Demonstrators talk during a protest in support of U.S. President Donald Trump's stance against what he calls racist laws, land expropriation, and farm attacks, outside the American Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, February 15, 2025.
MAGA pollster Rich Baris has interviewed countless Trump voters to get a gauge on Republicans’ chances in November. But standing in the way of salvation for Republicans is the fact that the 2024 version of Trump stinks.
“[I]f we're having an honest discussion, you could be a supporter of the president and you can still be honest. I don't just see what sycophants see: how that helps anybody. I mean, ultimately, it's my job to convey what people are telling me. And they wanted the old Trump back.,” said Baris, speaking with former George Bush speechwriter and Bulwark podcaster Tim Miller on Wednesday.
Baris said Michigan and Georgia are effectively locks for Democrats in the upcoming Senate race, and the outlook looks scary in many “safe” districts thanks to a declining Trump 2.0, which is nothing like the Trump of his first administration.
“People felt like,’ you know what? I think we might have had it a little bit better than we thought. Can we go back and have a redo?’ But this administration has not been a redo of 1.0 in many ways,” Baris told Miller.
Baris pointed out that his company releases a monthly summary report of what people tell them in interviews and a common theme keeps coming up over in every survey.
“And you could see it if you don't read the transcripts, the interviews, you could see in the word clouds, clear as day. They thought that the first Trump administration was much more focused on domestic policy. And Americans, they're not stupid. They know that the president's job has a lot [on its plate] but it's in the name right there: America First,” Baris said. “Look, I mean, I feel like I have a hard time speaking to some people on the right who are being intellectually dishonest with themselves. I mean, it's in the name, guys.”
Trump is a candidate and a two-time president who ran against “no new wars in the Middle East,” said Baris, and Trump’s voters very clearly plan to hold him to account on that. MAGA clearly loved what he was doing in the first three to five months in his second term, especially younger people, but that was a long time ago in terms of politics. Now, Republicans are running off the rails fast.
Trump’s economy, in the meantime, is in chaos thanks to tariffs and rising fuel and grocery prices.
“Republicans are going to run out of a coalition soon if they don't build on what he started to build in 24. And a lot of those gains are squandered because of the direction they took,” said Baris. “I mean, they decided by spring, certainly by summer, before Charlie [Kirk] was killed, to conduct Operation Midnight Hammer. And that was Kind of like a PTSD moment for a huge part of Trump's coalition.”
“They just thought, ‘here we go again. No, please.’ And they gave him a lot of grace and they waited and waited and waited, but he never took that pivot back to the domestic,” Baris added.
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