STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
Jonah Goldberg has been listening with us. He's co-founder of the conservative online site The Dispatch. Jonah, welcome back.
JONAH GOLDBERG: Always great to be here.
INSKEEP: OK, here's my question. Really important point. Republicans are calling it Trumpapalooza. It seems to me that Trumpalooza would be simpler to say, fewer syllables. What do you think?
GOLDBERG: (Laughter) Yeah, but it has to be more evocative. I mean, they could call it Burning Man, but that would really freak people out.
INSKEEP: (Laughter) So what do you think of this event?
GOLDBERG: So, I mean, I - just very big picture, and one correction. For the most part, midterm elections are not things, as you said in the setup, but there actually were a couple of them in the 1970s. But the whole - and some Republicans will say, well, they are a precedent. Democrats did it in the 1970s. But that sort of underscores my objection to this. The midterm conventions that the Democrats did in the 1970s were actually kind of sort of like actual conventions. I mean, Jimmy Carter defended the one in 1978 by saying, I believe it is very important to me as president and also as head of the Democratic Party to have my successes and failures assessed objectively and openly by Democrats representing the grassroots of our nation.
Now, the thing is, they had debates about resolutions and policies and they had committees and they had floor votes and all that kind of stuff. This thing is just - it's basically the political version of a ShamWow infomercial.
INSKEEP: And it's not just that it's a commercial. I mean, I've been reading your writing about this and it's very interesting. There used to be tons and tons of conventions all through American politics, including the presidential nominating conventions. And as you point out, they were where party delegates representing different regions and different groups argued about their interests. It was about the democratic process. And now I think you're telling me this Trumpapalooza is one more event that is about exactly one person.
GOLDBERG: Yes, and that's the - that gets us to the punditry and the political strategy of this. The bet, as the excellent setup piece pointed out, is that normally in midterms - basically every major, like, wave midterm of the last, you know - I don't know - half-century, the party in power, the party in the White House, wants to make it a choice. The party out of power wants to make it a referendum, and the referendum party always wins that argument and it ends up being a referendum anyway. So their theory is that if Trump is in the 30s in his approval rating, if he can get it up to the 40s, maybe he'll be less of a drag on some of these marginal races.
I actually think on paper, it's not a crazy idea. I just think in reality, it's cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs because the simple fact is that the country - Trump right now - I just looked it up - is at about 22% approval among independents.
INSKEEP: Wow.
GOLDBERG: The country is - has enormous Trump fatigue. Trump is still running as if he's taking on the establishment when he is basically the establishment. He has been the most popular - I mean, the most powerful figure in American politics for a decade now. Even when he was out of office, he defined the conversation a lot of time, and people are just exhausted with it and want to turn the channel. And the idea of doing two nights of, like, Trump rally meets crazy AI video is not - let's put it this way. I think it's going to turn off more people than it attracts. It's sort of like the salesman who says, sure, we're losing money on every sale, but we'll make up for it in volume.
INSKEEP: (Laughter) I'm glad you mentioned AI because I've been thinking about another aspect of this. The president is using more and more AI in his posts on social media. His output, if that's the word, over the weekend included seven posts, I believe, about renaming New Mexico New America, including an AI-generated post that showed him pasting the word America on a New Mexico sign. What do Republicans think of the president's focus, his emphasis on matters like that, rather than - I don't know - the cost of groceries?
GOLDBERG: Yeah. Look, I mean, he's been on - this weekend, he was on - he was posting on Truth Social like an escaped monkey from a cocaine study.
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
GOLDBERG: And you barely covered some of the more egregious things that he did. And I think it's - look, I think it is part of the broader pattern people are factoring into things, which is just simply that he is retreating to his safe places, his comfort zone. He wants to talk about building stuff - ballrooms. He likes to talk about putting his name on things. He likes doing things with a pen and a phone, you know, in terms of executive power. And I think it's just sort of breaking through that he just cannot sustain a conversation about the issues that, at least, the pollsters tell us Americans want him to be focusing on.
And I think the problem for Republicans is, you know, the Democrats said, we want to make this a referendum on Donald Trump, and Donald Trump says, I accept your terms. You had Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House, basically go out and say a vote in the midterms is a vote for or against Donald Trump. And, again, I just think that at the end of the day, the - you know, that's going to cost them more than benefit them because, at the margins - yeah.
INSKEEP: I can hear, though, with the social media as well as with the convention, this argument that we heard in Tamara's story that's so crazy it just might work, as they say in the movies. It enrages liberals. It maybe does fire up Trump voters who are not otherwise fired up, and in a fragmented media environment, most people won't even pay attention.
GOLDBERG: Yeah. I mean, look, that's part of the theory. That's part of the theory on paper that I think works. It's basically - I - the way I imagine it is they brought Trump a bunch of different strategies for the midterms. 'Cause Trump is sitting on, you know, a dragon's hoard of money, which he says is my money on - in these various PACs that he controls. And I bet you they gave him a bunch of different plans, and one was, like, give money to the actual campaigns, or give them to these campaign committees, or do this or do that. And, oh, yeah, a thing (ph) where you can just spend it all on talk about how awesome you are, and he was like, that's the plan.
INSKEEP: (Laughter).
GOLDBERG: And I think that that's sort of the fundamental problem, is that with everything, if it's not about him, Trump cannot muster a lot of energy for it. And the theory is is that the people who loved his act 10 years ago will still love it - that that crowd will turn out and hold up their lighters and say "Free Bird" (ph) one more time, and I just don't think it's going to work.
INSKEEP: And maybe he'll spend that dragon's hoard of money, as you called it. Jonah, thanks so much. Really appreciate it.
GOLDBERG: See you, man.
INSKEEP: Jonah Goldberg of The Dispatch.
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