‘At greater odds’： Trump becoming political liability for midterms as he campaigns in PA this week

Does the president even have an agenda to run on, considering the nation's at war, inflation is still high, gas prices are still high. The one victory that Republicans were already crowing about, the president dumped all over, the housing bill that went into effect at 12.01 Saturday morning, because the president opted not to do anything about it. What is he going to talk about when he gets to Pennsylvania? My guess is what he wants to be, what he wants to talk about is the SAVE Act and the fact that Republicans in his party don't want to, don't want to pass it. So he'll use that. His election, I'll call it the election suppression bill. Exactly right. And so he'll use that as leverage to essentially rally the troops against the Republicans to do something about that. Look, there's also a midterm election convention that they're doing in Texas. And so this is his opportunity to continue to run, even though he can't run and his name is not on the ballot. But this is the one move that he has. And when you talk about the housing bill, yeah, the shame of it is that any other Republican, any elected official, but certainly any other Republican would use that as an opportunity to go out there and give the members of his party cover to be able to run, to be able to run in this cycle, given that everything else is blowing up. But the reality is that his stepping away from that doesn't even give the Republicans an opportunity to kind of bask in the victory of that bill because they're going to have to, they're going to have to run and figure out whatever else he's going to do. Because what people saw for two weeks was 17 days, I think, was the fact that Donald Trump said he wasn't going to sign it. And then even when he, on Friday, he put on Truth Social that he wasn't signing it and that he said that if the dumb from Democrats is going to go to the Republicans in November because they're not going to pass the SAVE Act. What's interesting, he's going to be with David McCormick, the Republican senator from Pennsylvania this week. According to McCormick, this is very important, Trump is expected to tout the creation of quote, great paying jobs for Americans across Pennsylvania and the country. Philip Bump, do we think that President Trump is going to stay on message or as Basil and Jonathan and me and Jackie believe, that he is going to go, not even off message, off the message that Republicans who are on the ballot in November want him to be on? Yeah, no, I mean, he will definitely talk about how great the economy is, but he'll do it in the broad Trumpian terms of the best it's ever been and we're dying and so on and so forth. You know, I think this, the death of Graham here, I think is interesting because it is a reminder that this is a moment when Donald Trump and his party are at greater odds than they've been in a long time. Lindsey Graham was very, very close to him. He was a staunch ally. He loses that vote. Mitch McConnell is a wall like he's at 51 votes essentially in the Senate right now at a moment when senators are going south on him because they've lost their primaries and the Republican Party broadly is trying to figure out exactly that. How do we get between our base loves Donald Trump and wants to do everything you want, but Donald Trump is doing all these things that turn off literally everyone else. In a recent YouGov economist poll, 13 percent of non-Republicans approved of Donald Trump's job ready, right? And those people are going to vote in a lot of these elections and there's no middle ground, right? And so they're going to have this big celebration, this big midterm convention in September that we know is going to be all about Trump. And this just keeps putting more and more pressure on Republicans who understand that they have to be with Trump for their base and can't be with him for everyone else. And Trump is doing nothing to alleviate that. Why are they holding this convention in Texas? Do they want to continue to spotlight Ken Paxton and what a bad candidate he's turned out to be? I don't think he cares. But Trump doesn't care. Well, there's a lot of similarities. I mean, is this a way for Trump to pretend that he's the is make himself the candidate that's running against. Yeah, because he can't be on the ballot this year. Right. So the heat so that he needs to be able to get the Republican base to get the Republican base to act like he's still on the ballot. Right. And the fact is. And actually, it's it also sends a sign, a signal. Right. Because as you think about the ways in which some members wanted to, some Republican members wanted to have some level of local autonomy from the Trump administration, away from the Trump administration. This is a message to all of them, and particularly to John Cornyn, who's right there, to say, look, this is the price that you're going to pay for crossing me. Right. I'm going to come into your state. I'm going to campaign against you. I'm going to do everything that I can to make sure that the voters remember that you defied me. And that message is what the Republicans that's the only sort of organizing message that Republicans have. Right. And that convention is going to be less than two months to and people may even be voting at the time, depending on when they have it in September, what state it is. And so what folks are going to see is Republican after Republican going up and talking about how great Donald Trump is right when they're going. It's just like it is. It is. It illustrates better than I think anything else. The focus of Donald Trump, which is Donald Trump, and it's going to be incredible. Get in in that.