Republican divide widens as Trump, Pence take divergent paths

Read the Full Transcript

• Judy Woodruff:

  Former President Donald Trump returned to Washington, D.C., today for the first time since leaving office to deliver — he came this time to deliver a speech.

  This comes as the former president has hinted at a 2024 presidential campaign announcement and on the heels of a prime-time hearing by the January 6 Select Congressional Committee last week that accused him of violating his oath of office on January 6.

  William Brangham has more.

• William Brangham:

  Judy, the former president speech featured a familiar dark litany, over 90 minutes of criticisms of President Biden, the Democrats and the state of the country, as he sees it, today.

  Trump also repeated the lie that he won the 2020 election.

  Donald Trump, Former President of the United States: I ran the first time, and I won. Then, I ran a second time and I did much better. We got millions and millions more votes. And you know what? That's going to be a story for a long time, what a disgrace it was. But we may just have to do it again.

• William Brangham:

  Hours before that, and less than a mile away, his former Vice President Mike Pence spoke at another conference. Pence said the Republican Party needs to be looking forward.

  Mike Pence, Former Vice President of the United States: So I don't know that our movement is that divided. I don't — I don't know that the president and I differ on issues. But we may differ on focus.

  I truly do believe that elections are about the future.

• William Brangham:

  To assess these two messages and what actually Republican voters want, we turn to Sarah Longwell. She's a longtime Republican strategist who has spent this summer leading many focus groups with Republicans across the country.

  She's also the founder of The Republican Accountability Project, which is a political action committee that works to defeat candidates who have repeated Trump's election lies.

  Sarah Longwell, very good to have you on the "NewsHour."

  We just heard a little bit from President Trump. And he, in his speech today, ranged across a whole swathe of issues. From your polling and your focus groups, what are the top issues for Republican voters today?

• Sarah Longwell, Founder, The Republican Accountability Project:

  Well, the there's no doubt it's these kitchen table issues that you guys were talking about earlier in the program.

  It's gas prices. It's inflation. To some degree, it's also immigration. But those are the things — and, honestly, it's not just Republican voters. I mean, the economy is the dominant issue that I hear from voters across the political spectrum.

  But one of the things that voters are less interested in is a lot of the sort of relitigation of 2020 and Donald Trump's grievance. Even with Republican voters who tend to agree with him or did suspect that there was something fishy about the 2020 election, they do want to be looking forward.

  And I think Donald Trump runs the risk of that message getting a little bit old. I have done nine focus groups since the January 6 hearings. And one of the things that's really changed from prior to the hearings is that GOP voters, Trump voters are starting to worry that he is not as electable as potentially some other candidates might be.

  And I think — I think it's not that the January 6 hearings have broken through, so much as they're seeping in and there's starting to be concerned among these voters that Trump might not be able to win. And these Republican voters are very interested in winning.

  They think that there's a lot wrong with the economy and with Joe Biden. And so they do want to be looking forward, as Mike Pence said. However, unfortunately for Mike Pence, they are not looking forward toward candidates like him.

  As far as these voters are concerned, Mike Pence is the establishment. They use very negative terminology to talk about him. They call him a RINO. They call him a traitor. They are much more interested in candidates that are in Trump's mold from that sort of — they describe it as the America first wing of the party.

  And so somebody like a Ron DeSantis, who they see as kind of a Trump fighter, but without the baggage, tends to be more where they're headed.

• William Brangham:

  I want to circle back to the January 6 hearings, because those of us here in Washington have certainly been paying a lot of attention. And they have been getting some pretty decent ratings amongst viewers.

  But the sense we have always gotten is that the conservative media has, in some ways, downplayed them, has denigrated the hearings as nothing to see here.

  You are describing how the gist of those hearings has been creeping out or leaking out. What is the sense that you're hearing from Republican voters about that? What do they think about January 6 and Trump's role on that day?

• Sarah Longwell:

  They tend to not blame Donald Trump, and they very badly want to move on from the conversation around January 6.

  I mean, I think they believe that it reflects poorly on them and on the Republican Party. They would much rather be talking about all the things that they don't like about Democrats.

  But what's interesting about the hearings — look, they don't like the hearings. They describe them as a dog and pony show. They describe them as a witch-hunt. But, at the same time, because the hearings have been so effective, they have put Republicans on some defense.

  And while these — sort of the right-wing media ecosystem, they don't carry the hearings, and they excoriate the hearings, they have also been forced to kind of engage in the hearings. The right-wing media ecosystem is where these Republicans are going to kind of defend themselves by what the committee is putting forward.

  And, as a result, all of these Republican voters are very aware of the hearings, which isn't always the case. And so they're more engaged with them, actually, than you might be — so, even when they say they don't like them, this is still, I think, causing them to worry about Trump's electability prospects, because when we were doing the focus groups prior to January 6, you would usually get about half the group or more who said that they wanted to see Donald Trump run again in 2024.

  And in those nine groups we have done subsequently since the hearings began, there were four groups where zero people wanted him to run again. We did an analysis, and it was only 15 percent of the respondents wanted to see Trump run again in 2024. And that's actually — I mean, that's a big turnaround.

  We were we were quite surprised. Look, I have been sort of skeptical of the narrative that Donald Trump's grip on the GOP is slipping because, in the focus groups, group after group, they still wanted to see him run in 24. But I have actually seen that start to wane in the wake of these hearings.

• William Brangham:

  I mean, it's so interesting to hear you say that, that they would hope that, if they were the kingmakers themselves, that Trump would not run.

  We still don't know whether the former president is going to run. Let's just say, though, that he does announce next week or two weeks from now that he is running. What is your sense from talking to those voters? Do they then say, OK, he is the guy now, we have to go with him, or will they — let's say there's a contested primary — turn to a Ron DeSantis or someone like that?

• Sarah Longwell:

  Yes, I can't be certain of the answer of that.

  I do think that — my guess is, is that Donald Trump has people also doing focus groups and doing polling and that they're seeing the same softening in his support that I am. And I think, besides his legal troubles, my guess is, is that part of the reason he's so eager to jump in early is to try to freeze out other candidates, to try to reignite people's interest in him.

  Look, we haven't seen Ron DeSantis on the national stage. We haven't seen people like Mike Pence or others who might look like they're getting in, what it's going to be like if they're going head to head with Donald Trump.

  And we all saw what happened in 2016, when there was a crowded field of candidates. Donald Trump didn't need a majority. He just needed a plurality. And we know that even though his support may be softening, that he does have a very hardcore base of supporters that are going to go with him, and maybe only him.

  And so if you have got other candidates sort of splitting the vote, and Donald Trump over there with his plurality of hardcore MAGA voters, that that still gives him a leg up in potentially winning the nomination.

• William Brangham:

  All right, that's Republican strategist Sarah Longwell.

  Thanks so much for being here.

• Sarah Longwell:

  Thanks for having me.