Trump’s Miller pick points to a harder post-election line

Iran (5)

• Donald Trump acknowledged that voters disliked the Iran war and rising gas prices, then argued the war would be vindicated because it stopped Iran getting a nuclear weapon. Krystal countered that Iran may now be closer to a weapon and that Trump abandoned the JCPOA, which Iran had been following.
• Donald Trump publicly said JD Vance was right to question the Iran decisions, then faulted Vance for not saying Trump should make the same choice again. Saagar read the exchange as a warning about Vance’s prospects as a future Republican leader.
• Donald Trump said Pete Hegseth could stay, crediting him as part of victories in Iran and Venezuela. Krystal and Saagar expected Hegseth to be safe because firing him would undermine Trump’s claim that the Iran war was a success and replacement confirmation would be difficult.
• Iran’s foreign minister said a two-day proposal remained available if the United States ended the war on all fronts, while warning of further retaliation. Saagar said gas had fallen below $4 a gallon on hopes of a deal; Krystal warned the price could rise again if diplomacy failed.
• Krystal said Iran diplomacy remained fragile because Trump would have to accept a deal that could look like a retreat, while hawkish commentators pressed for escalation. She also noted Netanyahu’s political future was uncertain and said that could give him an incentive to resume conflict.

Elections (2)

• Saagar argued the Iran war helped Democrats win in South Carolina, Mississippi, and Kansas, while Krystal said immigration enforcement also hurt Republicans in Texas. Saagar said James Talarico won Texas by 12 points, including without its most populous counties; Annie Andrews won South Carolina by five points.
• Krystal said Republicans face a harsher political calculation after the midterms: they must now worry about general-election losses as well as Trump-backed primary challenges. She said the 2028 Senate map favors Democrats and makes a Senate supermajority easier to imagine than it had been before this cycle.

Corruption (3)

• Donald Trump rejected Ross Douthat’s claim that his net worth rose by $3 billion, saying he did not track his wealth and had long held substantial cash. Krystal called Trump’s defense of his crypto holdings and foreign-government ties corrupt, not comparable to earlier presidents’ assets.
• Calley Means accused Susie Wiles of benefiting from lobbying ties and said her daughter’s firm gained White House access. Means said Continental Strategies’ revenue rose to about $30 million a year, while Ballard Partners became the highest-revenue lobbying firm in history.
• Saagar and Krystal rejected Calley Means’s claim that Trump was kept uninformed and treated like a baby, arguing Trump had agency and knew about choices such as glyphosate policy. They said Trump used MAHA to win votes but did not prioritize its goals over corporate interests.

Media (1)

• Donald Trump announced Dana White as a possible press secretary, then said the offer was a joke; White declined the job. Krystal thought the mix-up may have begun with a recommendation of Dana W. White, a Defense Department public-affairs official.

Health (1)

• The hosts cited fruit-flavored vapes, kratom, glyphosate, cannabis, and ultra-processed food as examples of conflicts between MAHA goals and administration choices. Saagar argued food restrictions could raise prices; Krystal said stronger school-food standards would face a fight from companies profiting from school sales.

War (1)

• Thomas Massie’s Hegseth impeachment resolution could attract Republican defections, including from lawmakers who lost elections and blame the Iran war. Hakeem Jeffries said he would vote yes; Don Bacon and French Hill were undecided, and Hill said the commander in chief bears responsibility for war strategy.

Diplomacy (1)

• The Emir of Qatar was in Washington to meet Donald Trump and JD Vance, underscoring Qatar’s role as a diplomatic channel in the Iran conflict. Krystal said Gadi Eisenkot had been asked to try to form an Israeli government, but failure could leave Netanyahu as caretaker prime minister before another election.

Iran (1)

• The Iran war was a major source of Republican losses, and private polling found that defecting 2024 Trump voters most wanted it ended. Miller had promoted the war publicly but was not part of its planning; Jonathan Swan says only JD Vance forcefully raised doubts before it began.

Trade (1)

• Trump’s tariff policy was another source of political damage. Haberman says Wiles tried to carry out Trump’s broad trade confrontation, but the policy became calamitous on the terms Trump chose.

Elections (5)

• Trump’s team saw warning signs well before the election: private polling showed weakening support on immigration and the economy by the previous December, then growing alarm over the war and a possible Republican wipeout during the summer.
• Trump answered the looming losses with rallies and attention-grabbing projects, including the Lincoln reflecting pool, a White House ballroom, an arch, and a National Garden of American Heroes. His aides knew the ballroom fundraising and the time Trump spent on it were politically damaging.
• Trump privately blamed wasted campaign spending after Republicans lost. Haberman says he treated roughly $400 million in his super PAC as his own money and resisted spending it on other Republicans before his team persuaded him.
• JD Vance faces a difficult path to a 2028 presidential run: he must rebuild a coalition alienated by the administration while serving as vice president and relying on Trump’s endorsement. Vance’s public blame of the Iran war risked Trump’s support, though Trump also acknowledged political and gas-price effects.
• Haberman cautions against treating the midterm result as a forecast of the next presidential election: neither party is popular, and voters want government to improve their lives. Nominee quality and what Democrats accomplish over the next two years will also matter.

Politics (1)

• Haberman says Trump is driven by personal legacy, wealth, and attention rather than the Republican Party’s future. She reported that Trump and his family made $2.2 billion in crypto during the previous year; Swan says Trump wants to be remembered alongside history’s most powerful rulers.

Immigration (1)

• Trump said his immigration crackdown both helped and hurt Republicans, acknowledged that some workers were being removed from jobs, and expressed interest in a deal with Democrats granting legal status to undocumented migrants without violent criminal records.

Big Tech (1)

• NVIDIA opened an investigation into CEO Jensen Huang after he told the board he had been intimate with a business executive whom US intelligence identified as a Chinese spy. The New York Times reported that Marco Rubio had drafted a secret warning memo for senior officials the previous spring.

Israel (1)

• Israeli President Isaac Herzog asked opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot to try to form a coalition government that could remove Benjamin Netanyahu. If Eisenkot fails, Herzog can give another politician the chance, with Netanyahu a likely choice.

Elections (11)

• Democrats won the House and Senate and flipped governor’s races and congressional seats across North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, Ohio, Kansas, Georgia and Iowa. South Carolina elected its first Democratic senator since 1932.
• Charlotte Howard says Democrats gained ground across voter groups, especially young and Hispanic voters, while Edward Carr compares the scale of the repudiation to the backlash against a president around Watergate.
• The election passed without serious allegations of polling intimidation, fraud or rushed court challenges. Donald Trump accepted the results and said he would work with Democrats, though Charlotte Howard links that response to the scale of the defeat.
• Charlotte Howard says Hispanic voters who moved toward Trump in 2024 swung back amid unmet promises to lower prices and expand opportunity, and anger at aggressive deportations and ICE raids in Texas communities.
• Charlotte Howard says Republican mid-cycle redistricting in Texas and Florida backfired, producing Democratic seats instead of protecting Republican control. Donald Trump had urged Republicans to redraw districts before the election to preserve the House.
• Charlotte Howard says Trump-backed Ken Paxton lacked broad appeal amid allegations of corruption and marital infidelity. Edward Carr says Vivek Ramaswamy’s attack ad against Amy Acton also backfired, reinforcing voter rejection of aggressive partisan tactics.
• Edward Carr argues that voters crossed party lines rather than backing candidates simply to defeat the other side. He sees the results as a rejection of tribal politics that rewards performance and hostility over governing.
• Charlotte Howard says voters made the economy, cost of living and political self-dealing central campaign issues, while demanding results from Congress despite low confidence in the institution.
• Charlotte Howard expects Democrats to push votes restoring Medicaid coverage and Obamacare exchange subsidies, and to seek an end to the unpopular Iran war. She says major legislation may stall and the Trump administration may ignore congressional subpoenas.
• Abdel El-Sayed won Michigan’s Senate race by a smaller margin than Democrats who prevailed in deep-red states, despite being a populist leftist and Muslim. Charlotte Howard says candidates such as James Talarico and John Ossoff won wider support with less partisan presentations.
• Charlotte Howard expects Democrats to face pressure to impeach Trump but argues voters chiefly demanded action on living costs. Edward Carr says the Republican defeat opens a major internal fight over the party’s direction ahead of 2028.