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.
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Episodes

Trump Shooting Fiasco Worsens as Dems Find Fresh Line of Attack on ICE

As the scandal around ICE’s killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis gets worse, two leading Democrats—Representatives Eric Swalwell and Daniel Goldman—are set to introduce a new bill reining in ICE. It would end qualified immunity for civil enforcement officers like ICE agents, making it easier for victims of their abuses to sue them or pursue criminal charges against them in court. All this comes as top MAGA figures and leading Republicans have flatly defended the killing in some truly ghoulish di...

Jan 09, 202625 min

Trump’s ICE Agents Killed a Citizen. Then Damning New Details Emerged.

On Wednesday, an ICE agent killed a woman in her vehicle on the streets of Minneapolis. She was reportedly a U.S. citizen. But then President Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made their own conduct even more damning by blaming the victim and insisting the officer acted out of legitimate self-defense. The video Trump posted didn’t come close to supporting his claims. Other videos strongly suggested the officer wasn’t at all in a life-threatening situation and that lethal force wa...

Jan 08, 202622 min

Trump’s Vile Attack on Mark Kelly Backfires as Harsh Retort Goes Viral

Last year, Senator Mark Kelly and five other Democrats posted a video with a stark message: Military service members and officials are not obliged to carry out illegal orders. This infuriated Donald Trump, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is reprehensibly bringing disciplinary action against him as a retired Navy man. But this is backfiring: Kelly has now offered a striking new response in a second video , and it’s powerful stuff. Kelly speaks emotionally about his family’s commitment to the m...

Jan 07, 202623 min

Trump Explodes at Media over Tariff Fiasco as Poll Delivers Harsh News

President Trump just unleashed a wild rant on Truth Social, accusing media figures of deliberately ignoring good news about his worsening tariff disaster because they “hate and disrespect our country.” He added that the tariffs have made us “FAR STRONGER AND MORE RESPECTED THAN EVER BEFORE.” What caught our eye is how this shows Trump running everything, no matter how trivial, through a “strong” versus “weak” frame. He’s vowing to seize Venezuela’s oil after his invasion; he’s threatening many o...

Jan 06, 202625 min

Marjorie Taylor Greene Wrecks Trump in Epic Maduro Rant as MAGA Breaks

After American forces captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and brought him to the United States, almost no Republicans spoke out in dissent. But Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene did speak out. In an extended rant , she accused Trump of breaking his promise to avoid military adventurism. She sharply questioned Trump’s commitment to fighting “narco-terrorists.” And she even said straight out that this is a naked bid to take Venezuela’s oil. With other MAGA figures questioning Trump’s int...

Jan 05, 202623 min

Trump Press Sec Goes Full Cult as Brutal Fox News Poll Hits Him Hard

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 fi...

Dec 19, 202527 min

Mike Johnson Rattled by New Revolt as MAGA-GOP Fury Boils: “Bullshit!”

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 Re...

Dec 18, 202521 min

Trump Press Sec Goes Off Rails as Susie Wiles Fiasco Takes Worse Turn

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 prosecution...

Dec 17, 202525 min

Marjorie Taylor Greene Humiliates Trump over Reiner as MAGA Cracks Up

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 pile...

Dec 16, 202525 min

Raging Trump Wrecks GOP’s 2026 Message as MAGA Panic Grows: “Disaster”

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 i...

Dec 15, 202522 min

Trump Rages at Pollsters as Latest GOP Losses Reveal Surprise Weakness

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 ...

Dec 12, 202527 min

Trump Erupts in Fury as GOPers Humiliatingly Defy His Plot to Rig 2026

In 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? Be...

Dec 10, 202531 min

Hegseth Defense in Total Collapse as Leaks on Strike Grow More Damning

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 t...

Dec 09, 202521 min

Trump Press Sec Goes Full Cult as Spin on Mental State Flies Off Rails

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 ...

Dec 08, 202523 min

Angry Trump Unravels over 2026 Woes as GOP Panic Grows: “Flashing Red”

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 vo...

Dec 04, 202524 min

Trump Seethes Darkly at Media as MAGA Bloodlust at Bombings Boils Over

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 de...

Dec 03, 202524 min

Trump Press Sec Spin Implodes as Fresh Boat Bombing Horrors Rattle GOP

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...

Dec 02, 202525 min

Trump’s Fury at NYT Explodes amid Fresh Concerns about Mental Decline

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...

Dec 01, 202518 min

Trump Erupts in Frantic Tirade over 2026 as GOP Slips into Fresh Panic

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. Mea...

Nov 26, 202523 min

Raging Trump Spirals Further as Push to Jail Enemies Backfires Badly

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 enemie...

Nov 25, 202523 min

Trump Is a Weak, Failing President, and the Media Is Finally Saying So

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...

Nov 24, 202524 min

Trump’s Angry Tirade Calling for “Death” to Dems Just Backfired Badly

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 t...

Nov 21, 202525 min

Trump’s Anger over Prices Goes Nuclear as Fresh Polls Show Him Tanking

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 Powe...

Nov 20, 202520 min

Trump’s Plot to Rig 2026 Is Falling Apart, and Boy Is He Mad About It

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...

Nov 19, 202521 min

Trump Accidentally Stabs Vance in the Back as MAGA Erupts in Civil War

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 e...

Nov 18, 202522 min

Trump Explodes in Angriest Epstein Tirade Yet as Allies Visibly Panic

Anxiety is rising among President Trump’s staunchest allies that he’s politically lost his way. The New York Times reports that his advisers fear he’s alienating key voters in his own coalition. And CNN reports that some Republicans are openly warning the White House that the GOP is in trouble in the midterm elections. Meanwhile, Trump just erupted in a furious new tirade about the Jeffrey Epstein fiasco. In it, he ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Epstein’s ties to Democrats . B...

Nov 17, 202525 min

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Fresh Epstein Bombshell Should Terrify Trump

President Trump is angrily urging Republicans not to join Democrats in pushing for release of the Jeffrey Epstein files. But all of a sudden, with the discharge petition set to force a House vote, things are rapidly going in the wrong direction for Trump. In a surprise, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene now predicts that the number of Republicans who will vote to release the files will be “a lot higher” than anyone expects. If the GOP defectors hit truly sizable numbers, as suddenly looks li...

Nov 14, 202524 min

Trump Press Sec’s Epstein Spin Implodes as New Info Rattles Him Deeply

Suddenly, the Jeffrey Epstein files are back. Democrats released new emails raising fresh questions about the relationship between the sex trafficker and President Trump. It’s gotten so bad that the White House is now privately pressuring Republicans to stop trying to get the Epstein files released, a clear sign Trump is deeply rattled by the emerging info. Indeed, now that it looks like the discharge petition calling for release of the files will get 218 votes, Trump angrily warned Republicans ...

Nov 13, 202523 min

Trump Wrecks His Own Case for Tariffs as Bizarre SCOTUS Rant Backfires

Signs are mounting that the Supreme Court might invalidate President Trump’s tariffs, and he’s clearly on edge about it. Trump just vented wildly about the case on Truth Social, but he made a mess of it: In one rant , he claimed his tariffs have pulled in $2 trillion in revenues. In a second rant only hours later, that number suddenly ballooned to $3 trillion. We think this badly undermines Trump’s case: It shows how reckless and blundering the tariffs truly are, while vividly demonstrating how ...

Nov 12, 202519 min

Trump’s Rage over Shutdown Boils Over in Rant that Should Wake Up Dems

Eight Senate Democrats are now providing the votes to move forward with funding the government, but without getting the Democrats’ principal demand: A continuation of expanded Obamacare subsidies. On Monday, President Trump exploded in a deranged Truth Social rant , attacking air traffic controllers who took time off during the shutdown. He even bizarrely said money will be sent to those who did not. It occurs to us that the absurdity of Trump’s tirade revealed that his stance in the shutdown is...

Nov 11, 202521 min
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