Fox News drops BAD NEWS for Trump

**Brian Tyler Cohen** (0:01)
Trump gets some nightmare polling ahead of midterms, and I'm joined by Jon Lovett for a live show in Los Angeles. I'm Brian Tyler Cohen, and you're listening to No Lie.
I'm not sure Trump could have gotten worse news with midterms just around the corner. So a whole spate of new polls just dropped measuring Americans' responses on the generic congressional ballot, meaning who they'd like to see in charge of Congress. And here are the responses. This is five different polls. Democrats are up six points, seven points, eight points, nine points and eleven points. And that includes, I should add, a poll by Fox News where Brett Baier gives a pretty bleak outlook for Republicans on air.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:38)
You look at our polls and you look at the condition of the economy, and this is the one for midterms we look at closely, and that is excellent or good, 24 percent, only fair or poor, 76 percent. And that has got to have Republicans, Senate and House concerned.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:58)
Absolutely, Brett. And the truth is, there's not much good news for Republicans in this whole poll we did. Underwater on the economy, as you showed, underwater on affordability.
Those two issues are front and center for sure. Republicans have a little bit of a lead on national security, and I guess law enforcement. But everywhere you look, Republicans are down. Now, there is one, there is a bit of good news. You mentioned the redistricting will help them with seats in the House, and they will probably need every one of them they can get from that.

**Brian Tyler Cohen** (1:29)
And Fox News' poll showing Democrats up seven points on the generic congressional ballot, 53 to 46, is the biggest lead either party has had in Fox's own polling since 1996
Like, Tamagotchis weren't even invented yet. And, of course, the usual caveats apply here. Polling isn't a measure of what will happen in the future. It's just a snapshot of a specific moment in time. But five polls all showing Democrats up on average more than eight points is a clear trend line and one that does not bode well for Republicans. Now, unsurprisingly, what's driving these numbers is the fact that Donald Trump's approval is sitting at about 39% on average, with disapproval climbing to 57%.
Voters trust Democrats over Republicans on income inequality, on health care, on inflation, on the economy, just on issue after issue, a disaster for Republicans. But in terms of how we got here, it really isn't complicated. The entire Republican Party made a conscious decision, a choice, over and over again, to put their allegiance to Donald Trump ahead of their own voters. And now the bill has come due. Like, take Epstein, for example. Voters across the spectrum, not just Democrats, but Republicans, independents, wanted those files released. And what did we get? Months of stonewalling. We got a DOJ that, quote unquote, accidentally left out names of some of the most powerful people connected to Epstein while the survivors' names were released. And Republicans who spent that entire saga, either running interference for Trump or getting punished by Trump for stepping out of line. Nancy Mase said that her push for the Epstein Files bill cost her Trump's own endorsement. Thomas Massey, who led the bipartisan push to force a vote, got primaried. He's out in the most expensive primary in American history because Trump wanted him gone. Marjorie Teller Greene resigned from Congress. And after that, guess how many of other Republicans spoke out? None. Or how about Iran? You know, this brand new foreign war that Trump swore up and down would never happen when he was on the campaign trail.
A Reuters Ipsos poll found that just 27% of Americans approved of the strikes. A Washington Post poll found 52% opposed them outright. Even a Data for Progress poll found that a majority of likely voters, 52%, believed Trump at least partly launched the strikes to distract from the Epstein scandal. A quarter of Republicans agreed with that. Thomas Massey himself said, quote, bombing a country on the other side of the globe won't make the Epstein files go away.
But did that stop the party from, of course, falling in line? No. On Thursday, Senate Republicans voted against legislation that would end the war. They voted against it. They had an off-ramp. They've had multiple off-ramps, multiple opportunities where they could have said, we work for our constituents who are against this, not for one man's continued political survival. And at every single juncture, they chose him.
And now here we are. The most Democratic-lean generic ballot Fox News has measured in 30 years, an 11-point Emerson deficit, the biggest deficit that they've seen on their own polling. Trump's approval rating is underwater by double digits. I got to ask these Republicans, is it worth it? Is covering for Epstein worth it? Is marching lockstep into a war that most Americans oppose worth it?