Transcript: What the State of the Union means for the US midterm elections

This is an audio transcript of the *Swamp Notes** podcast episode:* ‘What the State of the Union means for the US midterm elections’

Sonja HutsonAt this week’s US State of the Union, President Donald Trump made his case that things are pretty good.

Donald Trump voice clipA short time ago we were a dead country. Now, we are the hottest country anywhere in the world, the hottest.

Sonja HutsonAnd if Americans want it to stay that way, he says they better keep electing Republicans.

Donald Trump voice clipYou’re going to win again. You’re going to win big. You’re gonna win bigger than ever.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Sonja HutsonThis is

Swamp Notes, the weekly podcast from the Financial Times, where we talk about all of the things happening in US politics, finance and the economy. I’m Sonja Hutson, and this week we’re asking: how will Trump’s pitch to voters fare this election year? Here with me to discuss is Lauren Fedor. She’s the FT’s deputy Washington bureau chief. Hi, Lauren.

Lauren FedorHi, Sonja.

Sonja HutsonAnd we’ve also got Jon McHenry, vice-president of the conservative pollster North Star Opinion Research. Jon, welcome back to

Swamp Notes.

Jon McHenryThanks for having me.

Sonja HutsonSo Lauren and Jon, you both watched the State of the Union. Lauren, you were actually in the Capitol building while it was happening. Could you sum it up for me in one word?

Lauren FedorLong.

Sonja Hutson(Laughs) All right.

Jon McHenryYou took my answer.

Sonja HutsonJon, what about you?

Jon McHenryLong and I guess if I was gonna choose another one, I’ll choose three words, better than expected.

Sonja HutsonWell, Jon, let’s dive into that. Give me a sense of the expected. What was the public opinion before and after the speech?

Jon McHenrySo, public opinion before has had President Trump mired in the, you know, low forties approval rating, high thirties in some polls. But the average has been somewhere in the 40 to 42 per cent range, which is not promising for results in the midterms. He has lost a lot of ground on approval for how he’s dealing with immigration. And he still got fairly low approval ratings for how the economy is going, despite his absolutely glowing review, ‘the hottest country in the world’. Voters aren’t really feeling that quite yet. Since then, we haven’t really seen much polling. It’s very difficult to do a good survey in such a short timeframe. We’re only two days out as we’re recording. We’ll get a better sense of how he’s doing and if things have actually changed about a week from now when some of the better polls start coming out on that.

Sonja HutsonLauren, what was your sense of what people took away from Trump’s message during his speech?

Lauren FedorWell, I think that Jon is right when he says ‘better than expected’ in the sense that I think that it was certainly a more disciplined message, perhaps, than we might have expected. The president largely stuck to his script, and that script is one that, as John said, you know, emphasises economic issues. What has been historically the winning issue for the president when it comes to the economy and kind of convincing people that they’re better off with him in the White House as opposed to the Democrats.

So from that point of view, from messaging discipline, from staying on message, I think that the president did just about as well as any of his advisers would have hoped him to do. He didn’t seem to get sidetracked or distracted by any tangents, despite the length of it. Despite the fact that it did run at nearly two hours, and was the longest State of the Union in history.

I think that said, you know, he does have a hole to dig himself out of here that Jon kind of neatly laid out when it comes to public opinion. If past as president, there’s the kind of historical context here, he shouldn’t do particularly well. The Republicans shouldn’t be doing well in these midterms. The opposition party tends to do very well two years into a new presidency. So he’s got all of those kind of headwinds heading into November.

Sonja HutsonYeah. How are Democrats feeling about his speech and the midterms?

Lauren FedorSo the Democrats are — and I don’t mean to say this in a necessarily like editorialised way, one way or the other — but they are all over the map, and they were all over the map on Tuesday. Literally speaking, a lot of them, dozens chose not to show up at all. And I think that you could actually feel that having been to several State of the Union addresses in the past, it felt emptier for sure than it has in years passed. But of those who were there, then you also saw, I think, a difference in I’d say decorum or behaviour. Some just sat there in silence the whole time. Some heckled the president and had some kind of, at certain points, quite heated back and forth. But I would say on the whole, Democrats do feel — to the kind of the second part of your question about the midterms — I would describe the mood as, you know, pretty gung-ho and optimistic. In fact, I spoke to Lauren Underwood, who’s a Democratic congressman from Illinois, and I think her mood and sentiment kind of summed it up.

Lauren Underwood voice clipThe American people go to the polls in a week in Texas and North Carolina. They’re going to the polls in Illinois in three weeks on St Patrick’s Day. The midterms are here, my friends.

Lauren FedorAnd I think, you know, just to clarify for our listeners, when she says the midterms are here. Technically, yes. The general election is in November. We still do have nine plus months, but the primary season is about to kick off. You know, we’re having this conversation on a Thursday. By Tuesday, we’ll see those primaries in Texas, North Carolina. These are the only really closely watched, I think, as kind of indicators of the mood and direction of both parties, both the Democratic and Republican parties.

Sonja HutsonJon, what primaries are you gonna be watching this year?

Jon McHenryCertainly the Texas Senate primary between Ken Paxton, the attorney-general, incumbent Senator John Cornyn, and then congressman Wesley Hunt. That one is super interesting. Honestly control the Senate in a sense might hang on the outcome of that, probably won’t know who the nominee is on Tuesday because I expect that one’s gonna go to a run-off. If Ken Paxton winds up winning the run-off, I think he’s a Republican that Democrats actually have a decent shot at beating, of course, depending on who Democrats wind up nominating. If Cornyn manages to hold on, if he makes the run-off and then Donald Trump decides to endorse him, then if Ken gets his endorsement and winds up winning, then he definitely holds a seat. Probably precludes Democrats from taking back the Senate even though they should do well in the House.

Sonja HutsonLauren, just step back for us a little bit. You know, Donald Trump is not on the ballot this year. It’s a collection of House and Senate seats. What is up for grabs?

Lauren FedorAt its core, what’s up for grabs is control of Congress. Donald Trump has enjoyed thus far in his second term unified government, right? He controls the House, he controls the Senate. He controls the White House, much to his chagrin, he does not control the Supreme Court, as we saw last week with the tariff ruling. But you know, the court is tipped in favour of the Conservative, so he really enjoys kind of unparalleled influence and power here at this moment in Washington. Should the Democrats take back even just one chamber of Congress, that would give them a, you know, significant power to at least stop President Trump’s . . . Stymie him when possible from pushing through any more significant legislation.

I think that we’ve already heard, and the president himself has acknowledged this, it’s likely that we would see a spate of impeachments should the Democrats take back the House in particular. Remember, impeachment is the kind of charges rather than removal from office, and the president was already impeached twice the first go around, but I think we could see a lot more of that on Capitol Hill, not only for the president, but for members of his cabinet, which would be at a minimum, I think, a huge distraction and embarrassment for the president and the administration and something that they don’t really want to be contending with.

That said, I think a couple of other things, Donald Trump is not on the ballot, because he’s, you know, not seeking re-election. You’re totally right in saying that. But I think that the kind of political minds at the White House would very much like to put him on the ballot, at least kind of metaphorically. They want him front and centre. They believe that President Trump is a turnout machine, that he can bring out voters in a way that no other Republican can. Now, whether or not candidates, particularly in these swings states will feel the same way, I think is a little bit more of an open question in these closely fought races. Some of these Republicans may wanna create a healthy amount of distance between themselves and a president who, as Jon pointed out, has a approval rating in the high thirties or low forties.

Jon McHenryThat’s always the challenge with Donald Trump, because Republicans now where their base is more of the non-college educated voters, the less likely to turn out in a midterm. They need his voters to turn out, and the best way to have his voters to turn out is for him to go out and do rallies and put his arm around people and say, this is my guy and I need you to support him so we can have tax cuts and tariffs, or whatever else he is pushing that week. But in some of these swing districts, he’s going to be very difficult to have sort of hanging around your neck and still win. His approval rating now, whether it’s, you know, 40 per cent or 42 per cent, that suggests that a loss of 30 to 32 seats just on the basis of where his job approval is. Now, I don’t think there are really that many seats in play this time, partly because of redistricting. If you think that the Democrats are gonna sort of run the table on their winnable seats, they might gain, say, 14 to 15 seats. That’s still plenty to take over the House. That kind of mini wave probably doesn’t get the Democrats on the Senate, but it does put them in great shape to take over the House.

Sonja HutsonWell, Jon, you mentioned redistricting and I do wanna talk about this because this is kind of clouding in some ways, the tea leaf reading about the midterms. You know, the Trump administration has pushed hard for state legislatures to change up the distribution of congressional districts in several US states. Can you, Lauren, tell us about where things stand with that?

Lauren FedorSure. So when you talk about the Trump administration, I think the big example there is what played out in Texas. You know, there was an effort really encouraged by the administration to redraw the maps there in the Republicans favour, Texas being like among the largest states. So, the biggest prizes there in terms of being able to run up the numbers for the Republican Party. But then you pretty quickly saw the Democrats decide to fight fire with fire and try to do the same thing, particularly in California, another very big state where there was room for manoeuvre to try to run up the numbers for the Democratic Party. But hopefully, you know, by the time we get into early summer, late summer, we’ll have a much fuller, clearer picture of what the map nationwide looks like. At the end of the day, the result here is a congressional map across the country that is even more partisan with even fewer seats that are actually genuine swing seats that are up for grabs. And we’ll end up probably focusing more narrowly on just a handful of congressional races, particularly fewer than, you know, decades past.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Sonja HutsonSo Trump has recently been talking about wanting to, quote, nationalise elections, basically that there is an emergency here with election security and he thinks the federal government should take over the voting process. How is that impacting, or is it impacting how the midterms are playing out this year?

Jon McHenryI mean, I would say that it’s probably really not Republican legislators at the state level and at the federal level have enough on their plates, wondering if they’re gonna have to vote on tariffs. You know, wondering about healthcare prices to say, oh yeah, while we’re at it, let’s let the national government, which most Republicans claim to hate, handle voting. You know, how are they gonna feel, you know, four years from now when President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is in charge of counting votes in Bexar County, Texas? Probably not something that Republicans want to get involved in at this point.

Lauren FedorI would also, actually . . . And I think that we have with this president a kind of track record of this. I think there’s a risk that amid his broader kind of rhetoric of casting doubt on our election systems and trust in those institutions, there’s just a real risk for him that he inadvertently encourages people not to vote at all. And I think we saw this play out in Georgia back in 2020, not to go too in the weeds with the run-offs and the Senate race. It feels like ancient history, but I think the president, you know, he railed against the election system there, told everyone was rigged and then a significant, not a majority of his voters, but a significant minority of his voters stayed home. And that was enough to impart, help ensure that Jon Ossoff became the US Senator, Democrat from Georgia rather than the Republican candidate. So I think there . . .

Jon McHenryAnd Raphael Warnock.

Lauren FedorYeah.

Jon McHenryWe have two Democratic senators from Georgia because Donald Trump told just enough Republicans. Don’t bother. It’s gonna be rigged.

Sonja HutsonSo, you know, we’ve touched on a lot of the nitty gritty of the upcoming midterms. Jon, I’m wondering if you can kind of zoom out and talk to us a little bit about what is on voters’ minds right now.

Jon McHenrySo, certainly cost of living in the economy is the most important thing, even in Republican primaries that we’ve surveyed, you know, at the congressional level, instead of being concerned about immigration as they were two years ago, at this point, they’re now very much focused on the cost of living and inflation. And that’s, you know, obviously that’s a huge challenge for the president. There are only so many levers he can pull to fix that. The Supreme Court may have helped him out by saying that the tariffs were not legal the way he was implementing them. That puts potentially Republicans on the hook to have to vote to support what he’s instituting, where he says it’s 10 per cent today, and then he wakes up the next morning and says, actually, we’re gonna go ahead and do 15 per cent. So we’ll see sort of how that all plays out. But that’s sort of factor number one. When I said he did better than expected in the State of the Union address, I thought one of the things that he did do well is put Democrats on the spot and say, you know, this is an opportunity for voters to see where the representatives stand. Stand up if you support protecting US citizens rather than illegal immigrants. And just sort of let that play out. It was awkward as heck even watching at home.

Sonja HutsonYeah.

Jon McHenryBut just to see him say, oh look, Senator Mark Kelly from Arizona is still sitting on his hands. And you could tell poor Senator Kelly sitting there like you son of a gun. Like, I can’t believe you’re doing this to me. Like, how am I gonna win a general election in Arizona or nationally?

Sonja Hutson

Yeah.

Jon McHenryHe did a decent job in framing the midterms as, even if you’re not super happy with me right now, remember there’s a reason you voted for me a year and a half ago. And this is what’s at stake. We’re talking about, you know, whether it’s crime, whether it’s illegal immigration, whether it’s, you know, transgender rules and whether men are allowed to participate in women’s sports, or whether parents are allowed to know what’s going on with their kids. He did frame that up fairly well to nationalise it in terms of, you know, what Donald Trump wants and what Democrats want on the other side.

Sonja HutsonWhat’s interesting is those things you just listed are not the economy.

Jon McHenryThat’s absolutely right. What he did sort of get into, oh, don’t forget we gave you a big tax cut and every Democrat in this room voted against it. I sort of wish he’d stayed on that a little bit longer as a Republican strategist to say, this is the thing that One Big, Beautiful Bill is going to be a key feature in I bet 40 per cent of general election ads this year.

Jon McHenryI wish he had said a little bit better case for the defence of that and dug into that a little bit more.

Lauren FedorA lot of the Republicans, you know, that I talked to here in Washington seem to be betting a lot on those tax refunds in particular. All the Republican kind of campaign operatives that I talk to, they insist, no people are gonna get those big refund checks later in the spring, early summer. They’re gonna feel great having that cash in their pocket, and we’re gonna remind them over and over and over again that that was our party, that was our team that delivered that for them. I mean, whether that actually bears fruit, I don’t know. We’ll have to see. But I also think on the point on immigration, I think it’ll be really interesting to see how that kind of beds in. Obviously, we started this year with some pretty arresting images and video out of Minnesota, and I think that there were a lot of Republican congressional candidates and Senate candidates who were pretty disturbed by that, and concerned that there were particularly elements in the administration who wanted to, you know, just push harder and harder and harder on that.

The administration has tried, or at least elements within the administration have tried to kind of turn down the temperature a little bit and perhaps be a little bit more even handed and measured in their approach when it comes to immigration enforcement. But I think there’s a view that they overplayed their hand on an issue that has been very, very strong for the president. They’ve moderated their position. And now, will the public kind of reward them for that? Or is there kind of irreparable damage with independent voters in particular? I don’t know, but I’ll be interested to see.

Jon McHenryAnd you can see the president even sensing a little bit of that where he talked about sanctuary cities during the State of the Union address. Sanctuary cities are probably a pretty good issue for him if he can keep the focus on some Democratic mayors, some Democratic governors are impeding us from taking, you know, violent criminals and deporting them. They really did sort of lose the thread over the course of enforcement in Minnesota where you’re killing two citizens and not looking like you’re enforcing the immigration law. As you said, we’ll see if the American people sort of respond to that, but you can see a shift in even the president’s rhetoric on it.

Sonja HutsonYeah. I’m also curious, you know, we’re talking now about how the economy and immigration are two really big issues on voters’ minds, but we are still many months away from the general election. Do you think these defining issues will change before that time?

Jon McHenryThe economy’s gonna be the most important issue, I think, throughout the year. There’s almost no way that it’s not. If it’s not, that probably means that the economy is pretty good. People are feeling good about it. That lagging indicator, as Lauren said, is now a good indicator for the president and Republicans. That would be one way that it’s not the top issue.

Immigration, I think probably declines as an issue overall if Republicans, you know, if ICE agents handle the issue and just the tactics of deporting people better. It’ll always be an issue for Democrats this year. It’s just seen as a justice issue and a democracy issue, which the Democratic base tends to care about more than virtually anybody else in the country. Independents care a lot about it now in the wake of Renée Good and Alex Pretti being killed. But if Republicans handle that better, then it becomes less of an issue. Allows Republicans to say, look, we’re just focused on deporting violent criminals. And then, you know, maybe something else comes up, maybe some social issues enter the picture. But it’s hard to see anything supplanting the economy at this point.

Lauren FedorI guess one thing I would . . . A giant question mark for me would be foreign policy and what happens outside of the US. I mean, I think we all understand that these kind of bread and butter kitchen table issues of the economy are what drive most voters. Foreign policy does not tend to be the kind of make or break issue, particularly when it comes to congressional or Senate races. But you know, President Trump has made engaging in, trying to end foreign conflicts a kind of hallmark of his first year in office. He is publicly toying with, you know, military strikes in Iran.

That opens up a whole new can of worms about what US military involvement looks like in the Middle East. I mean, that’s not even touching on what’s happening in this hemisphere and kind of the ambitions the administration, not only in Venezuela, but places like Cuba. I mean, there just are so many unknowns on the global stage for me. And should the US become more directly involved in some sort of conflict overseas, I think that could just scramble the whole picture and we could have a very different kind of conversation over the summer into the fall.

Sonja HutsonAll right, I wanna thank our guests, Lauren Fedor, the FT’s deputy Washington bureau chief. Thanks, Lauren.

Lauren FedorThanks, Sonja.

Sonja HutsonAnd Jon McHenry, vice-president of the Conservative pollster North Star Opinion Research. Thanks, Jon.

Jon McHenryThanks, Sonja.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Sonja HutsonThis was

Swamp Notes, the US politics show from the FT. If you wanna sign up for the Swamp Notes newsletter, we’ve got a link to that in the show notes. Our show was produced by Henry Larson and it was mixed by Kelly Garry. We had help from Marc Filippino. Special thanks to Pierre Nicholson. I’m your host, Sonja Hutson. Our executive producer is Topher Forhecz, and the FT’s global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. Original music by Hannis Brown. Check back next week for more US political analysis from the Financial Times.