Mark Mitchell: The USS Trump-Tanic Is Sinking Transcript — TFTC Article: https://www.tftc.io/mark-mitchell-uss-trump-tanic-sinking-2026-midterms Transcript page: https://www.tftc.io/mark-mitchell-uss-trump-tanic-sinking-2026-midterms-transcript Published: 2026-11-11 Machine transcription, lightly cleaned; may contain errors. ======================================================================== [0:36] Marty Bent: Mark Mitchell, we met towards the end of August, and it seems like a lot of what you prophesied in our last conversation came true last week. [0:45] Mark Mitchell: Basically a prophet. Yeah. I mean, but the funny thing is, is that I know from people that what I was saying out there on Twitter was all making it through the White House. And so really the big story in my opinion is like the people that know public opinion, this was not a surprise for. The problem is, is that very few people know public opinion because most of these people make money by basically lying and shilling for the establishment. And it's like, why didn't the Trump administration pivot? I think that's the entire question we should be asking ourselves. And after like the biggest electoral blowout since 1974, Trump is still not pivoting. Like, why? Americans deserve better. [1:22] Marty Bent: We're going to get amnesty for all. [1:24] Mark Mitchell: Yeah, that's a pivot. Not the right kind of pivot, but it's definitely a pivot of sorts. [1:30] Marty Bent: What was your take on JD's post on Wednesday? Because it seems like he at least had some level of introspection, or maybe was just hedging his 2028 potential run and trying to distance himself. But it seemed like he tried to portray like, I was hearing things, but the trusted insiders were telling us it was okay. Turns out the outsiders are right. [1:52] Mark Mitchell: Yeah, well, there was an insider that was right because that 13% pollster he was talking about, although I had 13%, was not me. It was Tony Fabrizio, the president's own pollster. So the president's out there banging on about election fraud now when his own pollster told him that it was going to be a blue wave. That's the kind of situation that we're in right now. But like, the way I would frame this is that Americans spoke and gave Trump a mandate to fix affordability and government corruption with Republicans. And then they looked at everything Trump did for a year and a half, 2 years, and they gave Trump a mandate to fix affordability and corruption with Democrats. [4:17] Marty Bent: Yeah. Well, I mean, not only that, but I think that's the other question is how much of a power vacuum does this create for the GOP and the Republican Party at large as well? I mean, I think it was a repudiation, a rebuke have been the favorite words of the last 7 days of the whole GOP establishment. And that's the question, do they learn their lesson? Was something like Susie Wiles having to resign a signal in that direction? see— I mean, I've been watching the clips and following along his rise. I think a lot of people are looking at Nick Fuentes and saying he was, again, prophetic in terms of how he called this thing, and others saying not only was he prophetic, but he probably drove a lot of the voting tendencies in the midterms. [5:18] Mark Mitchell: Well, it's definitely time for the boomers and neocons to hand it over. Let's agree to that. Right. Like, we have a plurality of Americans thinking that Donald Trump puts Israel first. That should not be like what our president is like. I mean, it just shouldn't. So, yeah, a lot of questions there. First off, I would say this was a story about independents who are now the largest voting bloc of Who do you identify with? The Republican Party, Democrat Party, or are you unaffiliated, independent, or third party? Group of people who respond options 3 through 5 there, not their registration, because some people don't even know and they don't even vote in primaries. [9:17] Marty Bent: Well, again, I think that's the big question is, are the interests going to get out of the way? I mean, they're going to fight. Hand, tooth, and nail. I think the Callie Means episode, I've only seen clips so far. I haven't had the time to sit down and watch the whole thing, but I feel like I get the gist. Susie Wiles was a longtime lobbyist for Big Pharma and a lot of special interests and was basically the stiff arm at the administration deciding who was getting appointments and who wasn't. And again, I mean, the the loot the treasury aspect of the Trump administration has been the most disheartening. I mean, my world, Bitcoin, crypto, the fact that he launched the Trump coin the night before the inauguration was completely insane to me. But obviously the reports of Susie Weill's children getting very cushy lobbyist jobs very close to the administration, I mean, it just created such easy soft targets on their backs for when the blue tsunami eventually hit. [10:20] Mark Mitchell: Yeah, I mean, the themes that stood out to me most are that we can't offend any of the interests because we need all this sugar daddy money so that we can have money to win the midterms. And so the midterm strategy was just keep the interests happy so we can be flush with capital and then hopefully just redistrict everything. And that should be enough to make up for the fact that we've done nothing. That was Susie Wilders' plan for the midterm. And not only her, but apparently James Blair and Chris Lasavita. who are out there gleefully spending this money because they most likely get a cut, right? [12:07] Marty Bent: Yeah. What do we learn about polling in this midterm election? You were mentioning before we hit record, Polling industry is still not on the ball. [12:20] Mark Mitchell: Yeah, no. So everybody should use RealClearPolitics. In my opinion, that's the best aggregator. I think what was interesting is that there are some left-wing people that are good faith actors, like G. Eliot Morris, who I've taken a bunch of swipes at in the past, did a good job and he wants to put accurate stuff out there. He's a raging leftist, but he did a good job. Rich Barris, Did a good job, like saw this coming a long way away. You know, I had my issues with Rasmussen and I had to break from them, so I had like a little hiccup in my polling. I showed up in August and nailed this right outta the gate. [15:54] Marty Bent: That was her Iowa call. [15:55] Mark Mitchell: Yeah, that she was off by 17 points. Well, he was off by whatever, 13 or whatever it was, right? But it's like a national poll with a 2% margin of error instead of a 4% margin of error. And it's national polling. It's like the states have their idiosyncrasy. They're harder on a per margin of interest, margin of error basis. But, and then you have the group of pollsters who I was affiliated with, who I believe were taking political action committee money from the Trump administration to suppress criticism of Trump because I was told to be silent. Because it would prevent taking a check from the Trump PAC and that my name was brought up by Susie and we weren't going to get that allocation, me and Rich Barris. [17:07] Marty Bent: well, for those who are uneducated about the science of polling, why is that idiotic to have presidential weights in a midterm election? [17:15] Mark Mitchell: So Rasmussen's got a bit of a stale methodology that doesn't really work that well. But you ask the questions and you ask if people are going to vote. And at the very end you say, you know what, I think the electorate looks Democrat 33, Republican 35, and independent 32, right? Well, I have that backwards. So Democrat 35. So that means when you compare the Democrat and the Republican sample, there's 2% more Democrats than there are Republicans. Now, that's a heavy-handed way to do it. You're almost applying your own view of the political makeup On America, of America at the end, after everything's been screened and sampled. [19:30] Marty Bent: Money in politics, it leads to vast corruption. And I really want to talk to this about you because I've been enjoying your commentary on this on the show circuit and then just tweeting on X. Like, what does the Republican Party look like? There's been a number of young Republican groups in colleges beginning to distance themselves from, from the parent organization this week. Again, going back to like the Fuentes perspective is like— [19:58] Mark Mitchell: Oh, we didn't even talk about him. Yeah, keep going. [19:59] Marty Bent: Yeah, like it's going to be like the indictments are coming, the subpoenas are coming, everybody's going to quit. So it's your time to like get into these staffs and just ride out the wave and become somebody of importance there. I think demographically, depending on which numbers you look at, what was it, 18 to 29-year-olds shifted 40 points to the left. The millennials and the Gen Z, I believe, are going to be the largest collective voting bloc moving forward for the foreseeable future. And you can feel it. I mean, I'm a younger millennial, or actually I'm smack dab in the middle. And I mean, I've got a wife, 3 kids, a house. [21:16] Mark Mitchell: Yeah. I mean, yes, 100%. The day of the pillow, right? So I'm a Xennial, right? And I'm right on the dividing line between X and millennial. And I would say the people to the left of me, think kind of different than the people to the right of me, you know what I mean? Like the boomers and Gen Xers. Now, Gen Xers are pretty based, but they're also like sort of piling into sort of the stale Republican Party politic and are still like supportive of Trump, whereas the other generations aren't. And I would also say, you know, we talked about the fourth turning before, I'm pretty sure, and that there's an aspect of generational change that will drive the future of politics, a disagreement of sorts between the young and the old. [25:31] Marty Bent: What's up, freaks? This Rip was brought to you by our good friends at Square. Bitcoin on Block is creating a whole ecosystem of companies, Cash App, BitKey, and Square, to make Bitcoin everyday money. The way Square does that is by enabling eligible businesses to accept Bitcoin over Lightning. This is a superior way to do payments compared to incumbent payment processors. And if you're a Square merchant that enables Bitcoin payments, if you're an eligible Square merchant that does that, you're going to have 0% processing fees through 2026. Another benefit, there's no chargeback. There's no chargebacks. Think about what that means. The card networks have been skimming every local business for decades, plus chargeback risk on top. [28:34] Mark Mitchell: You know what I think cynically is that we have a very concentrated and overinflated stock market and a lot of like— [28:43] Marty Bent: They need it. [28:44] Mark Mitchell: Well, yeah. I mean, you can't— our system is now, it's gone beyond being allergic to deflation. It would literally be the death knell that, in my opinion, brings this whole thing down because then we'll have like a sovereign debt crisis and stuff like that. Right. You know, people still think that America will pay its debt down. But part of that is because we still have a president who's out there saying we're going to monetize the debt. The problem is, is that we've already completely concentrated all the wealth and the power to the top. So any attempt to do that is going to further disrupt our societal fabric in a way that will literally cause torches and pitchforks. [30:17] Marty Bent: You get Elon on deck for that. Universal high income, not basic. We're going to get universal high income. And it actually would be a bit poetic. [30:25] Mark Mitchell: Can you even do that in a world where there's inflation? You know what I mean? If everybody has the same amount of money, then the money's worth less. Yes. [30:36] Marty Bent: Yeah. I mean, but this is the narrative that they will feed people. I mean, we had it like Josh Shapiro, they got the Pennsylvania House Democrats did. And first thing he tweeted out was, we're raising the minimum wage. It's like, okay, somebody lives in Pennsylvania. not very much looking forward to that. But, uh, and that's, that's like the— [30:56] Mark Mitchell: At least they know what to say though. I mean, obviously minimum wage, I think it does actually help some people. Like, it really does. Um, you know what I mean? Like, I'm not willing to point at that and call it socialism anymore because capitalism has completely failed. Conservative economics is a luxury belief right now. Like, I really think that. And if they were really conservative, they should have like actually conserve the system of capitalism that protects the common interest of every American. And they haven't— like, they literally failed. And I don't even know how they regain the authority to step in and fix that problem with the amount of, like, power that is really needed in order to do that, because you need to, like, be really brutal with these companies. [32:29] Marty Bent: Yeah. Well, I mean, not only that, but I mean, on the other end of the spectrum, instead of free market dynamics, it's like, okay, figure out the fiscal side of the books. They had the opportunity with Doge. I think that was another resounding reason why they lost last week was you literally had the golden platter. We had uncovered all this waste, fraud, and abuse, and you came into office with this mandate to clean all this stuff up. And 2 months in, it's like, oh, well, actually we can't do this. [33:01] Mark Mitchell: Doge was a historically retarded betrayal of the American people. And a lot of people don't understand why it was so great, because a lot of people will say, well, it was super chaotic and everybody hated Elon and all the federal workers were up in arms. And don't you know, they had No Kings rallies and stuff like that. But it was literally the only plausible scenario that we could ever come up with where Republicans supported austerity and where the American people were clamoring for it. You know what I mean? We had an austerity platform. We were going to cut the deficit and everybody was totally for it. [34:29] Marty Bent: Well, I mean, let's dive into this. For those who are listening who may not have watched the Callie Means appearance on Joe Rogan, I mean, we brought her name up quite a few times heading into the second administration. I remember vividly, between election night and inauguration, there was a lot of positive talk around Susie Wiles and the fact that she ran the campaign, did such a good job. She's going to be such a good Chief of Staff. How corrosive or parasitic was she in the role of Chief of Staff? [35:04] Mark Mitchell: She was there to manage Trump and not to actually execute on a plan for the American people. She made a lot of money, I would presume, especially for Ballard Partners. And literally everything that the American people voted for, anything that looked like systemic change, she shut down internally. Or other people that were part of her cabal shut down internally. And I think it's unfair to blame it all on her and not Trump. Like, A, he hired her. You know, at the end of the day, I think he knew a lot of this stuff was going on, but I've heard back and forth. Like, I heard she was taking his phone and blocking people she didn't want him to talk with. [39:48] Marty Bent: What's up, freaks? This episode was brought to you by Simple Mining. I'm sure many of you listening to this right now own Bitcoin and own it the same way. You go on an exchange, you buy it, sweep it to the cold storage, maybe you keep it on the exchange, and you pay full price. There's a smaller group of business owners, family offices, and investors with sharp CPAs that are quietly getting theirs a different way. They own the machines that make it. Here's how it works. You buy the miners at Simple Mining. Simple Mining hosts them, runs them at their facilities in Iowa on industrial power rates you can never get on your own. [42:45] Mark Mitchell: Has Nick come out and supported him yet? [42:47] Marty Bent: Uh, I'm not sure. I think, uh, I'm not sure. But for those who are unaware, I mean, he was the guy who came in to clean up the mess during Trump 1, right? Between the midterms of that election in 2020. [43:03] Mark Mitchell: Yeah, I talked to John once and I didn't hear too much about like what he thinks or how he plans to do things. I mean, like the things I know about him is that like, I don't think he would be operating within a very small operating envelope, which is good. Like, we'll, we'll consider new things, we'll be based, right? And that he's young and charismatic, like that's plus. I think like the negatives are he's affiliated with Trump. Like that's going to be a big negative soon, right? And maybe you can get over that very easily by just trashing him. Like I just don't know. I think he's like Groper friendly, which is a green checkmark, right? [45:57] Marty Bent: What is ANFest? [45:58] Mark Mitchell: America Fest. It's Turning Point's main— and so they've had it for years and years, but it's turned into a Trump cult of personality event, essentially. Right. And so last year it was still super rah rah rah because people didn't know the loss was coming and the Iran situation hadn't happened. And there were people there like Daily Wire and Ben Shapiro on the stage speaking, right? Dana Loesch, people like that, Brandon Tatum. If they get up and they say that we've been at war with Iran for 47 years, one of those speakers, you're going to see booing, you're going to see jeers. [46:35] Marty Bent: Is that one of the lines they're running with behind the scenes? [46:37] Mark Mitchell: I mean, this is a very— this is a This is the primary neoconservative explanation for why we had to do Iran now. They've obviously been one of our foreign policy priorities for forever, and this is our only chance to do it. And don't you know, they're a week away from a nuke? And it's like Trump said, we got rid of their nuclear program and then we did this strike. Right. So it's, you know, like— and the reason that they lost spectacularly is because they literally insulted the intelligence of all of America. And it's like, you told us we bombed Iran and America was forgiving of the 12-Day War. [48:24] Marty Bent: Like, I mean, it seems like you mentioned Ben Shapiro, Mark Levin. Looks like the tack they're taking is just blaming Trump. It wasn't Iran. People just don't like Trump. And it's The people who— some of the people who campaigned the most vigorously for the war in Iran and trying to justify it seem to be jumping ship pretty quickly, too. [48:45] Mark Mitchell: I mean, it's both, you know what I mean? Like, we have America— bipolarity thinks Trump puts Israel first. Israel has lost its— Israel is now— America now supports Palestine more than Israel. And Israel has been telling us that Palestine harbors Hamas and they're terrorists. And yet Americans still say we support them more than Israel now. So that's what we're working with here, right? And it's not, again, necessarily that we did some foreign policy intervention. It's that this comes on top of all of these other symbolic betrayals by Trump. Don't want your support if you care about Epstein, the stock market. I don't even think about Americans' finances. [51:04] Marty Bent: it sounds like a long, arduous road. And that's the thing. I had E.J. Antoni on from the Heritage Foundation focusing on like the economics of everything. And that's the one thing he said before the Iran War, things were slowly but surely beginning to turn in the right direction from In economic perspective. [51:23] Mark Mitchell: Not in public opinion. [51:24] Marty Bent: No, but that's the thing. You needed 9 months of that momentum turning the other way to— Well, [51:31] Mark Mitchell: I gave Trump an out to this. So I said, you're not going to be able to fix the economy. You have to get over that hump. You cannot gaslight people and say we have the golden age. Nobody's going to believe you. They don't listen to government numbers. Nobody gives a shit about the stock market. And so how do you solve that when the problems are too big to be fixed in any one cycle? You have to be an economic wartime president. And so it's like, hey, we're digging in for a war. You are now Patton. You're fighting the Nazis in order to fight an economic war. [52:40] Marty Bent: No, it's a swamp. That's what we were all sold. [52:42] Mark Mitchell: That's right. Yeah, he used to say the enemy, but now he won't, right? And so that tells me that he has been co-opted. [52:53] Marty Bent: Yeah, which is— I mean, you think of somebody who's very self-conscious about their image in the eyes of the public too. It doesn't seem like it's going to be it's going to be salvaged at this point. Do you think he realizes that, or is his hubris such that he thinks everything's fine and really believes like, I don't care, the stock market's at all-time highs? [53:18] Mark Mitchell: I think he unintentionally tells the truth a lot. I think he really does believe that he can like just go off to Israel and at least they'll celebrate him over there. You know what I mean? Like [53:29] Marty Bent: be the president of Israel. [53:31] Mark Mitchell: Yeah. I mean, My interaction with him was limited, but it confirmed, in my opinion, what was going on then, which is that he's operating under different constraints than he had before. And so he probably feels to some extent powerless to fix a lot of these things. And when I was saying stuff, it didn't feel like he was engaged in a way that meant that he was finding things he could do. And that's broad, but that was my observation. And that he was. So if you're going to fight for the American people, and you're up against a powerful foe, and like you have to listen to everything, and you have to be humble, and you have to understand that there's things you don't know. [55:30] Marty Bent: What do you say to the plan trusters out there? Susie's out, Stephen Miller's [55:35] Mark Mitchell: in. [55:36] Marty Bent: He's got nothing to lose. [55:37] Mark Mitchell: At this point, you're either a smooth brain or you're paid. And I know that a lot of these people are on the payroll. Like, I've heard names called out. You know, they tried to put me on the payroll to shut me up. They literally did. Right. Susie Wise's people, Chris Lasavita, tried to put me on the payroll. And the condition was I was not allowed to criticize Trump. And I've heard the people that the Israel folks have come to. I've heard the Qatari people come from. Come for them. And I actually heard from somebody who they came for both of, both of them that said, well, the Israel people tell you what to say. [56:30] Marty Bent: and this is, I mean, and it's, again, it's, we don't have good leaders on either side because I was like the DNC paying influencers on TikTok and lead up to '24 to pump Kamala. That was like one of the things everybody highlighted, like you're all paid shills. It is, I mean, to your point— [56:47] Mark Mitchell: Trump won because he didn't have paid shills. And all the consultants heard is that, well, we can pay shills and make money off of them. That's what the consultants heard. And so the Republican Party deserves this. They really do. I hate to say it. I've been a straight ticket Republican voter my entire life. Like, what did you think was going to happen, guys? Like, you had the moral authority, you had an authentic movement, you had the perfect platform, you had the best mandate you were ever going to be given. [57:10] Marty Bent: Yeah. [57:12] Mark Mitchell: So it's like, if you can't accept the fact that the problem is Trump at this point, then you're probably— your paycheck depends on it. And some of them, it's audience capture. We all know this, right? And some of it is just access. They're not actually on the payroll, but at the end of the day, they're lying for people. [57:27] Marty Bent: Yeah, I know you got to go here in a few minutes. I want to ask this, I guess, philosophical question, but are these the leaders we deserve? How much of the— [57:41] Mark Mitchell: Obviously not, right? Yeah. The Fourth Turning tells us that integrity will save us. It's just a matter of how desperate everyone gets. And so the temperature of the pot of water that the frog is in has increased. We all saw the hand that turned the dial up. We're learning a lot more, but the government is increasingly delegitimized. So I don't know how this ends. And The Fourth Turning also tells us that just we enter a period of disillusionment, a failure of institutions, and then a snapback in public, rapid change in public opinion because Americans realize that values matter, cohesion's more important than death, and out of necessity, this will come together. [58:53] Marty Bent: Yeah. Here's to hoping that Scott Galloway and Hasan Piker aren't indicative of the overwhelming mindset of the left, because it is crazy how emboldened some people on the left have been. [59:08] Mark Mitchell: But you might see crazy things. You might see people like Amy Acton call out folks like that. 'Cause she's done, in my opinion, she went beyond, above and beyond what your typical Democrat has in order to paint herself as not one of the typical scary Democrats. And if you were a smart Democrat that cared about America, you would be doing that. Oh, we went a little far with the open borders and, you know, like we want the deportations to be humane, but there's an opportunity to make a deal here. And no, they're not all your enemy. And yeah, we should probably have police. Like if you had a Democrat do that kind of stuff, They will— I think public opinion will reward them in a way that it won't, because look at the Democrat socialists that the Republicans tried to paint as the scary enemy. [1:01:30] Marty Bent: Yeah, I don't think we should be glassing them. No. To that point too, family formation, strong economy, secure the border. It's very simple, in my mind. [1:01:38] Mark Mitchell: Yeah. Economic, I would say strong economic progressivism for a common good capitalism. That's what I would say. We probably need a really progressive tax system. We probably need to tax billionaires now because Teddy Roosevelt did it, right? And it's not from a place of socialism, but from a place of excess. And because this is like— conservatives ignore this too. And so yeah, the period that everybody wants to conserve, the '50s through the '70s, the period known as the Great Compression, where you could literally have a one-income family, right, and buy everything you wanted, was partially caused by us being a superpower after everybody got decimated in World War II. [1:03:03] Marty Bent: The government and the central banking system. Mark. [1:03:07] Mark Mitchell: Yeah, sure. [1:03:08] Marty Bent: It's always a pleasure, sir. Thank you for your time. [1:03:11] Mark Mitchell: No, my pleasure. I love being able to talk about economics and thanks for having me on. Thanks for platforming me when my voice was unpopular. [1:03:19] Marty Bent: Well, I genuinely love the conversation, so I can't wait to do it again. [1:03:23] Mark Mitchell: Yeah, anytime. [1:03:24] Marty Bent: All right. Peace, love, freaks. Hey there. Thank you for watching the whole video. 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