Republicans Twist Their Talking Points After the Zelenskyy Meltdown
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Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent, and this is Somebody's Gotta Win. So on this episode, I have on a former chief of staff for Republican Senator Deb Fischer. That's Joe Hack. He is a friend of mine who is so plugged in in Washington and can really tell me what the inside political conversation that's going on right now after that huge blowup in the Oval Office between Donald Trump and President Zelenskyy.

How do these Republican senators who've been calling for military aid for Ukraine for so many years suddenly go back to their constituents and say, hey, I was wrong about that one. We need to follow the president in this new stance that seems to be more pro-Putin. We'll also talk about the real politic on the ground. How many people still have an appetite in America for the war in Ukraine?

We'll talk about the continuing resolution, which is basically a funding bill that keeps the government open. But it's the same one that Republicans passed during the Biden era. But now we're in the Trump era and they're still passing the same bill. What's going on over here, right? We'll see if they pass that bill just to keep the government open.

That's what President Trump wants, but they are working on a bigger budget through reconciliation. And they need to do that to pass their tax cuts. That's what they really want to do. That's top of agenda. But to make it budget neutral, that means they need to slash money in some places in the budget. And they have their eye on Medicare and Medicaid.

How is that going to play at home? I mean, you just had Elon Musk say on Joe Rogan that Social Security is a big Ponzi scheme. Are Republicans really going to go after entitlement programs that their own constituents use like Medicare and Medicaid? This could be politically disastrous. So I'm going to talk to Joe Hack about that. We're going to preview the State of the Union. What will be the things that Donald Trump takes credit for? What will he name as his agenda going forward?

We'll talk about the tone and the things that Donald Trump will take credit for and where he's moving ahead. We'll also talk about the Democratic rebuttal. Democrats have chosen a moderate senator from Michigan, Alyssa Slocke, and she was just elected to president.

speak for them. She is a former CIA analyst. She is no AOC or Jasmine Crockett. This is someone who won a state that went for Donald Trump, Michigan. And she's out there now with a different perspective. So we'll see if this reflects the future of the Democratic Party. We'll also talk about some of the emerging voices in the party, like Senator Chris Murphy and Rahm Emanuel, who is the former mayor of Chicago and Obama chief of staff.

He seems to be out there and ready for a fight. Will he emerge as a kingpin in the Democratic Party? Stay tuned for all of that and more. Joe, thanks so much for joining the show. So happy to be back, Tara. Thanks for having me. Where do we even start? I'm very curious about how Republicans are kind of like twisting themselves into pretzels to sort of explain this. Because, for example, someone like Deb Fischer from Nebraska, your former boss,

She was very pro-Ukraine. I believe she's visited Ukraine. She's fought for spending. So has Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House. Last year, he fought for $50 billion in aid for Ukraine. He said he felt like this mattered, that this fight was worth it because of the way history would judge him. And now he's saying that Donald Trump was right.

painting him in ways that I could never have imagined before. I mean, this is a man who's literally welcomed Zelensky into Congress. This is someone that he's really been astonished to be a defender of. And now he's sort of saying, eh, Trump was right. Zelensky was wrong. He should have been more gracious. This whole idea that he should have been more gracious too, I just can't get

wrap my head around. Yeah, I think there's a few things going on. First of all, I'd say there's a difference between supporting Zelensky and supporting Ukraine, right? Zelensky himself had royally pissed off Biden before. You might recall the news stories about some sort of heated phone calls between President Biden and Zelensky over strategy and funding as well.

So this isn't the first time an American president has been frustrated with Zelensky. As far as sort of shifting Republican attitudes and changes in Republican posture, it is really interesting to see people like Lindsey Graham come out to the sticks at the White House and say that it seems like there needs to be new leadership in Ukraine today.

if they're going to continue to have a partner in the United States. I mean, that's a big deal. That's a big shift. And just the day before, Lindsey Graham was among a group of senators who met with Zelensky at the Capitol. So there is a shift happening. I think there's frustration with Zelensky himself. I don't know that that necessarily translates to Republicans writ large,

sort of abandoning the cause. I don't think you're seeing that. Even just a week or two prior at the security conference in Munich, you saw Roger Wicker, who chairs the Armed Services Committee, staunch defender of Ukraine, has not wavered there. But I do think it's also interesting to see that the president's comments and his behavior have gotten some results that perhaps

perhaps are exactly what he wanted, right? Like over the weekend, you saw Zelensky go back to Europe, meet with European leaders who feel the pressure, are stepping up, are expediting their own funding, their own contributions to this war effort.

and sort of seem to be taking more ownership, which I think very much is what Donald Trump has wanted. And so I think that there is a desire among Trump and his supporters to sort of shift this effort from an American-led one to more of a European-led one. And I think you could argue that

that what happened, which was shocking to watch, I mean, it was like watching a TV episode, right? Like it was wild. It was insane. And Trump even said that at the end, he's like, this would be great television. And I love how he threw in the Hunter Biden laptop into all of it. I mean, he always somehow figures out a way to weave that in. It was shocking. It's amazing.

I felt very uncomfortable for Zelensky. Like, I don't think the posture made Donald Trump or J.D. Vance look big and strong. It made them just look like bullies who were basically attacking a man who's clearly in a state of distress coming from a war zone.

But I do agree with the idea that Americans are tired of paying for the war. Or they're just tired for the war in general. They don't want the fighting to happen. And Trump keeps saying the same thing over and over again. And his team keeps saying the same thing over. It's a talking point. We want to stop the deaths. We want to stop the bleeding. We want to stop the... And I think everyone can appreciate that. And I'd

really don't think Americans really care what the line looks like, whether it's an S or this or that between the division between Ukraine and Russia. I don't think they care about the bottom line. I think they want the war to stop, but

but it was very humiliating. The way he led into the meeting, I mean, calling him a dictator days before, basically siding with Putin, not, you know, not condemning the Russian invasion into Ukraine. I think Trump had long been provoking Zelensky. Like, I don't blame him for coming a little tweaked. Although, you know, coming on your knees asking for money is pretty tough. Yeah, and I don't even think that Zelensky, like, was aggressive in the press conference or in the spray leading up to that moment, right? Like, it

It almost felt like he was being provoked. And it felt very orchestrated. Yeah, it felt like, and I know all the press says that J.D. was not planning to do that, but it was almost like when a TV host jumps in or a reality star just says something wild to create a moment, you know, a viral moment. Like, it's like he wanted a viral moment. And my colleague Peter Hamby at Puck said that. He was like, J.D. Vance is essentially a podcast host.

I wonder if Trump got annoyed that he tripped on his own moment and he was the star of the show, because if we know one thing about Donald Trump, he likes to be the star of the show. And I wonder if J.D. may have overstepped. Yeah, I don't know. I think I think Trump also probably appreciated the fact that Vance was sort of not sticking up for him, but sort of like noting, you know, you should be more thankful, so to speak. Yeah.

I could see Trump buying into that. But it does strike me that it was very staged in a way. Like, wasn't it? I think it was they called last question and that was the last question. And they sort of waited for that moment to do it all. So anyway, I mean, that's all to say there was a lot of theater going

But what's interesting is I think the theater sort of yielded the results Trump wanted. And I think the theater was controversial. It made us all uncomfortable. This is not the way we are accustomed to like watching diplomacy, but this is the way Trump operates, right? And I think you could argue that he's accomplishing his goals and his supporters view it that way, right? I mean, it was amazing to watch in the moments after you're on these distro lists too, you see it, like all the content coming out of the White House communications shop

pushing congressional tweets of support, figures in media tweets of support, people from the right, leading conservative voices tweeting support. I mean, they made this into a viral moment. Like, they sped it. So it all just felt very deliberate and they leaned into it. And I think you could argue the president's gotten what he wanted. No, I think you're right. I mean, you have Europe saying they'll increase their...

their contribution to NATO at five to five and a half percent. And I think Americans understand that they don't want to continue to be supporting NATO at the level that America is supporting NATO. So that makes sense to me.

And I do think that Trump understands that politically the Ukrainian war is not popular anymore. It's not Slavia Ukraine. And I think Zelensky, on the other hand, has been very effective at playing at the American heartstrings as well because it is distressing to see a war, a land war in Europe where people are literally getting mowed down, hundreds of thousands of people dying. Now, when Trump says, you don't have the cards, you don't have the cards, I don't necessarily agree with him because Russia is not in a good place right now.

I mean, I know that in some places there are a standstill, but Russia is significantly weakened. I mean, the fact that they couldn't completely seize all of Ukraine is pretty significant. Yeah, they're bringing in North Koreans to fight. I don't think that Russia has as strong of a hand as Trump is giving. And I think Zelensky is worried that Trump will sell the whole farm for a buck to Putin and then they'll lose basically everything that is valuable in their country and their land. Although this mineral deal, I mean, I don't...

I don't believe that it was a real thing. I think that it's not very valuable. It was something that Trump did to placate the base to make it seem like he had gotten some sort of deal in exchange for more support for Ukraine because, you know, a lot of these minerals are probably underneath tanks in the eastern part of Ukraine, right? And,

and areas that are basically being run by Russia for many years at this point. And the minerals are dirty. I don't know that they're necessarily rare earth. From my sources inside the administration, a lot of them are very dubious about the actual nature of this deal and if it was really something that was that viable or beneficial for either of the parties, or if it was more just the impression of something, like almost like Trump's executive orders that have no teeth. Yeah, exactly. I think it also just

sort of feeds into the narrative that Trump is interested in propagating of getting results, right? Even if the results are a little bit smoke and mirror-ish, but still just the notion of action and the notion of America getting something is important to him. And I think that sort of allowed him to get there. But as we all know, it sort of fell apart. And to your point, Tara, on like the whole war weariness thing,

I think that's real. But I also think there's sort of a disconnect because this has been going on for so long that the American people don't really have a sense even of what's going on in this war. Where are we? Is there any potential for victory in the near future? How does this thing keep grinding on? And so I think there's sort of a disconnect and that creates political space

And that creates space for the president to sort of lean in and push his agenda. So, yeah, I think I think we're seeing this interesting mix and confluence of things. And you are seeing the Republican Party, I think, just start to shift a little bit and how it's talking about this and how it's how it's handling it. Definitely interesting to watch. Zelensky has said one more year and he thinks he can topple Russia, but I don't think the appetite is strong for another year of war in America, at least.

We'll see if the boots on the ground strategy from the Europeans helps. But I think Trump just wants a deal to make this over. I mean, he basically ran on that position. It is a little strange, though, because a lot of the members of the Senate, especially Republicans, they have stood by Ukraine this entire time. Like your former boss, Deb Fischer. I mean, how is she communicating this right now? Yeah, look, I mean, I think I think Republican senators, as I said, continue to support

Well, first of all, they oppose Putin, number one, right? But Trump isn't so clear about that. She's playing a little bit of a different game, I think. But the members of the Senate who have been very clear on this are clear that Putin's a bad actor. They oppose the incursion. They oppose the aggression, number one. Number two, there's, as you know, for the last few years, across sort of Republicans, there's been different questions as to how do you best provide aid? How do we...

do so in a way that advances American interests, whether that's the development of our munitions that we're selling over there, which is good for local economies in places like Alabama, or whether that's just aligning with our interests overseas. There's been sort of a mixed approach on that.

But I would say, generally speaking, that the members that have supported Ukraine still support Ukraine. Lindsey Graham still supports Ukraine. He's just saying, get rid of Zelensky, because Zelensky is problematic and cannot work with Trump. So we need new leadership. That's what they're saying. So I think that's the shift. The shift is not, we no longer support Ukraine. The shift is, Zelensky is problematic. He

He doesn't know how to play in the sandbox with Trump. This cannot work. Ukraine needs new leadership if the United States is going to be able to continue to stay involved. And to me, that's where we're seeing things change. I do think that a lot of people don't realize that the $50 billion in aid, it was a lot of military equipment that we had that was just...

and that we wouldn't have actually used ourselves. We cleared out our own coffers, essentially a military aid, and now we're using that $50 billion to build buildings

New artillery and planes and anti-tank missiles and all of that. I'm pretty sure all of the production of that equipment is in the United States and most of it in red states, right? Yeah. And that's it's interesting because that's something that like J.D. Vance pushed back on. I mean, J.D. Vance has been vocally opposed to this war effort for years. Right. So for many, we're in as a Senate candidate.

which was interesting because Ohio is home to like a massive Ukrainian diaspora. So it was interesting that he, he still ran on that in his campaign. He did not shy away from it, which is why it, again, going back to the idea of, of the incident we've been talking about, like it,

It was Taylor made for, it was Vance's moment, right? This was his issue that he's been talking about, that he's been passionate about. It was his America first moment. And you have to sort of wonder, like one of the questions I've been wondering generally over the past few months is how do Vance and Elon coexist? Because like they're both sort of acting like vice presidents right now. And everyone's just been focusing on Doge and Elon and everything he's been doing.

Um, and, and vice president Vance has gone overseas and he's made some speeches to sort of mixed reviews. Um, but this was his first kind of viral moment since he became vice president. Um, and it, it just seemed right in his wheelhouse and very intentional, uh,

And really played into that media base that just loves them. And it fed that beast. Yeah, it looked like Vance was trying to get a little moment in the sun where he hasn't gotten much of that lately. All right, I'm going to shift on from this topic. Let's talk about something really sexy, the continuing resolution. I'm kidding. It's a bill basically that will keep the government funded until the end of the fiscal year. It is the same continuation.

continuing resolution, by the way, that was voted on during Biden's term. So we are essentially continuing a Biden budget. Tell me, Joe Hack, how did this happen and how are the Republicans getting away with this, especially those fiscal hawks when they just continue to pass Biden era budgets? Yeah, this is kind of idiotic in like every sense, right? So I

I mean, first of all, the fiscal year ended in September. We're now in March. Is that right? Essentially, yes. So what we're fighting over is half a year's worth of spending. So we've already gone through half a year on autopilot.

We could have actually passed a bill in December, so before Christmas, that would have made some policy changes that would have been wins for Republicans, that would have cleared the decks and would have allowed Congress to just focus on the one thing Trump cares about, which is his tax cuts bill, his big, beautiful bill, tax cuts, border defense. But really tax cuts. But really tax cuts.

Um, but instead there were some people around the president who said, no, no, no, you know, we need to get our fingerprints on this spending bill. We can't just punt it. We need to make cuts. We need to do our thing. And so I think the president was persuaded by that. And, um, they kicked the can to March to allow the president and his team to get into place and to start the conversation. Of course, um,

You know, there's no progress. They have no agreement even on the amount of money that we should be spending. And this is all going on at the same time, just to make it more confusing for everyone. This is all going on at the same time that Congress is starting its conversation on budgets to enable tax reform. So there's a whole separate track here.

um, where Congress it's called reconciliation. And that's the only time I'll say it during this conversation, but it's just a terrible word. Terrible. The whole thing is terrible. Sorry. Working in it for lobbying. And basically we're running out of money though, by March, we're going to have a government shutdown. There's no plan. There will be a government shutdown, even though Republicans control both chambers. Yeah. It seemed like, it seems like everyone's positioning themselves to avoid it at this point. So like,

The president has said, let's just do a straight funding bill, a CR, through the end of the fiscal year. Pass the Biden budget, so I don't have to deal with this. Essentially, yes. Which, if I were a Democrat, that's what I would say, right? We're passing Joe Biden's budget. The speaker initially was insisting on Joe's

style cuts that Elon had sort of started to propagate. But he has walked back, recognizing that Democrats are never going to go along with that. So the question we're at now, the impasse now, is whether or not Democrats insist on language that is explicitly requiring the president to spend the money. Because

The way it was designated. The way it was intended by Congress. Because there's currently controversy as to whether or not Trump's doing that through his various executive orders, the freezing, all that stuff, all that shit that's driving Democrats insane. The freezing of the grants, that time when he shut the government down by accident for 24 hours. I forgot about that. Too much has happened since then. I've repressed and moved on. Like all of America. Never forget. Anyway, so long story short,

Everyone's positioning themselves, I feel like, to try and avoid it. I think the question is, do enough Democrats come on board? I sort of think they will.

um, it seems like the Democrats made the calculation on themselves that a shutdown wasn't the way to put the pressure on Trump to score points. I mean, that's another thing worth talking about Tara is just like, where the hell are the Democrats? Like still total disarray, no strategy, no message, um, nowhere. It's kind of crazy, um, to think that we are this far into the year. We'll get to that. Um, and there's just like,

I was in a group of them last week and they're still arguing over, you know, whether or not Kamala should have been on Joe Rogan. And I'm like, holy shit. Like, why are we still talking about this? This is insane. They're just licking their wounds. I mean, no one has risen up, which we'll get to later on. Is it Rahm Emanuel? Is it Gavin Newsom with his new podcast?

Or is it Alyssa Slotkin, the moderate from Michigan who won in almost all of the districts plus one? It's a state that obviously Trump won. I don't know. I'm not that jazzed on all of them, but we'll keep going. Okay, I want to get back to the budget because there has been a lot of talk about

The fact that the only way to be able to pay for these tax cuts, which will obviously add trillions of dollars to the deficit and the border wall and the energy bill, is that you're going to have to cut from Medicare and Medicaid. And Democrats are putting that out. Are Republicans going to have to cut from Medicare and Medicaid? So the president has said no. Senate leadership is opposed to that.

There are some members of the House that are more open to what they would call reforms of Medicaid. So adjusting eligibility requirements, who can access the program. What's interesting is like a lot of people don't even realize they're on Medicaid because in many cases, there were most cases, Medicaid

Medicaid essentially gets like block granted to states. So it's federal money that goes to states and then states use it to assist lower income individuals. But it's not called necessarily Medicaid. Sometimes it's called like Ohio Plus or California Access or whatever the state wants to call it. So until someone loses access to that program, they don't necessarily get

know that their Medicaid is being cut. So that's part of the Democrat message challenge, which I'm sure they'll overcome. But you bet your butt that they are going to be hammering that over and over because it dovetails so neatly with two Republican problems. One is the oligarchy, a row of billionaires that Trump loves to hang with and have become sort of like part of our brand. And the other challenge is just

Tax reform generally, the message tends to be that it favors business and corporations. So Republicans need to be super sure that they are doing their part to help working families as well and message the hell out of that and make sure that that gets through. Otherwise, this sort of trifecta of like the oligarchy plus this tax package, plus this notion of gutting Medicaid to pay for it,

could be a really lethal witches brew, um, that could crush us in midterms. And I think Trump gets that. And you're starting to hear more talk about like Trump's thinking about midterms and like understanding that he doesn't want half presidency. Um, so I, you know, I think Trump's going to have to lay the gauntlet down with house Republicans on this Medicaid question, but, um, it is difficult to achieve the amount of savings that need to be a

achieved without making reforms on entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid. And when you say reforms, you mean changing the eligibility for Medicare and Medicaid, making it basically more difficult to qualify for them. You know, it's interesting because Elon Musk was just on Joe Rogan on Friday. I tried listening to it. It was just, it can become too unlistenable. I will say it started in a really funny way with the bitchy grok.

But he said that Social Security is a pyramid scheme. He called it a Ponzi scheme. I mean, this guy has so much power in the government. Why are we supposed to believe that they are actually looking out for saving entitlements? I mean, this is the other thing.

The red states, you know, their voters, their constituents, they use Medicare. They use Medicaid. You take that away from them. That's a quick way to hand the working class back to the Democrats. You bet. I mean, there are tons of Trump voters on Medicaid. Not even just the working class. Well, yeah, exactly. Like retirees, by the way, seniors who vote religiously, right? Seniors don't miss elections. They don't miss midterms. They show up. You even sniff around Medicare or Medicare.

with touching Social Security, you're screwed. Which is Trump. I mean, to his credit, Trump has been crystal clear that he will not touch any of those. That is not a Trump thing. That's other people around him, maybe like Elon saying that or House Republicans saying that. You don't hear much in the Senate about that. It's much because

Because it's toxic. You can't do it, right? Like, it's the third rail. Yeah, I mean, Republicans have always been the fiscal hawks, as they say. Trump is not one of them. And they've been long looking at entitlements, as they've called them, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. But what made Trump stand out and what helped him co-opt that working class white nationalist base was that he...

He said, I will not touch those programs because he knew that they needed them and were using them. Exactly. There are some issues ahead for the Republicans. We'll see if they are able to keep the government open. And of course, Democrats are going to say this is on Republicans. They shut their own government down. I want to keep going, though, because we have so to that is the State of the Union tonight. Actually, if you are listening to this on Tuesday, it is tonight. What are you looking out for? You know.

The golden age of America, Tara. Like, that's what I expect to hear. You said it, not me. I think we're going to hear a big victory lap from President Trump. I think he is going to argue that he has had a very effective first, not quite 100 days, but first few months in office. And

And to be just super blunt, I think it's hard to argue that he has not had extraordinary impact quickly. He has not, you know, he's made a lot of changes on the foreign policy stage quickly. He's done it in ways and speed and rest that no one thought was possible within the administrative state. So like there's a new sheriff in town. Everyone gets it, right? There's changes everywhere.

And there's, I think for me, one of the biggest things is just the juxtaposition of him to Biden, right? This idea of like, leapy Biden, like what was happening for the last four years to Trump, who you may not agree with everything he says or does, but holy shit, there's so much happening, right? And like the American people like action. We like action. We like feeling like we're doing something. And Trump,

gives us that. And he gives us stagecraft, right? He gives us Kristi Noem on a horse at the border with her hair extensions. Like, we have stagecraft. She's riding in the ice vans with her ice vests. Like, they know how to kind of play this stuff. And, and,

To us, it seems hokey, but to a lot of people, they're like, look at that. That's what we want, right? Like we want them at the border. We want them down there. But you or I watch this stuff and we're like, oh, this is so dorky. No, people love action and the polls show it. And he can actually prove that migration is down, that the border crossings are significantly down. That's something he can absolutely tout. Now, here's something, though, he can't tout.

The reason that people elected him, they elected him because of migration, so he was right to go after it, right? I mean, his numbers aren't exactly impressive in terms of who he's deported, but he certainly deterred more entrants into the country. But he has not gone after the thing that people really elected him for, and that was inflation, bringing down the price of goods,

Costs of living. I was shopping yesterday. There were five eggs and they were packs of six. So half a dozen at the grocery store, 846 for each one of them. And I know Democrats are like, eggs, eggs, eggs. And I sound corny for talking about eggs. But I walked away.

away from the eggs. I have four here, my golden baby eggs in my refrigerator. Cost of food has gone up so much. It is insane. And I don't even have kids to feed. I can't even imagine. So I got a little sick to my stomach. I got to say, well, I was pushing that cart and I thought, ooh, I'm not feeling very hopeful. I'm not feeling very optimistic about the future. And I

not a partisan person. Like I don't sit up at night, like party warrior either side. Like, I'm just like, Ooh, what is going on here? You're so right. And it's so interesting because that was always Trump's biggest strength. Right. And like, like he pulled the best on, um, was the economy and his ability to, to fix this. Um, but as you, as you started to see Trump concede over the course of the last few months in various interviews, like

This is easier said than done. And there's only sort of so much a president can do. There's like macro economic things happening around us. So I'm not making excuses. I'm just saying, I think when you move out of campaign mode, there's like a shift and you saw the shift in his rhetoric. And so I think it is a huge Achilles heel for him. And I think if he cannot

demonstrate progress there, that's another huge problem in the midterms. Because you're exactly right. That is the number one reason why he was elected. It has not improved. And I'm no economist, but it seems like there's a lot of shakiness in the economy right now. There seems to be a lot of...

weak thoughts that I'm worried about. And I also don't have kids and don't have to buy eggs for them. But it is expensive. And I think people are tired of it. I think people are giving him a chance to fix it and get it's not necessarily going to happen overnight. But he's got to deliver. He's got to deliver because that was it. That was the campaign. That was what it was all about. So it's

It's on him. I mean, the Zelensky show is a big distraction right now, right? Distraction, yeah. And Gaza and his Gaza hotels and casinos, it's all a distraction. And I don't think people, we know that. They don't elect presidents typically for foreign policy. They care about their bottom line. They care about their pocketbooks. They care about their day-to-day. And I don't think he's actually addressed that quite yet.

I don't think people have felt the impact of it. I don't even know that they felt the impact of the deportations because there haven't been that many yet. But perhaps they feel better that the migration at the border seems more secure. But I can't think of anything that substantially makes you feel different. A lot of these executive orders are just culture war stuff. The fact

that English is the official language. Like, what does that do for me? I don't really care. I think people are on pins and needles about the tariffs. Midnight tonight, you know, Trump will decide what he plans to do. But in the meantime, a lot of business leaders, not just at the, not just big corporations, but small business leaders are kind of on hold. They're waiting and watching and seeing whether they should be continuing to develop. And I just think that the prices eventually trickle down. So,

We'll see what happens, but this is a very unstable, unsteady time, and Trump is certainly not soothing anyone. It feels a little COVID-esque a bit in the sense that we've got an avian bird flu. We've got kids with measles in Texas. One of them just died, and now RFK Jr. is saying, okay, maybe you should talk to your doctor about vaccines.

And it's, you know, there's a lot of things happening right now, the flights. And it just seems like he's on a different path. Like he's like, no, no, no, follow my narrative while everyone else is experiencing something different. It's like, look over here. I don't know how long that lasts for. Yeah, I agree. And I think another sort of economic challenge that no one's even quite talking that much about yet is to sort of like

the second and third tier ramifications of all these changes with regards to federal employment and the reduction of government. Think about all the contractors that rely on government as their vendor and all the business and economic development that creates in different states. So those reductions are also going to have impacts in those states too, many of which are red states. And many of these programs are benefiting Republican voters. So

This is all going to have different impacts. I think what's challenging in the Trump environment is that there's all these cross currents and you're not really sure what's going to rise to the top at any given moment.

And so I think you're right. I think the economy is definitely a challenge. I think Trump would argue and will continue to argue that the solution to that is two things. One, his tax cuts, which is going to be what he continues to talk about and why we need to pass them to jumpstart the economy. And the second thing is going to be leveling the playing field with his tariffs. Now, as you said, tariffs are going to drive up costs in many regards for American consumers. But I mean, we saw last time

soybean farmers in states like Nebraska who were getting hit by Trump's trade war still supporting the president, not deviating from their support. They also had subsidies, farmer subsidies. They did. You're exactly right. Is that going to happen this time or are they going to be on the Doge chopping block? I don't know. But you do know that Trump has ways of softening the pain, you know,

in smart political ways when he wants to. So yeah, as long as Elon Musk doesn't get in the way and like flag it as something that, okay, I want to get to Alyssa Slotkin and the Democrats. So they chose a moderate. They chose Alyssa Slotkin who has a background in the CIA. She was an analyst, I believe. So she's considered, you know, she's from Michigan. It's a purple state, went for Trump this time. And

And they chose her. They didn't go with AOC. They didn't go with one of the Jasmine Crockett, one of the young stars. They didn't go with even, you know, a governor like Gavin Newsom, who has his own podcast. They went with her. She checks a few boxes, as you said, but she also like I don't think they necessarily wanted to pick someone that's like in this conversation of presidentials. Right. They wanted someone who's sort of.

newer. Your listeners may recall after sort of the last election where there were a lot of postmortems, she was pretty vocal in terms of the need for Democrats to sort of return to the kind of kitchen table issues that voters were talking about. And she ran a disciplined campaign in Michigan where she talked a lot about that and tried to avoid some of the more

progressive or cultural stuff that the party was getting into. And so, you know, I think she'll be fine. I think the bigger question generally is just like we talked about earlier, what is the Democrats' message and strategy moving forward? Because you see this time around, it's clear it's not the resistance, right? Like you're not seeing that kind of orchestrated, top-down approach to resisting Trump. I think there's

There's some people like John Fetterman who are looking for ways to engage with Trump and Trump's voters and try and find issues where they can work together. And then there's others like Chris Murphy, right, who's out there very aggressively opposing the president and now his cabinet, saying he regrets his vote for Marco Rubio for secretary of state, his former colleague from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Chris Murphy is taking a real...

strong stand as a leader of the Trump opposition. So there's kind of a scramble going on. Everyone's trying to figure out where they belong. No one quite seems to know what to do. But you could see that in the way the cabinet nominees were processed. There wasn't really a clear strategy as to who was doing what.

It was kind of very ad hoc. And so, you know, I think the wandering through the wilderness continues. I think there's a vacuum of leadership generally. Like, I don't think the movement is looking to Chuck Schumer. Hakeem Jeffery seems lovely, but just...

I don't know, there's not much happening. So I think that the activist community remains very angry and is demanding action from their elected officials against Trump. And there's some real friction there in ways that Democrats, I have not seen experienced before, where their voters are crucifying them for not doing enough. And I've talked to some of these elected officials, these Democrats,

And they're just kind of like, look, this is what we said was going to happen during the campaign. The American people elected this man, elected this administration, and so it's happening. There's only so much we can do. So they're very frustrated. But their base is like red hot.

And is looking for an outlet and a channel. And so I think it's interesting to see someone like Chris Murphy kind of trying to tap into that. Someone who's viewed, I think, with leadership aspirations within the Senate and someone who's not afraid to still be sort of boldly liberal. Yeah. Yeah.

in an environment like this where progressivism is sort of not particularly zoned. Does that make sense? Yeah. And I know Rahm Emanuel is at one point floated as a possible DNC chairman and he was just on Bill Maher and,

He's seen as like a knife fighter. I see him more as a political operative than as a politician. But, you know, he's feisty. He'll fight for the party. His leadership in Chicago wasn't great. And he was asked about it on Bill Maher. Right. Why should we trust you? Because a big hit on Democrats is their is their management of their cities. Right. And the fact that they all seem to fall into disrepair. And I don't think he can hide from that. I mean, do you think

Rahm Emanuel is somebody who could run for president? I don't know. I think what's appealing about Rahm is what you said is he's a knife fighter. He's scrappy. He's not afraid to go there. He's got a mouth on him. He knows how to win tough races. And he's also not afraid to kind of like tell his people to shut up or stand down. Like he will stand up to his people, which has to battle sometimes. Yeah.

And I think he's sort of progressive enough. And he has, I think, two problems. One is, he said he's more an operative. He's kind of like evocative of that Obama era, which they got a lot of shit for sort of helping or what they did during Kamala's race, right? Whether they were responsible for or lost his old operatives, that whole thing. So I think there's going to be the generational question of,

of like, do we need to just move on from like all these Obama people? Is this just like another one of them? But I think his bigger problem, Tara, is exactly what you identified, which is

the city of Chicago and what's going on there. And Republicans will absolutely crucify him on crime and murder and just all that stuff. Whether or not it's his fault, that's his because it was his show for a long time. But yeah, you're right. A lot of Democrats are talking about him. Yeah. I mean, he pivoted on Bill Maher and he was like, education, why are our eighth graders not able to read? So, you know,

I didn't think he was that strong though. He's gonna have to beefen up his response when he's hit with that. But Joe, I would love to keep talking to you for so much longer, but I know you have to run. We covered a lot. Yes, we did cover a lot and there's a lot more to come, I'm sure. Enjoy the speech tonight and thank you for having me.

That was another episode of Somebody's Gotta Win. I'm your host, Tara Palmieri. I want to thank my producers, Christopher Sutton and Connor Nevins. If you like this show, please rate it, subscribe, share it with your friends. If you like my reporting, check me out at YouTube at T-A-R-A-P-A-L-M-E-R-I. You can also find me on X, TikToks, Instagram, Blue Sky, Substack. It's all at Tara Palmieri. You can find my latest work there. See you again.

State of the Union I have on special guest Julie Mason.