The following is a lightly edited transcript of the June 5 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
President Donald Trump appears to have finally turned on Elon Musk over the tech billionaire’s scalding criticism of the “big, beautiful bill” that Trump wants Congress to pass. At a presser, House Speaker Mike Johnson said straight out that Trump had told him he’s displeased with Musk—a striking glimpse into the rift that’s now dividing the two men. This comes as the Congressional Budget Office just released some brutal new numbers on the House GOP bill, showing that it’ll add even more to the deficit and kick many more off of health coverage than previously thought. So how’s all this playing with the public? The progressive firm Data for Progress just released new polling showing that the GOP bill is deeply unpopular, but that it’s still not quite breaking through with the public. Can the Trump-Musk rift help with that? We’re talking about all this with Danielle Deiseroth, the executive director of Data for Progress. Thanks for coming on, Danielle.
Danielle Deiseroth: Thanks so much for having me back, Greg.
Sargent: To catch people up, earlier this week, Musk unloaded on the GOP bill, which has passed the House, but it’s bogged down in the Senate. Musk called it a “disgusting abomination” that’ll explode the deficit. Here’s what Mike Johnson had to say about all this.
Mike Johnson (audio voiceover): I talk to President Trump all the time, multiple times a day. Obviously, we’ve talked about this. As you know, he’s not delighted that Elon did a 180 on that. Look, I don’t know what happened in 24 hours. Everybody can draw their own conclusions about that, OK? But I look forward to talking to my friend about it again. And I’m not upset about it.
Sargent: I watched the video of this, and Mike Johnson grinned while he said that Trump was not delighted with Musk, which I take to mean that he’s in a raging fury about it. Danielle, this is consuming Washington, which I think has the capacity to break through a bit, at least [to get] through to people the idea that this bill will explode the deficit and Trump doesn’t seem to care. What do you think?
Deiseroth: Well, I think that Musk is acting like a toddler who is clearly not getting what he wants. And we know that Musk was in trouble with the Tesla board for Tesla’s stock share plummeting over the past few months as he’s taken such a prominent place in the Trump White House. So look, I think that this is a split that was more predictable than the finale of The Bachelor and that marriage not working out so well. I think that this will definitely help draw some more attention to what’s going on in Congress right now. This will definitely prompt people to ask and say, OK, well, what actually is Musk mad about right now? If they haven’t been paying attention so far, his temper tantrum is certainly going to raise awareness amongst the general public. And it’s clear why Mike Johnson and Trump himself are probably very displeased: They know that Musk is going to be bringing the awareness of this bill up to more of the American public.
Sargent: Among independents, the deficit is a big concern and it’s easy to grasp, right? It’s one of those things that just cuts through the clutter very quickly. The public is predisposed to think that Washington spends too much and is driving up the deficit, for understandable reasons. So having Musk be associated with deficit worries, I think, has special appeal to independents. What do you think?
Deiseroth: I think so. I think that for everyday Americans, the costs are still sky-high. The quality of life in America is not improving in the way that they thought it would among those independents who maybe gave Trump a chance and voted for him in November because they were so concerned about the economy and America’s economic outlook. So certainly anything that Musk is saying—a bill that’s bloated and full of pork and is going to blow up America’s economic outlook—is probably going to perk up the ears of some of those independents who aren’t liking what they’re seeing from the Trump White House.
Sargent: So the Congressional Budget Office just released these new numbers that are absolutely crushing for Trump and the GOP. CBO found that the bill will add $2.4 trillion to the national debt and would result in nearly 11 million people without health coverage, largely due to the bill’s immense cuts in Medicaid. Danielle, is there some way for Trump and Republicans to explain away those terrible numbers—particularly the 10 million losing health insurance—or not? It seems like a tough one.
Deiseroth: Only if they flat out lie, which we see that they’re already doing about certain government reports. This is where it starts to get incredibly scary in terms of what the Trump White House is doing. If they’re straight-up lying to the American people about what this bill will do—which again, they already are in terms of how Karoline Leavitt has been describing the different Medicaid cuts…. They’re going to keep parroting their lies. And it’s really up to the Democrats to uplift this nonpartisan analysis from the CBO to remind Americans of what the objective truth is. And who knows, maybe we’ll see more fiscal conservatives finally step up and put their foot down. I’m not really holding my breath for that to happen because we saw how quickly House Republicans fell in line with the vote. But now that it’s going through the more serious chamber of the Senate, maybe we’ll see some more deficit hawks really being vocal. Although that could just mean more cuts and more bad things that they want to see.
Sargent: Right, absolutely. Rand Paul, the senator from Kentucky who’s been probably the most vocal on the deficit explosion that this bill would bring, is often dismissed as a crank and a goof and all that. But I think to low-information voters and independents and moderates, what they hear is Republican turning against Republicans saying this thing will blow up the deficit. And I think that breaks through with those types of demographics a bit more, no matter what a buffoon Rand Paul really is. The voters get Republican-on-Republican action, I think.
Deiseroth: I think that they might. And look, this is not the Republican Party that my dad and my grandparents grew up with where the Republican Party was associated, at least nominally, with fiscal restraint and fiscal responsibility. If Republicans are fighting amongst themselves with some saying that this is an irresponsible use of America’s taxpayer funding—when there’s infighting amongst the party, I know sometimes it can be perceived as Beltway chatter, but any fights are what the media is going to gravitate toward, right? And that’s what’s going to, I think, be shown on people’s nightly news or what they’re hearing, seeing, and reading. And again, the conflict is what I think really helps put a spotlight on these things. When it’s just business as usual in Washington, of course nobody’s going to be paying attention, right?
Sargent: Right. Right. And especially that’s why I think the Musk stuff helps a little bit. So you found in your poll from Data for Progress that only 30 percent of voters have heard a lot about the GOP bill, whereas everyone else has heard only a little or nothing. You concluded that the bill is having trouble breaking through. What’s the issue there? Why is that happening, do you think?
Deiseroth: Well, I think there’s definitely a couple of reasons I’ve been thinking about this, because I was surprised, honestly, when we got the polling back. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the number one thing people had…. When we asked them, “What is the news story that you remember from the past—the biggest news story you’ve heard?” most people said tariffs. All of the news around “Liberation Day” back in April really broke through to folks more than anything we’ve seen in the Trump administration thus far. Tariffs have stuck. They have broken through. People are mad about prices. They keep hearing about Trump going back and forth. And they’re not seeing any economic relief. So I was like, OK, great. Tariffs still breaking through. But holy crap, this bill, even though it passed the House of Representatives, has not broken through the consciousness in a real way.
And there is a lag with public opinion, right? This is all happening in real time. We just got [past] Memorial Day and the House was out for a few weeks; these negotiations are going to drag on throughout the summer. So it’s not quite like DEFCON 1, I would say, for the Democrats that this isn’t the number one thing that people have heard about yet. I think there’s some silver linings in here in that even if only 30 percent of so folks overall said that they’ve heard a lot, at least they’re correctly able to identify for the most part that Medicaid cuts are part of the bill. Is it the number one thing that they identify with the bill? No, but Democrats can win this fight if they can keep working on that and keep raising the salience that, Hey, this bill cuts Medicaid.
Sargent: Well, your poll actually found some striking things on that front. One of them was that 56 percent are aware of the Medicaid cuts in the bill. So those do seem to be breaking through. The other thing that I thought was very interesting that you found is that when you tell voters about the Medicaid cuts, about the bill’s tax cuts for the rich—which are a big part of the bill even if Musk doesn’t talk about that part—and about how the bill explodes the deficit, nearly three-fourths oppose the bill. What should we conclude from all that?
Deiseroth: I think we need to conclude that this is a fight that Democrats can and should win. This shouldn’t be discouraging. This should be a flashing light to keep going—that it’s great that over half of people know that this bill is going to cut Medicaid. We know that Democrats are strongest when they’re out there defending health care. We’ve seen them be successful before in defending health care in this country. And this bill goes way further than that. We haven’t even talked about the clean energy tax cuts either, which is maybe not the most salient part of the bill but that’s a lot of people’s jobs. Electricity costs are also top of mind for folks. So I think that there’s a lot of fruitful ground here for Democrats to keep leaning into the fight, take advantage of this moment where the Republicans are fighting amongst themselves, Musk putting the spotlight on this issue, and really use it to capitalize on public opinion and getting the public galvanized about what is happening in Washington.
Sargent: I’m so glad you brought up the part of the bill that goes after tax credits for clean energy because generally speaking, it’s a topic that Democrats shy away from a little bit during the 2024 campaign. I thought Kamala Harris and Democrats could have leaned harder into the immense spending that had been unleashed, the immense investments that had been unleashed by Biden’s policies when it comes to clean energy investments. They just didn’t want to do that. But if you look at the things that House Republicans who are vulnerable in the 2026 elections are worried about, it seems like a good guide, right? A number of those House Republicans didn’t want the Medicaid cuts, and a number of them didn’t want the rollback of the clean energy tax credits. So I think that’s a pretty clear clue what Democrats could be talking more about. And I just don’t get why Democrats won’t lean into the clean energy stuff more. What do you think there?
Deiseroth: That’s a great point. My background is in the climate movement, and we at Data for Progress did a lot of work talking about the messaging around passing the Inflation Reduction Act. And I’ve been waiting with bated breath to see what happens with this bill. I think part of the challenge for Kamala Harris and for Democrats to message about the Inflation Reduction Act and the clean energy investments in the lead up to the 2024 election was that so many of the projects had been either just getting off the ground or still in progress. There was some real growth in terms of clean energy jobs toward the end of the Biden administration, but it just was too quick for, I think, voters to really experience the benefits.
And we know that voters react to loss aversion; they don’t like things that are taken away from them, right? They’re not going to like Medicaid getting taken away from them. They did not want the Affordable Care Act taken away from them. So I think for a lot of these Republicans…. Even just today, Senator John Curtis from Utah was in The Wall Street Journal talking about having some common sense around the IRA tax credits because Utah is one of those states that has really benefited from the tax credits of the IRA. I think we’ll start to see, Hey, we really can’t take these away. We’re creating jobs. Some of those material benefits are starting to actually impact people’s lives. And we’ll see if Democrats are able to, again, capitalize on this and paint a better picture for voters about not only the jobs but also how electricity costs are going to be impacted. Trump says he wants American energy dominance, but he’s doing the exact opposite with trying to get rid of these tax credits.
Sargent: It’s just amazing to me that Democrats don’t make the argument more often that by rolling back these tax credits for green energy, we’re seeding the future of this industry to China. It’s just a gimme, Democrats should say it. I want to flag one other thing that Mike Johnson said, by the way. He told reporters that the GOP bill will be rocket fuel to the economy and that it will lift all boats. Now, Danielle, Republicans have been arguing for 50 years that tax cuts for the rich will lift all boats. It just doesn’t pan out. But what I take from this is that the big working-class makeover of the GOP is a sham, right? The old plutocratic arguments that Republicans have made for decades just keep coming back like zombies, including with Trump and with the Trump bill. So this is my question: What are the prospects for getting the public to associate Trump with that Republican tradition, given that he’s somewhat successfully positioned himself as different from traditional Republicans on this? Does this debate provide a way into that? How could that happen?
Deiseroth: I think this is why so many Democrats are banging their head against the wall, that how could a billionaire who had the front row of his inauguration full of tech CEOs be perceived as the man who is the working-class savior in America? That’s the failure of the Democratic Party in a nutshell right now. But I think, again, that picture from the inauguration is the ad: Trump and Republicans are going to kick millions of Americans off of their health care so that wealthy donors can benefit. That is the message, and that’s what Democrats should be repeating now until 2028. They are setting themselves up, I think, for that contrast because voters will have proof that for all of Trump’s talk, this is what he’s choosing to do.
Sargent: So how do you predict this bill? I’m presuming it passes probably with some tweaked Medicaid cuts that are massaged in some way that allow Republicans in the Senate to pretend that they’re not really taking health insurance away from millions anymore, that it’s only going after waste fraud and abuse, something like that. So presuming it passes, how do you predict it impacting the 2026 midterms, particularly in the House?
Deiseroth: I’m just sad. I’m scared. So many people’s lives are going to be impacted in such a negative way because of this bill. And I think we’re going to see a lot of anger. I think we’re going to see so much anger and frustration from the public. Again, so many voters wanted to see change from the Biden administration, whether they voted for Kamala Harris or not, and the change that Trump is bringing is going to materially impact the lives of millions of Americans in addition to all the people that he and his administration have impacted already.
I just think, again, Democrats have the contrast laid out for them. Medicaid, health care, clean energy jobs—there are so many things for them to run on and to connect with people about. And there will be actual proof with a bill that has Trump’s signature on it for, This is what he chose to do with his majority in Congress. I think we will see a lot of frustration.
Sargent: It sure looks that way. And it sure looks like this is an issue that Democrats can capitalize on. It’s definitely one that they’re comfortable with, maybe not other ones, unfortunately. Danielle Deiseroth, so good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on.
Deiseroth: Thanks so much again for having me.
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