Speaker 1Drowned in a blue tsunami, is Trump's MAGA movement finally dead?
Speaker 2As the Democrats celebrate an historic midterm election victory after flipping both the Senate and the House of Representatives, where does the President go from here?
Speaker 1Trump lost because he betrayed MAGA. If he was elected to do one thing, it was to stay out of foreign wars. Yes. And the key issue in this election was Iran. Even if people said to exit pollsters, I'm voting on the cost of living, that's a little bit about Trump's tariffs. But when people say cost of living, what they mean is the price of filling up the car. Gasoline. Gasoline. And that is up because of the Iran war.
Speaker 2So, Tim, let's sum up the mid-turmoil, as I'm calling it, for Trump. Very clever. Thank you so much. I'm so happy with that one. It's gone disastrously badly, worse than he could ever have imagined. The Republicans have lost some key heartland states. They've lost Kansas. They've lost Texas. They've lost Michigan. They've lost South Carolina. They've lost their minds. It's all gone horribly, horribly wrong. Yes. You're feeling vindicated right now.
Speaker 1I'm very vindicated right now because I said it would be a blue tsunami and some won. On Twitter, last night before I went to bed he said, when the results come in, and it's not nearly as bad for the Republicans as all these lefty, wet pundits are saying, Tim Stanley should resign. Right. Well, I'm still standing.
Speaker 2Yes. He's like Elton John, ladies and gentlemen, just not at a piano, by a keyboard.
Speaker 1When I last looked, the Democrats have won the House. That was to be expected. They've won the major governor races, for example, Ohio. Very Republican state. They beat Vivek Ramaswamy there. They beat our friend Steve Hilton in California. Again, to be expected. But they've done really well in the Senate, winning states, as you said, such as South Carolina and Texas, where they've not only won a Senate race, the first time they've won an office like that in 30 years in that state. But they've also won the governorship against Greg Abbott, who was a good governor. And my suspicion is that Texas is going to go the way of California, run very well by conservatives. For a long time, outsiders move in because it's run well. The outsiders decide they want good services, so they vote the Democrats in and ruin it. I mean, that's part of the tragedy. You can mark the results thus far by this extraordinary list of firsts. The first elected Muslim senator, Abdullah Saeed of Michigan.
Speaker 2Who some are suggesting is eye candy. Sorry to lower the tone.
Speaker 1Yeah, kind of broke my stride there.
Speaker 2Sorry. I can balance that out by
Speaker 1saying he's incredibly short. Is he? Like a lot of buff people, looks good on telly. In real life, you could trip over him.
Speaker 2He's already courted controversy in the UK by having a row with a man from Sky News saying, well, you don't represent any of my voters, so you can shut up. Yeah. And by giving a relatively funny and I think tongue-in-cheek address in Arabic just to really annoy Trump and his fans.
Speaker 1Yes. First openly gay senator in New Hampshire, Democrat Chris Pappas, who was there on victory night with his husband. First Native American female senator in Minnesota. First Native American female. Governor in New Mexico. First Latino governors in Texas and California. And first female governors in Minnesota and Tennessee.
Speaker 2Is MAGA dead?
Speaker 1No. And this is important. Yes. Even if people said to exit pollsters, I'm voting. On the cost of living, that's a little bit about Trump's tariffs, which have done some harm. For instance, spirit distillers are in trouble because of Canadian boycotts. So there's no disputing that. Gasoline. Gasoline. So because Trump forgot what he was elected to do, that is why he has been hammered by the electorate. Having said that, this results. This result is so bad, it's comparable to say, remember when the Tories were wiped out in the local elections? Yes. And a consequence of that is you just don't have a base anymore. You don't have an organization anymore because they've gone. Likewise, the similar scale of destruction in Texas, which I'm sure can be reversed, in the short term is so damaging that you're left wondering who would want to be the vice presidential candidate in 2028. Now, Donald Trump will still get to crown the nominee. By the way, another thing worth noting. Trump. He takes responsibility for this in part because he chose the candidates. He chose Ken Paxton in Texas, even though the man is dripping in allegations of corruption. He chose Vivek Ramaswamy, even though he's a very odd big tech guy.
Speaker 2And made some really unsavory remarks about his opponent.
Speaker 1He ran this grotesque ad against his opponent who says she was raped by her stepfather. And he produced an ad which suggested that she might be lying by quoting her mother who chose the stepfather over her own daughter. It's a mess. It was also. But the point is. Dallas and dynasty. These were his candidates.
Speaker 2Yes. And. Well, he's been quite humble, hasn't he? He has. We don't know whether this will last, by the way. But in a series of interviews that he has given, although he's now said to be kind of hunkering down in the bunker and not speaking to anybody. Yeah. And aides are running around with their hands in the air in hysterics like headless chickens. But apparently he has said, well, listen, we're going to have to work with the Democrats. And rather than being really combative, he did post that picture of a MAGA hat with the words veto on it, which doesn't look that positive. But he. He seems to be somewhat embracing this spirit of collaboration because he's been forced to do so. He said that his name wasn't on the ballot paper. But that's not quite right, is it? Because we do need to reflect as well. Are there echoes of 2006? George W. Bush is in the middle of a very unpopular Iraq war. Yes. And he's also mishandled Hurricane Katrina. Nancy Pelosi storms to become the first female Speaker of the House. The Democrats do really well and they pave the way for Obama in 2008. Although it must be. It must be noted they had an Obama. Yes. The Democrats right now don't. They probably do. Similarly, though, we've seen midterms go the other direction, haven't we? 1982 recession. Is Reagan finished? Two years later, wins an unprecedented landslide. But again, the Republicans don't have a Reagan to replace Trump. So is the consistent theme here on both sides a lack of a successor and therefore it's quite hard still to call 2028?
Speaker 1There's two ways of seeing. One is this is a Republican problem. Now, you mentioned George W. Bush there. As Matt Walsh, the conservative commentator, has pointed out, George W. Bush lost in 2006 and harmed his party for many years thereafter because of his support of an unpopular war in the Middle East. Donald Trump then got the nomination and was elected because he said, I reject Iraq and the politics of forever wars. And then he put himself into an unpopular war in the Middle East. So you could say there's something wrong with Republicans. They can't resist going to war with Muslim countries. And that is what makes them unpopular. On the other hand, we do have to acknowledge that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris lost. Yes. Right. We have to acknowledge that Hillary Clinton lost in 2016. There is a bigger picture, which has got nothing to do with either party, which is the decline of the great American middle class. For the first time in many generations, the percentage of Americans who could be defined as middle class slipped below 50 percent. Now, that happened partly as a consequence, actually, of income growth, that the people at the top end grew in proportion in the population, but also the people at the lower end grew in proportion of the population. In other words, America became a much more unequal society. During this period, you have seen income growth. It's not true that America. Americans have just gone downhill all the way.
Speaker 2Yeah. I mean, you've seen general economic growth in America
Speaker 1compared to us and the rest of Europe. But the point is, it's been much faster at the top end. So what you've wound up with is an unequal society. Now, if you have people whose living standards are doing OK, but just kind of rumbling along, what then happens if you enter a period of inflation is that middle class is just totally chewed up. If suddenly they can't afford the gas, if they can't afford the food, if because Americans have similar problems. with house prices as we have in this country, young people can't afford to get on the housing list. That middle class is squeezed even further. And you asked me at the beginning, is this a rejection of MAGA? Well, or MAGA. Well, accepting the very different cultural politics between the new socialist progressive left among the Democrats and the MAGA people, they do have a similar message on we're getting screwed over by elites. Yes. So there have been right wing populist attempts to speak to that shrinking middle class. And what we're now going to see is a left wing populist attempt to speak to that shriveling middle class. And as I said, they both really have the same message, which is you're getting screwed by rich people. And the problem is, is that Trump appeared to ally himself with the rich people, including on little things like how perversely reluctant he was to release the Epstein files.
Speaker 2Yes, that's right. claim it's a victory for them, you know, bringing back DEI down with the culture wars. I don't think that's the fair interpretation because I remember going to that final Trump rally in Pittsburgh in 2024 and universally all the people at the rally who were there from all sorts of different backgrounds, different states, different creeds, colours, religions, whatever, were all saying that they were voting for this guy because they thought he would make them richer. That was the standard being born at that election. I don't think Biden has helped my finances and I've got hope in this entrepreneurial president to make me feel better, richer and bring down the price of eggs, whatever. Okay, so clearly it is the economy stupid in regard to people now thinking that they are less rich, even though the economy has grown, even though wages have grown because at the petrol pump and in the supermarket, they don't feel that they're getting as much bang for their buck. I get that. But there is also a personality factor at play here because the Trump of 2.0 versus the Trump of 2.0 is a very different thing. i don't think it was the right political play to be giving that rambling speech at the reflection
Speaker 1pool which which which
Speaker 2seemed you know algae
Speaker 1has completely gone it's beautiful you can see your face in it i mean he's holding up pictures yeah look at that i mean it's just weird on the inner
Speaker 2mechanics of the tunneling that was required. It was senile.
Speaker 1It was the mirror image of what Biden became. Yes.
Speaker 2So isn't that an irony that Trump is slowly turning into everything he criticized in Biden? Yeah. Somebody who is making Americans feel poorer. Yeah. And somebody who isn't making very much sense on the world stage. Yeah. With the exception of the whole I wasn't a warmonger and now I am and I can't seem to get out of it. Also, on a personality level, we've got to Look at the next two years, wait for successes on either side. But to what extent does the Democrats attempt to completely eviscerate Trump personally play into this? Because if they are now going to try and re-impeach and besmirch and talk about corruption and, you know, get the tech bros to turn against him and have a look at Elon Musk's Doge project and all the rest of it, that is, of course, going to tar the entire Republican project. And the two key successors right now, Rubio and Vance, they're going to be hit by that mud ceiling, aren't they?
Speaker 1By the way, Elon Musk lost big as well on Tuesday. He spent nearly half a billion dollars to support the Republicans. So the world's first and only unattractive South African really came out of this very badly, too. On the point about the culture war, because it ties all these things you're saying in together, we have been through something called Woke One, which is where the left just came out and said, we're going to cancel everyone. Trans is great. We're going to destroy you. It's a cultural revolution. They realized that backfired with the reelection of Trump. They figured that out. They're not that dumb. So we're now into this thing called Woke Two, which is a subtle rebranding of woke, which is going to try to mainstream wokery. So if you look at the candidates they were running, for example, Tallarico in Texas, he went around talking about the Bible, about how he is a Christian. The Republicans tried to, with very coded language, imply he was a pervert. It didn't work. It didn't work. If you look at Georgia, I mean, you ask who is the Obama for the Democrats, it's probably John Ossoff, who's just been re-elected from Georgia.
Speaker 2The bookies here, by the way, have slashed the odds on him becoming the next, at least, Democratic nominee.
Speaker 1And he ticks so many boxes. He's white, he's male, he's moderate, he's from the Deep South, he's Jewish. So there's a little bit of minority in there, if you want to have a minority story. My point is, is the left is recalibrating. They're focusing on the economics. They're trying to downplay the culture stuff. And there's evidence that the culture war riposte from the right isn't working.
Speaker 2Well, hang on, just very quickly on that. Does woke 2.0 work when we have had in the last six years what Eric Kaufman describes as the great awokening? You know, the stuff that they were trying to force down people's throats back in the pandemic is not going to wash now or indeed in 2028, is it? No, it's not.
Speaker 1And I'm hoping they know that or it might be that they revert to ideological type and they just don't get it. And there'll be a lot of progressive Democrats elected in the House who will be trying to push a woke one style agenda. My point is I believe we're coming to the end of the period. I hope we're coming to the end of the period of the nasty right. And this is where I personally feel vindicated because for the last six months or so, I didn't intend to, but I have entered a war with parts of the online right. Because what I've been saying to them is the public will reject nasty. The public doesn't like nasty. And nasty was tried in this election and it failed. They tried it in Texas where they tried to suggest Tallarico was a pervert. Failed. They tried it in Ohio where they tried to suggest the candidate was lying about being raped by her stepfather. Failed. They tried it in Michigan where they went around saying, this guy is a Muslim. So presumably he supports the Muslim Brotherhood. And they failed. Michigan elected not just a progressive, not just a Muslim, but someone who was very anti-Zionist and would actually frame it that way. So what that tells me is the public has had enough of meanness. meanness works when it's Donald Trump because he's very funny and he owns the meanness. But he's had a toxic effect on right-wing politics, which is that people have tried to imitate that meanness. Very often people who don't have his charisma or his sense of humor. It's a bit like in the school playground. The saddest thing in the world is the kids who try to imitate the school bully in order to fit in. And they always make themselves look like idiots and weak men. And that's much of what's been going on here. And so the message, one message I would push strongly for British conservatives is look at what's been rejected here. Mindless war, obviously, but also the politics of going after the man and not the ball. Resist that because although online there is an audience for it who find it hilarious and get an almost sexual thrill out of seeing a little guy getting beaten up in public, The great public, when given a chance, will turn away from that.
Speaker 2Also, I think the great public who are on the right don't like being associated with nastiness because it is possible, funny enough, even though the left can't quite get their head around it, to be right wing and not nasty. OK, there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker 1Ronald Reagan managed it. And what was his 11th commandment? Never speak ill of another Republican. That's something else which has died under Donald Trump.
Speaker 2So also we have this strange situation that you and I were discussing, you know, the absolutely facile nature of the right in a circular firing squad. Just letting the left get away with murder because they're too busy trying to kill each other. What a grotesque waste of time that is to literally have figures on the right in the UK arguing about the extent of right wingness of people they agree with. Yes. Can we stop this absolutely ridiculous right wing ideological warfare and actually train our guns to use that analogy? Not that I think it should be actual warfare on the left and the idiocy of their socialist policies. This is completely fruitless. There's no point Robert Jenrick coming on my GB News show and just being literally eerily good impression. Well, do you know what I mean? If you have to make it personal and become tetchy in every interview you do. Yes. Is it that you're right and everyone else is wrong? Or could it be that there is a perfectly cogent line of journalist inquiry into reform the Tories and anyone else for that matter? Are you actually able to govern anything?
Speaker 1Well, I agree because if you can't govern yourself, it's reasonable for voters to conclude that you can't govern the country. But you take as a contrast the behavior of Jacob Rees-Mogg, someone who is respected by all the parties.
Speaker 2Oh, yeah. What a wetty he is according to some on the right.
Speaker 1And he's, yeah, but he's clearly absolutely not. He's as dry as a bone. Of course he bloody isn't. But he manages to conduct his politics without ever being personal or nasty about other people. In fact, on the contrary, he's gallant and he's chivalrous towards people. And I believe in the long game that wins.
Speaker 2I know. But by the way, can I make one clarification here? While it might be the end of a certain kind of nasty, let's not just attribute nastiness to one side. Oh, absolutely not. Because I tell you who is the most nasty of all, the nasties on the left pretending to be nice. I mean, that is really poisonous. Yes. Nastiness. I am a progressive. Yeah. But I would like you to be cancelled for disagreeing with me. Oh, I completely agree. And I would like you as a Zionist to be taken out and shot. Yeah. And open. By the way, if you do support Israel, then you're a racist and I can be on my moral pedestal. No, thank you.
Speaker 1I agree. And you mentioned earlier, one of the defining images of the night was El Saeed, the Senate victor in Michigan, picking on a Sky journalist. Yes. Because he had the temerity to ask him a question. He's a foreign broadcaster and he put his hands on him. It was classic bullying behavior. But what a lot of people called it was Trumpian. Yes. This is the thing. The other side of the equation. He's incapable of it. Within minutes of winning, they have become the thing that they hate. And what is Trump always doing? He's always having a row with journalists. Yeah. So I agree with you entirely. But I hope that I believe there is a moral to be taken from these midterm elections. And it's guys to stay out of war and stop the personal attacks.
Speaker 2And we'll have a PMQs analysis coming up next. We'll be right back.
PodcastTranscript AI