Why Republicans Lost Everything: Vance Blames Iran + Conservative Ballot Wins

Tuesday night, the blue wave came, and then some. Democrats flipped both chambers of Congress, picking up Senate seats in Texas, Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, Maine, and both Carolinas. James Tallarico became the first Democrat to win statewide in Texas in 32 years, and Susan Collins lost the seat she's held for nearly three decades. The blame game is in full swing. Ted Cruz calls it a Watergate-level repudiation. J.D. Vance blames the war in Iran. And the president says he wasn't on the ballot, and that if he had been, Republicans would have won in a landslide. But ballot initiatives bucked the trend, with voters voting for many conservative policy issues up and down the ballot, including protecting women's sports and locker rooms, rejecting wealth taxes and other tax increases, and new requirements for voter ID. The big loser? AI data centers, which were rejected in 40 votes across 10 states. House Speaker Mike Johnson is stepping aside, setting up a showdown between Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan over who will lead a thinned-down House minority. In Alaska, the race between the two Dan Sullivans and Mary Peltola comes down to a few hundred votes, and the ranked-choice count is still almost two weeks away. In Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed becomes the first Muslim elected to the Senate, even after Haley Stevens crossed party lines to back Mike Rogers. And Chuck Schumer promises to install legislative razor wire for the final two years of the Trump presidency. After a short-lived post-election bounce, the stock market sank precipitously, shaving trillions in value. Divided government is here. What does it mean for a divided nation? This is the District Club. Welcome to another episode of The District Club. I'm Mary Margaret O'Leary, and I'm joined by my co-hosts, Tim Rice and Ben Dominich. And today we're joined by our colleague, Isabel Brown. Isabel, thanks for being with us today. Thanks for having me. This is fun. We were just joking. Maybe we wouldn't fight so much today on The District Club, although maybe we'll fight a little bit more. I don't know. For the love of the game. It's very possible. We're coming off this wave of the midterm elections. Obviously, there are plenty of predictions that got Completely smashed. Other predictions that came completely true. Ben. Kick us off. What was your thought process when you hit the hay on Tuesday night? All right. So I had a lot of different thoughts, but I think that the number one thing that I think we have to take away from this election, just in terms of the consequences of it, is that all of the Republican establishment, the MAGA base, the different people within the party, the different coalitions, they all lost. Everyone lost. Good candidates lost. Bad candidates lost. This is not a situation where you can just blame this on one thing. It's not narrow. It's not a situation where the rhinos didn't come back. It's not a situation where you had an agenda that just almost squeaked by, if not for running one bad ad or having one mistake. This is something that is a full-on rejection of the congressional Republicans to a degree that we just haven't seen historically. And then the other thing that I really was thinking about was the incredible... damage that was done to the state of Texas. Um, Texas has been the, you know, the, the golden goose is been the, the apex of what Democrats wanted to achieve for decades. You have to go back before 1994 in order to find a point where they were actually in control there. They have tried so hard and yet, unfortunately, you know, for them, they have, uh, they have missed the mark each Each time they've, you know, the Republicans have been able to dodge the bullets. And then. The consequences of that down ballot, I think, was really the kind of thing that should scare Republicans today. There is no path to the presidency without Texas. And they were not just able to flip. The Senate, they were not just able to flip the governor, they were able to flip the state house, they were able to flip the state Supreme Court, which is elected in Texas. All the way down the ballot, you saw these wins for Democrats, and the potential for Texas to be a blue state for a long time is very real. We'll One anecdote that I found to be rather amusing is that when Greg Abbott, and I don't think be I don't think that this has been reported other than me saying it. When Greg Abbott called, you know, right to concede, that was their first interaction. And the reason it was their first interaction is because she was such an irrelevant state legislator that she had never passed a bill. back. So they had never actually met for a signing ceremony or anything else. That's the kind of people who got elected in this wave. It's a bunch of people who are, you know, nothings in terms of their political history. And that's going to completely change our politics. So, Tim, why do you think... What were the main reasons that some of these candidates won? Why did Republicans get whipped so soundly? Yeah, so I think it's interesting. It's helpful that you just ask that in two different ways, because I think the reason that the bad Democrats, it wasn't so much that the bad Democrats won, but that all the Republicans lost, right? And this is obviously like a little bit of a, I'm being a little bit silly, but I mean that intentionally. I think that this was an election of people voting against Republicans more than they were voting for Democrats. Now, that's not entirely true, and I'm sure we're going to get to some of the bigger cases when, you know. Cases like Abdul El-Sayed and the more radical kind of nationally focused Democrats, that's a different story. And I think that, again, that's a conversation to be had about where the Democrat Party is going. But folks like, you know, in Texas and a lot of these other, I mean, races that were either Republicans eked out and that shouldn't have been that close or, you know, kind of weak, unknown Democrats defeated popular incumbents by margins that they shouldn't have. This was a vote against Republicans, against Republicans writ large. And so when you start to break that down. There's obviously any number of things that you can pin it on. Obviously, a lot of people have been pinning it on the war in Iran and the subsequent affordability crisis. I've been thinking a lot about this in the past couple of days. I think that that's right, but I think very specifically, and this is something we've all talked about before, and again, I do want to be very clear that I'm not trying to pin all of it on this one thing because that's not how elections work. That's not how elections are won and lost. But I think one of the key things. That doomed Republicans was the White House's inability or failure to land on a message or a messaging around the Iran war that would carry Republicans through the election, by which I mean the president. I think if the president at the outset or right when things looked like they weren't going to be as quick or as or as successful as originally hoped, came out and said, look. It's about to get tough here. Okay, we've been in this position before. We're about to feel it at the pump. We're going to feel it in the grocery stores. But this is, I'm asking you to join me in a moment of national sacrifice because we need to get these guys out. What that does is it allows Republicans who want to run on the war to run on the war with a successful message. And it allows Republicans who don't want to run on the war to distance themselves from the president without totally distancing themselves, right? Saying, I understand the president wants us all to join in this, but I don't think the American people necessarily wanted to make that sacrifice. But instead, because the White House's message was the president's message, and the president's message was, we're winning the war, everything's great, look at my ballroom, Republicans had to choose between either... Staying with him, which I think made many American, many voters feel like they were being gaslit or run away from him fully a full break saying, I disavow, I disavow, which obviously alienated a lot of the base. And I think that that was a major driver and also just sort of arrested Republican messaging across the board because that was the first stumbling block that they would have needed to get past. And because they never did, I feel like they never landed on a success, a truly successful counter to Democrats. What do you think, Isabel? I have a lot of thoughts about this election. First, I'll say I'm not really shocked with how it turned out. I think if anyone's been paying close attention at all to the state of national politics for the last six months, no one is really shocked about how this turned out. I do disagree. There were no Republican winners. I think there was one very clear Republican winner in this election, and that's Congressman Brandon Gill, who by leaps and bounds was able to carry his district forward by 11 points. I thought you were going to say Paul LePage. He won his district By 11 points in a in the same district, James Tallarico took it away by over 10 points, a little over now based on exit polling. So this is a crazy dichotomy we're seeing for American voters right now. And obviously, that is one very specific example in one very specific district in Texas. But I think what you're looking for right now with American voters and what they are keeping their eyes fixed on Washington for is a type of candidate the Republican Party has yet to unlock. Or maybe they refuse to unlock because I'm seeing a lot of contempt around the idea of a new generation of leadership from Republicans who are here in Washington, which has been the rallying cry everywhere else in our country for a very long time. Someone like Brandon Gill represents that. He's obviously a literal new generation of leadership, but he also is incredibly unapologetic in the things that he believes in. He's bold. He runs on offense. He's unafraid to tackle the more controversial issues like demographic replacement. Like abortion, which he talks about regularly here on the Hill, like gay marriage, like the Islamification of America. These are things that D.C.'s lobbyist class is begging Republican candidates, do not touch with a 10-foot pole, because you might offend somebody and you might turn off a potential middle ground voter. Well, those middle ground voters aren't turning up for Republicans anyway. That became incredibly obvious this year. Mary Margaret, I want to hear your take on this, but because you were there and you were around the White House when they were going through this process. Just give us some perspective, I think, on the reaction there. We are seeing the early reports that have the leaks and things that are coming out. Knives are obviously out for everybody in terms of the internal who's to blame kind of activity. What was the mood at the White House in terms of their reaction to this? Well, on election night, you know, I'm there. I'm running back and forth to join you guys on the live stream. I'm trying to get the sense of what's going on in the White House, outside of the White House. Early in the evening, the vibe was we're cautiously optimistic. We're going to see how things go. And I remember as, you know, someone told me this and I run out of the White House to join the live stream and I'm listening and I can hear, I think it was Ben sharing one of the results of the race. And I thought, oh, my gosh, I wonder if they still feel cautiously optimistic, you know, five minutes, 10 minutes later. I'll talk to you later. I'm... But as the night progressed, their stance was we are defiant. We are ready. We are going to attack, you know, be prepared, buckle up. That was the messaging that was coming out of the White House. But behind the scenes, what people were telling me was. This is because of the war in Iran. Across the board, everyone was blaming the war in Iran. And obviously, affordability, which they said stems from the war in Iran. But this is what all young staffers across the administration were telling me in different agencies, in the White House, that they were very, very upset and very anxious and very stressed that the president's support for the war had caused this. Now, that doesn't mean that it's necessarily true, but that's the feeling amongst especially young administration staffers. So the problem that I have with that, and it's actually depressing to hear that from my perspective, because that's just not factually true. I mean, if you look at the actual evidence of the issues that people had. The president's approval rating was 40% before he started the war in Iran, and as of election day, it was 37%. You know, it's not something that actually, you know, made a huge ding in sort of where he stood. You know, now... Even when, sorry, even when connected to, like, the affordability stuff, because I feel like often people, and I, like, I think that we... So let's go through it. I think when you actually poll on this and you look at the different questions... The war in Iran is clearly a major problem. Affordability was a problem before the war in Iran. And so I actually think the best argument is Iran made all his existing problems worse. Iran made all the Republicans' problems worse. They were already bad, but they just kept going down as opposed to what they were hoping, which is that things would rebound and go up. And so from my perspective, putting it all on the war is actually... It's kind of a cheap game because it says like, oh, we didn't have a problem before the war. And it was like, no, you actually did have a problem before the war because things were still too expensive. People were pissed off that the economy wasn't getting better. They were pissed off that inflation wasn't coming down as much as they wanted to see. We just weren't keeping pace with it. And then you also see, I think, the elements of things that they just kind of avoided as a problem. When you look at the bipartisan sweep against data centers across the country, they basically lost every single ballot issue that they had in front of localities. And I don't think Republicans ever came up with a message on that. No, never a coherent one, no. And in addition to that, I think, you know, the simple fact that I don't know what the Republican affordability agenda is, On election day? That's a problem. Like, you should have one. Like, it could be a bad one, but you should have one. This is really interesting because the demographic that over the last year saw the biggest swing towards disapproval of the Trump administration was young male voters. And obviously you saw that in election day this week. But I'm taking back to early, early, early this year and even late last year, well before the Iran war was a topic of national conversation, when everyone's biggest concern was housing prices. Everyone was asking for innovative new solutions from Washington. How are we going to tackle this? The administration and Congress suggested a 50 year mortgage, literally not a single person on the planet ever asked for a 50 year mortgage. And you immediately saw that backlash. You've seen that conversation around groceries, around public transportation, around airfare and how ridiculously expensive it is to travel, which so many of us need to do for our jobs today. And the answer from Republicans, not just the Trump administration, I think this is a much larger problem with the party, has been to turn around and point the finger at young people and say. You slobbery, lazy, basement-dwelling trolls that are addicted to video games. Remember Brad, the commercial from a few weeks ago? Is that his name? Yeah. She won, though. This idea that you complain is so insane. Shut up and stop buying Starbucks coffee and your $20 Chipotle burrito, which is ridiculous, by the way. I still would like to go back to Burrito Gate. Because you guys are just whiny and you have to suck it up. That's been the messaging that I've seen across the board on virtually every policy issue. from Washington towards what real young people in particular are dealing with. Immigration is the exact same thing. It was a Republican member of Congress that introduced earlier this year the Dignidad Act to give 10 million illegal immigrants mass amnesty, while there are 10 million unemployed Gen Z American citizens looking for a job. She also won, shocking, although razor thin, razor thin. She lost a lot of support in her district. It's crazy. I want to go back to what... Ben was getting at there, though, in terms of the affordability message, because I think that one thing that we saw and one dynamic we can take out of these races, right, is that all of these non, I'm going to call them non-policy issues, I obviously understand their policies, but not these non kind of policy, innovative policy issues didn't help them, right? It didn't help Republicans to run on immigration, it didn't help them to run to the extent that they did on Do you think they did run on immigration? Well, that's why they didn't, they didn't as much as they could, but you know, they ran on, they ran on the border. Yeah. On the border. I didn't really hear anybody talking. I think we're getting to a point now where much like in the past with healthcare, right? When healthcare was the salient issue and Democrats answer was give it away for free and Republicans answer was. It was aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Like, I think we're getting there with affordability is the next one, maybe data centers, right? Things that are kind of these hard policy issues where you want innovative solutions and where the Democrats have a leg up because their answer is always and increasingly going to be, we'll just give it to you for free. The government will do it. How do we get Republicans? To a position and over the next two years to actually articulate the public policy. Well, a big part of this was having frank conversations around the war with Iran, because I agree with Ben that it wasn't the only issue, but it really tops it all off. And if you're trying to talk to Americans about affordability, you need to have a brutally honest conversation with them about the war in Iran and how it's causing the issues with affordability. It's causing gas to be more expensive. It's causing All of these affordability problems they're having, and you can't have that frank conversation unless you openly say, yes, the president's war is causing this, we're so sorry, hopefully it will end soon, and then things will get back to normal. But that kind of involved Republican candidates putting some blame on Trump there, and I think a lot of them, A, didn't know how to do that, and B, were scared to, and C, had messaging saying don't do that. And so it was this chaotic mess there where. A lot of people couldn't message properly on it. And then when you get to the issues like with young men, for example, I talk to young men all the time, you know, when I'm traveling or, you know, I get, you know, when we're at Daily Wire events and things like that. And I always ask them because I'm so curious what they think about what's going on. And anecdotally, across the board, these guys are so hung up still on Epstein, on conspiracy theories, on Charlie Kirk's death, on all these things that Republicans. Rightfully, in some cases, they say, that's nonsense, we don't need to talk about that anymore, that's real, not real, it's a conspiracy theory, but they still care. And so, in some cases, we still need to be acknowledging, okay, these young guys... They're hung up. They're confused on this issue. We still need to address it. And we still need to show them that they can trust their politicians. I think the Epstein thing is interesting. And Matt Walsh brought this up when we were covering this for the Daily Wire live stream. Thank you all for tuning in. We really appreciate it. Um, the The thing that... I feel like happened with that is that Epstein became an immediate shorthand. Democrats were able to manipulate it into an immediate shorthand for corruption. And so it became Epstein, Don Jr., Russian oligarch, crypto, Jared Kushner, island, you know, like they don't actually have to prove anything when they say these things, but it's just like a litany of like, it's all of this and this is all corruption. And the thing is, That actually, like, that doesn't apply to 95% of the Republican candidates who are running who have nothing to do with any of this. And yet, you know, and probably even more than that, but it was one of these ways that Democrats were able to message this that works perfectly for a TikTok sort of level. You know, assessment of what's going on. And Republicans never had a response for that. Exactly. And corruption was one of the top issues for Republican voters. And Republicans didn't message on it. And Democrats did. Which is insane because Democrats have actually been taking your tax money and giving it to people who don't legally qualify. This is literally the first major election since Doge. Like the opportunity to message on corruption, on government waste, on the deep state, on fraud. It was everywhere. And so I think you hit the nail on the head. The Democrats just had way better messaging this election cycle. And I don't know. But we even had any messaging, let alone coherent messaging as a party and as a conservative movement larger than the Republican Party, which then begs a lot of questions out of this with where we go and what we do need to message on. But I think there's a glimmer of hope in all of this. That doesn't mean all hope is lost, because I think there's a lot of conservatives around the country today looking at the map, looking at places like Texas, looking at potentially Democrat senators being elected in Alaska and Mississippi. I think those races still have yet to be called, which is also insane. When you boil all of this down to the issues that voters themselves get to weigh in on across the country, even in the deepest blue states like my home state of Colorado, wildly conservative ballot initiatives passed with flying colors. Colorado was able to pass three hugely controversial ballot initiatives, banning boys and girls sports, banning child gender transition procedures, and life imprisonment without parole for child sex trafficking. Wildly blue states all passed voter ID. They all passed citizenship requirements to vote. Idaho was able to defeat a radical pro-abortion ballot initiative and say, nope, we are Idaho. We are not going in that direction, even with a rising, rising blue population in their major population hub in Boise. So I look at this and I'm thinking, OK, how is it possible that Colorado elected universally Democrats minus one member of Congress? They elected a universal deep blue state government. All of the state legislature virtually is blue. They voted to raise their taxes substantially. And yet they're saying, yeah, I don't want you to trans my kids, and I don't want to deal with all of these culture war issues. I think there's a disconnect between the lobbying class here in D.C. and the consultants telling you, don't talk about the controversial thing. Don't touch it, don't touch it, don't touch it. Well, quite the reverse. I mean, the last thing that we saw from Michelle Tafoya and from... And from Mike Rogers was basically a complete cave on the abortion issue And I just before we go further down this, because I think this is an important thing to discuss, I just want to add one more because the social issues are all that's all very fascinating. But another valid issue was taxes across the country. We saw a lot of states rejecting taxes in California, even in California. California is probably I don't know if it's official yet, but is definitely going to reject the billionaire tax. North Carolina. They voted against two taxes and imposed stronger voter ID by the same 60-40 margin they elected Democrats. But that's even more interesting to me because we've seen this social movement brewing, right? Where it's sort of everyday, average, normie Americans, even in the deepest blue states, got on the, I don't want you to trans my kids, but I'm sorry. After the, in the year of our Lord, 2026, amid the wreckage of the blue tsunami, the blue tsunami, Americans are voting against new taxes. See, but what is going on that baffles? I don't know what's happening. I mean, I know a little bit on this, but this has been the question running around in my brain for the last, I don't know, 72 hours now. Is there just that much of a disconnect between candidate quality from the Republican Party and what actual people believe? Did we just not show up and message on any of these things? Mary Margaret. Because you would have been more motivated to vote for the right candidate if they had touched the issues that you clearly care about and showed up at the ballot box for I want your hottest take on what Republicans should do to come back from this. Ha ha ha. Well, listen, I'm no consultant, and if I were, I don't know how well these candidates would do. You'd be making a lot more money and doing less work. We'd be taking care of the data centers and saving the babies and saving all the children all over the country, and those are my main issues, so that's what I would care about. But no, look, I think when you talk about some of these initiatives and when you talk about candidates who leaned away from the culture war issues, it reminds me of... You know, the beginning of COVID, that era where there were plenty of us, especially me, because I was writing about these culture war stories all the time, that were saying, look at what's going on. These stories are crazy. People legitimately care. And Republicans were just backing away and saying, we want to talk about the economy. We want to talk about immigration. And we want to talk about the sassy exchange I had on Fox News or CNN or with my colleague on the House floor. That was really all people wanted to talk about. And then I remember. Jim Banks sent out this memo to the Republican Study Committee. I got the scoop on it, and I was a young reporter, so I was really excited. And he said, lean into the culture wars, don't be afraid, these are winning issues. And a lot of Republicans did, and that was around the time of the Loudoun County rape scandal, a lot of these stories coming out in schools. And Republicans finally learned, oh, actually, Americans really care about these stories. We should be talking about them. And then on the right, you know, that reporting exploded. Everybody was covering it. All of a sudden, everyone had culture war reporters in their newsrooms. Obviously, Daily Wire was covering it the whole time. But that was. And a great example of how people cared and how the Republican movement saw and responded. And it's like these consultants who, you know, you got people like Kellyanne Conway advising the Trump White House to talk about birth control and IVF and promote, you know, limited exceptions for abortions and things like that. She was talking about super intelligence when I was on election day with her. Of course she was. And you have these consultants that are really pushing to move backwards when young Americans are some of the most based. Americans we've ever seen. You talk about Brandon Gill. Brandon Gill is not hiding. He's not listening to consultants on any of these issues. He's a, I think he's a hardcore based Catholic when you come down to it. And his wife is too. So all of this is so depressing to me because I thought we learned these lessons during COVID. I thought we learned these lessons before the last election. The president really showed people so well how to lean into the culture wars and just Just call a lot of this nonsense crazy. And now we're backtracking. Do you think that, and I still want to get, I want to get your hottest take on how to come back. Do you think that Capitol Hill Republicans will take that lesson from this? Because I think you're correct about the you ignored these issues that could have actually been. If not a hedge against this, at least it might have boosted you a little bit as opposed to running away from it. Do you think they'll take that lesson? It depends on the office. That's what I've found. It depends on the staff. There are some fantastic staff in some of these offices who get it and you really have to get it. Not to sound too casual, but if they don't understand the issues and they don't understand how this plays, then it's very possible there are a bunch of wishy-washy half Republican, half Democrat staffers who are advising their council or their Senator, to just say whatever is easiest. I have very bad news for you, by the way. This is going to be the least Catholic Republican conference since before the Paul Ryan wave. Wow. Yeah. That's a little crazy. They were outsized in terms of their losses, just given the maps and things like that. I'm not too sure that any of the former Catholic congressmen or senators were too serious about this. That's fair. That is fair. It's fair, it's fair. So what's your hottest take on how they should come back? It's the opposite of what Mary Margaret just said, honestly. I think I do not, my hottest take is that you cannot, we cannot base and red-pilled our way out of this. My hottest take is that we need to, Republicans, I should say, need to start thinking very seriously about... Re reconstituting themselves as a political party, more than an ideological coalition. They need to start thinking about hard public policy alternatives that they are going to present up and down the ballot, national and local levels. They need, because look, obviously. Being the based party, nominating these people. Look, Brandon Gill won by a huge margin, but this didn't get young men to turn out. But he isn't the normie candidate for the Republican Party right now. Fine, but this isn't, this messaging, the White House has all these memes on every account and everyone's super online, but no one has a health care plan. No one has an answer. Well, but we have Malfoy. That's exactly right. The vice president dressed up as Malfoy, but we don't have a health care plan. And if we ever want to win elections again in a meaningful way. So let me put this to you. The consultant class here in D.C. is already talking about this. The president said when he called into Fox News on election night, you know, I can't work with the Democrats on trans and kids and blah, blah, blah. You know, you went, but you know, I can't work with them on some things. Some of them are wonderful, you know, the way he normally talks. And then he said, but the one issue that he mentioned was immigration. There is going to be a consultant push. Definitely. It's already started. To have the president do some kind of immigration deal with this new Democrat majority. What's your, does that fit into your perspective of policymaking? A little bit, a little bit, yes. Because I think it's absolutely something that he should be considering. Now, I say that very reservedly because immigration deal could mean a lot of things, right? Everything bad. Yeah, right, exactly, right, yes. If it means bring back DACA, then no. If it means we'll pause, like, the ICE raids and have some sort of, even if it's just sort of like paying lip service. Two, because obviously the raids aren't really raids and you know, whatnot. But not, I... She's shaking her head. I love you, too. I wildly disagree with that. That's fine. I think it was a disastrous mistake. Go, go. Sick him, sick him. I dressed like a Paul Ryan Republican today just to make this point. I think it was a disastrous mistake for the Trump administration and for Congress to back off on going all in for mass deportations. They obviously were responding to some perceived concept of wild unrest from the American people. But of course that was going to come through in the liberal media. And of course you were going to see these crazy protests in places like Minneapolis and Denver and Seattle and San Francisco. None of that was shocking whatsoever. What was surprising to me is the immediacy to just pull back the reins and say, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK. When that was working, and it wasn't just working to keep our cities a lot safer, violent crime has plummeted across our country, which is huge to motivate young families in particular. But it's working for economics. If you look at the cities that have deported the most illegal immigrants, their rent prices are crashing, and so are prices to afford purchasing a home. The biggest dips being New Orleans saw an 8% decrease in rent pricing last year. Nashville saw more than a 5% decrease in rent pricing last year. Cities across Texas, San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, all seeing. crashes in rent prices, which is one of the chief concerns on affordability for young people. I think if you just figured out a better way to message it, and maybe it's not through memes or Malfoy or whatever on TikTok, but saying, look, we're doing this to help you, to keep you safe, to help you afford things. It's uncomfortable maybe when you hear about it on CNN, but we're not backing down because we are here to serve you. It is interesting that when you actually look, and we're obviously early in terms of digging into the numbers here, but it is interesting to me that. The actual Republican coalition held on more to both Latino men and women than they did some of these other demo. And that goes to my personal theory, which is that the people who are actually pissed off about these ICE raids, et cetera, are suburban white liberal women as opposed to the people who are going to hate you anyway. So don't wait. Let me be really quick. I was literally just on an ICE raid, if you want to call it that. I did an ICE ride-along, and our video is coming out this week, so hopefully we'll have that for you guys soon. But while we were on this arrest, and we went to get four guys on this morning, we literally went to arrest an illegal alien who was convicted of sexual assault. So this man is a sexual predator. He escapes, runs away. The police can't help us because Virginia's policies, Abigail Spanberger, doesn't allow the police to help us catch this guy. We encounter several white women walking their dogs in this suburban nice neighborhood near Ballston, Arlington, which, if you're not familiar, very cushy little neighborhood of Arlington. And the ICE officer rolled down his window and said, hey, ma'am, have you seen a man running through here? And she said, are you ICE? And he said. Yes, ma'am. And she said, I'm not helping you. And as we drove away, she said, make good decisions. And I'm thinking, literally, there is a sexual predator on the loose in your neighborhood. I'm sorry. That is so America. That's awesome. That's... That's a skit. There's literally a sexual predator on the loose in her neighborhood. And she's like, make good decisions. And then we drive away. That is the state of the white suburban wine mom that is just, you know, has her, she's out there picketing against ICE. She's up on the bridge with her flag. state of what's going on there. And to me it was so incredible to see that and to experience it in real life because I know there's a sexual predator on the loose in that neighborhood. I understand that these guys are literally telling me I can't tell my kid not to talk about what I do at school so that he's not in danger. There's all of this going on and yet somehow it's not being communicated to the public. Yeah. And that is what really just how did the people chasing down sexual predators become the bad guys. I just want to say one thing in response to what Isabelle was saying before and then I want to hear I want to hear your hot take, Ben, which is just... I agree with everything that you said. You said that the issue might be with messaging. And I think that this is where the president or Republicans sitting down and talking to Democrats or at least pretending to be open to the idea of some kind of conversation could help with the messaging, because I think I think what happened was. The shutting down the border happened quicker and way more successfully than anyone thought it was. And then the deportations happened more efficiently and successfully than anyone thought it was. And I think it freaked everybody out. And the loudest voices were obviously the lunatic wine moms who said that this is fascism. It's a new Gestapo. But I think a lot of people in DHS were freaked out, too, and thought, oh, my God, we didn't really think that we were going to get this far this quickly. And I think that's why they were ready to be like, I think Republicans We're ready to sort of back off. Republicans were ready to go from Kristi Noem to Mark Wayne Mullen from the bravado saying we're not stopping, too. We're actually not going to talk about this because they freak themselves out a little bit. And so I think even if it just for Republican metal for Republican spirit decor. I think if the president said, I'm going to get in the room with congressional leadership right and left, we're going to talk about what the next phase of this immigration looks like without compromising what we're doing, but we're going to look at what the next phase looks like. That's the problem. I think that that could rally. That could be especially going into 28. I think that sets a really good table. Sure. That's not what happened, though. The without compromising thing didn't happen. We did compromise, and you're right. Republicans pulled back the reins immediately because there was this perceived idea of everybody hates us because everything in the media is so against us and everybody's taking to the streets and protesting. It wasn't everybody. It was the left-wing media who hates you anyway, and it was people who were going to take to the streets to protest anything you were doing anyway. I guess I have this problem with the Washington Republican mindset of this. It's not just immigration. It's abortion. You saw it with the Mike Rogers ad. You saw it with the Michelle Tafoya ad. It's demographic replacement. It's legal immigration. Vivek Ramaswamy had a huge campaign promise to expand H-1B visas, which was one of the most tone-deaf things you possibly could have said in this particular era of American politics. He had more tone-deaf things than that. Sure. One of the chief concerns of your key voter base being young white men under 40, right? I see this consistent problem with every single policy issue in American politics right now where we don't do that. Yeah, we're not compromising, but this is what we're doing thing. Instead, we just do compromise because there's this perceived idea that there's a massive group of nebulous voters in the middle that will be swayed if we're nice about certain things. Which has never been true. Those people don't exist. Like there is no voter in America who thinks, yeah, I mean, like I'm not pro-life. I'm really staunchly pro-abortion. But if a Mike Rogers tells me that he's not going to vote for a national abortion ban, sure, I'll vote for that guy over the Abdul Al-Sayeds of the world. There is not a single person who was outraged over Alex Preddy or Renee Good that would have seen Donald Trump go march his butt down to talk to Chuck Schumer and say, shut up, Chuck, this is what we're doing, but at least we're having a good faith conversation about it, that would have said, yeah, now I'm okay with mass deportations. The left doesn't do this for a reason, because they have an agenda, they have a blueprint, they stick to it, and we don't have any semblance of cohesion as a party whatsoever. Instead, at the first sign of backlash, every time we try to govern on offense, we just back off. Right, so we agree on the fact that the Republican Party lacks a coherent message. Yes. I think that we should actually... Start legislating and coming up with ideas that we can send to the American people and say, here's how we're going to make your life better. And you just, you just, you're saying that we should just basically replace the RNC platform with a Matt Walsh monologue. That's what's going to win us elections. That's going to win us the presidency. I do, because this was one of the biggest questions on Tuesday and call me insane. Call me like an absolute radical at this point, but I'm a little blackpilled this week, as we all are. Blackpilling ends next week, but you have a pass this week. It is impossible to me, I love using this example again, that Brandon Gill wins his district by 11 points in the same district Tallarico wins by 10 plus points. It is insane to me that Republicans look at someone like a James Tallarico and an Abdul Al-Sayed and they say, Oh, my gosh, these people are crazy. We talk about candidate quality, but Mike Rogers has a lot of political experience and Ken Paxton has a lot of political experience. We did put forward a good candidate on these things. No one would vote for a God is non-binary James Tallarico or I'm funded by the Muslim Brotherhood, Abdul Al-Sayed. Candidate quality for the Republican Party has to have a dramatic change tomorrow. If we are going to win any election at any level in American politics moving forward, it doesn't mean. You served in the military for 15 years and you're a great constitutional attorney and you've been in Congress for several cycles or maybe you worked your way up as an intern through the staffer level in D.C. for so many years. It has to mean you're willing to say the hard thing. And for the left, that is God is non-binary and let's import mass numbers of Muslims into our country and we should be saying inshallah at campaign rallies. That's absurd to us. We don't have an equivalent to that. We don't have an equivalent to that at all. You've got to let Mary-Margaret, she's been waiting. No, no, I mean, I think, look, James Tallarico saying that we love trans children, he loves trans children, that to me was so startling and along the same lines of what you're talking about, one of those things that Republicans were like, he will never win. Well, he did win. But someone else I forgot about that I don't think we've talked about is Michael Alfonso, who's Rachel Campos Duffy's son-in-law, who also won in Wisconsin, right? He'll be our youngest member of Congress. Yeah, very young Gen Z guy. So I'm very curious to see how Washington treats Brandon Gill and also Michael Alfonso, these very young guys who are very conservative, very serious about a lot of these culture war issues and how they'll fare in the end. But I also, the thing I really wanted to... Talk about was Mike Rogers abortion ad, because this got me all riled up. I barely tweeted anything about it. And everyone in my replies was like, how could you speak out against Mike Rogers when, you know, we're about to have El-Said win? And I thought, fair, you know, obviously it's a tight race. But to me, seeing Mike Rogers put out this abortion ad or not an abortion ad, but a statement essentially saying, don't worry, I'm not pro-life the way you think I am. That, to me, A, was such cowardice, and B, it reminded me of In a Man for All Seasons. I'm Catholic, so I'm bringing this up. In a Man for All Seasons, when Thomas More gets betrayed by his friend, and his friend comes before Parliament or whatever this scene is, and Thomas More says to him, essentially, you gave me up for Wales? Yeah, but for Michigan. But for Michigan. And, uh, Mike Rogers is going to have to answer for that in one way or another at some point in his life. Well, one thing that I, so there, there are a couple, just since you've all said various things here, a couple of things that I think stand out to me are, it seems to me that the. Question about immigration really is a test about how far Republicans are willing to go and whether they're willing to actually defend what they're doing rather than have this fantasy about a voter that doesn't exist, which to me takes us all the way back to the post-2012 autopsy. And by the way, it was an autopsy because it was about a party that was dead. OK, Donald Trump proved that four years later. But the point is that, like, just you need to be ready to defend this. You were willing to defend this war that was unpopular with your own people. You're not willing to defend this thing that was much higher on their list of priorities when they voted for you and for the president just two years ago. That's a major issue for me in terms of my hot takes. Tim already knows one of them, which is that I think Ted Cruz needs to give up his plan to run for president. He needs to focus on being the Republican John Tower of Texas. He needs to go back and save Texas for the sake of the country. He needs to adjudicate whoever is the next gubernatorial nominee. He needs to figure out what's going on there because he's the only statewide Republican now and he has the authority to do it and the money to do it. And he's the only person who does. Sorry, Ted, we know you want to live here, but, you know, you're going to have to stay there. And my other thing is actually a similar, sort of in the similar vein. There are a lot of House seats that were won pretty narrowly by these Democrats. It is not out, the Senate's a real problem for Republicans. It is not outside the realm of possibility. Two years from now, Republicans could cut deeply into this vast Democrat majority. And I have the perfect man to do that for you. Kevin McCarthy needs to run the RNC. Oh, my God. Wow. Let's go. He's the greatest recruiter in the modern history of the Republican Party. He will find the person who can win all of these things by 1.5%. He will raise a ridiculous amount of money. And most of all, and this is key. He will stay away from all of the controversy around the 2028 nomination, which will dominate the conversation within the GOP over the coming years. And that leads me to my next question, which is J.D. Vance. We got to talk about the vice president. He went out there and he said his take on things, that take was, depending on which reporting you believe, I believe. It's something that he did independently, that he, you know, was truly expressing his views on this. There were certain people, including the president's son, Don Jr., who applauded this take. I believe it was a huge mistake and admission of weakness and actually will increase the number of people who want to run against him. Because it once again, I think. displayed a lack of political judgment in terms of his inability to talk about many of the other issues other than the war that dragged things down. And indicating that he already wants to create some kind of separation from Donald Trump, which I believe is impossible. Well, haven't we known this the entire time? Okay, well, obviously, this is not news that J.D. Vance is not as supportive of the war as Donald Trump is. I mean, I have been saying this since the war began, that obviously the vice president doesn't agree he's going to have the president's back. He's going to support him. But he didn't have the president's back. He did. This tweet is not having the president's back. Okay, well, before this tweet, I've been to so many events, so many questions, so many gaggles where the vice president defended the president's policy on Iran, and we all knew he wasn't gung-ho about it, but he's going to support the president. This tweet, to me, was him saying, okay, we're looking at the situation. I believe the war was at fault here. And as a reminder, the president was asked about it, not even maybe... Five, six hours afterwards, and he had nothing bad to say. He wasn't upset about it. Oh, you actually believe the president was not upset about this? Donald Trump is not one to hide his feelings if he's upset about anyone in the cabinet. He would absolutely have said something. It should scare you when he does hide his feelings. He's, he's, he's, he's. He's thinking this week. I have a question for both of you then, if you agree with this take, because this is interesting to me. It can't be simultaneously possible that this election was a referendum on the Trump administration and a referendum on the Republican Party. And also, this was a horribly calculated political move to try to separate yourself from the disastrous legacy of the Obama war. Well, you know, when is, well, let's, just a simple question. When does that work? Well, it might not. That's the big question that I think everybody watches. So, no, no, no, no. I'm very serious when I say this. You do realize. In modern history, J.D. Vance is the least popular vice president. He's less popular than Kamala Harris. He's less popular than Dan Quayle. He's less popular than Mike Pence. He's less popular than Al Gore, none of whom obviously became president. Why does separating yourself from a man who has created this coalition, a new coalition, won the most votes in American history, how does that benefit you? Well, I would make two points there. One, I don't know that anyone, myself included, is saying that it was the right move necessarily. Well, she seems to be. No, I'm saying, you said it was a poorly calculated political move. I'm thinking there's not a reality in which this election, which we all agree was partially a referendum on the war in Iran and partially a referendum on the lack of governing on offense from Republicans in Washington, D.C. If that is true, which I think we all agree is true, then if you have any hope of becoming the next Republican president of the United States, it doesn't matter who. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. Let me just ask one basic question. Did that post... Increase or decrease the likelihood that Donald Trump endorses you for the Republican nomination? I don't know that it cut away because look, J.D. Vance is putting out this statement. It's very J.D. Vance-like. He's sharing a little too much wonky information, he's putting out a little too much wonky data and analysis information. I'm reading it and I'm like, where's the point? At the end, he literally says, the president agreed yesterday, he's drawing Trump in, he's trying to make sure people understand, I'm not breaking from the president here. And honestly, for a lot of people, it was kind of a relief to read that and say, okay, I'm not insane, because there were plenty of people out there saying, wait, the president has been saying this war is good for so long, I'm trying to hear from him on affordability, and he's kind of implying things are fine. That's very frustrating for a large portion of the population. I'm not saying the vice president was completely right in his analysis, but I do think it was cathartic for some people to read that and say, look, I'm not insane. There's more going on here than is being articulated. I think the number one way that J.D. Vance becomes president of the United States is if Donald Trump endorses him for the GOP nomination. And I think that that post decreased that likelihood. Well, I'll ask him if I can. Please. Mr. President, what do you think? I think there is a difference between Political positions and political maneuvers, and I think that you're right, Isabel, that at some point the vice president, certainly partially because the Iran war has proven unpopular, and also because he clearly just never agreed with the Iran war. As he runs for president, which he's certainly going to do, he's going to have to separate himself from the war. Doing it 11 minutes after the polls closed on Twitter was a bad political move. It let every other potential Republican contender who was sitting on the fence, Ron DeSantis, hopped off the fence and put his election white leather boots on the second he saw that tweet. Donald Trump Jr. is probably pissed. Trump is definitely pissed. Donald Trump Jr. retweeted it. Yes, he did. I know, but that guy is loyal to his dad. Donald Trump Jr. loves J.D. Vance, as did Charlie Kirk. I hope that you all enjoy your catharsis and your tweets and your memes and President Gavin Newsom. Because J.D. Vance is going to outwardly sell out of contention. We'll likely have a president, John Ossoff. Put it down in Cal State. You heard it here first. Regardless of catharsis, J.D. Vance has the hardest job in American politics for the next two years. He has to thread an impossible needle between keeping all of these people that feel disenfranchised from the governing style of the Trump administration and also trying to get a Trump endorsement. That is darn near impossible. I think it's a limiting idea to think that he has to thread a needle. You know, why not? I don't think we have to keep the people that we just know. No, I actually think that you I think that you need to be an inspiring figure in your own right. Well, sure. And that's exactly I think what he's trying to do right now is to say, I'm not the guy at the top right now. I support the guy at the top. I'm here to serve the guy at the top. It's not the decision that I would have made. I hear the concerns of the American people. That's my two cents on the issue. And also. It wasn't 11 minutes after the polls closed. It was halfway through Wednesday. And I know because I had been waiting and looking for what the vice president had to say about it, as had a lot of, you know, the D.C. White House reporters waiting to see what he said. And it was it was interesting analysis. So I think it's unfair to say this makes or breaks J.D. Vance. I think it was one post, one statement. We're not saying it makes or breaks him. No, I don't think it breaks him. I feel like that's the vibe here that, you know, he's done because of his post. I think it hurts his relationship with Donald Trump. And I think that it's a situation where. J.D. is starting to separate himself, I think, earlier than he needed to. I think a rational politician, a tactical politician, would have looked at this situation and said, I'm going to have to create some separation from the president. I'm going to be doing that a year from now or a year and six months from now on a debate stage where I explain myself to the American people as opposed. To a post on X. But don't you think Donald Trump would handle this better slowly and nicely rather than on a debate stage when he fully separates from Donald Trump? Donald Trump would be posting on True Social and say, I can't believe my VP. You don't think he's going to be hosting that debate? He's going to be the moderator. I mean, that's the thing. Because because you're of course he's going to. But that's part of the reason why you have to just almost kind of like control the experiment without him. Like, I mean, Trump is going to be Trump is going to push back on Vance whenever he starts to try to separate away. Better to make it seem gradual. and in the course of primary debate rather than cutting and running after blue waves. But he didn't cut and run. He didn't cut and run at all. He really didn't. I read that tweet and I saw an analysis of maybe the most important dark horse element to the 2028 election that no one in D.C. Republican politics is talking about. Young, white, Gen Z men swung 30... Eight points from the Republican Party to the Democrat Party between 2024 and 2026. Donald Trump is only in the White House because of the Charlie Kirk TikTok effect. Let's be very, very clear about that. Gen Z white men delivered the White House to the Trump Vance administration, and that is going to be the majority of the voting demographic between millennials and Gen Z. In 2028, for the first time ever, forget about campaigning on Social Security, forget about campaigning on Medicare. You have to reach these people who had the potentially biggest swing in modern politics as an indictment against the Republican Party toward the left immediately, or you have no hope whatsoever under the sun. Well, but let me dig into that. And I think that this is a good way to sort of wrap things up. If they are the most crucial demographic in terms of how much they swung, and I agree with your argument, how do you get them back given that What we actually see when we drill down in these numbers is people who did not vote. They did not, like a certain percentage as low, I mean, it looks like it's going to actually end up being perhaps single digits of them went over to the Democratic side. The vast majority of them simply did not turn out, did not show up. They were taken for granted and they just stayed home. How do you get them back? You have to write the blueprint of what the American dream for the next generation looks like. You have to have the policy plan, but you also have to have the right messaging to say we hear you. We understand the reality that you're living through is fundamentally different than what every generation who came before you has had to live through. We understand that there is a geriatric Congress that has absolutely zero concern for your well-being, your financial future, your opportunity, or your family. And we are changing that tomorrow, immediately. I think along similar lines, there have to be new promises made to prove that the promises that were not kept will be brought back. I mean, I think of all these young men that I've spoken to about this. When I say young men, I mean, you know, college age, my brother's age, or, you know, some of the guys I know that are deployed that, you know, voted for Donald Trump based on It's on No New Wars. Those young people. are disillusioned. They feel that their promises that Donald Trump made them were broken. And so they need a candidate that's going to make them promises and that they trust that he will keep or she. And obviously could be J.D. Vance, could be Marco Rubio, could be Ron DeSantis, could be anyone at this point. I'm not settled on anyone that's going to be that savior. But I do think this this Republican Party needs to get with the point that. No, we're not going to go back to your establishment weirdness. You need to focus on the future. And that is not the same as the past. So, Tim, should the president, instead of promising $5,000, should he have promised free GTA 6 copies for everyone? Really? Yes, a gillie in every pot. Lots. It seems to me that this is the big question for Republicans, and I don't personally have an answer. And I think that a big part about it is going to be about communication. And completely changing the way they try to win campaigns. The fact that the richest man who has ever lived spent $200 million in Texas to try to hold onto it, and it basically did nothing in terms of any kind of ballot effect. That, to me, means you have to completely start over from scratch and reevaluate the way that you communicate. You've been watching another edition of The District Club. I want to thank Tim, Mary Margaret, Isabel. I'm Ben Domenech. We'll be back next week with more.