 |
| Musk flops in Wisconsin, and it wasn't close (jsonline.com) |
Heading into Tuesday's Wisconsin Supreme Court election, Elon Musk appeared to be the dominant figure in the Republican Party, having spent $20 million on a race many in the GOP considered a must win. Less than 24 hours after the polls closed, reports surfaced that Donald Trump was telling his inner circle Musk soon would be leaving the administration.
In a conversation with U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI), Greg Sargent of The New Republic examines issues that led to the brutal GOP loss and Musk's stunning plans to exit. The Sargent-Pocan interview provides an insider's view of what produced a political earthquake in the upper Midwest. It appears under the headline "Transcript: Trump Set to Cut Musk Loose as Knives Are Out over WI Loss; As Trumpworld starts turning on Elon Musk over the massive GOP defeat in Wisconsin, Representative Mark Pocan explains what this all says about the deep unpopularity of the Trump-Musk agenda." Greg Sargent sets the scene:
After Democrats scored an enormous victory in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race—a contest that revolved heavily around Elon Musk’s involvement—it now looks as if Trumpworld is turning on their favorite billionaire. President Trump has reportedly told members of his inner circle that Musk will be leaving soon, with insiders now viewing Musk as unpredictable and a major political liability. But what happened in Wisconsin isn’t just about Musk the person; it’s about public backlash to the Trump-Musk alliance in government. It’s a backlash to what they’re doing to the country. And a new poll illustrates this starkly, which will further undermine Musk’s standing with Trump. Today, we’re talking about all this with Representative Mark Pocan, a Democrat who represents Wisconsin’s 2nd district and saw a lot of this unfold up close.
Pocan: It’s not just that we had a big win in a purple state—because we don’t have a lot of those anymore—but it’s the level of turnout that I think was especially significant. I was doing doors for the Supreme Court candidate. I was helping launch volunteers. I’ve been doing a ton of town halls, both in my district and in the neighboring 3rd district. And it’s clear people are pissed. They’re concerned. They’re worried. This was their way of expressing all of that by showing up to vote. And because of it, we had midterm congressional election–level turnout almost in an April nonpartisan primary, which means that people really are concerned about what Donald Trump and Elon Musk are up to.
Sargent: The turnout was extraordinary. I want to talk about the race some more. Judge Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate, beat the MAGA candidate by nine points after Musk dumped around $20 million into the race, maybe more. As you say, the election had very high turnout, extraordinary for an off-year contest. But critically, all indications are that Musk’s role ended up galvanizing Democratic voters almost even more than it galvanized Republicans. Can you talk about what you saw in that regard on the ground? What was Musk’s energizing effect on Democrats and independents who went your way?
Pocan: Well, it’s somewhat easy with Elon Musk—if he just walked around with his pinky in his mouth, he’d be the perfect central casting villain straight out of the movies we’ve all seen. So that’s almost too easy. What is real, and I can tell you from talking to people, is they don’t like what Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing: the firing of people, the stopping programs that help the middle class and those aspiring to be in the middle class all to find this $4.5 trillion to pay for tax cuts for Donald Trump and Elon Musk. So it’s not even just that Elon Musk came in and dumped a bunch of money and tried to buy an election and is not the most lovable, warm, sympathetic human being; it’s that people really don’t like what’s happening. This was their way of expressing that because Republicans aren’t doing town halls. There’s no other way for them to express their feelings, so they expressed it through the election.
Sargent: Can you tell us what you were hearing door to door? What were voters saying about Trump-Musk and their agenda?
Pocan: Yeah. I can tell you also that we’ve had record levels of calls and emails to my office—one week we had to respond to 18,000 people in getting messages out—mainly it’s about DOGE and the cuts and the taking away of services. A lot of it is around the cuts in Medicaid in particular, because that’s health care and long-term care for 1.3 million people in Wisconsin. One out of every three kids gets their health insurance from Medicaid; 55 percent of seniors who are in nursing homes, including my mom in her final years, get their help from Medicaid. So it was around the issues—but the intensity is what really stood out, and that’s why you saw the vote you saw.
I was doing doors one day, and I knocked on a couple’s door—they’re a couple in their seventies. They let me in, both shook my hand, and then the husband gave me a big hug. I’ve been hugged by my friends before when I go to their doors, but not by strangers. That’s something that doesn’t happen, but they’re just so concerned about what’s happening. First of all, they’re happy I’m there, that I’m listening, but they want some reassurance that this isn’t normal, as Cory Booker said, and that’s the issue. So this vote was not just about Elon Musk. It was about the actions of Elon Musk, the actions of Donald Trump, this Project 2025 in living form. That’s what the vote was about.
Sargent: Every type of county appears to have shifted toward Democrats relative to 2024. Politico had a chart on this. The vote moved toward Democrats by an average of eight points in swing counties; an average of six points in counties that Trump won by five to 15 points; and an average of five points in counties that Trump won overwhelmingly. Is there a way to get a sense of what happened with working-class noncollege voters, both white and nonwhite? Did you sense those demographics moving toward Democrats again?
Pocan: Yeah. We’ve always been fighting for them. We’ve always supported raising the minimum wage and getting people health care and good quality family-supporting jobs. Look, in November, we had a change of a candidate middle of the year. We had record levels of inflation coming out of a once-in-a-century pandemic that affected other countries as well as the United States and their elected officials. We had a lot of headwinds, but I think what people are seeing is this is not about the average person. This is about the wealthiest getting a tax cut. That’s their holy grail, and people are smart enough to get that. When Republicans don’t do town halls, for example, and they say that there’s too many George Soros folks or whatever other B.S. line they say.... People get that if you were really proud of something, you’d go on the rooftop and scream about it, right? If you’re hiding in your basement because you don’t want to talk about it, it doesn’t pass the smell test. So people, rightfully so, know something’s up, and it’s not them that’s going to be benefiting from it. And that’s how people voted.
I think we were surprised by the last big Supreme Court race in 2023 when we took the majority for the first time in a while. That I thought was the watershed moment of turnout for an April nonpartisan race. This time, we surpassed that total. And we had a good, qualified candidate. She’s a good judge, and she’s going to be a great Supreme Court justice. But honestly, if you were in line next to her at a grocery store, you may not know who she is. This was largely on much bigger issues, and that’s how people voted.
Sargent: I want to try to bear down on what happened with working-class voters. Did you interact with some of these noncollege voters? The story of 2024, for all the reasons you already enumerated, was that nonwhite working-class voters, noncollege voters were drifting toward Trump. It’s a big problem long-term for the party. Trump did traditionally well with white noncollege voters. What were some of those voters saying in this election? Did you get a sense that there’s a way to start getting them back? What were you hearing from them?
Pocan: So first of all, I disagree a little with the premise. Let me explain why. I’m the Labor Caucus co-chair; for 30 years, I’ve been a member of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades. I’m a working-class guy, grew up in a lower-middle-class family, so this is me. It’s not just who I talk to, this is who I am. And I can tell you that a lot of people voted because of inflation, because of the high costs of gas and food and housing. It wasn’t that they went to Trump; they just wanted something different. They don’t follow politics like we do, and they just wanted to make sure that they could afford to have a family vacation or have a snowmobile that winter or a camper for the summer. So I don’t think it was a movement to Trump. It was a movement looking at the economic conditions, but now certainly Trump hasn’t done anything to show he’s fighting for them.
And even on tariffs, where I have a bit of a nuanced position.… I think you can use tariffs wisely. If someone’s dumping cheap steel in the U.S. and they’re going to hurt the industry here, it’s good to put a tariff on it so you can protect the industry and protect jobs. But when you do them wholesale, Trump’s tariffs are really taxes on everybody. People are starting to see that they’re not first on the agenda. Maybe the number one thing for Trump in November was the economy, but it’s probably his number one detriment right now because he’s not delivering on it. So I don’t think it’s so much that we lost people to Trump. I think that unfortunately it was a tough election cycle due to inflation, due to mixing up the candidate. But people at the doors are realizing that this isn’t about them. If you’re cutting health care and education and food assistance, that affects someone they know. And if you’re doing it all for a tax break for Donald Trump and Elon Musk and people in Mar-a-Lago, we don’t know a lot of people like that. I think that really was the difference.
Sargent: What were these working-class voters saying about Trump, about the Trump presidency specifically?
Pocan: They don’t feel like they’re being represented right now by what’s happening. And we get it in the calls, we get it in the emails, we get it in the conversations, we get it at the town halls. Every town hall we’ve had, we’ve had to turn people away because the number of people who want to speak out on things. For most people, politics isn’t a hobby. It may be for us and people who listen to the podcast, but for many, this is really about their lives. If they lose health insurance or their mother who’s in a nursing home is losing their health insurance through Medicaid, it impacts their family. And no one’s listening. Republicans won’t do town halls. There’s no way to get to those folks. So this was a way to get to those folks, and they delivered a message.
Sargent: I think we heard from some Wisconsin Republicans who said something along the lines of, This was really a referendum on the Wisconsin Republican Party and not on Donald Trump. I guess their first instinct in every single situation is to talk about how Trump is infallible in every single conceivable way. What was your experience? Was it a referendum on the Wisconsin Republican Party, or was it a referendum on Trump? What did you hear?
Pocan: I hope they truly believe that because that’s about the dumbest thing I’ve heard. That way, we can continue to just devastate them election after election. They had a ton of money, more than they usually do. We were outspent on outside money coming in. That had nothing to do with the Wisconsin Republican Party. Is Elon Musk a warm, lovable person that you want to have a beer with? Hell, no. That certainly didn’t help. But the end of the day, it was about what they’re seeing happen. You’re taking away programs from the middle class and people who are aspiring to be there and putting it all aside for a tax break for the wealthy. That is at the core of everything. If I was a Republican in a swing district in Wisconsin or anywhere in the country right now, I would either figure out a way to listen to my constituents better or figure out a way to get a discount card at Walmart to buy Depends—because you’re going to have to go through an awful lot of them.
Sargent: Well, it does look as if the knives are out for Musk now. Politico reports that Trump has told his inner circle that Musk will be gone soon. And while Trump is going through the motions of praising Musk, some people inside the administration are describing him as unpredictable, unmanageable, really half-cocked with his firing off all kinds of crazy things on Twitter, sharing plans to wreck federal agencies without the plans being vetted. Congressman, to what degree do you think this is Trumpworld trying to scapegoat Musk for what’s gone wrong with their tenure so quickly? What’s your reading of those inner dynamics now with insiders starting to really turn on Musk?
Pocan: As a kid, I did magic tricks—I still do magic for fun, sometimes to talk about Washington with colleagues—and there’s something called misdirection. And this is misdirection, right? They want you to think it’s all Elon Musk, not their agenda. But Elon Musk didn’t write Project 2025; a whole bunch of Trump’s funders did. That’s what they’re actually doing. This is the living embodiment of Project 2025 that we’re seeing happen. So if they can scapegoat him and put him in the shadows and still collect his money when they want it, that’s one thing—but it’s not going to work. People, again, are smarter than that.
There’s a bumper sticker I used to print for my own campaign, “If the people lead, eventually the leaders will follow.” The people are leading right now. And I think at least Democratic elected officials understand that people are upset, that we need to respond better, and that we need to share that same rage and need for urgency that they have. Republicans aren’t getting that message. So I hope they really think it’s either the Wisconsin Republican Party or Elon Musk or whatever other piece of parsley that’s on their dinner plate when it’s that steak or the potatoes or the asparagus—something major that’s wrong—and they’re just going to ignore it.
Sargent: A new Marquette Law School national poll out today underscores what you’re saying. It found 58 percent of Americans disapprove of how Musk is handling the Department of Government Efficiency; 60 percent view Musk unfavorably. The poll is also very rough for Trump. His approval is down to 46 percent with 54 percent disapproving. His approval among independents is 32 percent, and 58 percent say Trump’s tariffs will hurt the economy and that Trump’s policies will drive up prices. There you have it. It’s not just Musk, it’s Trump; but those things are all connected, aren’t they?
Pocan: Absolutely. And people really do get stuff like this. They follow it closely. This is affecting people personally. And they’re not going to be able to just say, Elon Musk is leaving, therefore it’s over. As long as they continue to put this agenda forward, they’re going to have to answer to these things. And if they’re going to hide from having town halls and not have conversations with people, again, it doesn’t pass the smell test. Like I said, I grew up in a lower middle-class family, about as everyman as you can get. If something doesn’t pass the smell test, it doesn’t pass the smell test. And in this case, if they really had something good they were promoting, they would want to talk about it. The fact that they don’t just doesn’t make people believe what they’re saying. And simply saying, Elon Musk is gone, now it’s different.… They’re still going to fire people. They’re still going to implement Project 2025. And as long as they move forward with that tax cut and the cutting of programs to fund it, it’s not going to pass.
Sargent: It’s interesting because the tax cut people forget this, but the first Trump tax cut that he signed during his first term, which was an enormous giveaway to the wealthy and corporations, was a very big factor in the 2018 midterms. Do you see a dynamic like that shaping up now?
Pocan: Oh, yeah. I think many of these people in swing districts, or in a district where you won by single digits or even up to 10 percent, would be nervous when looking at the swings in Florida and at the Wisconsin results. This is not a good environment. When Trump did his tax bill the first time he was president, he was at his lowest favorability of 35 percent. He dropped that far. He’s not there yet, but he will be if he passes the cuts to these programs that people expect. I’m also guessing some of the tariff will have funny money to supposedly pay for the tax cut bill, so then he’ll get wise and maybe not cut all the programs. But until they get there, this is a very unpopular agenda right now.
Sargent: I want to ask you about Democrats as well, Congressman. The illegalities and all the heinous policies that Trump is pursuing right now: We’re seeing foreign students essentially kidnapped off the streets; we’re seeing Venezuelans get deported under the Alien Enemies Act ludicrously to a gulag in El Salvador. There’s lawlessness all over the place. They’re basically shutting down whole agencies without congressional approval, like USAID for instance. Could the Democratic Party be doing more? Are you satisfied with what the Democratic Party is doing right now to mount a stand against the lawlessness and betrayal?
Pocan: I think I’m seeing a lot more happen. On the House side, I think there’s at least 20 or 30 members doing what I’m doing now: going into Republican districts and having town halls. It’s kind of in your face, but it’s working. It shows that they’re disingenuous, and it gets right to the core of what’s going on. And in the Senate, Cory Booker this week honestly showed that there’s a pulse somewhere there. The biggest complaint I think that’s fair with Chuck Schumer wasn’t so much about the substance of what he did—I think if you had a panel of 12 progressives, it might’ve been a 9–3 vote on which way to go on that C.R.—but rather the style. If you didn’t show the fight.… That’s what he didn’t do. He said he was going to fight, and instantly it looked like it was a rollover, a capitulation. That was what people got upset about. So seeing Cory Booker show that stamina on the floor and use his time that way, having members do these town halls like the one we’re planning in a neighboring state right now for during the April break—the more we do things like that, the more we’re matching the level of intensity that the public has. And that’s going to be helpful.
I think the big question I hear a lot from leadership, and I don’t have an answer for this right now.… The number one issue for Trump in November was the economy, and the number one thing that’s hurting him right now is the economy, right? And they don’t want to lose focus on that because that is how people vote. So there’s a lot of shiny objects, and we try to ignore most of them. Tax bill, I think, is a really big one worth talking about, but [the leadership is] trying to balance it with keeping the focus on why he won and why he can lose while having all these conversations. And maybe that’s why they get paid the not-so-big bucks to be in leadership: to figure that out.
Sargent: It sounds like there’s still some dissatisfaction with Senate Democrats on the House side. Are you unsatisfied with Chuck Schumer’s tenure so far, and how Senate Democrats are handling all these lawless acts by Trump?
Pocan: No. I think what Cory Booker did was smart. He did show that there’s fight there. And hopefully that gets other people to realize that they don’t all have to wait for leadership to do something; they can take it on themselves. I think Chris Murphy’s been doing quite a bit of this. Bernie clearly has been going around the country doing this. We can do this without having to get permission. And I’ve never really gotten permission when I’ve done town halls in other districts, and yet it’s one of the most popular things that I do back home because people see I’m at their level of rage and being pissed off and doing something about it. So the more people who do that, the more we’re matching where the public’s at, the more synergy we have then to be able to fight back and win.
And don’t forget: On lawsuits is where we’re having our biggest victories. Over 50 lawsuits, we’ve had adjudications work our way, including by Trump-appointed judges. So I tell people to support the groups that are doing the litigation right now, and help us with communication. Get the disinformation countered out there, and make sure that we’re sharing other bits of information to win this fight.
