Wednesday: Trump Crashed the Knicks Party and the Left Wants the Senate Back

Rush Lindell: Welcome back to the Rush Lindell Show. We have got a show today. Reagan: Rush, honestly, where do we even start? Rush Lindell: Oh, I know exactly where. Madison Square Garden, Monday night. The President of the United States walks into a Knicks game, becomes the first sitting president to attend an NBA Finals, Reagan: Yeah. Rush Lindell: and the crowd greets him with a wall of boos. Reagan: And then the Knicks lost. Rush Lindell: And then the Knicks lost. James Dolan's night, everybody. We'll get into that. Plus, AOC had thoughts. The new mayor had thoughts. New York is a whole ecosystem right now. Reagan: And speaking of the new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, Self-described Democratic Socialist, was at 1% in polls not that long ago. Now he's the mayor of New York City. Rush Lindell: So here's the question nobody wants to answer. Is that a New York oddity or is it a preview? Reagan: That's exactly the debate, and I want to actually dig into it honestly. Because the easy answer for conservatives is New York anomaly, move on. I'm not sure that's right. Rush Lindell: You know what nobody wants to say? The 2026 map is genuinely dangerous for us. We're going to say it. Reagan: Cory Booker is out there barnstorming the country with $22 million. His opponent has negative cash on hand. That's not a metaphor. Rush Lindell: Negative, as in they owe money. Reagan: As in they owe money. We'll walk through the four states that could flip the Senate, including one match. A match up in Texas that should not be competitive. Rush Lindell: But here's the thing: we're not here to panic; we're here to think clearly. That's how you actually win. Reagan: That's the whole point. Rush Lindell: All right, let's get into it: Game Three, Trump, MSG, the booze heard round New York City, right after this. Before we dive in, a quick reminder: we love hearing from you. If you have questions or topics you'd like us to cover, head to the link in the description and submit your question. We read every single one. So here's what's going on Monday night, Madison Square Garden, Game three of the NBA Finals and walking into the building the first sitting President to ever attend an NBA Finals game, Donald Trump, guest of Knicks owner James Dolan, up in the suite, Reagan: Wow! Rush Lindell: first time in American history. Reagan: Historic, no question-and New York let him know exactly how they felt. Rush Lindell: They serenaded him during the National Anthem jumbotron hits. Crowd Sees the President's Thunderous Boos!" According to ESPN, the first sitting President at a Finals game. According to Trump afterward, it was "mostly cheers" and "very enthusiastic." Reagan: He said that. Rush Lindell: He said that. The NBA, he told reporters, is a little left wing but great, classic. The man hears boos and files them under standing ovation. Reagan: Look, the boos were real, but here's the thing: the security footprint The footprint was also a genuine problem for regular fans: two-hour waits to get inside, the outdoor watch parties canceled entirely. Rush Lindell: And that's where AOC comes in with the best line of the week. She called Trump's attendance, I want you to hear this, a vibe killer. On Instagram, a sitting congresswoman, vibe killer. Reagan: I mean, she's not wrong on the logistics. Rush Lindell: Reagan. She posted it before the game. She said the MSG watch party's out. These outside were getting shut down; and, I'm quoting the Hill here, sometimes the accommodations required for the security just for you to show up are not worth shutting down for other people. I agree with AOC—Fair's time for everything. Reagan: Mark the calendar! Rush Lindell: But then there's Mayor Zohran Mamdani—Fortune covered his statement—he said, quote, 'We're excited to welcome anyone and everyone who's rooting for the Knicks. Next—sounds gracious—read it again. Reagan: It's a knife wrapped in a bow. He's welcoming Trump only to the extent that Trump is rooting for New York. He's not welcoming the President; he's welcoming a fan, conditionally. Rush Lindell: Exactly right; and that tells you something about this guy. So who is Zohran Mamdani? And what does a self-described socialist mayor welcoming the President like that say about where New York's politics actually are? Speaker 3: R Rush Lindell: So the man doing the welcoming is Zohran Mamdani, and if you don't know who that is, you need to. Reagan: He beat Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary, then beat him again in the general, a Democratic Socialist who was polling at one percent a year before winning the biggest mayoral race in the country. Rush Lindell: One percent to running New York City. That's not a comeback story. That's a warning shot. Reagan: And his welcome anyone rooting for the Knicks line? Fine, genuinely clever, crunches on the surface, pointed underneath," he bought a standing room ticket for around one thousand dollars himself (according to Fortune), showed up as a fan, stole the narrative. Rush Lindell: That's a political move dressed as sportsmanship, and it worked. Reagan: It absolutely worked, but here's where I push back on the larger story people want to tell about it: Mamdani wins New York City, where registered Democrats outnumber Speaker 4: Republicans six to one. Reagan: Rats outnumber Republicans by something like five to one. Political scientists have already flagged that his blueprint doesn't translate to Ohio or Iowa. Rush Lindell: Hold on, hold on-I hear that argument every time the left wins somewhere big. Oh, it's just New York. But the energy is real-he knocked off Cuomo, that name was supposed to be untouchable. Reagan: The energy is real in New York; I'm not dismissing the energy. I'm saying there's a difference. The difference between winning Brooklyn and winning a Senate seat in North Carolina, free city buses and rent freezes don't play the same everywhere. Rush Lindell: Fair. Reagan: Mm-hmm. Rush Lindell: So the question is, is Mom Donnie a preview of where the Democratic Party goes nationally in twenty twenty six, or is he the New York anomaly they point to while running someone completely different in the swing states? Reagan: That's exactly the tension. The activist left wants him to be the model. The Senate strategists are probably hoping nobody looks too closely. Rush Lindell: And that tension is about to get a lot louder. Speaking of Democrats with national ambitions, Cory Booker has been on a different kind of tour. Reagan: A very long one. Rush Lindell: Now flip that frame on its head; Mamdani wins New York on Socialist energy, but there's a guy touring the country right now who thinks that same energy can flip the entire Senate: Cory Booker. The Speechmaker, twenty-five hours on the Senate floor last March, breaks Strom Thurmond's record and the donations just pour in. Reagan: The fundraising numbers are real, Rush. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Booker pulled over $22 million cash on hand, second highest among all Senate candidates, and roughly 80 percent of those donations were $25 or less, 200,000 small-dollar donors. That model actually worked. works. Rush Lindell: And here's the thing-his Republican opponent, Justin Murphy, won his primary with negative twenty four dollars on hand-negative twenty four dollars! I've lost more than that in a couch cushion. Reagan: I mean, New Jersey hasn't sent a Republican to the Senate since nineteen seventy two. That race is not the story. Rush Lindell: Exactly right: the Booker race is a foregone conclusion; his value is as a national surrogate; prediction markets put his re-election somewhere around ninety Speaker 4: nine. Rush Lindell: About ninety five per cent. The question is whether he can move the needle somewhere that actually matters. Reagan: And that's where I pump the brakes a little. I get why people believe a celebrity surrogate shifts votes, but the states Democrats actually need-Ohio, North Carolina, Maine-those aren't New Jersey. A twenty five hour Senate speech lands differently in Akron than it does in Newark. Rush Lindell: Shocker: a fund-raising megaphone doesn't automatically automatically become a vote machine-you know what nobody wants to say-there is a difference between building a national donor email list and actually winning Trump-won states. Reagan: That said, the money is real, and it moves to other races. That's his actual job here, not winning New Jersey: using that twenty two million dollar war chest as a transfer mechanism to candidates who need it. Rush Lindell: So the Booker Roadshow is worth watching, just not for the reasons his supporters think. Think. The real test is the map itself, and that map is where we're going next, because some of those Senate targets are a lot more vulnerable than Republicans want to admit. So the money matters if the map actually has targets. Let's count them. Reagan: Four seats: that's the number Democrats need for a majority. According to NPR's race-by-race breakdown, North Carolina is their best shot: open seat, Roy Cooper on the ballot. NPR rates it Lean D right now. Rush Lindell: Roy Cooper is a good get. Reagan: Mm-hmm. Rush Lindell: Former governor, won statewide twice, hard to argue otherwise. Reagan: Then Ohio. Sherrod Brown is back running against... Against appointed Senator Jon Husted, Wikipedia's 2026 Senate elections page has that as a toss-up. Rush Lindell: Sherrod Brown lost Ohio by four in 2024, and Democrats brought him back. That is either genius or stubbornness. I haven't decided. Reagan: Probably both: Maine is toss up; Collins defending a state Harris won by seven points; and Alaska, per NPR, is the majority maker; whoever wins that one likely controls the chamber. Rush Lindell: Okay, and then there's Texas, which nobody was supposed to say out loud. Reagan: Right: Talarico versus Ken Paxton. Democrats got exactly the match up they wanted. According to Ballotpedia, Paxton beat John Cornyn in the runoff. off with about sixty four percent, and Talarico has outraised him massively-forty million dollars to Paxton's seven point six million dollars as of May. Rush Lindell: Paxton called him Talarico. Talarico responded that he's been eating barbecue since before Ken Paxton's first indictment. I mean, that's a good line. Reagan: It is a good line, and here's what I won't pretend otherwise: the DSCC's own numbers show Democrats That's overperformed 2024 margins by an average of 17 points across five 2025 special elections. Generic ballot has them up six. That's a real environment. Rush Lindell: Yes, it is. You know what nobody wants to say? The GOP needs to take this seriously. Structural advantages don't survive a 17-point environment shift. Reagan: That said, the path is still narrow. They have to run the table on all... on offense while holding Georgia and Michigan on defense. One slip and the map collapses. Rush Lindell: Here's the question, though: if the environment is this good, and the candidate recruitment broke their way in multiple states, why is the Democratic messaging meeting still six consultants arguing about which slogan to run with? All right, so the map is brutal for Republicans. Favorable environment, contested states, the whole thing. And yet the Democrats cannot decide what they're actually running on. Reagan: I mean, Newsweek literally ran a piece recently with the headline, Democrats Still Don't Know What Their Message Is, a party framing its own platform. Rush Lindell: Six consultants, four slogans, three focus groups, zero answer for why they lost working class voters in the first place. I want you to picture that meeting. Reagan: Okay, but to be fair, they do have some message now. Affordability, health care costs, housing. That's more coherent than pure resistance. Rush Lindell: Sure. And also democracy and also tariffs and also Booker's thing, which chaos, corruption and cruelty, according to Newsweek, is literally 2018 resistance language recycled for 2026. Reagan: Right, and here's where I push back on that frame. That slogan motivates the base, but Newsweek quoted a strategist saying voters don't reward anti-Trump posturing, they reward parties that make their lives feel more secure. That's a real tension. Rush Lindell: It is a real tension. And get this: Booker's own campaign sent out two messages in one week, chaos, corruption and cruelty, and then in the very next breath, are you better off than you were in January 2025? Which one is it? Resistance theater or kitchen table economics? Reagan: They're not mutually exclusive, technically. Rush Lindell: Technically—that's the word—technically not exclusive—that's consultant speak for we have no Reagan: idea. You see, look, the honest reader's this; a party running six different frames isn't messaging, it's hoping one sticks; and against a genuinely bad environment for Republicans that might actually work, which is almost more alarming. Rush Lindell: Exactly right-incoherent message, favorable map-so what happened? What happens when conservatives just assume it won't be enough? That's the question I want to sit with. Reagan: And that's precisely what we need to talk about next, because dismissing and disorganized opponent is how you wake up on November 4th asking what happened. Rush Lindell: So here's what gets me: the instinct on the right is to look at Democratic chaos, laugh at the messaging malpractice, and assume Assume disorganization equals defeat. We did that in 2017. We did it in 2018. How'd that work out? Reagan: Exactly. Dismissing their energy as performative is intellectually lazy. Booker's tour, the candidate recruitment in Texas and Iowa, the small dollar donor machine, those are signals worth taking seriously. Rush Lindell: Not fake signals. Reagan: Knowing your opponent's strengths is not a concession. It's what serious people do before an election. The conservative case for holding the Senate requires better candidates. It's in a sharper economic message: confidence built on dismissal is not a strategy. Rush Lindell: It's a feeling. Feelings lose Senate races. Reagan: They do. Look, the environment is the environment. Approval in the high 30s, a war 53% of Americans oppose per YouGov, and consumers who say the economy is getting worse by a two-to-one margin, according to Brookings. You can't mock your way past those numbers. Rush Lindell: Here's the thing, and I mean this. The right answer is not... Not panic. It's not hand-wringing. It's sobriety. You have to look at what's actually in front of you. Reagan: And what's in front of Republicans is a map that leans their way on paper, but a climate that doesn't. The party that takes that seriously has a chance. Rush Lindell: The party that doesn't deserves what it gets. So where should listeners actually be watching? We'll tell you exactly which races to track. Speaker 3: So here's what to watch: not the noise, the signal. Reagan: Maine and North Carolina-those are your two early reads. Speaker 3: Exactly. Maine is Susan Collins against a political newcomer, Platner, backed by Bernie Sanders. Harris won that state by seven points. If Collins holds, Democrats have a ceiling problem. Reagan: And North Carolina is the open seat. Thom Tillis retiring, Roy Cooper running for Democrats-Trump won it by a single digit margin. That race tells you whether the map is expanding or staying tight. Speaker 3: Two races, Reagan: Uh-huh. Speaker 3: two answers. You don't need a spreadsheet. Reagan: The spreadsheet helps, but fair point. Speaker 3: Now here's the other thing I want you watching: Cory Booker's travel schedule. Seriously. Reagan: If he's landing in Ohio and Iowa, the DSCC has made a decision: real resources, real targets. Speaker 3: Right. Surrogates don't fly commercial to states nobody thinks are competitive. When the speechmaker shows up somewhere unexpected, that's the tell. Reagan: It's an honest signal. The money follows the belief. Speaker 3: Here's what it comes down to. You want to know if this is a wave or a ripple. Don't watch the polls in June. Watch where the surrogates are in September. Reagan: And watch the candidate quality. NPR has been tracking that the North Carolina race hinges on whether Republicans nominate someone who can win a purple state. Not just a primary, Speaker 3: Novel concept. Reagan: right? Turns out voters outside your base exist. Speaker 3: Look, I'll say it plainly: The environment we laid out today is not friendly to the party in power. Maine, North Carolina, the Booker travel map, those are your gauges. Watch them. Reagan: And stay clear-eyed. That's the whole point. Speaker 3: All right, that's a wrap on today's episode. Trump at MSG, Mamdani going from 1% to running New York City, Cory Booker barnstorming the country on $22 million, and Reagan walking us through the four Senate seats that could flip the whole chamber. Reagan: The through line today was simple. Dismissing your opposition because you don't like them is a losing habit. The environment is genuinely dangerous for Republicans right now. right now, and the evidence is sitting right there if you're willing to look at it. Speaker 3: ESPN confirmed it: first sitting president in an NBA Finals game. The crowd had, let's say, thoughts. He called it mostly cheers. We'll let you decide. Reagan: Watch Maine and North Carolina; track where Booker's travel schedule goes; those are your real time indicators. Speaker 3: If today sharpened something for you, subscribe, drop a five star review and send this to someone who needs it. New episodes every week. Every weekday. Reagan: Thanks for being here. Speaker 3: We'll see you tomorrow. Rush Lindell and Reagan signing off.