It’s been building for weeks, but after this week’s election results, Republican infighting has officially hit a fever pitch.

It’s like any anxious period in life, the kind where you don’t even realize something big is coming until you look back on it in hindsight. Over the past two weeks conservative movement has quietly been eating itself alive with a fight that, on the surface, was about Tucker Carlson’s podcast interview with Nick Fuentes. But with this issue finally breaking containment after Tuesday, well, let’s be honest — this wasn’t really about that. It’s about a party that knows, deep down, Donald Trump won’t be on the ballot ever again, and they’re worried they have no idea what to do next.

This wasn’t just any dumb online spat. Tucker Carlson, once the crown jewel of Fox News, now runs his own operation, and his guest list has been getting increasingly controversial. Nick Fuentes certainly falls into that category; he’s the dead center of outright racism and anti-Semitism, and he’s not particularly quiet about it. And yet, here he is, being given a platform by Carlson.

Now, I don’t think this was surprising. Tucker once interviewed the president of Iran, after all. No, here, the outrage was less about the specifics and more about what it revealed. The conservative world is split between those who want to double down on the bomb-throwing populism and those who would very much prefer a nice, quiet, electable figure in a navy blazer.

And look, the fear is justified. When Trump isn’t on the ballot, Republican turnout tanks. Nobody has yet figured out how to get those same voters off their couches and into a polling booth. JD Vance is trying to play crown prince to the MAGA throne, but we still don’t know if he’s got the juice. And sure, someone like Marco Rubio might look good on paper, but 2016 already taught us what happens when you try to play establishment kingmaker in a populist uprising. Meanwhile, the fringes of the movement are getting louder. The Fuentes crowd isn’t interested in compromise — they want the whole thing, and they’ll torch the place if they don’t get it.

The result? A Republican Party that’s stuck between an ever-unpredictable Trump and a base that only shows up for him. A coalition that used to rely on reliable suburban voters now hopes that low-propensity working-class Americans will carry the load. That’s not a gamble you want to be making blindly. The anxiety isn’t just about who says what on a podcast — it’s existential. Who inherits this movement, and can they actually win anything with it?

Trump isn’t going to unite anybody. He’ll back whoever flatters him most and ditch them the second they falter. There’s no Mar-a-Lago summit where everyone hugs it out and agrees on a future. There’s just this slow-motion car crash of conflicting ambitions, bad blood, and rising panic. And, yes, it might just get worse before it gets better.

Chapters

00:00:00 - Intro

00:02:59 - Republican Problems

00:14:01 - Interview with Dave Levinthal

00:26:21 - Update

00:27:23 - Shutdown Deal?

00:29:41 - Maybe Not...

00:30:24 - Unless... Filibuster Nuke?

00:33:23 - Interview with Dave Levinthal (con’t)

00:58:34 - Wrap-up

Well, what a night that was.

The 2025 off-year election came and went, and I don’t think anybody on the Republican side was quite ready for how hard it hit. I expected Virginia to go blue — I didn’t expect it to be a total decimation. Abigail Spanberger didn’t just win, she boat-raced it, besting Winsome Earle-Seares by a whopping 14 points. That momentum was even enough to carry Jay Jones, dogged by scandal after scandal, to a smaller (but no less impressive) six-point win. That’s despite having an opponent with a compelling ad campaign and a story that, in a different climate, might have turned heads. It didn’t matter. The wave swallows all.

What stands out to me the most is how broad this Democratic surge really was. In New Jersey, Mikie Sherrill handed Jack Ciattarelli a 13-point loss, completely rewriting the expectations I had going in. I thought if Republicans were going to find any traction, it would be in the Garden State. It wasn’t. In Latino-heavy areas like Passaic, New Jersey — areas that just barely swung for Trump in 2024 after 2010s results in the D+50 space — saw a reversion back to near-2020 Democratic margins. Republicans had a shot to build a new working-class coalition in those towns, and right now, it looks like they blew it.

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The real story of the night, though, was New York City. Zohran Mamdani didn’t just win. He crushed. He did it with style, focus, and an eye for narrative. His campaign was slick, and his messaging was clear. He connected with voters who felt left behind — people priced out of housing, worried about jobs, unsure about their future. Mamdani was speaking directly to them. He predicted headlines, embraced viral moments, and even handled scrutiny around some of the more potentially-controversial moments of his name with grace and wit. His vote totals show him cracking 50 percent, a number that Cuomo and Sliwa together couldn’t touch. It’s an out-and-out victory for a campaign that, initially, seemed like a pipe dream for the left.

What we’re seeing now is a Democratic Party that knows how to win and a Republican Party still figuring out how to respond. And with the 2026 midterms now less than a year away, it’s only going to get crazier.

Chapters

00:00 - Intro

01:30 - Virginia

04:50 - New Jersery

09:37 - Prop 50 in California

11:36 - Mamdani in NYC

18:51 - Wrap-up

I’ve seen my fair share of shutdowns over the years. Loud ones, quiet ones, dumb ones, strategic ones. But this one? This is just sad.

I spent the day on Capitol Hill talking to anyone who would meet with me, bouncing between offices, looking to understand how close we are to any kind of resolution, and the mood is absolutely lifeless. Nobody knows what they want, and nobody’s talking to each other. The word I keep hearing is “aimless,” and that’s exactly what it feels like to be here.

I had the opportunity to attend Speaker Mike Johnson’s press conference earlier today, and what stuck out to me was just how defensive it was. Republicans seem genuinely irritated that Democrats have managed to set the tone on this one, especially with their own base. Johnson spent most of his time pushing back against “false narratives,” but in doing so, he basically confirmed that the narratives are working. And I’ll be honest — if I were him, I don’t know that I would’ve spent that much time sounding frustrated.

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What did break through, though, was something more interesting. A change in who the Republicans are pointing fingers at. It used to be Schumer and AOC. But now, it’s Zohran Mamdani, and this — Election Eve 2025 — was the day it shifted. You’re going to hear his name a lot more from Republicans. According to them, he’s now the face of the Democratic Party, at least the one pushing for this shutdown. That’s a big change, and it tells you where they think the real energy on the left is coming from.

This all traces back to March, when Schumer passed a clean CR and got torched for it by the left flank. The idea now is that Schumer and Jeffries are shutting things down not because they want to, but because they’re scared of losing their jobs. That’s the same vibe I got from conversations on the Hill — they’re being pushed around, and they don’t have the political juice to stop it.

Like I said… I’ve seen dumb shutdowns before. But even dumb ones usually make sense if you squint. This one doesn’t. It’s got no internal logic. The Democrats don’t want to own it. The Republicans are scared of their shadows. The base isn’t fully convinced by either side. And while everyone blames everyone else, regular folks — the people running out of ways to pay for groceries, unsure of whether they can afford insurance next year — are the ones dealing with the fallout.

Chapters

00:00 - Intro

01:48 - Shutdown

09:10 - Update

09:42- Nancy Pelosi

10:49- Supreme Court IEEPA Case

12:00 - Thomas Massie

12:49 - 2025 Polls

16:42 - Interview with Andrew Heaton

33:08 - Wrap-up