Transcript: Trump Rages Wildly After Poll Delivers Him Worst News Yet

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the January 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.

Donald Trump exploded in fury on Thursday, lashing out at polling organizations and media companies that he said are rigging numbers against him. He was clearly triggered by the new poll from the New York Times, which delivered him probably the worst polling on immigration he’s ever gotten. Trump’s rage is a reminder that he thinks he’s immune to the laws of normal politics. And you can see why he thinks that. But we’re going to argue here that, well, he isn’t immune—and that he’s in real political trouble right now. We’re talking about all this with political theorist Alan Elrod, who has an interesting new piece for Liberal Currents that digs into this question about whether normal politics can ever constrain Trump.

Alan, great to have you on.

Alan Elrod: Great to be back.

Sargent: So let’s start with Trump. He erupted on Truth Social. He said, “Fake and fraudulent polling should be virtually a criminal offense.” Then he ranted that he’d won 2024 in a landslide and that all the “fake polls” were wildly wrong about that.

He ripped into the “Failing New York Times, ABC Fake News, NBC Fake News, CBS Fake News, Low Ratings CNN” and said:

“Something has to be done about fraudulent polling. I’m going to do everything possible to keep this Polling SCAM from moving forward.”

Alan, in reality, Trump won a historically small victory, and the polls were actually close to right. But you made an interesting point: that Trump’s only concern with polling is rooted in vanity, that he doesn’t fundamentally think it matters if he’s popular. Can you talk about that?

Elrod: Yeah, I think that Donald Trump cares about his polling numbers in the sense that Donald Trump likes to be able to say that he’s great and he’s the best. And so anytime there’s a poll that makes him look good, he likes that.

But when it comes to the question of democratic legitimacy—the idea that not only does it matter that you win elections and that you have mandates if you win them big, and that when you continue and go about your policies, that voters are generally supportive of those policies, that those things should be clear signals to elected officials about which direction they ought to go in—in that case, he does not care.

Donald Trump absolutely, I don’t think, cares if something he’s doing is popular in the sense of it being legitimate. And when he goes on these rants, what he’s really doing is just asserting his own legitimacy against reality.

He doesn’t care if the election results were narrow. He doesn’t care if current polling, generally or on a specific issue, shows him to be performing poorly. What he is intending to do is to say: I’m popular because I have power. And in a way, this is sort of tautological. And therefore that circles back around: I’m powerful because I’m so popular and loved.

But it’s really more about an assertion of authority than anything else. He has no interest in the kind of democratic legitimacy that typically undergirds the way we talk about polling.

Sargent: I think that’s really right. Trump is clearly talking here about the New York Times poll, which has generated tons of discussion. It’s striking stuff. Here are some numbers.

Trump’s approval is at 40 percent, with 56 percent disapproving. He’s underwater on just about every major issue. The economy: 40 to 58—18 points underwater. Relationships with other countries: 39 to 58. That’s 19 points underwater. And get this: the cost of living, 34 to 64. Around 30 points underwater.

And this is really critical. The non-white and young voters who moved to Trump in 2024 have all snapped back to Democrats, basically. The Times’s Nate Cohn says the Trump coalition has unraveled. Alan, I really think this shows that people overreacted to the 2024 win and seeing it as a seismic realignment. It’s come undone in a year. Your thoughts?

Elrod: I think that it’s encouraging in one sense that his polling has dropped and that his coalition is faltering. Certainly the idea that he was able to win significant non-white voters was the kind of thing that should have frightened Democrats because that’s a big, important part of their coalition.

But I don’t think it’s an overreaction because he’s in the White House now. And he doesn’t actually need to be as popular because he has the power. He can pull these levers, he can send ICE into cities, he can do things to disrupt how our democracy works, and he’s already taking a sledgehammer in many ways to our constitutional order.

So there’s the question with people like Donald Trump, with authoritarians, of how popular they actually need to be in order to effectively keep power. And that’s a sort of different equation than what it takes to win an election. And so I look at this and I say: OK, I will absolutely take the world where Donald Trump loses support. I prefer that to the world where he doesn’t.

But then I also look back and think we’re about where he was at, maybe a tick better, right after January 6. And then the country put him back in power. So America doesn’t seem to have a substantial enough repulsion to Donald Trump to mobilize people to fully cast him out.

And ultimately, he, having been put back into the White House, now has a lot more of an ability to do things to entrench himself in power and entrench his sort of policy agenda than a poll can take away from him.

Sargent: Well, I just want to clarify that I mean “overreaction” in the sense that a lot of pundits looked at this and saw it as a historic realignment, particularly the movement of non-white voters to Trump. They saw that as a potentially crushing and debilitating and possibly fatal blow to the Democratic Party over time.

Now, I don’t think for a minute Democrats should in any way minimize the potential that they could lose those voters. They should be urgently making sure that they don’t. But I do think that it matters whether there was an actual fundamental realignment in response to Trump’s campaigning on open authoritarianism on one side versus on the other which is what I think happened: that he has this immense penetration in the culture, he’s known as “the guy who builds stuff.” Voters have incredibly short memories. They didn’t really blame him for COVID, and you can sort of see why. And I think that story tells a much better one about the American electorate—a more encouraging one—than the other story does.

Elrod: Yeah, the 2024 coalition, I don’t think is exactly a permanent coalition. The only realignment I see as the sort of “big one” for Trump is the movement of non-college-educated whites and exurban voters to Trump, and then the doubling down in rural areas.

Rural areas were already red; now they’re as red as they can possibly be. And that has problems for us because of how our electoral system is designed. And it kind of cuts back to why he can actually sustain a substantial amount of authority on relatively poor polling.

But yeah, when it comes to the 2024 coalition that they managed to put together, I think there were too many contingent factors there. There was dissatisfaction with inflation. There was dissatisfaction with other issues. And I’m not sure that’s a replicable thing, especially for a party that’s now making its bread-and-butter issue going after immigrant children and putting them in vans.

Sargent: Yeah, well, I will definitely agree with you on this point, which is that the Senate’s structural makeup in particular means that all those structural changes that Trump has brought to the electorate—the ones that appear a little more durable—are really, really significant, and we do have to worry about them.

Let’s talk about the Times’s findings on immigration, which are really something. Trump is 18 points underwater on this issue: at 40 percent approving to 58 percent disapproving of his handling of immigration. Fifty-five percent of non-college voters—that’s working-class voters—and 62 percent of independents disapprove.

It gets even crazier than that, Alan. 63 percent of voters overall disapprove of ICE. And listen to this: even a majority of working-class whites disapproves of ICE. That’s the core of Trump’s base.

And the story we were told for many months is that Trump had mobilized this working-class backlash to immigration that Democrats had to reshape their entire politics around. And if they didn’t do that, they would perish. But I just—I think that’s bullshit. I think people overreacted there. These are the worst numbers Trump has ever gotten on this issue. I think the country’s paying attention to what he’s doing here. Your thoughts on that?

Elrod: Yeah, so from the kind of traditional political analytical standpoint, the idea that he is that much underwater on what used to be one of his sort of core issues is huge.

And obviously, I think that if you were giving advice to Democrats—or to ... there aren’t really any, but independents or Republicans who want to run counter to Trump—they should feel at this point liberated to say things like “abolish ICE” and “we need immigration reform” and all the things that had sort of frightened particularly moderate Democrats for the last decade and a half.

You shouldn’t feel like those things are in any way off the table now because it’s clear that there’s a huge amount of dissatisfaction. There’s a window being created. There’s a lot of anger.

So on that side, I would say the polling is a big green light to people to be bold, talk openly, don’t try to triangulate and play games with the issues; just say honestly what you think. If you don’t sincerely think we should abolish ICE, I guess I get that, but I don’t understand it. But if you are afraid to say it, I don’t think there’s a good reason to be. We’re in a moment right now where what people want are honest, bold, meaningful, and urgent responses to the moment.

Now, on the other hand, the thing that concerns me is—Donald Trump is this far underwater on what should be one of his core issues. And again, he is not acting like a man who really cares what the polls say. They are dialing up, not down, the aggression and the violence. They are coming harder and faster.

They are talking about sending troops into Minneapolis. They are talking about sending ICE into other cities in a way that is much more similar to what they’re doing in Minneapolis than to what they did in L.A. or Chicago, where it was really limited to a few parts of the city and not meant to just kind of cause this mass chaos and terror.

They’ve already launched an operation in Maine. They’re calling it “Operation Catch of the Day,” which is just deeply, horrifyingly offensive. And in that context, it’s scary, because normally if a politician stumbles on their core issue, there’s a huge reset. There’s a big panic in the administration. That’s not what they’re doing.

And to me, that’s again a sign that this is not a man or administration behaving like they feel like they have to respond to sort of the normal signals of democratic politics.

Sargent: Yeah, there’s no question that that’s absolutely right. The thing that heartens me is that Republicans, at least some of the time, are acting as if they’re facing an election in nine months or whenever it is. Trump can just sort of act as if Republicans aren’t, but it’s not his decision. It’s not up to Trump whether we have an election. OK, maybe he’ll try to use the military in some way to depress voting or whatever. But I’m a little skeptical that he can actually pull something like that off for a whole bunch of reasons.

But Republicans are gonna face an election this fall—I think—and they’re probably going to lose it. And a Democratic House can really put some brakes on Trump.

Is it what I really think needs to happen overall? No, but we got to work with the situation we have, and for him to be absolutely tanking this way, I find heartening. And I do think that normal politics still matters, at least a little bit.

Elrod: He can’t cancel elections. We know that. But when it comes to the question of whether he can disrupt elections, that’s a fairly opaque situation.

The problem there is, there’s first the question of: can he actually somehow cause enough disruption in these places—using ICE, using other kinds of federal interference, frightening people, arresting people—to actually change the literal numerical outcome of an election? That’s pretty hard.

But can he create enough chaos that he then follows that up by sowing doubt about the legitimacy of those elections and then essentially says that this is an illegitimate Congress, and at least persuades a whole lot of people on the MAGA side of the aisle that that’s the situation? I think he can probably do that.

So there’s levels to what can and can’t happen. He can’t cancel elections. It’s really hard to necessarily do enough to fully change the outcome of the elections. But can he cause a whole lot of chaos? Can he maybe water down the results in really pivotal swing districts? Can he hurt the Democrats’ majorities a little bit? Maybe. But can he sow doubt? Absolutely.

And so there are different tiers of crisis. And he can achieve some of those more easily than others. And I absolutely think he’s going to give it a shot.

Sargent: Oh, yeah. And by all means, Democrats have to be hyper-vigilant. We have to take every single permutation very seriously, for sure. I don’t doubt that.

OK, let’s talk about your piece. You argue that on some fundamental level, Trump doesn’t feel obligation for there to be any political legitimacy to his authoritarian actions. You quote Jonathan Last of The Bulwark, arguing in essence that the country is not capable of generating a sufficiently powerful opposition to Trump.

I want to challenge this a little bit in two parts. This is the first part. I think the outpouring of cultural and social energy and organizing against Trump’s immigration crackdown is a significant event.

Trump and Vance and Miller calculated that the “silent majority” would be with them on the core idea of MAGA that modern immigration levels threaten social cohesion, or “social solidarity,” as Vance likes to put it. But we’ve seen extraordinary solidarity from native-born Americans and citizens towards immigrants.

I think that in and of itself is important and tells us that in a very fundamental way, Trump’s whole project is in a lot of ways on thin ice. Is that too optimistic?

Elrod: Well, I guess from the piece I wrote, I probably would say it’s a little too optimistic. I would try to take that in two slightly different directions.

One is to say that the idea that there’s not been a sufficient enough sort of swelling of opposition to him does not mean that there hasn’t been opposition. There’s been a lot of it, in a lot of places. But what we’ve seen for the last decade or so is that even though Donald Trump has consistently been unpopular, that high 30s, low 40 percent support is essentially enough to sustain him politically.

Because what we’re really also asking is not, “Will the vast majority of the American people reject him?”—and this is something that Jonathan Last gets at in his piece—but, “Will enough of the American people reject him that it forces the hands of Republican elites in Congress?”

And we’ve already seen that ... I don’t know what will. January 6 didn’t. Thom Tillis, who’s one of the most outspoken Republicans right now on opposing Trump’s sort of aggression and saber-rattling with Greenland, has also turned around and said, No, I wouldn’t consider impeachment an appropriate tool, even if he uses—and Tillis said these words—“kinetic force” in Greenland.

So if Donald Trump seizing land from a NATO ally by force isn’t enough for a senior Republican senator—who’s retiring!—to say, “We should at that point convict and remove Donald Trump,” you have to ask where the political will is in the country to resist him.

And at that point, you have to say: if it’s going to come from the people, if the political will to generate that is going to come from the people, it’s going to have to be really, really big. I’m not trying to downplay the resistance we have seen. What I’m saying is in order to truly fight back against an authoritarian attempt like the one we’re living through, you need a lot more. You just need more. And we haven’t hit that.

And that’s where I think Last is right.... I guess to put a bow on it: I mentioned earlier that his polling’s really bad. It’s not that different than where it was right after he led a mob on the Capitol to kill his vice president and kill members of Congress. And we then turned around and put him back in the White House.

Sargent: Well, yes. But I think maybe that also indicts Democrats. Because Democrats had their shot, and they didn’t use power sufficiently to deal with the criminality that Trump and the MAGA movement represent. And I think that’s on them. But otherwise, your points are taken. You need something bigger. And this is where I want to challenge the Jonathan Last thesis a little bit as well.

You kind of got at this idea—that the country’s not capable of generating a sufficiently powerful opposition to Trump. I think there’s a distinction here that we have to draw: on the one hand, whether there’s a strong enough opposition to Trump out in the country among the people; and on the other hand, whether our legal and political institutions can constrain a president who is determined to plunge us into authoritarian lawlessness.

And I think the second one is where the real problem is. Of course I would like the opposition to Trump to be at 80 percent. But it’s pretty damn high right now. And that doesn’t translate into checks on this president who, as you’ve said, has no regard for political legitimacy and is determined to plunge into lawlessness. I think that distinction’s important. And I really think that the weakness here is in our institutions and their inability to constrain a president. So let’s get to work on those if Democrats ever get power back.

Elrod: And this is why I said that despite my not putting a whole lot of stock in the polls when it comes to resisting Trumpism ... Democrats do have to go ahead and be willing to be bold.

This is why you can’t sort of play around on the idea of whether you want to do something like abolish an agency that under this administration has become the most well-funded police force in the country and one of the 20 most well-funded—if it were a military—armies in the world. You simply have to gut that from the inside. You have to get rid of it entirely.

And if that’s not on the table, then you’re certainly not up for the institutional changes necessary. Because I do agree: Our institutions have failed us. The Supreme Court has not constrained him. Congress has not constrained him. The DOJ under Biden did not constrain him. We saw failure after failure after failure at the institutional level.

But ... I don’t know [if] it’s any ... worse with the people. We see a lot of opposition to Trump. But I think we’re going to see 40-something percent of the country is going to go out and vote for Republicans this November. And that doesn’t send a message of mass rejection. That sends a message more of sort of thermostatic swinging. But that’s not compelling in a moral sense when you’re in an existential fight for your country.

Sargent: Right. I think there’s two levels to this. One is clearly a lot of this is thermostatic and in that sense, it’s definitely not that heartening. But on another level, there’s also a fundamental ideological and moral rejection of Trumpism that we’re seeing on the streets, which is a critical thing.

Look, here’s the bottom line. OK, it would be great if Trump were polling at 80 percent underwater. But if he’s polling at 40 to 60, Democrats can win the House and possibly the Senate. And then in 2028, they have to win the White House, period.

So it’s really on Democrats to win these elections. And that is really the end of the story when it comes to how we get out of this.

And just one last thought, and I’ll let you close. If Democrats can win in 2028 ... look, Trump had two shots at this and he shouldn’t have had two shots. And Democrats failed by letting him get a second shot. But the good news is, Democrats may have two shots at really trying to cripple MAGA and this lawlessness. And hopefully they get it right if they get power back.

Elrod: Yeah. And this ties into what—it wasn’t maybe as explicit, but it was there—the more hopeful aspect of the piece I wrote, which is that if you lean into this reality, what you can accept is the opportunity for doing politics completely anew: that you have the chance to be bold, to build new institutions.

What Mark Carney laid out for the international community at Davos is the same thing we have to be thinking about domestically. We cannot be too timid to think about massive institutional reform, to fight big, to do interesting things, to understand that the previous institutional arrangements weren’t working, to understand, frankly, that the politics weren’t working. That the things that were happening even on the ground level in this country were producing a noxious kind of environment.

So that’s the thing that should hopefully unite our two points of view and also come back to this idea of the need—and it’s not really just Democrats. Anybody who opposes what Trumpism is should see this as a chance to think and do politics, actually do politics in a way that really frankly maybe we haven’t done for a few decades.

And to me that’s exciting. You have the chance in this moment to embrace big thinking and action and it doesn’t even have to mean kind of political spectrum–positioned stuff. It doesn’t have to be left or progressive. It just means big ideas, creativity, new thinking—not being tied to old institutions just because of status quo, because that’s gone. And if we accept that, then we can actually start working on making something that lasts longer and is better.

Sargent: Yep, I agree 100 percent. I think that really is the through line that unites us, folks. Make sure to check out Alan Elrod’s work at Liberal Currents. He’s one of the best political theorists writing today. Alan, you wanted to say something about one other project you’re doing. Just give us a little bit on that.

Elrod: Yeah, I run a little nonprofit. We’re called the Pulaski Institution. You can find it through my Bluesky. I’m at @aselrod on Bluesky, but you can also find us online at PulaskiInstitution.org.

And we are currently fundraising to do all kinds of things that we want to do that we can’t afford to do right now: research, conferences, events that’ll bring people together to try to solve the very problems we talked about today. So we really hope people will come check us out.

Sargent: Alan Elrod, it was terrific to talk to you, man. Great conversation. Thanks for coming on.

Elrod: Thanks for having me.