Transcript: Trump’s Panicky Plea to GOP after Worst Fox Poll Ever Hits

As Trump publicly begs the GOP to rig the midterms, the writer of a piece on his unpopularity explains why his coalition is imploding—and why his only way out is massive cheating.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 22 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.

Donald Trump just got hit with an absolutely crushing poll from Fox News. Disapproval of Trump on the economy is at a new high, and his ratings on inflation are simply awful. This includes among Republicans. In that context, Trump’s rambling to reporters Thursday was revealing. He again urged Republicans to pass draconian voter suppression legislation, but he accidentally admitted that this is about preventing Democrats from winning elections. And on top of all that, Republicans are revolting against Trump in a fresh way. Things are really falling apart for him. Can we sustain this through election day?

We’re talking to MS NOW opinion editor James Downie, who has a good piece laying out how Trump is hitting all kinds of historic lows. James, nice to have you on.

James Downie: Great to be back.

Sargent: So let’s start with Trump’s ramblings to reporters. He brought up the SAVE Act, which is a vile piece of voter suppression legislation that would probably disenfranchise millions of people, and then said that Democrats are trying to block it. Listen.

Donald Trump (voiceover): The Democrats don’t want to pass. Now, I’ll tell you what, the Democrat voters do want to pass, 87 percent. But the Democrat politicians don’t want to pass. And the reason is they’d never be elected again. Because with their policy of open borders, transgender for everyone—I call it transgender mutilization of your children for everybody—men playing in women’s sports, all of the stuff that they do, high taxes. They want a tax hike.

Sargent: It’s complete nonsense that Democratic voters want to pass the SAVE Act. But note how Trump openly says there that passing it would mean Democrats never win another election. He actually says straight out that his voter suppression bill would lead to one-party rule in the GOP’s favor and that this would be good. Your reaction to that, James?

Downie: Well, the clip practically speaks for itself. I think from the beginning of this presidency, but particularly in the last couple of months, we’ve seen from the so-called weaponization fund to the arch to all sorts of efforts at self-enrichment. This is a man who more than ever wants to avoid accountability. And the only way to do that is to stay in power forever.

And the fact that he is pushing this sort of SAVE Act—versus, say, a bill to help on the economy or to bring down gas prices by ending the war with Iran—shows that he isn’t really interested in winning voters over in any sort of regular, normal way. He’d rather cheat and he’d rather rig the election.

Sargent: Everything is about his monuments to himself and about preventing accountability for those things. Basically, that’s where we are.

Literally everything Trump talks about pretty much all the time is the arch, the ballroom. Now he’s got this new $1.8 billion slush fund that he’s going to use to reward allies. And that’s got to be sort of lumped in with voter suppression as yet another way to try and corruptly rig the system.

Downie: Absolutely. I think that the slush fund can be seen as—and my colleague Zeeshan Aleem at MS NOW has written about this—basically not only rewarding past insurrection attempts, but a promise to people who are considering insurrection attempts in the future that this is a way you can get money, this is a way you can make money, that there will be something there for you on the other side of it.

Sargent: Well, totally. So this week’s Fox News poll is really something else. Trump’s approval among registered voters on the economy is 29 percent; 71 percent disapprove. These numbers have risen substantially in recent months. James, this is looking like something pretty close to total collapse on the economy, wouldn’t you say?

Downie: Absolutely. And not just on the economy,........

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