Inside the Swamp: Shutdown Politics and the GOP’s Civil War

One of the GOP's most influential strategist's Jeff Roe opens up in rare interview about his battle with Trump’s inner circle — and how their feud could drain the party’s war chest.

Welcome back to The Red Letter.

This week, I’m diving deep into the swamp, the real one, where elections are won and lost in the age of Donald Trump.

With Washington barreling toward another government shutdown, and neither party seeming to care, I wanted to know: will it even matter? Could it move the needle in special elections or the 2026 midterms? Or has political pain become so baked in that no one blinks anymore?

So I brought in two heavyweights from opposite sides of the ring.

On Monday, I sat down with Jeff Roe, one of the most powerful and polarizing Republican consultants in America. His firm, Axiom Strategies, has its fingerprints on nearly every major race in the country. Roe’s philosophy is simple: win the base, win the cycle.

“We’re easy to hate,” Roe told me. “And, I’m personally, you know, somewhat easy to hate, although a lot of people haven’t met me, but I’m an easy proxy.”

And on Tuesday, I talked to James Carville, the legendary Democratic strategist who knows a thing or two about turning dysfunction into victory. Never one to hold back, Carville had sharp words for both Vice President Kamala Harris and David Hogg, the Democratic renegade who had a heartfelt on-air reunion with him on my last show. Surprisingly, the Rajin’ Cajun was more optimistic than usual about his party’s future…

You can hear both interviews on The Tara Palmeri Show available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. Subscribe to be the first to listen when they drop.

---

Trump’s Midterm Anxiety

President Trump is already musing publicly about losing the midterms and historically, he’s right to worry. Republicans only hold the House by a handful of seats. On any given day, absences, resignations, or even deaths could erase their razor-thin margin.

On the surface, the GOP looks united behind Trump. But beneath that, there’s a full-blown consultancy war, not over ideology, but over loyalty and money. And it all goes back to Trump’s legendary feud with Ron DeSantis.

Trump’s political team still holds a grudge against Roe for running DeSantis’s super PAC, Never Back Down, during the 2024 GOP primaries — the one that famously flamed out after torching $145 million. The bad blood runs deep: Trump’s current Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and White House Political Director James Blair both worked for DeSantis in Tallahassee, alongside several senior White House officials, who all left after being mistreated by DeSantis. He unceremoniously fired Wiles after she helped him win his first guberneratorial race.

Add Trump’s campaign manager Chris LaCivita, who’s constantly sniping at Roe online and comparing win records like high-school rivals, and you’ve got a civil war inside the GOP consulting class.

Trump’s been pulled into it too, mostly because he still can’t stand DeSantis for daring to run against him after that early endorsement for governor. I’m old enough to remember when he wanted to hire Roe to manage his 2024 campaign, after he led Glenn Youngkin to victory in Virginia. Ever since, Trump’s team has tried to freeze Roe out. Candidates are quietly warned: if you hire Axiom, don’t expect an endorsement from the kingpin himself. Roe insists it’s not true, and that his clients are still getting Trump’s backing.

The irony is that Roe and Trump are aligned on almost everything.

But now the pirate flag is up as he keeps his consultancy firm afloat, even it costs the party more money to defend incumbents as he pitches candidates to take on incumbents or blessed candidates in the primaries. The party is trying to avoid a messy primaries that could cost them ahead of the midterms where the focus is on frontline races.

“I don’t like anybody telling my team or us who to work for, who you can’t work for,” Roe told me.

“The last two Republican senators who were defeated for reelect, we did it. We had hands in those elections, Dick Lugar and Senator Michael Bennett and I’ve tried to work on building a company that people can spend their career in and their grandkids can work here.”

“I don’t rely on committees or entities to hand me business.”

🔒 Subscribers get the full breakdown of what’s really happening inside the GOP, the consultant feuds, the Trump loyalty tests, and how it could shape the midterms and 2028.

Plus, my full conversation with Jeff Roe on bucking the Trump establishment even if costs the GOP millions to defend seats, his Trump reconciliation in Houston, his thoughts on JD Vance and Gavin Newsom and what it’ll take for either party to win the next cycle.