Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on new rifts between Trump and GOP leaders over Iran

[0:00] the war in iran has opened new cracks in president trump's relationship with gop leaders on capitol [0:05] hill and democrats face their own family feud this week as new york's primaries pit progressives [0:10] against moderates here to reflect on that and the reflecting pool is our politics monday duo [0:16] amy walter of the cook political report with amy walter and tamra keith of npr thanks guys welcome [0:21] back hello tam let me start with you um we've got high profile republican allies questioning [0:27] the iran memo memo of understanding say it's weak and there's also spy power negotiations [0:33] at a standstill is this a gop conference now pushing back or not i think that we need to [0:40] wait a little while to see whether they are rhetorically pushing back or whether they're [0:44] actually going to take votes or do more substantive things to push back on the president they certainly [0:51] uh have some of them have certainly expressed displeasure with the iran deal with president [0:58] trump uh like temporarily pulling his nomination for the director of national intelligence or telling [1:03] him not to show up for his his confirmation hearing there is a big well of frustration with republicans [1:11] towards the president there's a big well of frustration from the president towards republicans [1:16] um insisting that they do all kinds of things to pass the save america act right which is a measure [1:24] that uh would require voter id proof of citizenship and also would uh really limit mail ballot mail voting [1:33] which uh a lot of republicans actually like um he's putting a lot of pressure on senate republicans [1:39] he's actually headed up to the hill this week to meet uh with some of these senate republicans um it's [1:46] just not clear that they can give him what he wants uh but it's also not clear how hard they're [1:53] ultimately going to push back against him amy and i wonder how much political pressure there is from [1:58] people so to speak uh let's look at the polls uh the people uh pbs news hour uh npr maris poll released [2:05] last week found the president with the lowest approval rating of his second term 36 percent only [2:11] 33 percent approving of his handling of the economy a new low for him as president and 78 percent of [2:17] americans say gas prices are straining their household budget how much of this is actual so here's where [2:22] this republican rift is really interesting as we've been discussing and you know very well there's definitely [2:29] a rift ideologically on capitol hill between those maybe who are more hawkish who would like to [2:35] see the united states um continue down the path they were going on militarily and others who did not [2:41] want to see that but fundamentally politically if you're a republican up for reelection in a tough [2:46] district here's a number you've been seeing since the war started the president's handling of the [2:51] economy the net unfavorable has gone up by about 10 points his net unfavorable on inflation has gone up [2:58] close to 20 points that is a problem for you as a republican running for reelection so this war ending [3:04] theoretically is going to help bring those numbers back to hopefully a reasonable place if you're [3:12] a republican running for reelection but the challenge right now for republicans in like the sort of [3:20] intra-party challenge beyond this question of how hard do they push back on donald trump who still [3:25] remains the kingmaker in the party but is um the lack of enthusiasm among the base the one thing in that [3:32] marist poll that i looked at is people who identify as republican how strongly do they approve of trump [3:40] versus how many are just like yeah he's okay he's fine i approve the strongly approved number since a [3:45] year ago at this time among republicans has dropped like close to 12 points on net and so what you're seeing [3:53] is republicans aren't abandoning donald trump but they're just not as enthusiastic about him which means [3:59] they may not be as enthusiastic to show up to vote let's talk about democratic primaries tomorrow [4:04] maryland and utah hold primaries tomorrow south carolina hold his primary runoff but most election [4:08] watchers will be focused on new york uh where new york city mayor uh zorhan mamdani is backing challengers [4:16] against incumbent democrats he sees as too moderate uh amy which races are you watching most closely well [4:22] let's start with this yes it's new york i love the people of new york but it is a very small um segment [4:29] of the electorate now no doubt the i think the national attention is going to be on mondani and [4:35] whether he can use what he has right now which is considerable political clout within the new york city [4:43] the progressive movement to get his preferred candidates over the line i'm intrigued by a couple of [4:49] things i'm uh the first is there's a basically an ai versus ai battle taking place in uh the one of [4:58] the district uh one of the districts in manhattan upper west upper east side where the folks from [5:06] anthropic who would like to see maybe more regulation are supporting a candidate who while in the state [5:12] legislature actually passed some ai regulation the folks at open ai don't really like the legislation that [5:19] he passed and so they're spending against him millions and millions of dollars for one seat [5:24] in congress the second thing i would say there's a lot of talk about whether mom donnie succeeds what [5:30] is what does this mean for the democratic socialist movement does this mean the party now the democratic [5:35] party has moved so far left um the race i think that's going to tell us much more about that is not [5:42] happening until august and that's in michigan where a much more progressive candidate sort of in the mold of [5:49] some of these candidates that mom donnie is supporting is facing off against two more sort [5:55] of establishmenty type of democrats in a swing state in a state that's going to matter in the next [6:03] upcoming presidential election as well so whether that candidate can win a primary and whether that [6:08] can can win a general election will tell us a lot more about the strength of that wing of the party [6:14] the mom donnie wing or the bernie wing then what's happening in new york and tam let me finally get [6:20] you on the pool uh so the president uh why thank you yeah the president seems increasingly frustrated uh [6:26] shall we say uh by his struggle uh to clean the pool to convince the public uh that it was in fact [6:34] saboteurs uh who created all that algae and all of the paint uh crusting um do these claims do these [6:44] arguments still land with the supporters yeah and and i will not be here to truth on uh or fact check [6:51] on epoxy and how it works because that is not my expertise uh what i will say is that this reflecting [6:59] pool has turned into yet another uh fight over donald trump and he made the pool about himself it is [7:08] one of many projects that he has pushed through um ahead of america 250 he has put so much focus on [7:16] it so much calling people into the oval office to show charts of the the pool next to giant skyscrapers [7:23] to say how big it is and on and on and on and all of these true social posts and all of this [7:28] that he's drawing so much attention to it um and and it does raise the question like what about [7:35] those kitchen table issues that senate republicans want to talk about and uh and and this housing bill [7:40] that is bipartisan support and just passed the senate that could be something that they could run on [7:46] or talk about which he has not talked about at all right right other than the pool yeah anything [7:50] but the pool i have a feeling the pool debate will continue yes tanner keith amy walter thanks as [7:55] always you're welcome welcome support journalism you 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