Should we be surprised that this action is taking place in advance of the election day?

Absolutely not.

This has been the end game for over a year now.

Every step this administration has taken, all the lies that they have told the American people about their sense of, you know, making sure elections are fair and free have just all led to this.

and Todd Blanch and company are the worst of the worst.

They are to do Donald Trump's bidding.

The federal government and the Department of Justice have absolutely zero role here.

Give me the 101.

While the ads show Republicans want us, I guess, to forget what's been going on for two years.

Well, look, the reality of it is, you know, guys like Byron Donald and others, you know, sort of pretend that, you know, it's a joke and I don't understand what the big deal is.

So why did you take his name off your website? Why do you pretend he's not your daddy anymore? And that's the harsh reality for a lot of Republicans.

Nobody in the neighborhood likes your daddy anymore.

and they don't wanna vote for your daddy, and they don't wanna spend time with your daddy.

And that reality is something that Republicans have to carry.

Many of us have been trying to warn for some time now that the party had to make a conscious decision.

and it doesn't matter what side you're on I think everybody can kind of agree with that

Pickup fees may apply.

The Last Word with Jonathan Capehart, ooh, Jonathan Capehart in for Lawrence starts right now.

Hey, Jonathan.

Y- y'all, that's almost as good, almost as good as when you and I are sitting around talking.

Folks, that's what you want to be around for, for sure.

But I'm gonna let you do this one by yourself, 'cause that's what Lawrence wants you to do.

The, the American public is noticing it.

Yeah.

They, they are.

Uh, and for good reasons because it's all up in your face.

Donald Trump doesn't care what the American public thinks about this.

I mean, he's articulated on more than one occasion he thinks that their economic pain is a hoax, you know? The affordability crisis that families are experiencing because of his public policies, um, on, on the war and on the economy have resulted in their, uh, economic pain, their inability to access healthcare, their inability to feed their kids.

They have to make those kinds of choices.

... reorienting the voters in one sense, um, by leveling up candidates that

How bad was it for Donald Trump to reverse himself?

It was bad.

It largely from what I could put together from conversations.

It really it wasn't translating into support.

The party candidates, down ballot candidates from, you know, Senate races, especially some state other statewide races like governor were really hemorrhaging.

The congressional ballot absolutely is a minefield for Republicans.

And at the core of it, that ad, you know, love me, love me, love me, did not translate into love for GOP candidates.

It's not hitting with voters because voters themselves are nervous.

'Cause Trump's still around.

Because, A, Trump's still around.

B, the infection of Trumpism does not go away.

There are too many acolytes who want to be like him and think that they can assume the power and do it better, meaning worse, than he did.

And I, and I've talked about this over the years.

When Reagan left in 1989, there was an internal discussion about who would be the next Reagan, and it never resolved itself on that, on that question.

Bubba got elected.

Mm.

It's not hitting with voters because voters themselves are nervous.

I think that's very true.

I think that's an accurate assessment of what we're seeing in these four ads.

I think it's also a reflection that the American people are at a point where they've had enough.

You know, this, to be honest, has been the longest weekend at Bernie's we've ever had politically.

I mean, this has been the biggest you-know-what show from day one.

And, yeah, you know, we've all been to that party.

What does that say to you about the state of things?

Is that sort of your take on this?

Absolutely.

Look, the, the, the man is desperate.

He's been pinned into a political and electoral corner.

Um, he knows, uh, the political fates have been sealed in many respects.

Um, things that shouldn't be in play, like the United States Senate, um, are.

I knew they would be a year ago because I knew Donald Trump would be in charge of the party.

Yeah.

[laughs]

But the reality of it is the rest of the Trump universe is in a little bit of a tizzy.

Um, and so now what I'm hearing, Nicole, as I'm sure you are with some of the folks you talk to, and I, I'm same with Alex as she travels the country, is, okay, so how do we do two things? Stop any further hemorrhaging, right? And number one, work the turnout, because there's a genuine concern that that r- that base vote is, is so weakened and demoralized that they won't turn out.

I, I always assume the, the, the worst in that, in that, in that situation, saying, yes, they will, until proven otherwise, because that's the nature of the beast.

Um, which means on the other side of the coin, Democrats, Independents, and Republicans like me have to get off their behind and get ready and in the game starting now since early voting is going on.

Don't get distracted by the 17% number.

Everybody hate him.

The margin is everything.

What connects this particular group of Republicans?

I think it's the idea of freedom.

The fact that, look, I've always styled myself and defined myself as a Lincoln Republican.

And I think the individuals that you just mentioned do the same.

And what does that mean? It's a little bit different for each of us because we all came to the party in different ways.

I grew up in Washington, D.C., so I did not grow up in a Republican company town.

I was not a young Republican, a college Republican, or a teenage Republican.

Yeah.

How's this all gonna play for him?

Uh, it'll play the way Trump wants it to play at the end of the day.

I mean, look, JD Vance thinks he's gonna be the nominee or somehow Donald Trump is gonna, you know, bless him and give him the imprimatur- Of, of the nomination.

Um, no, he's not.

Donald Trump likes pitting people against, uh, other people, so he's gonna pit him against Marco Rubio.

We've already seen that play out a little bit.

Uh, what is JD Vance going to do? I mean, JD Vance is largely a, a candidate, a potential candidate for the presidency, without, uh, his own base.

The answer.

Michael Steele, did any of that help any Republicans campaigning for November?

No, it did not.

And it you know, how do you know that's because Republicans have already decided, some at least, that they're not going to go to that very expensive midterm convention, which is highly unnecessary.

And problematic for for candidates, particularly those in very, very competitive districts this year, which most Republican candidates, especially in the House, are.

We heard a lot of very, very crazy stuff.

Coming out of the vice president talking out of every particular part of his of his anatomy, simply because that's what he was sent out there to do.

I thought the answer on 9-11, the 25th anniversary of 9-11, when every other living former president United States will be in New York.

He just called him crazy.

I think the Senate feels... uh possible maybe slightly probable and also that this is a this is an election that is happening as a reaction to uh the worst constellation of federal leadership that we've seen in my lifetime and and probably longer and if we're going to build we've got a lot of work to do if we're going to be able to win elections not just because the status quo is an unmitigated disaster

I find myself in some of the weirdest position in that I'm bullish on Democrats in 26.

As a former Republican chairman and still a Republican, y'all better win.

You have never had a better table set for success than you have right now.

This race in 26 is a combination of 2006 and 2010.

Regarding the mood of the country, the public have already begun to state very clearly going back to the end of last year and certainly the first quarter of this year, they don't like anything the Republicans are offering.

So the house is a big win, 35 seats minimum in my estimation.

And I think the Democrats need to have an answer that is big enough and constructive to respond to that.

Surprising?

Um, absolutely not.

I've been saying it forever.

Donald Trump, um, is about one individual.

That's himself.

Everyone else are, are side characters, useful idiots, and the like.

And, uh, this idea that he is going to take $400 million that he has coerced, cajoled, or otherwise taken out of the RNC, um, and away from candidates by redirecting resources towards his super PAC, um, they're fooling themselves.

Literally.

But I wonder what your thoughts are, uh, about how we kind of slow down and make sure that everyone focuses on the disrespect and the disregard and the danger that Trump put everyone aboard the USS Lincoln in.

You know, I, I was listening to Paul, uh, just now and you could hear, you could hear his service come through.

You could hear the conversations that he had when he was, uh, in a dusty tent in, in Afghanistan or Iraq, uh, in the Middle East.

You could hear from, uh, Senator McCaskill the conversations that senators, US senators would have, uh, about the care and attention necessary, uh, for, uh, the, the prospects of our service men and women.

Folks, what you hear, what you've heard in the first 15 minutes of the show is, are, are the voices are, of, of people out there who actually pay attention to, um, what happens to those in uniform.

We should listen to them because it is very true we cannot trust the lies coming from this administration.

We cannot trust what our president says in this moment.

Yeah

What happens if he does have an election denier in the governor's mansion in a place like Wisconsin, and he gives them a call and says, find me the votes, and the person is willing to do it, willing to carry his water? What then?

It is the ultimate corruption of the process in the system.

It is profoundly antithetical to what the citizens of that state decided.

And that then becomes a problem for that governor.

I mean, you know, these things don't happen in a vacuum.

If in 2010, excuse me, in 2020, Raffensperger and others decided, OK, we'll play with Donald Trump, you cannot discount the outrage from the citizenry.

And the voters out there, when hearing that text or hearing those tapes, then realize that their governor cheated, stole the votes from them.

He knows that this question of whether or not he can be a kingmaker is now in the ether.

Thank you.

Yeah, it's how this stuff translates.

Look, back in January, February of this year, Katie, I was making the point in a number of conversations that there's this tendency when you get into a political cycle for voters to begin to lock down on issues and on the incumbency of candidates and the president, all of it.

That began right around the time the president pushed us into his war of choice.

in Iran.

And it began to solidify some hard numbers around a whole host of issues, including issues like immigration, where they began to see it all as a package.

It's not that they suddenly support where the Democrats are on immigration.

So I wonder, and we've been exploring this on this show the past few days, Michael, if the president has lost What was once one of his superpowers, which was the power of persuasion, is he just not persuasive any longer? Are Republicans in Congress, are voters out there, are they starting, even MAGA voters, are they starting Fox News? Are they starting to look past him and see him as somebody that they're going to be done with in a couple of years?

They call that the Kinsley gaffe, for old Michael Kinsley.

You know, it, it-- the thing about it is these, these, these guys just cannot help themselves.

Right now, a lot of them, because they've had arguably a lot of success, uh, bullshitting people and pushing through narratives and upending so much of not just culture and e-economics, but, you know, the political dynamics that, that have always been in, in a very important balance between Democrats and Republicans, between our country and the world.

And, and now they sit there in their arrogance, and there's...

And, and those moments like that, you know.

Um, and it gets better, you know, when the guy's sitting there referring to himself, you know, you know, as the president's, you know, lawyer.

Like, dude, this is not how this works.

They wanna make sure people don't, don't just learn the basics about what happened to the founders.

Michael, still, how do you fight fire with fire when the man of the Oval Office gets away with everything?

Yeah, but it's the man in the Oval Office.

And I think we need to be smart.

I love the way you set up the conversation because you frame you.

You found the right framing here, giving examples of where the Democrats have had to meet this challenge in the past in various campaigns.

Their embrace of a movement like Me Too, rightly.

And now the confrontation in an environment in which it's seemingly a candidate that has the traits of a Donald Trump, that has the behavior of of some of the individuals that we loathe in this country, those who embrace racism and Nazism, et cetera.

He says it with a straight face, Michael.

is very good at making things seem normal and totally fine, Michael.

Yeah, I guess so.

You want to call it that? Look, John Thune is worried.

That body language tells me John Thune knows his Senate is in trouble.

And yeah, they need the lifeline of this housing bill signing.

They need the lifeline of Donald Trump to do something other than the reflecting pool and all the crazy around that.

Republicans have put themselves in this position.

so smart.

And you've got

to walk.

The one thing I think you know this, Senator, I know this as two elected officials.

The one thing you have to be always in your service is consistent and authentic.

because that's what the voters are going to trust, that you are consistent no matter what the issue is.

You approach it with diligence and foresight, yes, but you listen to people and you're not afraid to do what the work requires, which sometimes says John Tester has to call up Michael Steele and say, hey, I need you on this effort.

Or Michael Steele has to call up John Tester and say, dude, you and I, we got to walk this line together because it's the only way it's going to get done.

Education.

No

... for, uh, what's happened to the country.

How did we allow this to happen? Um, I think a, I think there is some struggle right now for some people trying, uh, some voters out there trying to reconcile their level of, culpability is a strong word because the, the right to vote is so sacrosanct, but you know, those who voted for Trump, voted for this in, in, in, um, 2016 and some again in 2020, and I've talked to a few who are now having, "Oh my God, I can't believe I actually got caught up in this." Um, there is, there is that kind of reconciling that people are going through.

Um, but the mugshot is, has become a symbol.

It is already iconic.

We got that.

But I don't think for the reasons that people in Trump world believe that, you know, I don't think America in the whole, Michael, sees this as a badge of honor, as an image of honor.

Yeah, he would've gotten the full Monty

Was this worth it?

So first off, let me say congrats on the new show.

I love the homage to Shaft.

That intro is awesome.

It is so Katie Turner.

I have to admit it really is.

So kudos there.

Does that make it any better, Michael?

Mm-hmm

... or the state legislative races, because people tend, even though the names are listed in order from top to bottom, people tend, uh, when they go into that voting booth, to be driven by, uh, things that are really, really close to home, local issues.

Um, and in this environment, local issues are going to kill Republicans, because those local issues are financial issues.

That is a bread-and-butter issue.

You know, the guy who's gotta f- uh, you know, fill up his, his, um, his Ford truck, uh, to get to work, uh, finds that much more difficult to do when he has to do it twice or more a week.

Um, the mom who's trying to get kids to school before she heads to her job, uh, finds that more difficult to do because in the planning of the household for that day, those expenses have gone up and, of course, the gas to get to work.

Mm-hmm.

So re- Democrats have won 37-plus special elections, and not only have they won them, Tavis, they have won them, um, by significant margins.

Which one of these do you think had a more profound effect on the direction of Republican politics, the Tea Party or birtherism?

Well, uh, uh, neither one actually.

Um, because the, the, the rot that would metastata- metastasize into MAGA started long before Tea Party and birtherism.

Um, it goes back to the 1930s.

The Republican Party for, throughout its modern-day history has struggled with, uh, episodes of fancying itself as a populous nationalist party.

Uh, it dealt, it danced a little bit on that pinhead in the 1930s in response to, uh, uh, FDR 'cause they had no response.

Typically, the party kinda falls in that rat hole when it's got no response to a big policy idea.

Yeah.