00:00Patrick, I just wonder whether it's coincidental that President Trump laid out that two to three week time frame on
00:07the day that U.S. retail gasoline prices shot above four dollars a gallon.
00:14I'm fairly confident it's not incidental.
00:17The party's fate tends to link closely to how gas prices and other economic key economic indicators tend to move.
00:26And since we are moving into the heart of an election year, I think that those kind of prices are
00:30definitely getting the Republican Party jittery.
00:35How are voters thinking about this war?
00:38Do they look at it through a national security lens or through a cost of living lens?
00:44What resonates more back home?
00:47Definitely with Americans, it resonates more as a cost of living issue.
00:51The war itself, I don't think, is particularly present in most Americans' lives.
00:57But the economic impacts of it, particularly the rising gas prices and the upticks in inflation that we're seeing here
01:04in the U.S. are definitely having an impact.
01:11How would you say are Republicans broadly feeling about this war?
01:17I mean, there's, you know, a good subsection of the so-called MAGA core unit that have been against U
01:26.S. expansionist policy.
01:27But at the same time, many, many hawkish members of Trump's own cabinet pushing for even more forceful action.
01:35How is this all splitting or resonating amongst the Republican Party itself?
01:43While the conflict has been fairly unpopular overall, we have seen a pretty significant rally around the flag effect among
01:50Republicans.
01:51Republican support, depending on the poll you look at, hovers at around 80 percent, which is lower than the Democratic
01:58opposition rate, which is above 90 percent.
02:00But it's still it's it's fairly strong for a sort of policy intervention that Republicans traditionally, at least since the
02:08Trump era, have expressed opposition to.
02:10That said, there are a number of framing issues and particularly the fact that a conflict is connected with Israel
02:19certainly helps to boost support for it among Republicans, particularly among evangelical Republicans.
02:26And are you seeing a generational divide?
02:28Is it that older demographics are tending to be more supportive of this war versus younger demographics within the Republican
02:35Party?
02:37I don't think it's as much a generational divide.
02:41I think it's more an ideological and religious divide within the Republican Party.
02:46In general, though, like I said, Republicans are supporting this.
02:49The fractures that we are seeing are among the more nativist or more anti-Israel wings of the Republican Party.
02:59We've seen people associated with the podcaster Tucker Carlson, who represents a particularly nationalist and isolationist wing of the Republican
03:08Party, break off and begin to express opposition.
03:11And we do see some of the more elements hostile to Israel or even approaching anti-Semitic like Joe Kent,
03:21who recently resigned from the administration, who are also mounting increasing criticism of the American intervention.
03:30You know, what scope is there for public opinion to shift further?
03:34I mean, you just mentioned 90 percent opposition among Democrats, about 80 percent support amongst Republicans.
03:41How is that?
03:42How are those numbers likely to shift the longer the war goes on for?
03:48Well, before conflict started out, we saw a poll coming out of the University of Maryland that showed only about
03:5421 percent of Americans supported a conflict.
03:57Once the conflict began, support for the war shot up to about 40, 41 percent.
04:04We've already begun to see fairly significant erosion in that support level, where currently it's hovering around 36 percent on
04:12average across poles.
04:13So the fall off on it has been fairly rapid.
04:17And I think if it were to continue and particularly if we were to see ground troops put in, it
04:23could plummet considerably further.
04:26One point of comparison might be George W. Bush.
04:30He ended up around at 27 percent by the end of the Iraq war.
04:37So what does this all mean for the midterms?
04:39That's the big question.
04:40And I wonder whether at this point the Senate is actually up for grabs for Democrats.
04:45What is the data suggesting?
04:49Right now, the data is suggesting, given the trends that we're seeing in polling and particularly the questions asking what
04:56party would you like to see in control of Congress,
04:59that the Senate races are moving from a more of a Republican-leaning outcome to a true toss-up.
05:07Now, it's a long time until November, and there are a lot of things that could happen.
05:11But this intervention in Iran has put some more wind behind the sails of the Democrats.
05:18And we've seen that play out in anecdotal evidence.
05:22We saw that becoming an important theme in the recent No Kings protests over the past weekend.
05:28And we've seen it in the upticks in candidates who were not necessarily polling that strongly,
05:35people like Mary Peltola in Alaska, who's looking to knock off a Republican seat.
05:44And, you know, it's very tough to get insight into President Trump's mind or what he's thinking.
05:49But given this is his second term, do you think, as the U.S. president, he's more focused on a
05:56legacy-defining war
05:59and one that is perceived to have, you know, gone well for the U.S., as opposed to, you know,
06:06achieving a big victory at the midterms?
06:11Well, we—I think he's got both in mind.
06:14I do think legacy is something that he's thinking about a little bit more.
06:19With the intervention into Venezuela and now this intervention here and the hawkish sounds we hear coming from the White
06:26House about Cuba,
06:27I do think that the president sees a possibility of putting sort of an expansionistic stamp on his presidency,
06:35something that he would see as a fairly strong legacy.
06:37But he has also repeatedly expressed concern that if the Democrats take over the House and the Senate,
06:43that he'll be able to block his further initiatives, prevent him from further reshaping the court,
06:48and, as he's most frequently expressed, likely would be facing another impeachment.
06:54So, let's look at it.
06:54So, let's look at it.
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