South

Africaners who have been coming in.

The only ones allowed in.

Can I just add, I mean, there was a moment, and I believe this was authentic, where we were hearing from White House aides that Donald Trump had had realized that voters liked his border security policy and being tough on border.

But what they did not like was ICE in the interior of our country rounding up people who had done nothing wrong other than coming to the United States in an undocumented fashion and some of those high-profile killings by ICE agents.

And Donald Trump had been telling folks friends, well, first he was hearing from friends and he was telling aides, he was hearing from businessmen saying, look, they just deported a bunch of my best workers.

He was hearing from friends who were saying, they just deported my kid's nanny or my kid's Spanish tutor.

Is Stephen Miller becoming the de facto president here?

But even their attempts at cheating and rigging and disenfranchising black voters from black districts backfired spectacularly politically to further immolate MAGA.

Well, not just that.

I mean, today, Nicole, I've been seeing that in some of these states where James Blair and the president wanted to do Blary Mandarin and the Republicans push back, like Indiana, for instance, when you look at the numbers out of Tuesday's election, there's evidence that had the Republicans actually been successful in doing it there, that they would have lost even more seats than they did.

So in certain ways, this White House and political operation was saved from itself by local lawmakers who wouldn't allow them to redraw the lines.

I mean, that profile ran, of course, before James Blair, Trump's political guy, ran before Tuesday's results, but quite close when they could see where things were headed.

And our understanding was in that period, and this might have been more public bravado than actual fact.

But James Blair at that time still was trying to claim and believed that he thinks it helped the margins a little.

But has that reality set in that if Texas and Florida are battlegrounds, the Republicans are in a lot of trouble Yeah,

So is that the apocalyptic scenario or is there an even worse one?

Yeah, I think that's – so first I should also say just on the positive scenario is for all of the tension that Trump may have in his relationships with Democrats, he's incredibly transactional and he can change on a dime.

And if he wants to get something done or Hakeem Jeffries says something nice about him, he would be totally willing to forget Hakeem standing in front of a microphone and saying F Donald Trump, right? Now I'll move on to dystopia.

Okay.

There's certainly the congressional investigations and then the potential constitutional crisis, I guess, would be the right word.

If, you know, subpoenas are issued and people from Trump's administration or former administration officials fail to appear before Congress and then the recourse that Congress has is to kick it up to a Trump Justice Department where his – Key metric on hiring an attorney general is that they will be loyal to him a la a fixer, not an independent attorney general.

So so you have that.

Like, that's much smaller than the vast inequality between you and tech titans that was the message that Hakeem Jeffries was pushing.

What races are you zooming in on and paying attention to?

so a handful um which is telling in and of itself because i was not expecting there to be about you know six months ago or a year ago so many competitive senate races so i'm interested in michigan ohio alaska um two other races i'm gonna mention um and then there's a few more but that are kind of interesting i'm obviously like everyone watching Texas, which is fascinating because in talking to people, operatives in Texas on both sides, someone who's done a lot of focus groups there, there's a feeling, and again, we don't actually know, that James Tallarico really could win.

And normally if we were talking about Texas voting for a Democrat, we would be saying, okay, so it's gonna be a total Democratic sweep, but the circumstances of Texas, and I'm happy to get more into this, are so unique.

to this cycle and these set of candidates, that there's a world in which Tallarico could win in Texas, but Democrats could lose in some of those aforementioned states.

I'm also, of course, watching Maine, which again is fascinating because in a cycle like this, you would expect the Democrat to easily win.

But Susan Collins is a senator who was a survivor and who fits that state quite perfectly and is very good at constituent services.

So, again, there's a world in which she holds on, but Democrats could do well elsewhere.

How has their strategy and their approach shifted since the war in Iran began?

Who is which what judge is going to sign off on allowing, if it happens, law enforcement to seize ballots? Do you have a sense that that question was asked in the White House? How far are these folks willing to go before they were allowed to be a part of this core team in Trump's world?

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, first of all, your question to judges is an about judges is an apt one, because that has been one of the few bulwarks we've seen against some of these cases that legal scholars, grand juries and even judges have sort of said, look, they don't really have much merit.

But the DOJ, since Trump came back into power for his second term, has already been incredibly depleted of those people who had a clear red line and were not willing to go particularly far.

And I know, you know, Glenn referenced Todd Blanche saying if there was to be something that I believe is illegal, you know, I would resign and I would step down.

But So far, he and those core people around him have been willing to do President Trump's bidding.

He may view himself as an umpire, but as of what we've seen so far, he's calling balls and strikes as the president sees them.

So, Ashley, how much does the White House want to push? How much of this is performative, as Glenn was asking?

It's like, is this a sort of opening cell phone? I

mean, that was a point I was going to make.

I mean, Michael is right that part of this lawsuit that I think any DOJ lawyer worth their salt knows is not likely to advance or be successful is helping Republicans in Alaska understand that there is one Republican, Dan Sullivan, and that's who they should vote for.

That's valuable for Republicans.

The flip side is, as you point out, there is a tremendous angst starting, you know, going back to January 6th, where Democrats and a lot of the electorate is terrified that Donald Trump and his team will not accept the results of a free and fair election.

And, you know, You talk to sort of the reasonable people in Trump's inner circle and they say – and Michael did a great story on this that you can talk about.

They say, yes, there is a contingent in the president's ear trying to get him to declare martial law, but that's a very tiny contingent.

If you were to open your reporter's notebooks, what are some of the things that you will be thinking about and looking for from the president and the administration? and from Democrats as well in the last couple of days.

But for the first time, really, it's it's I guess it didn't work in 2020, but it's not working again.

Yeah, Katie, it was fascinating to be on the ground in Nebraska for his rally yesterday or Monday, I believe, because as I wrote, in many ways it felt more 2016 than 2026.

I interviewed voters just like Michael did.

You showed some clips there and I heard the exact same thing, right? These were people, this was part of this unshakable base for whom Trump can do no wrong.

They, you know, They supported the war in Iran.

When I asked about the economy, they would admit it wasn't necessarily quite what they wanted it to be, but they mainly blamed Democrats.

They blamed Biden, but some even blamed Obama.

Why come out with another one today?

Am I reading that wrong?

Yeah.

I mean, Katie, you and I were familiar with the Front Row Joes.

As a point of personal privilege, my husband wrote the first story on the Front Row Joes.

And when he wrote a book about the 2020 campaign, the Front Row Joes were a key part of that book.

So I have read a lot and witnessed a lot about the Front Row Joes.

I mean, as Peter noted, the Politico piece was striking because to have any of these true believers splinter is notable.

Hoodwinked! Hoodwinked!

And I wonder if there's any risk there for them of overpromising and under-delivering, just because no matter what happens in the next couple weeks, they're not gonna have a DOJ on their side in any of this.

That's right.

There's, there's that risk.

Um, there's also the risk, um, that I've talked to some Democrats about privately, of overreaching, right? Their, their base is so eager for investigations and for what they view as justice, that there's also the risk that Democrats can sort of overstep their mandate and go too far.

But I will say that regardless of what would happen, um, if this particular very generous wedding gift [laughs] was, was investigated and was potentially referred up to Trump's Department of Justice and, and nothing happened, um, this strikes me as something that would not be viewed by the public as overreach.

This is something that the public understands very basically and simply as something, you know, that, as the Republican senator put it, stinks.

Ashley, do you get the sense that a lot of folks around the president are banking on angling for pardons?

pardons?I mean, the, the president has essentially said as much, that anyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval Office, you know, may, may get a pardon.

Those results are going to be almost certainly very negative for him and Republicans, but who knows what he might try to do.

Ashley, what about you? I agree with everything David said.

The thing this president fears most is irrelevancy.

And so he is trying to control and exert power over the things he can control.

So again, you see the media.

One of the things that was very surprising to me is normally when Trump goes to war with the media or bans the media as unacceptable and absurd sometimes as it may be, there's normally a specific story story or a specific reporter who he can point to why he's angry.

This feels like a blanket thing.

So, you know, I question all of this as well.

Right

... around the West Wing.

But no, it's interesting.

In talking to people close to him, you know, they have said that in general, on the whole, he would prefer that Republicans win, um, in part just because it prevents, um, a number of investigations, and it makes his final two years easier.

But, but they say, and again, this is, they say this privately, um, that fundamentally he does not care.

He doesn't really see himself of the leader of the Republican Party.

Um, and there's something almost nice for him or vindicating to say, you know, "We only win when I'm on the ballot."

Right.

What do you think this ban is really about?

I mean, again, we don't know the specific stories.

And as someone who, like many of my friends and colleagues in the White House press corps who's been attacked by the president by name and not by name, I often find it sometimes somewhat arbitrary what what annoys him and what doesn't.

You know, sometimes it turns out when we kind of.

Post game it that someone walked into the Oval Office and showed him a clip of a reporter saying something he didn't like.

And that thing could be as innocuous as stating the fact that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.

So it's hard to know the specifics.

And now look where we are.

So, Ashley, why aren't we doing that? Why is that not something that's a priority right now at the White House?

Well, for a number of reasons.

I mean, first of all, we've sort of had this AI doomsday moment that has really taken hold of Washington and of the Capitol and of the nation.

But one thing that is surprising even these doomsdayers is that they have been saying this for a very long time.

This isn't a new concern.

And you have a couple of reasons why it's sort of taking hold now and hasn't taken hold until then, when you sort of have all these tech CEOs coming up and saying, hey, this whistleblower has a point.

We are at least seeing some discussion in Washington and that kind of weird horseshoe where you have Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders aligned.

You're going to give me something in return.

Can you sort of walk us through that reporting?

Sure.

So the first way we heard about this competition, which was not public, was almost inadvertently.

Uh, we were speaking with a cabinet secretary who said that there was an event in New York that they had kind of wanted to attend but had declined because they didn't wanna get docked points in the competition, and we were immediately like, "What competition?" [laughs] Um, and so it turns out that there is this unofficial travel competition in the Trump White House.

It's overseen by a woman named Meagan Bauer, who, uh, basically coordinates with all of the cabinet secretaries, um, officially running between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

And basically, the goal is to encourage cabinet officials, cabinet secretaries, to travel the country, particularly to swing districts or swing states that are competitive in the midterms.

And each time they go to one of these areas, they get a point.

Mm-hmm.

There's not a violation to doing this, right? Or is there? Is there anything problematic about doing this? Or what does it tell you?

On its face, no. Democrats and Republicans have long done this, and cabinet secretaries, as part of their official duties, it is their job to go out and promote the president's agenda.

For instance, President Biden had officials doing this, and the most in demand was Pete Buttigieg, who at the time was the transportation secretary.

So it makes sense.

He can go to a state or a district.

Biden did a big infrastructure bill and talk about this is the bridge we helped bring you.

These are the new jobs from construction.

That's where it feels like a norm is likely broken in all of this.

Independents are not attending nor watching the midterm convention.

Yeah, I mean, I will say it was interesting, those clips you played, Katie.

The members were pretty honest about not going.

But it was notable that on the record, very few of them were willing to overtly criticize the convention or, more importantly, criticize this president.

But behind the scenes, there is a lot of frustration about the convention, which, like anything involving this president, is going to be a Trumpapalooza.

where they don't know what the president is going to say or do, but if history is any indication, they can bet it will potentially be problematic.

And where they'll be appearing by someone whose approval ratings are low, whose numbers on the economy are low, which is notable for Trump, who made his name as an alleged successful billionaire.

Ashley, there is there something anyone is happy about right now that within the Republican Party that Donald Trump, a move that Donald Trump has made recently that people feel good about?

But I guess the thing that I keep coming back to with this trade war with Canada is how did we end up back here? Why are we in this trade war with Canada?

Well, it's the South Park truism of blame Canada, right? Like, it's just an easy thing to...

No, I mean, Trump likes tariffs.

That's clear and that's true.

And he's very frustrated with Canada, in part because, as he said, you know...

On the one hand, he's sort of ready to get to trade war footing with our neighbor to the north.

And on the other hand, he'd happily make Canada a 51st state.

And do Republicans sort of see an offset, right, with the unpopularity of the president in the sort of discord that they might see among the Democrats?

They are not optimistic that things are gonna get better for them.

Right.

Well, you, you know, to the truism you pointed out, Katie, voters are willing to forgive a lot, especially when it's, quote-unquote, their president.

Um, but their president needs to at least exhibit some grounding in reality.

So, you know, I, I talked to a Republican pollster who was saying, and, and I talked to Democrats [laughs] who have been through this as well under President Obama and President Biden.

Voters are willing to forgive if you say, "Look, I know that it sucks having to go to two or three grocery stores, um, to, you know, kind of use your coupons and get the cheapest milk at one and the cheapest eggs at another.

I understand how challenging that is, but here's what I'm doing to try to help.

Ashley, if the Democrats are able to win, um, the House or, or the House and the Senate in November, is the White House gonna change at all? I mean, looking ahead to 2028 and Marco Rubio or JD Vance or whoever, does the White House under Donald Trump turn around and, and try to address some of these concerns that lost them potentially, if it happens, an election, or do they take a different path?

So when people think, oh, what can a basket do? What are in these baskets? And kind of what hold does that basket feel for people who may be walking through probably the worst phase of their life thus far?

In the baskets, we have just different things that, as a cancer survivor, you realize those were things that you needed.

They're not necessarily anything medical that your doctor would necessarily tell you or oncology nurse would tell you, but we have things like queasy drops.

and biotin mouthwash, toothpaste, and lozenges just because the taste when you have chemo can be off.

We have coloring books.

We have satin pillowcases for people when they're suffering with hair loss or even when your hair is thinning.

We also do prayer books for patients with cancer, and our prayer books for the most part are one-minute prayers for cancer patients So you really think that you've got a whole lot of time to sit and read books and things when you're going to go through treatment, but you really don't quite feel well enough or have the energy to even read a book.

But what have you heard is something that is seeming so small at the moment as a gesture of kindness, a basket? What are you hearing from people?

Are Trump's legal targeting impulses getting harder and harder to constrain? And what does that say about what we could see next?

Well, you would think it would be someone like Jeanine Pirro, and on an issue as, let's be honest, trivial as the lining of the Reflecting Pool.

Although, of course, this is not in any way trivial to President Trump.

He has been spending an enormous amount of time and energy and thought on sort of anything he can build or anything he can construct, um, in Washington, DC, and elsewhere in his second term.

But the point my t- uh, colleague Tom Nichols is making is that you see from this even, again, seemingly benign, seemingly trivial, relatively example, is a president who is not accepting the facts on the ground.

And th- you know, therefore Tom extrapolates if, if you won't accept that the contracting firm you hired did a rush job under rush circumstances for the Reflecting Pool, then are you going to accept, say, your intelligence community's, uh, analysis of the situation on Iran when you personally in your gut wish it to be different, when you believe yourself to be a great deal-maker who can make a deal with Iran? Um, it sort of goes up the chain in a way that people find incredibly troubling.

[laughs]

Sorry.

He doesn't have that many fans in the West Wing, as you know, but this is someone who has proven himself to be a foot soldier who's gonna carry out the president's bidding no matter what it may be.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

What's so interesting here is that Bill Polti has, on the one hand, the only thing that is really necessary in this administration, which is a constituency of one.

Um, but you know, sort of as soon as he arrived on the scene, not even in this role for which he's not qualified, you know, like you Jonathan, I was hearing from top people in the White House in President Trump's inner circle that they did not like him.

They didn't like him hanging around the president.

They did not think he was a force for good.

He was someone who would famously come into the Oval Office, sometimes with poster boards or signs, and get the president riled up in a way that all of the other aides then had to manage.

No matter how lame of a duck he is, there's a lot more he could be doing

Because it's fun and it's social and it's outside.

Yeah.

But again, I think there's like a balance, like a healthier balance.

But as you're talking about that, like to me, I feel like I will be like your mom.

Like, just my instinct is to feel insecure about money and want to, like, have something in case there's a health crisis or I live far longer than actuarial odds should allow.

Yeah.

Or whatever.

So the progress that we've made, like the salaries that we've already been able to reach is like something to be so proud of.

That feels like it feels like somebody who could have been talking to Joe Biden at the end of his term, Ashley.

Yes and no.

I was struck by that part of Paul's analysis as well.

You know, Donald Trump is old.

Joe Biden was old, is old still.

And but people age differently.

And Joe Biden was a much worse communicator.

Is this a similar scenario where he just doesn't make any sense on the subject of Iran?

[laughs]

... um, was I ...

My first job out of college, I started at The New York Times.

I was Maureen Dowd's research assistant.

It was an amazing first job, but like the only thing below assistant is sort of like subscriber, right? Like I [laughs] was like the lowest on the totem pole.

And so I'd started at the bottom and I'd stay, I ultimately stayed at The Times for 11 years.

Um, but as I ...

Wow

But what might he ask Todd Blanch to do in November if Republicans lose and he doesn't like

the outcome? Well, not to sound like someone testifying, but that's a hypothetical, Katie.

But what I will say is that broadly, he is going to do the president's bidding.

He is going to do whatever this president wants.

And to give you some sense of that, compared to the first term, Trump has been much more emboldened, willing to crash through guardrails, focused on retribution and going after his political enemies.

And people I talked to inside the White House, inside the president's orbit, close to the president, who, like him, has said that after these midterms, when there's really, and to be clear, he doesn't care that much about how Republicans do, but he cares a little bit now and then occasionally.

But in his final two years in office, there will really be nothing holding him back.

What's their plan for November?