- Right now, pretty much everything
is going Republicans' way.
You had big, wipe-out elections in Virginia and New Jersey.
- Oh, what a night it was. - Didn't win in New Jersey,
but it was a huge shift in the vote total.
Very low approval ratings for President Biden right now.
He's dipped into the 30s in a number of national polls.
You have real kitchen-table issues that are hitting voters
that are being blamed now on Democrats.
- A lot of Republicans would say it's Trump's party.
- When's the last time you spoke to Donald Trump?
- Uh, this morning. - The base, a lot of members,
if you listen to, do see him as the leader of their party.
- Wow, thank you very much, everybody.
- He remains the biggest voice in the party.
He is continuing to set the agenda in the party.
Everyone in the party is sort of operating under his shadow
or reacting to him.
He continues to pick fights with other Republicans.
- It's a very tenuous situation, with Trump, you know,
no longer in office but still very powerful and influential.
McConnell is in office, able to raise money,
able to exert his will in the Senate
because of the filibuster, for example.
After the election, on December 15,
McConnell announced on the Senate floor that.
- The electoral college has spoken.
So today, I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden.
- And then McConnell had a very contentious phone
call with Trump
in which he basically told the President he lost the election.
- Mitch McConnell should have challenged that election,
because even back then,
we had plenty of material to challenge that election.
He should have challenged the election.
- Both of them told me in interviews
that they haven't talked since then.
And Trump has called for McConnell to be ousted
as the Senate Republican leader.
- He has demonstrated that he can increase
turnout for Republican candidates.
He can bring people into the political process
that Republicans didn't have access to before.
If you look at the Virginia election results.
- We won this day!
- Terry McAuliffe got more votes than any Democrat
in the history of that state and lost pretty handily.
And a lot of that is because there was massive turnout
in rural areas of the state.
Youngkin had a real challenge.
He was going into a state, Virginia,
that has really been voting blue in recent years.
The way he did it was he didn't talk about President Trump.
He didn't engage in the sort of culture-war stuff
that former President Trump was engaged in.
And the key part of all that was he did it
with Trump's permission.
There were conversations he was having during the campaign
with former President Trump explaining his strategy,
explaining why he wasn't inviting
President Trump to Virginia
to campaign with him, and Trump was okay with it.
Trump felt like they had a connection.
Businesspeople. He respected Youngkin.
He felt like Youngkin was running on his policy platform.
He felt like he was being respected by Youngkin,
and so he never made waves.
He wanted the win. - I did ask him about 2024,
and he said that essentially he can't declare now,
because there's various campaign rules.
It would become too complicated.
Certainly at rallies and conversations,
he's made it seem like he's running.
You know, you can't absolutely be certain with Trump,
but he's certainly made all of the signals as if he will.
And as soon as he says, "I'm not,"
his power would immediately diminish.
So it's also in his interest in the short-term
to leave the impression that he will run.
- There's enormous optimism when it comes to the House.
It's a five-seat margin right now.
Redistricting is going to give Republicans an advantage,
and you have all these historical crosswinds
that are going to help Republicans.
There's very few Democrats I talk to now
who think there's much chance of holding onto the House.
- Here we are, 10 months or so after the insurrection,
10 months after the inauguration of Joe Biden,
and Trump is still the star of his party.
- His currency, in my eye, I think is very good.
I think he feels like he's in a very strong position
to return to power if that's, you know, what he chooses to do.
- And we will make America great again!
- To continue to maintain his position
in the Republican party,
we reported that in late August, he was talking to aides about
maybe just announcing for president right then.
I think his mind is also that if he can come out
of the midterms with a Republican win,
he can then take credit for it in a way that would help him
going forward into the 2024 presidential election.