The following is a lightly edited transcript of the April 24 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Suddenly, President Donald Trump appears to be retreating—or getting knocked back on his heels—on multiple fronts. Trump is reportedly considering slashing his tariffs on China to deescalate his worsening trade war. Elon Musk is stepping back from his Department of Government Efficiency, which remains a political catastrophe for Trump. Federal scientists are admitting the measles outbreak is worse than previously acknowledged. And the leaks about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are intensifying. All this comes as a new poll finds broad public opposition to Trump’s abuses of power. That’s not supposed to be happening, according to a lot of savvy D.C. insiders who told us voters don’t care about this kind of thing at all. It turns out they do care. Today we’re talking about all this with Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, who has been urging his party to make Trump’s weakness and his erratic retreats central to their message against him. Simon, thanks for coming back on.
Simon Rosenberg: Greg, it’s always good to be with you, my friend.
Sargent: Let’s start with the tariffs. Trump is now backing down from his threat to remove Fed Chair Jerome Powell after he figured out that this was actually backfiring on him by spooking markets and investors more. The CEOs for Walmart, Target, and Home Depot reportedly told Trump privately that his tariffs were going to disrupt supply chains, leading to higher prices and empty shelves. Trump himself is saying that the tariffs on China will come down substantially. Simon, what do you make of all that?
Rosenberg: Yeah. The tariffs are the greatest policy error, arguably, in American history. He’s using these powers without congressional assent in this capricious and tyrannical way, and it’s blowing up on him. It’s slowing the economy down. Prices are going up. The market’s crashing. Confidence in the United States is ebbing. Money is flowing out of the country. The safe haven that’s been so critical to our economic success and the dollar strength has been severely damaged. We’ve learned that Trump has now said that he’s going to unilaterally reduce the China tariffs, having been persuaded by his economic team that they were doing enormous damage to the country. So he’s in some form of another retreat—again. I think that this is part of this broader pattern, Greg: that he’s failing and retreating and stumbling, and his buffoonery is becoming clear to the whole world.
Sargent: Well, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was on Fox News, and she tried to downplay the idea that Trump was retreating on the China tariffs. Listen to this.
Karoline Leavitt (audio voiceover): Let me be clear: There will be no unilateral reduction in tariffs against China. The president has made it clear. China needs to make a deal with the United States of America, and we are optimistic that will happen. And when that continues, it’ll be up to the president what the tariff rate on China will be.
Sargent: Simon, I know that’s supposed to sound like savvy negotiating, in which Leavitt is signaling that China has to give ground before Trump does. But I think what’s really going on here is this shows what happens when Trump’s aides are required to shape everything around illusions of Trump’s absolute infallibility. Trump said the tariffs on China will come down. He said it himself. And that came after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent privately told investors that the trade war with China is “unsustainable.” And after the markets cratered again, the bottom line is this: Trump is frightened of the markets and he’s spooked by investors losing confidence in the U.S.
Rosenberg: And he’s spooked by the his polling numbers. Donald Trump wants to be liked. He wants big crowds. He wants adulation, right? He’s not a politician who doesn’t care about those things. Those things matter to him a lot. They’re important to him. His obsession with crowd size; every interview he gave during the presidential election, the first thing he talked about was his great polling numbers. So the poll numbers are becoming a crisis for him because what’s happening with his declining poll numbers ... And remember, we were told during Biden’s presidency that job approval was the coin of the realm, right? Everything flowed in Washington from the perception of power.
And Donald Trump has, I think, a very simple view of the world: that people are either strong or they’re weak or they’re winning or they’re losing. And he doesn’t want to be the one who’s losing and who’s weak. The truth is, his poll numbers have plummeted in every measure and every kind. Even in the Economist/YouGov poll this week, he’s actually now trailing. He’s underwater on immigration, his signature issue that was his strength, and he’s losing incredible altitude.
And what’s happening is that that perception of weakness creates permission structure for people to defy him. So it’s connected to, I think, this rising defiance that you’re seeing. The Supreme Court defied him twice in the last few weeks. Jerome Powell defied him. The Wall Street Journal and The Economist—and Wall Street itself is defying him. You’re seeing this increasing willingness of countries and institutions to defy him. It creates what I call this vicious cycle for him: that the greater evidence of defiance, the weaker he appears; the weaker he appears, the more people are willing to defy him. And I think he started to go into a vicious cycle of weakness and defiance, which is obviously good for the U.S. and good for the freedom-loving people of the world.
Sargent: It’s true that we’re actually seeing institutions perceive Trump’s weakness, and potentially they may be acting on it as well. Harvard University we’ve now seen is fighting back extremely hard against Trump. There has been a statement from dozens and dozens of universities across the country saying that they’re banding together. Now, this is not a perfect united front. We’ve seen a bunch of law firms roll over and cave to Trump, but we’ve also seen some law firms stand up and fight. And my sense is that the public support that law firms that are fighting and that Harvard are seeing actually matters significantly—because it encourages them to stay in this thing and encourages them to see what you’re talking about, which is that Trump is on very weak ground with the public.
So I got to think, Simon: As part of your program for fighting Trump, the American people have to stay in this game in a big way, right? They have to let institutions know two things. One, we’re watching whether you cave or whether you stand up to Trump. And two, if you stand up to Trump, we’re with you all the way.
Rosenberg: Yes. And I’m willing to bet that Harvard has already gotten pledges probably for more money from their own alumni than from the money that was taken away from them. We’re now at a point where, politically, Trump has entered into a new place, where there is this greater willingness to challenge him. You see it in the courts every day. You saw it. Twelve House Republicans came out and said they were not willing to support the Medicaid cuts that are essential to passing any reconciliation bills. Seven Senate Republicans just two weeks ago came out and backed a bill in the Senate that would claw back tariff authority for the Senate. And the thing is, as part of this movement that we’re in, we have to be making progress every day.
We have to be moving the ball down the playing field every day. And what is just clear as day now is that we are stronger today—the opposition movement—and he is weaker. What’s also true, though, is that we have to have a great sense of urgency about this work because Donald Trump is breaking things that will be very hard, if not impossible, to repair. Both of these things can be true at the same time. He can be weaker, we can be stronger; and he’s also continuing to break things, requiring enormous urgency around our work.
Sargent: I want to read some numbers from the new Reuters/Ipsos poll. Fifty-seven percent of respondents, including one-third of Republicans, don’t think that a U.S. president should withhold funding from universities if he doesn’t agree with how they’re run, and 66 percent say the president shouldn’t be in control of big cultural institutions. I think there’s a paradox here, Simon. We’re seeing a combination of weakness and overreach at the same time. He’s trying to use state power to force the big institutions of this country to help implement or conform with his project of culturally transforming the country. And we were told over and over that this is not something the American people care so much about, they only care about the price of eggs, etc. That’s not bearing true, and it’s looking like there’s a genuine public backlash to the authoritarianism, to the abuses of power. That seems to me to be overreach, which is weakening him. Those two things are like a vicious cycle as well.
Rosenberg: Yeah, I totally agree with what you just said, Greg. And I think that on some levels, if we can all just take a step back, Donald Trump is a ridiculous person. He’s a ridiculous leader. What he’s trying to do in this country that has almost 250 years of the democratic tradition, strong federalism, a government that has broken into three branches—he’s trying to turn this country into Russia, into China, into Venezuela, whatever the analogy is. And why? What’s the point? Usually when these radical transformations happen, it’s because the country has failed, the political system has failed. He inherited one of the strongest economies in American history. American power ... We were paramount. We were very strong in the global stage. There wasn’t some societal collapse that would have precipitated him bringing in these radical reforms that were not central, frankly, to his dialogue with the American people during 2024. And I think people are freaking out....
I think the three huge pillars of the strength that he had—his offering to the voters that wandered into his arms that were critical to his winning, which are young people, Hispanics, and independent voters who’ve all seen enormous drops in polling—is that first, with him, you would have a better life, you’d make more money. That’s not true. Second is that he’s going to run the country like a CEO, make things more efficient. Well, that’s obviously not true. The guy’s an historic buffoon and screwing everything up and has crazy people working for him. And then the third piece of that core brand was that he was going to make America strong—and he’s making us weak. And he’s weak.
So I do think that we’re at a point where we should be optimistic. There’s one central learning to me about the last few months, and this is things that you and I have been discussing for a long time, Greg: We’ve learned that people’s minds can change, that our work that we do actually is making a difference, that the country is actually changing their opinion about Donald Trump. And they don’t like what they see. In the Economist poll that came out this week, he’s not in a place of majority standing on any issue that matters to voters right now. He’s now got a majority of the country against him on inflation, the economy, immigration even, right? You’ve seen the country really turn on him.
Sargent: Trump is still essentially kidnapping foreign students off the streets. He’s deporting Venezuelans to a gulag in El Salvador illegally using the Alien Enemies Act, which is preposterous. He’s openly defying the Supreme Court right now on Kilmar Abrego Garcia; the court has directed the administration to facilitate his return and they’re not doing it. Yet at the same time, it’s like pulling teeth to get Democrats to talk about this. We had four House Democrats go down to El Salvador to highlight the case of Abrego Garcia. Chris Van Hollen, the senator from Maryland, did a terrific job of doing that as well. But we’re still seeing Democrats like Gavin Newsom and others say publicly that this is a mistake, that this is somehow raising the salience of a strength of Donald Trump’s. Why are they doing that?
Rosenberg: I’m not surprised that you’re seeing Democrats stumble or come out of the gates slowly because we’re seeing something so unprecedented in our history—this wanton lawlessness, this abandoning of the Constitution, this aggression that Elon Musk represented in Washington. There’s no question we got out of the box slow. There’s no question about it. And there’s no question that every day there are things that are happening that, to me, you could consider to be disappointing in people’s reactions to things. But while that is true, you’re also seeing greater ambition and greater willingness to defy Trump. And you’ve seen it happen incrementally.
Bernie, AOC have been really important. You’ve seen Cory Booker’s speech really inspired and lifted a lot of people up. Senator Van Hollen, what he’s doing is really important. You saw then the four House members—as you pointed out, you’ve been writing about this—and their trip to El Salvador this week. You’re seeing Democrats starting to discover their voice and learn how to operate in this new terrain and this new battleground in a way that, yes, I wish think we were further along. But while it is true we’re not as far along as we need to be, it’s also true that we are making real and meaningful progress. And I am very pleased, for example, that Hakeem Jeffries took a delegation of House members to the U.K. and to Denmark and to Jordan and to Israel, acting like the minority leader of the House of Representatives of the United States of America. This is exactly the kinds of things he should be doing.
So my own view about this is that in the last 10 days, this heightened level of defiance that you’ve seen even from places like The Economist and The Wall Street Journal—who have now become incredibly part of the opposition movement in the U.S.—and the willingness of Democratic politicians to have greater rhetorical, political ambition, we’re getting there. And yes, let’s all just stipulate that we all wish we were further along than we are right now—but that’s water under the bridge. The key now is we just have to keep moving forward.
I think we’re going to have a test of this very soon. The Kaine-Wyden bill that would roll back all of the tariffs that are in place now is going to come to a vote in the Senate at some point in the next few weeks. We got 51 votes to roll back the Canadian tariffs in the Senate. We could get a majority in the Senate around rolling back all the tariffs. Would it pass the House? I don’t know. But to have the U.S. Senate go on record calling for the revocation and the rescinding of all these tariffs would be a major rebuke of the president. And certainly, that’s something we can be all working toward in the next couple of weeks.
Sargent: Just to wrap this up very briefly, to keep the optimistic streak of this conversation going, what’s an optimistic long-term scenario? We’re talking about Trump’s approval getting to where? In the high 30s? And Republicans starting to break more from him, and him caving on more fronts—like, I don’t know, bringing Abrego Garcia back to the U.S.? What’s the short version of the optimistic scenario?
Rosenberg: I think we’re all aware that we have no idea what’s going to happen. And the various scenarios that could play out—most of them are really ugly scenarios and bad scenarios where all this keeps getting worse and worse and worse. However, these constant retreats are a sign that he is paying attention to public opinion and that work can affect what they’re doing. And I think we’re going to see some tests in the next few weeks. This tariff vote could be a very monumental moment in the willingness of Republicans to defy and break from him.
In terms of the polling ... So Donald Trump, in what is one of the most sturdy, reliable polls—the Economist/YouGov poll—is 41–54 in the polling out this week. Minus 13. That’s a 19-point net drop from where he was in the first week of his of his presidency. And what’s important to recognize is that 54 percent disapproval number. Joe Biden, the day that he got out of the race—when he was in trouble and was not able to govern the country any longer and run as a serious candidate—was at 55 disapproval, one point lower than where Trump is in this current Economist/YouGov poll. So he’s hovering in a place where the last person at that place of disapproval had to leave the presidential race in 2024.
And I just want to say one last thing, Greg, before we go. I think one of the other things that’s really important for us to start introducing as a concept is that he’s not just weak, he’s also a lame duck. And it’s really critical that we not allow this notion that somehow he’s going to try to manufacture a third term to discount this idea. We can’t obey in advance on that. He is not going to be president in four years. He’s got one final term that he’s going to serve. So he’s not only weak and struggling and pathetic and ridiculous but he’s also a lame duck.
We have to start introducing that concept—because in our political system, that word means something. It connotes weakness in our political system. One of the reasons that Trump’s been floating this third term idea is that he’s deeply aware that if he becomes seen as a lame duck, if there starts to be press coverage of his successors—the people running and angling to be president—it will further marginalize him. So we can’t allow his madness to become our own and to obey in advance by not using this term “lame duck,” which is completely appropriate to his presidency at this point.
Sargent: Well, there you have it, an optimistic case for what’s coming from Simon Rosenberg, whose Hopium Chronicles is really all about projecting optimism. Simon, thanks for coming on, man.
Rosenberg: Greg, it’s always great to be with you. And I just want to say thank you for the work that you do every day.
Sargent: Thank you, Simon.
You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.