THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent - podcast cover

THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

Greg Sargentnewrepublic.com
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.

Episodes

MAGA Fury Erupts as Trump’s Epic Legal Loss on Tariffs Slowly Sinks In

President Donald Trump’s advisers are raging over a court ruling that temporarily blocked many of Trump’s tariffs. Stephen Miller called it “judicial tyranny.” Another top adviser called the judges “globalist.” And press secretary Karoline Leavitt seethed that “unelected judges” have grown “dangerous.” While an appeals court did put a stay on the court ruling, letting the tariffs proceed for now, it’s now overwhelmingly clear the tariffs are extremely vulnerable legally, and the whiplash in the ...

May 30, 202522 min

Trump’s Rants about Harvard Get Darker as He Loses a Big One in Court

In a series of rants to reporters, President Trump’s rage at Harvard took a sadistic and unhinged turn. He made it clear that only total subjugation to him on Harvard’s part will satisfy him. This comes as a judge just blocked another one of his executive orders aimed at grinding a major law firm into submission, a big setback to Trump in a string of legal losses on that front. In today’s episode, Katherine Stewart, a sharp observer of MAGA who has a new piece on her Substack about the Harvard c...

May 29, 202522 min

Humiliated Trump’s Anger at Putin Grows as GOPers Start Breaking Ranks

In a series of public remarks, President Trump has lashed out at Vladimir Putin for keeping up his attacks on Ukraine in defiance of Trump’s stated desire for peace. Trump has called Putin “crazy,” has admitted he has no idea what Putin is thinking, and has even tweeted that Putin is “playing with fire!” Trump is plainly feeling embarrassed by Putin—who has only escalated his attacks amid Trump’s peacekeeping efforts—and his humiliation shines through in his recent eruptions, given his campaign ...

May 28, 202522 min

Trump’s Odd Ramblings to Media Accidentally Wreck His Own Tariff Scam

After President Donald Trump threatened to single out Apple with tariffs, he offered remarks to reporters that undercut his case. First he seemed to say this would apply to many iPhone makers, but then reiterated he’d said this straight to Apple CEO Tim Cook, a potentially serious abuse of power. Then Trump said U.S.-manufactured jobs would not result in higher prices due to automation, but this concedes that the manufacturing work he hopes tariffs will create are low-level jobs that might get r...

May 27, 202523 min

Trump’s Angry New Attack on Harvard Is Already Blowing Up in His Face

After raging at Harvard earlier this month, President Donald Trump is now revoking the university’s right to receive foreign students. The administration sent an unhinged letter to Harvard making the announcement while demanding extensive information about international students, a grotesque abuse of power. The White House statement justifying this seethed with angry, McCarthyite nonsense. We think this is already backfiring: Legal experts quickly dismissed the move as lawless, Harvard is alread...

May 23, 202522 min

Trump Unravels in Crazed Rants to Media as Poll Reveals Fresh Weakness

President Trump’s presser on Wednesday flew off the rails. He raged at a reporter for questioning his acceptance of a luxury jet from Qatar. He snapped when asked why he’s resettling white Afrikaners but no other refugees. And he tried to humiliate the South African president by brandishing printouts about the deaths of white South Africans but couldn’t defend his lie of a “white genocide” unfolding there. The corruption and the white nationalism—Trump openly promised both during the campaign, a...

May 22, 202522 min

“Chilling”: Trump’s Fury at Bruce Springsteen Just Got Much Darker

President Trump has raged at Bruce Springsteen for days, demanding investigations as retaliation against him for criticizing the president. This is easy to dismiss as the usual lunacy, but Rolling Stone reports that there’s a genuine idea at work here: Trump has long planned to use government agencies to constrain his opponents’ political activities, and that’s now under way. Indeed, the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, staunch Trump ally Alina Habba, just brought charges against a House Democrat f...

May 21, 202522 min

Trump’s Angry Walmart Tirade Backfires, Wrecking His Own Tariff Scam

President Donald Trump’s feud with Walmart is intensifying. After the retail giant warned that its prices will go up due to Trump’s tariffs, he erupted on Truth Social, and even threatened Walmart to get it to “eat” the costs of his levies. Then White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt reiterated the threat to reporters. Amusingly enough, all this constitutes an admission that other countries don’t pay the costs of the tariffs, as he keeps claiming—we do. We talked to Lindsay Owens, an econo...

May 20, 202521 min

Trump’s Threats to Defy Courts Darken as MAGA Fury over Losses Grows

President Donald Trump has been ranting wildly at the Supreme Court. In a pair of tweets after oral arguments over his effort to end birthright citizenship displeased him, Trump raged that the people are on his side, a dark hint that he will wield the wrath of his supporters against the high court. Then, after it dealt a setback to his use of the Alien Enemies Act for deportations, Trump shared a tweet from a top MAGA figure suggesting the release of terrorists near the justices’ homes. This was...

May 19, 202524 min

Trump Rages Over Qatar Jet Fiasco as GOP Angst Worsens: “Humiliating”

President Donald Trump has been growing angry over the criticism of his decision to accept a $400 million luxury jet from Qatar. He snapped at a reporter who questioned him about it, and erupted over it on Truth Social. Now The Atlantic reports that Trump is privately telling his advisers it’s “humiliating” for a president to fly around in an outdated jet—and has even mused about keeping the gift after he leaves the White House—all of which suggests his mood about the scandal is darkening. Meanw...

May 16, 202520 min

MAGA Senator’s Stunning Admission: GOP Is Badly Screwing Trump Voters

The House GOP is forging ahead with its massive domestic policy bill implementing President Donald Trump’s agenda. And it’s becoming clear that it will seriously screw over Trump voters. But don’t take our word for it. Senator Josh Hawley, a staunch ally of Trump, went on CNN and said this in strikingly direct terms. He decried the bill’s massive cuts to Medicaid, and confirmed that they are a betrayal of GOP and MAGA voters. We talked to Jonathan Cohn of The Bulwark, one of the best health care...

May 15, 202517 min

Trump Tariff Fiasco Worsens as Brutal New Reports Reveal a Fresh Scam

The White House has been boasting that President Trump’s partial pause in the trade war with China is a historic breakthrough. But two new reports, one from The New York Times and the other from the non-liberal Wall Street Journal editorial page, neatly expose what a monstrous scam this notion truly is, in and of itself. As they detail, Trump has put the global economy through major turmoil and uncertainty, but without winning any serious concessions from China. This will get worse for Trump: In...

May 14, 202521 min

Jamie Raskin’s Harsh Takedown of Trump’s Qatar Jet Scam Hits the Mark

Over the weekend, the news broke that President Donald Trump is accepting a luxury jet from the country of Qatar for presidential travel. This extraordinarily brazen act may well violate the Emoluments Clause, which bars foreign gifts to officials unless expressly authorized by Congress. It comes even as Trump is embarking on a Mideast trip to countries that are the sites of Trump-branded projects, and Trump-aligned businesses are scooping in huge sums from foreign governments via crypto. We tal...

May 13, 202529 min

Trump Press Sec’s Fawning over Him to Media Takes Scary, Cultlike Turn

In her most recent media briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt went full North Korea with a number of worshipful monologues about Trump. Yet at around the same time, another journalist’s criticism of Trump caused him to explode in a wild, triggered fury that undercut the image Leavitt tried to project of a leader who is strong, calm, and in command of events. We think this tension is a regular, deeper feature of Trumpism. So we talked to Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, who knows how to...

May 12, 202526 min

MAGA Rage Erupts as New Pope’s Views of Trump Prove Unexpectedly Harsh

Right after the news broke that Robert Francis Prevost was elected as the new Pope of the Roman Catholic Church, the internet produced lots of evidence that he has promoted articles critical of JD Vance and Donald Trump, and even expressed sympathy for George Floyd. That prompted MAGA figures to erupt in anger. They attacked the new Pope as anti-Trump pro-open borders, a Marxist, and soft on thugs and drug dealers, as Media Matters documented. We talked to the excellent political theorist Matt M...

May 09, 202523 min

Trump Erupts as GOPers Quietly Nix Key US Attorney Pick, Enraging MAGA

President Donald Trump erupted on Truth Social this week when it became clear that MAGA loyalist and insurrectionist Ed Martin’s nomination for U.S. Attorney for Washington D.C. is in trouble. Trump even called GOP Senators to demand their support. But then GOP Senator Thom Tillis announced his opposition, leading even staunch Trump loyalists to concede he might not survive. MAGA personalities lashed out in response. Lost in this saga has been the basic reason we don’t want a MAGA-brained Januar...

May 08, 202527 min

Trump’s Odd New Tariff Musings Show How Badly He’s Screwing His Voters

Thanks to President Trump’s policies, a confluence of events is set to absolutely clobber rural America. First there’s Trump’s trade war. On Tuesday, Trump unleashed a bizarre set of ramblings that indicated he’s fine with letting it drag on forever, our exporters be damned. Meanwhile, there are new signs that farmers in Trump country are already getting hammered. The House GOP’s planned cuts to Medicaid will likely pose a massive problem for rural hospitals. And big GOP cuts to food stamps will...

May 07, 202523 min

Trump Seethes as Karl Rove Delivers Harsh On-Air Warning about Polls

President Donald Trump is angry at longtime GOP strategist Karl Rove. That’s because Rove delivered Trump a stern on-air warning about his sliding approval ratings. What caught our attention, though, is what Rove said about immigration in particular. Rove suggested that Trump is in trouble on what’s supposed to be his best issue, and offered a striking explanation for it that surely got under Trump’s skin. This comes as Trump also delivered another diatribe about the Supreme Court for suggesting...

May 06, 202524 min

Trump’s Rage at Fox News over Bad Poll Signals Coming Fiasco for MAGA

President Trump has recently been erupting at Fox News over its new poll finding him with 55 percent disapproval. Trump described Fox’s pollster as “Trump hating” and demanded that the firm be “investigated.” Stephen Miller subsequently called for the pollster’s firing. Guess what: Fox News has gotten the message. As Trump’s poll numbers for other news organizations have steadily worsened, Fox personalities have begun going to great lengths to deny what the numbers clearly show. This highlights ...

May 05, 202522 min

Trump’s Arrests Hit by Major Legal Setback as Stephen Miller Seethes

Big news: A federal judge just ruled that President Donald Trump’s renditions under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act are illegal. It’s a crucial moment in the battle against Trump’s lawlessness. Meanwhile, Stephen Miller ranted wildly at the media for daring to ask hard questions about the wrongfully-deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia, falsely stating as fact that he’s an “MS-13 terrorist” and raging at the very idea that migrants he labels “terrorists” should get due process. It’s a clear sign of Miller’s...

May 02, 202520 min

Trump Rages Wildly over Humiliating GDP Data as Aides Calm His Fury

We just learned that President Donald Trump’s economy contracted in the first quarter. Trump unloaded twice over this bad news, attempting to blame Joe Biden for it. Meanwhile, some of Trump’s aides went full North Korea, bowing down before him and offering adulation in shockingly abject terms. So how long do Trump’s advisers think they can keep him in a protective cocoon, shielding him from the realities of his disastrous reign? We talked to New Republic senior editor Alex Shephard, who has a g...

May 01, 202523 min

“He Was Pissed”: Trump’s Vile New Threat over Tariffs Takes Scary Turn

After the news broke that Amazon might publicly clarify the costs that President Trump’s tariffs are imposing on its products, Trump instructed his White House press secretary to publicly threaten the company. Trump also called Amazon founder Jeff Bezos to express his displeasure, and one adviser told CNN that “he was pissed.” Amazon immediately shelved the plan, and Trump openly gloated about Bezos bending the knee, an unnerving signal of more autocratic bullying ahead. Meanwhile, a new PRRI po...

Apr 30, 202523 min

Trump’s Fury at Bad Polls Goes Nuclear as Allies Rush to Calm Him Down

President Donald Trump is growing angrier over polls that keep showing him tanking. On Monday, he raged that polls sponsored by media outlets are “COMPROMISED AND CORRUPT.” He even quoted one of his own pollsters saying that surveys from The New York Times and The Washington Post are “FAKE POLLS,” something his pollster clearly hatched to calm his anger. So to what degree are the people around Trump simply lying to him about his disastrous reign? They’re deceiving him about the state of public o...

Apr 29, 202521 min

Trump’s Fury over Abrego Garcia Case Darkens as Crushing New Polls Hit

Over the weekend, President Trump raged on Truth Social at judges who are ruling that Trump must follow the law in the case of wrongfully-deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia and others illegally deported to prisons in El Salvador. Trump again threatened to dispense with due process for migrants. Yet this comes even as Trump admitted in a new interview that he’s open to bringing Abrego Garcia back and retrying him for deportation through lawful channels. For Trump to acknowledge he has this option whil...

Apr 28, 202523 min

Trump’s Surprise Admission about Putin Wrecks “Great Dealmaker” Scam

President Donald Trump just made some new public statements about the Russia-Ukraine war, and they were thoroughly unimpressive. At one point, he seemed to get angry at Vladimir Putin over a massive new Russian attack on Ukraine, calling on Putin to “STOP.” But then in remarks to reporters, he openly suggested that he doesn’t expect Russia to make any serious concessions at all in the quest for peace. This striking public admission badly undercuts Trump’s “master dealmaker” mystique, and wrecks ...

Apr 25, 202526 min

Trump Suddenly in Retreat on Many Issues as Poll Reveals Key Weakness

Suddenly, President Donald Trump appears to be retreating or getting knocked back on multiple fronts. Trump is considering whether to slash his tariffs on China. Elon Musk is stepping back from the administration. Federal scientists are admitting the Measles outbreak is worse than previously acknowledged. And the leaks about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth are intensifying. All this comes as a new poll finds broad public opposition to Trump’s abuses of power—revealing a surprise weakness in an ar...

Apr 24, 202523 min

“Madness”: Trump Tariff Fiasco Suddenly Worsens amid Brutal Poll Drop

On Tuesday, largely due to President Trump’s tariffs, the International Monetary Fund downgraded its projections for economic growth in a big way. Meanwhile, we’re already starting to see layoffs. All that comes as new polls show Trump cratering on the economy. Trump is now shifting blame to Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell for the tariff fallout. But those attacks are only rattling markets and investors more, backfiring on Trump. We talked to one of the best economic commentators out ther...

Apr 23, 202521 min

“Full-Blown Meltdown”: Don Jr. and MAGA Rage as GOPers Turn on Hegseth

President Trump’s defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is imploding again. We just learned that he shared still more highly sensitive data on a private signal chat. A GOP Congressman just basically called for his resignation. And a former chief Pentagon official who is a Trump supporter himself also tore into Hegseth’s tenure, calling it a “full-blown meltdown.” That triggered a furious response from Donald Trump Jr., who declared this turncoat critic “exiled” from the Trump movement. Other MAGA fig...

Apr 22, 202520 min

Trump’s Ugly New MS-13 Ramblings Wreck His Case Against Abrego Garcia

President Donald Trump’s case for leaving Kilmar Abrego Garcia to rot in an El Salvadoran prison continues to collapse. In bizarre, rambling remarks to reporters in which Trump talked about Abrego Garcia’s alleged ties to MS-13, Trump revealed the profound weakness of his own arguments. In particularly ugly fashion, Trump basically admitted he knows little about the supposed evidence linking him to the gang—even though this notion is central to the rationale for refusing to bring him back. Today...

Apr 21, 202518 min

Trump’s Fury at Harvard Darkens as GOPer Openly Admits: “We’re Afraid”

In an extraordinary escalation of President Trump’s rage at Harvard University, the administration just threatened to block Harvard from receiving foreign students if the university doesn’t provide extensive information on students to the government. Trump also erupted at Harvard on Truth Social, making all kinds of other threats. On another front, GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski openly admitted to a sense of widespread terror of retaliation: “We are all afraid.” We talked to Jeffrey Sachs of Acadia ...

Apr 18, 202525 min
For the best experience, listen in Metacast app for iOS or Android
Open in Metacast