A 'midterm's disaster'? Planet America puts it to Rich Baris and John Fredericks
John Barron and Chas Licciardello also head to Ohio, where a Senate race between Sherrod Brown and Jon Husted may decide which party controls the chamber.
ABC News In-depth
Story of Why this story? The video opened at a pace of 179,864 views a day, 11 times a normal first day on this channel (16,807).
Is Trump’s Republican party headed for a midterm’s disaster? | Planet America
Is Trump's Republican party headed for a midterm's disaster, and can it turn things around before November? That is the question Planet America asks this week, and it put it to two people from the president's side of the argument: the polling analyst Rich Baris, host of People's Pundit, and the radio host John Fredericks, a Trump loyalist who tells the show the polls are "fake".
The episode has drawn nearly 150,000 views in its first 16 hours, about ten times what a new video here usually gathers in a whole day. It is well ahead of the Four Corners investigation into companies targeting veterans and the 7.30 report on Victoria's potholes, both posted the same day, even though the channel as a whole is running at about half its usual daily pace.
As ever, the half hour moves quickly. Trump is back on the campaign trail, the show asks whether Hispanic voters are drifting from the Republicans, and in Texas the president campaigns for Ken Paxton against the Democrat James Talarico. There is a detour for a ride in the Beast to Oklahoma. Then the program travels to Ohio, where Sherrod Brown, who lost his Senate seat in 2024, is running against Jon Husted, the Republican appointed to the seat JD Vance gave up to become vice president. Billed in the description as a race that is "getting nasty", it is the longest segment of the episode. The closing segment looks at Trump's rebranding of AI as "SI", for super intelligence.
In the comments, the Fredericks interview gets the most attention. Many viewers write about Barron's expression as he listened, and some ask why the interview was so short. An American viewer says they understand their own country's politics better through an Australian broadcaster. And one viewer with a good eye for history spotted a slip in the show's gallery of Ohio presidents: Ulysses S. Grant was captioned as Charles Dawes, and James Garfield as Benjamin Harrison.
Published on Trari
Read next
Is this your channel?
Share the story with your audience: in a community post, in your channel's description or on your socials. The text and the badge are ready.
You may use the picture, the badge, and link it to this story.
- Channel
- ABC News In-depth
- Subscribers
- 2,450,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 6,116,646
- Channel views, pace per day
- 494,001 (on a normal day: 984,354)
- Video published
- October 5, 2026
- Video views so far
- 149,101 (less than a day online)
- Video views, pace per day
- 179,864
The numbers
The numbers show an episode that pulled far ahead of everything else the channel posted the same day.
💡 Test your knowledge
Planet America co-host Chas Licciardello is a member of which Australian comedy team?
Chas Licciardello is one of the founding members of The Chaser, the satirical team behind The Chaser's War on Everything.
