What Happens If Trump Announces Before the Midterms?

BUCK: We have a big election coming up. We’re already at the end of July about to be here in the August recess, and then from there it’s a sprint to the finish for the midterm elections. There’s a lot of back-and-forth because, remember, this midterm is going to really determine the rest of the Biden presidency. Is it effectively an almost lame duck for two years Biden presidency? There’s some budgetary things and executive actions he’ll be able to do.

But if the Congress is entirely in Republican hands, Senate and House, it’s very tough for Biden to get any — I mean, impossible to get any — sweeping legislation done, essentially, and, therefore, not a whole lot in terms of the Biden agenda other than spending, which in a time of high inflation is almost a… There’s a degree of self-restraining reality, I think, that happens when you have super high inflation. Although keep in mind, the Biden administration did want to spend $5 trillion as recently as January.

So they may go back to something like that. All that said, we’re trying to make sure that we — and we do have a candidate joining us in the third hour of the program. We want to make sure you hear from some of our Republican contenders as possible. We don’t endorse anyone in primaries, but we want to give you, our beloved listeners, the chance to hear from as many of the big names out there in Senate races and in House races where we can. There’s obviously a lot of House races so we can’t have them all on. So have Jim Lamon joining us in the third hour to talk about his bid for a Senate seat in the great state of Arizona. We’ve got a huge audience in Phoenix. Clay, are we number two, three…? Oh, no, I think we’re number one in Phoenix.

CLAY: Number one in Phoenix and I believe number one in Tucson. So we got Arizona State and we got Arizona both covered.

BUCK: C&B, NBD. So we are very excited to be joined by him later on. And I would just say there’s a lot of back-and-forth right now in GOP circles, not so much about — ’cause we just want to run up the scoreboard, right? So, every Republican sitting around, Clay, saying, “We need a reckoning, we need blue annihilation or Red Wave.” All the fun analogies and metaphors and similes of whatever we could throw at this we’re gonna be doing. That’s clear.

And it would be, for me, more than even the economy, as much as it can be a slap-down of the covid madness is in my mind the most important possible outcome we can have, because the covid lockdowns in so many ways led to the disastrous inflation and the economy being so painful for people right now — on the brink of the recession being official. But should Trump announce before this midterm, this is getting a lot of talk in GOP circles. One thing is we might actually have the president, former president joining us on Friday here on the show. We’re trying to set that up to talk about, well, a lot of issues. Here is pollster Frank Luntz who, unfortunately, is a very… He’s a Fauciite, done that? He’s a big Fauci guy.

CLAY: Yeah, he’s been angry at me on Twitter.

BUCK: Yeah, angry at me on Twitter. And I’m like, “Dude, go triple mask. It will keep you safer. Double mask plus plexiglass screen or else, Luntz, you don’t take the virus seriously.”

CLAY: The fifth shot will take care of it once and for all, one, two, three, four didn’t work. But five — five, six, and seven — will definitely work.

BUCK: Those are the magic ones.

CLAY: Everybody knows.

BUCK: At that point, it’s almost like when Spider-Man gets bit by the radioactive spider. You might get superpowers. Maybe you could shoot some webs out of your hands. Here’s Frank Luntz, though, talk about the possibility of a Trump announcement before the midterms versus after.

LUNTZ: More and more Republicans are saying, “Enough! I don’t want to focus on the past. I want to focus on the future. I don’t want to focus on Donald Trump and an election that is now two years old. I want to focus on inflation. I want to focus on crime. I want to focus on Ukraine,” and this is causing a significant problem for Trump, and I think it’s the reason why he’s more likely than not to announce in 2022 rather than wait ’til 2023. And one final point: If he does announce, he could actually cause the Republicans the House as well as the Senate. If the election is about the economy, Republicans win both. If the election’s about Donald Trump, Republicans lose both.

BUCK: Okay. First of all, he’s wrong. Republicans are gonna win the House unless —

CLAY: The House is locked and loaded.

BUCK: And if you don’t, honestly, Clay, it’s time that we start looking at plots of land in, like, Costa Rica or Palau or something Smoke ’em if you got ’em, folks, ’cause America’s over, okay? If we can’t win the House in this environment… The Senate’s gonna be close regardless. You and I live in Realityville. It’s a couple seats.

CLAY: There are five states in the Senate. But you’re right, the House… No matter what happens between now and what day, what, we’re basically 10 weeks out, effectively, from November 8th, Election Day, and so the House is locked and loaded. The Senate is gonna come down to Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and probably Wisconsin, right? If you had to say the five states that are most going to decide things going forward. Doesn’t mean there can’t be upsets in other places, but those would be the five.

And things can go a lot of different directions as those are very often regional-based contests. I think Dr. Oz needs to get his act together, honestly, in Pennsylvania. Fetterman is an incredibly weak candidate. He’s unhealthy. He’s not able to get out on the road. That’s one that Republicans must win, and he really needs to start landing somebody blows in that fight. I’ve said this before but I got cut off. (laughing) Some of you may have seen it yesterday, yesterday evening I was talking on Fox News with Steve Hilton. And look.

He’s a doctor, Dr. Oz. How is he not getting Fetterman on the record about can men get pregnant, do you believe that women should be completing in menus athletic events. These are things that Democrat orthodoxy requires Fetterman to support, not to mention the fracking issue which I think they’re starting to land some bodyblows finally on that, ‘cause Fetterman, crazily, blamed Republicans for high gas prices in a tweet, which makes me believe that he’s not that smart of a candidate in general.

But Dr. Oz has gotta win that race, Buck, and he’s gotta start landing some body blows, and I know it was a bruising primary, and I know there’s a lot of you listening to us in Pennsylvania that might have supported a variety of different candidates there. There were a lot of good ones, three of them; we had all three of them on. But, Buck, this is a must-win, must-hold Senate seat.

And I am a little bit nervous in some of these places, that if Trump announces before the midterms, that in these tight races in the Senate it could make a difference because it allows the candidate to not have to run on Biden’s economy. And even like, down in Georgia — I don’t know if you saw this quote over the weekend — Raphael Warnock was asked whether Biden had been a good president so far and totally dodged it. When you can’t even say that your current president is a good president — it’s a pretty softball question — that’s a big deal.