Dominic. And today, we're joined by our colleague, Isabel Brown. Isabel, thanks for being with us today. Thanks for having me. This is fun. We were just joking. Maybe we wouldn't fight so much today on the District Club. Although maybe we'll fight a little bit more, I don't know, for the love of the game. We have it very possible. We're coming off this wave of the midterm elections. Obviously, there are plenty of predictions that got completely smashed. Other predictions that came completely true. Then, kick us off. What was your thought process when you hit the hay on Tuesday night? So, I had a lot of different thoughts, but I think that the number one thing that I think we have to take away from this election, just in terms of the consequences of it, is that all of the Republican establishment, the MAGA base, the different people within the party, the different coalitions, they all lost. Everyone lost. Good candidates lost. Bad candidates lost. This is not a situation where you can just blame this on one thing. It's not narrow. It's not a situation where the rhinos didn't come back. It's not a situation where you had an agenda that just almost squeaked by if not for running one bad ad or having one mistake. This is something that is a full-on rejection of the Congressional Republicans to a degree that we just haven't seen historically. And then, the other thing that I really was thinking about was the incredible damage that was done to the state of Texas. Texas has been the golden goose. It has been the apex of what Democrats wanted to achieve for decades. You have to go back before 1994 in order to find a point where they were actually in control there. They have tried so hard and yet, unfortunately, for them, they have missed the mark each time. The Republicans have been able to dodge the bullets. And then the consequences of that down ballot, I think, was really the kind of thing that should scare Republicans today. There is no path to the presidency without Texas. And they were not just able to flip the Senate. They were not just able to flip the governor. They were able to flip the state house. They were able to flip the state Supreme Court, which is elected in Texas. All the way down the ballot, you saw these wins for Democrats and the potential for Texas to be a blue state for a long time is very real. One anecdote that I found to be rather amusing is that when Greg Abbott, and I don't think that this has been reported other than me saying it, when Greg Abbott called to concede, that was their first interaction. And the reason it was their first interaction is because she was such an irrelevant state legislator that she had never passed a bill. So they had never actually met for assigning ceremony or anything else. That's the kind of people who got elected in this wave. It's a bunch of people who are, you know, nothings in terms of their political history. And that's going to completely change our politics. So, Tim, why do you think what were the main reasons that some of these candidates want? Why did Republicans get whipped so soundly? Yeah. So I think it's interesting. It's helpful that you just asked that in two different ways because I think the reason that the bad demo, it wasn't so much that the bad Democrats won, but that all the Republicans lost, right? And this is obviously like a little bit of a, I'm being a little bit silly, but I mean, that intentionally, I think that this was an election of people voting against Republicans more than they were voting for Democrats. Now, that's not entirely true. And I'm sure we're going to get to some of the bigger cases. When cases like Abdul Al Sayed and the more radical kind of nationally focused Democrats, that's a different story. And I think that, again, that's a conversation to be had about where the Democrat party is going. But folks like, you know, in Texas and a lot of these other, I mean, races that were either Republicans eaked out and that should have been that close or, you know, kind of a weak, unknown Democrats defeated popular incumbents by margins that they should have. This was a vote against Republicans against Republicans writ large. And so when you start to break that down, there's obviously any number of things that you can pin it on. Obviously, a lot of people have been pinning it on the war in Iran and the subsequent affordability crisis. I've been thinking a lot about this in the past couple of days. I think that that's right, but I think very specifically in this something we've all talked about before. And again, I do want to be very clear that I'm not trying to pin all of it on this one thing, because that's not how elections work. That's not how elections are won and lost. But I think one of the key things that doomed Republicans was the White House's inability or failure to land on a message or a messaging around the Iran war that would carry Republicans through the election by which I mean the president, I think if the president at the outset or right when things looked like they weren't going to be as quick or as or as successful as originally hoped came out and said, look, it's about to get tough here. Okay, we've been in this position before we're about to feel it at the pump, we're going to feel it in the grocery stores, but this is I'm asking you to join me in a moment of national sacrifice because we need to get these guys out. What that does is it allows Republicans who want to run on the war, to run on the war with a successful message, and it allows Republicans who don't want to run on the war to distance themselves from the president without totally distancing themselves, right, saying, I understand the president wants us all to join in this, but I don't think the American people necessarily wanted to make that sacrifice, but instead because the White House's message was the president's message and the president's message was we're winning the war, everything's great, look at my ballroom. Republicans had to choose between either staying with him, which I think made many American, many voters feel that they were being gasslet, or run away from him fully, a full break, saying, I disavow, I disavow, which obviously alienated a lot of the base, and I think that that was a major driver and also just sort of arrested Republican messaging across the board, because that was the first stumbling block that they would have needed to get passed, and because they never did, I feel like they never landed on a truly successful counter to Democrats. Hmm, what do you think, Isabel? I have a lot of thoughts about this election. First, I'll say, I'm not really shocked with how it turned out. I think if anyone's been paying close attention at all to the state of national politics for the last six months, no one is really shocked about how this turned out. I do disagree there were no Republican winners. I think there was one very clear Republican winner in this election, and that's Congressman Brandon Gill, who by leaps and bounds was able to carry his district forward by a level point. I thought you were going to say Paul LePage. He won his district by 11 points in the same district. James Calarico took it away by over 10 points, a little over now, based on exit polling. So this is a crazy dichotomy we're seeing for American voters right now, and obviously that is one very specific example and one very specific district in Texas. But I think what you're looking for right now with American voters and what they are keeping their eyes fixed on Washington for is a type of candidate the Republican party has yet to unlock, or maybe they refuse to unlock, because I'm seeing a lot of contempt around the idea of a new generation of leadership from Republicans who are here in Washington, which has been the rally and cry everywhere else in our country for a very long time. Someone like Brandon Gill represents that. He's obviously a literal new generation of leadership, but he also is incredibly unapologetic in the things that he believes in. He's bold. He runs on offense. He's unafraid to tackle the more controversial issues like demographic replacement, like abortion, which he talks about regularly here on the Hill, like gay marriage, like the Islamification of America. These are things that DC's lobbyist class is begging Republican candidates. Do not touch with the 10-foot pole, because you might offend somebody and you might turn off a potential middle ground voter. Well, those middle ground voters aren't turning up for Republicans anyway. That became incredibly obvious this year. I want to hear your take on this, but because you were there and you were around the White House when they were going through this process. Just give us some perspective. I think on the reaction there. We're seeing the early reports that have the leaks and things that are coming out. Nives are obviously out for everybody in terms of the internal who's to blame kind of activity. What was the mood at the White House in terms of their reaction to this? - Well, on election night, you know, I'm there running back and forth to join you guys on the live stream. I'm trying to get the sense of what's going on in the White House, outside of the White House. Early in the evening, the vibe was we're cautiously optimistic. We're gonna see how things go. And I remember, as someone told me this, and I run out of the White House to join the live stream, then I'm listening, and I can hear I think it was been sharing one of the results of the race, and I thought, oh my gosh, I wonder if they still feel cautiously optimistic. Five minutes, 10 minutes later. But as the night progressed, their stance was, we are defiant, we are ready, we are going to attack. Be prepared, buckle up. That was the messaging that was coming out of the White House. But behind the scenes, what people were telling me was, this is because of the war in Iran. Across the board, everyone was blaming the war in Iran. And obviously, affordability, which they said, stems from the war in Iran. But this is what all young staffers across the administration were telling me, in different agencies in the White House, that they were very, very upset and very anxious and very stressed that the president's support for the war had caused this. Now, that doesn't mean that it's necessarily true, but that's the feeling amongst, especially young administration staffers. - So actually, so the problem that I have with that, and it's actually depressing to hear that from my perspective, because that's just not factually true. I mean, if you look at the actual evidence of the issues that people had, the president's approval rating was 40% before he started the war in Iran. And as of election day, it was 37%. It's not something that actually made a huge ding in sort of where he stood, you know. - Even when, sorry, even when connected to like the affordability stuff, 'cause I feel like often people, and I'm like, I think that we-- - So let's go through it. I think when you actually pull on this and you look at the different questions, the war in Iran is clearly a major problem. Affordability was a problem before the war in Iran. And so I actually think the best argument is, Iran made all his existing problems worse. Iran made all the Republicans problems worse. They were already bad, but they just like kept going down as opposed to what they were hoping, which is that things would rebound and go up. And so, you know, from my perspective, putting it all on the war is actually, it's kind of a cheap game, because it says like, oh, we didn't have a problem before the war. And it was like, no, you actually did have a problem before the war, because things were still too expensive. People were pissed off that they weren't, that the economy wasn't getting better. They were pissed off that inflation wasn't coming down as much as they wanted to see. We just weren't keeping pace with it. And then you also see, I think, the elements of things that they just kind of avoided as a problem. When you look at the bipartisan sweep against data centers across the country, they basically lost every single ballot issue that they had in front of localities. And I don't think Republicans ever came up with a message on that, as consistent with all. And so, and in addition to that, I think, you know, the simple fact that I don't know what the Republican Affordability Agenda is on election day, that's a problem, like you should have one. Like it could be a bad one, but you should have one. - This is really interesting, because the demographic that over the last year saw the biggest swing towards disapproval of the Trump administration was young male voters. And obviously you saw that in election day this week, but I'm taken back to early, early, early this year and even late last year, well before the Oral War was a topic of national conversation when everyone's biggest concern was housing prices. And everyone was asking for innovative new solutions from Washington, how are we gonna tackle this? The administration in Congress suggested a 50 year mortgage, literally not a single person on the planet ever asked for a 50 year mortgage, and you immediately saw that backlash. You've seen that conversation around groceries, around public transportation, around airfare, and how ridiculously expensive it is to travel, which so many of us need to do for our jobs today. And the answer from Republicans, not just the Trump administration, I think this is a much larger problem with the party, has been to turn around and point the finger at young people and say you slobbery, lazy, basement dwelling trolls that are addicted to video games. Remember Brad, the commercial for a few weeks ago, was that his name? - She won, though. - This idea that you complain is so insane, shut up, and stop buying Starbucks coffee and your $20 Chipotle burrito, which is ridiculous, by the way, I still would like to go back to burrito gate, because you guys are just whiny and you have to suck it up. That's been the messaging that I've seen across the board on virtually every policy issue from Washington towards what real young people in particular are dealing with. Immigration is the exact same thing. It was a Republican member of Congress that introduced earlier this year, the Digny Dodd Act, to give 10 million illegal immigrants mass amnesty while there are 10 million unemployed Gen Z American citizens. - She also won. - She also won, shocking. Although Razer thin, Razer thin, she lost a lot of support in her district. It's crazy. - I wanna go back to what Ben was getting at there, though, in terms of the affordability message, because I think that one thing that we saw and one dynamic we can take out of these races, right, is that all of these non, I'm gonna call them non-policy issues, I obviously understand their policies, but not these non-kind of policy, innovative policy issues, didn't help them, right? It didn't help Republicans to run on immigration. It didn't help them to run to the extent that they did on-- - Do you think they did run on immigration? - Well, that's why they didn't, they didn't as much as they could, but you know, they-- - They ran on, they ran on the border post. - Yeah, on the border post. - I didn't really hear anybody talking about that. - I think we're getting to a point now where much like in the past with healthcare, right, when healthcare was the salient issue, and Democrats' answer was, "Give it away for free," and Republicans' answer was, "Ah!" Like, I think we're getting there with affordability as the next one, maybe data centers, right? Things that are kind of these hard policy issues, where you want innovative solutions, and where the Democrats have a leg up, because their answer is always and increasingly going to be, "We'll just give it to you for free." The government will do it. How do we get Republicans to a position over the next two years to actually articulate public policy? - Well, a big part of this was having frank conversations around the war with Iran, because I agree with Ben that it wasn't the only issue, but it really topped it all off. And if you're trying to talk to Americans about affordability, you need to have a brutally honest conversation with them about the war in Iran and how it's causing the issues with affordability. It's causing gas to be more expensive. It's causing all of these affordability problems they're having, and you can't have that frank conversation unless you openly say, "Yes, the president's war is causing this, we're so sorry, hopefully it will end soon, and then things will get back to normal." But that kind of involved Republican candidates putting some blame on Trump there, and I think a lot of them, A, didn't know how to do that, and B, were scared to, and C, had messaging saying, "Don't do that." And so it was this chaotic mess there where a lot of people couldn't message properly on it. And then when you get to the issues, like with young men, for example, I talk to young men all the time, you know, when I'm traveling or, you know, I get, you know, when we're at Daily Wire events and things like that, and I always ask them, 'cause I'm so curious what they think about what's going on. And anecdotally, across the board, these guys are so hung up still on Epstein, on conspiracy theories, on Charlie Kirk's death, on all these things that Republicans, rightfully, in some cases say, that's nonsense, we don't need to talk about that anymore, that's real, not real, it's a conspiracy theory, but they still care. And so in some cases, we still need to be acknowledging, okay, these young guys, they're hung up, they're confused on this issue, we still need to address it, and we still need to show them that they can trust their politicians. - I think the Epstein thing is interesting, and Matt Walsh brought this up when we were covering this for the Daily Wire live stream. Thank you all for tuning in, we really appreciate it. The thing that I feel like happened with that is that Epstein became an immediate shorthand. Democrats were able to manipulate it into an immediate shorthand for corruption. And so it became Epstein. Don, Jr., Russian oligarch, crypto, Jared Kushner, Island, they don't actually have to prove anything when they say these things, but it's just like a litany of like, it's all of this, and this is all corruption. And the thing is, that actually, that doesn't apply to 95% of the Republican candidates who are running, who have nothing to do with any of this, and yet, you know, you probably even more than that, but it was one of these ways that Democrats were able to message this, that works perfectly for a TikTok, sort of level, you know, assessment of what's going on, and Republicans never had a response for that. - Exactly, and corruption was one of the top issues for Republican voters, and Republicans didn't message on it, and Democrats were-- - Which is insane, because Democrats have actually been taking your tax money, and giving it to people who don't legally qualify-- - That's not really the first major election since Doge, like the opportunity to message on corruption, on government ways. - Oh, and they start to do so. - It was everywhere, and so I think you hit the nail on the head, the Democrats just had way better messaging, this election cycle, and I don't know that we even had any messaging, let alone coherent messaging, as a party, and as a conservative movement, larger than the Republican party, which then begs a lot of questions out of this, with where we go, and what we do need to message on. But I think there's a glimmer of hope in all of this, that doesn't mean all hope is lost, 'cause I think there's a lot of conservatives around the country today, looking at the map, looking at places like Texas, looking at potentially Democrat senators being elected in a last Scala and Mississippi, I think those races still have yet to be called, which is also insane. When you boil all of this down to the issues that voters themselves get to weigh in on across the country, even in the deepest blue states like my home state of Colorado, wildly conservative ballot initiatives, passed with flying colors, Colorado was able to pass three hugely controversial ballot initiatives, banning boys and girl sports, banning child gender transition procedures, and life imprisonment without parole for child sex trafficking, wildly blue states all passed voter ID, they all passed citizenship requirements to vote, Idaho was able to defeat a radical pro-abortion ballot initiative and say, nope, we are Idaho, we are not going in that direction, even with a rising, rising blue population in their major population hub in Boise. So I look at this and I'm thinking, okay, how is it possible that Colorado elected universally Democrats minus one member of Congress, they elected a universal, deep blue state government, all of the state legislature virtually is blue, they voted to raise their taxes substantially. And yet they're saying, yeah, I don't want you to trans my kids and I don't want to deal with all of these culture war issues. I think there's a disconnect between the lobbying class here in DC and the consultants telling you, don't talk about the controversial thing, don't touch it, don't touch it, don't touch it. It's quite the reverse. I mean, the last thing that we saw from Michelle DeFoya and from Mike Rogers was basically a complete cave on the abortion. And before we go further down this, because I think this is an important thing to discuss, I just want to add one more, because the social issues are all, that's all very fascinating, but another valid issue was taxes. Across the country, we saw a lot of states rejecting taxes in California. Even in California, California is probably, I don't know if it's officially yet, but is definitely going to reject the billionaire tax North Carolina. They voted against two taxes and imposed stronger voter ID by the same 60, 40 margin they elected Democrats, but that's even more interesting to me because we've seen this social movement brewing right. We're sort of every day average, normy Americans, even in the deepest blue states got on the, I don't want you to trans my kids, but I'm sorry, after the, in the year of our Lord, 2026, amid the wreckage of the blue tsunami, the blue nommy, Americans are voting against new taxes. What is going on? That baffle. I don't know what's happening. I know everyone's analysis on this, but this has been the question running around in my brain for the last, I don't know, 72 hours now. Is there just that much of a disconnect between candidate quality from the Republican party and what actual people believed? Did we just not show up and message on any of these things because you would have been more motivated to vote for the right candidate if they had touched the issues that you clearly care about and showed up at the ballot box. I want your hottest take on what Republicans should do to come back from this. Well, listen, I'm no consultant and if I, if I were, I don't know how well these candidates would do. It would be, you know, taking care of the data centers and saving the babies and saving all the children all over the country and those are my main issues, so that's what I would care about. But no, look, I think when you talk about some of these initiatives and when you talk about candidates who leaned away from the culture were issues, it reminds me of, you know, the beginning of COVID, that era where there were plenty of us, especially me because I was writing about these culture war stories all the time that we're saying, look at what's going on. These stories are crazy. People legitimately care and Republicans were just back in a way and saying, we want to talk about the economy. We want to talk about immigration and we want to talk about the sassy exchange I had on Fox News or CNN or with my colleague on the House floor. That was really all people wanted to talk about. And then I remember Jim Banks sent out this memo to the Republican study committee. I got the scoop on it and I was a young reporter, so I was really excited. He said lean into the culture wars, don't be afraid. These are winning issues and a lot of Republicans did and that was, you know, around the time of the Loudoun County rape scandal, a lot of these stories coming out in schools and Republicans finally learned, oh, actually Americans really care about these stories. We should be talking about them. And then on the right, you know, that reporting exploded. Everybody was covering it. All of a sudden, everyone had culture war reporters in their newsrooms. Obviously, daily wire was covering it the whole time. And that was a great example of how people cared and how the Republican movement saw and responded. And it's like these consultants to, you know, you got people like Kellyanne Conway advising the Trump White House to talk about birth control and IVF and promote, you know, limited exceptions for abortions and things like that. She was talking about super intelligence when I was on election paper. Of course she was. Yeah. And you have these consultants that are really pushing to move backwards when young Americans are some of the most based Americans we've ever seen. You talk about Brandon Gill. Brandon Gill is not hiding. He's not listening to consultants on any of these issues. He's a, I think he's a hardcore based Catholic when you come down to it. And his wife is too. So all of this is so depressing to me because I thought we learned these lessons during COVID. I thought we learned these lessons before the last election. The president really showed people so well how to lean into the culture wars and just call a lot of this nonsense crazy. And now we're backtracking. Do you think that, and I still want to get, I want to get your hottest take on how to come back. But do you think that Capitol Hill Republicans will take that lesson from this? Because I think you're correct about the, the, you ignored these issues that could have actually been, if not a hedge against this, at least it might have boosted you a little bit. Yeah. As opposed to running away from it. Do you think they'll take that lesson? It depends on the office. That's what I've found. It depends on the staff. There's some fantastic staff in some of these offices who get it. And you really have to get it, not to sound too casual. But if they don't understand the issues and they don't understand how this plays, then it's very possible. There are a bunch of wishy-washy half-republic and half-democrat staffers who are advising their, their, their council or their congressmen or senator to just say whatever is it? Yes. I have very bad news for you. By the way, this is going to be the least Catholic Republican conference since before the Paul Ryan wave. Wow. Yeah. Nice. They were, they were, they were outsized in terms of their losses, just given the maps and things like that. I'm not too sure that any of the former Catholic congressmen or senators were too serious, but that's fair. That is fair. That is fair. That's fair. So what's your hottest take on how they should come back? It's the opposite of what Mary Margaret just said, honestly, I think, I do not, my hottest take is that you cannot, we cannot, based in redpilled our way out of this. My hottest take is that we need to, Republicans, I should say, need to start thinking very seriously about re reconstituting themselves as a political party, more than an ideological coalition. They need to start thinking about hard public policy alternatives that they are going to present up and down the ballot, national and local levels. They need, because look, obviously, being the based party, nominating these people, Brandon Gill won by a lot of a lot of a, by a huge margin, but this didn't get young men to turn out. I think it isn't the normy candidate. It's getting public and party right now. It's fine, but this isn't, this messaging, the White House has all these memes on every, every accountant, everyone's super online, but no one has a healthcare plan. No one has an answer. No, we have Malfoy. No, we have Malfoy. Exactly right. The Vice President dressed up as Malfoy, but we don't have a healthcare plan. And if we ever want to win elections again in a peaceful way. So, so let me put this to you. The consultant class here in T.C. it's already talking about this. The president said when he called into Fox News on election night, you know, I can't work with the Democrats on trans and kids and little, you know, you went, but you know, I can't work with them on something. Some of them are wonderful. You know, the way he normally talks and then he said, but the one issue that he mentioned was immigration. There is going to be a consultant push definitely. It's already started to have the president do some kind of immigration deal with this new Democrat majority. What's your, is does that fit into your perspective on policy making a little bit? A little bit. Yes, because I think I think it's absolutely something that he should be considering. Now, I say that very reservedly because immigration deal can mean a lot of things. Right. Yeah, right. Exactly. Yes. If it means bring back DACA, then no, if it means we'll pause like the ice raids and have some sort of combat, even if it's just sort of like paying lip service to because obviously the raids aren't really raids and, you know, what not, I shaking your head. You too. I love it. I wildly disagree. That's fine. I think it goes. Go. Sit down. Sit down. My dress, I dress like a Paul Ryan. I'm hoping to get to that. Just to think of the way. I think it was a disastrous mistake for the Trump administration and for Congress to back off on going all in for mass deportations. They obviously were responding to some perceived concept of wild unrest from the American people, but of course, that was going to come through in the liberal media. And of course, you were going to see these crazy protests in places like Minneapolis and Denver and Seattle and San Francisco. None of that was shocking whatsoever. What was surprising to me is the immediacy to just pull back the reins and say, okay, okay, okay. When that was working and it wasn't just working to keep our cities a lot safer, violent crime has plummeted across our country, which is huge to motivate young families in particular, but it's working for economics. If you look at the cities that have deported the most illegal immigrants, their rent prices are crashing and so are prices to afford purchasing a home. The biggest dips being New Orleans to an 8% decrease in rent pricing last year, Nashville saw more than 5% decrease in rent pricing last year. Cities across Texas, San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, all seen crashes in rent prices, which is one of the chief concerns on affordability for young people. I think if you just figured out a better way to message it and maybe it's not through memes or malfoy or whatever on TikTok, but saying, look, we're doing this to help you to keep you safe. interesting. It's uncomfortable maybe when you hear about it on CNN, but we're not backing down because we are here to serve you. It is interesting that when you actually look, and we're obviously early in terms of digging into the numbers here, but it is interesting to me that the actual Republican coalition held on more to both Latino men and women than they did some of these other demo groups. And that goes to my personal theory, which is that the people who are actually pissed off about these ice raids, et cetera, are suburban wine and cheese, white liberal women, as opposed to the people who are going to hate you anyway. Don't wait. I was literally just on an ice raid if you want to call it that. I did an ice ride along in our videos coming out this week, so hopefully we'll have that for you guys soon. But while we were on this arrest, and we went to get four guys on this morning, we literally went to arrest an illegal alien who is convicted of sexual assault. So this man is a sexual predator. He escapes, runs away. The police can't help us because Virginia's policies, Abigail Spanberger doesn't allow the police to help us catch this guy. We encounter several white women walking their dogs in this suburban nice neighborhood near Balson, Arlington, which if you're not familiar, very cushy little neighborhood of Arlington. And the ice officer rolled down his window and said, "Hey, ma'am, have you seen a man running through here?" And she said, "Are you ice?" And he said, "Yes, ma'am." And she said, "I'm not helping you." And as we drove away, she said, "Make good decisions." And I'm thinking literally, there is a sexual predator on the loose in your neighborhood. Okay, I'm sorry. That is so hilarious. That's a skit. And there's literally a sexual predator on the loose in her neighborhood. And she's like, "Make good decisions." And then we drive away. That is the state of the white suburban wine mom that is just, has her, she's out there picketing against ice, she's up on the bridge with her flag. That is the state of what's going on there. And to me, it was so incredible to see that and to experience it in real life because I know there's a sexual predator on the loose in that neighborhood. I understand that these guys are literally telling me, "I tell my kid not to talk about what I do at school so that he's not in danger." There's all of this going on. And yet, somehow it's not being communicated to the public. And that is what really just happened. How did the people chasing down sexual predators become the bad guys? I just want to say one thing in response to what Isabel was saying before, and then I want to hear your hot take Ben, which is just, I agree with everything that you said. You said that the issue might be with messaging. And I think that this is where the president or Republicans sitting down and talking to Democrats or at least pretending to be open to the idea of some kind of conversation could help with the messaging because I think what happened was the shutting down the border happened quicker and way more successfully than anyone thought it was. And then the deportations happened more efficiently and successfully than anyone thought it was. And I think it freaked everybody out. And the loudest voices were obviously the lunatic wine moms who said that this is fascism. It's a new Gestapo. But I think a lot of people in DHS were freaked out too and thought, "Oh my god, we didn't really think that we were going to get this far this quickly." And I think that's why they were ready to be like, I think Republicans were ready to sort of back off. Republicans were ready to go from Christy Nome to Mark Wayne Mullin from the bravado saying, "We're not stopping too. We're actually not going to talk about this because they freaked themselves out a little bit." And so I think even if it's just for Republican metal, for Republican spirit decor, I think if the president said, "I'm going to get in the room with congressional leadership right and left," and we're going to talk about what the next phase of this immigration looks like without compromising what we're doing. But we're going to look at what the next phase looks like. That's the problem. I think that could rally, that could be especially going into 28. I think that's a really good table. Sure. That's not what happened though. The without compromising thing didn't happen. We did compromise. And you're right. Republicans pulled back the reins immediately because there was this perceived idea that everybody hates us because everything's in the media is so against us and everybody's taking to the streets and protesting. It wasn't everybody. It was the left-wing media who hates you anyway and it was people who were going to take to the streets to protest anything you were doing anyway. So I guess I have this problem with the Washington Republican mindset of this. It's not just immigration. It's abortion. You saw it with the Mike Rogers ad. You saw it with the Michelle DeFoya ad. It's demographic replacement. It's legal immigration. But they promised, Swami had a huge campaign promise to expand H1B visas, which was one of the most tone-deaf things you possibly could have said in this particular era of American politics. He had more tone-deaf things than that. Sure. One of the chief concerns of your key voter base being young white men under 40, right? I see this consistent problem with every single policy issue in American politics right now where we don't do the, yeah, we're not compromising, but this is what we're doing thing. Instead, we just do compromise because there's this perceived idea that there's a massive group of nebulous voters in the middle that will be swayed if we're nice about certain things. Which has never been true. Those people don't exist. Like, there is no voter in America who thinks, yeah, I mean, like, I'm not pro-life. I'm really staunchly pro-abortion. But if a Mike Rogers tells me that he's not going to vote for a national abortion man, sure I'll vote for that guy over the Abdul Al-Saheads of the world, there is not a single person who was outraged over Alex Prety or Renee Good that would have seen Donald Trump go march his butt down to talk to Chuck Schumer and say, shut up, Chuck, this is what we're doing, but at least we're having a good conversation about it. I still feel like it. That would have said, yeah, now I'm okay with mass deportations. The left doesn't do this for a reason because they have an agenda, they have a blueprint, they stick to it, and we don't have any semblance of cohesion as a party, whatsoever, instead at the first sign of backlash. Every time we try to govern on offense, we just back off. Yeah, sorry, sorry. We agree on the fact that the Republican Party likes to go here and message. Yes. I think that we should actually start legislating and coming up with ideas that we can send to the American people and say, here's how we're going to make your life better. And you're just, you're saying that we should just basically replace the RNC platform with a matte wash monologue. That's what's going to win us elections. That's going to win us this week. Yes. I do. This was one of the biggest questions on Tuesday and call me insane. Call me like an absolute radical at this point, but I'm a little blackpilled this week as we all are. Blackpilling ends next week, but you haven't passed this week. It is impossible to me. I love using this example again that Brandon Gill wins his district by 11 points in the same district. Tallariko wins by 10 plus points. It is insane to me that Republicans look at someone like a James Tallariko and an Abdul Al-Sayed and they say, oh my gosh, these people are crazy We talk about candidate quality, but mic Rogers has a lot of political experience and Ken Paxton has a lot of political experience. We did put forward a good candidate on these things. No one would vote for a god is non-binary James Tallariko or I'm funded by the Muslim Brotherhood, Abdul Al-Sayed. Candidate quality for the Republican Party has to have a dramatic change tomorrow. If we are going to win any election at any level in American politics moving forward, it doesn't mean you served in the military for 15 years and you're a great at constitutional attorney and you've been in Congress for several cycles or maybe you worked your way up as an intern through the staff or level in DC for so many years. It has to mean you're willing to say the hard thing. Okay. And for the left, that is God is non-binary and let's import mass numbers of Muslims into our country and we should be saying in Shalaw at campaign rallies that's absurd to us. We don't have an equivalent to that. Okay. We don't have an equivalent to that at all. You got it. You got to let me. She's been waiting. No, no. I mean, I think, look, the James Tallariko saying that we love trans children. He loves trans children. That to me was so startling and along the same lines of what you're talking about, one of those things that were Republicans were like, he will never win while he did win. But someone else I forgot about that I don't think we've talked about is Michael Alfonso, who is Rachel campus stuff, he's son-in-law, who also won in Wisconsin, right? Yeah, very young Gen Z guys. So I'm very curious to see how Washington treats Brandon Gill and also Michael Alfonso, these very young guys who are very conservative, very serious about a lot of these culture war issues and how they'll fare in the end. But I also, the thing I really wanted to talk about was Mike Rogers abortion ad because this got me all riled up. I barely tweeted anything about it. And everyone in my replies was like, how could you speak out against Mike Rogers when we're about to have El Said win? And I thought, fair, obviously it's a tight race, but to me seeing Mike Rogers put out this abortion ad, or not an abortion ad, but a statement essentially saying, don't worry, I'm not pro-life the way you think I am, that to me, A, was such cowardice and B, it reminded me of In a Man for All Seasons, I'm Catholics, I'm bringing this up, In a Man for All Seasons when Thomas Moore gets betrayed by his friend and his friend comes before the parliament or whatever this scene is. And Thomas Moore says to him, you know, essentially, you gave me up for whales. Yeah, but for Michigan, but for Michigan. And Mike Rogers is going to have to answer for that in one way or another at some point in his life. One thing that I, so there are a couple that, just since you've all said various things here, a couple of things that I think stand out to me are it seems to me that the question about immigration really is a test about how far Republicans are willing to go and whether they're willing to actually defend what they're doing, rather than have this fantasy about a voter that doesn't exist, which to me was, takes us all the way back to the post-2012 autopsy. And by the way, it was an autopsy because it was about a party that was dead, okay, Donald Trump proved that four years later. But the point is that like just you need to be ready to defend this. You were willing to defend this war that was unpopular with your own people. You're not willing to defend this thing that was much higher on their list of priorities when they voted. for you and for the president just two years ago. That's a major issue for me. In terms of my hot takes, Tim already knows one of them, which is that I think Ted Cruz needs to give up his plan to run for president. He needs to focus on-- - We're sorry, Senator. - He's a Republican, John Tower of Texas. He needs to go back and save Texas for the sake of the country. He needs to adjudicate whoever is the next a gubernatorial nominee. He needs to figure out what's going on there because he's the only statewide Republican now, and he has the authority to do it and the money to do it, and he's the only person who does. So, sorry, Ted, we know you want to live here, but you know, you're gonna have to stay there. And my other thing is actually a similar, sort of in the similar vein. There are a lot of house seats that were won pretty narrowly by these Democrats. It is not-- The Senate's a real problem for Republicans. It is not outside the realm of possibility. The two years from now, Republicans could cut deeply into this vast Democrat majority. And I have the perfect man to do that for you. Kevin McCarthy needs to run the RNC. - Oh my God. - Wow. - Let's go. - He's the greatest recruiter in the modern history of the Republican Party. He will find the person who can win all of these things by 1.5%, he will raise a ridiculous amount of money, and most of all, and this is key, he will stay away from all of the controversy around the 2028 nomination, which will dominate the conversation within the GOP over the coming years. And that leads me to my next question, which is, JD Vance. We gotta talk about the Vice President. He went out there and he said his take on things, that take was depending on which reporting you believe. It was something that he did independently, that he was truly expressing his views on this. There were certain people, including the President's son, Don Junior, who applauded this take. I believe it was a huge mistake and an admission of weakness, and actually will increase the number of people who want to run against him, because it once again, I think, displayed a lack of political judgment in terms of his inability to talk about many of the other issues other than the war that dragged things down, and indicating that he already wants to create some kind of separation from Donald Trump, which I believe is impossible. - Well, haven't we known this in the entire time? - I'm sure it's the back of it. - Well, I have everything to say. (laughing) - This is not news that JD Vance is not as supportive of the war as Donald Trump is. I mean, I have been saying this since the war began, but obviously, the Vice President doesn't agree. He's gonna have the President's back. He's gonna support him. - But he didn't have the President's back. - He did. - This truth is not having the President's back. - Okay, well, before this tweet, I've been to so many events, so many questions, so many gags where the Vice President defended the President's policy on Iran, and we all knew he wasn't like gung ho about it, but he's gonna support the President. This tweet, to me, was him saying, okay, we're looking at the situation. I believe the war was at fault here, and as a reminder, the President was asked about it, not even maybe five, six hours afterwards, and he had nothing bad to say. He wasn't upset about it. So I think-- - Oh, you actually believe the President was not upset about this. - Donald Trump is not one to hide his feelings, if he's upset about anyone in the cabinet. - He would absolutely have said something. If he thought that he was wrong. - It should scare you when he does hide his feelings. - He's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's, he's thinking this week. - Why are you upset? - Because of both of you then, if you agree with the state, 'cause this is interesting to me. It can't be simultaneously possible that this election was a referendum on the Trump administration and a referendum on the Republican Party. And also, this was a horribly calculated political move to try to separate yourself from the disastrous-- - Sure, sure. - Well, you know, when is, well, let's, just a simple question, when has that worked? - Well, it might not. It might, that's the big question that I think-- - Okay, so no, no, no, no, no, no. I'm very serious when I say this. You do realize in modern history, JD Vance is the least popular vice president. He's less popular than Kamala Harris. He's less popular than Dan Quail. He's less popular than Mike Pence. He's less popular than Al Gore. None of it, who obviously became president. Why does separating yourself from a man who has created this coalition, a new coalition, won the most votes in American history? How does that benefit you? - Well, I would make two points there. One, I don't know that anyone, and myself included, is saying that it was the right move necessarily. - Well, she seems to be. - Well, I'm saying, you said it was a poorly calculated political move. I'm thinking there's not a reality in which the selection, which we all agree, was partially a referendum on the war in Iran, and partially a referendum on the lack of governing on offense from Republicans in Washington, DC. If that is true, which I think we all agree is true, then if you have any hope of becoming the next Republican president of the United States-- - Okay, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. Let me just ask one basic question. Did that post increase or decrease the likelihood that Donald Trump endorses you for the Republican nomination? - I don't know. - I don't know that it cut away. Because, look, JD Vance is putting out this statement. It's very JD Vance-like. He's sharing a little too much-- - That's the problem. - Too much wonky information. - Okay, if all this-- - Well, there's a difference between political and Republican. - I was just gonna point, I was sorry. - He's putting out a little too much wonky data and analysis information. I'm reading it, I'm like, where is the point? But at the end, he literally says, the president agreed yesterday he's drawing Trump in, he's trying to make sure people understand, I'm not breaking from the president here. And honestly, for a lot of people, it was kind of a relief to read that and say, okay, I'm not insane because there were plenty of people out there saying, wait, the president has been saying this war is good for so long. I'm trying to hear from him on affordability and he's kind of implying things are fine. That's very frustrating for a large portion of the population. So I'm not saying the vice president was completely right in his analysis, but I do think it was cathartic for some people to read that and say, look, I'm not insane. There's more going on here than is being articulated. - I think the number one way that JD Vance becomes president of the United States is if Donald Trump endorses him for the GOP nomination. And I think that that post decreased that likelihood. - Well, I'll ask him if I can. I'll say it from the president. What do you think? - I think there is a difference between political positions and political maneuvers. And I think that your right is a bell that at some point the vice president, certainly because the Iran war is proven unpopular. And also because he clearly just never agree with the Iran war as he runs her president, which he's certainly going to do is going to have to separate himself from the war, doing it 11 minutes after the polls closed on Twitter. - Sure. - It was a bad political move. It was, it let every other potential Republican contender who was sitting on the fence, Ron DeSantis hopped off the fence and put his election white leather boots on. He saw that tweet. Donald Trump Jr. is probably pissed. Trump is definitely pissed. - Donald Trump Jr. be tweeted it. - This is what he did. - I know, but that got everyone to his death. - Donald Trump Jr. loves shady vans. - I am, I'm okay. - I hope that you all enjoy your catharsis and your tweets and your memes. - Well, let me do some. - And president Gavin Newsom. - More of them. - We're not gonna have a president. - No, no, no, no. - You don't think we have to keep the people that we just know? - No, no, I actually think that you, I think that you need to be an inspiring figure in your own right. - Well, sure, and like it's exactly, I think what he's trying to do right now is to say, I'm not the guy at the top right now. I support the guy at the top. I'm here to serve the guy at the top. It's not the decision that I would have made. I hear the concerns of the American people. That's my two cents on the issue. - And also, it wasn't 11 minutes after the polls closed. It was halfway through Wednesday, and I know because I had been waiting and looking for what the vice president had to say about it. I had a lot of, you know, the DC White House reporters waiting to see what he said. - And it was interesting analysis. So I think it's unfair to say this makes or breaks JD Vance. I think it was one post, one statement. - You're saying it makes or breaks, right? - I don't think it breaks. - Actually, that's the vibe here that, you know, he's done-- - No, I think it hurts his relationship with Donald Trump, and I think that it's a situation where JD is starting to separate himself, I think earlier than he needed to. I think that a rational politician, a tactical politician would have looked at this situation and said, I'm gonna have to create some separation from the president. I'm gonna be doing that a year from now or a year and six months from now on a debate stage where I explain myself to the American people as opposed to a post on X. - But don't you think Donald Trump would handle this better slowly and nicely rather than on a debate stage when he fully separates from Donald Trump? Donald Trump would be posting on true social and saying, I can't believe my VP. - You don't think he's going to be hosting that debate? He's gonna be the moderator. - You don't know what you want to do. - Because you're, of course, he's going to, but that's part of the reason why you have to just almost kind of like control the experiment without him. Like, Trump is gonna push back on Vance whenever he starts to try to separate away, better to make it seem gradual and in the course of primary debate rather than cutting and running after a boy. - But he didn't cut and run. - He didn't. - He didn't. - He didn't. - I read that tweet and I saw an analysis of maybe the most important dark horse element to the 2028 election that no one in GCE Republican politics is talking about. Young white Gen Z men swung 38 points from the Republican Party. party to the Democrat Party between 2024 and 2026. Donald Trump is only in the White House because of the Charlie Kirk TikTok effect. Let's be very, very clear about that. Gen Z, White men delivered the White House to the Trump Vance Administration, and that is going to be the majority of the voting demographic between millennials and Gen Z in 2028 for the first time ever. Forget about campaigning on social security. Forget about campaigning on Medicare. You have to reach these people who had the potentially biggest swing in modern politics as an indictment against their Republican Party toward the left immediately or you have no hope whatsoever under the Senate. Well, but let me dig into that and I think that this is a good way to wrap things up. If they are the most crucial demographic in terms of how much they swung, and I agree with your argument, how do you get them back given that what we actually see when we drill down to these numbers is people who did not vote. They did not, like a certain percentage as low, I mean, it looks like it's going to actually end up being perhaps single digits of them went over to the Democratic side. Most of them just didn't vote. The vast majority of them simply did not turn out, did not show up. They were taken for granted, and they just stayed home. How do you get them back? You have to write the blueprint of what the American dream for the next generation looks like. You have to have the policy plan, but you also have to have the right messaging to say we hear you. We understand the reality that you're living through is fundamentally different than what every generation who came before you has had to live through. We understand that there's a geriatric congress that has absolutely zero concern for your well-being, your financial future, your opportunity, or your family, and we are changing that tomorrow, immediately. I think, along similar lines, there have to be new promises made to prove that the promises that were not kept will be brought back. I mean, I think of all these young men that I've spoken to about this. When I say young men, I mean, you know, college age, my brother's age, or some of the guys I know that are deployed, that voted for Donald Trump based on no new wars, those young people are disillusioned. They feel that their promises that Donald Trump made them were broken, and so they need a candidate that's going to make them promises that they trust that he will keep, or she. Obviously, could be JD Vance, could be Marco Rubio, could be Ron DeSantis, could be anyone at this point. I'm not settled on anyone that's going to be that savior, but I do think this this Republican party needs to get with the point that no, we're not going to go back to your establishment weirdness. You need to focus on the future, and that is not the same as the past. So Tim, should the president, instead of promising $5,000, should he have promised free GTA six copies for everyone? Yes, I'll give this an every pause. It seems to me that this is the big question for Republicans, and I don't personally have an answer, and I think that a big part about it is going to be about communication and completely changing the way they try to win campaigns. The fact that the richest man who has ever lived spent $200 million in Texas to try to hold on to it, and it basically did nothing in terms of any kind of ballot effect. That to me means you have to completely start over from scratch and re-evaluate the way that you communicate. You've been watching another edition of The District Club. I want to thank Tim, Mary Margaret, Isabelle. I'm Ben Damage, we'll be back next week with you.