On Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone explains how Donald Trump's betrayal of right-wing podcasts could impact Republicans in the midterm elections
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From the July 10, 2025, edition of MSNBC's Deadline: White House
NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): There's not a single example of where that dynamic has transferred on to anybody else, right? It didn't apply to Mike Pence who's you know, political history. It doesn't apply to any Republicans. He had calamitous midterms for Republicans while he was president the first time. I accept your argument about what his thinking is, but it does not set Republicans up -- the combination of prices not coming -- I mean, that was the fantasy in terms of what moved voters in the 2020 election because all of the cultural and all of the other things in the story they hear every day, that is really insular at this point.
And I, you know, you have to sort of peer in to see it. But in terms of people that pay attention every four years and try to make a decision, the best decision for their families, they were probably cognizant of that. I'm not letting them off the hook, but they're were most animated by economic frustration, fear, anxiety and insecurity and malaise about stubborn inflation. He has betrayed them by pursuing this thing that you talk about, his fantasy over tariffs. What do you think happens to Republicans in the midterms?
ANGELO CARUSONE (GUEST): I think that there may -- and I'm usually the pessimist and the naysayer here, but just watching what's played out in the right-wing space, Trump is assuming that we're still operating at a talk radio and Fox News-dominated landscape, and he's forgotten his own lessons from the last cycle. There's a reason why he went on all those podcasts. He went on those podcasts during the election, but he doesn't pay attention to them now. They're all starting to turn on him, not because they're opposed to his politics. In fact, they like his politics. They're still part of his politics.
But they feel exactly what you're feeling, that he's betrayed them in some way. He's betrayed them on the Epstein stuff. He's betrayed them on some of the foreign affairs stuff. They don't want to carry his water. And so to your question, you know, if you don't have the ground, that big part of the right-wing media, that larger online landscape willing to carry your water for these stories, the individuals that are going to suffer the consequences of this are the Republicans that are enabling Trump, that don't have his political resilience or his megaphone. And I think that's going to be the real consequence because ultimately, people just won't be there to defend them, and they're going to need that.