Jim VandeHei, the co-founder and CEO of Axios, joined MS NOW’s Morning Joe on Friday and offered his take on President Donald Trump’s sinking poll numbers.

“And you need to put the polls in some context. It’s almost impossible in modern polling, given the ideological impulses of base voters, to get much lower than he is in terms of his unfavorable ratings, but also how unpopular he is when it comes to the economy, when it comes to inflation, even when it comes to, you know, the non-border enforcement part of immigration. Like, he is very, very low,” VandeHei began, adding:

He still has most Republicans with him, but that’s even sinking. And I think the biggest alarm for him and for Republicans is they look at the House map and it looks almost impossible for them to keep control of the House.

They look at the Senate and they start to look at states like Iowa, Ohio, Alaska, Texas, Maine, all of which should be very, very winnable — maybe not even competitive — and they all look suddenly in danger. To me, the most interesting thing is talking to people around the president. Their language and body language has changed markedly in the last two months. They know they’re in a huge hole and it’s going to be really, really hard to get out of it.

They don’t even really defend it anymore. They understand that we’re here by a series of choices that the president made by himself. How to prosecute this war was his choice. To do tariffs the way he did was his choice. To unleash ICE into neighborhoods before ICE was properly trained to do it was his choice. To then promote that in a very chest-thumping type of way was his choice.

And now Republicans are having to pay for that. And I don’t think you’re going to see Republicans in Congress necessarily turn on him in force, but I can tell you right now, there’s a tremendous amount of pressure on the people around the president to change this cabinet, to get some more people in here — some fresh blood, some clear thinking — or they worry they’re just going to get wiped out. And as we’re reporting this morning, day one, Democrats will impeach him.

I don’t think he cares that much. He’s been impeached before. He’ll survive it in the Senate, but that’s the fate. And he can ignore the subpoenas, but his friends and family can’t. All those companies can’t. Like, he’s heading for a political hell, and that’s going to be tough.

“Well, you know, it’s going to be difficult on one side of it. On the other side of it, Donald Trump even told me after he got elected that he understands that it was all the trials, it was the perceived political persecution, that got him elected president,” replied co-host Joe Scarborough, adding:

He said, “If they only charged me with one crime, I’d be in big trouble right now. But they came after me time and time again.” And I wonder, Jim, if there’s not a part of him that’s thinking, “Okay, I’ll be much better off fighting against a Democratic Congress where they’re trying to impeach me and they’ll never succeed. I’ll win there, too, and my numbers will go up.”

So I’m just wondering — because at this point it would seem that Donald Trump, in the past, would have backed down and would have figured out a way to go into Iran for two weeks and come out. Now, the further we get into this war — and I will say strategically, there are a lot of our allies in the region, the UAE, the Saudis, others, that are glad he’s staying in there and not cutting and running, because that would be an even bigger long-term disaster — but does it, I’m just curious, does it seem to you that he actually is focused more on his legacy of being the one president that can do what seven other presidents have not been able to do with Iran since 1979? And if he loses the midterms, okay, they’re going to impeach him again — once, twice, three times — and he’s going to win all of those and his numbers are going to go up.

Watch above via MS NOW.

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