"Even Trump voters are disillusioned with what they're seeing"

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Hi again, everyone. It's 5 o'clock in the East and unexpected, very disappointing jobs report out this morning showing a slump in the job market. Meanwhile, Americans are struggling to make ends meet with the high price of gas and groceries. Even Trump voters are now publicly disillusioned with what they're seeing. Do you feel like life is affordable in general right now? Grocer. It is not. I'm on a fixed income. If we have doctors appointments, maybe we'll have to do with something else. Food is, it's getting outrageous. With rent going up, gas going up, groceries going up, two people struggling to live in a house, and we're barely scraping by. It sounds to me like it's the big hot shots, the big corporations, the big, the billionaires are all getting the money and we're just being stuck. under 100 days out from the midterm elections in November. And Donald Trump is struggling mightily on his central promise to the country and especially his voters that he would deliver. better than any Democrat on affordability and creating a strong economy. When asked about his party's prospects in November, Trump surprisingly acknowledged voters growing anger. But as to who voters should direct that anger at, it could be him. So that is fault. There's a little bit of his sit-down interview with Punch Bowl News. If I don't run, will those people go out? and vote. And that's the one thing I can't tell. I'm going to ask them to. A lot of them are very angry and Republicans, to be honest with you. Why is that? I don't know. I mean, they're angry at Republicans, but they're not angry at me. They're not angry at me, but they are angry at Republicans. I don't know. Why would they be angry Republicans? I mean, they're not mad at me. Just the Republicans over there who are so independent from me. It's nonsensical, and the polls tell a very different story. Donald Trump is currently seeing his approval rating hit all-time historic lows for him and for any president. The latest Quinnipiac poll finds only 32% of all Americans approve of the job Donald Trump is doing as president. A majority of voters don't believe that Trump is focused on the problems facing Americans. New reporting in Politico finds that Trump is essentially hanging Republicans out to dry politically. when it comes to his deeply unpopular policies, especially the war with Iran. Quote, the regular messaging guidance, the White House and other parts of the administration provided to Republicans at the start of the war has dwindled to almost no communication at all in recent weeks on how to talk to voters about Iran. That's according to six people with direct knowledge of the matter who spoke anonymously. Briefings on campaign trail guidance are scarce and Tone deaf, according to multiple House Republicans. A tone deaf response from the Trump administration to American struggles and concerns is where we begin the hour with some of our favorite experts in front. Puck News, senior political columnist and national affairs analyst John Heilman's back. Also joining us, political analyst and host of the Bullwork podcast, Tim Miller, is back. And the host of Politics Nation, the president of the National Action Network, the Reverend Al Sharpton, is here.

Tim, I kind of love, I don't even know if it's cognitive dissonance. That might seem like too big of a assumption to make about this cognitive capacity. But I love the, I don't know why they're mad at Republicans. They're off here doing whatever they do when they're literally crying as they fall in line behind Donald Trump on the Senate floor today. Yeah, it is. Who are the people that he's talking to also? On the Mar-a-Lago pool deck, they're mad at Republicans and not him? The egg, the omelet bar, yeah, the people that he sees like while he's putting, yeah. You see, in focus groups from the Texas private, I just, this is like just a classic Trump, only megalomania story, honestly. It's, this is, he doesn't care about these people. He doesn't really care about the midterms. In a different interview yesterday, I believe it was Fox yesterday, they were kind of asking him a similar line of questioning about whether he's going to be out there during the midterms. He's like, I'm out here now in Nevada, right? They don't have to be. It seems like a waste of my time. He was very dismissive about this campaign event, which was a disaster in its own right, in Nevada yesterday. And he just, he's moved, like he doesn't care about them. And it's an easy story to tell himself, comforting story to tell himself, the people still like him. They're mad at these other amorphous Republicans. He can't answer Jake's follow-up question because. like what would even the substantive answer be i i guess maybe that they're not giving them what they want on the save act i'm just like trying to put myself in his warped brain which is very challenging but uh you know the republicans are doing everything they want besides besides the save act i guess um Halman, let me read you this Axios reporting. The headline is great. Behind the curtain, Trump's quicksand. But what they describe is like, I don't want to insult Banta White, but it makes him sound like someone just sort of pointing to the letters. Top congressional Republicans tell us Trump's unpopularity points toward the likely loss of the House and perhaps the Senate. But an 80-year-old man who made the greatest comeback in American political history appears too proud, too stubborn, and undisciplined to change. Republicans privately admit. So rather than face the issues, Trump often pivots to showing visitors' renderings of the new White House ballroom or a model of the planned triumphal arch. He showcases his new Air Force One, touts his plans for dullus and obsesses about the helipad being built on the South On. I missed that he was... He was tearing apart Dulles Airport. Is that part of his vanity tour? Has he ever landed there? I missed that. I miss that.

Yeah, yeah, he's doing, they're doing this big rento at Dulles now. Nicole, I think it's fair to say that it's one of the few things that anybody who's ever flown through Dulles, you know, it's one of the few things Donald Trump has proposed that I can get behind. I'm not sure it's going to be done well or it's going to be a worth of money that they're going to spend on it. But, you know, those moving buses that take you from the interterm or the outerdustrum, those are horrible. And it was one of the things that Trump focused on. I just wanted to say Trump rode the bus and like wants to fix it. Trump, Trump just wants to leave as many possible imprints as possible on Washington, D.C. in the surrounding environment in the hope that when the Democrats get back into power next and they do the systematic cleanup, where they metaphorically and literally rip Trump's name off of everything that it's been attached to and tear down every ridiculous thing that he's, every monument he's erected to himself, he's trying to figure out some way, maybe there'll be a small plaque. at Dulles that will still have his name on it. And he's thinking, you know, I got to just, I got to lay my bets everywhere, right? Because I understand what's coming. I did want to say, it's been a little while since I've been on television with Tim Miller. I thought for a moment I wanted to, I wanted to endorse him as, as, you know, was going to endorse my friend Michael Whatley for being, for Congress or governor or whatever it is that Tim's running for. But he's, that, I don't want to go to Las Vegas thing. What would you like to discuss? That's right. But I'm going to make the same mistake four or five times over the course of the show where I'm going to prefer to him as Michael Whatley because, you know, my cognitive level has declined rather rapidly. And I'm about to take another one of those camera man television tests. What did you want to talk about, Nicole? Certainly not Dulles Airport. Well, no, I mean, I missed Dulles Airport in his, you know, Renaud obsession. I mean, I guess what's challenging at this point is that the news is so deadly serious. Bill Cassidy looked tormented. It looked like you could see him ripping his own soul out of his chest as he stood there and said, Bill Barr told me that that. I don't know. I don't even know what he was saying, Bill Barsett, that this was the best we could do, I guess, and that this is the time of Trump. And Trump is focused on such inane, idiotic, superficial, and stupid stuff. And it's just a surreal... It's a surreal attempt to cover the real-time destruction of the rule of law, which Republicans are not just looking the other way on and allowing to happen, but helping happen. I had two federal judges on yesterday talking about the death threats against their kids and spouses. One was Esther Salas, who I think we all know at this point. The other was Judge Jack Mitch McConnell. And then there's this, I guess. interest in covering the stupid crap Trump says in interviews and the total detachment from the country that he runs. So you can go any which way you want with it, Howellman. Well, I'd like to focus on two things, one of which was in that Axios report where they said that congressional Republicans had decided that Trump was too stubborn.

too proud and too indisciplined to help them in the midterm elections, basically. Those are the three words that were used. The problem with that is it leaves out the most important thing and the thing that apparently still virtually know Capitol Hill Republicans understand, which is that those three things are all true about Donald Trump. But the more important thing is that he does not care about them. He does not give a crap about his own party are about trying to help anybody on Capitol Hill. He is already, it's evident from the comments he's making, internalize the notion that Republicans are going to lose the House and Senate. He's trying to already shift blame. And that is the key element of this thing. He's grasped someone on Fox News said something that is actually also true, which is that in years when Trump's name is not in the ballot, Republicans in 2018, in 2022, and now presumably in 26, Republicans are not going to turn out in the kind of numbers that they did when his name has been on the ballot. He's now planting that as an excuse for why Republicans are going to lose in the fall. He's going to say, they didn't do what I told them to do. They didn't pass the Save Act. They didn't get rid of the filibuster. And the only thing that... Republicans care about in the country is me. And so, hey, it's not my fault. These Republicans are, I've lost control of the House and Senate. And he's just walked away from them in the same way he's walked away from the American people. And the last thing I'll say, Nicole, is the Bill Cassidy thing you just said a second ago. Again, similar to the comments in playboy, the in Axios about Trump, you said something about Bill Cassidy's soul, struggling with his soul and his body. I'm convinced. that at this point that Bill Cassidy has a soul, maybe he has a soul. But you and I and Tim and Rev all remember of Washington, D.C., where Bill Cassidy, having been screwed not just out of a job, but out of his dignity by Donald Trump over the last six years, the last 10 years, would have said in this last moment would have said, F you, Donald Trump. You want Todd Blanche as my last act of consequence in the Senate, I'm going to stop him. Just out of pure spite and pride, I can't believe I'm hearkening back to the days when that was the way that a lot of people in the Republican Party acted in Washington. I would then have bemoaned the spite. But at this moment, a little bit of spite, you'd think it would be the least that someone like Bill Cassidy or John Cornyn could muster. Instead. Even when they have nothing to gain from it, they bow down in front of Donald Trump. This is a point I kind of feel like I've been making out for the last 18 months, which is give me an example of when they've stood up to him and I'll start to believe that there's some possibility they'll stand up to him in the future. And part of the reason why I'll never believe it is because of people like Bill Cassidy and their lack of balls. Yeah. I mean, I guess I'm going to be grateful you. edited out the F-bomb, but Rev, I'll ask you to elevate us again. And what's interesting to me about Howlman's last point is that it used to be that they didn't stick up for their own principles or ideals because Donald Trump was more popular. That's not the case. He's at 32%. That is a line below which...

sort of friends and family and the billionaire class is the only sort of group of people still cheering your presidency. They are also paying a political price for looking weak. So it's a political loser. Why do they fall in line behind him? You said the key word, weak. The fact that they were weak, they were weak in the first place is how Donald Trump steamrolled them and became the candidate twice and the president twice. You have to have some serious questions about your own self-image and your own self-being that you would sit around and do something that you know is unethical. that you know it borders on really throwing justice to the win in this country and vote for a man because you were too cowardly to stand up to a president who has literally done in your career. I mean, here's a guy who didn't subtly take a swipe at you. This wasn't him twittering something. He ruined John Cornyn and the other senator's career today. Today, he comes in votes for him to put in his personal attorney as the Attorney General of the United States. You know, I think as a matter of so, I think everybody has a soul, John, but I know they don't have any guts and any self-respect if you can do that. We're not asking for a hard one here. The American public knows that this is corruption in terms of having this person there as Attorney General. So. It doesn't take courage. It just takes having the backbone that you're supposed to have as a member of the Senate. That's one part of it. But the second part is for Donald Trump on a day that we are told that 23,000 jobs were lost. After the predictions were that we were going to do better with unemployment, we're doing worse, groceries is going up. And he's sitting there telling a reporter, well, they're not mad at me. They're mad at the Republicans. Well, based on what data, you're the one that's 32% in the polls. Over two-thirds of the country don't think you're doing a good job, but they're not mad at you. So you're dealing with a man who's 80 years old and in denial, and you're dealing with some sink offense that we thought we elected to the Senate. I mean, Tim, what's interesting to me is how slow Republicans are to respond to the thing that they've been held hostage by for a decade, which is politics. And the politics of the MAGA movement have reshaped how we cover politics. They've reshaped how we cover elections. They've reshaped how MAGA media programs, their programs. They've reshaped how other media outlets staff up their contributors. The only people who haven't responded, though, to the change, which is that MAGA Media is now a toxic political brand. On the generic congressional ballot, Democrats are at 51% Republicans are at 45%. That is a loser. So the MAGA brand is now losing to the generic Democratic brand. How would the country be if Democrats take control of Congress? Again, a plurality say better off if Democrats win, 38 to 33.

how voters are doing financially versus a year ago. This was Donald Trump's one-time sort of ace in the whole political issue. And 49% of Americans say they're worse off, just 34% say they're better off. Again, that 34 down near his rock bottom poll numbers of 32 to 34% in Quinnipiac and AP this week. What is your sense of the inability to respond to the thing that has shaped the Republican Party more than anything else? And that is the politics of MAGA, which right now suck. They're kind of in a vice, I think, these Republican candidates, right? And Trump has left them there, right? Because we're in this situation where it's really bad. I know those poll numbers are really bad, as my colleague Sarah calls it. We're down at the Bush line. That hurts my feelings a little bit on two levels. But anyway, we're there. But it's got to get lower. Like one thing that is different from Bush. is that when Bush's numbers went down after Katrina, as the war started to turn, as the economy started to get bad in the second term, they went down kind of with everybody, right? Like, Democrats went from 12% support to two, and independents from 50 to 20, and Republicans from 90 to 70, right? Like, it went down across the board. That's still not really, like, happening. And with the core MAGA base, that is the remaining 32. And so you have these candidates who I do think, are scared of, you know, if they try to get away from him too much, then they'll do him themselves. If they stick with him too much, they'll do him themselves, right? And so sticking with them is the easier path, right? Like, that's the path of least resistance. I think that's what you're seeing in these Senate races. It's like, I had Adam Hamilton on this week. He's a great guy pastor running in Kansas. I think it's a big sleeper race. He's running against Roger Marshall. The economy is terrible everywhere. Rev mentioned it. We lost jobs last month. It's really bad in Kansas. It's really bad in the plains and the farm country. And Roger Marshall's out there talking about in Trump, we trust. He's been the best. And I'm like, why? You know, Roger Marshall is never a big kind of neocon war person. He's out there defending the Iran War. Why? I think it's because it's like, well, if I distance from him, it still might not. be enough, and it might backfire because the Maga Base will get mad at me, and I'm not going to be welcome at the Capitol Hill Club. People are going to get mad at me, right? So why not just ride the course and see if it works out? And I think that's what a lot of them are doing. It doesn't really explain the Bill Cassidy of it. And Rev left that word of self-respect, which I think is pretty important. Bill Cassidy today, to me, looked like a man that had lost all self-respect, a completely broken shell of a man. Because the quote that really stuck with me from the speech, was like people like before you even explained why he's going to confirm Todd Blanche he was like people are going to criticize me for this they always do and he's like he's doing this woe is me thing on the senate floor like oh um these guys always no matter what i do i'm going to get criticized i'm going to get yelled at so why do the right thing Why not just do the easy thing? You know, this way, when I go back to Baton Rouge Country Club, nobody's going to be mad at me. And if I want to lobby for the pharmaceutical companies next year, nobody's going to be mad at me. And I do think that there's this kind of sense of giving up among a lot of the Republicans where Trump is unpopular. You know, maybe they could benefit from distancing, but is the juice force to squeeze?

Maybe not. Or do they have the respect of the backbone to do it, the intestinal fortitude to do it? Not really. And I think that, so I think that kind of, in my opinion, explains why the kind of lack of adjustment. I mean, I think the juice is always worth the squeeze. I just think it's your point about, and in terms of. being accepted in polite company like he obviously didn't think it was the right thing knew it wasn't the right thing if he thought it was the right thing he would have done it before today on the senate floor right he wouldn't have made a big press announcement about announcing he was going to announce where he came down. So he contributed to the portrait of himself as someone without any self-respect. No one goes anywhere. Another reason for Donald Trump's historic unpopularity is the deep disconnect with the American people from members of his out-of-touch, super-rich administration. The latest is another example of the Uber-rich lecturing Americans who are feeling the pinch at the grocery store and the gas station every single day, and we'll show it to you. Also ahead, it's not just Trump's plunging poll numbers. It's young, popular, Democratic candidates who are flexing their crossover appeal, how Jon Ossoff in Georgia and James Talarico in Texas are winning over the hearts and minds and votes of people who aren't in their political party. That's later in the hour. Deadline White House continues after a quick break. Don't go anywhere.

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It is always a lie and it is always an insult to the intelligence of the American people because the assumption is that I can throw anything out there and it will stick because the American public is so uninformed or so stupid that they will not check anything I say. Even something as serious about as serious in life as groceries. We're talking about people feeding their families and they're up. with no sensitivity at all to the fact that they've caused a lot of this inflation that we're dealing with. And they're not only going to make us have a situation that is unpalpable for most Americans, they're going to insult us. They're going to, in many ways, dig deeper in knifing us in the back. It is the epitome of just mocking the American public to have this show. with this kind of misinformation, as we see the unemployment numbers today, as we see inflation going up, as we see there's no way out of this war so we don't know how the economy is going to turn around. And he puts on an apron and lies straight into the camera. Tom Homan, I was glad he had a shirt on because the last time I saw him on YouTube, he was doing like naked push-ups with some deadbeat rocker. I forget his name. But. The idea that they have any credibility selling, like Maha was a pretty important political piece of the MAGA coalition. And there's, I believe, more pesticide in the soil. There is more disease from measles. There is more. I mean, he's done nothing that he's allegedly there to sort of represent in the Trump cabinet. And Trump's mad at him for not putting out more lies about vaccines. I mean, what is going on? Well, first of all, I appreciate the Washington Post columnist or reporter going in totaling up how much it would cost to make that meal. I didn't, I mean, I would never have been quite that rigorous, but I could tell you this, that he was talking about making a meal with wild Alaskan salmon that was going to cost less than five bucks. I mean. I don't know where he gets wild laskin salmon, but you can't find a pound of wild lascan salmon anywhere in America for less than $15 a pound. And they can often run up to $25 a pound. And so unless you're eating a very, very, very small piece of wild laskin salmon, you're never going to have a $5 dollar wild alaskan salmon dinner. It's not just a lie. It's a ludicrous lie that anybody who's ever been inside a seafood store or even a grocery store understands. What's happening, Nicole, is that, you know, You made the right point, which is at the highest level, the notion of being against Maha has made people uncomfortable at various times because, you know, we have a lot of health crises in America and particularly things that relate to diet.

and nutrition and a lot of very basic things. And so the notion of a health and human services secretary who would take that seriously. And even one who, one found objectionable on a variety of levels and ludicrous and who has like a, you know, a worm in his brain, you'd still be like, okay, this is a, maybe these guys, I never had this hope because I knew he was a conspiracy theory nut on the question of vaccines. So I always thought this was going to be a disaster. But it's hard. You see that people hesitate to want to criticize. One of the things that in principle, at least, we could all get behind. We should all want to make America healthy again or healthier, right? The problem is, you know, the utter lack of credibility that doesn't just go to the misinformation and the lies and the obvious transparent lies about how much all this is going to cost and all the rest of it, but is that this person has already lost all credibility because on matters of serious science, he's demonstrated that he, much like Donald Trump and the Republicans on Capitol Hill, R.K. Junior doesn't give a crap about science either. And so how can you take seriously any kind of advice from someone who has made the world safe for the anti-back's cause? That's sort of game set match for me. And nothing he does in terms of an apron or reality show is going to change that. Yeah. All right, Tim and John stick around. The Reverend L. Sharpton, thank you for joining us today. We'll see you this weekend on Politics Nation at 5 p.m. Eastern. When we come back, good news for two Democrats, crucial to the party's hopes of winning control of the United States Senate. House Senator Jon Ossoff in Georgia and candidate James Talarico in Texas are winning over independence and even some Republicans, giving Democrats optimism for November's midterms now less than 90 days away. Don't go anywhere.

unusual in a race that's this high profile. He has been praised for his constituent services. I think that goes a long way toward helping local mayors, as you're seeing there. But this is a race that is rapidly falling down Republican target list. In fact, sources I talk to view Michigan now, especially after this past week, and even New Hampshire, as better pick up opportunities than they do in Georgia. So really, Democrats are in the fight for the Senate because they have a strong incumbent like Jon Ossoff, and that they have gotten good candidates like James Talarico in Texas, like Josh Turek in Iowa and Roy Cooper in North Carolina. Take me through how you see the James Talarico race. Ken Paxton is so, he's almost cartoonishly terrible. Does he have quiet support, or is that race what it looks like? I think to me, Texas is Democrats Lucy in the football. You know, they seem like they seem like it's competitive and certainly it is a competitive race. If Texas is going to turn blue, this is absolutely the year because you have a candidate like James Talarico that has crossover appeal and most importantly money to be able to run a statewide race in such an expensive state. And you have a deeply flawed nominee in Ken Paxton after a very bruising primary fight. So James Talarico has the opportunity to win over John. Kornan supporters, sort of those old Bush Republicans to his side. But, you know, this race hasn't really fully engaged yet. You have Republicans, they're sort of warring over who's going to come in and pick up the spending here because this is not a state that they had anticipated spending in and it's so expensive. And so I think that when you see some of these attacks come on James Talarico that they know are coming, I do think this race will tighten. But it's certainly a race that we're watching closely. We still have it in lean Republican column, but I've certainly taken note of some of the polls in the past few weeks that have shown this a really, really close race. You mentioned Iowa and North Carolina. How are those shaping up? North Carolina is the best pickup opportunity on the board for Democrats. It's an open seat. Rory Cooper has been very comfortably ahead in polling there. We rate that race as lean Democrat. And so that's the best pickup opportunity. From there, it goes to Maine. I do think the Democrats are better off with Troy Jackson after the Graham Platner debacle. And he's, I think, I'm hearing very good reviews of sort of how his campaign has been launched over the past few weeks, but it's never easy, as we saw in 2024, to launch a campaign with just about 100 days until election day. From there, it's Ohio and Alaska that I do think are the next two pickup opportunities. but we have to remember that those are in double-digit Trump states. Those are not easy. Iowa, I do think, is next. There's something really unique happening in Iowa this cycle. Three of the four congressional seats are very competitive, and they have a really strong gubernatorial nominee atop the ticket in Rob San. I mean, that's a race that's probably at this point leaning toward Democrats. So if San can sort of carry the ticket, when you have tariffs, when you have rising fertilizer, diesel prices, all being exacerbated by the war in Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. There's just something really unique happening in Iowa that Republicans are right to be very worried about. Tim Miller, how do you see the map today?

Not too, I'm a little bit more bullish on Texas than Jessica. There definitely is a lucy with the football element to it, but I think it's important to remember Beto never led in the polls. Like there was a lot of positive vibes around Beto. He raised a lot of money. He was close in the polls. I think a lot of people were excited because it was like, wow, it's Texas. Beto's only down by three. James Talarico is consistently leading in the polls. So this doesn't mean that he's going to win. We've seen poll misses, of course. We just saw one this week in Michigan. But I think that Pax is a pretty uniquely bad candidate. I think the Hispanic numbers, you know, the Scott Bottoms falling out for Republicans among Hispanics. I think that Talariko can appeal to kind of the... you know, suburban college women in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, etc. So, you know, I think that that's not completely out of the question. I think that Jon Ossoff moving to Georgia in that race, I think that race is over, basically. I don't, Mike Collins was a horrific nominee, you know, for all of the garment lending about some of the Democratic nominee issues. Mike Collins is. Twitter feed was like the Twitter feed of a groight of a college-aged racist groiper. I mean, and I think that's because he handed it over to one of those. And, and Jon Ossoff, on the other hand, Eric Erickson, and if people don't know him, he's a, he's a pretty conservative, right-wing radio host in the state that's going to have an on-again, off-again relationship with Trump, mostly on again. And he was talking, and he just was being blunt on the radio show this week around these mayor's endorsements. And he said, hey, like, Jon Ossoff, he's like, I know business guys. who are Republicans, never voted for a Democrat. But if they need something in the state, they call Assov, he calls them back. And I do think that Assov has been really good of just kind of that blocking and tackling there in Georgia. So that's where I'm at. I agree with Jessica, but Iowa. I think Iowa was in Alaska, places to watch. I mentioned Kansas earlier. I think that's a big long shot. But if you're going to look at a long shot for Democrats, I'd look at Kansas. And we recently shifted our rating this week on Kansas as well. So I do think Kansas is coming on the board. Well, there you go. We'll pull Highland into this conversation on the other side of a very short break. Don't go anywhere. I'm awfully tired. It's not just because I'm old and I walked up the stairs back there. It's because I'm tired of divisive politics. I'm tired of hateful rhetoric. I'm tired of corruption. I'm tired of criminals running for office. I'm so tired that I'm willing to fight for what's right. And James Talarico is what's right for this state.

It's a huge deal. That was Jim Ross, the independent mayor of Arlington, Texas, throwing his support behind James Talarico in the Texas Senate race. Tim mentioned the polls, a brand new one by Texas polls, shows that James Talarico has opened up a four-point lead against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the state Senate race. Well, that's within the poll's margin of error. The same poll had James Talarico and Ken Paxton tied in June. We're back with Jessica, John, and Tim. How many you've spent a lot of time in Texas, as have I? There's a lot of concern with this batch of Republicans. And I, you know, I'm out of the prediction business. But I think there's reason to trust that this lead that James Talarico has is real. Well, I just, just not to be persnickety, but, you know, it's within the margin of error, it's not really a lead. I think what there's willing to, what you should trust in, Nicole, is I think something that are the two evident right realities. One is, James Talarico is a very, very good candidate and a candidate who has certain qualities that will make it harder to beat him in the way that Republicans beat better or more. He does not read as a cultural liberal. in the way that there's not a diss on Beto, but that was part of the thing. He was always, Beto was able to, even though we worked incredibly hard, but very charismatic was kind of, could be portrayed as kind of a cultural liberal. That is not the way James Talarico comes across. The second thing I think you should trust is the thing Tim just said a second ago. It is going to blow everyone's mind, except for maybe Jessica's when I say this, but back in when that better work, Ted Cruz race, throughout that entire race. Ted Cruz's favorability ratings were always in the positive. He was above water. He was a relatively popular incumbent. It's hard for people to hear that because they hate Ted Cruz an awful lot, but he was not wildly unpopular. The net Republican, Ken Paxton, the Republican nominee. Is that him or me? Oh. Tom Homan, you're muted. You muted yourself. You got me? Now we do. We lost you right at Ted Cruz was popular. Ted Cruz, Ted Cruz was pretty popular. People like Ted Cruz amazingly in Texas. And that's not the case with Ken Paxton. Ken Paxton's probably sitting a good, like I think he's in the kind of net negative favorability territory, not net negative, but about a dozen net negative. It's a really unpopular candidate. So the combination of a good candidate for Texas and James Talarico, a bad, unusually bad candidate in Ken Paxton, and the energy of the year, which is to say so much intensity. against MAGA Republicans around the country. You got to look, it's not, although Michigan's a long way from Texas, Michigan again showed the trend, which is vast turnout for Democrats and okay turnout for Republicans. That has been a trend we've seen for 18 months. And I don't think Texas is going to be immune to that in the fall. So I don't think it's, it's by no means a gimmee state, but I am, I think that is a state that is going to be in play.

all the way until the very end. And ultimately, I think both the national parties are going to have to be in that race spending money on it because it's going to be that close when we get to November. Jessica, are you moving races directionally more frequently than you usually do because of national trends, the war in Iran and people's sentiments about the economy? Or is this about normal as sort of a midterm enters the less than a hundred-day window? I think that, right, when we start to move races more frequently, and I would continue to look at the cookpolitical.com for some upcoming moves, perhaps, in the coming weeks. But, you know, Labor Day is traditionally the start of campaign season. We get sort of more polling and things from then. But I will say that, you know, when I was talking with Republicans in the spring. I've certainly moved more races in Democrats' direction earlier than I would have anticipated places like Ohio and Alaska than I, you know, a year ago I would not have sat here and said that the Senate was even in play or I would not even have dreamed that Kansas or perhaps even Mississippi might be on the board. So I do think. the war and the fact that it has, it's a stalemate and we're, you know, it's sort of a quagmire right now and the way that it's driving up gas prices and Trump's approval rating, it does feel like all, it feels a lot like 2006 to me, um, with an unpopular war in the Middle East and unpopular president. And you have really strong candidates and races that are coming on board like it did in 2006, like places like Montana and Virginia. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And an economy that felt terrible from coast to coast. Jessica, thank you so much for joining us today. John Hellman and Tim Miller, thank you both so much for spending a Friday afternoon hour with me. Ahead for us, an update to some exclusive reporting. We brought you this week about the conditions American sailors and Marines are currently enduring on board the USS Abraham Lincoln. We'll have that after a short break. Don't go anywhere.

An update to a story we brought you earlier this week. MS Now's Priya Shrether is reporting that in two separate meetings, the families of the service members aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln angrily confronted acting secretary of the Navy, Hongkow, over the conditions that their loved ones are facing on board. They report this, quote, among the concerns brought up in the contentious meetings, the sailor's mental health, safety on deck, a lack of supplies. food shortages, water contamination, and disruptions in the mail system, which have caused many care packages en route to the ship to be lost in transit for months. One parent said that her daughter feels that she is never going to come home and believe she is going to die on the ship. Others asserted that the Navy has not done enough to take care of the sailors as they fight this war. Navy leadership expressed sympathy for what their loved ones are going through. but we're unable to tell them when the USS Lincoln will come home, citing operational security. We'll stay on top of this story. A quick break for us. We'll be right back. Thank you so much for letting us into your homes for another week of shows. We are so grateful. Hi, I'm Angie Hicks, co-founder of Angie. And one thing I've learned is that you buy a house, but you make it a home. Because with every fix, update, and renovation, it becomes a little more your own. So you need all your jobs done well. For nearly 30 years, Angie has helped millions of homeowners hire skilled pros for the projects that matter. From plumbing to electrical, roof repair to deck upgrades. So leave it to the pros who will get your jobs done well. Angie, the one you trust to find the ones you trust. Find a pro for your project at Angie. com.