Transcript: Trump Tirade over Gas Prices Backfires in Epic Self-Own

As Trump’s rhetoric about the Iran War gets worse for the GOP, MS NOW’s Steve Benen explains why Trump’s political implosion increasingly resembles George W. Bush’s in 2006.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the August 17 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 had two very strange outbursts that won’t make Republicans happy. In one, he angrily ridiculed the idea that anyone would be upset about higher costs created by his war. In the other, he brushed off the concerns of military families about the length of overseas deployments. All this comes as Trump is pushing through dramatic new changes to aircraft carriers that are roundly rejected by military experts.

And that prompted a scalding takedown from a Democratic senator who actually knows something about these topics. It occurs to us that all this captures something essential about the fix we’re in. Trump has been faking it all his life, and it’s finally catching up with us. We’re going to work through it all with MS Now’s Steve Benen, who caught a really interesting pattern buried in all this lunacy. Steve, good to have you back on.

Steve Benen: Thanks, Greg. It’s great to be here.

Sargent: So let’s start with what Trump said at a rally just now. Listen to this.

Donald Trump (voiceover): For you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember, you’re doing it so that a very evil country cannot have a—it’s really the number one state sponsor of terror in the world. We don’t want to have them have a nuclear weapon. So remember that when you have to pay a little bit more. You’re at four dollars. It’s OK. I mean, it’s—I’m not, I’m not—I’ll never apologize. I did the right thing.

Sargent: Steve, that is really something. Note the pure seething contempt for anyone who’s concerned by the added costs created by his war, his unnecessary war. He’s unable to grasp these voter concerns through any frame other than how it reflects on him. I think this is a big deal, big news. What do you think?

Benen: Yeah, I think you’re right. I mean, here we are, twelve weeks out from the midterms. Polls showed that affordability and the cost of living are the number one issue on the minds of the vast majority of voters. And so one would like to think that the head of the Republican Party, the sitting American president, would have the wherewithal to express some empathy and to say, maybe I can try and help you. Maybe I care about the pain that you’re dealing with right now, and I’m going to maybe promise you new policies or a better tomorrow in some way.

But no, he doesn’t do any of those things. Donald Trump instead stands in front of a crowd full of supporters, mocks the very idea that they’re suffering in any way, and denies any responsibility for the fact that he’s to blame for these circumstances that people are suffering through.

And so, you said you think it’s a big deal. I agree with you. I think this is the sort of thing that can resonate with most voters, who see this and will be disgusted by it. And so I would not be the least bit surprised if this is one of those quotes that just lingers in the public mind for the next several weeks.

Sargent: Yes. And this is something that Democrats really have to grab onto. I don’t want to hear anything from any Democratic strategists about how Trump’s negatives are baked in or whatever. Grab this and use it. That’s what I think they should do.

Benen: Well, wait a minute. It’s a gift handed to Democrats on a platter. I mean, here we are, looking at a set of circumstances in which Democrats are saying that they want to focus almost exclusively on kitchen-table issues. They want to avoid social issues altogether, nothing about the culture war. They want to talk about the economy. Well, great.

The head of the Republican Party just said he doesn’t care about higher gas prices. He laughs off affordability as a scam. He doesn’t accept responsibility for the fact that he’s ultimately to blame for the fact that people are suffering through these higher costs, higher cost of living, higher prices. And so, I think you’re quite right. For Democrats who are looking for a strategy for the final 12 weeks, for this home stretch between now and November—well, here it is. Donald Trump just handed it to you.

Sargent: He absolutely did. This is the sort of thing that could really seep into the coverage. So let’s now go to this other Trump outburst. Reporting had indicated that on the USS Lincoln aircraft carrier, living conditions were poor, in part because it had been out at sea for far too long in the Mideast.

Now, the audio of this exchange is not great, but listen carefully and you can hear that a reporter asks Trump to respond to families’ concerns about these long deployments. Trump just brushes it off. Listen.

Reporter (voiceover): Family members of U.S. servicemembers are concerned with the conditions aboard the USS Lincoln…

Donald Trump (voiceover): Well, no, that ship is moving. No, they’re not. That ship is moving right now, or very shortly, and it’s being replaced with another very similar ship.

Reporter (voiceover): Have the deployments gone on too long?

Donald Trump (voiceover): No, not nearly long enough.

Sargent: So there Trump says that the families just aren’t concerned about all this, because he says so. And then he says, you know, the deployment hasn’t gone on long enough, by which I think he means, we’re going to continue........

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