And Democrats just happen to be the beneficiary.

What do you think, Evan? Well, this is what all the Republicans are saying right now, which is that, well, this isn't about Democrats at all.

Look at how bad their brand is.

It's fine.

I don't know.

Like, when I was out on the road and I talked to a lot of voters, and I was in South Carolina as well, another one of these big pickups that Democrats got.

And, you know...

Wow.

Years

ago, when we were looking at the next few election cycles and planning out what was going to happen and thinking about what we're going to be covering, we were always talking about how hard this map was going to be For Democrats, I will say that my colleague, my Negro's colleague, Al Weaver, interviewed John Soon in Ohio just yesterday.

And, you know, Soon talked about these states that keep them up at night.

And, you know, they are like your Maine, your Ohio, Iowa, Alaska, Texas, Kansas, and Nebraska states.

There we go.

Which is like a very long list, a much longer list than we would have expected when this whole thing began.

Of course, you can throw in these kind of wild things that we're hearing about now, South Carolina, Mississippi.

Who wins the Cheesecake debate? Listen.

Right? 'Cause seats that went from R plus 10 or R plus 25 will now be R plus 4 or R plus 5, and in the wrong environment, that's a dummy mander, right?

That's right.

I mean, that's why the voting thing, this voting ruling is so important because in order for this whole thing to work, right, you want to gerrymander the districts and then also prevent a wave election big enough to wash over those barriers that you put up with your gerrymander, right? If you're in a ...

That, you know, that, like a sort of a, a pinker district, uh, doesn't just become blue because so many people vote.

You know, this is a midterm election.

People who are most likely to vote are those who are the most angry at the president.

If you make it harder for them to vote [laughs], it makes it easier for you to make things work.

I think that's a really, really important point, which is we all breathe a sigh of relief, uh, but, uh, we also need to take this very seriously, how we vote and yeah.

Yeah.

We change the subject from some of this other stuff, and it would be like Trump will be back as a viable party leader for them.

And really, the, this month has ended with them in absolutely dire straits.

I mean, these numbers are very, very bad, and the Republican nominees that are running across the country are still basically boxed in.

They can't really run away from Trump because that's not gonna be make the base that re- that still really likes Trump happy, and, uh, they can't really, you know, run towards him because that is incredibly toxic for, uh, the general electorate.

So this is basically as good a position, uh, for the polls as Democrats could get really.

Like, this is ex-

Yeah

Discuss.

Well, look, this is, this...

We- we've done a lot of reporting this week on Notice, uh, about this third reconciliation bill, 'cause most important thing about what we're talking about is that all these things, this unpopular Iran war that they have to fund, this, this election stuff, which, you know, we're gonna learn more about that this week when Trump talks, but that has largely not been super well greeted with, uh, by the voters either.

It has to be done without Democratic votes.

It has to all be done in reconciliation, which is that process where no Democrats can vote for it.

They can get it past the Senate with no Democratic votes.

And we've had a bunch of reporting that before they even get to this point, right, these numbers are whatever they are, but inside the Republican conference, they've got a lot of problems.

Right.

Why is Sam Plattner 25 points underwater with working class, non-educated people, and 25 points, I, I might be off by a few points, over water with college-educated? There's something else going on here.

Well, what do you, what- I mean, I've been co- I mean, I covered Bernie's campaign in 2016 from the very beginning.

This is a challenge that they have, right? And one, and one of the reasons when you go, you talk to voters sometimes, they say, "Look, uh, we're concerned about the new thing.

We don't know what's really going on." This particular political movement, it does have a conversation to have with these working class voters that they think that they want to have on their side.

But if you look at Mondale in New York, for example, he too didn't win with the working class.

But as he's been in power, they've sort of come to him and, and, and this movement is growing of those people as well.

Sure

... where we've seen the idea of taking away some of these districts from people, taking away some of these, uh, some of this voting opportunity from people like this.

Well, not yet, but they're gonna be open on Friday right after the markets close.

Sure.

I mean, look, I might as well be another person declaring victory in this.

This is, this is the latest thing that we're seeing.

You know, we got some reporting at Notice this morning where we just really just...

Our, our reporters just wandered around and talked to senators in the Senate yesterday after this, this sort of deal was announced, this deal that you can't see but has been signed but has more deal-making to go and is being negotiated, but it's really good and we're gonna see it.

And we just got a lot of kind of heavy sighs from these senators, right? And it, you know, and it fell in different categories.

Pizza Jack

Right.

But there is this interesting thing that they, they ...

It is a somewhat different combination.

If you talk to Republicans, some of them will say, okay things about Tucker Carlson.

He's obviously been around for a long time.

He has some credibility.

Um, and Trump was happy to associate with him, right? Right? Trump talked to Tucker Carlson a lot on the phone, in person.

Right

I don't think I should be agreeing with Alex Jones, but he sounds more sensible than all the Republicans in Congress.

Well, this is really what we're dealing with, is that this whole Iran thing has been the strongest, the biggest stress test of this MAGA idea, uh, that we've seen, the entirety of Trump's arrival on the scene, right? The whole thing is that this is the guy who said, "I can go out in Fifth Avenue, I can shoot five people, and people will still love me.

I can do whatever I want." And as this Iran thing has both begun and gotten bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, we have seen more and more people who were, you know, fellow travelers with Trump and with MAGAGet really freaked out.

I mean, Alex Jones has kind of had his ups and downs with Trump and, you know, Marjorie Taylor Greene is somebody out there who you know, she's saying Fifth Amendment as well, and she's had her ups and downs, obviously.

But you mentioned Congress.

You know, Senator Ron Johnson from Wisconsin-

Right.

And obviously I have no answers for any of this, but people are, like, actually [laughs] pretty freaked.

Well, it sounds like we, we've explained-

Well, I will say, I mean, I mean, we don't, we don't tip these people directly, right? I mean, when you pay your taxes, y- you know, the Congress has the power of the purse here to sort of do appropriations.

And what this, what this argument is really about is an appropriations bill, which is that, you know, are you gonna fund the Department of Homeland Security at all the things that it does, from the Coast Guard to the TSA to everything else? And what happened was the Democrats said, "We are not going to do that.

We have the leverage here to tell you that we're not gonna do that unless you make some actual legal reforms to the way immigration enforcement works." The White House refused.Republicans refused and so then you have a thing where what is really an argument about immigration enforcement becomes a situation where people from the TSA don't get paid.

Um, that's really how it works.

Those surcharges and things, it's not like it's a direct cash payment to, uh, to, to the TSA.

But I would say those who are flying, you know, be nice to your TSA agents.

What are you hearing in that, Evan?

[laughs]

... work incredibly quickly on a Friday so they can get out of town for their planned recess, which is, which is, which is what has happened here.

And I think that there's a lot of questions because the House dynamics, you know, it was a tough one in the Senate, and mostly because Democrats remained united on this one.

If you think back to that, uh, shutdown from last year, that longest ever shutdown in American history, which of course most people have already forgotten by now because shutdowns are, in their nature, anticlimactic, um, that one was really about the Democrats not being united.

Like-but like the, the Democrats overall sort of had this vision of what they wanted to do with that shutdown, but you could always find senators who were saying, "We shouldn't be doing this.

Let's open the government back up.

We don't like this." This shutdown, uh, which is specifically about Americans', uh, distrust and in some cases disgust with what they've seen from Trump's immigration enforcement efforts, that one united the entire party.

What are you hearing in that, Evan?

How does the White House talk about the conflict now versus what they said in the beginning? Because those are two very different things.

Well, it's changed basically every day of this war.

And, and the thing about this whole conflict is that we start each day with a blank chalkboard, basically.

What are we doing? Why are we here? What's going on? Um, at this point now, when you're talking about these negotiations, it's such an interesting thing because this started out as we're gonna win this thing in, you know, two weeks.

We're gonna go in there, we're gonna, uh, topple this regime, and now we're talking about negotiations with the same regime, and the negotiations are in a way that it's, it's the United States that is really more interested in them than the Iranians, it feels like.

Like, they're the ones who are setting the tone.

You know, they're setting the agenda.

But they're practical for us.

But it'd have to go back through the House either way.

Yeah, it would have to go back to the House.

I mean, this is the whole thing.

This is an issue where the electorate in Texas is very interested in keeping ...

You know, the Republican electorate wants to keep this seat Republican.

Some of them say they can do it by having this Ken Paxton, who's a real, like, bomb-thrower, right-wing guy.

Some think they gotta do it by having this sort of dyed-in-the-wool, uh, establishment John Cornyn guy.

Yeah.

But why do you think lawmakers, like what's the, well, we need to clarify hesitation dialogue?

Well, I'm not sure I'd go with the call their bluff.

I mean, the thing about it is Democrats did not line up to stop this from happening, right? A lot of Democrats voted to hold the Clinton-Zinken attempt, but they didn't testify.

What's interesting about this is, like, in some alternate reality, this is the capstone of a remarkable first term for MAGA that all of America is locked in on.

Approval ratings are high, right? This is kind of the thing that he was brought in to be, you know, to do when he was elected, Donald Trump.

But in the end, what's actually happened with the sort of Byzantine way this whole process is played out, you play that clip of Todd Blanchard at the beginning of the segment, right? That's sort of where this actually lies, that the base that cared a lot about this topic and Americans do care a lot about this topic are finding themselves in a position now where you have this key moment, which is they're going to get Bill Clinton to testify.

They're going to ask him all these questions that they want to ask him.

Do you hear that? I know you report a lot on progressive circles in particular.

So this framework, is it a deal, or is it just smoke and mirrors after an embarrassing 24 hours?

Well, we don't know much about the deal yet, but I will say that this question that you're asking about, "Don't we already have what we want from Greenland?" is what everybody in Washington has been asking for weeks now.

Uh, you know, one of my colleagues went and talked to the chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, um, just last night or two nights ago, and, you know, he's running around, he's talking about, "Well, you know, we bought Alaska.

That worked out.

Maybe this could be something like that." But there has not been a big push from the Republican Party or from the Congress to get on board with this.

You've not heard from a lot of other allies that this is a great idea.

This whole thing has kind of been this strange dance that now maybe ends in some new deal that means we already have a connection with an ally about stuff in Greenland, which we already have.

Who? Who were the people that expected there would be this force from his base?

What does all of that tell you about tensions within the Republican Party right now?

Well, it tells me two things, right? The first thing is, it's almost 2026, right, an election year when suddenly if you're a politician you stop thinking about your party and start thinking about yourself a bit more, right? So it makes it a little bit easier to go against the president 'cause you're worried about winning your own election rather than helping him out.

But it also speaks to this thing, this central characteristic of Trump 2.0 was supposed to be this power this president had to stitch together a disparate co- uh, Republican coalition to kind of give him carte blanche to do all the things he had to do to fix the country, right? You think about USAID when he cut that and burned it down to the ground and nobody stopped him in the Congress.

When they talk about Dodge and the things they did there, um, you know, tariffs that Republicans were against and now, you know, Trump is doing them and suddenly they're for them.

This was really the sort of mojo that powered Trump's presidency and now it appears that a significant number of those Republicans, especially those in the toughest districts, no longer think that kind of going with the mojo, sticking with him, is the right thing to do.

That's a huge shift for this president.

I mean, that changes everything about the next year of his administration if he can't have that situation where Republicans are just sort of marching along with him in doing what he thinks that they should do.

Evan, what's your reaction?

Can you talk about this aspect of the speech, meaning solutions, whatever you think is under that?

Well, I think this is what's most fascinating about this moment, is that you have a president who came in as this wild, different, new kind of president, right? This Trump 2.0, to me, so different.

And he's ending the year kind of doing what other presidents all have to do, which is like, all right, okay, guys, I've done a lot of stuff.

I'm doing the best I can.

Look at Congress.

They can't do anything either, right? So it's not so bad.

And then they come up with some sort of little thing like this.

this a bad sign when basically people start saying the only way to get things done is to get in a room, we all sign on, and we just vote without him?

True.

True.I mean, th- this is the plan, right? They ...

I mean, Trump when he r- you know, he released his statement today, it's all about the Democrats, Democrats are in the files, et cetera.

What's different this time than when we saw this debacle first begin this administration back in February when they put those binders out, kicking off this whole thing that really has w- wrecked this part of the administration for them, n- you know, not being able to get rid of it, is that this time the Congress is much more engaged, you know.

Uh, my news ...

M- my fellow news reporters were out in Congress this week talking to people as this vote was getting closer and, you know, going through this vote, and Congress does not want to have to hear about this again.

So this idea that Trump might, might, you know, redact and, like, try to keep some of these files away, he's got a lot of folks in Congress now who actually ... who he didn't have the last time who are very interested in really putting a fire under this.

So, so how long is this hustle gonna go on? The American people know.

Now, I don't think he thought that's what he was doing, but that is a direct con- is- a direct consequence of the tariffs.

That's right.

And I will tell you, they had no plan for this.

We have been talking to...

The, the other thing I've been reporting on since the beginning of the administration, okay? Because I kept asking them, you know, from, like, just a political pers- from a reporter perspective, "So what's your plan when prices go up because of tariffs? What's your plan? What are you gonna say? What are you gonna do?" And what they would say to you repeatedly over and over was, "They're not gonna go up.

They're not going up.

It's not gonna happen.

Mm-hmm.

in his first term.

That's right, and it was, it was hard to push, to pull off then.

But this, this idea of the Senate not getting involved is very important, but this is also a thing where this is kind of Trump trying to prove his point, right? Because you look back, he looks at all the prosecutions that he faced as being fake, trumped-up charges, political charges.

Now there are political charges, and so they can sort of point at those and say, "Look, you know, like I said, political charges.

Everybody loves to do 'em.

We're doing 'em now 'cause they were done to us." This is kind of what, th- this is a messaging thing as much as it is kind of a, uh, actual legal thing, right? But the other part of this really is this thing that this president thinks that the entire government, uh, the executive branch serves at his pleasure to do what he wants it to do.

This is a thing that his people believe, and he has not had anybody tell him otherwise in the US Senate, um, from the people who are in power there.

I sure think so.

if his presidency ends, which we assume it will at some point, we are now in uncharted territories, right? That's then the question of, like, when you see stuff like this, I know it's out of fashion to say, like, "Oh, my God," because part of the reason he does it is to say, "Oh, my God," but it is truly, like, uncharted territory.

Well, I think oh, my God is a very important aspect of it.

I mean, the thing is, th-...

I th- I think what you're talking about is also politics, too.

You know, I, I, I interviewed Catherine Cortez Masto, the senator out of, uh, Nevada, the other day, and we were talking about a lot of stuff that's going on, right? This, this is a month about spending bills and a month, you know, about, you know, all, all the sort of leveraging the, uh, the power of the purse, et cetera.

And Cortez Masto is a person who wants to be...

She's a Democrat who wants to find a middle path, you know, a way where we can get back to compromise and sort of traditional order, the kind of Democrat that a lot of left-wing Democrats don't like a lot.

I mean, that's even Trump's people are saying, that he's making things more expensive.

Right.

Despite the fact there are many different kinds of Republicans inside that Congress, right? That's the truth.

But when it comes to the election that has to happen, the general conversation that has to happen, this is gonna be one, as these things often are, on these people who switch around and who look around and who expect a, a lot of things from their politicians that politicians will often say, "Well, tho- those expectations are a little bit unrealistic.

I can't really do all of that." But voters want them to, and Trump, if he can't...

If the Republican Party is walking into a situation where they have raised prices on people, they have made it more difficult for them to access healthcare because of the stuff that they have cut, uh, in their reconciliation bill, uh, they have raised prices on a lot of things, and maybe, um, there's more involvement in, you know, in wars, maybe there's n- you know, m- maybe American forces are now helping to protect Ukraine, other things that were really motivating in that conversation, um, then politics just become real again.

Like, when you get aw- like, the Trump administration, and Trump I think really likes to talk about this idea about his base.

He gets really nervous when his base is mad.

Uh-huh.

10,000 episodes.

Yeah.

Look, again, let's, let's, let's, let's do the face value argument, right? The person who's the head of the FBI now, Kash Patel, he said there was a bunch of stuff that needed to come out for years before he became the head of the FBI, right? The person who's the deputy head of the FBI, Dan Bongino said for years there's a bunch of stuff that needs to come out, right? And now, uh, after this administration has changed over and, and those guys are in there, they, you know, they signed off on this sort of like, "Actually, there isn't anything else to find," whatever.

But now Democrats are saying, "Look, there's a bunch of stuff that needs to be found." We've seen, you know, Senator Ron Wyden and some other Democrats saying there's a bunch of stuff to be found.

You know, the issue here is I feel like the straight politics of this is I do think the White House doesn't wanna talk about this.

Uh, my colleague, Jasmine Wright, who I write the newsletter with, spoke with a senior administration official this week, and they were kind of like, "All right, we just need to weather this." Uh, this was back when Charlie Kirk was really complaining, "I need a, I need a press conference from Pam Bondi to explain what's going on." And this White House, uh, this senior administration official said, "Do you really think a press conference from Pam Bondi's gonna put this to bed?" Like, they are aware that they are in this situation where there, there really is no way kind of out of this, right? But there is this issue of we don't really know what remains that can be looked at.And so even with this stuff today, uh, Trump said, "I want the pertinent..." I'm doing air quotes, people can't see it, "The pertinent stuff from these grand jury tests and we're going to be released." Which of course, means some filtration, right? And you see in Pam Bondi talking about the fact that we can't release everything because some of it is, maybe it might re-victimize people or maybe it's just kind of disgusting and, and, and not really, again, pertinent to the conspiracy that people want it to be.

But the problem with that is, is that as long as there is sort of any document inside any drawer that has the word Epstein on it, that is not released, they are gonna be under pressure to release stuff.

Right.

I mean, what do you make of how they're responding to this?

Well, I don't know much about battle planning or flying an airplane or any of that sort of stuff, but I do understand how words work in politics.

And the important thing to know is the only person who has said, completely obliterated, is the president.

Every single other person, including Pete Hegseth in that press conference the morning after the strikes, The general at that press conference, John Ratcliffe, in the quote that you just gave, has not said those exact words, right? So we are kind of in one of these spin zones of how much do you want to believe, but what do you want to believe? But that basic idea of totally obliterated, that first word used, That has not been repeated.

And that's the important thing people need to look at.

When they think about war, we know how this works, that the government will try to sort of spin things up in their direction.

Or make their case.

Oh, people.

So if Trump loses his bread and butter, the argument that he's gonna make you a winner, what does he have?

Well, that's absolutely right.

That's why you see this White House changing direction so much in this time, uh, of a, of economic uncertainty that we're seeing like this.

Because they know the last president, right, he had a lot of ideas, told people to wait along, you know, "Hang on with me.

Wait for me.

I got plans.

We're gonna rebuild things.

[laughs]