The presidential race is tied, and Donald Trump very well could win. But he is now scapegoating others for a possible loss: He’s reportedly angry with Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley, he’s raging about supposed voter fraud in Pennsylvania, and his allies are sounding new alarms about his ground game in key states. Meanwhile, new polls show engaged voters tilting to Kamala Harris, which means more pressure on Trump’s ground operation to turn out low-propensity voters. We talke...
Oct 31, 2024•25 min
As the backlash to Donald Trump’s hate rally in New York intensifies, he defended the event as a “lovefest” in a rambling monologue on Tuesday. Why? Because the vile “joke” at the rally comparing Puerto Rico to a pile of garbage is infuriating Puerto Rican voters, a surprisingly large constituency in Pennsylvania. We talked to GOP strategist Mike Madrid, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, expert on the Latino vote, and author of The Latino Century. He explains why this could be the “October Surp...
Oct 30, 2024•28 min
MAGA suddenly seems very, very out of sorts. Donald Trump raged at Fox News on Monday, blasting the network for its supposedly favorable coverage of Democrats. Meanwhile, a number of Trump’s allies suddenly seem very worried about the backlash to his hate rally at Madison Square Garden. We spoke with Democratic strategist Anat Shenker-Osorio, who regularly does research into disaffected voters and explains why Trump’s rally at the Garden could provide last-minute motivation to vote against Trump...
Oct 29, 2024•25 min
Over the weekend, Michelle Obama delivered an extraordinary speech that reminded us how catastrophic Donald Trump’s presidency was, harshly criticized his debased moral character, and asked why the press expects Kamala Harris to meet basic standards of public conduct that aren’t expected of Trump. Could this closing message win over the undecided voters who will decide the race? We talked to Reed Galen, a former GOP strategist who’s working to pull remaining fence-sitters away from Trump for his...
Oct 28, 2024•24 min
In a new interview, Donald Trump seethed with anger at Jack Smith, and confirmed that if elected president, he’ll fire Smith as special counsel immediately. On top of that, Trump also boasted that the Supreme Court has now given him immunity from criminal prosecution. Which suggests Trump really does think that if he wins, he’ll be able to function as president with something like absolute impunity, unaccountable to any laws. We talked to former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade, who explained ...
Oct 25, 2024•25 min
Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, John Kelly, just revealed that he believes Trump will rule as a dictator and a fascist—and that he mused aloud about having his generals function as Hitler’s generals did. Kamala Harris jumped on this news to highlight the dire threat posed by a second Trump term. Can Harris translate this bombshell into a strong closing message in swing states that will decide this election? We talked to Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler, who walks us ...
Oct 24, 2024•31 min
With two weeks to go, the presidential race couldn’t be closer. But if Kamala Harris is to win, how exactly would that happen? Veteran journalist Ron Brownstein has a new piece in The Atlantic laying out what Harris’s path to victory looks like. The short version: She has to run up massive margins in cities and affluent suburbs, while limiting Trump’s gains among nonwhite and working class white voters. That may sound unsurprising. But the details on how this might unfold are complicated, fraugh...
Oct 23, 2024•33 min
The other day, Donald Trump playacted as a worker at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania. But he ran into trouble, evading a question about whether he would support a minimum wage hike, producing scalding headlines. Which gets at a larger scam: Trump enjoys public approval on the economy, even though his agenda for working people is borderline nonexistent, whereas Harris has a detailed economic agenda for working and middle class people alike. We talked to HuffPost senior reporter Jonathan Cohn, author...
Oct 22, 2024•27 min
At a rally in Nevada, Barack Obama offered a blistering new warning: Trump’s vows to persecute the “enemy within” should be taken with deadly seriousness. Trump’s displays are deeply dangerous in someone who would be president with no guardrails left. Yet even now, a sizable subset of voters just doesn’t take his threats seriously. We talked to veteran analyst Michael Podhorzer, author of a good new piece warning that we’re “sleepwalking our way to fascism.” He explains how this election could c...
Oct 21, 2024•32 min
On Thursday, Donald Trump erupted with rage at Fox News over its election coverage, explicitly slamming Fox for making a Kamala Harris presidency more likely. Meanwhile, CNN reports that among Trump allies, plans for another fake electors scheme are in full swing. Which raises a question: What sort of chaos could erupt, if the voting is close and Fox and other right wing media start amplifying Trump’s inevitable lies about fraud in the election? We talked to election law expert Matthew Seligman,...
Oct 18, 2024•23 min
The word “fascist” has fully penetrated the presidential race. We just learned that a top general under President Donald Trump described Trump as “fascist to the core.” Trump has been threatening to unleash the military on the enemy within, which numerous observers describe as fascist politics. And at a Fox News event on Wednesday, Trump uncorked an unhinged, rambling response to all this, insisting that the real fascists are Democrats. We talked to David Austin Walsh, a historian and author of ...
Oct 17, 2024•29 min
Is the media finally figuring out how to cover Donald Trump’s mental unfitness for the presidency? First, CNN’s Jake Tapper dressed down a Trump surrogate for whitewashing Trump’s threat to unleash the military on his enemies. Then Trump held a strange town hall at which he abruptly stopped answering questions, which generated aggressive media coverage. And Kamala Harris has directly engaged on Trump’s mental state in a new way, drawing media attention to it. We talked to Brian Beutler, who ofte...
Oct 16, 2024•32 min
Over the weekend, J.D. Vance tried to argue that Donald Trump will not target his political enemies if he’s reelected president. Yet at around the same time, Trump was confirming the opposite point with several new rants on Fox News, declaring flatly that he’ll use the military to target the “enemy within.” Indeed, Trump regularly says openly at his rallies that in a second term, he will persecute unnamed enemies of MAGA. We talked to Politico reporter Myah Ward, author of a great new piece on w...
Oct 15, 2024•23 min
In recent days, Donald Trump has escalated his attacks on CBS News, raging at the network over something they supposedly did involving Kamala Harris’s interview on “60 minutes.” He has now stated repeatedly that CBS should lose its broadcasting license. We think this is a clear warning about what a second Trump term would look like. We talked to Michael Sozan, author of a new report for the Center for American Progress Action Fund on Project 2025. He gets specific about how an authoritarian Trum...
Oct 11, 2024•23 min
It’s a big question in the presidential race: Will Republican and independent voters who backed Nikki Haley in GOP primaries support Donald Trump at the levels he needs? New data suggests the answer may be No. The Bulwark reports that a new poll taken by a Democratic firm finds a surprisingly large percentage of voters who backed Haley defecting to Kamala Harris. And a New York Times national poll finds her making new inroads among GOP voters. How real is all this? We talked to the Bulwark’s Mar...
Oct 10, 2024•24 min
In a new book, Bob Woodward reports that Donald Trump sent covid tests to Vladimir Putin at the height of the pandemic, and that after leaving office, Trump had up to seven private phone calls with Putin. This drew a harsh response from Kamala Harris, who pointed out that Trump kowtows to Putin because he aspires to be a dictator himself. Which highlights something important: The direct connection between Trump’s authoritarian aspirations at home and the axis of global autocrats rooting for him ...
Oct 09, 2024•27 min
In a new interview, Donald Trump unleashed an ugly, crazed rant about Kamala Harris, calling her “low IQ” and “stupid.” And almost no leading journalists took it seriously. Which points to a larger story: Trump regularly targets Harris with vile attacks that are unapologetically misogynist, yet it barely attracts notice anymore. We talked to writer Susan Milligan—who does good work for The New Republic on Trump’s misogyny—about how overtly anti-woman Trump’s strategy has become, and what Harris ...
Oct 08, 2024•29 min
On Sunday, The New York Times published an extraordinary piece detailing Donald Trump’s deteriorating mental state, singling out his deranged fabrications and outright fabulism as central to its expose. Meanwhile, Trump held a weekend rally in Pennsylvania where he lied angrily in ugly new ways about the federal response to Hurricane Helene. Can Democrats capitalize on all this in the home stretch? We talked to Democratic strategist Maria Cardona, who suggests new ways to close out this race by ...
Oct 07, 2024•21 min
Donald Trump keeps pushing the vile claim that federal officials are withholding disaster aid from GOP areas devastated by Hurricane Helene. This has now backfired, focusing media attention on Trump’s own hyper-politicization of disaster relief as president. To wit: Two former Trump officials told Politico that Trump initially refused to approve disaster aid for California after wildfires in 2018 due to the state’s Democratic lean. We talked to one of those officials—Olivia Troye, a senior homel...
Oct 04, 2024•31 min
At the vice-presidential debate, the CBS News moderators fact-checked one of JD Vance’s lies—and that was all it took to trigger an epic attack on CBS from Donald Trump and his MAGA allies. Which highlights a larger story: The degree to which Trump’s campaign is built on an immense superstructure of endless, shameless lying. Bullying the media into not fact checking Trump and Vance is essential to that project. We talked to Jamison Foser, who writes about the media and the right on his Finding G...
Oct 03, 2024•25 min
With five weeks until Election Day, Donald Trump has decided to win over swing voters by rhapsodizing about police violence, threatening to prosecute anyone who displeases him, and unleashing disgusting insults toward his opponents. His latest? Raging that Tim Walz is a “moron” and “sick.” We talked to A.B. Stoddard, columnist at The Bulwark and author of a new piece suggesting a closing strategy for Kamala Harris, about how Democrats can use Trump’s angry, unhinged eruptions to fashion a winnin...
Oct 02, 2024•32 min
Western North Carolina is enduring full-blown catastrophe. In the wake of Hurricane Helene, towns have been destroyed, roads have been washed out, people are frantically trying to locate loved ones, and dozens have died. Enter Donald Trump, who just declared that the federal government—and Democratic governor Roy Cooper—are deliberately neglecting MAGA parts of the state, and charged that the Biden administration is consciously letting Americans drown. We talked to state Democratic Party chair A...
Oct 01, 2024•20 min
At a rally in Wisconsin over the weekend, Donald Trump really cranked up the rage and hate speech about immigrants, and viciously savaged Kamala Harris as “mentally impaired.” But this deserves special attention: Trump also attacked Fox News for the mere act of carrying a recent Harris speech about immigration on the network, seething that Fox shouldn’t be “allowed” to do that. We talked to Salon columnist Amanda Marcotte, a skillful interpreter of Trump’s violent threats, about the clear signal...
Sep 30, 2024•25 min
Donald Trump has been quiet about January 6th lately. But this week, he suddenly unleashed an epic rant on social media about Special Counsel Jack Smith, raging about false new claims on the right that the “deep state” deliberately allowed the insurrection to go forward—against Trump’s will. The real cause of Trump’s fury? Smith is set to submit a court filing detailing his evidence of Trump’s alleged January 6th related crimes—some of which may become public. We talked to Politico reporter Kyle...
Sep 27, 2024•26 min
If Kamala Harris can defeat Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, she almost certainly will win the presidency. It’s must-win for him. Yet the state remains a coin-flip—which is why both candidates campaigned in the state this week. So what is Harris’s path to victory? We talked to Governor Josh Shapiro, who explained why the race is so close—and why he thinks she’s “on her way” to winning there, in part due to concerted communications with non-college voters. Shapiro also responded at length to Trump’s...
Sep 26, 2024•23 min
Donald Trump and his allies have been pushing Nebraska’s GOP-controlled State legislature to change how the state’s electoral votes are allotted, to prevent Kamala Harris from winning the election with just the blue wall states. But Nebraska’s GOP governor just announced that he will not hold a special session to change the rules, dashing Trump’s hopes. How did this happen? We talked to Joe Perticone, who has been covering all this as national political reporter at The Bulwark. He unpacks why Tr...
Sep 25, 2024•23 min
The scandals are getting worse for Mark Robinson, the GOP candidate for governor in North Carolina. After CNN broke the news of his incendiary comments on a pornography message board—including describing himself as a “black Nazi”—much of his staff quit. Now the national GOP has stopped funding his ads. You’ve heard talk about how Robinson’s collapse could help doom Trump in must-win North Carolina. But how exactly would that happen? What would it look like? We talked to Morgan Jackson—chief stra...
Sep 24, 2024•28 min
In two bizarre rants over the weekend, Donald Trump openly fumed about female voters, lecturing them about why they should be supporting him and dismissing concerns about GOP abortion bans and all they’ve wrought. Meanwhile, a new NBC News poll shows Kamala Harris leading Trump by 21 points among women. Is Trump even trying to speak to them effectively anymore? We talked to Joan Walsh, national affairs correspondent at The Nation who writes well about the politics of abortion. She explains how H...
Sep 23, 2024•28 min
If Donald Trump loses Pennsylvania, he almost certainly will lose the presidential election. Now, all of a sudden, we have four new high-quality polls showing Kamala Harris ahead, though some others show it tied. Why the heck is Pennsylvania so close? What is really going on there? Should we believe the polls? Or not? We chatted with Democratic strategist Rebecca Katz, who is from Pennsylvania herself, worked on Senator John Fetterman’s victorious 2022 campaign, and knows something about winning...
Sep 20, 2024•24 min
At a rally in Michigan this week, Donald Trump unleashed a strange monologue about how we should only build gas-powered cars in the future, because we have lots of gasoline and China doesn’t. Translation: China has a huge lead in electric vehicles, so we shouldn’t even try to compete. Why isn’t all this more central in the presidential race? We chatted with Princeton professor Jesse Jenkins, a sharp observer of the energy transition and host of the weekly Shift Key podcast. He explained how Trum...
Sep 19, 2024•27 min
