Clinton, Epstein and Trump's dire polling

This is a global player original podcast. I'm getting very good polls on crime prevention, on law and order, and on the border. I have to and I'm getting starting to get great polls. On the economy, which I think is the same thing. The polls on the economy aren't aren't they they're not great. They should be great. They should be, so why aren't they? I don't know. That is Donald Trump telling the polls that they should be better than they are.

On today's show we're gonna look at polling. We're going to ask what the American people are starting to think about their president and his presidency. And we'll be speaking about the Clintons' choice of testifying before Congress over their appearance, Bill's appearance in the Epstein Files. Welcome to the NewsAgence USA. USA. John Sopor. And to help us do all that, I'm going to introduce Doug Sosnick, who is

Polster Supremo, senior advisor at Brunswick Group and a former political director to President Bill Clinton. And Doug, it's lovely to have you in the studio today. And I think we're gonna dive straight in because There has always been a discrepancy. between how British people for the most part have viewed Trump And how Americans have viewed Trump and clearly in twenty twenty four he swept the elections across the board. So tell us your sense, your numbers.

of how he's doing now. Well let's be clear and despite what the President says, he did not win in one of the largest victories in twenty twenty four. In fact it was the fourth narrowest victory since nineteen sixty. So he did not win in a landslide, first of all. And secondly, most of the reason he won was less that he got more votes and more that Harris had much fewer over three million fewer votes than Biden.

So just to set the record straight Isn't that saying the same thing, that he still got more votes than Oh he got more he got more votes, he won the election. But he says he won in one of the biggest landslides in American history and in fact it was actually relatively speaking a narrow victory.

In terms of how Americans feel about Trump, I would say there are three groups of people in America consistently about Donald Trump. The first group are people that dislike him intensely. It's around forty five percent of the people. And the second group are people that are will stand by Trump no matter what. And that's around forty percent of the people. Forty. Forty. So it's forty five and forty. So there's a remaining fifteen percent of the people.

who largely support a lot of Trump's policies. Like they support uh being tougher on China, they supported having a secure border, they supported smaller government, they supported making NATO pay their fair share, but they had personal misgivings about Trump. But given the choice of either Biden and eventually Harris, they felt it was a relatively safe choice. So it's that fifteen percent that agree with them on policies and are uncomfortable with them personally

Those are the groups of voters that have abandoned him. So he's now at around forty, forty one percent job approval, which is down to his core group of supporters. So when you say abandoned, because that's quite a strong word. If they weren't really in love with him in the first place, what makes you think they've actually abandoned him this time round? I mean, it could be that they still come out to vote for the midterms for him. Well, first of all, he's not on the ballot. Secondly

The people who vote in a presidential election are different than the people who voted in an off-year election. So the whole ballgame in an off-year election is gonna be who's gonna turn out to vote. And the people right now by polling are far more motivated to come out to vote against him than for him. And what you've seen clearly since he announced and was elected president is that he isn't able to transfer his support to other people on the ballot when he's not running.

So where do you think this has started to lose him votes then? I mean, can you point to direct Policies. Is it over ICE and immigration? Is it over the Greenland craziness? Is it about the way he's treating allies? Or is it actually just much more bread and butter issues, which is affordability and whether people are seeing their prices go down?

It's mostly about affordability. He r he got elected for two reasons. He got elected because people remember his stewardship of the economy when he was president compared to Biden and Harris. And the other was about immigration and a failure to secure the border. Since he's been elected president, he has not focused on economic issues.

And for the majority of people in America, particularly the sixty percent who don't have a four year college degree, their life is not better now than it was before you took office. And secondly, on immigration, they disapprove of the tactics that he's been using to enforce the uh the immigration law. So it's a combination, but first and foremost

It's a failure for him to do what he said he was gonna do when he got elected president was to make people's economic lives better. We played the clip at the beginning and you know th there was something kind of Canute like, isn't there, about hearing a president trying to control the polls and say that they are going in the direction that he wants them to be when when they're clearly not.

A lot of us will be remembering the Biden problem, which was that Biden kept talking about macroeconomics, he kept talking about the direction of travel. And people pointing to the price of eggs or the price of of bacon. I mean, isn't that the same now? for Trump that I mean you look at the stock market which is doing record things, not just with AI anymore, not just with energy companies, but sort of gaining new height.

And isn't he right to say people will see the change, that it's coming. They haven't caught up with where we're at? Uh well, we don't know. But the problem in America is m our macroeconomic data doesn't reflect the m how majority people feel in America. The top ten percent of people in in America by income are spending fifty percent on consumption. And so while the macro numbers are fine, it's disproportionately centered on the people who have and are making the most amount of money.

So the macro data by traditional standards is pretty good or at least acceptable. But it's not distributed equally and that's why this K shaped economy there are so many people in the explain K shapes. K shaped if you think about a K there's there's the the the line that goes up is quite positive and it reflects Positive trends.

the bottom part of the K going down reflects negative trends. And so in our K shaped economy, around ten to twenty percent of the people are enjoying the upward projection of the K. So all their numbers are positive, but the bottom sixty percent are not feeling any better now than they were before Trump took office. And if our listeners and our viewers are saying you've already described Doug as a democratic strategist, are you looking at these through rose tinted

Democrat tinted lenses, Doug. I mean is this is this where a a Democrat would naturally sit in February of the midterm year. Well it might be where a Democrat would naturally say I wrote a number of articles in the New York Times on the run up to the twenty twenty four election, in which I basically said Biden can't win.

So I look at the numbers and uh I say'em for what they are and I say it, uh, regardless. Um but I will make a point which I think is important for your listeners. The results on the twenty twenty six election Uh will tell you very little about the twenty twenty eight election. Right. And while I'm quite optimistic about the twenty twenty six election, that has nothing to do with what's gonna happen in the next presidential election.

And you say that because it's a completely different set of voters each time. A completely different set of voters. And we've been living in America since Donald Trump rode down the escalator in twenty fifteen. We've been living for the last eleven years in the age of Trump. And we will continue to Democratic Party for the last eleven years has stood for nothing other than opposition to Trump.

But the twenty twenty eight election will indeed I think be the most important election in my lifetime. I I put it more akin to the nineteen sixty election when John Kennedy came uh was elected and it was a generational change. But the twenty twenty eight election is gonna be about what politics in America looks like after the age of Trump.

So I guess some people will be saying that's quite optimistic in its own way because you imagine that Trump will seed the stage. We've been covering here on the news agents some of the democratic incursions that we've seen that taking, stealing of the ballots in Fulton County, Atlanta and Georgia. We've been looking at some of his remarks in terms of what he thinks

of his mandate for the midterms. He talked about I think sort of Republican Party nationalizing them. I mean, we always feel like we're going a bit crazy when we apply sort of standards of tinpot democracy to America. But is that something that you are alert to and is it something you are genuinely concerned about?

Well, I am and I'm also one of the people that's not the most hyperbolic of all Democrats. I I I have the thr I call it the three phases of Trump. When he says he's gonna do something outrageous, the first thing I say is he can't do that. Then the second phase is he won't do that. And then the third phase is, he just did that. And so I don't take anything off the table. And I will tell you this to perhaps make you feel a little more unsettled.

He's acutely aware of his mortality and length of time in office. And I think every day he wakes up and it's one fewer days, one less day left as president, he'll be more reckless. And he has surrounded himself by people that are psychophants and enablers. There's no one putting brakes on him. And he's also in a bubble now with not only a staff that are psychophants and extremely weak cabinet

But he's mostly spends his time around rich people. So he's not getting any negative feedback loop. He has no impulse control. And I think he believes that power is there to be used. So what does that mean for the midterms? We've seen his attempts to redistrict Texas. We've seen Newsom in California respond to that with his Prop fifty, the sort of California equivalent of of redistricting t to uh benefit the Democrats.

I mean what what do you think lies in store then for the next six months in terms of how the midterms and how voting could be affected. Well, just on the re uh redistricting, it looks now that the Democrats will probably pick up a net number of seats. Because of not only California but Virginia. So i the law of unintended consequences runs reigns strongly in politics. But but they wouldn't have done I mean you say unintended consequences, but they wouldn't have done without

Fighting back on this one, right? Oh no, no. But but Trump and the Republicans started it. Yeah. And they had a plan. And Democrats did respond to it. But it it's unintended consequences that this actually will probably in a m at least n marginal way be a negative for Republicans. I I think what he I think what they'll do is try to put as much pressure in areas of of the country

that are gonna decide the outcome to intimidate people not to vote. Whether it's putting National Guard troops or ICE and other kinds of people which I think by the way it could be another example of the law of unintended consequences in terms of motivating more people to vote. But I think he will do it the closer they get to the election, the more he feels like control of the House and potentially Senate's at risk, I think the stronger measures he would take.

So you think that whatever happens in the midterms and To be fair, I mean sort of tradition has it that the opposing party generally picks up seats. I mean y I don't know whether you'd make a prediction. Do you think he's do you think he's gonna lose the House and the Senate? Well so what a guy like me does at this point is I look at trends as much as numbers. And so if you look at what I think is pretty accurate, the betting markets.

They've been trending increasingly for the Democrats to take back the House. And now it's about seventy six, seventy-eight percent likelihood is what they say, which I think is probably accurate. In the Senate, which I can explain to you, it's gonna be much more difficult. And again, the the trends are more favorable to Democrats now in doing it, but they're still down to only around forty percent.

And why do you say it's more difficult then? I mean just sort of spell that out for a it's the structural realignment in American politics based on education. And the Democrats' inability to be successful in working class non college areas of the country puts a lot of states out of reach for us that normally in a blue wave we would be winning. And so there are thirty five Senate races this year. Twenty-two of them are Republican held.

but only seven of them are considered competitive and the d the Democrats are defending three of them. For the Democrats to take the Senate back, assuming that they hold their seats and win North Carolina and Maine, they still have to win two states out of Alaska Ohio, Texas, and Iowa. And those are states that all voted for Trump in the last three elections by eleven points or more. So those are very

difficult areas for Democrats to do well in, even though we've recruited great candidates. Haven't you just put your finger on it though, Doug, when you've said that it's s sort of systemically problematic for Democrats to win where there are, I guess, poorer and less educated people. I mean, isn't that fundamentally the whole problem now for the Democratic parties, which is hundred percent right. And we will never be a majority party if we can't get working class people

to support us. And right now they don't support us. because they f believe th they're th we they're culturally estrained from democrats. They think of Democrats as being elites who look down on them and live in a different world. And that's why And is that fair? It is fair. That's why back to that K shaped economy. Where if you're just to give you a s an idea, so Trump carried eighty four percent of the counties in America in the last election. I'm sorry, eighty six percent.

So of the fourteen percent of the counties that Harris won, over sixty percent of the G D P came from those areas. So it's really two Americas now. And so for the vast majority of Americans the sixty percent who don't have a four-year college degree, they feel culturally estrained from the Democratic Party. And they think that we as Democrats look down on this.

So what is the answer to that for Democrats in terms of who you who you choose now? Let's just kind of harden this conversation up a bit. I mean, as you sit here Newsom is by far the most kind of muscular, maybe vocal, Gavin Newsom of California, of of the sort of potential Democratic presidential candidates. Do you think he would realign the party? Do you think he's a person that you would You would back? It's way too early to be figuring that out. But what I can tell you is this.

Whoever the Democrats nominate has to be someone who is not defending the status quo. They're gonna have to be for breaking things and making change. They cannot be perceived to be part of the elite. institutional interest of America and probably shouldn't be can't be from Washington.

They have to have a ri a vision of where they're saying for Washington. Would that apply to New York and California, East Coast and West Coast as well? Well it's a life it's a lifestyle. I mean, for instance Bernie Sanders has been in Washington for thirty five years. He's too old to run. But Bernie Sanders could run even though he's been in Washington for thirty five years. Well,'cause he's Vermont.

But no one th no well, I mean he's so far o against the establishment forces that even though he ph physically Ronald Reagan was was eight years as governor, eight years as president, no one ever thought of him as working for government.

Right,'cause he was an outsider. So you have to be on the outside. You have to give a piece a person. I mean I I know you don't want to name names at the moment, but I'm kind of like racking my brains as to who the sort of anti establishment democrat is. Well, first of all We don't know what the mood of America is gonna be like two and a half years from now when the voting starts.

And you every action creates a reaction. And we don't know what that's we don't know what the mood's gonna we can guess but we don't know that. And we also we're gonna have to have people go out and run and see who's capable. of having a narrative and get people to vote for them. We don't know we have no idea, they haven't been tested. And by the way, as a party, we've had two problems.

One is we haven't stood for anything for the last eleven years except being opposed to Trump. And the second problem we had is Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton the Obama Biden presidency. Those four people have dominated the Democratic Party for a quarter of a century. So we haven't had anyone has not had the opportunity

To show their stuff and see if they're any good. And I just tell you, when Bill Clinton started running for president in tw ninety one and Barack Obama started running in oh seven, they were a lousy candidate. They worked as candidates to try to figure out and articulate why they were running for president. If you look at their speeches, And Clinton in ninety one at the end of ninety one and Obama at the end of oh seven. You look at those speeches then.

th it was the architecture for their presidency. But you only get good at doing this stuff by doing it and you have no idea who's gonna be good until you see how they do it. And pr someone like Harris, for instance, Has still never, despite having run twice now, ever made a cogent case of why she's running for president and what she would do if she's elected. So in a line, what would be that

Because we should just explain. I mean most of our our viewers, our listeners will will know this, but there isn't any such thing in the US as a leader of the opposition. In other words, there is no figurehead to the Democratic Party as things stand, which is why we see these sort of long forums of of sort of debates with you know, up to sixteen candidates once you get into an election year, right?

But when you put it that starkly and you say nobody's made a case for doing anything other than running against Trump And presumably, in twenty twenty eight, they won't have to be running against Trump. They do not expect to be running against a man who constitutionally should have stepped down by then.

So how would you remake the slogan of the Democratic Party then? Or remake the the promise, let's say, not the slogan. Well, I don't know about the slogan, but first of all We as Democrats will probably not win in twenty eight if all we're doing is being opposed to the other guy. The American public does not have confidence in the Democratic Party for their personal security or economic security. So just running against the Republicans will not be enough.

to get elected. So what enabled Democrats to be the majority party in America from Roosevelt through the Johnson era was the fact that we gave every American, regardless of what family they were born into, The opportunity, if they worked hard, they could get ahead. And they can not only have a middle class job, but a middle class lifestyle.

And we've lost that in America because of that K shaped economy where we've lost that middle. So any Democrat who runs for president has to have a vision for the future in which people get a sense that if they work hard, the system is not rigged. And that they can get ahead. And would they have to say, as Bernie Sanders has done and Soran Mamdani has done, there is no room for billionaires in America? I mean, is that an important message for Democrats to Well...

And it's interesting on Epstein, which I'll get back to in a moment. I think I don't know about you know, obviously you you can't tax billionaires to balance the budget, even though it's a good applause line.

I do think it's important though to be able to say who you're for and who you're against. And so what Democrats are beginning to do now is they're beginning to talk about the Epstein class, the people around Epstein, as a way to make a pivot to Epstein as a way to make a pivot to the fact that we are we have a system in America

That's controlled by the rich and powerful and benefits the rich and powerful at the expense of everyone else. We'll be back in just a moment talking about the Epstein class. The News Agents USA.

Doug, it was you that brought up this idea of the Epstein class. Um I was reading a a very old, I think unpublished piece. by Michael Wolfe, who was right in the Lion's Den with Jeffrey Epstein, and he describes a rich man's club. And that is I guess what a lot of people are taking away right now from the Epstein files. Without going into every single piece of three million data. They're saying this was a place that locked in The man on the wretched.

and it dispensed with or abused the women on the periphery. I mean, there were women in the middle of it as well, but I wonder if you can sort of dissect for us what that's doing at the moment to Mm. Well just to be clear, Michael Wolfe who is a technically a reporter. was not only in the lions den, but you saw him through the emails as an enabler and political advisor or press advisor to Epstein. So he's very much symbolic of this corruption you're talking about. And so I think in politics

The negatives that stick the hardest are the ones that reinforce a pre existing feeling that people have. So people have felt for a long time that the system is rigged The rich and powerful have a different set of rules and control the the rules. And the Epstein files reinforce a preconceived notion that people already had. And these emails, which no one obviously expected to ever see the light of the day

they're so granular and giving you that feel that the rules don't apply. And by just to mention one other thing. All these emails we're talking about are all from like two thousand eleven forward. There's an entire decade of emails. prior to that that no one has ever seen a single one of. There's a l there's a lot of past emails from two thousand two and three as well. Tremendous numbers. And and also in real time when when I mean we've had four presidents now that were in office

where nobody ever did anything to Epstein. And so I think that these emails lay bare what people already thought about the way the club works. Do you think Epstein is more a Democrat problem than a Republican problem? I mean he was a Democrat, clearly. Well, I think Epstein is is for Epstein. I I think it's more of a of a pro uh I mean the fault line in our politics right now is either whether you're part of the establishment or whether you're part of the revolutionary

And I think he's a problem for the establishment, who who of whoever you are. Although Bannon, I guess, would think of himself as a revolutionary and he is absolutely sewn in to just about every appearance. In the Epstein file. Well I think he's made a calculation that nothing matters. He can say and do whatever he wants and he can't be held accountable and he just never gives an inch and just moves on. Or guys at present.

within the prison once, but I mean I think he knows what his brand is and um You know, So wait a sec, that's really important because what you're saying essentially is if you have trashed your own reputation or if you don't care about your reputation, then you actually get to ride it out with impunity.

Well, I would say there there's a tendency of successful politicians to have what I call the no shame gene. If you have no shame And you'll say or do whatever, many people get ahead because of that. Trump has a no shame gene. I mean it doesn't matter what it is, he has no shame. Bannon certainly doesn't. And I think I probably because I'm a Democrat, I'm uh probably better off not naming names, but there are plenty of Democrats who also don't have the no shame gene. If you have a shame gene,

it will hurt you getting ahead politically. Does Clinton have a shame G or a no shame Gene? I think that he is more willing to move ahead and let bygones be guy bygones. than other people. You're laughing. So you think Well, I mean you're telling me as his former advisor he's he's shameless, right? I think that he's capable of of doing what he needs to do to move forward.

So he's agreed to testify. Yes. Just break that down for us because it wasn't obvious I mean it was far from obvious that he and his wife that Hillary Clinton were going to testify. I think they were the first ones to say they'd go before Congress. What changed? I mean did you were you in their ear? I wasn't involved with it. So Whatever you want to say about Richard Nixon He had at least some semblance of respect for the

for the constitution and for the rules and what was appropriate in government. I think the Clintons share that as well. And by the way, a and you saw from Trump's answer, if you want to know who the person who's most unhappy about them testifying, it was Donald Trump.'Cause he didn't want to see the precedent of that. And I think they believed and I've not discussed this with them.

that ultimately they didn't want to have a constitutional crisis and that ultimately out of the respect for the constitution, um, they would testify. And Hillary Clinton who says she's never met Jeffrey Epstein, she's a better example of exactly what this is about. It's all politics. They're trying to sh put enough shame on the Clintons to muddy this up. But Democrats have been historically fortunate over the years.

And they're very fortunate with Comer, who's a complete incompetent, who's never run away. He's the head of the committee. Head of the committee. And Hillary saw showed you with the Benghazi hearings over a decade ago. how incompetent and political these Republicans are. She wants these hearings to be testified. If she she's like, you want to talk about Epstein? Let's talk about Epstein. Let's not do it behind closed doors. And the president has said the same thing. Let's let the cameras roll.

I mean that was a feat of endurance above anything else. Hillary Clinton I think was I don't know in the room. Eleven hours, something like that. So Bill Clinton, you said it's all this is all politics. Clearly it's not all politics, Doug, because he was a friend of Epstein. He was on the jet. he did make many invitations to Epstein when he was president. Th there was a friendship there, presumably you will know about that friendship.

Well first of all, I don't know about many invitations when he was president. And what I'll tell you is this though there's about seventeen occasions where Epstein went to the White House. Okay. What I can tell you and I'm only gonna say this to you because you asked. So I worked for President Clinton for six years.

I had in the last several years m my office was next to the Oval Office. I could go to the Oval Office through a back door. I would say for the last four to six years I was in the White House I traveled with the president. I probably spent more time with the president than any human being during the Lewinsky stuff. I never once met or saw Epstein. So what does that mean? That you don't think he didn't meet him or you don't think they were friends or you th I mean

There's no there's no question that Felkins was on the jet, right? That's correct. I think there were two trips, if I'm not mistaken. There are allegations he visited the island. There's absolutely no evidence or proof of that. Do you think he did? No. And are you sure he didn't? Well I'm not I can be sure of anything. He said there are Secret Service agents attached to him and there are Secret Service law.

And there's no evidence from any of the Secret Service logs that he was ever on that island. Uh, I mean I was on when we were on the road, not in the White House, but we were I was when we were on the road around the world, I was the chief of staff. No incoming call got to him before it went to me. Right. At that time it would have been impossible, is what you're saying, for Epstein to call him without speaking to you first.

Right. So I'm just count I don't know what I don't know, but I I can tell you what I do know. is I spent a lot of time personally around the president and never once did I see, meet or hear from or about Epstein. So should Bill Clinton be scared to testify?

I don't think he should be scared and I think he uh I think at this point they want it. I mean they clearly would prefer not to be doing this. They they made no bones about that. Who would who in their in their natural mind would want to go through all this? Now that we're going through this, he's looking forward to it. And do you think that allows Democrats to put pressure on Trump to do the same? You know, Nixon never would have been removed from office.

by the Democrats. It was only the Republicans and they went to him and said, You know, you've lost it. When we were going through the Lewinsky matter and um uh I said to the President, the Republicans will never impeach you. But the Democrats can. So we had to hold the Democrats. And so for Trump, the Democrats don't matter.

All he has to do is hold the Republicans. And even though their his grip is slipping a little bit with the Republicans, he still has an iron grip on the Republican Party. And I see no evidence that the Republican Party is gonna abandon him in math.

Do you think just to wrap up we will see any further convictions of prominent men involved in wrongdoing from the release of the Epstein files. I mean the the The Department of Justice doesn't appear to have the appetite. To open new investigations. Do you think like if you're the American public now and you're watching this stuff and you're reading the gruesome, gory detail that's coming out now, would you have faith that there are going to be convictions at the end of this process?

Well first of all, your question about further convictions, there have been zero convictions other than Epstein. So there are no We said for the convictions of men. First of all. And I don't think anyone, even Republicans will tell you privately, to think that the Justice Department investigation of Epstein is anything remotely on the level.

So there's not a single person who who will tell you off the record that that place is nothing but a kangaroo court and th it's all there to protect Trump and there's absolutely no difference in Trump's mind between President Trump And the Department of Justice is an agent for the president. It's no independent Justice Department. And there's no one there's no one even on the okay.

that believe that that it's on the level. It's completely off the not on the level. It's all there in service of Trump, as is the entire administration, by the way. But Department of Justice is different than everywhere else. If your d Justice Department is not independent, then it tells you the entire government is not independent. So that's an Well I think I I mean I tr I have no idea it's a short answer, but I will say this. There is so much pressure for transparency.

And they've mismanaged it so badly that this is gonna be continue to be an issue that I think it's gonna be really hard. As more information comes out, I think it's gonna be really hard to justify not going forward prosecutions. That's not partisan, by the way. Either way. Either party. Doug Sosnik, thank you very much.

The News Agents USA. And I'm sure many of you when you read that that alleged FBI report probably thought to yourself, wow, this really cracks our narrative that we've been trying to push. about this president for many years. So uh we're moving on from that. Reagan. That is Caroline Levitt telling us we'll move on. Move on. From the Epstein files. Come on, get over yourselves. They've been out for a week now, and there's only three million pieces of data, so could we all just

get to where Trump's press secretary would prefer us to be. Answer from Twitter yes, even Twitter, a resounding no. The work continues. We'll see you next week. Bye for now. This has been a Global Player Original Production.