Why 2026 midterms could define Trump’s presidency (Full Transcript)

AmeriCast examines GOP headwinds, tight House margins, Senate targets, and why Trump may campaign nonstop as Republicans defend Congress in 2026.
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[00:00:00] Speaker 1: We're starting the campaign to win the midterms. We've got to win the midterms. Got to win them. That's what Donald Trump's going to be saying for nine months in advance of the big political event of 2026, the midterm elections coming in November. Can Republicans possibly hold on to the House and the Senate? What will it mean for Donald Trump's presidency if they don't? Welcome to AmeriCast.

[00:00:21] Speaker 2: AmeriCast.

[00:00:28] Speaker 1: AmeriCast from BBC News. Hello, it's Sarah in the BBC's Bureau in Washington.

[00:00:32] Speaker 2: And it's Anthony right here next to Sarah in Washington, DC.

[00:00:35] Speaker 1: Now, right now, November seems quite a long way off, but it's going to come barreling at us very, very quickly, isn't it, when we've got these crucial midterm elections, absolutely vital for Donald Trump. And a little bit later, and we're really lucky because one of our podcast friends, Brian Lanza, is going to come and try and tell us what the Republican campaign will look like. He worked on Donald Trump's 2016 and 2024 campaign. So he's a great guy to talk to about this. But let's lay out exactly what the stakes are first, because it is hard, isn't it, for a sitting president to try and do well in midterm elections?

[00:01:10] Speaker 2: Right. The stakes are very high. Control of the US Congress is in play. Control of key governorships are in play. And the Republicans have an uphill battle, traditionally, something that Donald Trump himself pointed to in a rally he held this week in Iowa.

[00:01:29] Speaker 3: You know, the worst thing about the midterms is the fact that no matter what happens, the people that win the presidency, you win the — even if you're a good president. I think we had the best first year of any president ever, maybe, they say. But even if you have a great — it's like, in the last 50 years, they've won it twice. Can you believe it? If something happens, there's a screw turns with the voters. So even if it's a Democrat or Republican, whoever wins the presidency has a hard time with the midterm. If we lose the midterms, you'll lose so many of the things that we're talking about, so many of the assets that we're talking about, so many of the tax cuts that we're talking about. And it would lead to very bad things. We got to win the midterms. I mean, I'm here because I love Iowa, but I'm here because we're starting the campaign to win the midterms. We got to win the midterms. That means Senate, and it means House.

[00:02:22] Speaker 1: It's not the grandest-sounding name for a set of elections, the midterms, is it? What's at stake, Anthony, I think, is all of the seats in the House of Representatives, a third of the seats in the Senate, and is it about a third of the governorships across America?

[00:02:36] Speaker 2: That's right, and state legislatures, too, which is also important for determining policy in these states. The stakes are high. There's no doubt about it, because control of Congress right now is held by Republicans entirely. Democrats really don't have any hands on the levers of power. If they win one chamber or both chambers, they're going to be able to grind Donald Trump's legislative agenda to a halt. But more than that, they're going to be able to ramp up oversight of Donald Trump. They're going to be able to hold hearings, issue subpoenas, have investigations. They can make Donald Trump's life for the last two years of his presidency really difficult, in the way they did for the last two years of his first term in office, where Democrats, one, controlled the House of Representatives in January of 2019, and they impeached Donald Trump by the end of that year.

[00:03:23] Speaker 1: Yeah, they would move to impeach him again, surely, wouldn't they, if they took control of either House?

[00:03:27] Speaker 2: I think there's a lot of sentiment to do something like that, although they may start a little lower on and focus on people like Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security Secretary, which they think they might have a better chance of actually bumping out of power. They may have given up on impeaching Trump after two bites at it last time around.

[00:03:44] Speaker 1: Is he right when he says sitting presidents, their own party, very rarely wins the midterms? I know it's traditional that two years into your presidency, voters have maybe turned against you a bit, but is he exaggerating when he says you can just basically never win them as a sitting president?

[00:03:59] Speaker 2: Very seldom. I'm not sure if the two times over the last 50 years is right, although I can think of two examples where the president's party did do better and pick up seats in midterm elections. One was in 2002 with George W. Bush. That was after the September 11th terror attacks, and the Republicans ran on national security and homeland defense and did better in those midterms. The other one, I think, was in 98 with Bill Clinton, the midterms in the second term of his presidency, and that was right in the midst of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, and House Republicans were in the process of impeaching. And while the Democrats didn't take control back of the House, they did pick up some seats. Those were the exceptions, though. The rule is that, as Donald Trump described, it is a pushback against the president and his party who control power. It is a way to put a check on a president who the public may think has overextended himself.

[00:04:58] Speaker 1: And certainly across the country now, from Minnesota to Texas, we can see some very, very animated people in opposition to Trump's policies. It's not difficult to see how you would try and motivate them to get out and vote against what's happening. It's going to be a problem, though, isn't it, for Republicans that Donald Trump's name's not on the ballot, because there are a lot of people who do still support him, who still love him, but may not bother to turn out to the polls if they can't vote for Donald Trump himself, just some candidates that he's approved of. And actually, his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, was talking about this the other day when she was on the MomView podcast.

[00:05:33] Speaker 4: Typically, in the midterms, it's not about who's sitting at the White House. It's you localize the election, and you keep the federal officials out of it. We're actually going to turn that on its head and put him on the ballot, because so many of those low-propensity voters are Trump voters. Yes, they are. And we saw a week ago Tuesday what happens when he's not on the ballot and not active. So I haven't quite broken it to him yet, but he's going to campaign like it's 2024 again.

[00:06:03] Speaker 1: So when she was saying a week ago Tuesday, she was talking to some of those off-year elections, right? Republicans didn't really do that well last year.

[00:06:09] Speaker 2: They didn't do that well. And in those off-year elections in Virginia and New Jersey, the Democrats did quite well. And in some other, as we've discussed in the past, isolated little elections, like some state-level elections in Georgia, the Democrats outperformed prior results, particularly the 2024 results, when Donald Trump was on the ballot. And if you look at special elections all through last year, special congressional elections, Democrats, even when they didn't win, they did better than they did in 2024, by about 13% on average, which tells you exactly the headwinds that Republicans are going to be into. If they hit this November with these midterm elections and do 13% worse than they did in 2024, they are definitely going to lose the House of Representatives. And it could very well put the Senate, which is a higher bar for the Democrats to try to take, but it could put the Senate in play.

[00:07:02] Speaker 1: Yeah, because the margins are so incredibly tight at the moment. Now, they change a bit, don't they, in the House, because some people have resigned. What is the size of the Republican majority right now?

[00:07:11] Speaker 2: I think it's about a two-seat majority in a 435-seat chamber. So that shows you how small it is. It doesn't take much to tilt it back to the Democrats. And there are seats that Democrats are targeting that Kamala Harris carried in 2024 that are controlled by Republican members of Congress. For instance, I believe Nebraska is one of them. There are some in California that have been redistricted, some in New York. Now, the redistricting in Texas has made it likely the Republicans will pick up some seats there. But if this is a wave election, which we've seen in the past when there's an animated out-of-power party looking to get to the polls, if this is that wave election, then even these little redistricting things here and there and little details aren't going to matter. It's going to be such a route that the Democrats will be able to win, despite what the Republicans are trying to do.

[00:08:06] Speaker 1: And as you say, it's harder for Democrats to try and take the Senate. But they've got a few interesting options because some big-name popular Republican senators are retiring or not running for re-election, which means that some of those races are a bit more open than they might have been, even in unusual states. Right.

[00:08:23] Speaker 2: Tom Tillis in North Carolina, who has been an increasingly outspoken critic of Donald Trump, he's a Republican. He isn't running again. So that's an open seat in the swing state. Democrats have to win that, basically, if they want to be able to take control of the Senate. They'll have to pick up four seats to take control of the Senate, because it's a 53-47 Republican majority and a tie would be broken by J.D. Vance, because he's the vice president right now. So that's one. Susan Collins in Maine, she's running for re-election, but Maine is a more liberal state and she has won against the odds in her past re-election campaigns. Maybe her luck runs out this time around. That gets you to two. Then you have to start thinking about other states that are a little bit more of a reach and where they can pick up. One of them is Joni Ernst's seat in Iowa, where Donald Trump was this week. She's not running for re-election. That seems like a reach. But in the past, Democrats have been able to be competitive in Iowa. Maybe that turns around. We have a Florida seat, a Senate seat. It's not an open seat. Alaska, Democrats have a good candidate running against the incumbent there. All of these would be mildly surprising, maybe even more than mildly surprising, but they're the kind of seats that Democrats would have to win to get those four flips. It definitely means that they're going to have to find a way to kick out some incumbents, which is always harder.

[00:09:47] Speaker 1: Let's try and drill down into what Donald Trump and the Republicans can do to maximize their chances, how they're going to run this campaign basically for the next nine months. Hello, Brian. Great to have you back. Thank you so much for coming into the studio.

[00:09:58] Speaker 5: Great. Thank you for having me.

[00:10:00] Speaker 2: It's been quite a year since I think we last spoke, Brian. What do you think is happening? What do you think the outlook is for the midterms now that Donald Trump has a year under his belt in his second term?

[00:10:12] Speaker 5: I mean, the pace has been unrelenting. I think that's what we sort of take away from the last year. I mean, I think the midterms are going to be tough, right? They're always tough for the party in power, at least on the House of Representatives sides. The economy is not where it should be. It is better than what it was under Joe Biden, but President Trump made promises that it would be exponentially better. And so they have some work to do and some catching up to do. But at the end of the day, it was always going to be an uphill battle. The fact that there's question marks about the economy makes it harder. And then you throw in what was President Trump's signature issue in the rally to the MAGA base, which is immigration. At least visually, it's turning into a liability. So it's certainly the start of an interesting year. Plenty of time to turn it around. But if the election were held today, I wouldn't have a good feeling about it.

[00:11:01] Speaker 2: We listened to a Susie Wiles clip earlier talking about their campaign strategy. And she said that she was going to get Donald Trump out there campaigning nonstop like this was a presidential election. Usually in midterms, when the president isn't all that popular, they kind of disappear. That doesn't seem like the strategy now. They want Donald Trump front and center. Is that a good idea, you think?

[00:11:22] Speaker 5: I mean, he's front and center regardless. I think we learned that in 2018, that whether he's on the ballot or not on the ballot, the entire campaigns for a lot of these Democrats are going to be about Donald Trump. And he is his best messenger. He is the best counterpuncher out there in American politics. And he is the contrast, right? I think Democrats, what they're talking about now, the election for them isn't about the economy. It's not about affordability. It's not about pricing. For them, it's about impeachment. And the more you have President Trump out there, the more it's going to trigger the Democratic base to stop lying behind their other political arguments. And Trump out there sort of makes them address, you know, the election for Democrats is solely about impeachment. And that's a political problem for them. People want more than just divided, frozen government and an impeachment every month.

[00:12:09] Speaker 1: So Donald Trump has been getting out there and he delivered what was basically a campaign speech in Iowa earlier this week on one of the things you say that's all important on the economy. And I wonder if you think he's got the message right on this. Let's listen to what he had to say.

[00:12:23] Speaker 3: It's a word that they came up with, affordability. Every time you hear the word, remember, they're the ones that caused the problem. And first time you heard about it was like a few months ago. This election is all about affordability. Well, they're the ones that caused the problem. But nobody knows that. You know, people forget. So they say, oh, affordability, let's vote for the Democrats. It's no affordability. They caused a tremendous price increases. It was caused by the worst inflation we've ever had. And they come up with this word, affordability. And I saw it even, although you're not hearing it so much anymore. You know why? Because the prices are coming down so much. They don't want it to be an election based on lower prices. But we're bringing down the lower. I like that term better.

[00:13:08] Speaker 1: Brian, to me, that sounds as though President Trump is trying to tell people that they're better off than they feel, that the evidence of their own wallets or bank balances is lying to them, which is kind of what Joe Biden tried to do before 2024. And that didn't work.

[00:13:22] Speaker 5: No, listen, I think the differences here are democratic policies as a whole drive up costs. We know this. It's not a secret. So when President Trump says affordability conversation is a scam, 100% is a scam in the sense that Democrats don't care about affordability. They never have. So it is ironic for us to who observers of campaigns who work with the president to hear the media prop up and the Democrats prop up the conversation affordability when they've never cared about the issue before. And evidence is that they don't care about it now. And they want to double down on Joe Biden's policies, which led to an affordability crisis.

[00:14:01] Speaker 1: That's a sophisticated argument. I'll put it to you that a lot of voters are going to take this much more simplistically. And as you say, prices are still high. There are things people can't afford. They're going to blame the president or the party who has been in power for almost two years by the time they go to the ballot box. If they're feeling the squeeze, they are not going to blame Democrats for it. They're going to blame the people who are running the economy.

[00:14:20] Speaker 5: Well, I think you have to look at some things like energy prices are cheaper today than what they were under Joe Biden. Inflation is lower today than it was under Joe Biden. Eggs are lower. The thing is, is there are costs throughout the entire ecosystem of family that are cheaper today than they were under Joe Biden. However, things could get cheaper faster. I think that's the challenge that President Trump had, is he made it sound like he could return the great economy of Trump won with the flip of a switch. And he set that expectation. We set that expectation. It's taken longer than we wanted. And so President Trump, when he's out there campaigning, the campaign is against ultimately himself. He said it was going to be fast and it's taken a little bit longer. But let's be clear, the alternative is what we're experiencing in Virginia. Higher taxes, less affordability. That is what the alternative is when you vote for Democrats.

[00:15:11] Speaker 2: So is it a messaging problem? Donald Trump has said previously that maybe he needs better messengers, better people to come out with a better message. Or is it a policy problem? Do the Republicans need to do something more to address these issues?

[00:15:27] Speaker 5: Well, let's be clear. The best thing that President Trump can do with respect to affordability is choose a new Fed chairman. That new fair chairman is going to have an opportunity, I think, either in May, July, most likely in June, actually, to drop interest rates. Does he drop at a point? Does he drop at a full point? Or does he go full MAGA and drop interest rates two points? That will supercharge the economy overnight. That will basically make borrowing cheaper than it's been in probably 10 years. And the affordability crisis, quite frankly, disappears. Now, there's long-term consequences for that, but that's post-election.

[00:16:05] Speaker 2: I mean, the long-term concerns that you mentioned about cutting interest rates are that it'll drive up inflation, which will drive up prices, and is exactly the opposite of what Donald Trump wants.

[00:16:16] Speaker 5: Listen, right now, what I've learned, and I've got a minor in economics, which means nothing, right? But what we've learned over the last years under Trump's stewardship of the U.S. economy is that economists get it wrong all the time. They have the worst record under President Trump when it comes to making these predictions of what's going to happen. I remember during Trump 1 when economists said we were going to drive up inflation because of the tariff policy. That didn't happen.

[00:16:43] Speaker 1: Yeah, they said that again last year.

[00:16:45] Speaker 5: And they said that again. I mean, so you have to be careful when you listen to economists, because economists, they're on the side of every issue and they tend to be wrong when it comes to President Trump. We don't know what's going to happen if you drop 2%. We have theories of what might happen, but we've also learned that those people who create those theories tend to be wrong more than right.

[00:17:05] Speaker 1: So the other big issue you identified that'll be on the ballot for the midterms is immigration crackdown. And obviously, that's front and center of people's minds because of the images that we've been seeing coming out of Minneapolis. Is that a real problem for Republicans come November?

[00:17:21] Speaker 5: The images are terrible. There's an American citizen that's dead, who by every visualization, every video we've seen should not be dead. Our hearts goes out to him and his family. This is a tragic thing that took place. It's clearly a result of customs and border agents not having the proper training of dealing with crowd control. But that goes to the larger issue. Why are we in this dilemma? I refer to this as the blue state rebellion when it comes to immigration policies because what you don't see is you don't see red states having these same situations. You don't see red state governors saying don't cooperate with ICE. You don't see red state mayors saying don't cooperate. They actually cooperate with ICE. So a normal ICE or customs and border task or action item is they pull up on a residence, they knock on the door, they identify who the illegal alien is, and they put that person into custody. And local law enforcement does crowd control because local law enforcement is trained to do crowd control. That is the primary training. What you have in places like Minnesota, what you have in blue states is you don't have the local support. The customs and borders and ICE doesn't have the local support of law enforcement to do the crowd control. So you're bringing in supremely inexperienced people who've never had the training for crowd control because customs and borders is far different than controlling the crowd. And they're using aggressive tactics. They're using the tactics that actually work at the border but don't work in our cities. And the reason those tactics are being used today is because of a blue state rebellion where governors and mayors don't want to cooperate in enforcing federal law and enforcing what the people voted for in 2005 in their election. They said we wanted deportation. We didn't hide what we wanted. What they didn't say is we want deportation, but we want blue states to rebel.

[00:19:07] Speaker 2: They voted for deporting the worst of the worst, right?

[00:19:10] Speaker 5: They wanted people- No, that's your messaging. What we always said is we will start with the worst of the worst, but we're deporting every illegal alien out there.

[00:19:18] Speaker 2: So when you listen to Donald Trump, he says we're getting the worst of the worst. Now, they did have signs at the convention saying mass deportation. Correct.

[00:19:25] Speaker 5: We never hid behind it.

[00:19:27] Speaker 2: And journalists were saying that means millions of people being rounded up. That means it's going to be more than just criminals. But there are, I think you have to acknowledge, there are people who think this is going too far. And on one hand, deporting a convicted rapist, getting him out of this country may be a good thing. But what about deporting a five-year-old child at a bus stop or your local gardener or someone who works in your school? People who have no criminal records beyond just violating immigration law, those weren't the kind of people that they had in mind when they voted on immigration.

[00:20:00] Speaker 5: When you say they, I make the case that half the electorate exactly knew what we were going to do. We didn't hide from it. We had signs that mass deportations. I was on this network. I was on various networks explaining how it's going to work. We're going to start with the worst of the worst. We're going to assess, and then we're going to continue to the next phase. I'm sorry. These are enforcement actions. These are laws that are in our books. We had a Democratic president under Barack Obama. We had a Democratic super majority or a veto-proof majority under Barack Obama. And we had a Democratic House. They never passed anything to address these things. It was clearly never a priority for them. This is the net effect of them doing nothing and policy not sort of marrying up with what the electorate wants. But the reality is the policy is what we're fighting for, and it's what's being implemented. And whether it's a five-year-old who is left at a bus stop or in the process of being deported, if policymakers wanted to be differently, they should change it.

[00:21:00] Speaker 1: The problem, though, is the images of Alex Pretty being killed, and everybody can see that he wasn't brandishing a weapon, hadn't set out to massacre law enforcement, any of the things that some administration officials said. But that image risks turning off a lot of voters on the immigration crackdown. People who possibly at the end of 2024 thought, yes, we do want to get rid of millions of illegal people living in the United States without documents. But now, having seen what happened on the streets of Minneapolis, they think it's gone too far, and they're not necessarily going to vote Republican as a result.

[00:21:34] Speaker 5: Well, we'll see. I mean, at the end of the day, what I've learned in American politics about what the American electorate does is they care very little about the process, and they care about the results. That's what I've learned over my years in politics, my years in government, is the process makes a lot of noise for cable, makes a lot of print for the media. But when you get to the polls, it's usually the result that matters, right? And like I said, that tragedy was a strategy. But let's discuss what actually took place. Those weren't political folks on the ground that said, you know, he was coming out there, you know, try to assault officers. Those were career Customs and Border people who lacked the candor to tell administration folks exactly what took place. And if the administration has egg on their face on this, it's the fact that they repeated, you know, this misinformation coming out of Minneapolis first. You know, that, you know, sure, we're to blame for repeating bad information, right? The administration is to blame for repeating bad information. But that's the reason that information got out. And the reason that they got out the way it did was because if we don't feel the narrative of what's taking place, the left is going to feel the narrative of what's taking place. And what we've learned over the years is that the left lies, and they're usually enabled by the media to being allowed to lie. And so what we've done, you know, fairly or unfairly is we now rush to put out information. I look forward to the time when a politician is asked a question, and they go back to the normal answer. This is currently under investigation. I have no comment. Bill Clinton's second term was, I'm sorry, Monica Lewinsky is under a special prosecutor, you know, investigation. I can't comment. Think about that. Bill Clinton entire second term was, I can't comment about a potential investigation. And that worked for him. And we can't wait anymore.

[00:23:23] Speaker 1: There's been a much higher focus on foreign affairs in the first year of Trump's second term than I think many of us expected. And the attack on Iran, the military action in Venezuela, the focus on Greenland, Canada, all sorts of things. Is that a winning issue with voters?

[00:23:40] Speaker 5: No, no. We have learned over the years, and the reason Donald Trump is in office right now was because the American voters lost confidence in Joe Biden and Democrats when it came to issues of pocketbook, right? You know, what I learned in American politics, you know, is a derivative of what I learned in, what is it, 19, you know, 1991, right? Herbert Walker Bush won a war. You know, his popularity was through the roof. And then nine months later, he lost an election, primarily because of the economy. And so, you know, I think, you know, voters are going to pass judgment. It's either going to be thumbs up or thumbs down. We would like the question to be, are you better off today than you were two years ago? I think that answer is probably going to be most likely yes. I think the criticism we receive is President Trump promised for it to be fast. This is not fast enough.

[00:24:34] Speaker 2: So it is an uphill struggle. It is likely they are going to lose, lose the House. Do you think the Senate's in play?

[00:24:42] Speaker 5: Yeah, I do think the Senate's in play. I think you look at Ohio, Sherrod Brown having won there before, you know, Rosh Hashami not doing as well as previous governors have done. I think that that becomes in play. I think you have, you know, Texas certainly comes into play. If Cornyn would lose, if Ken Paxton were to win, we probably lose Texas, which is shocking, which is jarring. But it's not the political rift we think it is. It's not because it's a shift in electorate in Texas. But yeah, I very much think the Senate is in play.

[00:25:13] Speaker 2: Do you think, do you think if they do lose, say the House of Representatives, that it is a judgment on Donald Trump and his second term that people are going to look and say, you know, this was, he's not doing what the voters want?

[00:25:24] Speaker 5: Every midterm is a judgment on that president, right? But I think the question becomes is, you know, what is the judgment ultimately say? I think if the people say, hey, it's improved a little, just not as much as we wanted, then we know, you know, we made promises of a fast recovery and we were able to hit those promises. But I think every midterm is sort of the test on the president of how things are going. And I don't think President Trump's any different. And we're going to make the case that the economy is better than it was two years ago. And if you give us more time, we'll make it even better.

[00:25:58] Speaker 1: And you said when you sat down, you were pessimistic about Republicans' chances in November with that message that you've just articulated. You think they can turn it around in the next nine months?

[00:26:06] Speaker 5: Yeah, I think a little bit, right? A lot really depends on how people feel, not necessarily what they see, but how people feel about the economy, right? I think if, you know, if interest rates go down significantly, they sort of feel a little bit more optimistic because money is cheaper. But I also, you know, the Democrats have a problem, right? You know, their only message is Trump. There's no policies that they're champion that are moving the electorate toward them. I think if Republicans talk more about what democratic control means, impeachment, stalemate, nothing happens, then the electorate has a real decision to make.

[00:26:40] Speaker 1: But what's the positive message you would advise the Republicans to be campaigning on?

[00:26:43] Speaker 5: The positive message is, you know, we've made progress. We'll make more, right? You know, the economy has improved a little bit. The affordability pricing has improved. But if you give us more time, we'll improve it even more.

[00:26:57] Speaker 1: So the tagline for the election is, we're getting there just not as quickly as you wanted us to.

[00:27:02] Speaker 5: I think the tagline is, is we've made progress. Give us, you know, two more years, and we'll make more progress.

[00:27:08] Speaker 2: But saying the other guy is going to be worse. The other guy is worse. But that's going to be a risky message, right? That's what the Democrats are saying.

[00:27:14] Speaker 5: They're saying Donald Trump is worse.

[00:27:15] Speaker 2: Yeah, and they tried that in 2024. And they'll all make Donald Trump is going to be awful. And voters are like, yeah, you know, you suck. We're going to get you out of here. I mean, it's not that kind of a negative message. You know, it might.

[00:27:26] Speaker 5: Yes and no. Keep in mind, Democrats, the approval rating is at 18%. It's the lowest it's ever been. It may not be a hard argument. But I know one thing, you know, and I've seen it in focus groups, and I've seen it all over the country. Voters do not want stalemate, you know, out of Congress. They're frustrated with how slow it goes, how nothing's happening now. If they feel that it's going to get worse, that does have a, that does have a resonating message.

[00:27:50] Speaker 1: Can we have you back after the midterms? And we'll get your, we'll get you to critique how it all happened.

[00:27:55] Speaker 5: We'll get my scorecard.

[00:27:57] Speaker 1: Right, well, thank you so much for coming in.

[00:27:58] Speaker 2: Yeah, goodbye. And thank you for having me. Great to have you on, as always, Brian. Thank you.

[00:28:02] Speaker 1: That's it for today. If you want to listen to any of our other episodes, you can get them wherever you get your podcasts. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

ai AI Insights
Arow Summary
BBC News AmeriCast discusses the stakes of the 2026 US midterm elections for President Donald Trump and Republicans, who currently narrowly control Congress. Hosts Sarah and Anthony explain historical midterm headwinds for the president’s party, tight House margins, and the difficult Senate map for Democrats needing four flips. Republican strategist Brian Lanza argues Republicans face vulnerabilities on the economy and the optics of immigration enforcement, but says Trump must campaign aggressively to mobilize low-propensity Trump voters. Lanza contends Democrats’ main message is anti-Trump/impeachment, while Republicans should stress incremental economic improvement and warn that Democratic control would mean investigations, impeachment efforts, and legislative stalemate. The conversation covers potential interest-rate cuts, skepticism of economic forecasts, and how incidents like a fatal immigration-enforcement-related event in Minneapolis could affect public opinion.
Arow Title
AmeriCast: 2026 Midterms—Can Trump’s GOP Hold Congress?
Arow Keywords
2026 midterm elections Remove
Donald Trump Remove
Republicans Remove
Democrats Remove
House of Representatives Remove
Senate Remove
campaign strategy Remove
Susie Wiles Remove
Brian Lanza Remove
affordability Remove
inflation Remove
interest rates Remove
Federal Reserve Remove
immigration enforcement Remove
ICE Remove
oversight Remove
impeachment Remove
special elections Remove
voter turnout Remove
Arow Key Takeaways
  • Midterms typically punish the party in the White House; Republicans face structural headwinds in 2026.
  • GOP control is extremely narrow in the House, making it highly vulnerable to small swings.
  • Democrats need four Senate pickups; open or competitive seats (e.g., North Carolina, Maine, Iowa) shape the battlefield but remain challenging.
  • Republicans plan to keep Trump central to the campaign to energize low-propensity Trump voters and counter Democratic anti-Trump framing.
  • Economic perceptions—especially prices and interest rates—are likely to dominate voter judgments more than foreign policy.
  • Immigration enforcement visuals and incidents could become liabilities even if the policy remains popular with parts of the electorate.
  • If Democrats win a chamber, they can halt Trump’s legislative agenda and escalate oversight, subpoenas, and potential impeachment-related actions.
Arow Sentiments
Neutral: Analytical and political-strategy focused, balancing risks for Republicans (economic expectations, immigration optics, midterm backlash) with possible counterarguments and GOP messaging aims, without overtly endorsing either side.
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