Ezra Klein: My pet theory right now is that Donald Trump is not trying to win the midterm election. I'm not saying he's trying to loosen it exactly. I just don't think he cares. What he cares about is controlling the Republican party. The Republican party is his power base. The Republican party is his protection. The Republican party is how he can wield power far into the future, long after his presidency. And so control of it is what he's prioritizing. I call this a theory, but it's more like a hypothesis. It has predictions. You can test them. Trump is more unpopular at this point in his second term than basically any of his modern predecessors. The midterm elections, they're less than 6 months away. He could easily lose the House. He could actually lose the Senate now. So, what is he doing? Well, if he wanted to win the midterms, he'd be moving to the center. He'd be focusing on the things that Americans are angry about, disappointed in him about. he'd be supporting the strongest Republicans in contested races and doing everything he possibly could to bolster Republicans in vulnerable states and districts. He is not doing even a little bit of that, not even a bit. Instead, he's doing the opposite. He's announcing a $1.8 billion slush fund that appears designed to pay out to January 6 riers. He endorsed the scandal plagued, very controversial Ken Paxton over John Cornin in Texas, giving Democrats a real chance at winning a seat that should be way out of reach for them. He helped primary Thomas Massie, the House Republican, who released the Epstein files. He defeated Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana senator who voted to impeach him in his first term. He is attacking Brian Fitzpatrick, one of the very, very, very few House Republicans representing a district that voted for Kla Harris.

Ezra Klein: He's threatening to escalate the Iran war. And when asked whether he is worried about Americans finances, about their pocketbooks, about their cost of living. Here is what he said.

Trump (Clip): "Not even a little bit. It the only thing that matters when I'm talking about Iran, they can't have a nuclear weapon. I don't think about Americans financial situation. I don't think about anybody. I think about one thing. We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon. That's all."

Ezra Klein: What a gift to Democratic admakers. That clip is Donald Trump cares about control of his party, not of Congress. If he can win the election in a way that tightens his control of Republicans, like through redistricting, he'll take that. If not, he's busy. He's got other things to do. I'm not saying he wants Democrats to win, but I don't think he minds it if they do. A Democratic Congress gives him an enemy to fight. I think he gets a little lost without an enemy. It frees him from the tedious work of trying to pass legislation. It puts him back in the place he's most comfortable, which is not wielding power. It's claiming persecution. What Trump would mind, what he does fear, is a Republican party with a spine. He fears the Republican party where members of Congress begin to participate in the investigations of his scandals or they abandon him as his fortunes fall. And so he's made his choice. He is showing them that to oppose him, even from the right, is to light your political future on fire. The point isn't just to defeat Massie or Cassidy or Cornin or any of them. It's to scare every Republican left in Congress. to make sure they know that Donald Trump would gladly destroy each and every one of them personally, that he would gladly burn the entire Republican party to the ground. That's what it took to save himself. I thought it would be interesting to hear how this looks to someone whose business has been winning elections for the Republican party, particularly Senate elections. Liam Donovan is a Republican strategist and a president at Targeted Victory.

Ezra Klein: Liam, welcome to the show. Trump is now under 40% in a bunch of different polls. More unpopular at this point in his term than basically any of his modern predecessors. Let's start with him. Why is he down there?

Liam Donovan: Good to be here. Thanks for having me. I think if you think about the mood of the country that produced the comeback of Donald Trump putting together the coalition that he did, that was predicated on a rejection of the status quo and the bet that Donald Trump would be able to return us to the economy and maybe the vibes of precoid 2020. Of course, that's much harder to do than it is to talk about. And I think this is fundamentally about frustrations of how difficult some of these problems are to tackle. Uh an electorate that is not really looking to be told that everything is going well. And then when you compound that with some of the policy choices that have been made that I think might prove to be wise in the longer run, but there are legacy-minded moves, not immediate term electoral plays.

Ezra Klein: At this point in his first term he had a plus 10 net disapproval. He's now at plus 21. So he is you know more than twice as unpopular uh at this point in secure as in his first. But but it all goes to this question, I think, which is whether or not you understand the the sort of weakened political state he's in as a function of the mood of the country or actually as a function of the country's reactions to Donald Trump's policies.

Liam Donovan: I think you there are layers to it. I mean, you have to think about there's now a ceiling in a way that there didn't used to be. Um but I think we've we've seen this over the last 20 years maybe since the Obama era since our our coalitions have shifted the the parties of have countries polarized. It's very very difficult to imagine a president getting above say 48% something like that the coalition that got him there. Um so in that sense it's it's a a hard cap and so like you need to almost uh grade on a little bit of a curve in terms of where these things are. That said, the president's approval rating, I don't care which party you're from, wants to be above 40. You know, it wants to be at 42, 43. That is your firm base. What we're seeing here is that there are elements of the Republican coalition that consider themselves Republican who are disillusioned for one reason or another.

Ezra Klein: Trump as somebody who cared on some level about his popularity and who has a real sensitivity to the whims and wins of public opinion. But as his numbers have fallen in the second term, he seems to me to be going on to tilt. He is not doing the things that you might imagine a president worried about losing a midterm would do. He's not doing a big pivot to the center. or he's not trying to avoid certain kinds of controversy. He seems like he doesn't care. Why do you think that is?

Liam Donovan: Well, I think we got to step back for a minute and think about how he got here. How did Donald Trump get the nomination in the first place? And it was in in a sense running against the institutional Republican party, running against the establishment. The fact that he doesn't, you know, find himself aligned with the broader fortunes of the party and that that's not his primary object. He's not of the party. Uh that's not what drives him. That's not his imperative. That's different than any president I think we've ever seen.

Ezra Klein: So I take your point that Donald Trump does not come from the institutional Republican party, but he seems to me to care more about the control he has over Republicans than the control Republicans under him have over Washington. like he is running a risk here of losing the Senate but with I guess more control over the rump Republican senators when he could be, you know, trying to win the Senate but have a couple of people who might be more willing to oppose him. So like does he want to control Congress or control the Republican party?

Ezra Klein: Who's Paxton and why did Trump decide in the final moments of that primary to endorse him over John Cornin, possibly risking that seat?

Liam Donovan: Ken Paxton is the sitting attorney general of of Texas. He has prevailed in part by aligning himself with Donald Trump being a leader on a number of the initiatives that the president cares a lot about from the 2020 election standpoint and otherwise. Um so he has boosted his brand by wrapping himself in MAGA. John Cornin, who I adore, uh is a longtime incumbent, is very much of the flavor of the George W. Bush era. Um why does Donald Trump get involved? Look, like I said, I think Cornin became a bargaining chip for Trump.

Ezra Klein: There's a world where they wake up after the election and James Tarico won in Texas and that made Chuck Schumer majority leader and that's purely on Donald Trump's table like he chose that outcome. Are they mad about that or does he actually on some level not care that much because fighting with a Democratic Congress is in some ways a pleasure for him?

Ezra Klein: Let's walk through the Senate elections. If you're wargaming this out, what are the states you understand to be competitive?

Liam Donovan: North Carolina is the first one. It's their single best candidate in the former governor, Roy Cooper. That is a prime pickup opportunity. Then there's Maine with Susan Collins. She is a survivor. The value of Platner is he's the high variance candidate. The Ohio race is probably where Democrats have the best shot. Shared Brown is somebody who lost in the previous election.

Ezra Klein: One thing we're seeing in a bunch of different places is a schism maybe between what I would think of as the Fox News Republicans and the YouTube Republicans.

Liam Donovan: I think that is the sort of thing that needs to break through in this kind of attention economy. I think so much of it is attitudinal. Trump's gift was being able to be all things to all people and have being a walking contradiction in ways that kind of worked.

Liam Donovan: Three books I'd recommend: Matt Cottoni wrote a history of the right called The Right. Patrick McGee's Apple and China. And The Frackers for understanding our energy dominance evolution.