JVL Sees the GOP Losing Big—but There’s a Catch

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]This is why I have this crazy idea that I think Don Jr. is like the most likely successor to Trump because he's the only plausible candidate who solves for that problem and also kicks the can down the road on a post-Trump succession fight within the Republican Party. I think that winds up being attractive to both sides. I just think that Don Jr.'s chances to be the Republican nominee in 2028 are wildly undervalued by everybody. And that uh if you don't think that he is a top three candidate to to be the Republican >> Republican nominee, you're crazy.

[00:00:31]>> You mean simply because he has the Trump like stamp on him? He is like a Trump branded item and therefore he's he's the natural fit?

[00:00:39]>> He's very crafty in this way. Where Ivanka thought that the way to to possibly be her father's successor was to get into government and learn how government functions and try to do things. Don Jr. realized what he needed to do was master Fox News. And so Don Jr. is like a folk hero in the MAGA base. Like he you know, he goes to the Bass Pro Shop openings and people people love him.

[00:01:05]>> JVL, welcome to the show. It's good to have you back as always.

[00:01:09]>> Great to be here, my friend.

[00:01:11]>> Um here's something I've been thinking about, which is that I don't often go to you for optimism and I I kind of I kind of get the sense a lot of people in your life are like that.

[00:01:22]>> [laughter] >> They don't come to you for optimism.

[00:01:24]Fair?

[00:01:25]>> I think that's fair. I'm more of the you know, at hedge funds, they have a lot of people who do like risk management and their job is to like sit around and think about all the ways that everything could go terribly wrong.

[00:01:37]>> That's you.

[00:01:38]>> I would have been very good at that. So, I'm the guy who sits around thinking about tail risk.

[00:01:42]>> So, I was struck by an article you wrote recently because it was kind of the opposite of this. It was titled >> I know.

[00:01:49]>> Plutocrats, you're going to win. And I was like, bold choice there, JVL, to just go for it. Say, "You're winning."

[00:01:59]Did that feel comfortable for you?

[00:02:01]>> Well, see, here's the thing. I I very much dislike contrarian thinkers.

[00:02:07]And so, I try to look at everything anew and with fresh eyes. And when I was looking at I I wrote that piece immediately following a bunch of the redistricting decisions and was looking at what this meant for the house.

[00:02:24]And I just think objectively, Democrats are likely to to do well in the house.

[00:02:31]>> I want to clarify what you're saying there. You're saying you wrote this piece after the Supreme Court said gerrymandering is cool.

[00:02:39]>> [laughter] >> And you were like, "Yeah, this is happening, but stop panicking."

[00:02:44]>> Yeah. You just looking around at the objective reality.

[00:02:48]Um, $4.50 is the national average for gas, diesel around 6%, consumer um confidence at literally all-time lows, never been lower in the history of the Michigan survey.

[00:03:02]Um, we we have year-on-year producer price index uh jumps at like 6%, so inflation creeping back in, new Fed chairman ain't going to be no rate cuts, might possibly be looking at rate hikes, which would make it even even worse. We have the bond market with yields over 5%. Uh, things are very, very bad and likely to get worse over the course of the next 24 weeks, which by the way is about all the time we have. And Trump's approval rating sitting somewhere in the vicinity of like 38% as of right now. And again, not a lot of room for him to move upwards there.

[00:03:41]>> So, you're saying all the normal indicators are not looking great for Republicans.

[00:03:46]>> All the normal indicators look terrible for Republicans. And then you have just the historical indicator where without Trump on the ballot in the Trump era Republicans don't do well without Trump on the ballot because their coalition is now made up of a bunch of low information low propensity voters who don't show up for midterms.

[00:04:06]>> So, let's assume for the sake of this episode you're right.

[00:04:10]Democrats are going to be able to declare some kind of victory come November.

[00:04:15]I wonder if we can noodle over something else.

[00:04:18]>> Okay.

[00:04:18]>> what kind of coalition they have to assemble to get there and whether they're actually assembling that coalition in this moment.

[00:04:27]>> [laughter] >> What are you thinking about that?

[00:04:31]>> I mean, that's a great question and I don't have an answer to it. Uh the Democrat Democratic Party at the elite level has not been great over the last 2 years, but hasn't been terrible. I mean look, Chuck Schumer is not the not not the greatest strategic mind in the history of the Senate.

[00:04:52]But he did recruit some good candidates.

[00:04:54]Uh you know, he recruited some some candidates that didn't work out, but uh but he's recruited some candidates which have worked out. On the whole Democrats have a pretty strong slate of Senate candidates heading into um heading into the elections.

[00:05:08]The Democrats did win the shutdown fight twice.

[00:05:12]I mean, just objectively on the politics of it, they won it twice. Uh and so, you know, the leadership has been okay. You know, Hakeem Jeffries again maybe not Nancy Pelosi, he's not the second coming of Pelosi, but he certainly hasn't gotten in the way of letting uh House Republicans uh implode and fall apart.

[00:05:33]>> Jovial, I'm finding this optimism destabilizing at this point.

[00:05:36]>> Well, it's not optimism. Again, I'm just saying like it isn't [laughter] it isn't awful, right? You can look at them and say, yes, they could have done better by doing XYZ maybe.

[00:05:47]But you can also look and say, "Well, they've gotten some wins and with a very bad hand."

[00:05:52]>> And maybe that's all you need when Trump is behaving the way he's behaving.

[00:05:56]>> Right.

[00:05:57]Right. I mean, just again, Trump is doing all this objective reality and Democrats are not the enemy here. Like they're they're just ancillary to the story.

[00:06:07]And that's pretty that is something.

[00:06:09]There's an accomplishment to make yourself continue to be ancillary to the story while the other guy is is blowing himself up.

[00:06:16]>> I think what might be challenging for people in this moment as they see the fracturing happening all around them is to understand that it's going on alongside this other thing which is um this coalescing of the sort of nut of what MAGAism is, this this base vote.

[00:06:40]>> Yeah, his hold over the party itself is actually consolidating.

[00:06:43]>> Exactly. And I think that that may read as contradictory to some people. Like you look at what happened with Kentucky, Thomas Massie, Louisiana, Bill Cassidy, and now Texas, John Cornyn. And you might think like, "Oh, this is unstoppable."

[00:06:57]>> Yeah, and the other thing to understand is Trump is really different in that he, unlike every president that I can think of, maybe there's a counter example, but Trump is much more concerned with his personal grip on the Republican Party itself than he is on holding functional power over governing apparatus.

[00:07:24]He would be happy to give up control of the Senate so long as he has total and unquestioned control over the Republican Senate caucus.

[00:07:33]You know.

[00:07:34]>> Yeah.

[00:07:34]>> And one of his advisers told David Frum, I think it was in the Atlantic, uh you know, like every once in a while you have to shoot one of the hostages.

[00:07:43]Meaning like get rid of a Bill Cassidy because he sees the Republican Party as his hostage. He is not a Republican, he has never been a Republican. He does not care what happens to the Republican Party 5 minutes after he dies and he has no interest, right? And that gives him an enormous asymmetric advantage over all of these mooks like Mitch McConnell who cared deeply about the institution of the Republican Party and you read the the Wall Street Journal had an editorial this week, I think, where they were they were saying oh Donald Trump is the Republican Party is going to be hurt.

[00:08:17]Because the Wall Street Journal editorial page that really matters. Like they care about the Republican Party itself as a as a thing as a good.

[00:08:24]>> Well, in the two-party system like this functions because of our two-party system. That's the reason why this approach matters, right? Like because you only have two choices. So, if you consolidate your control over one, that's really powerful.

[00:08:39]>> Yeah, it except that Trump again Trump sees he views all of this as a mob boss and not as a politician, right?

[00:08:47]Like he just needs to make sure that he controls the crime family, you know? As long as he controls the family like what the family actually does doesn't matter.

[00:08:56]You just can't have another don out there you know, trying to supplant him.

[00:09:02]And I you know, I don't know I it amazes me that other Republicans haven't figured that out yet or maybe they have figured it out, but they think well, if I keep my head down I could just I can outlast him.

[00:09:15]>> Well, be really hard. I mean, I think about like what just happened in Texas.

[00:09:20]Ken Paxton now the Republican nominee for Senate.

[00:09:25]Have you ever like reduced a sauce?

[00:09:29]JVL?

[00:09:30]>> I don't I don't do cooking. I'm sorry.

[00:09:32]>> Like you know, made a sauce where it like boil it boils down to its essence, I think Ken Paxton is that for Maganess, right? Like I'm just going to like tick off all of the things that people should know about Ken Paxton. Like in 2020, his own aides reported him to the FBI and he was accused of bribery. He was impeached in uh the Texas legislature. That impeachment failed. His own wife, who was a state senator, filed for divorce and was like, "This is on biblical grounds." And then the most recent thing is he he just um released this guy, Adam Hoffman, who was accused of sexually abusing a boy. Like it's like that is these are not good facts, but he's just sort of openly doing these things. Everyone knows it.

[00:10:28]And um like that's kind of that's like the dark heart, maybe, of the >> [laughter] >> belief system to just do things out in the open that seem um uh not good to everyone else.

[00:10:44]>> Well, I mean, here's the the real problem with this is is not that Republican voters chose Ken Paxton because they were able to overlook all the bad things.

[00:10:55]Because that's a thing that is reasonably normal, right? I mean, the scale of it is different, but uh you know, from time immemorial, people are willing to overlook the sins of the of the guys who they view as being on their own side, right? They say, "Well, you know, Senator Smith, I know he's a son of a but he's our son of a right?" Um the thing that's worrisome about Ken Paxton is that those sins are the reason people voted for him.

[00:11:21]>> Now, why do you say that? I've heard you say that before. What What makes you believe that?

[00:11:26]>> I mean, just what is his differentiator? What is What is his comparative advantage? I mean he he and uh John Cornyn are basically the same age. They're both white guys. They both went to UVA law school.

[00:11:41]They both vote 100% of the time with Trump. They both love Trump. They both talked about how much they love Trump.

[00:11:48]The difference between them is that one of them is a six-term senator who has kept his nose clean and just coded as a normal person and the other one is transgressive.

[00:11:58]And his transgressiveness is as as you just mentioned is all of those things and in fact again important for listeners here who are not like steeped in Texas politics.

[00:12:11]The people trying to bury Ken Paxton over the last 10 years have been Texas Republicans.

[00:12:18]These are his colleagues in the Texas party, not Librinos, not Democrats, not resistance moms, but other Republican office holders in Texas have been trying to get rid of this guy because they think he's toxic.

[00:12:31]And and a criminal.

[00:12:34]And Republican voters in Texas looked at these two guys. They said, "Oh no, well we want the criminal stuff. Like that shows that he's a fighter. That shows that he's on our side."

[00:12:45]The fact that he does these things. And it wasn't close.

[00:12:50]He he won by 26 points, I think. 26 points.

[00:12:54]And it sure looks to me like Trump endorsed him at the end because he realized that he had to endorse him because he was going to win.

[00:13:05]He was going to run away with this thing and so Trump had to get on board.

[00:13:09]>> I think your argument for why folks should not panic in this moment because we've just laid out why someone who is very corrupt is the likely winner of a Senate race in Texas. I mean James Talarico is a a really interesting candidate against him, but you know, it it would be a big deal if he won.

[00:13:30]Um I think your argument for sort of hope in the face of this is basically that it's easier to run against a nakedly corrupt person and administration. Like this is the full tamale.

[00:13:43]>> [laughter] >> You know, we're just not messing around.

[00:13:47]We're not saying anything sotto voce.

[00:13:49]Like we're just we're doing it, folks.

[00:13:53]Uh is that a fair way to put it?

[00:13:56]>> Yeah, I think so. And it's I mean, look.

[00:14:00]All of these things these aren't Trump problems. These are American society problems.

[00:14:06]It seems pretty clear to me that American society has changed a great deal over the last 10 years. And uh what we're seeing is not new because there have been strains of racism and blood and soil nationalism and uh aspirational fascism since the founding.

[00:14:26]That's what the Civil War was about.

[00:14:27]That's what Jim Crow was about. Um but new for everybody who's living. And everybody who's living new in the sense that it's it's said out loud, right? I mean, the the stuff is not being coded. It's not being dog-whistled. They aren't proxy fights.

[00:14:43]I mean, like actual saying all the things about how we'll not want to have a president who wants to be a dictator for a day. Um And if we're we are ultimately hostage to what the will of the people want, basically.

[00:15:00]And I think I would prefer to have I mean, if if American society really wants it then I want them to vote for with their eyes all the way open.

[00:15:11]You know, and that that's the argument for saying, "Okay, well, let's just do this thing. Let's touch the stove all the way.

[00:15:16]Let's uh let's let's not have there be any fig leaf where people can say, 'Well, I'm this is really about school choice for me. You know, I I I just This is I know that he's bad, but he's good on school choice, and that's the most important issue for me." Like, let's let's just have the whole thing fully revealed. And if America, you know, if if 49% of America wants that, well, that's that's the world we're going to get.

[00:15:40]Great.

[00:15:41]>> I read something recently, and I wish I remembered the source, but I don't. But the basic thrust of it was that in order to assemble a winning coalition in the American political system, you have to thrash together a group of people that kind of doesn't make sense. Like, you have to convince a lot of people you're going to do what they want, people who might not necessarily be friends. The argument was that this is what Obama did. Uh he was able to speak to a number of groups of people. They all thought, "He's our guy."

[00:16:08]Given what we know now about how the midterms are going to go, and there's still some outstanding primaries, so we don't have the full picture of like who our candidates are.

[00:16:18]Um are Democrats assembling that coalition?

[00:16:22]A coalition of people who are listening to what they say and believe them even though they may be standing next to someone they don't agree with.

[00:16:34]>> We need the macro, no, but in the micro, it seems yes.

[00:16:38]>> Like, Democrats writ large, but candidates individually, maybe.

[00:16:42]>> Candidates individually do seem to be doing that, right? They're finding candidates who fit who fit their milieu and and and fit their districts and fit their states. And >> candidates that you look at and you see doing this well?

[00:16:56]Like, Sherrod Brown.

[00:16:57]>> Right. Sherrod Brown is not going to be uh every progressive Democrat's uh first choice or second choice, but he's a pretty good fit for Ohio. And if you're going to have a chance in Ohio, Sherrod Brown is going to give you as good a chance as anyone.

[00:17:11]Uh I think Graham Platner, certainly not my cup of tea. Um I think he's a pretty good fit for the state in Maine.

[00:17:19]>> I would push back a little bit about that what you say about the coalition stuff because it's definitely true of Democrats, right? Democrats have a very very big heterogeneous coalition which I think is one of the reasons they are more constitutionally resistant to authoritarian strongman thinking.

[00:17:41]Because it's there just so many constituencies that you have to pull together that you can't really you couldn't do what Donald Trump did to the Democratic Party because like you wouldn't be able to hold everybody together.

[00:17:55]The Republican Party is not heterogeneous at all.

[00:17:58]Right? It is primarily rural voters, overwhelmingly white voters, overwhelmingly white Christian voters, and to a very large degree white male Christian voters.

[00:18:10]Like it isn't that big a tent.

[00:18:12]>> I'm not sure I totally 100% agree with you because I don't think >> Okay.

[00:18:17]Tell me more.

[00:18:18]>> Donald Trump could have won I mean I agree I agree with what you're saying about the Republican Party, but I do think that what pushed Trump over the top and I think you would agree with this are low information, low propensity voters, people who are not traditionally part of the Republican coalition. And so in some ways Trump did have to thrash together this coalition that didn't quite make sense.

[00:18:42]>> It turned out more of a Not Not different, just more.

[00:18:46]>> Okay. Okay.

[00:18:48]But I don't think those people are like have been historically Republican Party people. Maybe they are now.

[00:18:54]>> No.

[00:18:54]>> But I not sure.

[00:18:56]>> We don't know.

[00:18:57]>> That's what we're learning.

[00:18:58]>> Right. That's the big mystery. What happens once Trump leaves?

[00:19:02]This is why I have this crazy idea that I think Don Jr. is like the most likely successor to Trump because he's the only plausible candidate who solves who solves for that problem and also kicks the can down the road on a post-Trump succession fight within the Republican Party, I think that winds up being attractive to both sides. Um But uh but we'll see.

[00:19:25]Nobody I just think that Don Jr.'s chances to be the Republican nominee in 2028 are wildly undervalued by everybody. And that uh if you don't think that he is a top three candidate to to be the Republican nominee, you're crazy.

[00:19:41]>> You mean simply because he has the Trump-like stamp on him? He is like a Trump-branded item, and therefore he's he's the natural fit?

[00:19:50]>> He's a He has the Trump-branded stamp.

[00:19:52]Uh he has spent the last decade where where Ivanka thought that the way to to possibly be her father's successor was to get into government and learn how government functions and try to do things.

[00:20:08]Don Jr. realized what he needed to do was master Fox News.

[00:20:11]And so Don Jr. is like a folk hero in the MAGA base. Like he you know, he goes to the Bass Pro Shop openings, and people people love him at MAGA world.

[00:20:22][snorts] And he's got deep ties, connections to Tucker, and to all the influencers, and he At the same time, because he is so plugged in with tech world and crypto and all that, I think like the Wall Street Journal class could tell themselves Don Jr. is safe. You know, if we go with Don Jr., it's not Tucker. You know, we're not going to like that Don we can work with him. You know, in the same way they did that with Trump.

[00:20:52]>> to this party is like wow.

[00:20:56]>> Uh yeah, I just And if you're if you're the Trump family, and again, I just try to look at the world through their eyes, right? They have made Center for American Progress tracker on this, I think is like $2.8 billion in like hard money over the last 20 months. Um Your only way to control access to that stuff, it is not enough to have J.D. Vance be president and to tell people, "Well, you know, if you funnel another billion dollars towards me, I'll put in a good word with J.D." No, that's not enough. The only way to ensure your access to that pipeline of money is to either control the US government or to be to have a plausible chance to be in control of the US government in the future.

[00:21:44]>> So, you're saying that Don Jr. is making himself too big to fail.

[00:21:49]>> I I'm just saying that if if you assume that the Trump family exists to to make money the the best way for the Trump family to continue making money would be for Don Jr. to inherit the Republican Party itself.

[00:22:05]>> I like how I called you here because you were like being optimistic, but you've still found a way to take a hard fork into darkness with me.

[00:22:12]I mean >> [laughter] >> It's my brand.

[00:22:16]>> Unstoppable.

[00:22:18]>> [gasps] >> Um >> This is our future. This is our future.

[00:22:21]Don Jr. versus Graham Plater 2028. I can't wait.

[00:22:26]>> I mean, you've you've written about how Donald Trump relies on those low-information, low-propensity voters.

[00:22:33]Are there signs in the candidates you're seeing from the Democrats that they are making inroads with those people? Is that part of why you have this semi-optimism for November?

[00:22:46]>> We don't know. Um Platner's the only one who I think you might be able to guess could do that. Um because he >> He has all the signals. If you listen to a Graham Platner ad, it sounds like he's a UFC announcer.

[00:23:02]>> We don't care that you pretend to be remorseful at the start of a new forever war that you chose to let happen. We don't care that you are concerned while we go broke as you sell us out to the president >> And he is certainly like signaling the implicit signal is I'm a dude bro veteran and oysterman running against an old lady. Make your choice.

[00:23:27]That that's what he's saying.

[00:23:29]>> Yeah. And you know, there's nothing about Hotchkiss in there and uh And he's he's doing non-traditional media channels, right? I mean, he is really he is very opportunistic and and savvy in his approach to to new media and I mean, I Yeah, I I wrote this piece saying that if he beats Susan Collins by six points like the day after the election people are going to say, "Huh, I wonder if Graham Platner should run for president." Um doesn't mean he'll do it, but he instantly becomes part of the conversation and it's crazy to pretend he he wouldn't um because white male voters are going to be the single most important group heading into 2028.

[00:24:12]Because you simply cannot if you're the Democratic Party allow Trump to keep maxing out with with those voters and there's there's no indication that they have reached uh the limit of that. I mean, there were there yeah, there were there were a couple counties in Texas this week where Paxton won 79-21.

[00:24:39]>> I mean, my eyes are so big. I'm just like staring at you with wide eyes, saucer eyes.

[00:24:43]>> Those are just Saddam Hussein numbers.

[00:24:46]Yeah.

[00:24:47]You know.

[00:24:48]And uh and you you can't if you're the Democratic Party, you simply cannot get control of the US government giving up margins like that.

[00:24:57]You could live with like 58 42 or something white dudes, but you cannot start, you know, giving up more space. And so, they are going to need to eat into those numbers while also reestablishing uh a a big big margin with Hispanic voters, while also bringing black male voters home cuz a bunch of them defected. Now, I think both of those problems take care of themselves in the near term simply because of the Trump administration.

[00:25:25]We'll see. Um I mean, I I really hope that African-American voters nationally are very keyed into the Klay decision and what has happened with Republican states in the South where they basically decided they don't want black representatives anymore. And then, you know, black residents in Tennessee shouldn't get any representative in Congress or something like that.

[00:25:49]>> I feel like I understand this personally because I am a woman. And, you know, I look at some of what's happening this year with midterm signaling, and some of it is so cringe to me, but I understand some of it might be necessary. Like, okay, you can look at what's happening in Texas. Republicans are talking about O'Rourke is like a low-T candidate >> [laughter] >> for Texas. He's a vegan.

[00:26:17]>> The Democrats have a weird a weird candidate.

[00:26:21]Low-T O'Rourke, too [music] weak for Texas.

[00:26:26]>> Low-T.

[00:26:26]>> I'm like, "Ew, gross." And so, for me, like, okay, like, I'm I'm pro-O'Rourke, great. But then I look at Greg Abbott, and I see sort of similar signaling, which may in fact be necessary to win the seat, but I can sort of understand why holding this coalition for the Democrats as a party is difficult because some of it I look at it and I'm like, "Ugh."

[00:26:50]"Ugh."

[00:26:51]And I do we have to do this? but maybe we do. And like frankly, we're we're all making compromise choices here.

[00:26:58]>> Yeah, I uh if you want to get really depressed, >> [snorts] >> Always.

[00:27:04]>> think about conspiracy theorists.

[00:27:07]And uh one of the things that has happened over the last 10 years is we I mean look, there are a lot of psychologists will give you a different number depending on where you are, but you know, like there are just crazy people in the world.

[00:27:23]Like they are some consistent percentage of the population.

[00:27:26]>> And some of them vote.

[00:27:29]>> Well, some of them vote, but they traditionally been pretty equally distributed across the political spectrum. And so they just sort of canceled each other out. One of the things you've had over the last 10 years is a consolidation of the cranks.

[00:27:42]And they they've all consolidated under the Republican banner.

[00:27:48]And that's kind of a problem because there aren't 15 of them.

[00:27:52]They're a lot of them, right?

[00:27:55]So, I don't know. Do Democrats have to become more friendly to people who harbor conspiracy theories?

[00:28:03]I don't know, maybe they do. I don't I I just >> You can see them trying with the Epstein file stuff, right? I mean like they're sort of trying to like do it in their own way.

[00:28:11]>> Trying to do it in their own way and uh but I don't know. Like are is there are there votes to be won by doing a lot of just asking questions, you know, like uh a little bit of light Alex Jonesing?

[00:28:27]Um and I mean it's not nice to consider these things because we don't want it to be true. And and if maybe if there is is vote are votes to be won on that, Democrats shouldn't do it anyway cuz it's bad.

[00:28:42]It's toxic and all that. And I'm on board with that.

[00:28:45]But just as objective matter, do you think Democrats could could gain a little bit of footing back by by being a little more open to conspiracy land? I think probably they could.

[00:28:57]>> JBL, this was your optimistic show.

[00:29:01]>> This is Yes, this is >> [laughter] >> This was happy JBL.

[00:29:08]>> I'm sorry.

[00:29:09]>> we landed.

[00:29:10]>> [music] >> Um thank you for coming on the show. I always love it.

[00:29:14]>> Thanks for having me, Mary.