Ben Smith Discusses Trump’s Collapse in 2026
2/18/202618 mincomplete
0:00As Donald Trump's polling hits new lows, we're seeing massive international protests against Donald Trump.
0:07We're seeing him mocked in parades, like coming off of whatever the heck that was
0:12of Rubio in Munich. You have in Dusseldorf, Germany, a carnival that was taking place
0:18today where one of the main attractions was mocking Donald Trump.
0:22There were Donald Trump hitting Jesus in the face and giving Jesus a black eye
0:29float, along with Vladimir Putin floats.
0:32There was Donald Trump being a Putin bootlicker float.
0:35Of course, right outside of Munich, there was this statue of Donald Trump called the
0:40Orange Plague that everybody saw as they were walking.
0:43And rather than me describing it, let me just play for you what went down.
0:47And this is what it looks like in Dusseldorf as Donald Trump.
0:51It's a float of Donald Trump violating the Statute of Liberty while he has a
0:56stormy tattoo on his leg.
0:58Here, play this clip. More from Dusseldorf right here.
1:10Here, play this clip. Finally, I'll show you a little bit more right here.
1:29Let's play it. So the United States was featured alongside the Ayatollah, Putin, Afghanistan.
1:51They sure know how to do a carnival there in Dusseldorf and in Germany.
1:55More on Donald Trump's crashing poll numbers.
1:58The new data out this morning suggested if there were to be a redo of
2:02the 2024 election, not only would former Vice President Kamala Harris, well, I mean, she'd
2:07win, but she'd win pretty big numbers here.
2:09Play this clip. Regrets of some folks had a few.
2:13What are we talking about here?
2:14Well, let's just take a look here.
2:16Okay. Choice for 2024 presidential election.
2:18The actual was Donald Trump winning by about a point and a half.
2:21It rounds to a point.
2:22But take a look here in a polled redo between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris
2:27in April of 2025. It was within the margin of our right Kamala Harris by
2:30point. But look at where we are now, according to an NBC News survey monkey
2:34poll. Kamala Harris wins in a redo asking folks, essentially, if you could redo the
2:402024 election, how would you vote?
2:42She wins it by, get this, eight points, a massive shift from what we saw
2:48back in November of 2024 when Donald Trump won by a point.
2:52And I will note that this sample was weighted, weighted to the 2024 result in
2:57which Donald Trump won by a point.
2:58But yet Kamala Harris in this reweighted, in this weighted sample, get this, she wins
3:04by eight amongst the sample that voted for Trump by one.
3:07So the good news is Kamala Harris for her wins the 24 election.
3:11The bad news is it's actually 2026, so it doesn't count for her.
3:14What about, though, the 2026 midterms when we're talking about Trump voters and then also
3:20Harris voters? OK, so you see this.
3:22And as John was laughing about, the fact is the 2024 election is good, gone,
3:26goodbye. But it has a massive impact, this voter sentiment, on what may happen later
3:31this year. Why do I say that?
3:32Because let's take a look at the vote for Congress.
3:34And this is very important.
3:36All right. 2024 Harris voters, they vote for the Democrats on average by, get this,
3:4189 points. The Trump voters mostly stick by the Republicans, but by a significantly smaller
3:46margin, by 83 points. This means that the Democratic base that voted for Kamala Harris
3:51is sticking with those congressional Democratic candidates to a much greater degree than those Trump
3:57voters are sticking with the Republican candidates for Congress.
4:00And that is why what you're seeing on that generic congressional ballot is Democrats leaping
4:05ahead by this point by about five points, because at least at this point, the
4:10Trump voters are not sticking by the Republicans as much as the Harris voters are
4:14sticking by the Democrats. Yeah.
4:15And these numbers may not look that different, but this five points, which is roughly
4:19what that is, that really could be hugely important come November.
4:22This is people who did vote in 2024.
4:25What about those perhaps who did not?
4:27OK, so part of the equation, right, is that the Harris voters are really sticking
4:31with those Democratic candidates to a more so than the than the Trump voters are
4:35sticking with the Republican candidates.
4:37But it's more than that.
4:38It's also people coming off of the sideline.
4:41OK, voters choice for election for the 2026 congressional elections.
4:45If they didn't vote in 2024, look at this.
4:48Democrats are winning that vote by a significant margin by 16 percentage points.
4:54So you add on to that and you add on to that, you add on
4:58to that the independent voters who are overwhelmingly swimming, swinging away from Donald Trump.
5:03And the question is why?
5:04And I think one of the I think we know the answer.
5:07But I think one of the great articles that came out recently was from Semaphore
5:11by. Ben Smith, host of the Mixed Signals podcast and co -founder and editor -in
5:16-chief of Semenfor. How Trump's politics return to earth.
5:20They identify some of the main factors here in kind of Donald Trump's fall right
5:24now. Real videos, the ICE, Border Patrol, Gestapo videos that people are capturing of Trump
5:31terrorizing and this Border Patrol terrorizing the people in this country.
5:35The Epstein disaster, obviously, the cover -up of the Epstein files, the continued cover -up
5:40and Donald Trump claiming he's vindicated while there are lots of people in his regime
5:44who are mentioned and certainly doesn't seem like vindication would be putting it lightly and
5:49the American people are horrified at what they're seeing and rightfully so.
5:52And Trump's attempt at capturing the media really hasn't gone as planned.
5:57I mean, yeah, we see what's going on on CBS.
5:59Obviously, you have Fox and other media bending the knee, but I think you have
6:03independent news also rising and people are getting their information from places like the Midas
6:08Touch Network, like Semaphore, and other places.
6:11So let's bring in Ben Smith.
6:12Ben, it's great to see you right there.
6:14I showed you what was going on in Dusseldorf, but I didn't need to show
6:18you in Dusseldorf what's going on right here in Priorio.
6:22What's happening in the United States is something astonishing.
6:25And I know you as a reporter, political observer for so many years.
6:30I mean, this is, you know, there's definitely something going on right now, which is
6:35why you wrote the article that is not hyperbolic, I don't think, to talk about,
6:40you know, Trump really, you know, descending right now, as Enten says, to new lows.
6:46What do you make about it?
6:48Yeah, I don't think Trump is going to win the Dusseldorf mayoral election this November.
6:56But more broadly, you know, the thing about Trump is he is this bizarre political
7:00phenomenon who seems to play by none of the sort of rules that we grew
7:05up thinking about how politics works.
7:06And when he arrived on the scene, everybody said he was going to lose and
7:09he won. And I think, you know, and yet at the same time, there are
7:15these other periods where he is sort of behaving exactly like any other political figure.
7:20And actually, you know, having the first year of a presidency feel like this massive
7:25sea change in the direction of the country in which the president has absolutely reshaped
7:29everything. And then you get to the second year and that all collapses is like
7:34the most familiar pattern in American government.
7:37And, you know, Trump's numbers are somewhat worse.
7:40I think in the polling, Nate Silver has a little worse than Biden's were at
7:43this point of time, a little worse than his own numbers were eight years ago,
7:47which is, you know, pretty bad, but within the norms of the second year of
7:51a president bad. But, and I think one of the really interesting things is how
7:57much of what we thought was happening last year kind of turns out to be
8:00wrong. I mean, I think there was this idea that we were post -truth specifically
8:04that kind of the combination of these hyper -partisan social media environment and, and AI
8:11was going to mean everybody would live in this kind of closed bubble and nothing
8:13would crack through that, you know, if you didn't like the reality, you saw somebody
8:17would make you a video showing a different one.
8:19I just don't think that's really happened.
8:21Like I was worried about that, but I think if particularly around the ice stuff,
8:24you know, what broke through was the reality of these videos and it broke through,
8:29you know, including to the white house, which is now pulled out of Minneapolis.
8:32But I, but I do think, I don't think anybody thought, Oh, like the big
8:36story of 2026 is going to be like real videos on social media, which just
8:42pursue change everybody's minds about reality.
8:45Like, I think that was a, in a weird way, kind of an unexpected plot
8:49twist. And then that to me is actually in some ways, the thing that everybody
8:53got most wrong, the idea that Trump had created this new epistemic universe.
8:58Uh, you know, I think we, we, we often overrate the power of our, of
9:01our politicians. Right. Well, he was certainly trying, um, you know, and when we saw
9:08the real videos, whether it was Renee Nicole Good, Alex Preti, or the countless others,
9:14it followed a repeated pattern.
9:17And it's interesting that we're recording this on the day where Tricia McLaughlin announces her
9:22resignation or that she's departing.
9:24They claim this has been in the works since December, but who the hell really
9:27knows with them. But the pattern is Tricia McLaughlin, Kristi Noam, you know, whoever they
9:33come out and they say, you know, this is a domestic terrorist.
9:37They try to bend the reality of what it is.
9:39And then that's reported as first as the truth.
9:43And then the video comes out and then different angles of the video come out.
9:49And then people are like, yeah, but you just said that we're, we're watching the
9:53video. And then they go, yeah, but that's not really what happened in the video.
9:56And then they kind of, and I think this is what you talked about in
9:59the article as well. They then had to basically like with the Preti video, somewhat
10:04walk it back and say, well, now we're doing an investigation and then it falls
10:08into the ether. But they, they've tried to bend the reality of what's happening.
10:13Don't you think at least, you know, I think, I think people did think it
10:16was working. I mean, I, you know, I think that that's sort of the perception
10:19of that first hundred days, the flooding, the zone, the shock and awe, and you
10:24know, that magic, whatever it was has just totally worn off.
10:27And I think the Trump people to some degree persuaded themselves that they could shape
10:31reality, that they could, you know, particularly on X, just reshape people's perceptions of what
10:35was actually happening. Um, you know, it reminds me so much of the Bush.
10:39There was this famous line that the Bush administration gave, I believe to like a
10:44GQ reporter, that the power of the United States was such, the Bush administration, that
10:51they could reshape reality, they didn't need to respond to it.
10:54And I do think that the best analogy right here is for, at least in
10:58my own experience covering politics, is this just feels so much like 2006 when you
11:04had the Iraq war, which had been the, you know, the great initiative of the
11:08Bush administration, the fight for freedom, what was what made Bush popular and got him
11:12reelected in a certain way, had become so intensely unpopular.
11:16And you had this advisor, Donald Rumsfeld, who became seen as the kind of central
11:20figure of the administration and who resigned the day after the midterms.
11:24And I don't know if it's, you know, it's not really Trump style to push
11:26people out, but I would think there's just enormous pressure on Stephen Miller right now.
11:29And I don't know if he resigns before the midterms, resigns after the midterms, sticks
11:33around. But, but I think that's, to me, it's, it's, it's, it's sort of that
11:37moment where, where the president put a lot of confidence in one advisor to steer
11:41national policy in a direction that's been politically disastrous.
11:45Right. You know, but Bush still had conventional political figures around him who still made
11:50conventional political moves, even if they express that kind of bravado.
11:56I mean, you know, when Trump was confronted with the fact that Howard Lutnick said
12:01he had never been to, or never spoken with Epstein because he was so disgusting
12:05after one interaction, then, you know, brought his fricking children to the, to the Island.
12:12And then, um, and then did a business deal with Epstein and Trump's asked about
12:17it. Trump's like, yeah, he brought his family that she brought, he brought his kids
12:19as far as I know.
12:21And the American people like, yeah, that's the problem.
12:24He brought his kids to the Island where the children were sex traffic.
12:28That's, that's the issue of the judgment here.
12:30And so, you know, you talk about the Epstein files in your article, his handling
12:37of that has been so botched and so destructive.
12:41And every day it just feels like he's further and further not.
12:46I mean, obviously he's alienated people, you know, who, who despise him, but even his
12:51own base is like, what, like what, what, what you're saying you're vindicated.
12:55What are you talking about?
12:57Yeah, no, I think the, I mean, the Epstein files, I mean, one of the
13:00really great political mistakes I've ever seen was Pam Bondi and Dan Bongino and Kash
13:06Patel, you know, who, I mean, who, I guess they sort of weren't in that,
13:09on the joke. Like Trump liked to talk about the Epstein files, like to kind
13:12of throw out his modest enemies, but also of course he knew that he'd been
13:15close friends with Jeffrey Epstein for years, by the way, no serious allegation that Trump
13:19ever committed a crime. That's not, that is not in the files, but the association
13:25with Epstein right now, politically, it's just, it's like an oil spill.
13:29Like you can't get it off you once it's on you.
13:31And I mean, I can only imagine what Trump was thinking when his, these trusted
13:36aides of his went and said, you know, we're going to release all the emails.
13:39This is going to become the centerpiece of American law enforcement.
13:42We're going to divert the FBI and these us attorneys from immigration cases, from everything
13:47else to redact Epstein files when of course Trump was going to be all over
13:52them. Of course he knew that he'd known Epstein for years.
13:54They were friendly. That's been why that was widely reported before he ran for president.
13:58It was all over the tabloids.
13:59And so just an unbelievable kind of unforced error by, by his team to kind
14:05of totally derail. I think his, his second term by just dropping this, you know,
14:10giant bucket of allegations basically on his, on Trump's head.
14:14And he can't really say, I'm going to fire anybody who's been, who has a
14:18connection with Epstein. Cause obviously Trump has a, had a closer relationship with Epstein than
14:22Lutnicker than anybody else here.
14:24Um, you know, you, you, you, you mentioned there that there's, you know, regarding the
14:29Epstein files, that there may not be anything in the files that there certainly are
14:33lots. Let's be, I think there are lots of allegations that are made against Donald
14:37Trump in the files that were never investigated by the FBI and DOJ.
14:43I mean, we see the allegations there, whether they're corroborated or uncorroborated, they were never
14:48investigated. And I think a lot of people have concern about that, but look, I
14:51think what people are recognizing let me, I just say, I actually just for what
14:56it's worth, I disagree with you on that.
14:57I mean, you think the Biden justice department participated in a years long coverup of
15:02Donald Trump's crimes. I think these are, you know, this huge dump of files that
15:05were probably, they were part of one of the biggest investigations in American history.
15:08And the reason nobody got indicted is because they couldn't find anybody to indict.
15:12Well, I think that there was an active, I realize this may be a dissenting
15:15view. No, well, look, I appreciate dissenting views, but let's, you know, I think it's
15:20a, I think it's a healthy debate to have.
15:22So, you know, one of the things that I think is important is this undisputed
15:28fact. And you could push back if you think it's true or not.
15:32Mar -a -Lago, was it a site where child sex trafficking took place, like true
15:38or false? I mean, I just, I mean, I guess I think that there's just
15:43the allegations being thrown around the Epstein files.
15:45You've just got to really root them in evidence.
15:47And I, and I, I just see no reason to believe that the, that the
15:51Biden FBI was involved in an extensive coverup of crimes at Mar -a -Lago.
15:55That just seems unlikely to me.
15:56Well, I mean, I think that, you know, I mean, Virginia Giuffre was somebody who
16:00was at Mar -a -Lago who was, you know, sex trafficked when she was underage.
16:05And there was the ongoing.
16:07in the appeals against Ghislaine and then Donald Trump has been found civilly liable for
16:12sexual assault right yeah I feel like you're trying to turn me into Donald Trump's
16:15lawyer here Ben I'm not I'm not trying to turn you into I'm not trying
16:18to turn you into his lawyer you know I I just you know to me
16:21there's a lot you know no matter whether it was Biden whether it was uh
16:27you know Trump won whether it was Obama where it was George W Bush you
16:33know I I'm not trying to turn you to I I just think that there
16:36are no but I think we can probably agree that like the people around Trump
16:40really should have known better than to unseal this particular Pandora's box which just flew
16:46right into their own faces and just really an incredible way well you know I
16:51think um you know I think that they have a lot of explaining to do
16:55I don't think Lutnik's explanations are great I don't think the fact that Steve Bannon
17:00was having all of these conversations you know was great you know I think that
17:04it was it raises a lot of serious questions and and look I I think
17:08that the American people you know are looking who's in control now who's the people
17:13saying release it they're the ones there's a lot of documents that haven't been released
17:17and I think we'll just we'll leave it at there's a lot of questions that
17:19need to be answered yeah and I and I think there are questions that I
17:23mean I think partly because Trump genuinely admittedly publicly had this friendship with Epstein it
17:27just becomes it's just so hard for him to ever disentangle from this I mean
17:31it's just a sort of unsolvable political problem for him I think no doubt everybody
17:35take your read of Ben Smith's article in semaphore check it out uh and make
17:40sure you all check out the podcast as well mixed signals thanks Ben so much
17:45for joining us thank you so much want to stay plugged in become a subscriber
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