Transcript: Trump Hits Record Poll Low amid Fresh Leaks of GOP Panic

As GOP panic intensifies over Trump’s cratering numbers, a veteran Democratic strategist in North Carolina explains why Trump is so toxic among independents—and why he’s plummeting in red areas, too.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the September 23 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.

Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.

We’ve been talking a lot about the polling on here because it’s crunch time now, and we’ve got some really striking new data to look at. Donald Trump’s approval just hit another record low in the polls. On the Iran war, he’s absolutely collapsed, and his tariffs are in deep trouble too. Meanwhile, Republican leaks are getting worse. Operatives are privately admitting that the bottom is falling out for the party. So here’s our question: Is it really this bad for Trump and Republicans, or is it a mirage that will soon get swamped by GOP spending?

To figure it out, we’re talking to veteran North Carolina Democratic operative Morgan Jackson, who’s on the Roy Cooper campaign, about what he’s seeing on the ground. Morgan, thanks for coming on.

Morgan Jackson: Absolutely, Greg. Great to be with you.

Sargent: So let’s start here. A new Reuters poll finds Trump’s approval nationally down at 32 percent. That’s a record low in Reuters polling for Trump’s two terms. I don’t know if it’s that low, Morgan, but the FiftyPlusOne polling averages have him at 35 percent. So it’s plausible that he’s heading down into the low thirties. Morgan, what’s your sense of where the president really is right now?

Jackson: So I think first and foremost, Greg, the president is in trouble, and he’s dragging down every Republican on the ballot. What we’re seeing, and I think what we see at every date—and the president was just here in North Carolina campaigning. And look at the kind of things that follow the president here.

One of the things he talked about was the war in Iran. He talked about gas prices, and how glad people were to be paying for higher gas prices. He talked about North Carolina, a state that he’d won three times, being the worst state in the nation. These are not things that help Michael Whatley, who is running for Senate in North Carolina.

And what we continue to see out from Trump’s numbers—you talked about his overall numbers, but his numbers with unaffiliated voters are even worse than his overall numbers.

I don’t know, Greg, that in the 30 years I’ve been in this business that I’ve seen a public official have worse numbers with unaffiliated voters. And as we know, North Carolina, as in a lot of these states, unaffiliated voters now make up the largest constituency, the largest number of registered voters.

Sargent: His collapse with independents is an extraordinary story, still unregistered by the mainstream media, in my view. Morgan, didn’t the president come down there and also kind of make fun of disaster relief and joke about it in some sense? I mean, that can’t play very well there.

Jackson: No, it can’t. And what I’ll tell you is he said, we’ve given you some money from FEMA, you want two or three billion dollars more—if Michael Whatley wins, I’ll give it to you. If he doesn’t, I won’t. And he paused, and then he joked, then he laughed, said, that was a joke. But I don’t think anybody thinks disaster recovery is funny.

I don’t think holding back federal dollars from a state that desperately needs it is funny. I don’t think cracking about hurricane recovery relief with your self-appointed hurricane czar in Michael Whatley—FEMA czar—who’s been absolutely AWOL in western North Carolina, is a joke.

Sargent: Well, yeah, and also this is something that really hit western North Carolina very hard, and that’s deep red territory. We should note that Trump’s drop in the Reuters poll is fueled by his slide among Republicans. In this poll, he’s only at 73 percent approval with them. That is catastrophic for them, if that’s anywhere close to right.

And I will say, Republicans are publicly acting as if this is the problem. They’re acting as if he’s badly got to get Republicans excited about him again. You spend a lot of time in red, rural North Carolina. What are you seeing candidly in these areas with regard to Trump support?

Jackson: So I think there are two challenges that Republicans have right now. I think the very first challenge is they have a base that is not enthusiastic about this election. They are not enthusiastic about Trump. Now think about the Trump coalition that powered him to victory in all seven battleground states in 2024.

A lot of the folks that drove the Trump coalition—and especially the folks that had switched from sort of traditional Democratic support, lower-income, non-college-educated working people—those are the folks who, when you think about high gas prices, high utility bills, high grocery bills, are feeling it every single day, even worse than the rest of the population. And so when gas jumps up to four and five dollars a gallon, the guy who drives a truck for a living is the one who feels that way more than somebody who’s working an office job or doing something else.

And so I think we’re talking about a lack of enthusiasm, because it is promises made and promises not........

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