Donald Trump has awakened a sleeping giant

President Donald Trump speaks, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, John Ratcliffe, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth and General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Palm Beach, Florida, Jan. 3, 2026. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

President Donald Trump went off at Sen. Susan Murkowski (R-Alaska) last weekend, and political experts think it foreshadows what's to come.

The New Republic's Greg Sargent chatted with longtime Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg for the "Daily Blast" on Tuesday. The two couldn't help but notice Trump has manufactured his own election downfall and is desperately trying to find someone to blame while also trying to salvage whatever he can.

Trump threatened to halt everything he's doing for Alaska if they vote Democratic, which Sargent said is clearly part of the president's freakout over losing the U.S. Senate. If the GOP loses Alaska, Sargent said, he has to believe that it's because the GOP has lost the Senate along with it. Alaska could be one of the last Senate races to be called unless there are recounts or extremely close counts.

"Yeah, look, he's had a really bad few weeks," said Rosenberg of the president's downfall. "The inflation reports were terrible. The job report is terrible. Brent crude is up at $115 a barrel today. The Middle East war is getting worse. I mean, nothing has gone right for him in these final few weeks before the election. And we've seen it play out in the polling."

Every report on the new Trump polling showed the president hit a "new low."

"So, the battlefield underneath him has deteriorated in the last few weeks, and I think they are genuinely now starting to panic," Rosenberg said.

Trump recently offered a $1 million reward for anyone finding voter fraud. If there's widespread fraud, Sargent noted, many people will get $1 million checks.

"He's been erratic on the stump. He looks terrible," Rosenberg said about Trump. "He's bloated, and even the makeup is not helping him. MAGA just got their butts kicked in Serbia and Brazil. And the other thing is that there's been an incredible amount of bad news spinning out of the White House. People fighting. People getting fired. It feels like they're closing with chaos instead of strength. And you're starting to see it in how they're approaching the final ad spend in the race and also what they're doing with his time."

They walked through the high early voting numbers, which are generally a good sign for Democrats. Higher turnout generally bodes well for Democrats, while lower turnout suggests Republicans are likely to do better.

Meanwhile, Trump has lost big with key demographics that made up his coalition in 2024, namely Latino voters. Their voter participation is up 41 percent compared with the last midterm election in 2022, Rosenberg said. Meaning, the share of the early vote as of now is that much higher among Latino voters than it was in 2022.

That surge isn't coming only from Texas and California; it's happening everywhere, Rosenberg said. The raw numbers, he read, show that the Latino vote share is up 35 percent in Texas, 44 percent higher in California, 15 percent in Arizona, 25 percent in New Mexico, 35 percent in Colorado, 51 percent in Illinois, 84 percent in Virginia, 70 percent higher in New York, 45 percent higher in Nevada, 59 percent in New Jersey, 58 percent in Georgia.

"So, all that means is this is a universal trend. It's not surprising, frankly, given how Trump and Stephen Miller have targeted disproportionately Hispanic families and Hispanic communities. His dismal treatment of people in Latin America ... To me this is a very significant event and it's one of the reasons that places like Texas are so competitive. You know, the old line is waking a sleeping giant. Well, Donald Trump sure looks like he's woken a sleeping giant in politics," Rosenberg explained.

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