District Club: Republicans' Midterm Cash Infusion, Trump on the World Stage, and Media Ban Lifts

Okay, first before we give you the facts of the day, run Hyde Fight Infadels is streaming now only on Daily Wire. It's an ode to the great action movies of the 80s and 90s. There is even a love story which nobody expected. And you can support Daily Wire's mission to continue making movies that people actually want to watch. Go check it out. Inspiring Bible Stories. And messages created to strengthen your faith. Whether you need peace, encouragement, or a fresh start, pray.com helps you make prayer part of your everyday life. Download the pray.com app today. Summer is over but things are heating up in Washington. A week of international drama ends with a flashy state visit from Chinese president Xi Jinping. President Donald Trump was all smiles but with disagreements over trade wars and AI, where do things really stand? As fears of unfettered AI development and a dystopian future grow, unlikely political partnerships are forming in a push for regulation. And several mainstream news outlets are back in the White House after a brief but contentious exile. Critics cried foul over the ban but didn't really matter. All that and more coming up on the District Club. Welcome to another edition of the District Club. I'm Ben Dominic, opinion editor at The Daily Wire. Happy to be joined again by my colleagues Tim Rice, DC Bureau Chief, and our White House correspondent Mary Margaret Olhan. Great to be with you. And also to welcome our guest today. Terry Moran, longtime expert reporter in terms of covering Washington, all aspects of the swamp. You can check out his sub-stack at realpatriotism.com. I'm also told I was not allowed to say this but you are now officially a playwright so congratulations on that Terry and welcome to the District Club. I want to start today's conversation actually with something a little bit different which is I think that today we have to talk about the degree to which we have seen this massive money bomb that Republicans have been talking about for the last several weeks as they're saving grace in this midterm and really debate whether it's going to have any impact at all. There was a great piece I think and I say this pretty rarely when it comes to covering Texas in the New York Times that ran through the different names that came to mind when people had to react to the name Ken Paxton. It included a number of different Republicans, including Lee Republican voters, people who had voted Republican consistently before. Here are some of the things they said. Crook, criminal, crook, crooked, bad, amoral, disgusting, two words morally corrupt, disgusting, corrupts, womanizer, crook. By the way, the one who said womanizer and crook also in when reacting to Taleriko indicated that she would definitely be voting for Ken Paxton. So I think that we are in sort of through the looking glass when it comes to this situation. The latest news is that the Senate leadership fund backed political action committee is willing to spend upwards of $200 million in Texas according to a punch bowl this morning. This seems to me to be a massive self owned by the Republican Party. Tim, Mary Margaret, what is your reaction to this situation that basically has Republicans throwing a lot of money into a race that could have been something that cost them a lot less? Yeah. Well, I mean, first of all, my first reaction to hearing all those insults to Ken Paxton is the Democrat messaging ads are doing very, very well because that's what they're saying. They're calling him crooked, they're calling him corrupt. Yes. That is actually the buzz word of the midterm elections corruption. That's how they want to paint most Republicans and it's actually not a bad idea if you're going after people in power, especially when the president of the United States is very wealthy, his family is very wealthy, an easy way to vilify them is to call them corrupt and that's really trickled down from the top and that's what we're seeing in Texas. I think especially so at least on that front, the Democrat campaign against Paxton is doing very well and if you can have someone looking at Paxton and criticizing him more harshly than Tallarico, given some of the very easy sound bites that even us at the Daily Wire have been publishing. We've found all these undercover videos exposing his stances, exposing his church, all these things. But your reaction is to call Ken Paxton corrupt, that that's very interesting political space to be in, right? Tim, I don't know if you remember the old ad that ran when it was against David Duke, you know, back in the day vote for the corrupt. I mean, look, messaging aside, I think, right, to get back to the money question, is any of this going to matter? I think the way that I'm thinking about it is not, is any of this going to matter? I think probably not, but was there ever a point where it could have mattered, right? Or was this race always destined to just be such as it is with Paxton versus Tallarico? Obviously, if you go further back and think of different candidates, but that's what you can, then you can just play any game you want. Was there ever a moment when the Paxton, Tallarico race was not going to be a massive and potentially ineffective money suck for the GOP? I think probably not. But I mean, on the flip side, what else are they going to do, right? Are they not going to spend the money? Are they not going to show support? And Paxton won by 28 points. Right. It's not like, you know, it's not like that primary was a situation where I personally don't think that Trump's endorsement had anything to do with that win. I think he was going to win anyway. But Terry, from your perspective, you know, it seems to me that what we've learned over these, over the course of the history of midterms is that sometimes there are races that are much closer than they ought to be, that have a trickle out effect to a bunch of other races. I mean, there are tons of examples on both Republican and Democratic sides. I feel like if only we had spent, you know, $2 million more or $10 million more in this state versus this state, we might have been able to pull off, you know, a victory. Do you think that Texas is going to be the drag that ultimately could turn the Senate? On money possibly. They feel that they have to because look, the race is going to tighten. It already is very tight. Republicans are going to come home. They always do. If the president manages to get some kind of end to this war, that'll take a lot of pressure off of them. And money is absolutely critical in politics, but it cannot buy you love in politics or in anything else. And the people of Texas, not the Republican-based votes in the primary, but the people in Texas know Ken Paxton. It's one of the best-known politicians in Texas. And they have a judgment on them that no amount of money is going to dissolve. No one's changing their mind about him. No, well, even Donald Trump. I mean, if you look at how the president talked about him at the Republican midterm convention, I mean, that's not a really great selling point. We said this actually last week a little bit when you were a way, Mary Margaret, but don't you think those messages are kind of like, "Hey Ken, don't make me look bad." Oh, I thought it was more "Hey Ken, I'm doing this that I don't really want to." Yeah, exactly. It seems like the doom and gloom is really set in with Republicans. Was it this week or something, bro? I thought it was last week, but now it feels like- I think it's really me. I think it started to break last week. Again, I think, look, this is partially just like October's around the corner. They're the incumbent party. We can rehash for the 1 millionth time the conventional wisdom. So, I mean, do you guys think that this is just, again, was this just going to happen regardless? Is this just sort of like pre-test anxiety? Or did something happen that really does have Republicans? I mean, his, look, historically, Democrats are playing a home game in this midterm election, and we understand that, and we've always understood that. But there were signs, I think, back December, January, where you felt like Republicans, oh my gosh, they might actually, you know, and they won some of these redistricting fights that were very critical. I mean, the Virginia fight in particular, sort of going, you know, with one vote in the Virginia Supreme Court, the Republicans' way, you kind of felt, well, maybe they'll, you know, somehow escape a massive wave. Now, I think the feeling really is, okay, we actually have to start racking up, you know, sort of the- we have to defend the people who might suddenly become, you know, a viable knockoff in a wave election, and that's never where you want to be. Terry, these folks are younger. We're a little bit older. I'm considerably. What midterm election does this most remind you of, and our good friends at the Cook Political Report correct when they say this is looking more and more like 2006. I was going to say- I mean, a wave, you can, you get a feel like you're surprised. Wait a minute, that race is getting close. Wait a minute, they're spending money here, and it is because not of the money, not of this strategy, it's because of the facts of people's lives. That's what drives a wave. People are very unhappy. I've had an Iowa couple of all the week. weeks ago, farmers staunch Trump Republicans voted for them three times. They're getting killed by the price of diesel and fertilizer. And they're not happy about the tariffs. And trying, as I think the president has been trying to, and as the Republican strategy seems to be as far as I can see, you cannot argue people out of the facts of their lives. You have to address practical issues with pragmatic solutions. And I don't hear them. Yeah. That's a good point. We actually, Brent Shere, our editor-in-chief and I, we do our access every single week, and we talk to our daily wire audience about what they want me to be asking in the briefing room, because unlike a lot of legacy outlets, we're actually invested in what our audience wants to hear about. And we actually like to ask questions that our audience wants to know. So when we did this, most recently, our audience, what they wanted to know, was about the economy, about gas prices. And I think that's a really good pulse check, too, of conservatives who love Donald Trump, who will tell you. You know, I'm really worried about gas, but I love Donald Trump. I'm really worried about the economy, but I love Donald Trump. That's a population that cares very strongly about the president, about the administration. They want them in the White House, but that's their main concern. And I think to me, you know, from my vantage point, if that, those are, if that's what they're so concerned about, then I think the White House needs to take a gut check. Well, but doesn't, doesn't that indicate, though, that they're not hearing what they want to hear from the White House in terms of an answer to any of those questions? I think so. They're asking you to ask that, because they feel like the president is more interested in all this other stuff, as opposed to that. Well, exactly. So, I just spent all week, you know, we're talking about the midterms. And in my mind, I'm like, right, I know this is the biggest news, but to me, I spent all week with President Xi at the White House. I was at a fraud press conference. I was at all these different events all week. They didn't really have anything to do with the midterms. Now, of course, that's just the nature of the White House, right? The nature of the White House beat. You're covering a lot of things that bleed into the rest of politics and bleed into the midterms. But there's a lot going on and a lot of it has to do with international relations. A lot of it has to do with President Donald Trump's legacy. And absolutely these things do impact the midterms. Absolutely. You know, the public is watching, but it does have an impact, I think, on how people are going to go to the polls and how they're looking at the president and how they feel about this administration. It also is so crazy that the White House and the president in particular are not really, really ramping up. Oh, no, they have a great, they have a great message. We heard it from the, from the Ag Secretary this week. You can just buy chicken. Right. Look, Donald Trump is, it's not the man obviously has, look, maybe a month ago I would have said that he didn't have a deep breadth of historical knowledge, but then he made a weird Michael DeCoccus reference in Dallas, like an unnamed Michael DeCoccus reference. So clearly, you know, he remembers things. Any other Republican president who reads that cook political report or even without it looks around and says, okay, I've got an unpopular war in the Middle East, gas prices are climbing and oh, just for good measure, a crazy hurricane that's about to break these coasts. It's 2006 again. It's 2006 again, no matter what the political, cook political report says that should be scaring the hell out of the White House and yet we're talking about chicken and Obamacare fraud and all these other things that have nothing to do with the midterms. Although, sorry, really quickly, I do think Obamacare fraud does plan into the midterms in that it is a good selling point for the Trump administration investigating fraud and finding a lot of it. But it would be great if it could get through the noise of Trump because I actually think one of the issues is the president himself. You talk to people, it's like he's concerned about everything else in the world. His own glorification, his arch, this, that, the helipad, the White House press corps which we're going to talk about, but not them. There's a very large number of Republicans, I believe, I always have been, who have voted for Trump despite his character, despite his low character as they perceive it as I perceive it as I think a lot of people perceive it. And that's what he's running on, that's what he's, that's what he's showing to them. Not I've got your back. But look at me. The glorifying me. The thing that actually, I think the problem there that you've touched on is that part of a major part of Trump's appeal from the beginning was that he was someone who said, "I'm outside the political class, I am incorruptible because I'm wealthy and I don't have any kind of the affinities of this political class that can be bought off by people." Now you and I, and jaded people who have long and long lost our attitude toward. No president has ever used the White House to make money for his family and corporations. Does this guy have any president ever had any president who would have crucified? But I think that this is a situation where the president, unfortunately, has now reached a point where he's thinking about his legacy, as you said. And that legacy, from his perspective, has very little to do with the price of ground beef. He doesn't feel like he's going to be remembered for that one way or the other. He feels like he's going to be remembered for repositioning America in the world stage. And actually, Tim, I'd like to hear your thoughts on this. This summit was she. And I also want to hear about your interactions with some of the journalists who were there. But it had kind of a weird tone to it. We've been anticipating it for a while and it ended up being something I think kind of different than what we anticipated. What did you think when you were sort of seeing this? I mean, look, honestly, the most striking thing to me was that there weren't that many big moments out of the summit, I feel like, but on the ground here in Washington, the protests and the counter protests were wild, right? So there were, I mean, obviously, sort of anti-China free Tibet, free Taiwan protests, but there were also in downtown every street corner had these groups of, it looked like Chinese nationals are waving Chinese flags, these banners that said in English and in Mandarin. We wish you a successful visit, President Xi. And then this again, this really hyped up first time in a decade, Chinese state visit was kind of, I mean, it was there was pomp and circumstance, but what was really discussed, what really happened? And I mean, Mary Margaret, you were, you spent literally all day. Literally all day. What was actually going on? Well, I will say first of all, there were a lot of talks between Trump and President Xi that we don't know the substance of. There were bilateral meetings that the press weren't allowed into that went on for several hours. So we do know they talked about Iran. We do know they discussed AI restrictions and the future of AI between both countries. And many other topics to the same effect, but I will say like in the, in the public forum, there was only one opportunity for the press to ask some questions and I was in the pool. So I was with the reporters who started screaming questions at President Trump and President Xi in a very funny moment where Trump decided to make all the press move so he could go in the front entrance and shows Xi, the, the curtains, I don't know, in the front of the White House. And so we're all lined up. They walk right through us and we all run to get away. And then, you know, we're yelling about Iran, we're yelling about Jimmy Lai for my part. I wanted to know, you know, is a, is China going to release Jimmy Lai before he dies. And we got nothing from them. What we did get was the President said the meetings went well. And he also said that President Xi loves granite, which we think that he was mishearing what one of the reporters was asking because there was no reason to be discussing granite in that context. But truly, that's all we got from them in a, in a question and answer for that. So that was a little frustrating, you know, just from a reporter perspective. And then, you know, we saw at this state dinner that was, it was very beautiful. I was there. A movie, a very, very solemn and ceremonial, every tech CEO in the world seemed to be there. You got your Fox News host, you got the Supreme Court justices. So beautiful pop and circumstance, like you said. But again, in their remarks, very careful, very demure, very, very general. Many times, do you think that Natalie had to say to Trump, don't make any Winnie the Pooh? People were texting them to me all day. Every picture I posted, I got a, I got a food record. When I was, when I was covering the Hong Kong protest, Terry back in the day, pre-COVID, the Winnie the Pooh graffiti was phenomenal. It was so impressive. It was so well done. What did you think of the state visit? Well, I think my mark is exactly right, there is no substance on the surface. But both of these leaders came to this meeting in a position of some weakness, right? Trump bogged down in Iran. She had this problem in the Chinese economy. And yet, the issues, the big issue, which I know we're going to talk about at length, is AI. I mean, this is the, this is the, we are the two countries that can destroy the world with it. Yeah. And I'd love to have been a fly in the wall in those countries. Yeah. I mean, we did emerge with a little bit of substance there. I think that there was a US proposal to have a bilateral agreement for incident notification, which to me, I mean, I'm sure there's more, there's more, more specifics on that. But I would like to know when there are. I would say I had this for the phone. Right. The red phone is just an app now. Yeah. I mean, I will say, I hid my bags yesterday at the White House with all those Chinese press running around. But that, that's also a concern as well. Before we get fully into AI, I do want to, I just want to ask because the, the G visit was obviously at the end of UN week, right? And so it was a big kind of foreign policy, international diplomacy, focused week in DC, and certainly in New York. And, you know, Ben Terry, I, Mary Morgan, I wonder what you guys think. It seems to be that. That it was odd, the week sort of started with Trump, but a pretty good position, right? I mean, his speech in the UN was not, it was predictable, but it was strong and mostly on message and all the right people walked out. The stuff on South America was unexpected, but good. And then, you know, Netanyahu had his strong moment. So, right, the Western Alliance is good. We're yelling in front of the Jade Wall in the UNGA and then it ends not with a bang, but with a really nice fish heavy dinner for vision pain. Was that a tactical error? - Well, I don't think the Western Alliance isn't a good shape, unless the Western Alliance is Israel and the United States. And even that now, because of the burden of the Iran War, is freeing Netanyahu got no meeting with Trump at all. And so, I actually think, I mean, Netanyahu's speech I thought was heartbreaking, heartbreaking because Israel now stands virtually alone in the world and that's not healthy for any country. Even a country that's used to illegitimate criticisms of it, used to annihilationist instincts in various places, Netanyahu has been a disaster for the security of Israel. - Well, so, first off, I think that I viewed this more in the context of the president coming off of this agreement when it came to Greenland, which I think a lot of people never thought would get there, and which, by the way, lots of people, including myself, had actually said, you know what, there's actually an easy way to do this that is a lot less, you know, belligerent, and this is essentially where they ended up. The thing that I think could have happened with that is something that reestablished, you know, America is having a vision for the world that other nations cotton to. Unfortunately, I have to agree with Terry. I think that, I think the Western alliances here have really frayed, I think that, you know, the focus that has, and I blame, you know, our European allies or former allies in some instances, you know, on a lot of that, I don't really think that anything changed with this. I don't think that it ended up being as significant as perhaps people were looking forward to it being. As for Israel's isolation, I, you know, I think that that's something that's undeniable at this point. I don't think that there's anyone who believes that Israel has anyone that they can depend on, you know, beyond the United States. And unfortunately, I think that that's, you know, in large part of consequence of people misjudging a lot of happy talk and hand waving that happened during either the Abraham Accords or during some of these other things where it's a lot of surface level stuff that was never going to survive any kind of confrontation with conflict. And I think in this case, the president's judgment when it came to the Iran war led to that level of conflict and suddenly places that were never getting bombed, were getting bombed and that made them reassess things. - How do we move on from this or move forward from this? - Well, I mean, the president is very focused on things that are happening around here. Obviously, he didn't have this meeting with Netanyahu, but he did have a state visit with President Xi at the White House, which isn't over yet. I mean, he'll have Chinese officials in town for over the next week. And then he took President Xi to the National Archives, I believe, on Friday. So there's so much going on with the president and his focus on China, on AI. And I guess you could say forward thinking, forward looking interest in the next couple of weeks, which I know we talked about this briefly earlier. He has said he's going to be campaigning for all these Republicans. He's promised to be out. And I think what was it, 35 key states in the weeks leading up to the midterms? And there are weeks leading up to the midterms. We do have some time before the midterms roll around. So I have not given up hope yet that the president will be out there campaigning for Republicans. What I do know is I see from all these legacy media outlets trying to tell us that Republicans don't want Trump out there with them and that Trump is actually not helping them when they're out there on the campaign trail. So that, to me, is my interest focus heading into these next couple of weeks, because does Trump help and do these Republicans want there? Terry, you were just an Iowa, as you said, doesn't help in Iowa. Actually, Henson is kind of moving away from him. She started her campaign by saying, I'm going to be as big as Dalai in the Senate. And now she's criticizing them, all these Midwestern states. And frankly, the top tier of states on the Canadian border, if the tariffs are killing a lot of businesses there. So I feel like this week, and we started this conversation by talking about kind of the break. You saw Mike Rogers breaking with the president on a ramp. That's pretty astonishing, given Mike Rogers' history. You saw this separation that's happening, which is something that is always, I think, dangerous to do, because you're going to own it one way or the other. There's no way to separate yourself from the president. And if we look at the polling, it basically says, we have a depressed Republican electorate. We have an active Democrat electorate. And if you are distancing yourself from the president, I just don't feel like you're going to be raising up that number at all on the Republican side. Well, I come back to the number of Republicans who have voted for him for three times for a version of Trump, the good Trump. And there's bad Trump, right? Good Trump, immigration they like him on. A lot of independence, thought the immigration enforcement was too forceful. But certainly for tried and true Republicans, immigration is a good issue. The economy. That's not good for people. And what does he really want to talk about? It seems himself only. And they're saying, they're looking at him. And they're like, you know, you are for the non-hard core mega people who have voted for him. They're looking at him and saying, you don't get it. You do not get it, which happens with second term presidents a lot. Yeah. And I think it's dangerous, yes. But I think it's dangerous in a high risk, high reward. Or a risk reward, maybe neither of them are high. But I think it's good. And I think it's good. First of all, that Republicans are, to Terry's point, right? Doing with the White House will not. And with the president will not. And acknowledging that not everything is sunshine and rainbows. And it's actually good. And you can just eat chicken and walk to work. And, but I also think it's good that there is, it's the right time, almost halfway through a lame duck administration. It's good that these candidates feel that they can. Right? It's good that they feel that they can separate themselves from the president and not, especially this president, and not make it the defining area of their campaign, right? In 2022, if there were Republicans who were running away from Trump, it would have been the whole thing, right? It would have been, I denounced Donald Trump, I disavow. I'm, yeah, I mean, the Liz Cheney campaign, right? But now, this is like a return to some sort of normalcy. You should be able, especially on issues like war and affordability, you should be able to say, I'm not, I'm no longer with the leader of my party. Does that open you up to allegations of hypocrisy? Of course, does it open you up to potential attacks from the White House, this White House in particular? Yes, but by and large, I think this is good, if not for the actual racism, certainly for kind of the electoral future of the GOP. - I mean, I'm just interested in post elections that candidates that do that, how they will be treated by team Trump, how they will be treated by the GOP going forward. Because, I mean, if you look at the RNC, they are still fully aligned with the president. The RNC has no interest in distancing from him, and they couldn't even if they wanted to. So, the candidates who do push away from Trump, whether or not they do well, I think they will have some reckoning to deal with afterwards. - I do think that there's, there are, high risk, high reward, as you said in situations here, but I do think that it was significant that this week we saw John Curtis, the Senator from Utah, you know, call for this subpoena in the Judiciary Committee of Don Jr. over this pro-public report about the payments for, I guess it was a wedding after party on an island. - That's right, it was not the way. - Well, so what's interesting to me about that is to me, it presages what's gonna come next, which is a host of hearings, oversights, subpoenas, you know, impeachments, potentially, that could happen underneath a Democrat Congress that are going to target a lot of the people around the president who are still gonna be around, as opposed to the president himself, because the president himself has a ticking clock and it's just sort of like, you know, okay, well, we can't get you, we've tried to get you, we're gonna try to get all these people around you. I think that that's gonna be, I think that's gonna be a major, it's, that itself is going to be an approach that I think is gonna be risky in part because Democrats are gonna win this election based on the economy. - Exactly. - And based on affordability. - Yes. - And then if they turn around and they say, actually this is about, we're gonna halt Don Jr. in front of three different committee hearings and have a bunch of lawyer stuff, no, that's different. - That, that is the temptation to Democrats they have to resist, although there needs to be proper oversight without question, proper, old fashioned, you know, not hunting for scandal, but where is the money going? - But he's not a government, what's happening? - You know, like, it's, it's a little different. - Well, and who's gonna conduct the proper oversight? Because I agree with you, there should be proper oversight, but do we really think the Democrats at this point are gonna conduct a appropriate. - I think one of the things that, two things are happening in this election. One, the inevitable turning the page on the president. The calendar is doing it, his own age, does it? Let's acknowledge that. He is a different figure in front of the country. And I'm not talking about the maga base. I'm talking about people who know what an old person who's fading away. Now, is he Joe Biden? No, but is he 80 years old? Yes. Is he losing inhibition control? Sure looks like it. Is he addressing the problem? - Well, that presumes that he ever had. When he was at his peak, he knew exactly what he was doing every second. He had a carnivorous instinct for the right level of going out. The other thing that is happening is the Democrats got a lesson. The Democrats have had a lesson, not all of them, but you look at the candidates who are running and who are running close in these races. They are not AOC. They're going to try to portray them as communists. You cannot portray these candidates as communists. But that's what happens when the pendulum swings, and I think that's what we're looking at as one of the forces in the election. Well, I think one of the things that sort of sticks to that is much of the emphasis from Republicans this cycle has been on the radical proposals of a lot of Democrats who have one primaries in blue districts and are going to be members of the next Congress. But if that isn't happening in your state, then you're looking at Shared Brown, and you're sort of saying, "I might have voted for Shared Brown and then voted for Trump." A lot of people were in that category. So that is a harder thing for Republicans to deal with, I think, in a climate now, we'll see what happens in Michigan, but I do think that this is a situation where you're going to see a lot of people who have changed the Democratic Party in interesting ways. And whether that ends up, you know, resulting in the kind of, you know, targeted going after the Trump family or something else, we'll have to see it. Terry's absolutely right. I mean, you can't say a lot about Chris Papis and New Hampshire, but you can't say that he's a communist. I think that the amount of Chris Papis Donald Trump voters that we're going to see in about a month from now is just going to be absolutely staggering. Well, I would be afraid to be a little naive here if we didn't expect Democrats once they are in office. And look what they did during the last administration. They weaponized the Department of Justice against President Donald Trump, against his wife, against members of his administration, against pro-lifers, against doctors in Texas Children's Hospital. So I would be very wary against suggesting that, you know, we would have any semblance of justice from a Democrat oversight or Democrat investigations of Trump family members, even going out of this midterm election cycle, because we've already seen how these Democrats behaved, and I for one have no confidence that the Democrats who are running now as these candidates would not behave in the same manner. I think they're doing the same thing. Clearly right. Yeah, I mean, it's perhaps they are different category of candidates, but we've seen this before. Once they're in the House of Representatives, once they're in Congress, they behave in the exact same way. They have the same leadership, and they have the same DNC that's directing their movements, and the same leadership at the end of the day. I hear Democrats breaking from those forces that you're talking about. I hear Democrats saying, I'm not that guy. I think it's too early to tell in that, but not in the, it's too early to tell, obviously. I think that Mary Margaret is right that we're not going to see in the near term, certainly in the run up to 2028 with this leadership, with this DNC, but I think with this, if this crop of this class of Democrats gets elected in a way that we think it does, and then maybe one more along those lines in 28, right? If the Chris Papises prove to be more popular than they have dual al-Saheads, then maybe, maybe down the line. I think you are being very, very kind to this generation of Democrats. Yeah. The natural incentives are in place for them to do exactly where they're going. Why? They keep losing. No, but they have to do something, but how do you keep that major faction of your base loyal to you? You hold on, Jr., in front of your subcommittee. That's the way that you do it. Well, and you also, you know, to get elected, you will say one thing and mean another. I mean, in extreme cases like Tolerico, you have him, you know, tampering down his radical stances for the cameras and then telling people privately, don't worry. I still believe what you think I believe. So there's a lot of that going on as well, so I would love to imagine that this crop of Democrats are more moderate. No, no, no, no, no. Come on. Come on. I have absolutely no faith that they will be. I'll get on the optimism of the chair. And the question is, the working class, Donald Trump took the working class from the Democratic Party, the middle class and the working class from the Democratic Party. Voters with annual incomes of under, household incomes on $100,000. Do they get them back and the key demographic, they're the biggest swing vote in the country, is Hispanic voters and they are swinging against Trump. But hard. But this is the thing, they don't care about Don Jr. No, they don't care about any of this stuff. They don't care about any of this stuff. What they care about is the price of ground beef, the price of coffee, the price of gas. Those are the things that they care about because they're logical. And dignity and enforcing immigration so that you aren't just tackling nannies in the street. Well, but rounding a hard working America, who are here lawfully. Well, but I also think that a big part of, I think a big part of that immigration agenda sort of side of things, saying this as, as someone who is surrounded by Hispanics and my own family who voted for, for Donald Trump is that they truly believe that the priority should be criminals and they have been convinced by the media that the priority is not that. Well, the fact say that the priority has, well, no. I would disagree with you on that, though. But I don't want to get off on a whole immigration debate standard, but, but what, what, what? The Trump administration would tell you that everyone legally in our country is a criminal. Is a criminal. Yes. So it's, I think there's a definition problem. Which is now what he was talking about, the worst and that has not, I think that the bigger problem, I think the bigger problem for the president and for the party is that there's so much that matters that is going to follow from this election that they seem to have just taken their eyes off. Like I don't feel like they care about it. I don't feel like the president cares about it. I don't feel like he thinks that this is going to be a big deal one way or the other. I think it's going to determine whether he gets another year of effective policy making or whether it all just stops. And I think that's a big deal. I mean, you know, it's a big deal for the future of the Republican party. It's a big deal for the future of conservatism. It's going to have, I think, some ramifications in terms of the lessons people take. This week, there was a piece in the Wall Street Journal by Phil Graham and Don Bedreau that was kind of setting, it was setting a narrative for why Republicans were going to lose. They didn't frame it that way, but it's basically that's what it was saying tariffs are bad. The Iran war is bad, but tariffs are the real thing that is bad. And that's hit the heartland, it's hit Iowa, it's Ohio, it's hit Michigan, and that that's the reason that Republicans are going to lose this cycle. They didn't, again, they didn't say that, but they said it. I think that that's going to be a really interesting fight to observe because everyone's going to have their lesson coming out of this midterm and everyone's going to have their person to blame. It's also just going to be so odd, and I think you're right, Ben, if it does wind up being that the knives start coming for Trump immediately after these midterms. Why don't think it's coming for Trump? Or after whoever. I think it's coming. I think it is coming for the Natcons and for the people who bought into this industrial policy stuff and all these other things, and it's going to be the Reaganites coming out of the woodwork and saying, it's going to be Larry Cudlow saying, hey, we have a great stock market and we have a great, we have great jobs reports, we've got all these other great things. You shouldn't have done the tariffs because that was your mistake. But at the same time, you have Republicans in Congress moving more with Democrats on a lot of things. I mean, there's not a ton of daylight really between Senate Republicans and Senate Democrats on AI and data centers and regulation at this point. I think that as the 2028 campaign ramps up and every Democrat presidential candidate rolls out their massive Medicare for all version, I think we're going to see a lot of Republicans come out and say, yeah, that universal health care thing seems pretty good, too. So, I don't know. I think that we might just say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. If we're going to get universal health care, AI is the best path toward it. No, I'm not kidding, I'm not kidding. If you want universal health care, AI accomplishes exactly what single payer is aiming to do. It also includes firing essentially every health care bureaucrat, and every insurance processor, and every coder, and essentially, I mean, millions of American workers who currently work at this. The private companies will do that, too, but you've raised the possibility of an optimistic outcome here, which I'm inclined to believe in, which is that after elections like this, incumbent presidents tend to get a lesson. If, in fact, we are seeing what we're talking about, which is the loss of at least the house, maybe both in what looks like some kind of a wave, and you get compromised. Trump is a deal maker, right? He wants to take credit, and the Democrats want to pass legislation. They want to pass legislation on health care, for sure. They want to pass legislation elsewhere, and could you see a grand bargain on some of these issues? Yes, I believe you could. We never know what that guy would do. Trump, it's one of his gifts, that he will do a deal. Well, I mean, you saw the way, treat him and Donnie. He is open to a deal, but we're running out of time, and I need to get Terry's take on the media craziness. Yes, yes, yes. We need that. We need that. Because I have lived it. I've lived, I've seen all of it all week, but I need to hear from people on the outside. What was your take on everything that happened? Well, I think it's wrong. I think it's wrong to pay attention. can choose who gets to ask your questions, right? I just think because you don't like the way they write about you or broadcast about you. We've never had a president who does that. It feels cowardly to me. And whatever it is about, come on. I mean, you grow up. Every president hates the press since Washington. All right, all of them have had to deal with it. Yeah. Some of them have had to have had to deal with absolutely vicious press. Far worse than, well, all right. Lincoln, a lot, there were plenty of presidents who got bad coverage and they were grown-ups. They were adults about it. This seemed like a tantrum to me. Is it constitutional? It might be its role. I do think it's constitutional. I do think that there's no real provision against it. I also think it's very stupid and it's a distraction. I don't think that it accomplishes anything. You think it's a purposeful distraction. Well, I mean, do you think that? I was curious. I've been wavering over that all week. I don't know. It kind of seems like one. Terry, I have to ask you something. I personally have a lot of respect for the different news entities that are out there, the old guard, the legacy media. I think that they actually are not as evil, deep down as a lot of people think that they are. I think that the new leftist media is actually far worse than the legacy media because they have no standards. I still find it really bothersome. The degree to which the legacy media has so many people who used to be Democrat employees who are in senior positions. It doesn't bother me that George Stephanopoulos hosts a show. It bothers me that he's the head of the ABC News politics division. That bothers me. I've met George Stephanopoulos. I have respect for George Stephanopoulos. But it bothers me on like, I don't think I should be the head of a news entity like that. He doesn't run the politics unit. He is titularly that. Yeah. On a day-to-day basis from what I've seen, and George is an incredibly generous colleague on his expertise. I think he does it, excuse me, a very good job as a journalist, distinguishing. Does he always do it well? No. I think the problem is deeper and broader than there was a Democrat here, a Democrat here. I've said it aloud and gotten trouble for it. I said it when I was at ABC News. We, that we, no longer we, but the legacy media lacks viewpoint diversity. I mean, they all went to the same college. The first job I ever tried to get in Washington many, many years ago, I didn't get because, literally, I was told I didn't go to Harvard. They didn't, probably. I went to Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, which I'm very, very happy for me. And there was that strain of sameness. You need viewpoint diversity in news organization. Yeah. One thing I've been baffled by, and I spend all my time with these legacy reporters. I was, you know, with all of them till 11 p.m. the night the G was here. You know, we're all chatting and having a nice time for the most part, they're kind people. But what I'm confused by is this lack of awareness to understand that you are left-leaning. You are. CNN, MSNBC, MSNOW, they are left-leaning. But nobody acknowledges this. If you ask some of these reporters, Caitlin Collins, every single night on her show talks about only negative things. Her show is based on negative stories about Donald Trump. It's just, that's what it is. And sure, there's often negative news about Donald Trump. But when your complete focus is negativity about a specific president, that's, I mean, that's what her brands on. That's what CNN's brands on lately. Caitlin, I don't know very well at all, but I do know her coverage, and I would say they're what, when I would cover the White House for five, six years, Clinton through the first term of Bush, I recognize that there's a kind of White House reporter who wakes up every morning and thinks the job is, how do I take a pound of flesh out of the president? Yes. Any president. That is one dimension. Not any president. No, no. Every president. Bitches about the press. Every single president does. The Biden Trump years have been weird in this sense. But otherwise, yes, ever since, ever since Nixon resigned, there is a type of White House reporter who's, how do I be bottled over today? But these White House reporters, all of them, and I think they would even tell you this. If you ask them, are more voracious about Donald Trump than they were about Joe Biden? And there's a reason for that. It's because they are left leaning. Their outlets are left. There's an alternative explanation. We have never had a president who tests the boundaries of constitutional power, who has personalized the power of the presidency, who has gone beyond this framework. I completely disagree. I don't think, I don't think, I don't think, I don't think, I don't think, I don't think, I don't think, which president has done this. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Does Obama's like unconstitutional droning of all sorts of people over the world, including Americans. One American is not sound. I'm sorry. He killed Americans. He killed Americans. I'll say this is someone who is a Trump critic. The truth is that he is actually abided by the constitutional guidelines that the judiciary has actually put on him in a surprising way. In the final instance, he has not defied this framework. So this is, but to me, the real problem here, you said it's a few point diversity. Does a single legacy network today employ someone as a commentator who voted for Donald Trump? Oh, as a commentator that I don't know. Do they employ a reporter who voted for Donald Trump? You know, I don't know, I think. The answer to that is very obviously well, I got you to see the only one I can think of. No, no, no, no, I said legacy. No, I don't. I mean, I could include CNN, but I guess you're talking about news coverage and the best reporters, once again, I think there's a lack of background diversity of viewpoint diversity in all kinds of different ways that would improve the conversational, editorial conversation and the product. And are there reporters who voted for Trump? Maybe here's here's my point. I don't cover politics. But but here's my point, Terry. I was on CBS for for several years there after Trump was elected. I didn't vote for Donald Trump. Okay, but I was on there as like this token right-winger. Barry Weiss has changed CBS. She had this long list of names that she added. I think if you look at that list of names, I doubt any of them voted for Donald Trump. Okay. Now, are they right of center? Certainly they're right of where it used to be, but it seems ridiculous to me that we would have a twice elected president and not have in these legacy media entities even one representative of, yeah, I'm for him and I'm emphatically for him. I have no, you know, as a reporter, as a commentator. As a commentator. I think either one, though, and I have a couple friends who are very good at their jobs. They're unbiased reporters who are actually so good at their jobs because they work for more left leaning outlets that employ them because they have Republican contacts, Republican sources. They aren't going after Republicans and the president and the White House has something to be, you know, savage, but instead to be reported on and to be understood. And so I think that's the real difference here. But if you look at CNN and MSNBC, even political, that's not what you see there. And I think that's part of the reason that the president and the White House have had such frustrations with them this week. But Terry, we got to go, we got to get your final thoughts on this. Give us your last words on this subject. Yeah, I'm an optimist by my nature. And I think the the MAGA movement and the and the Trump presidency will open up a broader spectrum of reporting like yourself, like others. And that will be healthy. Okay, the legacy news media, right, is not going to be with us in 10 or 12. Not going to be around. So does that matter? It does because it was good when there was a sense that there was a consensus about reality. We'll have to find that without the legacy news media. And one of the ways to do that is through conversation. Do you think do you do pin the point where it started to really have that decline at at the Dan Rather report? How do you mean that? Just that just that the fact that they ran with that report about Bush? It was ludicrous. It was ludicrous. That to me was the point where it started to really like because before that, my dad would watch Dan Rather. And then after that, it was like I remember thinking and saying at the time that of all the hands that got on that on that report, the lawyers, the producers, the fact checkers, the correspondent himself, everybody, I bet not a single one of them voted for George W. Bush, who that report was about. And that is what I'm talking about. No, it's a great example. Tim, final thoughts? I agree with Terry. I think that we are due and our way to a great American perestroika, both in terms of media coverage and the way the parties interact. I think that by inauguration day 2029, we are going to be back in what someone call a normal country. All right. Well, you've been watching District Club. Terry, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. Appreciate it. We will be back next week. What if a few minutes with God could change? 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