What’s actually at stake for Trump at the midterms?

0:00ABC Listen. Podcasts, radio, news, music and more. Hey, I know you're here for Matt Bevan. First though, I'm Keely Johnson, host of Expanse, disappearing in the Devil's Triangle. I want to tell you about my new podcast, investigating what happened when five men flew into the wilderness and vanished. What followed is a story of conspiracy, desperation. When do you make that decision in your mind where he's not coming back? Rumours of corruption. Just how far are we willing to go to explain the unknown? Join me as I investigate the mystery of Flight VHMDX. Search Expanse on ABC Listen. This podcast was produced on the lands of the Awabakal, Gadigal and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people. G'day, Matt Bevan here. This is If You're Listening.

1:01The US midterm elections are tomorrow. And here in the basement, we're getting ready, this is If You're Listening. The US midterm elections are tomorrow, and here in the basement, we're getting ready for our extremely experimental live election broadcast, with graphics and maps and stats and charts and all that kind of thing, all of which will be running off my ABC computer sitting here on my desk, and all of which may or may not work. We're going to be live on our new YouTube channel, it's going to be very exciting and or terrifying. But I haven't actually traveled to the US this election cycle. So I thought it might be worth talking to someone who has. Mark Willisey has spent the last few weeks traveling across America,

1:36talking to voters and experts and the former heads of the CIA and FBI. These midterm elections are the most important, certainly in my lifetime, and maybe ever in the United States, because we have an out of control presidency, where one branch of our government that's supposed to be constraining him is missing in action. A lot of people seem quite worried that this election, which is shaping up as a referendum on Donald Trump, might get ugly. He was filming an episode of Four Corners, which aired last night on ABC TV, and he's with me now. Hi, Mark. Thanks, Matt. Mark, I was in the US for the last election in 2024, and the atmosphere was kind of weird. Democrats were really anxious, too cautious to be optimistic, really.

2:35Republicans were, I mean, I found them surprisingly quiet. The Trump rally that I went to, I mean, it was kind of like a third empty by the time he had finished talking. People were wandering out. Prices of things already seemed pretty insane. What's it been like these last few weeks in the lead up to the midterms? Well, if the Democrats were a little cautious back then, they're probably a bit confident now. I think I've got a feeling from them that they know they're going to win the House, and there's quiet optimism that they're going to take the Senate as well, although that could be quite tough. The Republicans, as we heard on Four Corners, you know, we talked to one of the Republican campaign strategists, Luke Ball,

3:15and he said, you know, we're just waiting around for a funeral to happen. I think here in Washington amongst Republicans, there's a lot of angst about the midterms it almost feels like we're sitting around waiting for a funeral to start I would be amazed if we kept the house I would be surprised if we kept the senate so they know they're in deep trouble you know they know that tomorrow's election is going to deliver bad news it's just a scale of it yeah and talking about a Trump rally I was also over there for the presidential election in 2024 and I went went to a Trump rally in New Jersey. It was quite a carnival atmosphere, and what I was surprised about was the sort of, ah, the breadth of people.

3:52The one I went to was in Michigan in November, and so... Yeah, yeah. New Jersey's a bit warmer than Michigan, so maybe that's why people are happier to be out and about. Yeah, it was a bit more of a carnival. But I think, Matt, what was interesting was the turnout of people there. What I found was, you Yeah, it was a bit more of a carnival. But I think, Matt, what was interesting was the turnout of people there. What I found was there was university students from sort of well-to-do families who are black Americans, Hispanics. There was a great diversity of people there, which surprised me. And I've just come back from a Trump rally in Tennessee, and those people aren't there anymore. It's just the hardcore MAGA base.

4:22That's all that's left. He's great. He's great. Greatest of all time. That's why that's left. He's great. He's great. Greatest of all time. That's why I can afford gas prices. I got a gas guzzler. I can afford it. I got a good job. So the economy is not a big issue for you? Not at all. You know, you talk to those people about the insane cost of living in the United States. And as you said, it was bad then. It's worse now. And you go, it's Donald Trump. I'll pay more at the Bowser. I don't care. You know, so these are the hardcore that's left. You live in socialistic countries, communistic countries, and then you talk to me about the economy. We're the greatest country that God's ever blessed this planet with.

4:58Your diverse range of black Americans, uni students, Hispanics, they've somewhat melted away in the last couple of years. Yeah. Donald Trump's approval rating among people who aren't the hardcore MAGA people are very low. Have you run into people who were Trump voters in 2024 and now feel differently? Yeah, we did. We ran into some people, you know, I was talking to a farmer from Kansas, just on the phone. And, you know, he was saying, look, we voted for Trump in 2024. You know, we remembered his first term. The economy went pretty well. You know, we thought inflation was bad under Biden. But now we're paying more for fuel because of the Iran war, more for fertilizer because of the Iran war. We've got to pass on those costs, which make, you know, our product

5:37more expensive. And I said, well, so what are you not going to vote Democrat? And they went, no, we're just not going to turn up. So that's the problem for Trump. And that's why you hear him at these rallies repeatedly, nearly every time he gets up to speak, he says, pretend I'm on the ballot. Pretend that I'm running and go out. You got to get out of vote. He's hoping that that personal brand will get people out of their homes, out of their armchairs and into polling stations and to vote Republican. But it's starting to sound a little desperate, to be honest. How do the local candidates and local Republican operators feel about Donald Trump saying that, saying, I'm on the ballot, please come and vote because it's all about me?

6:17Would they prefer that maybe he just left it up to them to try and get their guy over the line? Yeah, look, one guy said to me, that's a very brave strategy that the president's putting out there because he's saying if you pretend I'm on the ballot, come out and vote. And if people don't come out and vote, Republicans don't come out and vote. That's a big slap in the face for Donald Trump. And there are candidates, we know Republican candidates who, they don't want Donald Trump within Cooee of them. And so, you know, it's only quite the hardcore. You know, he's been going to Texas a lot, as we've seen. He's got a candidate down there called Ken Paxton, the Texas State Attorney General, who's had, let's just say, a colourful past.

6:55You know, there's some baggage there. He specialises in those guys. He does, and they're the sort of candidates that still will have Donald Trump at their rallies. But having said that, some secretly recorded audio was released with Ken Paxton complaining to his donors that Donald Trump, every time he comes to Texas to help him out, actually sinks him even further. So there you go. It's interesting you mentioned the turnout thing, because yeah, when I was there in 2024, I was hung out for a week in Detroit. I would sort of go down to the early polling places and kind of there was nobody there. There wasn't a lot of activity. And Detroit is theoretically a Democrat city. Turnout is good for Democrats.

7:29Low turnout is very bad for Democrats in Detroit. And there just didn't seem like a huge amount of buzz and excitement. Have you found places where there is buzz and excitement? No. Okay, fair enough. I didn't. We went to South Carolina. We went to Tennessee, Mississippi, Colorado. Not really. Yeah. I think actually there's a bit of trepidation about this election, Matt. I get a feeling a lot of people are really worried by the president's language, you know, talking about how elections, there's cheating, there's rigging, there's fraud, that the elections are vulnerable to interference. And, you know, Trump did a primetime address in July. He made all the American networks take the address in which he basically warned about interference in the

8:10elections and how fraud could play out. Great damage has been done to our country. Our elections were left vulnerable to being rigged and stolen. And the trust of the American people was lost. This cannot be allowed to continue. You know, what's been interesting is that talking to people, you know, they'll talk about the cost of living. These are ordinary Americans as you go around. But they're also worried a bit about what's going to happen on polling day. They're saying, you know, could we see ICE officers at the polling stations? That's something that has not been ruled out by the president or his Homeland Security secretary. So, no, there's no buzz. There's actually, I would say, a little bit of trepidation.

8:48And we actually went, while we were in Colorado, in Denver, we went to where the chief election official, where he operates, out of his building, and they were doing a practice run. And their chief concern is that federal agents could be at the polling stations, which is technically illegal. They're authoritarian tactics. And at the end of the day, it is absolutely illegal. We're not going to let any of these thugs scare anybody from exercising their right to vote. They've already taken a lawsuit out against the Trump administration to try and stop that. It was unresolved at the time. So I think that could be something that will drive voters away, perhaps more Democrat voters, because you talk to people like Anthony Scaramucci, Ty Cobble, all of these former White House

9:31insiders under Trump, and they say, we see this as a plot to basically drive Hispanic voters away in particular, even though they might be legal voters. They might be citizens of the United States. Yeah. So in your episode of Four Corners that was on air last night, and you can watch it now on iview, you spoke to James Comey, the former director of the FBI, and John Brennan, the former director of the CIA. They had serious concerns about election interference in the midterms. I think part of the goal of Donald Trump in connection with any election is to sow doubt about its integrity. If he loses, he can say that he was cheated. If his side wins, he can say we overcame the cheating. I do worry about what he could do in the run-up to the election. Donald Trump's attitude,

10:13I believe, and again, it's evidenced by his actions, is he's willing to go beyond those limits and then dare people to pull him back. James Comey, of course, is no stranger to election interference. He was the one who had to inform Donald Trump about likely Russian interference in the 2016 US election. How did he reflect on that briefing? Yeah, I was fascinated. I really wanted to interview Comey and also John Brennan, who was the CIA director when Donald Trump won that election in 2016, and they both, along with a couple of other intelligence chiefs, had to go to Trump Tower and brief the president elect about Russian meddling. And they said to me, you know, we had to tell him that they did

10:54interfere. They did meddle and they meddled on Donald Trump's behalf in terms of not on his doing or his word, but they wanted Trump to win. And so it was a very awkward meeting and they were quite alarmed by Trump. They said he basically brushed it off and he also just tried to spin it and say, well, how can we sort of deflect with this? And the other reason I wanted to talk to them for this story, you know, was because there is still fears about foreign meddling in these elections. There's still fears that Russia is trying to meddle in some form. But both Comey and Brennan are saying, look, we also fear that Donald Trump is meddling in this election. We've not seen anything like it, whether it's his language,

11:34whether it's his implied threats to put ICE agents at the polls, it's him not ruling out invoking the Insurrection Act or some sort of national security emergency, it's him possibly not accepting the result at the end of the election. So yeah, I wanted to hear from them given their roles in investigating meddling in elections in the past. And also because these two men have become the prime targets for Donald Trump's retribution in his second term. Both of them are under DOJ, Department of Justice Investigation. In fact, this week Comey was slapped with a third charge over alleged leaking of sensitive material. He denies all the charges, as does Brennan, John Brennan, ex-CIA director. So that's why I want to

12:14talk to them. And it was fascinating to sit down and have a good old chat with them. How do they feel about the pressure that they're being put under by the Justice Department? Are they worried that something's going to happen to them? I got a sense they're not worried, that they think the American justice system is the last thing standing. Donald Trump's got the White House, he's bullied the Congress into submission. Yes, he's stacked the courts, they say, with his appointees, but the courts are holding fairly firm and they think they will be vindicated. But they also say, look, we're very lucky. We have a platform on which we can fight back. We can come out and we can deny these charges. We can

12:50give interviews. They said there's countless other people who've been targeted by this administration who don't have their profile, who don't have their power. In fact, James Comey's daughter was sacked, I believe, as a Justice Department lawyer. And it was only recently that was found to have been an illegal dismissal. So this retribution campaign goes well beyond these two men, but these two men are probably the most public embodiment of what Donald Trump promised before the presidential election, which was retribution. And James Comey said it's the one promise he has delivered on. Trump promised retribution in his second term. Has he delivered? In large measure. It's one of the few promises he's actually kept.

13:29It's really interesting considering what is likely to happen in the next few days, because in the 2020 election, obviously, Donald Trump was the president at the time, but there were a lot of people who retained a certain level of independence from him who were working inside his administration. We know a number of people were willing to say no to him, to push back against him, including the Attorney-General Bill Barr, who pushed against him on a number of the election interference claims that he was making about the voting machines being hacked and that kind of thing. Then in, obviously, 2024, he had no control over any of the system at all. But then this time in 2026, he's got all of the control.

14:12And he has all the power to, at the federal level at least, influence things. Do you get the sense that people really think that he will try to influence either the voting process or the counting or the certification process of these midterm elections? Or is it sort of a, well, he could, but we're just not sure. How worried did they seem? They're very worried. And you talk to former insiders. These are people who worked for Donald Trump, whether it was Ty Cobb, who was his White House special counsel, John Bolton, his former national security advisor, Scaramucci, of course, the not very long serving White House communications director, James Comey, John Brennan, who obviously were the intelligence chiefs.

14:53They say you can't rule anything out with Donald Trump. You know, just his language, you know, talking about cheating and rigging. He had one rally where he got everyone at the rally, all his supporters to raise their right hand and pledge an oath, which included, sort of jokingly, to cheat. Please raise your right hand. I pledge... ..to the greatest president in the history of the United States... ..that I will go out with my family, my friends. I'll do it anyway. I don't care if I'm registered or not. I'm going to try and cheat like hell like they do. This is a man who sat idly by while his supporters trashed the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. So what they're saying is, OK, he's already using language

15:42that is bringing into question the integrity of the electoral system. That's part one. And then there's the disruption. And so the disruption could be ICE agents at the polls. Mark Wayne Mullins, the Homeland Security Secretary, has not ruled that out. And as the fact has said, they may be at the polls to execute things like arrest warrants. Well, technically that's illegal. The head of the FBI, Kash Patel, asked at a very feisty congressional hearing about the possibility FBI agents at the polls, said, why can't they be there? Sure, that could happen. Then there's the issue of a national security emergency. Donald Trump was asked, could you invoke a national security emergency on election day or around election day? And he said, I'm not ruling that out. Then there's the

16:23Insurrection Act, which he's often threatened to invoke as well. So that's your disruption. Then there's the denial right at the end. And that is, he loses the House. He potentially loses the Senate. He says it was rigged. These results are not correct. They're not going to stand. Now, all of these things are sort of illegal or unprecedented or unthinkable. But in Donald Trump's America, these former insiders who've worked with him say anything could happen and we're really worried about it. But just his language in the lead up to this election is really casting doubt over the integrity of the elections themselves. He seems to have a particular bean in his bonnet about Alaska. Were you able to look into the situation in Alaska at all?

17:02No, that broke just after we got back, but I have had a look at that. It's really interesting because the issue that Donald Trump and his administration have with this is that there are two Dan Sullivans on the ballot paper. One of them is the incumbent Republican Senator. Another is some guy who's running as an independent. So you've got Senator Dan Sullivan against some guy named Dan. Dan Sullivan, right? So Trump has ordered the Department of Justice to lodge a lawsuit. If successful, the lawsuit will block the certification of that election should Republican Dan Sullivan lose by a narrow margin. Now, what's fascinating is the New York Times have just come out in the last week or so with a story suggesting that the other Dan Sullivan, the independent who's just popped up,

17:50could have actually been encouraged and, you know, urged to run by the Democrats. So there could have been some dirty pool here on the Democratic side that they've gone looking for a Dan Sullivan to put in there. In fact, the New York Times, I think, suggested that they found a few Dan Sullivans and all but one of them refused to play along. So there you go. Well, it's interesting you mentioned that, that, you know, we don't know for sure whether the Democrats recruited this gentleman. That's right. But the Democrats have kind of, to a certain extent, abandoned the, you know, if they go low, we go high, Michelle Obama style of politics in this election. And that includes in the redrawing of districts for the House. What were you able to pick up about

18:33what's been going on in terms of the pretty brazen gerrymandering in a bunch of different states? That's right. Well, that has been an issue. And, you know, you get Democrats accusing Republican-led states of gerrymandering through these redistricting and vice versa. So they were all doing it. It's just the scale of it. Look, at the end of the day, the Democrats seem fairly confident no matter what redistricting has gone on in Republican states, it won't stop them winning the House. But what's going to happen in the next few years? You know, how bad is this going to get? Like, I've come from Queensland. We know a little bit about gerrymandering up here, I can tell you. And it's obviously something that doesn't help democracy flourish and

19:08both sides are doing it. In your episode, you spoke to the members of a democratic task force, which has spent the last few months wargaming what to do if some sort of a January 6th style insurrection were to happen again. What are they looking out for and what can they do about it if that kind of thing happens? Yeah, the Democrats have sort of formed this task force, as you said, it's led by senators like Chuck Schumer. They're sort of really worried. They got caught with their pants down a little bit on January 6th. They know that. Everyone did, not just the Democrats, but they've been wargaming now for several months. So it's not just sort of your high falutin senators, you've got staffers, you've got election experts. They are talking about things like, could Trump invoke the

19:49Insurrection Act? What does happen if ICE agents come to the polls? So they said they've identified over a thousand separate threats. And I didn't have time to go through each one of them in this interview with a guy called Justin Vale, who was a special assistant to President Joe Biden. He now runs Protect Democracy, which is a civil society group. All right, Justin, bring in some sandwiches. Threat one, tell me about it. That's right. And a cup of coffee, a liter of it. But he said what we've done as well is we've identified thousands of districts and areas and jurisdictions that we think the Trump administration may target. So these might be areas that are very tightly fought over. The race is really, really tight where the administration could influence things.

20:31Now, whether that is sending in federal agents or even seizing ballot boxes was one thing they were talking about. They are ready in these thousands of jurisdictions to rush to court. So they've got all the lawsuits or their tactics or their strategies ready to go. And he said, look, just on the issue of the Trump administration, they've asked 30-odd states to hand over their unredacted voter rolls. They say, we want to identify people on those voter rolls who shouldn't be there. A lot of the states have said, no way. Places like Arizona, Colorado have gone to court and won. And Justin Vale said to me, look, just on that issue alone of taking over voter rolls, there had been 26 lawsuits fought over between the Trump administration and groups opposing that,

21:14and Trump's lost all of them. They've lost 26 out of 26. The courts have been clear that this is an intrusion, a federal government intrusion into state powers and a violation of Americans' right to privacy. These people who are wargaming this task force, they see the courts as the last defence that they have and they are ready to rock and roll if all these shenanigans potentially come to pass. Let's say that the polls are right and that the Democrats are heading for victory in the House and a potential victory in the Senate. It's sort of looking a bit more likely than not that the Democrats will win the Senate. What will that actually mean for Donald Trump, though, given that in this second stage of the Trump era,

22:01this second Trump administration, Trump has basically sort of found a whole bunch of ways that the president can just do stuff without Congress stopping him or without Congress even sort of checking. He can sort of have something already underway and then dare Congress to unwind it. Yes. Can the Democrats actually do much about the way that the Trump administration has been operating if they do take power in this election? They sure can. And I think they're raring to go on it. I think what will happen, say the Democrats get control of the House and the Senate, they'll be in charge of the committees. They'll have the chairmanship of all the committees. And guess what's going to happen? It's going to be what some are calling an oversight onslaught. So in other words,

22:42they will be investigating under every carpet, pillow, chair, desk in the administration. Donald Trump, according to John Bolton, his former National Security Advisor, will have two years of misery if the Democrats win as expected. I think it means essentially no legislative accomplishments for that two-year period, and it reflects a deeply divided country. They'll be investigating alleged corruption by his administration, by his family, the deal-making. You know, we know that Trump last year alone in one year, according to his own filings, made $2.2 billion in that year. That's $43,000 a week. Million. $43 million. Short-changing him. My apologies. $43,000 a week probably is stuff he'd just throw that in the bin.

23:26But anyway, I talked to Benny Thompson. So he's a veteran Democratic congressman from Mississippi. He was also, importantly, the chair of the House Select Committee into the January 6th insurrection, if you want to call it that. And he just said there will be probably a vote on setting up investigations into Donald Trump and his family. And if there is, I'll be voting for it. If it comes to a vote, I plan to vote for it. He made a ton of money and brags about it when we see grifting in plain sight. We can't ignore it. He probably won't get convicted, but he could be impeached. And there are also mutterings within the Democratic ranks that, yes, there will be impeachments, but maybe the way to do it is to go after those around Donald Trump,

24:11not Trump himself. Don't turn him into the martyr that he likes to be. So go after people like the Defence Secretary, Pete Hegseth. Impeach him, because he's not exactly universally loved in the Republican Party either. So there will be some serious machinations going on for the next two years if, as expected, the Democrats win the House and possibly the Senate. Yeah, I think that's an interesting point that you make there, actually, because Trump has already been impeached twice, and that didn't seem to slow him down. No. Trump has infinite amount of money to defend himself from that kind of thing, but not all of his officials do. And serving in the Trump administration may seem a lot less attractive

24:50to people if they know that it's going to lead to them spending half their time facing Senate committees and House committees. That's right. The impression that I think a lot of people would have got from the last 10 years is kind of that investigate Trump all you want. It doesn't seem to matter. Nobody seems to care what you find. People keep voting for him. And he spins it. He spins it into this narrative of martyrdom. Yes, yes. Witch hunt, all that kind of thing. All right. Well, it's going to be very interesting to see how it goes in the next few days. Thanks so much for coming on and talking to us about it. It's an interesting time to visit the US. Are you going to go back in a couple of years,

25:23do you think? I hope so. I wouldn't mind completing the circle. I'd love to see who the Republicans pick as their next presidential candidate. Is it J.D. Vance? And then, of course, the Democrats. Who are they going to go with? It's going to be a fascinating ride. You can watch Mark's episode of Four Corners called Endgame right now. It's available to watch on iview and on YouTube. And speaking of YouTube, that is where I'll be answering midterms questions live at 3pm Australian Eastern Daylight Time tomorrow. We've put a link to the stream in our show notes. You can subscribe to our If You're listening youtube channel there and click notify me if you want to be notified when the stream starts i will catch you then Thank you.