THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

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.

Last refreshed: May 20th, 2026 at 9:19 AM ⓘ

Follow this podcast in the Metacast mobile app to refresh it and see new episodes.

Follow on

Apple Podcasts

Spotify

RSS

Podcasts are better in Metacast mobile app

Don't just listen to podcasts. Learn from them with transcripts, summaries, and chapters for every episode. Skim, search, and bookmark insights. Learn more

Episodes

Why Democratic Elites are “Shaken to their Core” about Trump and Biden

This week, the freakout among Democrats about President Biden reached its shrillest pitch yet, after a special counsel report exonerated Biden but included combustible claims about Biden’s mental capacities. While many Democrats redoubled calls for the party to entertain alternatives to nominating Biden, confusion and disagreement reigns among them about what precisely to take away from this moment. We talked to Brian Beutler, who regularly criticizes the Democratic Party’s approach to politics ...

Feb 13, 2024•38 min

Elon Musk’s Unhinged Pro-MAGA Tweets Expose Tech Oligarchy’s Dark Side

Elon Musk has unleashed numerous tweets lately boosting far right personalities and endorsing MAGA tropes holding that migration constitutes a deliberately engineered invasion. He even endorsed a version of “ white genocide theory .” Along with his elevation of Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian president Vladimir Putin, it all amounts to a genuine ideology: Reactionary tech authoritarianism. We discussed this with Gil Duran, author of a New Republic piece called “The Tech Plutocrats Dreami...

Feb 12, 2024•30 min

How Trump’s White Evangelical Army is Slowly Destroying Nikki Haley

With Nikki Haley set to make a last stand of sorts in the South Carolina primary later this month, there’s a hidden reason that Donald Trump has been so dominant throughout the GOP nomination process: White evangelicals. Their support for Trump has held through impeachments, scandals, revelations about sexual assault, multiple serious criminal prosecutions, and even an insurrection attempt. We talked to Sarah Posner, a scholar of the religious right , about Trump’s extraordinary hold on these vo...

Feb 09, 2024•41 min

Republicans Admitted the Deal They Killed Was a Good One, Senator Says

In an extraordinary spectacle, virtually all Senate Republicans joined together Wednesday to block a bipartisan bill that would have given Republicans much of what they wanted on border security . Why? Because Donald Trump told them to. We talked to Democratic Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, who conferred with Republicans throughout this process. He opened up about what Republicans said behind closed doors, noting that they privately admitted that this bill was “aligned with their view of wh...

Feb 08, 2024•31 min

How Trump’s trial-delaying scam could screw over GOP voters

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court ruled that Donald Trump is not immune from criminal charges stemming from his effort to steal the 2020 election. With Trump expected to take this to the Supreme Court, how will the timeline of his insurrection-related trial dovetail with the presidential election? We talked to former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade about all the possible scenarios—including one that backfires spectacularly on none other than the Republican Party’s own voters. Learn more abo...

Feb 07, 2024•27 min

J.D. Vance’s Ugly Rant About Trump’s Coup Portends a Dark MAGA Future

This week, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio declared in an on-air rant that if he had been Trump’s vice president in the run-up to Jan. 6, 2021, he would have told states to send Congress multiple slates of electors so lawmakers could “debate” the election’s supposed improprieties. That may sound like typical MAGA bluster, but it has deadly serious ramifications, confirming that Republicans still think Trump’s effort to overturn the election was in some ways a good thing . So what might they attempt n...

Feb 06, 2024•28 min

Krugman: Trump-MAGA are in Desperate Denial About the Economy

It’s one of the strangest disconnects in our politics today: By many metrics, the economy is doing extremely well , yet President Biden’s approval numbers on the economy are in the toilet . With the latest jobs report showing an extraordinary 353,000 jobs created in January, we talked to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman about what the boom means, why Trump and MAGA Republicans are in denial about it, and how President Biden should respond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.f...

Feb 05, 2024•37 min

Trump’s Legal Mess Triggers Shocking New Levels of Right Wing Grift

This week, we learned that Donald Trump’s fundraising committees channeled an extraordinary $50 million toward bankrolling his myriad legal defenses throughout 2023. Such sordid trickery has a long history on the right: For decades, shrewd fundraising gurus have raked in cash from conservative voters with hallucinatory alarmism about leftist villains and other apocalyptic threats. We talked to Geoff Kabaservice, the author of a “ Rule and Ruin ,” a history of the GOP, to situate Trump in this ha...

Feb 02, 2024•31 min

Alarming New Polls Show Trump Ahead. So Why do Dems Keep Winning?

A frightening new batch of polls this week showed President Biden trailing Donald Trump in all the key battleground states. And yet, as bleak as the polling has looked, Democrats racked up an impressive winning streak in special elections all throughout 2023. This disconnect is why political pros are closely watching an election for state House in the Philadelphia suburbs that’s set for Feb. 13th. We talked to Democratic candidate Jim Prokopiak to gauge what he’s seeing on the ground in swing te...

Feb 01, 2024•26 min

MAGA’s Ugly New “Civil War” Fantasy Should be Taken Seriously

Far-right personalities are fantasizing about “civil war” again, amid a standoff between Texas Governor Greg Abbott and the feds over border enforcement. That may seem silly, but unbridgeable differences over immigration truly are driving many big stories of the moment, from that Texas battle to Senate negotiations over a border bill to the House GOP impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. If you want to understand what’s really going on with all these complex issues, few ...

Jan 31, 2024•44 min

Meet the Lonely Republicans Who Think Trump is Disqualified from Running

Three former Republican governors — Marc Racicot of Montana, Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, and Bill Weld of Massachusetts — have signed on to a legal brief to the Supreme Court arguing that Donald Trump is disqualified from running for president under Section 3 of the 14th amendment to the Constitution. Greg Sargent talks to Racicot about what he hopes this will achieve, whether the GOP is to blame for the rise of Trump and the MAGA movement, and why principled anti-Trump Republican elit...

Jan 29, 2024•34 min

← Prev

Hosted on Megaphone by Spotify

For the best experience, listen in Metacast app for iOS or Android