The Republicans turning on Trump – Decoding America podcast

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:00]I'm Read Arhed >> and I'm Jonathan Yerashami >> and this is Decoding America, a podcast from Guardian Australia. Well, Jonathan, as you just heard there, the Late Show with Steven Colbear, one of the most cutting comedy shows critical of Donald Trump now officially off the air. But it's quite unfortunate timing because it's just as tensions within the Republican party are really starting to heat up. Yeah, there are signs that amid low approval ratings, the intractable war in Iran, and a chaotic lead up to the midterms, Donald Trump's own party might be starting to turn on him. Anger has been building for a while now. But this week, it burst out into the open.

[00:00:36]>> But there's a growing number of people on the right who have a form of TDS called Trump disappointment syndrome.

[00:00:41]>> Trump disappointment syndrome, a play on Trump derangement syndrome. And that was uh very fired up Thomas Massie making his point. Um, we're also going to come back to Steven Cobear, whether political satire can survive under Donald Trump.

[00:00:55]That's a bit later on. But first, Jonathan, last week we talked about Donald Trump waging war on his enemies in the Republican party. Now, the tables might have turned.

[00:01:07]>> Yeah. Look, this this week we've seen a couple of signs that the Republican party, and when I say the Republican party, I mean in Congress and more specifically in the Senate, might be starting to turn on him. And this is really important because if we look at back at Donald Trump's career in the Republican party for the last 10 years, he has held up very strong amongst Republicans. They haven't turned on him over the gutting of the federal government in the last year. They haven't turned on him over his criticism of Ukraine, over the immigration enforcement and the scenes of people being arrested by ICE. They've given him a free radar, >> demolishing part of the White House, >> tariffs, >> nothing cut through.

[00:01:47]>> Exactly. But now things might be changing.

[00:01:53]>> What is it that has pushed them over the line? Because as you say, every time something new happened, I would think, boy, the Republicans must be angry about this. Nothing. So, what's changed?

[00:02:06]>> I think it's a culmination of a few things. So, obviously, we've been talking about his low approval rating for the last couple of weeks. That's hurting everyone because by association, it hurts Republicans. But also a couple of things this week. So, last week we talked about this IRS fund. Donald Trump was suing the Internal Revenue Service, the equivalent of the Tax Office in America. They settled by setting up this fund to pay people who claim persecution by the federal government, including perhaps people who rioted on January 6 and stormed the capital. So, that's angered a lot of Republicans. And then also a potential Iran deal that they don't quite like the shape of. And as you mentioned just then, this continue continuing turning on some Republicans in Congress.

[00:02:53]>> We'll take them one at a time. Let's start with the so-called weaponization fund. Critics call it a slush fund.

[00:03:00]You've been listening to Senator Ted Cruz's podcast this week. We know he had a podcast.

[00:03:06]>> Yes. The things I do for this podcast.

[00:03:08]>> And you've picked this rather revealing tidbit. There were fireworks at an epic level and I got to say it's one of the roughest meetings I've seen in my entire time in the in the Senate. Uh there were a lot of Republican senators who were just pissed. So that's Ted Cruz talking about a meeting that was held at the end of last week between quite a lot of Republican senators and Todd Blanch, the acting attorney general. You know, he's leading the Justice Department, but he's very close to Donald Trump. And the description we got of this meeting was in one word, and this is a quote, "Shittow."

[00:03:46]And we had more than a dozen Republicans, senators, questioning Blanch about this fund, this IRS fund.

[00:03:53]They were furious about it because in their view, it makes them look bad. Um, voters don't want to see federal money, taxpayer money, going to people who may have been rioting on January 6. I I've got to ask about that because I thought a lot of Republicans do believe this narrative that the Justice Department was weaponized under Biden. I thought that they would be okay with this so-called slush fund.

[00:04:18]>> Look, I think some are. We've definitely had a few Republican senators come out, you know, in support of it, but many many are very uncomfortable with it because you've got to remember the Senate is they have much longer term senators. So, they have terms that last for six years. So, they're able to be a bit more bipartisan. They're often more moderate. They don't have to cleave as closely to the president's agenda because they're not up for election every two years.

[00:04:40]>> That's a good point.

[00:04:41]>> A lot of them are up for election this year. A third of them will be up for election in um in November. But a lot of them are frankly angry about how this makes them look. And it's put this really important funding package that the president wanted to get through Congress funding immigration and ICE, a $70 billion multi-year package. has put that at risk because from what we've heard there was a lot of anger inside this room. Senators questioning the acting attorney general about why they did this now, how bad it made them look politically, saying they were fed up with Trump's insistence on settling personal scores and pursuing pet projects at the expense of their legislative agenda.

[00:05:21]And that's just paralyzed this kind of measure to get this funding through.

[00:05:26]>> That that really um surprised me. you mentioned it, a $70 billion legislation fund to fund ICE, the immigration and border patrol and then they sort of have delayed it because they're unhappy with this um weaponization fund in the ballroom. That to me was the first signal that there were kind of realworld consequences for Donald Trump as opposed to just the little disgruntled whisperings.

[00:05:52]>> Yeah. Well, so a lot of what I know about this meeting comes from Ted Cruz, which is handy. Thank you, Ted. But the fact that he even spoke about it, >> I think that is interesting. I think it is indicative that he is speaking out so candidly. He's a supporter of the president. I think he's broadly a supporter of this fund. But the fact that he's willing to speak out so candidly and openly about what a disaster this meeting was and how much Republicans are turning on Trump's own attorney general, that tells something tells us something in itself. But, you know, we heard from other Republicans, you know, unnamed, who said that in the meeting, they basically said that if this had gone to a vote, if they'd put this funding package to fund border security and ICE to a vote, Democrats wanted to attach an amendment that would have gotten rid of the IRS IRS fund. So, it would have got rid of Trump's weaponization fund >> pushing back.

[00:06:42]>> And Republicans were going to vote with Democrats to do this. they were actually going to vote against Trump against Trump's own measure and so the Senate just had to pull it because they couldn't embarrass Trump like that.

[00:06:53]>> Right. Okay. So, we we're sort of seeing some sort of movement maybe and there is an indication that Donald Trump is feeling the heat because he was asked about whether he's going to go to his son's wedding. Don Jr. is getting remarried in the Bahamas. I believe >> he got remarried over the weekend.

[00:07:13]>> Oh, it's already happened. It already happened.

[00:07:16]>> I lost track. I lost track of time, Jonathan. But here is how Donald Trump answered when he was asked, "Are you going to go?"

[00:07:25]>> But it's going to be just a small little private affair and I'm going to try and make it. I'm I'm in the midst. I said, you know, this is not good timing for me. I have a thing called Iran and other things. Uh that's one I can't win on. If I do attend, I get killed. If I don't attend, I get killed by the fake news, of course, I'm talking about.

[00:07:47]>> It's not good timing for me. I don't know if if we would ever get more of an admission from Donald Trump, but he mentioned the Iran war. That's really putting pressure on him as well.

[00:07:57]>> Yeah. I mean, before we get to global geopolitics, let's spare a thought for Don Jr. His dad didn't go to his wedding.

[00:08:02]>> No. Well, it's a second wedding. I mean, you know.

[00:08:05]>> Oh, all right. You're very forgiving.

[00:08:07]>> It's the second time. I feel like that's kind of okay, but anyway, we we digress.

[00:08:11]>> Yeah. Like so there was a flurry of diplomatic movement over the weekend that it made it appear like a peace deal with Iran or at least a deal to get the straight of Hormuz open was very very close and from what we understand it has been close and those negotiations are continuing on but what we're seeing is a huge amount of push back from Republicans in the Senate. Yes, but actually from the wider party from people who are quite close to Trump over what this deal could be. Now, we know that Donald Trump is under a lot of pressure to end this war. We've talked about it before. The economy is suffering. Oil prices might be about to skyrocket even further if the straight remains closed longer. He needs to get out of it, but he needs to get out of it with by saving phase. He can't be seen to be, you know, retreating. He can't be seen to securing a deal that's worse than the deal that Barack Obama secured with Iran in 2015. He needs to come up with something. I I have to say I feel very gaslighted every weekend when I hear that there might be a deal. It's it's quite exhausting because it's so crucial to Australia opening the straight of Hormuz and the global economy as well as of course what's happening inside Iran.

[00:09:24]But my understanding is there are some loyalists who don't want an Iran peace deal. So So Donald Trump is sort of stuck in the middle a little bit.

[00:09:33]>> Well, I think they don't want this Iran peace deal. So what we're looking at potentially from this peace deal is something that is literally just going to get the straight open and in return Iran might get see some of its assets unfrozen and get you know a couple of billion dollars like that. But it basically just returns us to the status quo of February 27th the day before the war was launched and all of these other things like the nuclear program or the support for proxies in the Middle East.

[00:09:58]It doesn't really address that and negotiations will continue on later. But a lot of Republicans are really angry about this frozen assets issue, about the fact that billions of dollars might be handed to the Iranian regime.

[00:10:13]>> They don't want to see that.

[00:10:14]>> Exactly. And that was something really controversial that that happened with Barack Obama's deal. And so, for instance, you have Senator Roger Wicker who um chairs the armed services committee. He he called it a disaster.

[00:10:25]Ted Cruz, we've just talked about him very close to Trump. He says it was deeply concerning. Mike Pompeo. Now, at one point, I think Mike Pompeo was in the running to be Trump's vice president. Um, last year, he was the head of the CIA in the first term. He was the secretary of state as well in the first term. He called this deal, the outlines of this deal, not remotely America first and accused it of being similar to the Obama nuclear deal.

[00:10:49]>> I I have seen Hawks in his party even questioning why what was the point of launching the conflict in the first place, which I I thought was quite brave along with the other examples you provide. Um and Donald Trump has said on social media, I think to some of the criticism that this deal is going to be the exact opposite of the one that uh Barack Obama um was negotiated under Barack Obama's term. But I that to me is the crux of it here in terms of just Iran. Why I feel like the Republican party and Donald Trump are stuck because nobody is going to want to get out of this without a better deal than what Obama got called the JCPOA.

[00:11:31]Is that what this is all about? Just oneupping his rival.

[00:11:35]>> Well, and he needs to show that he did this for a reason. There needs to be a reason for the last 10 years. the re a reason for him pulling out of a deal, a reason for him launching strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last year and then this wider war this year. And look, they're pushing really hard back. The White House is pushing very hard back on these dissenters in the Republican party. Steven Chung, he's the White House communications director. He replied to Mike Pompeo after Mike Pompeo questioned the deal. And this is a quote. He said, "Mike Pompeo has no idea what the he's talking about. He should shut his stupid mouth and leave the real work to the professionals.

[00:12:12]>> That's from the White House.

[00:12:13]>> That's to a to a a Republican.

[00:12:15]>> Yeah.

[00:12:16]>> To an ally.

[00:12:18]Makes me laugh hearing you swear. But that's a quote. That's a quote we should say. Look, I um I want to play devil's advocate here just before we move on.

[00:12:30]What if I argue that this is not a turning point? that this is just all about Republicans worried about losing their seats in the midterms. There's an unpopular president. You mentioned that I think a New York Times Sienna poll put his approval rating at 37%. It's really low. The economy is bad. People are getting upset.

[00:12:48]If those things improved, can I argue that the disscent would go away?

[00:12:55]>> Look, and I don't want to overplay this as well. I think there is an argument that a lot of people within the party still support him. We know, for instance, that it's very difficult to get elected as a Republican without his help. We talked about Thomas Massie last week, this sitting house member who um Trump endorsed his opponent in the midterm primaries and he lost just today, an hour before I walked into this studio.

[00:13:19]>> I'm so glad you're mentioning this. Tell me. Yes.

[00:13:21]>> John Cornin, sitting Texas senator, >> talked about last week, >> been in power for 24 years. He has lost his primary because Donald Trump endorsed another candidate. a candidate who was impeached by his own party at one point. This is not a popular figure in Texas more broadly, but voters threw their weight behind this Ken Paxton because Trump had endorsed him. It makes it really difficult to to, you know, stand as a Republican without Trump's approval. But you're right, he he has record low appro disapproval. People do not like what Trump is doing. 37% in some polls. That's how low the approval is. And normally when we see this with any world leader in the world, it could be, you know, an Australian election in the UK, unpopular leaders typically give lawmakers a bit of leeway. They they allow them to stand without, you know, having to campaign with them. They distance themselves from them because they want to keep the legislative chamber and they know, okay, I'm a bit unpopular. I don't want to sully your campaign by standing next to you. Donald Trump doesn't let people do that. He is involved in all of these elections. He is talking about them all the time. He is endorsing people. He is demanding that members of his party pull ever closer and he's punishing people that speak out.

[00:14:37]>> They still need him. They're still afraid of him. And and that's the crux of it to me that we're still a long way from seeing Congress behave the way it should. They have a separation of powers. Congress is meant to behave separately to the executive to the president. I feel like we're still a long way from seeing them take up that responsibility again and just stop passing legislation really pushing back.

[00:15:04]>> Yeah, Trump has sidelined Congress in a historical way this this term. He's relied so much on executive orders, but I think we are starting to see the outlines of that. Certainly in the Senate, if the way that senators are speaking out, the threat to his legislative agenda, I think we might start seeing a little bit of movement there as the months go along.

[00:15:25]>> All right. Well, let's turn to what is a bit of a cultural moment in the US.

[00:15:31]It's the end of an era. The Late Show with Steven Colbear is now off the air.

[00:15:36]It was number one rated. He was known as the king of late night.

[00:15:40]He's gone. And I remember watching The Late Show with David Letterman, but Steven Cobar's predecessor um for for many many years. And I also remember when Steven Cobear started to satarize Trump, it really cut through and that was what made him and now that's gone.

[00:15:59]>> Yeah, they're such an important part of the kind of US cultural landscape, aren't they? We don't really have late shows like that here. Things that combine a bit of comedy, some celebrity interviews, and a lot of news, frankly.

[00:16:10]And I think it's really interesting to see the way Donald Trump's relationship with these shows have changed. I don't know if you remember when he was first running for president in 2015 2016 he went on Colbear. They kind of joked a bit you know I think Colbear challenged him a bit.

[00:16:25]>> He went on Jimmy Fallon I think in 2016 another one of these late night hosts.

[00:16:29]And Fallon got a lot of criticism for kind of normalizing Trump and he apologized later on. I think he said he went too soft on Trump and he should have been a bit harder. I think Trump went on SNL Saturday Night Live as well.

[00:16:40]>> That's right. He did. Yes.

[00:16:41]>> So, he's been really ingrained in that when he was just a celebrity, but now he's kind of turned against them a bit because what we know about Donald Trump is he doesn't like to be criticized.

[00:16:53]>> The New York Times culture podcast with Wesley Morris really put this into context a little bit and the politics behind it. Uh let's just have a listen to how he describes what this moment means. But now the crisis, I don't know, it's existential. There's no talk show going into the late night slot.

[00:17:15]Meanwhile, over at ABC, Jimmy Kimmel lives in almost weekly risk of cancellation now. And you know, their crimes can basically be boiled down to offending the president.

[00:17:25]>> So what he's hinting at is some of the questions around the timing of why Colbear's show was cancelled. So, just to briefly remind us, Cobear criticized CBS's parent company, Paramount, for making a $16 million settlement uh payment with Donald Trump.

[00:17:45]And then it was um shortly announced that the Late Show would come to an end after that. Uh and Colbear sort of hasn't said a lot about it, but he said, "I I think we're the first number one show to get cancelled." CBS did blame the economics. TV is is expensive to make. It's fair enough. and TV viewers are declining. The landscape has really changed.

[00:18:08]But some people really saw it as the network bowing to Donald Trump at a time when a mer they were trying to get a merger through as well. Yeah, that's crucial because Paramount, who owns CBS, was trying to get a merger through with Sky Dance and it was going to make them one of the largest entertainment companies in America and they needed approval from the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC, that's the regulator of broadcast in America. And I think a lot of the criticism was that this was a sweetener that maybe Colbear was taken off air because Donald Trump doesn't like him as a way to kind of push this through. And it and it, you know, it happened that that merger happened. Um that company's now being run by the Ellisons who are very close to the to Donald Trump and his family.

[00:18:56]And since then the FCC, the regulator under Trump has been quite forthright in the way it talks about late night shows.

[00:19:04]Yeah. Uh I mean we should say obviously Paramount the Ellison's would deny any of those allegations but uh what uh Wesley Morris was hinting to there there was um that now Jimmy Kimmel is under attack because he made a joke about Melania Trump.

[00:19:22]Melania Trump didn't like it. Donald Trump didn't like it. And now the parent company there is having their license reviewed early.

[00:19:29]>> Yeah. Yeah, and remember Jimmy Kimmel was taken off air last year for a few days because he made some comments after the murder of Charlie Kirk. A lot of people in the MAGA movement were really offended by those comments. And Brendan Carr, who leads the FCC for Trump, he basically went and gave an interview and said, you know, the ABC needs to be very careful. And it was seen to be threatening ABC's license. And then within hours, Jimmy Kimmel was taken off air. Now, he was returned because there was an outcry by viewers, but since then, it's been very obvious that the FCC under Trump has these late night shows in its crosshairs.

[00:20:06]>> It's a really febral, uncertain environment. Uh, but I just briefly before we move on, I want to talk about what Colbear is going to do next. Can I share that with you?

[00:20:16]>> Yeah, I'd love to hear that.

[00:20:17]>> He's apparently writing a new Lord of the Rings movie.

[00:20:20]>> Wow.

[00:20:20]>> Alongside his son wasn't expecting that.

[00:20:22]He's a huge Lord of the Rings fan and he feels like there's a certain number of chapters that were missed out of the movies. So, he's going to do a new one with Peter Jackson, >> right?

[00:20:31]>> Like it's official with the with the actual director who did the other Lord of the Rings movies and within 24 hours of the show ending, the late show.

[00:20:39]Apparently, he reportedly attended his brother's wedding and then he did a um public access TV show only in Monroe in Michigan and he did a whole hour. I actually think it was funnier than the late show.

[00:20:52]It's my personal, it's just personal taste, subjective opinion, and it was hilarious. So, I feel like I think Steven Cobear will be okay, but the question is, will America be okay?

[00:21:04]>> And where the late night TV shows, I think that it they're so representative of maybe something that is kind of passed now. You talked about record ratings. I think 6 million people watched that final episode, which is huge. But I looked it up. So Johnny Carson, who's kind of the godfather of American late night TV, American late night shows, when he aired his final episode in the '9s, an estimated 50 million people watched it. It's nowhere near, we're not anywhere near those numbers now. And I think it points to a kind of real schism in American culture.

[00:21:34]You know, Donald Trump's rise was aided by this, the fact that people could lock themselves into echo chambers and that we don't have these kind of shared cultural moments. And the decline of TV is part of that. The decline of these late night shows is part of that. The fact that people aren't all sitting around the TV watching it together, embibing the same thing, listening to the same comedians and embibing the same values. People are on their phones, their kids are looking at YouTube, you and I listening to podcasts. I think it's really interesting what this represents. a and a question of maybe why it's so they're vulnerable to being buffeted by political winds because they don't have that power that advertising power that they used to. And if it doesn't say it all, uh the late show is going to be replaced by a show called Comics Unleashed and apparently an apolitical comedy show.

[00:22:26]>> Perfect in the age of Trump.

[00:22:27]>> There you go. Well, with that, we'll go to a break. Afterwards, the Democratic Party published their autopsy of the last election. But why doesn't it shed much light on why they failed?

[00:22:40]Welcome back, Jonathan. The Democrats released this report into why they lost the presidential election to Donald Trump, but it seemed to be missing some key information.

[00:22:49]>> Yeah, I think what's interesting about this report, it went for over 200 pages, so you would expect to have a lot of information there.

[00:22:54]>> Yeah. Ken Martin, who's the head of the DNC, the Democratic National Committee, he didn't want to release this. He said that he wasn't proud of the report and it didn't meet their standards. And when you read it, you kind of get an idea why because it fails to mention Joe Biden's decision to stay in the race and then drop out quite late. It fails to mention the kind of wide anger about his age and whether he was cognitively impaired. It fails to mention the decision to run Kamla Harris as the nominee without a primary >> which is all extraordinary because she didn't have a lot of time to run. It was like when by the time Biden dropped out, was it like 100 days or so?

[00:23:32]>> Yeah, it was a matter of months and >> to really campaign >> and there was so much anger about that process about whether the White House had been covering things up that Americans had been taken advantage of and lied to. It also fails to mention the words Gaza and Israel. There was so much anger about Joe Biden's >> position on the Gaza war that was in its kind of worst moments during that campaign, but it just completely fails to mention any of that.

[00:23:56]>> Does that mean that they just don't have now any comprehensive review into what happened that they can take going forward?

[00:24:05]>> Well, look, it has a few things. So, it looks on these key demographics that Harris lost. So, we know that Kamla Harris didn't perform as well with Latinos and men and rural voters, which typically, you know, many of them might vote for Republicans, but she really lost a lot of support then. And there's a quote in there that saying Camela Harris wrote off rural America. She assumed that urban and suburban margins would compensate for them and that maths doesn't add up. So, they've clearly looked at some of these issues and realize they need to do a little bit of work there. It also found that Democrats more generally should focus less on abstract issues and identity politics.

[00:24:42]That didn't play well with American voters.

[00:24:45]>> I've seen the Democrats saying, "Look, we're seeing off what they call off-year election wins. So, actually, we're going okay." But how much of the Dem's success at the moment is representative of anti-Trump vote as opposed to pro-democratic party vote? I think that's the key question because that masks quite a lot, doesn't it? Because we know for instance that in congressional polls looking for the at the midterms in November, Democrats are leading Republicans by 48 to 40%. Now that's quite a big margin. That should help them to win the House. They're expected to win the House. But if we look at kind of broader polls and step back, 58% of US adults have an unfavorable view of the Republican party. 59% have an unfavorable view of the Republicans. And that's probably because Democrats are generally more willing to be critical of their own party, their own leaders. We were talking about this with Trump earlier. A lot of Republican voters are pretty rusted on and they're not going to turn on their party. But that's a big problem for the Democrats because elections are about enthusiasm.

[00:25:49]They're about getting people out. And if their own voters aren't enthusiastic, then that's going to be a massive issue.

[00:25:54]They might be willing to come out in the midterms this year, but what about in two years time, four years after that?

[00:26:00]They really need to look at what happened in 2024, and start making some changes.

[00:26:05]>> I do wonder if this report might flag um the start of a process at least, if I can try and be positive on behalf of the Democratic party that that there there might be more introspection to come, especially once you get to the midterms.

[00:26:19]And that's that's a real test, isn't it?

[00:26:21]>> Yeah, I think that's that's probably fair. And I think we'll just have to see how those things go. I think one of the issues though might be that the Democrats and the Democratic Party more generally is such a kind of wide group of people. You know, there is not a leader like we have here. There isn't an opposition leader at the moment. We're all wondering who might be running for president in 2028 for the Democrats. And I think when we know that, we'll have an idea a bit more of what they're going to stand for.

[00:26:44]>> All right. To be continued. Jonathan, we'll talk again next week.

[00:26:47]>> Brilliant. Thanks very much, Richard.

[00:26:49]>> Thank you.