Both bases want to fight.

They want to fight.

They are mistrustful of the other side.

But the American public writ large wants leaders who at some point are constructive, unifying even as they're prosecuting a strong agenda.

Hello and welcome to GZERO World.

I'm Ian Bremmer and today we are looking at the state of American politics and we're refusing to look away because unlike a five-car collision on the Beltway, this political pileup isn't getting cleared anytime soon.

For weeks, Washington has been paralyzed by a government shutdown that may or may not be over by the time you're watching this, but that will certainly not be the last of its kind.

Democrats gambled that forcing a shutdown over health care would rally public support to their cause.

So how did we get here and what to make of the Democratic and Republican parties one year out from midterms?

I'll be joined by Mitch McConnell's former Chief of Staff and one of the most successful Republican fundraisers in modern history, Steven Law.

Don't worry I've also got your Puppet Regime.

But first, a word from the folks who help us keep the lights on.

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Additional funding provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities, and... It's high time to address the donkey in the room.

What the heck is going on with the Democratic Party?

Here's one answer.

The Democrats have lost millions of people.

They've gone crazy.

Honestly, I think they're crazy.

They suffer major Trump derangement syndrome.

And it's turned out to be actually a disease.

But it's a disease of weak people and stupid people.

But someone may want to remind President Trump that he too is not very popular.

The Economist has his approval rating at around 39%, disapproval at 56, a net negative, I do the math, 17 points.

That's lower than it was at this time in Trump's first term, just about where President Biden sat after his disastrous debate performance last summer.

No bueno.

More alarmingly, data suggests that Trump has lost all or most of the ground that he picked up with young voters in 2024.

An August Pew poll found that Trump's approval among voters under the age of 35, who backed him in the 2024 elections, has now dropped by 23 points.

Trump has failed to deliver on two of the most important issues to young voters, the economy and accountability on Jeffrey Epstein.

They're making their displeasure known.

But do you know what Trump does have?

He has his party united behind him, unlike the Democrats.

According to Gallup, 91% of Republicans view their own party favorably, up from 87% last October, while Democratic favorability has fallen to 73%, down from 92% just a year ago.

Now, that's partly because Trump doesn't tolerate any dissent amongst the ranks.

And it's partly because Democrats are furious at allowing Trump to win again.

But Democratic infighting is more existential than just one big election defeat.

They can't agree on what they stand for.

Should they move to the center or further to the left?

Should they flee "wokeism" or double down on social issues when they matter the most?

Nor are Democrats looking particularly good after forcing a government shutdown over health insurance.

That may have something to do with the fact that only about 3% of Americans view health care as the most important issue for the country right now.

Democrats are equally unsure about how to communicate what they do or don't stand for to the American people.

Should they go full Gavin Newsom with his Trump mocking tweets and alt-right podcast appearances?

Or should they embrace their inner Bernies and Mamdanis and just focus on the economy, stupid?

Trump, for all his foibles, certainly knows how to control the narrative.

One prominent young Democrat thinks that's a lesson his party must learn.

I think that Democrats have been slow to understand the changes in how people get their information, slow to understand some of the cultural changes that have been happening, and maybe most problematic of all, too attached to a status quo that has been failing us for a long time.

With the midterms just about a year away, Democrats only need to pick up a handful of seats to control the House.

With Republicans doing everything they can to pad their lead, there's no guarantee that a blue wave will come next November.

Here to talk about the fractured state of the American political scene is Senator Mitch McConnell's former chief of staff and a major political fundraiser for Republicans, Steven Law.

Steve Law, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much.

It's great to be on with you this morning, Ian.

Political parties in the United States, when I talk about them, it doesn't usually amount to a pleasant conversation.

Right?

I mean, because people don't seem to believe as much in their parties these days.

What are the Republican and Democratic Party, in your view, what do they stand for right now?

Well, on the Republican side, at least for the foreseeable future, it's pretty clear where the party is, and it's the party of Donald Trump.

He has an incredible grip over the party, influence over its voting base, influence over donors.

So, he -- his views, his ideology, to the extent that he has one, everything that he's doing, I think, defines the party pretty substantially.

On the Democratic side, you're seeing this play out in the shutdown battle that we're seeing unfold in Washington.

The Democratic Party is undergoing a period of reappraisal and trying to figure out where they go for the future.

For me, there's a little bit of PTSD involved, because Republicans went through the same thing after Mitt Romney failed to defeat Barack Obama in 2012.

There was a huge, roiling conflict within the party.

What are we going to be?

How are we going to deal with Obama?

What are we going to be about?

And I see that going on in the Democratic Party today.

- So the Democratic Party, in a sense, is orienting itself in terms of what it's not as opposed to what it is?

I mean, is that a fair thing to say?

- Yeah, I mean, you see these different voices, Ezra Klein talking about the importance of focusing on economic abundance, kind of pulling out of the culture war issues that the party became tainted with in this last election.

But then you also see the more left-wing, very activist base, which has a huge amount of influence in the party and a lot of money.

I mean, they're tied to the unions, particularly the teachers' unions and other government unions.

And their view is that the party should be much more focused on taking on Trump, on standing strong on these social issues that they had been championing over the last few years.

And somewhere in the middle are a lot of elected leaders in Washington just trying to figure out what to do and how to do their share of governing in Washington for the next couple of years.

And what they all are also looking for as well is, a year-and-a-half hence, there will be the 2026 midterms.

And that's really going to be an important moment.

It's going to be a report card on the Trump presidency.

It's also going to be a report card on whether the Democrats are able to offer a compelling alternative vision.

Now, when I think of midterms, I usually think of lower turnout.

I usually think of elections that are principally about what the incumbent and the incumbent party, especially when they run everything, is actually doing.

And so in that regard, it's less about what the Democrats stand for and who they happen to be running.

Do you think that's not likely to apply this time around?

Well, again, it's another little moment of PTSD for me.

Republicans thought that would be the case during President Biden's midterm election in 2022.

We thought it was going to be all about him.

Inflation was a big problem.

People were still stung by the embarrassing withdrawal from Afghanistan.

But what ended up happening was that Republicans became mired in bad primaries that produced even worse candidates.

There were a lot of other things that made, and then you may recall that Donald Trump announced he was going to be running for president again before that election.

So all of a sudden, the focus shifted away from Joe Biden, inflation, all that, to, okay, what are the Republicans doing?

What are their candidates like?

And it made for a disappointing midterm.

So it is possible for the Democrats to end up, if they have weak candidates or far left-wing candidates, or they can't shake this complete identification with that left-wing social agenda, it could be a problem for them as well.

- And if you were telling the Democrats, here are the two, three issues that you should actually be running on in the midterms to make a difference, to not have the challenges that you've suffered PTSD for, you'd say what?

I'll move to the Republicans after this.

I'm just trying to like clear the wood for you.

- Yeah, sure, no, I always hate to give advice to the adversary, but I think there are two issues that I think are most important for them, really in almost any election, this whole shutdown gambit, at the end of the day, reflected a strategic decision, I think, by Democrats to go back to one of their core issues, which is healthcare.

And that's a base play issue.

You talk about healthcare, it's a dog whistle to Democratic voters.

They pay attention, they wanna vote Democratic, less so for Republicans.

But the other issue that's lurking out there, and we just simply don't know yet what the environment will be like, and that's the economy, inflation, cost of living, the job market.

Is it soft?

Is it strong?

Certainly the stock market is, uh, pricing in a lot of economic growth going forward, but we'll just have to see, uh, at the end of the day, though, in most elections, most elections I've seen in the last 40 years of doing this, most elections turn on how people view the economy and how that's going.

So that's one that either they're going to be able to take advantage of because it seems like the economy is slowing down and inflation continues to go on, or as the White House is currently saying, you just wait, it's going to be great next year.

Now, look, I think one of the things the Republicans have been very effective at, certainly with their own supporters, is there's nothing Trump is doing that Biden hasn't already done or even worse, which I don't find personally compelling when you do the research and the facts.

I think a lot of what Trump represents is unprecedented.

But I think that message has really resonated well with the voters, especially in a very divided media space, algorithmically, and network and cable and the rest.

Do you agree with that?

Yeah, I certainly, certainly with respect to expanding executive power and wielding it with a lot of purpose, you know, I think, I think part of what's happening, and I've not seen data on this, but my, I'm increasingly of the view that people look at Washington and they look at politics with just derision.

And what they see is a completely dysfunctional, broken system.

Congress can't even pass bills to spend money.

I mean, that's just how bad it's gotten.

And when they see Trump, whether they like specifically what he's doing or not, and it may have been this way with President Biden, if you were a Democrat, here's somebody taking decisive action to address problems that everybody knows are problems.

And they look at Washington, they look at the political culture that's just not able to do anything.

And I think, you know, people often say, eyes follow motion.

Here's a guy who's constantly doing things, constantly putting points on the board.

He may not like the points that he's putting on the board, but he's a guy who's getting stuff done.

And that is something that I think people have longed to see more happen in Washington.

Incidentally, if Democrats ever take the White House back, and you have to assume that someday they will, I assume they'll do the same thing.

- So let's bring you closer to your comfort space and switch to talk to the Republicans.

You know, you did say right up at top, and it's not at all surprising, we know what the Republicans stand for right now because you've got a leader who doesn't really brook a lot of dissent.

Now, there are some things that it seems that he really does stand for in terms of ending wars, for example, in terms of using tariffs as the principal tool of U.S.

statecraft internationally for a whole bunch of reasons.

But domestically, could you provide some clarity around what you would say the Republican Party now stands for from a policy perspective?

Yeah, and you hear different members of Congress say this.

Certainly the administration is fully in unison on this.

The Republican economic project under President Trump is not just about supporting big business and giving that whatever it wants, but Scott Bessent has actually, I think, been a very articulate spokesman for this point of view, that the goal of making the economy work for everybody.

You know, I tend to lean much more on the free and open trade side, but there is legitimate concern about the fact that that system of global trade has impacted adversely entire communities, entire regions of the country, and certainly sections of the middle class.

You could also argue, I think correctly, that it has raised living standards overall for this country and around the world, but it has had some disparate impacts that I think this administration is saying we want to make sure that the economy works for everybody.

Interestingly, that's a page stolen directly from the Democrats, which is why you see Democrats not criticizing what Trump is doing on tariffs and all these things to kind of blunt the force of globalism.

I think they like it.

In fact, my concern again is someday there'll be a Democratic president and they'll do it 2x or 5x.

So certainly my presumption is that if the Democrats come in in 2028 that these tariffs are going to stick because there aren't a lot of government officials you and I know that don't want that revenue.

Right.

It's a source of revenue and it's a talking point for how you're protecting American jobs.

I think the challenge for this administration and Republicans along with him is between now and next year and then certainly beyond that, to be able to demonstrate that this approach of being much tougher on foreign trade, on raising tariffs, which then sometimes lead to investment deals and sometimes lead to resourcing jobs in the U.S., there's going to need to be a concrete case made that this is in fact happening, that the short-term pain of $5 a cup coffee is being -- what's coming through that is jobs back here in the U.S., factories being built, more investment in the U.S., and people getting jobs.

I think that's going to be the argument that will need to be made between now and next November and then even beyond that.

And, otherwise, I mean, again, the economy, I mean, has always been, you know, core issue.

If it's not number one, it's almost always number two for the U.S.

electorate.

Certainly a lot is being made by Trump right now, not just on border security with Mexico, where he's been quite popular, but specifically on immigration and crime inside the United States, which appears to be a fight that he really wants to have.

Do you think that is smart strategy?

Are the numbers bearing that out?

- Well, I haven't seen a lot of numbers on it yet, and I think it might be still a little early to measure it because the move from securing the border, which is undeniably immensely popular, even among Democrats, certainly among Independents and Republicans.

Now we're shifting toward, first of all, finding and deporting criminal illegal migrants, people who their illegality is not just their status, but things they've done in this country.

That's also popular.

But then the next step is obviously that they're pursuing, which is to find people who are here simply here illegally, no other known crime besides that, and detaining them and ultimately deporting them.

Each of those has different levels of support, and in some cases, the tactics required to do these kinds of significant deportations of people who are simply illegal as far as status, but no other reason, that's going to be uglier.

That's going to be messier.

We're already starting to see that.

And obviously that's also leading to these confrontations.

It's a big part of why the national guard is now being deployed in some cities, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.

So, you know, the core focus of the president to, to really bear down on sealing the border from illegals, dealing with people who were here illegally and committing crimes, that's popular question is how much further it goes and, you know, how much, you know, the average American follows that.

But certainly with the base and the base matters in a midterm election, all of that is what, you know, those voters signed up for.

And, and sort of relatedly the, the level of, and there's a, you know, mutual demonization in the United States going on right now, which clearly is unhelpful to the political culture of the country.

I found it very noteworthy that when President Trump and Pete Hegseth were addressing the troops not so long ago, they were really focusing on the enemy within in the United States and defining that much more broadly than certainly I've ever heard a president define it in my lifetime, which means more resources, but it also means that the political opposition in the United States might not be legitimate in their view.

Did you hear that the same way?

Is this something that concerns you?

Well, I did hear it that, uh, and I certainly heard that as an interpretation, uh, whether Trump himself meant it that broadly sort of this kind of Nixonian view of the opposition, uh, Trump is kind of famously, uh, imprecise in his words.

He doesn't speak like a politician at different times.

He said things that people take one way, but actually it means something more benign.

But obviously this is an area where you really have to speak with great care.

And if you're the leader of the country, you have to be clear what you're saying.

But again, as to your point, you can't simply with a broad brush, say every judge who issues a negative ruling, every Democrat who opposes what we want to do is somehow an enemy.

And I don't think the president believes that.

I really don't.

But but again, you have to be very careful about when you talk about things like that.

So this raises a challenging question, because on the one hand, having a strong leader makes it easier to win an election.

On the other hand, that leader is occasionally saying things that are not only imprecise, but that can cause outcomes that clearly you and many of my other Republican friends are deeply uncomfortable with.

So I'm wondering to what extent that you and perhaps more importantly, all of the Republican leaders that you advise, do you feel like they are constrained in a way that is uncomfortable for them?

Do you feel that they are not able to speak their mind on issues that they really would rather to help ensure that the Republican Party reflects a party that they want to be part of, that they're proud of, those sorts of things?

Yeah.

Well, I would say it is almost since time immemorial that when your party has the White House and you're in Congress, you support the party line.

I mean, that was true very, very few times that I ever hear any Democrat say anything critical of President Obama.

So that's not an unusual phenomenon.

I do think that Republicans and others who wish the success of this administration do find avenues to express concerns about particular policy issues, and they just do it inside the tent.

And I think that, with this president, that's an especially preferred approach than doing it publicly.

So I think there are outlets for that.

But then you kind of take your question more broadly.

I do think at some point between now and next year, there's going to be a dividend that the voters will pay to a public leader who stands up and says, we just need to turn the temperature down here.

But the other dynamic that you have that is the political driver, and you have this on the Democratic side, you have it on the Republican side, is that both bases want to fight.

They want to fight.

They are mistrustful of the other side.

I mean, your average far-left Democrat thinks that every Republican is a Nazi or a fascist.

Well, fascist is now the new term of art, and every Republican on that far right fringe views the left as basically incorrigible traitors.

I mean, that's the energy underneath it all.

And so you've got people on both sides saying we just really, really need to fight.

I don't think, I mean, you and I know a lot of Americans in common across the political spectrum.

I can't think of many people in those groups who consider the opposition to be fascist or traitors.

But I do think that that's the way the leaders are framing it.

Well, I don't know that that's a leadership level message.

I don't hear that from the president, sort of this broad brush "they're that way."

I don't hear that from, you know, Minority Leader Jeffries or Minority Leader Schumer, although every once in a while Schumer does have an ungoverned moment of rhetoric.

But, you know, for the most part, you know, leadership is about attenuating that.

You've got to-- Obviously, you're leading a party on either side.

You're leading a base on either side.

But I think the American public writ large wants leaders who at some point are constructive, unifying, even as they're prosecuting a strong agenda.

Steve Law, thanks so much for joining us today.

Thank you.

And now for a bit of sanity.

Just kidding.

I've got your Puppet Regime.

Who the hell is... Hello?

>> President Trump.

What?

Sorry, I can't... Hello?

It's me, Zelensky.

>> Zelensky?

Who?

I need you to make peace in Ukraine, now that you made peace in Middle East.

Yes, sir, hello?

It's very hard to hear.

I'm in the middle of a session here very strongly.

I'll call you back.

Or better yet, why don't you call the Europeans?

That's our show this week.

Come back next week.

And if you like what you've seen, or even if you don't, but you have your own reasons to shut down the federal government, take a minute and check us out at gzeromedia.com.

[ Music ] >> Funding for GZERO World is provided by our lead sponsor, Prologis.

Every day, all over the world, Prologis helps businesses of all sizes lower their carbon footprint and scale their supply chains.

With a portfolio of logistics and real estate and an end-to-end solutions platform addressing the critical initiatives of global logistics today.

Learn more at Prologis.com.

And by Cox Enterprises is proud to support GZERO.

Cox is working to create an impact in areas like sustainable agriculture, clean tech, healthcare, and more.

Cox, a family of businesses.

Additional funding provided by Carnegie Corporation of New York, Koo and Patricia Yuen, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities.

And... ♪♪