Chris Whipple

And on that feed is a constant live feed of Trump's truth social posts.

You know, I didn't ask her specifically about that.

I think it's – look, my guess is it's a little bit like having just a monitor of what the president is up to.

She would tell you that she doesn't care about approval ratings.

Whether you believe that or not is up to you, but she is emphatic about the notion that approval ratings change rapidly.

The only approval rating that counts is a couple of weeks out from a midterm, for example, in this case, 2026.

She is convinced.

I said to her,

How do you think you'll do in the midterms?

And she said, we're going to win the midterms flatly.

Well, that would be something because, as you know, history says that incumbent presidents suffer shellackings, as Barack Obama famously put it, in midterms.

And this one, all the smart money would say this one will be no different and perhaps even worse for Trump than usual.

An incumbent president could be expected to lose as many as 13 seats in the House and two or three in the Senate, and he thought they'd do better than that.

Now, you can take that any way you like, but that sure sounds to me like J.D.

Vance trying to lower expectations before 2026.

I did talk to her about all of the above.

Some of it was off the record.

On the record, she insists that he is fine.

She says, my health is good.

His health is great.