AMNA NAWAZ: For more on the president banning some news outlets from the White House, Republicans publicly breaking with Trump, and where their party is spending its money for the midterm elections, we turn now to our Politics Monday duo.

That is Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

Great to see you both.

AMY WALTER: Good to be here.

TAMARA KEITH: Hello.

AMNA NAWAZ: You heard Liz's reporting earlier on CNN, MS NOW, and Politico being banned from White House coverage, now suing for access.

Liz also laid out exactly how the TV press pool works and why it exists.

But, Tam, you were the president of the White House Correspondents' Association from 2022 to '23.

You have also covered this president.

What's your reaction to this ban and why do you think the president did this now?

TAMARA KEITH: Why precisely now, I'm not sure.

But this is a pattern that we have seen going back to his first administration.

But, certainly in this second Trump term, we have seen repeated efforts by this president to punish news outlets who do coverage that he doesn't like, including kicking the Associated Press out of the pool, then punishing the wires when he got a judicial decision against him.

He -- and, really, it's not even just about the press, though I could go through a long litany of things that he's done to target the press.

He's also gone after inspectors general and other sources of independent fact that contradicts the reality that he's trying to create for Americans and for his supporters.

His complaint really is, they're reporting things that I don't like.

And that is not a legal justification for kicking just some news outlets out.

AMNA NAWAZ: Amy, why would it be in the president's interest to reduce the coverage he's getting or also ramp up this war with the press?

AMY WALTER: Right.

I'm a believer that the presidency sees the world as he's a hammer and everything's a nail, right?

And so when there's a problem, the hammer always comes down.

This isn't -- not necessarily logical, right, like, walking through all the different steps to say, here's how this is actually going to help my ratings.

But I do think what the president is frustrated about is exactly what Tam's saying, is that, if the news media is reporting on bad poll numbers or a bad economy or things going wrong in Iran, the best way to handle that is to reduce the access to that.

That is not necessarily going to change people's perceptions of those.

So is this going to work?

Are people going to not have access to things that are impacted by the president?

No.

But it just goes to really the core of his value system, which is, when things go badly, his instinct is to shut them down.

TAMARA KEITH: And to double down.

AMY WALTER: Yes.

AMNA NAWAZ: We can probably expect some more comments like this in the future.

We should also note the president's facing some public breaking from his own party, several Republicans coming out to speak out against him and some of his policies.

We have reported on this in the past.

Florida Congresswoman Maria Salazar released an ad speaking directly to the president, saying his immigration policies have gone too far.

South Dakota's Republican secretary of state, Monae Johnson, previously refused to acknowledge that former President Joe Biden won in 2020, this weekend endorsed the Democratic candidate, Terrence Davis, to replace her.

And all of this, of course, follows Karl Rove we reported on last week, the former adviser to George W. Bush, saying he will vote for a Democrat in a state race in Texas.

Tam, are these -- are these outliers?

Are they indicative of something else going on in the party?

TAMARA KEITH: This is the beginning of a drip, drip, drip.

There are others.

Tom Tiffany, who was proudly endorsed by President Trump and his race for governor in Wisconsin, not talking about that endorsement anymore, pushing back on the president publicly.

You have seen several -- or at least a couple of Republicans who were in toss-up races vote to -- vote against the president on the war powers resolution last week.

You see candidates emphasizing their bipartisanship, Republican candidates.

You see other candidates weighing in on specific policies, particularly the president's decision to import beef to try to bring down prices, the tariffs related to Canada.

You see sort of limited pushback on a number of things, which is a little -- creating a little bit of space there.

The reason that this is notable at all is because this is a president who requires sort of maximum fealty from Republicans and those in his party.

And any other president and every other president facing a midterm environment like this would say, you do you.

Like, you don't need to stay loyal to me.

You say -- you can criticize me all you want.

George W. Bush did that in 2006.

President Biden did that in 2022.

He had a running joke: I will campaign for you or against you, whichever one will help.

That's not the Trump way.

And so the fact that these candidates are starting to create that separation, I mean, is mostly just an indication of where things stand in this race.

AMNA NAWAZ: Amy?

AMY WALTER: Yes.

And I do think this is a big difference from, say, where we were in 2018, when the president was then going into a midterm year.

Yes, his approval ratings were low, but he had a united Republican base.

It took a while for it to get there.

The first couple of months of his presidency in that first term were a little bit rocky.

But then he got the base together and they stuck with him, and, quite frankly, they have stuck with him through a lot.

This is the point at which - - again, I wouldn't -- I would be careful to say that there's -- they're at a breaking point or that we're watching the party disintegrate.

But the disappointment with the president is leading to some enthusiasm challenges, which I have talked a lot about with you, with Tam about the midterms.

If you look at people who say that they are MAGA supporters first versus party supporters first, those MAGA supporters are much more interested in showing up to vote than the non-MAGA voters are.

And that's really where the challenge sits for Republicans up this year.

It's not that they don't like the president anymore.

It's that they are disappointed enough to maybe stay home.

AMNA NAWAZ: Let's talk a little bit about what we're seeing in this final stretch going into the midterms there, specifically when it comes to the money.

We know Republicans are entering the stretch with a financial edge.

According to the ad tracking firm AdImpact, Republicans and their allies plan to spend about $221 million more than Democrats on advertising through Election Day.

That includes Senate, House, and state races, and that includes $140 million in the nine most competitive Senate races.

Georgia here is the one exception.

That's where Democrats are expected to spend more than Republicans.

But, Amy, I will start with you on this.

We have seen money make a difference and not make a difference.

AMY WALTER: Yes.

Right.

AMNA NAWAZ: Will it make a difference in these races?

AMY WALTER: Right.

And this is what Republicans are counting on, that especially in the states that are red, the states that Trump won by double digits, they don't need to use that money to convince people who already are upset with the president to change their mind and go vote for a Democrat.

What they need to do is encourage those who right now are Republicans, who want to see Republicans win, but don't feel like their vote is -- that voting for them is all that important.

So theirs is about turnout versus what we saw, say, in a presidential when we're talking about those battleground states and the money going into those.

That was as much about persuasion, trying to ensure that voters in those purple states heard your message.

AMNA NAWAZ: Tam, how do you look at this?

TAMARA KEITH: Yes, I have been digging into these numbers, and what is remarkable here is how many races these super PACs, Trump-aligned groups, and also the party committees, how many of these races that they're spending money on in are in districts that President Trump won by 10 points, 12 points.

Significant.

These are red districts.

These are Trump districts.

One example is Florida 25, which was part of the gerrymander to create a new Republican district.

It's a -- President Trump won that district, or those -- under those lines by nine points.

They're spending tens of millions of dollars on air to try to make that be a Republican seat.

This gerrymander that was supposed to advantage Republicans begins to look like a dummymander if they can't make those seats red.

And it's taking a lot of work.

So that's just also a sign of the political climate.

One Democrat put it this way: "Money can buy you an umbrella, but it cannot change the weather."

AMNA NAWAZ: That's a good way to put it.

Tamara Keith, Amy Walter, great to see you both.

Thank you.

AMY WALTER: You're welcome.

TAMARA KEITH: You're welcome.