Transcript: MAGA Radio Host Leaks GOP Poll Bombshell in Blow to Trump

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the September 25 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.

A right-wing radio host in Iowa unleashed an extraordinary screed this week. He leaked internal polling data about the House races there and said districts Donald Trump carried by double digits are in serious peril. And he blamed Trump’s war for just about all of it. This comes as Republicans are leaking fresh levels of midterm panic, and new polling shows further deterioration for Trump and Republicans. But Iowa has special significance. If Dems can win here, it suggests there may be an opening to regain ground in rural America.

We’re lucky to be talking about all of this with Rita Hart, the Democratic Party chairwoman in Iowa. Chair, thanks for coming on.

Rita Hart: My great pleasure, Greg. Thank you.

Sargent: So Iowa radio host Steve Deace, who’s pretty thoroughly MAGA now, dropped this bombshell on X. He said this:

“Iowa House Republicans were informed by their own pollsters that if you are in a plus-15 district, you’re within the margin of error. And if you’re in a plus-10 district, you’re underwater.”

Chair, if Trump or GOP plus-15 districts are within the margin, and plus-10 districts are underwater, that means a double-digit swing toward Democrats, maybe a 15-point swing toward Democrats in Iowa. And this is a place Trump carried by 14 points. Do you think that’s where things are right now?

Hart: I think it’s quite remarkable that Steve thinks it’s that dramatic. I would tell you that we have known for a long time, since last year, when we were successful in running some special elections where we overperformed by over twenty points, that things were moving in our direction.

And things have only become even more in our direction, especially when we look at the fact that we’ve been under rule by the Republicans for ten years, and under the direction of Kim Reynolds, who is, you know, the most unpopular governor in the country, and has been for a while.

You can look and see that people are paying more at the pump, they are paying more at the grocery store, they’re paying more for their health care. In some cases, their local hospitals have shut down, or their hospitals are no longer providing certain services that they’ve got to drive farther for, and therefore, again, pay more money in increased costs.

These are all things that have caused people to say, you know what, if I want things to change, which I desperately need them to change, then I’m going to have to vote for some Democrats and wake these Republicans up.

Sargent: Well, that is a remarkable turn of events. Let’s talk about the Iowa districts that are in play here. There’s Iowa’s First District, which is represented by Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks. Trump won that district by 8.5 points. There’s Iowa’s Second, which is an open seat—Trump won that by 10 points.

And then there’s Iowa’s Third, represented by Republican Zach Nunn, which Trump won by four points. Can you describe the demographic makeup of these districts? How rural are they? How working-class are they? What’s their makeup?

Hart: Well, we’ll start with the First District. You know, that’s a district that I ran for Congress in, back in 2020. And it is a rural district. I mean, Iowa City is the largest city in that district, but it is quite a few counties along the Mississippi River, and it goes all the way to the Missouri border. It’s a fairly rural district.

The Second District, we’re talking, again, a lot of rural counties, along with the city of Dubuque and Cedar Rapids, so there’s an urban-rural mix there. The largest city in the Third District, of course, is Des Moines, which is very urban, and so that is probably the most urban of the four districts, but it also includes some rural counties as well in that Third District.

Sargent: Well, let’s go back to Steve Deace’s eruption for a sec. What’s critical is that he blamed Trump, particularly his war, for the brutal political situation Republicans are in. He talked about the war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

He actually compared this to the COVID lockdown and the bank bailout in terms of unpopularity, and those things were not popular in Iowa, or anywhere else. And he said this: “Here in the cheap seats, it feels like another Middle East war quagmire, regular folks are paying for on both ends all over again.” Chair, what’s your reaction to that? Is that how you think voters are seeing it?

Hart: I hear this all the time from our voters, that they don’t understand the logic of this war. Now, of course, you’re going to have a certain number of folks who are still hopeful, right? They voted for Donald Trump three times. They have a notion that he is smarter than everyone else, that he’s got a plan, and if he just gets a little more time, that he’s going to show that he’s got it under control.

But the vast majority of people have never understood the rationale behind this war. They don’t understand exactly why we went into it. And it’s understandable why they don’t, because the story has changed too much.

You know, here we are with high gas prices, with high diesel prices, and the tariffs continue. All of that is wreaking havoc on our Iowa economy, which is very ag-dependent. And I would tell you right now, we’re facing a very tough harvest. We’ve been very wet, and the future doesn’t look good. It doesn’t look like it’s going to dry off.

They’re telling us that we can count on one or two dry days, and then it’s going to rain again. A wet harvest is really difficult, takes longer, it’s more discouraging, and it costs more. And so farmers are really under the gun, and that puts our entire economy in jeopardy. So there’s a lot of reasons why, again, people are not happy about the Iran war, they’re not happy about the tariffs and the costs that they’re going to bear.

Sargent: So let’s talk about the Democratic candidates for a second. They are Christina Bohannan in the First District, Lindsay James in the Second, and Sarah Trone Garriott in the Third. Can you just give us a one-sentence description of each of them?

Hart: Sure. So Christina Bohannan is a candidate who is smart, who has run great campaigns. This is her third time to run in this district. She knows this district well, and she is determined, as is evidenced by that, to represent the members of the First District in Congress.

Our Second Congressional District candidate is Lindsay James, who is a former pastor—a present pastor, I guess—who has been a state representative, who is smart and capable, and really is a caring individual who is very charismatic and works really hard.

Our Third District is Sarah Trone Garriott, also a very scrappy woman, who has won in Republican districts and has taken on some incumbents with a lot of clout and managed to win those districts.

And our Fourth Congressional District—I’m going to add that, because I think he’s a great candidate as well—Dave Dawson, who is a former state representative and is, again, somebody who really cares about this state and wants to see better representation in the Fourth District.

Sargent: Well, we’re getting a lot of leaks from Republicans right now. Politico reports that Republicans may be giving up on the Georgia and North Carolina Senate races. I bring those up because they’re places with a lot of red rural areas in them, just like Iowa.

So you can see similar things happening in places like western North Carolina, parts of Georgia, and rural Iowa. One Republican explained to the Times, meanwhile, that Republicans are running from Trump now because, quote, “this is survival mode time for Republicans.”

Can I ask, though—Iowa is sort of a different kind of place. It’s much redder than either Georgia or North Carolina. It’s one of Trump’s real success stories. He turned it into a much more red state.

I think people would be shocked to know that Barack Obama carried Iowa twice, and Trump has really transformed it. Is there a shot at winning? If you had to make the call now, if the election were today, how many of those House races are you going to win in Iowa?

Hart: I guess I would tell you, Greg, you never know. I’m—you have to understand that I am somebody who the polling was really high on before election day, and then we ended up losing that race by six votes. So I never take anything for granted. We don’t know what people are going to do until they enter that voting booth. But what I can tell—I’m going to push it back on you a little bit, Greg, on saying that Iowa is not as red as you might think, right?

I mean, because we’ve had these close races in the past. We haven’t gotten them across the finish line, so then it looks a lot redder than it is. But I have a lot of faith in the Iowa voters. They are practical, they are smart, they do their homework, and they are looking for a candidate that’s going to represent them. They want people who are going to not only tell them what they want to hear, but actually act on it. And our Democratic candidates are ready to go to work for them.

And that’s what I’m counting on, is that the average voter in Iowa is going to recognize that the Democratic candidates are going to make a difference if they just give them a shot. Because that’s what they look for.

They look for who’s going to represent me best. And they’re smart enough, and understand the political situation enough, to know that if you want different results—and right now we need different results—you’ve got to vote for something different. So those people who have been voting Republican are going to give our Democratic candidates a shot.

Sargent: Well, so it seems like, on paper, the ingredients are in place for Democrats to win some of these areas that Trump won, again, by ten points, one of the districts, 8.5, another one of the districts. The two main ingredients seem to me to be, number one, deep, deep dissatisfaction with Trump and a big collapse in support for Trump, including among rural voters, including among non-college whites—the MAGA coalition essentially breaking up. That’s ingredient number one.

And ingredient number two is Democrats having candidates that are matched well to the districts. Those two things together create a situation where, all of a sudden, voters are willing to listen to Democrats where they were not willing to before.

Is that something you’re seeing kind of on a day-to-day basis? Are voters who normally just tune out Democrats—they think of Democrats as culturally alien—are those voters opening their ears to what Democrats are saying now?

Hart: Well, I certainly hope so. And I would tell you that that’s been our strategy throughout this cycle. We understand that people have been looking to Democrats for a different kind of representation. And I would tell you that we struggle here in Iowa to present ourselves as Iowa Democrats, in light of the negative connotations that have gone along with national Democrats, right?

Iowa Democrats are not the extreme folks that we sometimes see in the national news. So our strategy has been that we’ve got to get our ordinary Democrats, who have so much in common with any other Iowa voter, to get to the doors, to talk to folks, to let them know that there’s much more that we agree on than we disagree on, and that there’s been an overemphasis on the social issues.

And that, as a result, that’s caused some people to dismiss Democrats out of hand, when those Democrats should be considered, because they’re the folks that are going to work the hardest and show up, and their priority is working Iowans, people who need that kind of representation and haven’t been getting it.

So we’ve got an organizational plan that gets folks to the doors, that has these one-on-one conversations, so that we recognize, again, that it’s time for change. Things have not gone well here in Iowa because of the result of one-party rule for 10 years. Democrats understand they’re prioritizing the issues that are most important to the average Iowa voter. And that if we work together, we can start to turn this state around. So it’s time to vote for change.

Sargent: Well, the third ingredient that I think you probably need for voters to be opening their ears to Democrats is this kind of full-scale betrayal of rural America that we’ve seen from Donald Trump, which is, I think, not like something we’ve seen before. Tariffs, trade war with Canada, the war driving up diesel prices, the cuts that are closing rural hospitals—the list is really endless.

I’ve not seen an opportunity like this open up in my lifetime for Democrats to regain ground in rural America. So are Democrats leaning into this enough right now? Beyond just winning these immediate races, is there the potential for something really significant to happen in terms of repairing some of those relationships?

Hart: Well, absolutely. And that’s crucial to all of us—you know, whether you are on the Republican side, whether you’re an independent, or you’re a Democrat. We have got to elect people that are going to start bringing us together as a society. You know, we’ve got so many things that we can point to that have driven us apart.

And I would like people to take Donald Trump up on his challenge to say, vote like Donald Trump is on the top of the ticket right now. Because he has not made good decisions for Iowa. He has not made good decisions for the people. He has benefited from this personally, financially. His family has done that as well. This is a corrupt administration, and people are tired of being taken advantage of.

So yeah, we’ve got to not only reach out and have those kinds of conversations where we find things in common for this cycle, but we’ve got to build for the future, so that we have a stronger Iowa and a stronger United States of America as we come out of this spin that we’ve been in.

Sargent: Do you think that your candidates right now are ahead in all those three races?

Hart: I think that this is going to be a very tight race. We’ve got 40 days left. We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that it isn’t as tight as it seems right now. And we’ve got to make sure that our voters have every opportunity to get to know our candidates better, from now until November 3, so that we can get more of their votes.

Sargent: And is the money there? Donald Trump’s own super PAC, or at least its affiliates, are spending money—investing in, or reserving time in—at least two of these Iowa districts. Two of them, the ones that are Trump plus 8.5 and Trump plus 10, his super PAC is putting money into those districts. Are you getting outspent in these places?

Hart: Yeah, they’re pumping millions and millions of dollars in there. I’ve never been one to believe that we have to match the spending, but we have to have enough resources to fight back effectively. And so that’s what we are doing.

I think it’s a good sign for us that they’ve been pouring these millions of dollars in, and yet the polls still keep us in the game. That’s a good sign for us. I think that people are smart—especially as they see these negative ads, and they see how many lies are in these negative ads, they are smart enough to reject that and say, what is really happening here? And give our candidates a chance.

So yes, money is always a problem, and we are working very hard to make sure that we have enough resources. But the bottom line is, our candidates are the better choice, because they’ve got more solutions that are going to be important to average Iowans.

Sargent: Are you going to have enough, or do you need financial reinforcements right now?

Hart: We cannot raise enough money. That’s the bottom line. And so, yeah, anyone who is looking for good results here in November ought to be helping out financially as much as possible.

Sargent: Chairwoman Rita Hart, thank you so much for joining us. Good luck out there.

Hart: Thank you. Good luck to all of us.

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