Transcript: Trump Erupts in Rage as Dem Gov’s Harsh Takedown Hits Home

Sargent: Well, to that point, we have this new Quinnipiac poll. It finds that Trump’s approval among U.S. voters is 37 percent. But notably, 56 percent disapprove of his sending of the National Guard into D.C. Only 41 percent approve. Among independents, it’s an extraordinary 61 percent disapproving of his sending them in. And on his approval of his handling of crime in particular, he’s deeply underwater as well, at 42 to 54. When I look at numbers like that, Brian, just to go back to the point we discussed earlier, it makes me think that something like this from Pritzker really would move and resonate with people in the middle as well. They’re going to hear someone saying, This is absolute madness. It has to stop. And I think they hear that as essentially an indictment of a massive overreach and a massive display of authoritarian power.

Beutler: Donald Trump has never been able to achieve majority support, let alone maintain it. And as he overreaches, as his lust for power overtakes him and he grabs for more and more, he tends to become less and less popular. And it’s not just that he becomes less popular, it’s that almost all of those people [in] the majority of the public that disapproves of him strongly disapprove of him. So basically half the country just hates Trump compared to the 25 percent that adore him. Those are really important numbers not just for Democrats thinking about how they’re going to do in subsequent elections, but where people in the middle are and what might attract them to Democratic appeals, Democratic rhetoric.

There are two schools of thought on this. One is the approach that the Democratic leadership in Congress takes where they look at past elections and they look at issue polling and they assume that, OK, because of what this data says, the median voter thinks Democrats are softer on a crime than Republicans. Ergo, if Donald Trump is doing something on the pretext of fighting crime, Democrats need to make sure that they don’t come across as weak on crime in order to appeal to the median voter. But what I think is happening—and what I think J.B. Pritzker thinks is happening—is that people in the middle are seeing Trump abuse his power and they don’t like it. And when they hear the opposing side not really fight it, they don’t like that either. What they do like is somebody with gravitas and courage calling it bullshit and saying, I’m going to use all the power that I have to stand in your way. And if I fail, I’m not going to stop then either.