S6 Ep32: It's "Messing With Me Mentally" (with Ashley Parker)

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Hello everyone, and welcome to the Focus Group podcast. I'm Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwork, and this week it is clear that the war in Iran is taking a toll on the American psyche. We're about a month into this war, and I think it's clear from our focus groups that there's a certain mental architecture to why Americans are so on edge and why there are polls showing Donald Trump's approval rating at 33% or 35% right now. We're gonna get to that in a bit.

My guest today is Ashley Parker, staff writer at The Atlantic and one of their most prolific White House reporters. Ashley, thanks for coming back. Thanks for having me. So as much as Trump Stock is going down. Not every swing voter sees the cast of characters in the Trump administration equally. Uh there are some they think are clowns and some they like really think are adults. There's sort of a strange new respect for Marco Rubio happening.

We're gonna talk about both in this, but for our listeners who are not in this business.

What is your life like right now? Like covering this White House? Like did the war in Iran like upend your day-to-day life in terms of how you're covering the White House? Or just talk about you for a second reporting on this? Yes! So I mean there's two ways to answer that. And one is if I was still at the Washington Post and at a daily newspaper, it would have absolutely one thousand percent upended my life in a fairly catastrophic way.

because you know, there's just this relentless demand and, you know, h his people try to spin it as he's playing twelve D chess. They are right that he that the end result is that he's unpredictable and that can be inadvertently strategic. Um, but I think it would be a mistake to understand this as a deliberate well thought out strategy. But what that fundamentally means is every single day you are chasing something different, right?

Is he putting boots on the ground? Is he not putting boots on the ground? Why? Does he want regime change? Does he not want regime change? Why is he saying we've had regime change even when we haven't really had regime change? I will say just inherently in a magazine, we are covering Trump in a more in the news way. Um

But the nice thing, frankly, is we don't have to match every single drip and drab and sort of daily incremental development. So it's something I think about a lot and I'm reporting on in a slight you know, between the like micro and thirty thousand foot. I'm probably at about like ten thousand feet.

kind of dipping in when it makes sense, but also I still have the freedom to to peel back and and do bigger pieces, which which I like, which is to say my life is not quite as crazy as you might imagine. Well what just going off what you just said, when you're like they don't have a clear strategy and it is up to Trump. And I I always, whenever people are like, he's playing 15-dimensional chest, I'm like, no, he's eating the pieces, guys. Just eating what's on the board.

Are there factions in the White House around the war in Iran where some people do have a goal and other people are just winging it? How is it working in the White House right now as they're deciding this? Or is it just Trump? Are we all just at Trump's whim for how this goes? I mean there were some people in the run up to the war certainly who were much more clear eyed and thus much more queasy about it. Um I would put

chief of staff Susie Wiles in that bucket, but I wanna be clear. It wasn't like in the first term where you had people kind of throwing themselves on the train tracks to prevent this, right? Like She has a view, but she views her job as making sure the president gets a lot of different inputs and a lot of different information and that once he makes the decision that he wants to make, he's able to execute it.

in the best possible way. Um there was some real notes of caution and realism from General Kane. You know, then you look at And this to me is such a striking difference between the first term and the second term. You just look at who his defense secretary is, right? It's Pete Heggseth whose platform is sort of enhanced lethality. And everything you've seen him say is like.

I talked to a service member who told me they want more bombs and bigger bombs and like boy do I love to hear that, right? So Trump is also getting those inputs. He's talking to people like Lindsey Graham. You know, the joke is he's never met a conflict he doesn't want to get embroiled in. Um And so those are the the stronger inputs in the president's year. All right. Uh well, I want to start the show the way we start every focus group, uh, which is we ask.

Same question, every group. How do you think things are going in the country? That's just how we kind of open things up. After people tell us, you know, what their hobbies are and what they do. Um, we get to know them a little bit. But it's been really interesting to hear the answers.

Uh nowadays, especially from the swing voters, which we categorize on this show as Biden 2020, Trump 2024 voters, uh, which is everybody you're gonna hear today. So let's just play a smattering'cause I would say the whole focus group was a little bit in this case like a A how are things going in the country? Um airing of grievances. Um but we're just gonna start with a few of the answers to that exact question uh to get us started. I uh enjoy travel.

Of course I won't be traveling anytime soon because of the lines at the airport, but I when not traveling, I enjoy hiking as well. And I know people wanted him to be strong on the border, but um to to bring, you know, ICE in and just, you know, give them, you know, it felt like unfettered powers. Um these murders I think were were way over the top. Um, you know, now he's got them at the airports with Seems ridiculous as well. We are

safer at the border that just can't be can't be denied, but you can't really arrest all the ones that have already flooded in under the previous four years. And he's trying to overcompensate that. And no, you shouldn't be coming into forest masked up like you're a gang into a city when all you're supposed to do is your job there.

come in as you are, arrest who you're supposed to arrest and leave everybody else alone. Looking at my portfolios and I don't like them and they're not great. I know that there's a lot of tipsy turby things, it seems like, even with crypto and things like that. So investment wise. I think that um There's not a lot of steady, so then there's not a lot of steady growth and then anything else kind of like can contribute to that at this point.

where we started, um, from the beginning of Trump's term here and then where we are now just almost midtermish, um the economy is going down, gas prices are super high. Just like mentioned, you know, investment portfolios are down below what they've been within the last year. Um, food is expensive of course. I just think the economy is on a downward spiral right now.

And the tariffs kinda hit us really hard in the construction industry, which kinda opened up my eyes to the rest of the state of the economy. It's kinda scary how divided we are that we're like just bitter rivals, not as human beings, but on on political sides of the spectrum, to where it's kind of like a heated sports rivalry where you just you know, taught it to hate anybody that's not aligned with you nowadays and it's just kind of destroying us from within.

So I have a lot of people I know who have bachelors who have been working like retail for the past couple of years. um because of it. And I also think just the dividedness, not we can't really be friends with the other side. Um It's just pretty just there's a lot of tension and depending like depending on who you voted for and stuff. So

You know, I've seen things like snap cuts that are really hurting uh poor people. Um, so I'm concerned about that. I mean, I have a daughter who's been out of college for almost a a year and can't find a uh job in her field. So concerned about especially entry level jobs. And um also concerned about, you know, of course this war if it drags on and um, you know, the stuff with ice very concerning.

Lots of things are expensive right now. Like we're looking at health insurance tripling for the same services last year, and that's from health, dental, vision, all the above. Even car insurance needs a cap, if you ask me. But yeah, it's pretty expensive and uh the pay didn't increase, but the bills did. So that's just like a little bit of a taste. And uh but the one I want to focus on, because this was interesting to me, which is

the first woman who said, I love to travel, but I can't right now because of what's going on at the airports. That wasn't even in the how are things going in the country part. That was in the what do you do for fun part. Right. And she was talking about how she couldn't travel. And this to me is always something I think about with voters, which is the My life is getting 20% more annoying threshold. There's like there's the whole economic

piece, which we're gonna get into. There's the whole war piece, which we'll get into. So on this like life is getting twenty percent more annoying, that was the kind of thing I saw people souring on the Biden administration about. It was like Supply chains, servers at restaurants. It was like little things that were just annoying people. How do you think that's going right now in the Trump administration?

Well again, what what's striking to me is Sarah, you and I, because it is our jobs and because we live in the DC area, we talk and we think about politics. all day long, but most voters do not, right? True. They affirmatively don't want to and and they don't have the time to because they're busy living their lives. And so again, what's striking is when politics enters their lives or the ramifications of political decisions.

enters their lives. And I think that woman, again, she wasn't asked what's driving you crazy about the Trump administration or what would you wanna change. It it was her hobby and she's realizing Travel is harder because of TSA lines because of a funding issue in Washington. And there was another woman in the group you didn't play and she said this a bit later in the context of politics.

But she was also talking about traveling and she was talking about these places are off limits for these political reasons and I was gonna go to South Africa, but now I can't even do that because all the connections are through the Middle East. And again, when things enter voters' day to day lives, whether it's with luxury like travel or it's, you know, people saying, Look, I used to go to the grocery store closest to my house.

But now I get in my car and I drive to the Aldi's because it's twenty percent cheaper and that matters. Um They believe that they are not being served by their political leaders and the president in power and the party in power, and we saw this acutely with Biden, is going to pay the price. Du, jag skulle ju köpa några nya palstält i lagret. Det kanske blev lite mer grejer. De hade ju allt, man hade skribord, jag köpte en sån här. Och kontorstolar, och sån hade de en skit snygg Typp.

Vi har inredning för hela arbetsplatsen. Välkommen till AIP.

All right. Now I want to get in the meat of the show, which is around. A couple weeks back we had voters very initial reactions and we had we had done uh a show. I think I did it with Bill. But now that we are several more weeks in, we have more fleshed out reactions from folks about the war in Iran. So let's listen to that and then get into it. Trump is moving so emotional. Everything is about his feelings versus what is good for our country right now.

He is starting wars everywhere. Um I love to travel overseas, but I don't even know where I can go because he threatened Panama something about the Panama Canal a few weeks ago. Um It's really kind of messing with w with me mentally with the different changes every day that there's something, there's something going on. As administration, I really feel like this is just retaliation. Like, oh, okay, Iran came after me in an assassination attempt. Let's go.

Excuse my my uh slogan but the guys by the balls here with the the straight up horm hormids or whatever with the oil and and stuff, so it's kinda scary. Like if there was a war to be fought, this one wasn't ours to jump into, you know. Um and it's putting our people in danger. You know, they just released TSA announcements that, you know

certain places and people could be targeted and I just feel like it just puts a big target on our back and our people. They raised the draft limit to forty two now. Um, you could be forty two and get drafted into the army. throwing us in this war, you know, sh I feel might be Israel's war that we owe Netanyahu something for. I don't under I really don't understand why we're over there.

But I I'm hoping that maybe these radical decisions that are going on are gonna shape a better economy in the future. And that's his reasoning for doing it. The understanding it's not just about protecting Israel. You had Iran to the point where their missiles were s at sixty percent uranium, you know, and who gave them the money to do that? Biden.

So they are creating weapons of war, not just against Israel, but also I feel that he was protecting us just in case something like 9-11 happens again, which is why ICE was created from Homeland Security. Separate thing. That's a whole big thing. So I feel like Was it really um Israel that we were fighting like to protect? Or was it really the just that, hey, we could be next? They're getting stronger, they're building more weapons.

and we could possibly be next because they sit there and they say, We hate you. We're gonna destroy you. You know, we death to America. I I I don't I take that pretty seriously. You know, we're gonna have to send ground troops at some point. Uh, you know, Trump keeps saying that we're not going to, but you know, I don't know if I feel confident of that. So I still enlighten

a very like empath person. And so it's hard for me with just four in general. And then also the gas prices going up because of the oil. I'm all for freeing the Iranian people. I'm a veteran myself, so the part where I'm wishy washy is the the the process of how our military went about it. I don't want uh any more of my brothers and sisters going over there. All right. So Couple of things happening in there that I wanna pull on.

First of all, plenty of people do not think this is being done, primarily in America's interest. Like it doesn't have America's interest at heart. Uh, the last two decades of foreign policy mean people have very little confidence that we won't be putting more troops on the ground. The connection is super obvious between this war and a four dollar gallon gas. Um

That people are paying for right now. And then Trump walks a fine line with swing voters between being sort of like a tough guy and a crazy person. And he was trending more toward the latter.

For a lot of these voters. So Ashley, one thing we talked about last time you were on the show was Trump caring a lot about his polls. Uh he's always a guy who likes to talk about his polling. Uh and about just like Public sentiment, which is why he tacos, because he's like, Oh, the markets are reacting bad or oh everybody hates this. I'm gonna change my

But this war seems to be kind of a deviation from that. As you're reporting, how does the public perception of the war, the negative public perception, the fact that independents are dropping, fact that these kinds of swing voters primarily don't like it and aren't with him, how is that impacting their thinking in the White House?

So it it depends whose thinking we're talking about. His political team, even before before he made the initial decision to kind of bomb Iran and launch this war was very concerned because they understood acutely how it would hurt him politically. And and Trump still cares about his polls and is still reactive to those sorts of things, but a couple of things have changed, and those are.

First of all, he's not running for re-election again. He's never gonna be on the ballot again. He is not a traditional leader of his party, um, where he doesn't at the end of the day, really care about his party. Um, you know, someone someone told me Look, if he if he cared at all about holding the Senate, he would have endorsed Senator John Cornyn in Texas already. Um, because his not doing so.

essentially means Republicans may very well still hold Texas, right? Corden may win his primary or if if Paxton wins, he will may very well easily win the general election. But Republicans are going to have to spend, you know, millions of dollars unnecessarily in those races, right? And so Trump doesn't really care about the House.

He cares a bit more about the Senate and in theory been told he cares about having a Republican successor. Um, but even that is complicated because as someone put it there as a part of him. that wants to believe that only he can hold this MAGA coalition together, not J. D. Vance, not Marco Rubio, and I know we'll talk about them in a second. So there's that dynamic at play.

And then another dynamic is the information flow has changed a bit from the first term to now. We forget, but the first term he was on Twitter. And he wasn't just sending out Twitter messages, although he was certainly doing that. Um, but he he was scrolling Twitter like a traditional Twitter user. He was not just getting the inputs of the people who called him and the people who deliberately put things on his desk, but he was getting the inputs of sort of

his base and what an Ann Coulter was saying or, you know, what what a podcaster was saying. And he's not on Twitter now. He is on Truth Social, but that is sort of a a one way thing. It's just sending his messages out into the world. Um A lot of the descent on Iran we're hearing from some of these podcasters, right?

And you know, again, I'm not saying Trump doesn't hear anything because people do get in his ear and tell him what they want him to know, but Trump himself is not listening to Joe Rogan for multiple hours a day. He's not listening to the Nelk Boys or or any of these other people who are voicing some of that displeasure. And NBC had some great reporting about his team coming in and showing him videos of

the cool big bombs in Iran, right? Um and so there is a concern among some people who are already worried about this war that he is hearing from more heavily weighted towards one contingent. Yeah, you're getting at something that I think is so important. And I think there was a little bit of this for Biden's White House, too. Like when people around the president. Yes. Yeah, right? When people around the president go out of their way to shield them.

from where the public actually is, it has huge deleterious effects on the decision making capabilities of the presidents. And I would say one of the things that they're doing, and this has been reported on, is that and that Trump got all excited about. And this is like Harry Enton did this at CNN. And I think this was I I don't I don't endorse this as a process. They're saying Iran the Iran War is a hundred percent approval or ninety-six percent approval from MAGA Republic.

Okay. So they have s they have stripped from the voting pool there everybody who doesn't identify strictly in terms of Trump. And so sometimes I've seen like some discourse around this where people are like People think it's Trump's base that he's getting crosswise with, um, with the Iran war. And that's not true. It's one of those um kind of pedantic things where

Trump's base is sort of different from the more isolationist base of the Republican Party. A lot of those people are kind of like red-pilled Joe Rogan, Theo Vaughn, like types versus if you're MAGA. You say whatever Trump says goes. And so, like, if Trump says I approve of the Iran war, I'm gonna go do this. MAGA's like, okay, well, whatever Trump says, I'm with him. So like, yes, so they're showing him those people, but that excludes

non-maga Republicans. So people who are basically like, I think for myself or I put the party before Trump, but then also independents, which is where he's completely cratering. And then Democrats. They're a sample size. The people they are sampling are self-selecting, preordained. to be like whatever Trump says goes. That's not helpful. Right. I mean we use we and I do it too. We sort of use MAGA as a shorthand um to mean people who voted for Trump.

But in fact, the coalition that lifted him to victory. is not all on board. The the MAGA coalition whose ideology is whatever Trump says goes is on board, but but that is not sufficient for electoral victory, right? It's It's people who voted for Biden and then voted for Trump. It's people who, based on demographics, normally trend democratic but went for Trump.

And those are not people who on every issue just bless whatever Trump says. Um, so sure, is the MAGA beast behind him? Yes. But again, if you care about electoral victory for your party in November, That's not good enough. Things like that are keeping him in this space. And you're right though about the truth social thing. I I actually thought about the the Twitter input a little less. Um but of course that's right.

Of course that's right. If you're on Truth Social, which is by the way how any American right now gets the only place we can get our news about what's happening in Iran is from the president on his own janky social media site that is he owns and he is making millions of dollars on, which is in itself an insane thing that would have never happened uh in a different timeline. Like his inputs, if you what you're getting is your people coming in being like, MAGA loves this.

And he's on truth social with just people who are like, Trump, I I worship you, and that's why I'm on your particular social media site. And he's only watching Fox News. uh he's just increasingly isolated from the vast majority of public opinion. Right. And also my understanding is in addition to the fact that the inputs on his own social media site are going to be from the people who by and large support everything he does. As you pointed out, it's janky. Like it's like Twitter is

stunningly, devastatingly easy to scroll, right? It's it is like made for dopamine hits and to be addictive. It is it is hard to operate truth social. So my understanding is he's also just scrolling it less as well, and if and when he does, the inputs are more self fulfilling. He's siloed himself to the point of not having uh a breadth of awareness about how maybe the American people are feeling about this war. Although you can't escape him that it's unpopular.

That's what I was gonna say the flip side in a note of caution is is someone who just wrote a story about how literally everyone has Donald Trump's cell phone number, like seventy journalists and every world leader and god knows who else, like I don't mean to say that like he gets all manner of inputs from all manner of people who are both qualified and not qualified to give him inputs.

So I I don't wanna say that doesn't mean that someone who is wildly opposed to the Iran war is not talking to him and in the run up to it, look, like Tucker Carlson was at the White House multiple times for, you know, several ninety minute one on one meeting. So, you know, just let that be a note out there. Yeah, Susie Wahles was like, let's get Tucker in and try and talk him out of this deal. Great, great way to run a country.

Jag skulle ju köpa några nya palsrält i lagret. Det kanske blev lite mer grejer. De hade ju allt, hade skribord, jag köpte en sån här, och kontorstolar, och så hade de en skitsnygg tippkonter. Vi har inredning för hela arbetsplatsen. Välkommen till AI-produkten! Okay.

I want one more quick set piece on Iran. A couple of weeks ago, uh Scott Bessent floated that we might have to put up with fifty days of higher oil prices to keep Iran from having nuclear weapons for the next fifty years. That was their

formulation. He also said it could be longer than 50 days. And we checked in with how voters thought about that. So let's listen. That we could be sure of that. That's a good I think that's a good trade-off, but I don't feel we can be sure of it's going only going to be 50 days. Um, I think that's the whole problem is we don't know can we trust this administration that that's going to be true?

You can't just estimate what's gonna go on or what's gonna affect us because things like this tend to have especially it's a war, these t things to tend to have a long term effect longer than fifty days. Yes, it might. cripple them for a long time, but I feel like the effects that it'll cripple our economy as well. So I just feel like you just can't estimate, oh, fifty days and we'll be this could go on for a year or two and the economy can get even worse. We can go even more in debt.

Wasn't it Iraq that was supposed to have all these mass uh weapons of mass destruction? And how long were we there? So this comes up all the time. We do we can't play all of them, but this idea of people's living memory includes Iraq and Afghanistan. And I think a lot of times when people are making a case for war.

or making a case against war. There has to be a lot of introduction of new information and whatever. Trump is not doing the case making particularly well for why Iran or even well, they're barely trying. It's a it's a morass of reasons. He didn't do it in the run-up at all. I mean, I remember watching that State of the Union less than a week before it started, and there was maybe a sentence and a half.

about Iran, which was just wild to me. When I watched the State of the Union I thought like, Oh well maybe my reporting's wrong. Maybe we're not gonna do this. I always thought he didn't hold an Oval Off address in part because he's kind of trying to like hide it from the majority of American people. Like he knows they're not like so tuned into this stuff. And it was in the early days of the Iran War, we've had people in the focus groups who

didn't know anything about it. Like they still it just like hadn't quite penetrated. Um, but now that it has, and now that it's gone on, and I think this is why you're seeing the numbers really start to dip in the last week, isn't just because of gas prices, although I think that's probably the things sort of puncturing people's immediate life bubbles. But it's also that this has gone on for a month.

And the idea that it was gonna be one of these bomb fast get out move on situations like it was in Venezuela or it was the first time we bombed Iran, uh people don't think that. They're like, oh no, oh no, I know how this can get out of control. I know how this can turn into a a decade or two in the Middle East. And so I think you're hearing a lot of pushback like of how it echoes.

historically. Does that sound right to you? There's that and the fact that, you know, everything those voters that you just played said. is correct. Like the oil and the ramifications of what has already happened in Iran is not like you flip a switch and say, Okay we're done here and suddenly gas prices the next day fall to what they were. It doesn't mean the Strait of Hormuz opens. Um

In fact, there's every indication that it's not going to open. Um, and and you know, as someone put it, and again, I'm not an expert on this, but like I I think you were right that Americans are very good at sacrificing and being patriotic if they believe what they're being told and A, if it's truly a finite period. Um, but that fifty day number from all the experts and reporters who do understand this far better than I do is just apocryphal, right? If if the US pulled out tomorrow

gas prices would not be down in fifty days. They just wouldn't. Uh and the voters whether whether they're intuiting that because they're thinking about Iraq and Afghanistan and applying it here or because They understand supply chain and oil markets, whatever the reason, they're correct not to believe Scott Besson. Yeah.

Du, jag skulle ju köpa några nya palpställd i lagret. Det kanske blev lite mer grejer. De hade ju allt, man hade en skribord, jag köpte en sån här, och kontorstolar, och så hade de en skit snygg typcontainer. Vi har inredning för hela arbetsplatsen. Välkommen till

One really interesting thing that emerged from this focus group was when we asked them to name characters around the Trump administration that they they either liked or disliked. Oh yeah. Yeah, let's listen to that. Gnome, Christy Gnome, as we see she just got fired. Thank God. She was more of a

how do I say it, uh reality T V show ho uh celebrity than anything, you know? She's posting around pictures with all these Ice Asian suits on, but like is she really it in the streets and doing what these people are doing and, you know, she I don't think she really sees what's going on with these people's lives and they're just being thrown out like and then, you know, also Pam Bondi, uh, who else uh

Cash Patel, it's like it was supposed to be America first, not Trump first. So it's like, you know, sometimes I wonder it's like Do they have any of their own ideas? Pete Had Hagseth I don't think is qualified at all for his job. You know, he's another that's scary the position he holds, you know. It's like he has so much power and I don't think he just knows what he's doing with it, you know.

I have to mention uh Stephen Miller, he's uh pretty deplorable in my mind. Uh I think he's the architect a lot of the extreme immigration policy and for him to you know, say that ice really has no limitations, you know, ICE can't be prosecuted. I, you know, just extreme views that are very, very frightening in my mind.

If you read about Miller before he even became who he is now, it's H his track record of the sing things he says are under disguise of historical this and historical that, but there's there's an under quite a lot of underlying hatred that you can just see emanating from him and it's kind of really hard to explain. I'm not even trying to get personal, but if I didn't grow up in the situation I did growing up, I don't think I would see through a lot of that. But his His America first agenda is not

healthy to put it lightly. And I I agree with Trump. I think a lot of what we're seeing negative is drafted by him because himself and he's been quoted quite often saying that Trump listens to him more than anybody else.

Well, I for one couldn't agree more with these voters. But just remember that these are all Trump voters. Ashley, you wrote a couple months ago about Steven Miller and said that even in Trump's inner circle, he's a dogmatic force whose ideas are too extreme for public consumption. Since you've written about it, tell us a bit about Stephen Miller's influence inside the administration. He's a very unappealing figure. The voters sure seem to think that, but are you surprised?

He isn't more of a political lightning rod. So it's interesting as is I was listening to those responses and as I'm hearing them tick through that kind of first set of names, I'm like, okay, they don't like the clowns, right? Like the people who aren't really qualified to be there and are cosplaying their roles and doing dumb things. And then when they got to Steven Miller, I was like, Oh, one of these things is not like the other, right? And you know

Th it seems like the reason they don't like Stephen Miller is because, you know, I believe in my piece we describe Stephen Miller as sort of the pulsing id of a president who is almost already pure id. Um And they understand that some of that stuff uh that they mentioned earlier that they don't like about ICE um and the aggressive, you know, immigration enforcement from this president. that Stephen Miller is the architect of it. Um that's very clear to them.

Steven Miller is incredibly powerful in this administration. He acts as an accelerant uh to a president who is already lacking the guardrails from the first term. And people associate Steven Miller with immigration. That's absolutely accurate. I didn't put this in my piece, but one person I talked to said, look, if Steven Miller could choose how to spend five hundred percent of his day, he would spend it on immigration.

But the truth is not only is he the driving force in Trump's immigration policy, but his portfolio is sort of so wide that on any major issue that he cares about and that Trump cares about Steven Miller has a huge hand, so tariffs. He's a big player on tariffs. On foreign policy and this very muscular view of, you know, if if you're powerful you go take it.

view of foreign policy. That's Stephen Miller. I would remind you, um, you know, Stephen Miller and Marco Rubio were viewed as kind of the two key architects of the capture of Maduro in Venezuela. And right after that capture, Stephen Miller's wife, Katie Miller, a figure in her own right, posted a map of Greenland with the American flag plastered over the country that said next. So it it's that view of muscular n not so isolationist foreign policy. Um it

the war against the university. Steven Miller is a key architect there. I will say there has been some talk and some reporting by my colleagues who cover immigration that Stephen Miller's a little bit in the doghouse. There was a sense in the White House that those death in Minnesota uh by ICE agents went too far, were a political liability. You saw Trump course correcting for that. You know, Christy Noam is no longer uh the Homeland Security Secretary. Um

But I I still would not underestimate the power he holds in that orbit. This is a personal privilege question. Stephen Miller seems like somebody Trump would hate. Like he's he's like rat like and repellent. Every time I see him, there's nothing about him that says, Boy, I'd love to have lunch with this guy or a drink with him. Trump, though, finds him an enjoyable presence. So a couple things. Uh I mean it is funny, someone told me that in general Trump

Like his his preferred look, and this is not just for Stephen Miller, is not sort of like bald skin head. They said it's like he prefers a full head of hair, like Johnny McIntyre, who was a a young aide with good hair, a former athlete. But but one thing about Steven Miller that I remember from the first term uh in in talking to people in the White House and was borne out in my reporting is that a lot of people, his colleagues,

actually like him. They think he is a good colleague. He has a very, very like almost Sahara dry deadpan sense of humor. And they've said that on in a weird way they appreciate how dogmatic he is, because in a White House, you know, known for sort of Backstabbing and sneaking around, all although again I will say that was more the first Trump term than the second Trump term.

Sort of like you know where Steven Miller stands on immigration. You may find it absolutely abhorrent, even as a Trump supporter, but like you know what he wants to do and how he plans to do it, right? There's no guesswork with him. And on issues that he doesn't care about. He he could be a pretty good colleague when he was a speechwriter and he he still sees the speeches, he would give people a heads up like Hey, I know you think it's really important that Trump

affirm Article five of NATO when he speaks at the NATO headquarters. I just wanted to let you know that not only has he crossed out that line, but he plans to threaten to withdraw if you want to try to hop in the beast and get him to change his mind. Um So I think he is better liked internally by his colleagues than people might expect. And the thing likes about him is his, you know. Undying loyalty and fealty, that's always of premier importance to Trump, even though he doesn't

return it in kind. And he also likes the fact that if he tells Steven Miller to do something, he knows that Steven Miller is going to get it done. Steven Miller is incredibly competent. Um he used these four years out of power. to sort of learn from the mistakes of the first term to figure out, you know, why why in the first term was my travel executive order struck down by the courts, right?

How can I write it this time so it lands? How can I think about this thing and find an obscure law from the eighteenth century to help ban immigrants from coming into the country? Trump likes and respects all. The the idea that he's liked internally, I I didn't uh I didn't really know that. It doesn't make sense to me from a personal liking standpoint. It does make sense to me that

I remember that about the first thing, right? Because they were all trying to scuttle Trump's ambitions. And and and so they would sort of there was this like weird dynamic where they both wanted to Trump to like them and dislike other people. They knew they could kind of turn him against people, so people did that work.

Um, but they were also trying to get Trump off certain things. Whereas I bet that Trump does like that Stephen Miller's the guy who you say, Hey Steven, if I want to stay for a third term, figure out how I'd do that. And Steven's like, Yes, sir, and we'll come back with like actual plausible extra constitutional plan.

for how one could try to get that done. And I asked people, because sometimes on immigration especially, Steven Miller is more extreme than Trump wants. And so I said, what happens if if Trump decides something that Stephen Miller doesn't like? And people said, look

You always know where you stand with him. So he will very forcefully argue his case, including in front of the president, right? He he doesn't pull back, he doesn't sneak around, he will advocate, he will lobby, he will send other people in. to lobby the point on his behalf. But once President Trump has made a decision, unlike a lot of other people, again, particularly in the first term

Steven Miller's like, Okay, I don't necessarily agree with it, but I'm gonna execute it. And that's what he does. And if the decision goes sideways, Steven will use that as an opportunity to come back and say, you know, here's why I think we didn't go far enough, or here's why I think we should adjust course, but but he will loyally do what Trump wants him to do and the president likes that. Yeah.

Du, jag skulle ju köpa några nya palpstrält. Det kanske blev lite mer grejer. De hade ju allt, hade en skribord, jag köpte en sån här, och kontorstolar, och så hade de en skitsnyggkontainer. Vi har inredning för hela arbetsplatsen. Välkommen till AIP.

All right. Well, let's talk about another figure that's coming up uh a lot because this is the guy who is viewed as the adult in the room. And I gotta tell you, I am tracking this closely because in the In the burgeoning 2028 mochinations around J.D. Vance versus Marco Rubio, I have long held the view that pre-Trump Republicans are non-starters with Republican voting.

One person is sort of emerging to to change that, and that is Marco Rubio. And part of that is a lot of younger people, when you talk to them, see Marco Rubio as the adult room and they have no idea about pre-Trump Marco Rubio. Never met him, never heard of him.

Um, and so the guy he is now uh is who they know. And I'll tell you, this is another thing where I just think that meme, this is like politics by meme, that meme of every you give Marco Rubio every job, right? Where I mean the one going around today. Yeah, everybody loves that meme. Everybody loves it. It's a bipartisan meme because for those of us who hate the Trump administration and think they're all clowns, you're like,

There's one person that they have to give every job to because he's the only competent person. Other people love it just because it's like funny. You know, it's like a funny meme. Yeah. The implication is Marco Rubio is the one guy who can get things done. You have to give him all the jobs. And that is building in people's minds the sense that Marco Rubio is actually the guy. Plus, they they're like, the more they see of JD Vance, the more they hate him. And so I would just say with voters.

Marco Rubio's stock has been rising and I'm hearing it. Um, so let's listen to what these voters said about Rubio and then I'll get your reaction on the other side. Marco Rubio, I think is An amazing dude. Sometimes I think he's um

I don't know if you ever watched uh like old biker shows or old shows where you always got that really nice kid that hangs out with the bad guys and doesn't realize until it's too late. I'm not I don't mean that. That's just as an analogy. I'm not saying everybody in the cabinet's bad. Marco Rubio just If anybody is left that we can see on the TV or and you can never find

him actually going against what he's saying down the road or back and forth is Marco Rubio. Like if anybody's a family man and still a stand up politician, I just I just feel that it's him because he also is about putting America first, which I agree with. But when you put America first, you also gotta remember, you know, the other friends and family and essence that we have around the world. I think he's relatable. Um seems more human than a lot of the some of the other characters, I think.

I know when he was in Congress I felt like he had some kind of more populist kind of ideas that made sense. Um so I feel like he's more about uh reason and facts and more more about doing kind of what's right. I feel so I feel yeah he's he's pretty respectable. We just played it from this last group, but like this is all over

groups now. It is one of the m biggest trends that I am starting to see is the rehabilitation in Trump voters' minds of Mark Rubio. Now say he's a little more popular among swing voters, these swingier types than he is in the in the trenches of MAGA. Um, but there are rumblings that Trump is playing, Marco, against JD Vance. Even though they seem to like each other personally and often operate as a team, um, and he's like wondering aloud who would be a better 2028 candidate.

surveying people who come in, one of his fun parlor games. Where do you think things stand in terms of how Trump is is Playing with those two. So first of all I have to say that guy who sort of likened Rubio to someone who unwittingly like accidentally falls in with the bloods or the Crips, you know, um I just I loved that analogy. I went back and told all my colleagues, like it it was so

enlightening, I felt like. Um, you know, that sort of they see him ab above all those other people they don't like for whatever reason. Uh You know, it's interesting. Rubio has said if JD Vance runs, he won't run. I know we talked earlier about Trump not caring that much about the party, and that's true. But the one thing I've been told he does care about a bit.

Uh, with that tension of only he can be the true MAGA leader, is he does want a successor, presumably a Republican president to make sure that like the Trump Kennedy Center and the Trump Arch and all these things stay. And that Rubio has emerged. uh over JD Vance as sort of the the person within Trump's orbit who people think has a better chance of winning a general election. That said, for Rubio to do that.

A, he would have to have the fire in his belly to sort of seize it and to to go up against JD Vance, who is the obvious successor just as the vice president, right? And and some people don't think. He has that fire in his belly. And also, one of the reasons Marco Rubio gets to do every job per the meme and is sort of ascending so quickly.

in the Trump administration is because there is the sense that like he's just a good soldier who's competent and wants to serve this president. And the minute you have political ambitions of your own that all changes and that potentially changes the dynamic. So it's one of those things. It's like you you can

You can be the one everyone would love to be the successor as long as you're not running to be the successor. But the second you start running to be the successor, no one really wants you to be the successor anymore.

Ron DeSantis knows a little bit about that. Uh I I would also argue Ron DeSantis is the case for great on paper awkward and not great in real life. JD Vance, there are ways in which he and DeSantis are quite different, but his trajectory with voters is quite similar in that I think even in the last like

year and a half that they've been here. In the beginning, people were like, Oh, I I like JD Vance. Like he's out there, you know, he's a good face on Trump. He's a little calmer than Trump. People do not talk like that that much anymore. Like they are like, I don't like him. I think he's weird among the voters.

I am hearing way more pro-Rubio content than before and much less pro-JD Vance. And especially with women, including MAGA women. They're just like, this guy sucks. And I kind of think he creeps me out. Which is what happened with Ronda Sanchez. Two people were like, eh, it sounds good on paper. I liked him for a while. And then like they got a better look at him. And everyone was like, eh, I don't like him.

And there was some real buyer's remorse with JD Vance as the VP pick dur you know, so almost as soon as he was chosen because of the rollout. Um But then JD Vance did a very good job in the vice presidential debate. And I I think the one thing about JD Vance that is a wild card is keep in mind he rose initially to prominence. w with his memoir, Hill Biliology, talking sort of very thoughtfully and and nuanced and moderate in some ways. Um and you saw a glimpse of that version in the debate.

And that was a very deliberate strategy by his team was that everyone's gonna expect him to come out swinging and trolling and let's show the likable, thoughtful. you know, earnest side of him and A, does that person even exist anymore, I think is a question. And B, could he turn that on in a sort of post Trump world? I don't know.

You know, that is a good question, Ashley. I gotta tell you. I said this on on TNL, but this is the second time that JD Vance's book has come up. So I didn't read Hillbilly Elegy when it first came out. Never read it. I did read it. And then I did read it. You did? Okay, so I didn't, but I read it while I was writing my book.

So in my book, uh which by the way is for pre order right now, uh how it's called How to Eat an Elephant One Voter at a time and it's using all these focus groups for analysis about where we're headed. But In it, I talk a lot about where I grew up, which was in central Pennsylvania, super small town geographically. I and I was curious actually. The reason I picked up Hillbilly Elogy for the first time is I was like, you know.

JD Vance was from a similar type town as I was. I want to hear how he talks about it. I was blown away. That book sounds like it was written by a different human. Just like a totally different guy than the one we are currently seeing. Like to read Hillbilly elegy right now, knowing who JD Vance has become, is a wild ride. It's like I Teleporting into the Yeah, it's someone who is

and has real empathy for views in people who are not like himself or people who are like himself that we don't really see him at least publicly exhibit anymore. I thought it was a good book. He's not like the weird post liberal thinker that he is now. in that book. Like He's a thoughtful guy, but not in a weird Peter Thiel kind of way. Like Yeah. And he he was also in that book, which was interesting, you know, kind of an outsider, but actually who was was struggling but succeeding.

In mastering a lot of these insider places, like Yale Law School, right? And and there's moments that stay with me, I think, that, you know. calling, I think his now wife frantically from a recruiting dinner with McKinsey asking, which fork do I use? Which again, right? Or almost spitting out the first time he has

Perrier'cause you know, it tastes like disgusting water. Like fair, you know, but it's sort of like like he figures it out and he masters these worlds and his journey to figuring it out, I think, again, is so relatable, so understandable. But then he can kind of move within these two worlds, which is not the version you hear from him anymore. This is why I started reading it and this is because I was trying to explain to voters.

People always ask me, like one of the number one questions I get is, how do you listen to these voters? How does it not make you crazy? Or when people are like, oh, all Trump voters are racist or all Trump voters are hungry for authoritarianism. And I'm like, no, they're not. And and it's peop how do I know? Because I grew up with that.

But I also went to private school later in life. My parents weren't like we were poor and then we were not poor. And so like I did, I also had this two worlds thing that I felt like gave me tools. To listen to voter a lot cross section of voters and be able to sort of see where they were coming from. And that that that two worlds thing. I knew was part of what he did. And so I wanted to see that. But it's funny how what Trump seems to have done to him, right? Like I feel like.

When you listen to a lot of people or or you do have that two worlds thing, part of what it develops in you is a sense of empathy for people's origins and the culture that they were raised in and how that shapes their political views, shapes the information environment they're in. Whereas somehow he's decided in his later in life that like he seems to hate people. That empathy part, that thing where like I can I can sort of code switch with people.

It no longer feels earnest and rooted in an interest in people. It feels like it's rooted in ambition for himself. And now, and I'll tell you, I think voters smell. I was just gonna say that you you haven't played them. I don't know if you're going to, but when the voters were talking about JD Vance, you know, that's what comes through to them. Whether that's accurate or not, that is every single voter's takeaway about JD Vance in this moment.

Yeah, we're saving those clips for a JD Vance specific episode. That is the through line with voters as they start to sour on him. Uh, but for you, we're all done. This is the end. This is the end of the podcast. And uh, Ashley Parker, thank you so much for joining us. And thanks to all of you for listening to another episode of the Focus Group Podcast. We're going to be back next week. Remember to rate and review us on Apple Podcasts.

Subscribe to the Bulwark on YouTube. Subscribe to the Bulwark Plus and go buy my book, How to Eat an Elephant, One Voter at a Time. Ashley, you have anything you wanna plug? Oh, I could plug my husband's book, sure. Um it's now in paperback. Um His name is Mike Bender. It is called Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost. It is a Trump campaign book from

twenty twenty, but the thing I will say about it, uh which I think dovetails nicely with with Sarah's book, which I am one thousand percent going to buy and pre order and read, um In part because every time I do your podcast and every time I call you, it's just such a privilege to watch these focus groups and to hear your insights from them because it's just

so fascinating and and it's a a perspective. I I don't have the time to every single day travel the country. Um so I love that. But one thing his book does is in addition to this great inside Scoopy campaign reporting, he has these little vignettes of these front row Joes, these Trump voters, and and understand them in in the way that we're talking about with sort of

empathy and nuance and for anyone who thinks all Trump voters are racist or w crave authoritarianism, um, you know, this book, like Sarah's book I imagine, shows you that that could not be further from the truth. I understand why people want to assign voters that way. It helps you orient the world in a certain way, right? Like These are bad people with bad motives. Simplistic and easy. But when you realize that actually so many of these voters voted for Trump because

They are panicked about their economic conditions and they were just like, I know he's a bad guy, but like I'm I'm I feel desperate about this. Like you can unlock empathy for that. Number one. Number two. You can see a strategy out. Like the reason I wanted to write the book is to say, Hey Democrats, how do we take Trumpism out root and branch? One.

Focus on people's material concerns relentlessly, day in and day out, because that is what is driving most people. And people, it's like, oh, it's the economy stupid. I've heard that analysis. That's not so fun. I'm like, you know what? I want to tattoo it on your face. I want to t I want every day you look in the mirror, you say it's the economy, stupid. Uh because for Hispanics.

Hispanics who've abandoned Trump now, why did they vote for him? It's not because there's a permanent coalition change. It's because Hispanics were like, I think this guy as a businessman will do better things for the economy. Okay, now why do they have that impression? 'Cause they had a parasocial relationship with him because he was on T V as a fake businessman for forever. Like

very unique circumstances. And I do think he can uniquely hold a coalition together in ways that other Republicans are going to have a really hard time doing. And so I think Democrats have a unique opportunity to take Trump's failures. And project forward into a into a a new political reality for people, but they have to seize it. Everybody's got to get the fire in their belly for what comes next and they gotta build.

anyway, sorry. Um that's why I wrote the book is because I feel very strong. Yeah, so buy her buck. All right, Ashley Parker, thanks so much for being on the show. Guys, we'll see you later. Du, jag skulle ju köpa några nya palpstrält. Det kanske blev lite mer grejer. De hade ju allt, skribord, jag köpte en sån här. Och kontorstolar, och så hade de en skit snygg tippkontrol. Vi har inredning för hela arbetsplatsen. Välkommen till AI-produktion.