Republicans in disarray and Trump's war on the press
Greg Sargent discusses what's going on with Republicans right now and Trump's threats against the press.
Donald Trump is very unpopular, and Republican candidates keep losing elections as we get closer to the midterms. Furthermore, we've seen quite a few rifts develop within Trump's MAGA base over issues like the Epstein files and the war in Iran. Republicans can't get Trump's voter suppression bill passed through Congress. In short, you might say Republicans are in disarray.
It would be unwise to assume this is some kind of death knell for the MAGA movement, and I do not think it is. But they do seem to be struggling right now. So where does that leave us? Does it mean anything for where things are going?
Greg Sargent, a staff writer at The New Republic, has been covering dysfunction within the Republican Party for a long time. He's been focusing on these issues in his writing and on his podcast, The Daily Blast. I decided to call him up and see what he thinks is happening with Republicans.
"It is no surprise that the 'molten core' of Trump's base supports whatever he does. The better question is what is happening with the broader Trump 2024 coalition," Sargent says. "This coalition—which includes a significant number of Latino, young and non-white working-class voters—is distinct from the MAGA base and far more vulnerable to policy shifts."
Now, many of the people who voted for Trump in 2024 were never fully behind him, and Sargent acknowledges this. They voted for him in that moment because they were dissatisfied with former President Biden, wanted prices to go down and things like that. However, if a large chunk of those voters are now actively against Trump and Republicans, that would cause problems for Republicans running this year.
"What really happened with a lot of these voters is that they thermostatically turned on the party in power—just like what happened with incumbent parties across the world due to the post-COVID shock and inflation," Sargent says. "I think that this war—like the deportations, like the tanking economy, like inflation—is fracturing the coalition that enabled Trump to win. Republicans rely heavily on those disengaged, more infrequent, lower-information voters."
Sargent says most of these voters are against the war in Iran in "overwhelming numbers." Joe Kent, a longtime Trump ally who was the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, recently resigned over the war. Sargent says Kent is a horrible person, but he thinks this resignation is indicative of something important.
"Joe Kent’s resignation is significant because it highlights a genuine segment of the Trump coalition that is deeply troubled by 'wars of choice,'" Sargent says. "By saying—as a senior member of the intelligence bureaucracy—that there was no imminent threat from Iran, Kent directly undercuts the administration’s entire rationale for the war."
Thor Benson
While all of this is happening, Trump is also engaging in a war on the press. FCC Chair Brendan Carr has been threatening news outlets over their coverage of the war, for example. Sargent has been covering that, too, and he thinks this is part of the administration trying to control the narrative, as a lot of things seem to be falling apart.
"There's a paradox at the core of this: Brendan Carr really can't use the licensing system in any significant way to bully news organizations into becoming propaganda outlets for Trump's war," Sargent says. "But even if that's true, threatening to do so is itself an abuse of power."
Sargent says he thinks the media has been doing some "admirable" and "aggressive" reporting on the war and has gotten the truth out to a lot of people. Obviously, this has frustrated Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, but Sargent doesn't think they're winning this battle.
"His base wants to hear that he's crushing his enemies and mercilessly destroying the media," Sargent says. "It's not true. Brendan Carr actually isn't getting his way with the press. The threats are nonsense."
Trump is always doing so many things at once that it can be hard to cover him, because you have to sort through a lot of bullshit. However, it appears he might be doing too much, and that could end up backfiring on him and his supporters in Congress.
We're still seven months away from the midterms, but if things continue moving in the direction they've been moving—or get worse—then Republicans might have a hard time convincing people to vote for them. The party in power tends to lose when the midterms come around anyway, but being part of a very visible disaster probably won't help their chances.
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