Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.
In today’s edition, Alexandra Marquez files a dispatch from the not-so-subtle 2028 shadow primary campaign trail. Plus, Jonathan Allen explores what the Jeffrey Epstein files fight reveals about the future of the MAGA movement — and Donald Trump’s role in it.
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— Adam Wollner
A red-state Democrat test-drives a 2028 message
By Alexandra Marquez
GREENVILLE, S.C. — In an early preview of a potential 2028 presidential campaign, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear hit the road across South Carolina this week, testing a message focused on how to grow the Democratic coalition.
Beshear laid out a blueprint for the party to win back rural voters, union voters, independent voters and even Republicans — music to the ears of Democrats still feeling the sting of 2024’s losses and eager to hear about how the party can rise again.
“The actions of the Trump administration are providing a huge opportunity for Democrats to go out and regain the trust of the American people to be the party of common sense, common ground and getting things done,” Beshear, 47, told union members gathered at the South Carolina AFL-CIO convention in Greenville.
“When we deliver and make people’s lives better, they’re willing to vote in different ways. They’re willing to support different people, and that’s where we’ve got to be,” added Beshear.
Red-state credentials: At stop after stop, Beshear noted that he knows how to win voters in traditionally Republican areas. After all, he’s done it twice.
The first time was in 2019, when he won his first gubernatorial election by less than half a percentage point, beating GOP Gov. Matt Bevin. In 2023, Beshear improved his margins, beating then-state Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a Republican, by 5 points.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump won Kentucky by almost 26 points in 2020 and by over 30 points in 2024.
South Carolina focus: Though he insisted that his travel to South Carolina came about partly because of his son’s baseball tournament near Charleston, Beshear hasn’t been coy about his presidential aspirations before arriving in the state that voted first in last year’s Democratic presidential primaries.
In an interview with “Meet the Press” just days before he arrived in South Carolina, Beshear said he would “take a look” at launching a presidential campaign in 2028. He’s at least the fourth Democratic elected official to publicly visit the state this year, arriving just a week after California Gov. Gavin Newsom and several weeks after Govs. Wes Moore of Maryland and Tim Walz of Minnesota. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., also has an event planned in the state later this week.
Read more from Beshear’s swing through South Carolina →
What the Epstein saga reveals about MAGA’s future
Analysis by Jonathan Allen
Whatever is in the Jeffrey Epstein files, Americans haven’t learned much about the content because the Justice Department hasn’t released them and appears to be in no rush to do so. But the fight over them has told the public a lot about the future of the MAGA movement and President Donald Trump’s place in it.
The truth that grows more glaringly obvious with each passing day is that Trump is a temporary leader of a modern Republican base that fashioned itself in his image. But countless elected officials and right-wing influencers hope to remain prominent once Trump has exited the presidency. Their timeline simply isn’t the same as his.
These folks, from Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk to megabroadcasters Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones, simply can’t afford to alienate the hardcore MAGA base that is calling for transparency on a matter that speaks directly to their antipathy for powerful institutions and players.
That’s the most logical explanation for echoing criticism of Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi. It’s not that Trump’s longtime allies don’t support his presidency — Kirk went so far as to say this week that pushing the Epstein issue is done out of love for Trump — but they aren’t about to risk their own credibility with his voters.
Trump, who watched some of his most prolific backers distance themselves from him on arming Ukraine and bombing Iran, can expect more of the same as his second term progresses. Over time, ambitious figures in the MAGA wing of the GOP are sure to cling tighter to the base than to Trump.
That’s the new reality for a president who faces a constitutional bar to running for another term. The lesson for him is that despite being the most powerful person in the world, his political capital will continue to diminish each time he picks a fight with his own movement.
The Epstein files represent the first major MAGA rift of his second term. If he’s not careful, it won’t be the last.
Related:
Trump is not interested in naming a special counsel for the Jeffrey Epstein case, White House says, by Dareh Gregorian
DOJ fires Maurene Comey, daughter of James Comey and a prosecutor in Sean Combs’ and Ghislaine Maxwell’s cases, by Ryan J. Reilly, Jonathan Dienst, David Rohde and Zoë Richards
🗞️ Today’s other top stories
- 🩺 Check-up: Trump has been diagnosed with “chronic venous insufficiency” after he was checked out for “mild swelling in his lower legs,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Read more →
- ✂️ Rescissions update: The Republican-led Senate voted overnight to pass Trump’s request for $9 billion in spending cuts to foreign and aid and public broadcasting, sending it to the House. Read more →
- 🪙 Crypto crunch: In a bipartisan vote, the House passed the GENIUS Act, which would establish the first regulatory framework for issuers of stablecoins, sending it to Trump’s desk. Read more →
- 👀 Iran strikes fallout: A new U.S. assessment finds that the strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities last month destroyed only one of the sites, according to five current and former U.S. officials familiar with the assessment. Read more →
- 👟Walk it out: Democrats walked out of a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting to advance senior Justice Department official Emil Bove’s nomination for a federal judgeship, alleging Republicans improperly rushed the process. Read more →
- 🚅 High-speed showdown: The Trump administration pulled $4 billion in federal funding for California’s high-speed rail project. Read more →
- 🔴 Staff shake-up, part 1: Virginia Republican gubernatorial nominee Winsome Earle-Sears demoted one key staffer and parted ways with another as she lags in the polls and fundraising. Read more →
- 🔵 Staff shake-up, part 2: The Arizona Democratic Party voted to oust Chairman Robert Branscomb II after a six-month tenure plagued by infighting, the Arizona Republic reports. Read more →
- 🥤New Coke?: Trump said that Coca-Cola in the U.S. will begin to be made with cane sugar, but the company did not explicitly say that was the case when it was asked later about the claim. Read more →
- 🥎 Sports corner: Lawmakers snapped their losing streak in the annual Congressional Women’s Softball Game last night, defeating the Bad News Babes 5-3 in a weather-shortened showdown. Roll Call has the recap →
- Follow live politics updates →
That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner and Dylan Ebs.
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