Transcript: Trump Tirade over Gas Prices Backfires in Epic Self-Own

And this message is getting through. The war is wildly unpopular with the American mainstream, nearly as unpopular as Trump’s economic performance. And that one-two punch is absolutely devastating, not only to the White House and its agenda, but to the Republican Party at large, especially here we are in this critical election period.

Sargent: Just to take your 2008 and George W. Bush comparison one step further—everybody should recall that in 2004, after George W. Bush was reelected, he looked absolutely untouchable. I remember the atmosphere at the time was that because of September 11, and because of all the theatrics that Karl Rove was doing, which at the time looked really formidable—the sense was that he had absolute dominance over our information space, that there was no way they could lose arguments, that Democrats were just scattered and listless and without direction. And then, in two short years, Republicans lost both chambers of Congress. And, then we got 2008 and one of the biggest Democratic victories in, I guess, our lifetimes.

Benen: Exactly. You know, it’s so easy to forget that after 2004, we heard the same things that we were hearing shortly after 2024—that we had entered an era of Republican dominance, that Republicans were going to be leading for the foreseeable future, that they’d cracked the code, they’d rewritten the alignment, everything was going to be different from here on out. That’s what we heard in 2004, when Republicans were running the show. They had the White House, the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. And as far as we were told, the conventional wisdom from most of the pundits was that Democrats were just lost at sea for the foreseeable future. Two years later, Democrats took back Congress. And then two years after that, they controlled the show. They were in charge.

And so I think that when you heard similar talk in 2024, after Trump won, that he had somehow realigned American politics, I couldn’t help but laugh at the time, thinking, yeah, let’s get back to me in a year and a half. Let’s see what’s going on as we approach the midterms. And here we are. It’s exactly what’s happening. History is repeating itself. They didn’t really earn a mandate in 2004 or in 2024. They overplayed their hand. Americans rejected the poor economy and a failed war in the Middle East. And it’s happening just like it happened then. It’s happening again now.

Sargent: And Trump was supposed to be the guy who was much shrewder than the Bushes and the Roves of the world. Steve Benen, all of that was beautifully said. Thank you so much for coming on. Folks, if you want to check out Steve Benen’s stuff, make sure to check out the MaddowBlog over at MS Now. Steve, great to talk to you.

Benen: See you soon, Greg. Thanks.