Claim OwnershipTHE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent
Subscribed: 956Played: 95,304
Subscribe
© 2024 The New Republic
Description
Every weekday, The New Republic’s Greg Sargent brings you a fresh way of thinking about the biggest political stories of the moment, offered up in an entertaining, information-packed conversation with a leading lawmaker, journalist, or newsmaker. We go deep into the stories behind the headlines leading TNR and other news outlets—while making it fun and fast.
456 Episodes
Reverse
On Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the world that the Kennedy Center has now been renamed after President Donald Trump. Her announcement of this great honor was bizarrely obsequious, mimicking phrases Trump himself uses and slathering him with great flattery. We think it’s no accident that this comes as Trump’s decline is worsening both physically and politically: On Friday, he seemed to nod off amid his escalating physical deterioration. And a brutal Fox News poll finds his approval on the economy cratering, huge majorities saying economic conditions are bad, and even majority opposition to his mighty boat bombings. We talked to Moira Donegan, a columnist for The Guardian, who has a great new piece on Trump’s decline. We discuss how Trump’s minions are compensating for his deterioration with increasing cult worship, why his physical and political decline are connected, and what it means that the world is now looking beyond Trump.
Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
In a blow to House Speaker Mike Johnson, four House Republicans joined Democrats to force a vote next year on an extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies. Anger is spiking in both directions: Representative Mike Lawler, one of those four, ripped Johnson’s effort to block that vote as “absolute bullshit!” But more MAGA-fied allies of President Trump like Representative Eric Burlison excoriated those rebels for “stabbing the rest of the party in the back.” This is the worst of both worlds for Republicans: They are mired in infighting, yet despite this push by centrists, the subsidies will still expire, bringing political trouble next year. Indeed, Johnson seemed unnerved as he gamely insisted he has “not lost control.” We talked to Grace Segers, who writes well about Congress and policy as a staff writer for The New Republic. We discuss the deeper roots of intra-GOP tensions, how this all might play in the midterms, and the deeper human toll that the expiring subsidies will unleash.
Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles gave numerous interviews to Vanity Fair that were way too candid about, well, everything. That prompted press secretary Karoline Leavitt to offer some rancid spin: She went full cult in praise of Trump. She dissembled lamely about “fake news.” And she raged at the publication for not including enough of Trump advisers’ praise for him—as if it’s obliged to do that! We think Wiles’ most interesting revelation was her open admission that Trump’s prosecutions are indeed about “retribution.” Zeteo reporter Asawin Suebsaeng has a piece out today reporting on a new turn in this saga: That confession will complicate Trump’s prosecution of enemies, because it gives them ammo to show that his targeting of them is vindictive. We talked to Suebsaeng about the damage this will do to Trump’s corrupt prosecutions, why Leavitt and others praise Trump so obsequiously at difficult moments, and what all this says about our slide into authoritarianism.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
President Trump offered a disgusting response to the horrific death of Rob Reiner and his wife, narcissistically insisting they’d died of “Trump Derangement Syndrome” while delusionally claiming world-historical successes for himself. What surprised us was MAGA’s retort to this. Marjorie Taylor Greene offered a remarkably heartfelt reply to Trump, and the contrast between her measured tone and his unhinged, megalomaniacal cruelty had the effect of quietly humiliating him. Other MAGA figures piled on as well. We think this captures a deeper set of divisions inside MAGA, and indeed, it comes as other MAGA figures are now warning that the base is drifting away from Trump. Even Trump’s own pollster is sounding the alarm. We talked to New Republic senior editor Alex Shephard, who’s been writing well about Greene and MAGA. We discuss why Trump’s hold is weakening over his base and MAGA influencers alike, what Greene recognizes about Trump’s weakness that other Republicans don’t, and how this will likely get worse for Trump, to the benefit of Democrats.
Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
President Donald Trump keeps ranting furiously that “affordability” is a Democratic scam. But suddenly he’s now promoting video of himself talking about how devoted he is—really, truly—to doing something about costs (while angrily blaming Democrats for it). And that admits costs are a problem on his watch. Republicans want him to stabilize his message on affordability, but by lurching wildly back-and-forth, he’s sabotaging it. And even the very MAGA chair of the Republican National Committee is admitting the GOP faces a “looming disaster” in the midterms. Other MAGA figures are also sounding the alarm. There’s a reason Trump can’t escape this conundrum: His policies actually are making things a lot worse. We talked to economist Rob Shapiro, who has a good piece at Washington Monthly spelling this out. We discuss the true nature of the Tump-GOP conundrum, the deeper reasons Trump is so vulnerable on the economy, and why it’s all likely to get worse right through 2026.
Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
President Trump erupted Thursday in a wild rage on Truth Social in which he appeared to blame pollsters for failing to register his world-historical success. “When will Polls reflect the Greatness of America at this point in time?” he fumed. Notably, this comes just after Democrats scored big wins in the Miami mayoral race and elsewhere, which analysts see as a sign that the Latino vote is shifting hard away from Trump. Not coincidentally, a new poll has Trump’s approval on immigration plunging below 40 percent. We talked to William Saletan, staff writer at The Bulwark, about his great new piece on Trump’s open agenda of ethnic persecution. We discuss the relationship between Trump’s racism and his unpopularity, what the latest GOP losses show about the collapse of the MAGA coalition, what to make of the GOP’s open embrace of full-bore ethnonationalism, and why it’s (somewhat) heartening that the public is rejecting it so decisively.
Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
1In today’s episode, we talk to Representative Jamie Raskin about President Trump’s corrupt scheme to gerrymander the 2026 midterms—and about Raskin’s new ranked-choice-voting plan. Trump’s rage is growing as Indiana Republicans keep resisting his pressure to gerrymander their state, and he exploded in a wild Truth Social rant over the weekend. Yet for now, state Senate Republicans appear dug in. Worse for Trump, other Republicans are now beginning to argue that his scheme is backfiring. Why? Because Trump is hurting Republicans so badly that those whose seats are made somewhat less safe by gerrymandering might now be at risk. Raskin sees an opening to offer another way: Today he’s introducing a new bill that would require ranked choice voting in congressional races across the country. He tells us about the proposal, discusses how Trump’s gerrymandering chaos shows why ranked-choice is a better alternative, and urges Democrats to fight GOP tactics with hardball of their own.
Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Pete Hegseth’s defense of the killing of two men clinging to an incapacitated boat is falling apart on multiple fronts. Lawmakers who saw video of this horror are letting it be known that the two men were waving before their execution, suggesting they were either surrendering or beckoning for rescue. And other leaks confirm that the boat very well might not have been bound for the United States to begin with. Meanwhile, some Republicans are abandoning him or acquiescing to legislative language that denies Hegseth funding until video is made more widely available to lawmakers, suggesting his position is weakening. We talked to Tess Bridgeman, co-editor-in-chief of the Just Security website and former national security lawyer in the Obama administration. She explains why Hegseth’s position is untenable, why the entire bombing campaign is illegal, why it’s critical that oversight pin down President Trump’s role, and what the prospects are for true accountability later.
Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Under persistent questioning about President Trump’s unfitness for office at his latest cabinet meeting, White House press secretary offered one of the ugliest defenses we’ve ever seen. She singled out Trump’s vile racist attack on Somalis, and praised it as an “epic moment” that put an “exclamation point” on that meeting “for the whole world to see.” Never mind that Trump appeared to fall asleep there, and in that rant about Somalis, called them “garbage” who “contribute nothing” and suggested he wants them all out of our country, even though many are American citizens. We talked to Vedant Patel, a former State Department and White House official. We discuss what it means that Leavitt went full cult in giving White House sanction to his ugly bigotry, why the targeting of Somalis is so ghoulish, and what Trump really intends when he threatens denaturalization and “remigration,” as he is now doing.
Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Democrats have signaled that they’re running in the 2026 midterms on “affordability.” This week, Trump unleashed several angry, wild-eyed rants about their “affordability” message. In one, he raged that this message is a “con job.” In another, he seethed that it’s a “Democrat scam.” He’s angry because these attacks are working, and because he knows it means the GOP’s midterm woes are getting much worse. And right on cue, in this week’s special election in Tennessee that Republicans won, the vote shifted 13 points to the left relative to 2024. That shocked Republicans into a panic: Representative Elise Stefanik openly fretted that Republicans are “underperforming.” Senator Ted Cruz urged Republicans to sound the “alarm.” And a senior GOP strategist called the result a “flashing red warning.” We talked to Amanda Litman, the president of Run for Something, which is recruiting candidates across the country. She digs into the special election results to explain why they’re good news, details how Democrats can keep the momentum going through 2026, and reflects on what could still go wrong.
Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Suddenly, on many fronts at once, President Trump and his allies are demonstrating how central sheer sadism is to his agenda—and to how MAGA conducts politics. Trump just unleashed a hateful rant to the media about Somali immigrants to set the stage for a coming campaign to arrest them en masse. Meanwhile, MAGA excitement over the Caribbean Sea bombings is spiking: Pete Hegseth tweeted out a deeply sadistic cartoon celebrating these extrajudicial killings. A prominent MAGA personality just declared her desire to see bombing victims “bleed out.” And MAGA figures are raging at reporters who broke the story of the follow-up strike killing two men in the water. We talked to Paul Waldman, who has a good piece on his Cross Section Substack about all of this. We discuss the centrality of hate and bloodlust to Trump-MAGA politics, how the administration’s social media strategy utilizes sadistic imagery, and why the public backlash to all these depravities is heartening.
Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
President Trump’s illegal boat bombings just got even worse. We’ve now learned that after demolishing a boat allegedly carrying drug smugglers in September, two survivors were left behind, and they were both blown apart in a second strike. That’s probably a war crime. On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt struggled mightily to spin this as perfectly lawful. But all she revealed is how hard it is to defend all this when actual facts are known. Meanwhile, the latest turn in this saga is clearly rattling some Republicans, who feel forced to appear as if they want to exercise more oversight. We talked to Jennifer Rubin, editor-in-chief of The Contrarian, about her good new piece on this latest fiasco. She explains why we should take GOP angst over the bombings seriously, why people inside the chain of command should fear they’re on the hook for illegal acts, and what it will really take to impose accountability.
Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
President Trump dreads being seen as weak. He exploded in a long, crazed rant about a harsh new piece in The New York Times about his ongoing decline. Though the piece documented his deterioration in careful detail, Trump insisted in all kinds of ways that, no, really, he’s as physically energetic and cognitively sound as he’s ever been. We think this gets at a bigger story: The illusion that Trump is strong, powerful, and wields absolute mastery over foes is essential to his political mystique. As his wildly unhinged overreaction to the piece demonstrates, he knows this better than anyone. Yet that eruption only confirmed the thesis: The whole fracas even got medical professionals to weigh in on his obvious mental decline. We talked to David Lurie, who writes for the Public Notice Substack, about his new piece depicting Trump as a “lame duck dictator.” We discuss the collapse of Trump’s aura of strength, how the combination of his political debilitation and consolidation of authoritarian power poses new dangers, and the importance of depicting him as the naked emperor figure he truly is.
Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This week, the White House leaked plans to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies for some of the millions of people who stand to lose out from their expiration. But that’s on ice after Republicans declared it a nonstarter. That could hurt them in the midterms, and oddly, it comes as President Trump just exploded in a wild tirade about the elections. He falsely ranted that Democrats will open our borders and unleash DEI, and urged the Indiana GOP to hurry up and gerrymander to stop Democrats. Meanwhile, Republicans tell Punchbowl News that they’re losing the House, that resignations are coming, and that “morale has never been lower.” But if so, why not renew ACA subsidies to try to save yourselves, Republicans? We talked to New Republic staff writer Monica Potts about her good new piece on the GOP predicament. We discuss the roots of GOP anti-ACA hatred, why Republicans bank on election-rigging, and how it all explains GOP plutocratic politics in the Trump era.
Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
This weekend, President Trump raged over a video from Democrats that warned against carrying out “illegal orders.” That led him to get his Defense Secretary to launch an investigation of one of those Democrats, Senator and former Navy captain Mark Kelly. But things kept spiraling downward for Trump when a judge tossed out his corrupt prosecutions of James Comey and Letitia James. The ruling—that his appointment of a stooge U.S. Attorney was illegal—shows that his slapdash targeting of enemies is what backfired. In all these stories, Trump is corruptly weaponizing the system to get revenge on enemies for corrupt purposes, and it’s running aground for him. We talked to David Kurtz, who covers legal issues for Talking Points Memo’s excellent Morning Memo newsletter. We discuss how Trump’s own corruption is blowing up in his face, how the failing prosecutions are connected to his vile effort to get revenge on Kelly, and why we’re going to need another post-Watergate-scale reform effort to salvage the system once all this is over.
Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Suddenly, media outlets seem to have figured out that President Donald Trump is really, really unpopular. There’s been a palpable shift in the discourse: The New York Times reports that Republicans are quietly looking beyond Trump, suggesting he’s losing his grip on the party. Axios claims that it’s “red alert” time for Trump and the GOP. Politico describes how Republicans are getting routed in school board races, a sign that MAGA culture-warring has lost its sway and is even backfiring. And one CNN analyst offers a brutal reading of recent approval numbers on Trump, pronouncing them “atrocious.” We talked to Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, who regularly dissects MAGA and media foibles alike. We discuss why the political media smells blood, how deepening splits in MAGA show Trump’s weakness, what it means that the Trump-MAGA culture war and immigration raids are badly alienating ordinary voters, and how Trump is in a potentially irreversible tailspin.
Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On Thursday, President Trump called for the execution of a number of members of the opposition party. This came after Democratic lawmakers released a powerful video informing military and intelligence officials that they are not obliged to carry out illegal orders from Trump. Then he raged in several ranting tweets that this was “sedition,” punishable by “death.” Democratic leaders forcefully hit back. And White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt spun madly in response, struggling to deny that Trump had given illegal orders. In other words, it all backfired badly on Trump by forcing a public conversation about whether Trump actually is giving illegal orders. We talked to Representative Chrissy Houlahan, an Air Force veteran herself, who is one of the Democrats in the video. She explains why Democrats needed to do this, why service-members need to know they have support from lawmakers like her, what they’re hearing from inside the military, and why it’s so important to have a big public debate over Trump’s violent lawlessness.
Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
President Trump is cratering in two new polls. A Marist survey has his overall approval rating at 39 percent, and a Marquette poll has his approval plunging on the economy (36-64), tariffs (37-63), and inflation (28-72). Yet Trump and his advisers don’t have much of an answer to this problem. Trump just unleashed a long, rambling tirade angrily insisting that prices are really going down, not up. And he ranted bizarrely about Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, saying of the latter, “I’d love to fire his ass,” another sign of his anger over inflation. So what happens if the economy really dips? We talked to New Republic staff writer Timothy Noah, who has been writing well on this question. He explains what’s going on with the gathering economic storm clouds, why Trump is uniquely ill-suited to handle a worsening economic crisis, and what things might look like for Trump if the bottom falls out.
Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Suddenly, President Trump’s effort to rig the 2026 midterms with corrupt gerrymanders appears in trouble. A panel of judges just blocked the GOP gerrymander in Texas, which had added five seats. In Indiana, Republicans currently lack the votes to redraw their congressional map. Trump is angry about all this. He lashed out at Indiana Republicans, threatening primaries and calling one opponent “weak” and “pathetic.” So is the scheme dead? No Several aspects of it still remain unresolved. The Texas seats are in doubt, but that’s being appealed, and Republicans have added four other seats. Meanwhile, Democrats are adding 5 in California and one in Utah. Now what? We talked to Heather Williams, who’s been fighting against the GOP schemes as president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. She explains the hurdles that lie ahead, how it could all turn out relatively well for Democrats, and why rank-and-file voters need to take state-level contests way more seriously.
Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
A civil war is unfolding inside the MAGA movement over Nick Fuentes, the neo-Nazi and white supremacist, and President Donald Trump just made it worse. In an interview, Trump defended Fuentes in a way that will boost his standing inside MAGA in a big way. As it turns out, however, this will create a surprising and unwelcome problem for JD Vance. The vice president has tried to avoid taking sides on Fuentes. But it’s now clear that Fuentes represents a constituency inside MAGA that’s too big to exile. That means Vance, who’s hoping to harness MAGA for his 2028 presidential run, will have to tread carefully, and Trump’s intervention has only made that harder for him. We talked to Vox’s Zack Beauchamp, who has a great new piece digging into all this. He explains Fuentes’s growing influence inside MAGA, why Vance will struggle to navigate all these complexities, and what all this says about today’s right more broadly.
Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Download from Google Play
Download from App Store
United States
. . . #TDS . . .
The felonator is holding on for dear life to this idea that tariffs hold some kind of pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I don't understand that frantic quality about his grasping. What scheme has he thought up surrounding it? My suspicions point to, as always, to enriching himself. But how would he get his mitts on it? If it was truly like a tax, citizen or companies could pay it when they purchase it. But then, who pays the govt? It just doesn't add up. Please someone clear this up.
Where is the outrage????