Rick Rosner On, 48: 2026 U.S. Midterms, Trump, and MAGA Divisions
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Personal SubStack
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2026/11/04
Scott Douglas Jacobsen interviews Rick Rosner on the 2026 U.S. midterms, Trump’s approval ratings, voter turnout, and Democratic prospects. Rosner discusses election fraud allegations, minimum wage legislation, gun safety proposals, prominent Democratic candidates, and divisions within MAGA, explaining his support for Republicans who have broken with Trump despite political disagreements.
Interview recorded on November 3, 2026.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Election time, midterms, a very important time.
Rick Rosner: Today’s Election Day. It is noon Pacific, Tuesday, November 3, in America. The first polls close soon. In America, people turn out to vote in presidential elections. The last couple of presidential elections have had more than 150 million votes cast.
The midterms are lower. No presidents are on the ballot. The last midterm was about 112 million; the midterm before that was 120 million. So they’re 20% to 30% below. But this time around, I think we should easily break the all-time record for midterm turnout. I put money on it.
Jacobsen: Trump’s approval is very low.
Rosner: His approval, if you go off Nate Silver, is at 38%. If you go off RealClearPolitics, it’s at 39%.
People are pissed. He doesn’t look good. He’s been saying a lot of bullshit.
He held his final press appearance before Election Day yesterday at the reflecting pool between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. He joked about calling it the Trump Reflecting Pool.
He spent a long time talking about the reflecting pool, which people don’t give a shit about. He could have talked about prices. He could have talked about stopping the Iran war.
Even a lot of hardcore Republicans are looking at him skeptically now.
I’ve been looking at turnout numbers throughout the day. We’re in mid-afternoon on the East Coast, noon on the West Coast. So you can get some idea.
Voting has been, I’d say, light-ish.
But that’s still in line with the midterms. You get the worst lines to vote during presidential elections because 30% more people vote.
I’ve got money on the Democrats taking back the House.
I’ve got less money on the Democrats taking the Senate because it’s more of a gamble. I’ve got money on overall voter turnout.
The pre-election nonsense is over, and now everybody is expecting a bunch of post-election nonsense from Trump, where, whatever bad results the Republicans get, Trump will blame them on voter fraud, even though we have insignificant levels of fraud.
In Nevada, federal officials identified 185 registered voters as suspected noncitizens. State officials checked them, and all 185 were citizens. Everybody checked out as legit.
It’s a bunch of bullshit about voter fraud. But that will be loudly yelled about if the results are as bad as people think they will be for the Republicans.
There’s also the lame-duck period, with a Republican House and a Republican Senate before the new Congress takes office in January. I expect them to try to pull some last-ditch, last-minute bullshit to reduce the power of an incoming Democratic House.
If the Democrats take the House, in January they’ll be holding a bunch of hearings into the corruption of the past two years and perhaps voting for things like minimum wage, with Trump stonewalling them. The federal minimum wage in the U.S., $7.25 an hour, hasn’t been raised since 2009.
A lot of other people have their salaries pegged to the minimum wage: minimum wage plus 10%, plus 20%.
The Dems need to show that they’re doing something for Americans. They should at least pass in the House a measure to raise the minimum wage. If it passes the Senate too, let Trump veto it.
But let it be on Trump instead of on the Democrats. If you think a little bit, you can come up with a bunch of stuff Americans would be okay with.
You could do this: every time you buy a new gun, it has to come with a gun lock. There are these very inexpensive biometric gun locks. You use an enrolled fingerprint to unlock and remove them. You can register other people’s fingerprints too. Once the lock is off, it doesn’t control who can fire the gun.
Compared to the price of a gun, they’re not very expensive. Some are under a hundred bucks.
You can pass legislation that says that every time a gun is sold, it has to include a biometric lock. The owner doesn’t have to use it. But the owner has it in the same box that the gun came in, and they can use it.
I think something like that could certainly pass the House.
The Senate’s trickier. Most legislation can be blocked by a filibuster, and ending that debate takes 60 votes in a full Senate. Final passage takes a simple majority.
Hardcore gun nuts would say, “Well, okay, it’s not gun control, but you’re giving us something we don’t want. We don’t like that.”
Democrats have to do a bunch of stuff Americans approve of. Will the shit pass? I don’t know. But it’ll be up to Trump to shoot it down.
Jacobsen: How liked are the Democrats compared to the Republicans right now?
Rosner: They’re not well liked. The Republicans are loathed. Congress is loathed. The Democrats are part of that. Nobody likes the Democrats either.
They’re liked slightly more than the Republicans. The past few elections, when people voted for Biden, Biden was not an exciting candidate. They were mostly voting against Trump.
In the 2018 midterms, they were mostly voting against the Republicans and Trump. This time around, there are some good individual candidates who excite people. Jon Ossoff, a senator out of Georgia. People really like him. They’re talking about him for president.
But, for the most part, it’s a vote of anger against how shitty Trump and the Republicans have been.
Jacobsen: Who are some of the most liked Democrats? Who are some of the most liked Republicans?
Rosner: I’d say Ossoff, as I mentioned, is maybe the most liked. Then there’s Josh Shapiro. People like him a lot.
Abdul El-Sayed is liked, but he’s polarizing. Can you guess why he’s polarizing?
Jacobsen: I guess it has something to do with which Sayed he’s on.
Rosner: He’s Muslim, but he’s also all-American. He was captain of his football team. He played lacrosse.
He’s an epidemiologist. He’s got a medical degree. He became the director of health for Detroit. He seems like a good guy.
Jacobsen: Of the MAGA crowd, there has been a substantial amount of fragmentation. People like Laura Loomer have changed some of their minds when they took a trip to Ukraine here. Others have broken away from that but been more pro-Russian, like Tucker Carlson in an earlier period.
There are other outliers who have more extreme rhetoric around women, around minorities, around the role of democratic society, like Nick Fuentes. What ex-MAGA Republican impresses you, or is liked?
Rosner: I’m a slut. I love people who have abandoned MAGA. Now I’m a Marjorie Taylor Greene fan.
She’s said a lot of crazy shit. I’m sure she still believes a ton of crazy shit, but a lot of the stuff she’s been saying, I agree with. I’ll take that as a win.
Even Loomer. Loomer is a crazy asshole. I’m not a fan of hers, but I’ll give a heart to a tweet that I agree with that comes from her. Not really from Nick Fuentes, because he’s got very Nazi-leaning stuff.
Joe Walsh is a former Republican who turned against Trump. He was a Tea Party congressman who then swung all the way the other way. He still has Republican values. There’s nothing wrong with traditional Republican values.
I’ve talked about that quote from William F. Buckley. He said a conservative is somebody who stands athwart history, that is, in the middle of the road, shouting, “Stop.”
Republicans want to go slow. They’re resistant to change. They want small government.
None of that is inherently bad. It’s just the way they’ve been doing it lately is, A, not conservative, and, B, it fucking violates all the precepts of pre-Reagan conservatism.
Liz Cheney I like. I hate most of her political stances, but she doesn’t talk about most of her political stances anymore. Those stances don’t matter because the only stance that matters is the stance for saying that Trump is a piece of shit.
Adam Kinzinger, a former congressman. Anybody who’s a former Republican, former MAGA, or even just a never-Trumper Republican.
Rick Wilson, he’s the guy who coined the phrase, “Everything Trump touches dies.” If you get entangled with Trump on anything, it will likely be to your eventual detriment. That guy is a Republican strategist.
I assume if Trump went away, he would eventually, if he still could get work being a strategist for Republicans, go back to doing that. He’d have his candidates saying shit that I would find horrible. But I love the guy right now.
Jacobsen: Thank you very much for the opportunity and your time, Rick.
Last updated May 3, 2025. These terms govern all In-Sight Publishing content—past, present, and future—and supersede any prior notices. In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons BY‑NC‑ND 4.0; © In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen 2012–Present. All trademarks, performances, databases & branding are owned by their rights holders; no use without permission. Unauthorized copying, modification, framing or public communication is prohibited. External links are not endorsed. Cookies & tracking require consent, and data processing complies with PIPEDA & GDPR; no data from children < 13 (COPPA). Content meets WCAG 2.1 AA under the Accessible Canada Act & is preserved in open archival formats with backups. Excerpts & links require full credit & hyperlink; limited quoting under fair-dealing & fair-use. All content is informational; no liability for errors or omissions: Feedback welcome, and verified errors corrected promptly. For permissions or DMCA notices, email: scott.jacobsen2025@gmail.com. Site use is governed by BC laws; content is “as‑is,” liability limited, users indemnify us; moral, performers’ & database sui generis rights reserved.
