in mind that you don't need any reasons. We have such a long track record of the party that's not in power gaining seats in midterm elections. So it almost doesn't matter who the president is, and probably it's just going to go that usual way. However, if ever there was a time that it wouldn't go the usual way, it would be this time.

The historical trend, which you know, even if it had been 100 percent of the time up until now, this would be the one time you could legitimately say, well, this situation is fundamentally different. And what's fundamentally different is that the favorability of Democrats is at an all-time low and that Trump is having the presidency of all presidencies. Not everybody's going to give him as high marks as his base, but we'll talk about that. Even the Democrats are starting to say, "All right, well, okay, I got to admit that was pretty good what you did there, Trump." So that's a situation that's very rare. Will it be enough? I don't know.

Listen to Axios's five things that would make Democrats have a better midterm. They say the big beautiful bill is polling terribly. Well, I think people would only care about individual things that are in the bill. I don't think they would vote or show up to vote or decide not to stay home because of the big beautiful bill. Does that one sound persuasive to you that because people don't like the big beautiful bill that more Democrats will show up for the midterms? I don't feel like it. I feel like if you had a conversation with any Democrat, you stop them on the street. You go, "Tell me about Trump and why you'd want Democrats to win the midterm." Would any of them say, "Well, I'm still mad about that big, beautiful bill that I don't even know what was in it." I don't feel like it. So I'm going to disagree with Axios on their first one.

Number two, cuts to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, which is part of the big beautiful bill. Let's be mad at that. That's a possibility. But if we go another year and the people who vote have not personally lost their healthcare, do you think they'll have as much interest in it? It will be true that illegal non-citizens will lose their coverage. It will be true there's some able-bodied people who should have done something more to make sure that they got their healthcare, i.e., get off the couch and get a job. If those people who are going to vote, if you were so lazy that you wouldn't even get a job so that you can also have healthcare, do you think you're voting? I don't know. So it's possible that while in concept the Democrats would be very against anybody losing healthcare, but they might just forget about it because they might not know anybody who actually loses their healthcare and didn't have it coming. So we'll see. So that one could make a difference, but not 100 percent.

Then there is the fact that prices are still high under Trump and he had promised to lower them. Let me ask you this. How many of you think that a president has any control over prices? Why are we even talking about it? The only thing a president can do is not overspend. That's it. They basically have one button: don't run up the debt so we have to print a bunch of money. Nothing else. Now Trump also has the energy thing which is an inspired way to look at it. So if he gooses energy production and he has been, let's say, judicious with the debt so that it's not spiraling out of control and he's doing some DOGE things, that's all he can do.

If you look at things like eggs, the government can subsidize one area of expenses for a while or they can change some regulations so that one part of the economy improves like eggs. But basically, you don't have really any tools. You're just doing more energy because that lowers all the energy costs. I do think that people have an affordability problem and that that will matter even though it shouldn't maybe.

Then there's Trump's deportation because he's sending back more than just the worst first. But I have not heard anybody complain about it yet, have you? Is there anybody in your real world who's complaining that too many of the wrong kind of people are being shipped out of the country? I've complained. Nobody I know has been shipped out of the country. Nobody I know has been deported. But I do have a problem with somebody who's lived and worked here for 20 years being deported. I'm not going to hide that just because I know that's not popular to say on this broadcast and you might have a different opinion and I would respect that. But the one thing I'll tell you is that the more personal contact you have with members of the immigrant community, there's no way that doesn't affect you. And I've had a lot of contact. So if you had as much contact as I did over the course of your adult life, you would probably agree with me, but most of you haven't. So on paper, if there were no humans involved just on paper, I would say, "Yeah, of course. Deport everybody. Absolutely." But once it becomes personal, well, it's harder.

The fifth thing from Axios is that Democratic enthusiasm to go vote in the midterms is much higher than Republican enthusiasm. But I wonder if that's something you can measure yet because when the midterms get close, Trump is going to get really active. And even though he's not in that election, he's going to make sure you think it's the end of the world if you don't vote. So I would kind of suspect that Republican enthusiasm for voting might be a lot higher once we get there. But also, I don't know that Republicans need enthusiasm to vote. Democrats might. They might need to get whipped up to vote, but I feel like Republicans vote because it's a civic duty and you know, the stuff you want. So I don't know. I don't know if enthusiasm really tells you what Republicans are going to do. I just have an open question on that.

According to Mike Benz, I guess the National Endowment for Democracy, better known as NED, got fully funded by the House of Republicans. Trump had asked for that to be zeroed out and the entire National Endowment for Democracy to be eliminated. Now, I can't explain this story as much as Mike Benz could. So let me say if you're not following Mike Benz, you probably are just flying blind trying to understand why everything is the way it is. You really need to follow him. It'll just spin your brain around in your head. But I think the bottom line is that this National Endowment for Democracy may have been something that the CIA uses to further its goals and maybe that's the reason they're keeping it. I don't know. So I can't give you the full story. I'll refer you to Benz on that.

Trump is now suggesting that the Democrats might have planted some names in the Epstein files. He said, "Those files were run by the worst scum on earth." That's when Biden was in control. The whole thing is a hoax. They ran the files. I was running against somebody that ran the files. If they had something bad for Trump, they would have released it. I think that's true. And he says, "Now they can easily put something in the files that's phony." Well, to me it seems like he's inoculating us just in case there's something in there that doesn't look good for Trump. And my guess is apparently he's mentioned a bunch of times but never went to the island. There's no direct evidence that he was involved in anything illegal or unethical with Epstein. But there might be something in there that he doesn't know about. So he's just inoculat