[laughs]

So that's one.

And then the second thing is the, the idea that, you know, Byron's a liar, and he doesn't want to participate in the, the spectacle and goofiness of it, and it's gonna change the electorate, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

'Cause in some of the polling, despite all these things that Jolly has done, which a lot of pundits, experts, political players, people of his own party, his own supporters, consultants think he did wrong, nevertheless, in the polling, he's kind of neck and neck with, with Donalds.

And Jolly's polling double-digit independent support over Donalds, and Jolly is polling more Republican support than Donalds is polling Democrat support, and Democratic support in most polls.

And so in the Jolly sort of calculus here, hey, w- why give this guy an ability to sort of get those Republicans back and paint me as some-

Oh, yeah

... f- from Georgia.

Huh?

My guess is, like, I know Zacharia through, y- you know, sort of media circles on social media, so we're, we, we're acquainted with each other there.

And now that she's working at the White House, we have to kind of get to know each other.

But her...

One of the reasons that Donald Trump, President Trump, picked Katie was that she is very good on camera, and she's, you know, has a good command presence-

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Uh, however, I think, like, where we'll find agreement is that with the rise of social media and the 24-hour, second-by-second news cycle fueled, uh, by Twitter, or X, you just have an increased focus on sort of constant news.

thrill us about that and then and then even i went on to do the news and you know you would do the news for local station i became like a radio guy and i'm telling you what objectivity what is it that that they have lost why is it the gotcha situation all you got to do is step well i mean i'll disagree

in a friendly way in part the the news media We cover stories in the essence of stories that people listen to or conflict.

I mean, if it's Aristotle, the fundamental essence of drama is conflict.

We don't report when the plane lands safely.

We report when it crashes.

However, I think... like where we'll find agreement is that with the rise of social media and the 24-hour second-by-second news cycle fueled by Twitter X, you just have an increased focus on sort of constant news.

And so you have this appearance of sort of this kind of constant in your term gotcha, this kind of constant sort of conflict.

But the Supreme Court ain't going to let that happen, I guess, Mark, huh?

And so what are some of the reasons that this race has gotten particularly close here?

In South Carolina, it's got these unique factors.

Number one, there's just the general political environment.

Republicans, by and large, are not as enthusiastic about voting as Democrats are.

And the cost of living is up.

The cost of fuel is up.

Mortgage rates, interest rates and the like.

What do you make of that?

Mark, uh, th- this is both a specific question about a specific poll and a specific state, but also a general question about polling being off, so have at it.

Yeah.

Well, there's a general truism that primary polling is sometimes harder than it is general election polling, and the polling misses in both Wisconsin and Michigan in the Democratic primaries, as has been explained to me, is they oversampled, uh, highly educated people and undersampled, uh, high school degree earners, who are still a, a, a significant portion of the base of the Democratic Party and, and of the electorate.

Allegedly, A, that is not going to be the case going forward.

B, Republican and Democratic pollsters are both producing sort of similar results, uh, both in their private polling, and then what you see in public, they look very similar.

And nevertheless, one of the complaints I'm hearing from Republican pollsters is, "We're having problems," or this was about 10 days ago, so it could have changed, right? But they've been having problems for a long time getting Republicans to respond to polls now, and one of the pollsters I'd spoken to, it's like, like, "Are people telling us something?" Like, are these people just not showing? And so there can be funky things in the data.

One of the things that Luke Thompson, who is the, um, the, one of the consultants for, uh, Zahn in, or Zahn, pardon me, in Iowa, the gubernatorial Republican candidate, is pointing out, is all of these Iowa polls showing, uh, the Democrats with nominal leads have what's called a recall vote that is where everyone says, "Here's who I voted for for president." That shows too many people supporting Kamala Harris at plus seven, whereas she lost the state by pl- you know, by 13.

Mark.

Is there one guy at the White House who's running this, or is this a staff that's competing against itself to get their own individual agendas?

No, it's not like Trump won.

Trump, too, is very much a top-down, this is what the president wants, let's do it.

Now, I don't have preview to all those.

which it did, meetings behind the scenes.

But generally, when the president decides to do something, they do what he asks.

So a good example of that would be late last year.

Is the White House doing this program consciously and actively to secure the hemisphere, or is this kind of just like, hey, look, we lucked into Venezuela?

Yeah

...

if you follow her on social media, she's everywhere.

She's very closely tied into the relatively small, for Florida, but nevertheless energetic progressive community, and the labor and organizing community.

And one thing I, I think people outside of Florida need to understand is organized labor in Florida is sort of, well, m- of a different stripe than you come to associate, say, with the Midwest.

Here, organized labor is more gonna be your, your s- your teachers union, who usually are disproportionately are not teachers but are usually sort of support staff, custodial staff and the like.

That's one thing.

... advisors.

... or Kansas.

Right.

It's really heavily rooted sort of in the Corn Belt, as you were told.

And one of the consultants who has access to and is involved in numerous campaigns had said that there's a real farm crisis that's brewing in Iowa, and it shows signs of spreading.

And it's not just people's lives and livelihood and the culture of the place, but obviously there's a political effect.

And there's essentially two major factors which are both rooted in Trump decisions that have made the difference and made things more complicated for farmers.

Number one, the tariffs.

Is there a real sense inside the party that this year could be different because of all the economic conditions around it?

What was discussed during that meeting?

A few things, but for us at Axios, the headline of the meeting was that Trump had discussed, had mentioned to Delcy Rodriguez, like, look, eventually you're going to have to have elections in Venezuela.

Obviously, the United States had deposed her one-time ally, at least, a friend for a time, Nicolas Maduro, elevating Delcy into the leadership role of essentially interim or acting president.

But there's been a question about whether there's going to be elections, when they're going to be, and the specifics on when it's going to be is still unknown.

But the fact that Trump had mentioned it and had specifically said, and I'm sort of quoting what someone had sort of quoted to me, was you're going to have to have elections at the end of the day, was an important thing, I'm told, to convey that the United States is, yes, interested in this as well.

the issue that venezuela has the united states view is that it's a its finances are just wrecked they have about 300 billion dollars in sovereign debt it's bigger than their gdp and it needs to be restructured and the view of united states officials and trump that debt that restructuring needs to happen or needs to be significantly dealt with before there are elections otherwise you're going to wind up having a democratic elected government that is going to wind up failing if it doesn't have sort of the proper safeguards in place it doesn't have its economy back up and running and its institutions properly managed There is a council of sort of a bipartisan or a multi-party council that's meeting in Venezuela to discuss issues of elections.

There is a national elections commission there.

since she became the acting president?

Vice President.

The vice president's office is pretending like, oh, we've always done stuff like this.

Like, oh, there's nothing new, nothing different here.

It's like, no, you guys are doing more sort of behind the scenes stuff.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Vance is just one of the things I think people dislike.

Mark, what are what are things you're watching for between now and Election Day?

Is that OK, Mark, to do that? Huh? Well, I'm sure

Democrats would disagree.

I can't predict the mind of other people, but I'm sure they would disagree.

I mean, it looks exactly like a traditional convention.

You have on the floor, you have people organized by states and delegations and the like.

I mean, technically not really a convention in the traditional sense, but, you know, it's certainly a two-day rally designed to sort of broadcast the message that that Trump wants, which is he's effectively on the ballot.

He's just accepted that as a reality, and that if Democrats take over, all of the Republican agenda, all of his agenda is just going to be stalled and undone to the degree Democrats can do it.

I

Were you surprised by how explicit and public President Trump was with those demands?

No, it's Donald Trump.

I mean, you know, he says lots of things.

The problem with Trump, obviously, is that he says lots of things.

Sometimes he says things that aren't true.

Sometimes he says things that he believes and then changes his mind and then changes his mind again.

And that's a complicated thing.

What should we know about him?

Yeah.

But I, I do know from Isenstadt, they were given to him in a sort of a background capacity to not print them.

I believe that was the case for Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan when they wrote their book, which is why they didn't actually print the full letters.

How, how, when, where, and what the arrangement was with Wolff who had them, I don't know.

I think other publications or other media reporters had similarly gotten them.

So they, at this point they could be floating around the atmosphere, and that's how Wolff got ahold of them, who knows? But the reality is, is there's a...

So why are we talking today about Natalie Harp? There's a few s- few things.

What happens when somebody tells him something he doesn't want to hear? Do they actually survive that? Is it, I mean, does Suzy do that or is it just like Trump runs the place?

Mm.

As for why she joined the DSA, great question.

It, she will tell you that she joined it because she was being outgunned, uh, outspent by Alex Fineman, and she needed to avail herself of their grassroots enterprise, their organizational network.

She's also a very progressive Democrat.

And so she is a fellow traveler, so to speak, of the Democratic Socialist of America, and agrees with them on things like healthcare and education and the like.

But she kept it quiet.

You know, she only joined them in July.

Right

Is it realistic to believe that, you know, Fishback gets 10%? Is it realistic to believe that only that 50% number is a concerning data point that would give Democrats an opening to win?

I wouldn't say it would give them an opening to win, but it's a sign that Byron Donalds has some weakness, and David Jolly's performance is a sign he has some strength.

Environment, even the Trump people in unguarded moments will acknowledge is very difficult.

So it's going to be a difficult rope for Jolly to walk because he's probably gonna wind up campaigning belong a very progressive candidate in Angie Nix.

And how he handles that, we're not quite sure.

Republicans are doing back flips about the idea, like, finally we've got a Democratic socialist to run against statewide, and it's gonna be in Florida.

At the same time, the electorate has heard this sort of socialism attack a number of times.

For Republicans that, right, they went through the redistricting pos- process to try to pick up some seats here, what is the reality that you're looking at based on these primary results of how you expect these House races to go down?

loserUm, when you look toward November at these sta- statewide races, the governor's race, the Senate race, where Republicans are, are heavily f- favored, even if it is a blue wave election, which, you know, I think a lot of people think it will be, will that impact Florida at all?

I mean, it'll impact Florida probably you'll see it in state legislative races, State House, State Senate, where Republican margins might come down a bit.

But, uh, the legislature redrew a lot of the districts.

One of the reasons you're seeing some of the craziness, like Jared Moskowitz ha- having to run in a new district, Debbie Wasserman Schultz moving district, is because they were redrawn.

On the map right now it's a 20 Republican to eight Democrat spread in the 28 seats in the US House.

Under this map, if you had sort of a, a, a more typical year, you could see that 20 member Republican conference in Florida grow to 24-

Yeah.

Jeb Bush's changes to the Republican Party and to the tax structure of Florida, which incentivized, essentially, Republican super voters, "Hey, move to Florida.

It

all comes down, right.

At the end, like if a candidate gets more votes, they're going to win the election, right? And so- That is just how things are trending right now is Republicans might be limping into November.

They might be slouching toward November, but they nonetheless still have sort of the numbers and the campaigns that are opposing them are just not doing that great.

Now, of the top of the ticket races, the ones that do seem to be that that does seem to be getting a measure of traction is David Jolly, who is likely to be the Democratic nominee.

for governor.

He's a former Republican congressman who long ago became an independent and then became a Democrat recently.

They didn't think they'd be looking at it.

there's just

sort of a, I don't know if contradiction is the right word, but there's a tension between what he's saying, because he's basically saying the cure to the socialism threat to the capitalist system is the government.

And the fundamental problem, I believe, as the father of younger people and as the colleague of younger people and as an observer of just people in my community, is that corporate America doesn't pay shit to a lot of people, right? And it's less like, hey, I got an idea.

Like you don't want people to be envious.

It's the same shit with rap.

Like you listen to rappers all the time, talk about like everyone's envious and I got all this gold.

Hey, I got an idea, share your fucking money.

Mark.

What in the world's going on here? Didn't we already settle this with a Supreme Court decision not all that long ago?

Well, no.

The Supreme Court decision applied to Trump's executive order he had released on Inauguration Day, January 20th, 2026.

And that was sort of a broad blanket effort to ban citizenship from being automatically awarded to the children of undocumented and non-citizen residents of the United States, right? Children of illegal immigrants, for lack of a better term.

So the court ruled as it did, but in looking at the ruling, the administration has decided, okay, well, our big ask was rejected.

They've read in there an ability to maybe ask for some more targeted things.

So bottom line, what Trump is essentially asking for or ordering is until it gets rejected or if it gets rejected, is an expansion of two categories that are recognized and were recognized in the Supreme Court ruling, which is the children of diplomatic staff who are non-citizens.

Do I have it wrong, Mark? Well,

Iran's really hurting him that bad?

The question is what...

You know, the question is, is what victory looks like, 'cause, you know, President Trump went in there with the goal of changing Iranian behavior, and not so much a direct goal of regime change or territorial war, and the Iranians turned it into a territorial conflict by essentially seizing the Strait of Hormuz.

And the president, while he says all options are always on the table, he's, he has not gone forward, he has not seriously considered a real ground and land invasion for pretty clear reasons.

And so that, I think, is at the heart of the conflict, and it's just not helping him.

I mean, if you, if you looked at some of the, a lot of the research, whether it's polling or focus grouping, you talk to a lot of people, they don't really l- like the war.

Now, they're not consumed with it the way the Iraq war was because we don't have boots on the ground, but, you know, fuel is a little higher.

Do you think it can get significantly more positive in the next couple months so it can affect the election?

Do you think now that he comes back and he turns on Fox News and he's sitting in the residence and he's watching television and he sees the criticism even coming from Fox News, that that's gonna change his mind about this deal or that, uh, it's gonna make it harder for him to defend it?

Woe betide him who predicts what Donald Trump is going to do.

Uh, nevertheless, I, I would find it difficult to believe that he would change that much.

M- my general view of Trump is that if you criticize something that he has started to put his chips in, he doesn't like the criticism.

I asked him during the interview, "Are you going to punish any of the Republicans who oppose you on this?" Because there are elements of the deal with sanctions that are gonna need to come back to Congress for sort of a final approval in part to set up or make effective this $300 billion reconstruction fund.

And it took me a little while to, to get the president to answer, but he said basically no.

Now, I'm wondering if that'll change.

So, uh, you know, is there any recognition, not from Trump himself personally, but aides you've talked to, just about what a bind they're in? Is there any sort of concern as to what this meant for November?

I don't even know legally how something like that would work, but I would love to get your take

on all of this.

Well, two things.

One is I think there is truth to the idea that Donald Trump is an incredibly powerful executive and that his cabinet agencies and cabinet appointees do what he says.

And so when the case, the 10 and 11, I don't want to speak out of turn, but I'll just say that my understanding of the lawsuit that Trump had filed would not have progressed and been allowed in that form had there been a different president in office because it was irregular concerning the law and the amounts claimed in the $10 billion.

And the case about or the idea that this is Trump suing himself was raised in a fashion by one of the federal judges, the federal judge overseeing the case in Miami.

And there was sort of a process where the judge wasn't informed at the time that while the Trump and the Trump org was suing the IRS, that behind the scenes, Trump's legal team and the DOJ were working out this weaponization fund agreement.

The question I want to ask you is why does this story still have staying power, especially when many other Epstein related relationships have all faded from public attention?

if I'm a listener and I don't know much, like what do I do with this headline? What does this mean?

It just means that there's just a little bit more Republican opposition to President Trump than there was before.

But it's not gonna really bind him, at least it doesn't look like it's gonna be right now.

I mean, there's a, there's a outside possibility, and I would assign a low probability to it, that Trump would say if it passed the House and it passed the Senate, "Okay, fine.

You guys wanted me to withdraw.

Here's an excuse for me to withdraw." So in answer to your prior question, it does give him an out.

For instance, when I talk about that weaponization fund earlier, that $1.8 billion, they use as an excuse of backing off of it the fact that a court had issued an adverse ruling.

Right.

What do we gain from the knowledge that Trump seems more than willing, both publicly and privately, to tell Netanyahu what he thinks and Netanyahu listens?

Well, it's just sort of Trump being Trump.

And I think Trump has built up enough credibility with Netanyahu where Netanyahu is going to listen to that criticism and take it.

After all, this operation that was launched on February 28 in Iran was done in close consultation with Israel.

And it's something that Israel, under Netanyahu, has wanted for decades.

So, the two of them have a sort of brotherly relationship, President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu, and sometimes brothers quarrel.

And, in this case, from what we understand, the bigger, older brother really let the younger brother have it.

What does your reporting show is the truth about who controls who?

And do you stand by it now?

Oh, certainly.

We spoke to multiple senior administration officials with knowledge of the call who we have used as sources of accurate information before.

And the reason we were able to report this first is over the weekend, my colleague Barack Ravid and I had done a story about how Trump had made an amendment change to the Iran peace plan that he's hoping to strike next.

with the government there.

And during the reporting of that over the weekend, one of our sources had told us that Netanyahu wanted Lebanon to be included in the peace plan, but Trump thought it was too complicated.

Then the next day on Saturday, Or better said, on Sunday, the Israeli military just unleashed holy hell in Lebanon.

Is that how you understand it?