Here & Now

Charlie Sykes on Donald Trump and Republican Voters in 2024

Frederica Freyberg:
Presidential candidate Donald Trump beat his last Republican challenger standing in the New Hampshire primary this week. Nikki Haley vows to continue her campaign, but where are we with the presidential contest? We turn to political commentator, Charlie Sykes, who knows Wisconsin politics as former host of a powerful conservative talk radio show out of Milwaukee for more than 20 years and the cofounder of The Bulwark Podcast. We should note he’s also a well-known never-Trumper. Charlie, thanks very much for being here.

Charlie Sykes:
Good to be back with you.

Frederica Freyberg:
So not withstanding what Nikki Haley is saying, is it a foregone conclusion that the Republican primary race is over and the general election race between Donald Trump and Joe Biden is on?

Charlie Sykes:
I think you have to assume that that’s the case. This is Donald Trump’s party. I think that that’s been evident for some time, and I think that the fact that so many elected Republicans are coalescing around him so quickly is an indication that they’re expecting a coronation this summer here in Milwaukee.

Frederica Freyberg:
What do you make of that?

Charlie Sykes:
Well, it is extraordinary how quickly the Republican Party has capitulated to Donald Trump once again. I mean, think about all of the off-ramps they could have taken. They could have taken off-ramps after he was defeated. They certainly could have taken off-ramps after January 6th, after the indictments, and yet at each turn, there’s been a failure of will. There’s been a failure to coalesce around somebody else, and here we are, three years after the attempted overthrow of the free and fair elections of 2020, and Donald Trump is poised to win the Republican nomination despite the fact that he is facing more than 90 felony charges. A case stemming from a sexual assault of a woman back in the 1990s and fraud cases in New York, and yet the Republican Party is not blinking at the prospect of running under his banner.

Frederica Freyberg:
No, in fact, experts have told us that the criminal charges against Donald Trump make him more popular among his base, not less. What is happening?

Charlie Sykes:
Well, I think two things are happening. I mean, number one, clearly the Republican Party, the base, has rallied around him. He has effectively played the victim card. He has effectively made the case that he is being targeted. But at the same time, it is hard to imagine that as the criminal charges unfold over the next year, that there are going to be very many swing voters who might have abandoned him in 2020 who are going to say, you know, this time around, we think we’re going to go with him. So I think there’s two narratives that I think are parallel at the same time. Number one, he is dominant in the Republican Party, but I think that you’re also seeing that he’s vulnerable in a general election. He’s vulnerable among moderates, among soft Republicans and among independents, and I think you saw that in both Iowa and New Hampshire and I think that that’s going to be — that that’s going to be more evident as we go through the year.

Frederica Freyberg:
How do you think those dynamics play with the Wisconsin electorate?

Charlie Sykes:
Well, in Wisconsin, everything is on a knife’s edge. These elections have been decided by 20,000 votes. And Donald Trump lost in 2020. Largely because he was — he didn’t do as well as he needed to do in the suburbs. You had a massive Democratic turnout, but you also had a number of Republicans, quite a few Republicans, who voted for Republican candidates for the state Legislature and for Congress but did not vote for Donald Trump. Now, I don’t know whether they voted for Joe Biden, but there was clearly an undervote, and I think that — there’s two big questions about Wisconsin. Number one, will Democrats be able to once again be able to have the enthusiasm to have a massive turnout, particularly in Dane County and, number two is Donald Trump going to continue to underperform in the WOW counties: Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington Counties. And I suspect that he probably will. But again, every election in Wisconsin is close and this one probably will be as well.

Frederica Freyberg:
So you were talking about soft Republicans and independents. Do you think they’ll vote for Joe Biden?

Charlie Sykes:
I don’t know at this point, but I think that there is — there’s evidence, there’s a lot of those voters that are just not going to vote for Donald Trump. The MAGA base is going to stick with him, there’s no question about it. I think the hard-core Republican voters are going to turn out. Nothing is going to continue to change there, but I think that there is a segment of the electorate that may not agree with Joe Biden’s policies, may have concerns about his age, may have concerns about where he’s taking the country, but also recognize, as Liz Cheney has said, only one of the candidates on the ballot is going to shred the constitution, and so the question is, what will they prioritize? Will they prioritize certainly ideological single issues or will they step back and say we cannot have a convicted felon in the White House. We cannot have a seditionist. We cannot have somebody who is as erratic as Donald Trump return to the presidency.

Frederica Freyberg:
Or maybe people just stay home. Charlie Sykes, thanks very much. Thank you.

Charlie Sykes:
Thank you.