Transcript: Trump TV Ads Backfire as Poll Shows He’s Shockingly Toxic

As the saga around Trump’s taxpayer-funded ads grows more absurd, the author of a piece exploring Trumpian propaganda explains why no amount of disinfo can protect the GOP from Trump.

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the October 1 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.

This week brings two related developments. Donald Trump just hit another record low in the polls, and Donald Trump is using taxpayer money to fund propaganda ads in the midterms that are all about himself. He doesn’t seem to see the disconnect with that. The ad scheme is corrupt and probably illegal, and an official just leaked something damning: the corruption of the scheme is in part the point, because it draws media attention to the ads, which amplifies them. We think that says a lot about how Trumpian and autocratic propaganda really work.

So we’re talking to David Corn, who has a good piece for The New Republic exploring how Trumpian disinformation really functions. He’s author of How Russia Won, a book about Trump, Russia, and America. David, good to have you on.

David Corn: Great to be on The Blast.

Sargent: Let’s start with the polling. Quinnipiac has a new survey finding that Trump’s approval is down at 34 percent, and he’s down to 31 percent on the economy, which is an all-time low for both terms in Quinnipiac polling. Democrats are leading in the generic House ballot matchup by 51 to 39. That’s 12 points.

David, I don’t think it’s that high, but we’re getting there. Nate Silver’s average has it at nearly 10 points now, the generic ballot average. All indications are, one, Trump continues to drop, and two, the Dem lead continues to expand. Is that too optimistic? Your thoughts?

Corn: Well, I mean, he’s at lower numbers than Jimmy Carter, right? And they keep dropping. Yeah, it’s showing us kind of where his floor or basement is. And I always thought it was around 30 points. One or two outlying polls have him down as low as 29, but the average is still low-to-mid thirties.

So I think there’s still a little bit further for him to drop. About 30 percent of people look at him as an information source and thus believe what he says. And he’s basically losing almost everybody up to that, because people can see what’s happening.

In my book, and in the piece I have in The New Republic, I write about how he won the messaging war on Russia by saying over and over again it was a hoax, it was a witch hunt, it was a deep state conspiracy, Russia, Russia, Russia—and the Democrats, a lot of the media, gave up. That’s a big part of my book.

But people are seeing the gas prices every day. They see the war is not over. They see what the trade policy did in terms of the economy. They see innocent, law-abiding residents being brutally apprehended. They see fellow Americans being shot. So in the face of all this, Trump’s propaganda—which is endemic to all authoritarians—is not getting traction. And that’s a key point.

Sargent: It really is. And Trump is now using taxpayer money to fund the propaganda. He’s now run three ads that claim to be funded by the U.S. government, in the ads themselves. One shows Trump saying he’s waging a final battle against the Marxists and the globalists. A second shows something similar, with Trump vowing that America will never go communist. A third shows Trump’s July 4 speech at Mount Rushmore.

David, where are these running? And can you explain why this is so corrupt?

Corn: Well, they’re running a lot on football games. You know, they’re trying to reach football watchers, which tells you that they think they’re losing middle America. I have a friend who works for us at Mother Jones, a colleague, who was rained in this last weekend and watched, like, 12 hours of football. And he said the ads were up again and again. College games, pro games, different channels. They’re just pouring millions of dollars.

And I think it’s, you know—while things look good for the Democrats, you have to remember that the Republicans have, at this point, a $222........

© New Republic