Rick Wilson & Bhaskar Sunkara

Molly Jong-Fast (0:00)

Hello, welcome to Fast Politics. I'm Molly Jong-Fast, and we have such a great show for you today.

Later in the show, I will talk to the nation's Bhaskar Sunkara about how socialism can deliver for the American people. But first, we have The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson talking about how Republicans are in a lot of trouble. Rick Wilson.

Rick Wilson (0:22)

Hello, Molly.

Molly Jong-Fast (0:24)

I'm about to read to you the list of people that Donald Trump had on his plane when he was flying to his latest rally, the one where he famously said some things we can't say on cable television.

Rick Wilson (0:43)

Yes, indeed. But go ahead, read the list. I think this is a sign that we will interpret for our audiences after you read the list.

Molly Jong-Fast (0:52)

Yeah, it is like the bad idea of caucus. Okay, among those traveling with Trump on his way to the Dayton, Ohio midterm rally, Boris Epstein, Esquire, with the vests, Natalie Harp, or the human printer, First Lady. Bill Colte, the king of the problematic poster board.

Rick Wilson (1:17)

Oh yeah.

Molly Jong-Fast (1:18)

Daryl Issa, Dusty Johnson.

Rick Wilson (1:21)

A blast from the past, baby, right there. Daryl freaking Issa.

Molly Jong-Fast (1:25)

Yeah. A couple of other people who don't really matter. And CIA Director John Radcliffe.

Rick Wilson (1:32)

Because why wouldn't you go to a political event with your head of national intelligence and your CIA director? Makes perfect sense to me.

But look, I have a theory of the case. This is the time of the year where the people who should be on the plane are Susie Wiles and Chris LaSavita and Tony Fabrizio and James Blair and the people that make up the core political team. But this seems more like the core Binky team. This seems more like the people who make him feel good.

And I got to tell you, I have a real skepticism about whether Susie's got any hand left at all on the tiller. I have heard from a couple of Republicans that Fabrizio and La Savita are now like the come sweet meteor of death, take us all, phase of their careers.

Molly Jong-Fast (2:24)

That's because Fabrizio is seeing those polls with John Anceloni. And John, who is that, so they're doing, so what we're seeing now is that bipartisan pollsters, Anceloni and Fabrizio are doing polls together. Those two are like the killers, right? Like they both have really good track records.

Fabrizio is like really the gold standards for Republican polling. We see that Anceloni is the same for Democratic polling. And John has shown that like the bottom has fucking fallen out for Republicans.

Rick Wilson (2:57)

And if you look at the, and here's one of the things about election polling. And my son Andrew and I were talking about this the other day because he's a pollster.

Very rarely do the numbers get better in the last month of the campaign. But they also don't dramatically drop out. But what we're seeing now, if you look at the New York Times Sienna poll from just this morning, the numbers are dropping out.

Bhaskar Sunkara (3:24)

Yeah.

Rick Wilson (3:24)

The approvals are down dramatically. The disapprovals are up dramatically. And that's across the board from everybody from the president on down to Republican dogcatcher candidates in the states. And that motion is because voters aren't getting any feedback that says, hey, we hear you.

Molly Jong-Fast (3:43)

Yeah.

Well, that's because when voters get a window into Donald Trump, it's him gluing gold stuff on the Oval or complaining about the heliport, the helipad. Or the split screen that you're getting from the Trump White House is like a golden split screen of your taxpayer funds being just- Incinerated. Yeah.

Rick Wilson (4:10)

Well, there was that clip of Kevin Hassett, I guess it was on CNN. Kevin Hassett saying like, no, the economy is great, you're just too stupid to realize it. It's so good. Things are great. It's amazing.

That is not where the voters are at right now.

Molly Jong-Fast (4:24)

And he was on with Tapper today and I was reading the transcript where he was saying like, it's not fair. You know, if I say the economy is great, I'm in a bind. And if I say the economy is bad, I'm in a bind. No, no, honey. Like people can't afford stuff.

And so whatever you say, they're going to be like this fucking bullshit.

Rick Wilson (4:44)

They the bullshit detector, the shit filter, as they say, is full.

And nobody and you have talked about this a bunch. It's the unspinnable nature of of a gas. You know, you're at the gas prices. And no matter how much of a hard Republican you are, how much Trump supporter you are, that gas is not $2 a gallon. It's $5 a gallon. That diesel, if you're a farmer or a trucker, is not three bucks a gallon. It's seven bucks a gallon or more now in some places in the country. And so the crazy part of this is his team, Fabrizio and La Savita and Blair, they do understand politics. And they understand that what should be happening is the president should be out there saying something, like, I'm going to get gas prices down, not this vague sort of woo woo. You know, we've beaten Iran 400 times now and they're obliterated and they're begging for a deal. They're clearly not.