THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

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Dimwit Trump Praise of Vile Ramaswamy Ad Backfires as GOP Panic Erupts Oct 23, 2026

Show notes

In dense and convoluted remarks, Donald Trump defended that disgusting ad in the Ohio gubernatorial race. The ad from Republican Vivek Ramaswamy featured the mother of Democrat Amy Acton calling her a liar. But it quickly emerged that Acton was apparently raped by her step-father, the mother’s husband. The move backfired spectacularly, as numerous Republicans, including Ohio governor Mike DeWine strongly condemned the ad and GOP panic over the race erupted. Even MAGA appears divided. We talked to Jim Swift, a senior editor at The Bulwark, who wrote a good piece on this fiasco. We discuss the deeper reasons Ramaswamy decided this ad would energize the MAGA base, how it could cost Republicans the Ohio gubernatorial and Senate contests, and what this ugly saga says about the depravity of Late-Stage MAGA and the growing mainstream backlash to it.

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Trump Blurts Out Bizarre Election-Theft Admission as Polls Bottom Out Oct 22, 2026

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Donald Trump just unleashed a panicky string of posts—see here, here, here, and here—in which he frantically urged Republicans to vote by mail early. Amusingly, this comes after he told Republicans for months that mail-balloting is fraudulent to pass his SAVE America Act. Now that his efforts to nix vote-by-mail have flopped, he’s prodding Republicans to adopt it—effectively admitting his attacks on vote-by-mail were a scam to help him rig the election. Mail voting is an essential piece of pre-election-day voting, so his “fraud” nonsense could be discouraging GOP early voting, too. So what does the data say? To find out, we talked to Michael McDonald, who tracks the early vote at the UF Election Lab and on his Substack. He explains why the data suggests Democrats and independents are far more energized than Republicans, what we can extrapolate from it about the election, and how Trump screwed himself on early-vote-by-mail. We also discuss the latest New York Times poll showing Democrats leading by 11 points and Trump at a new low, which suggests the bottom is falling out for him.

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Abdul El-Sayed’s Viral Takedown of GOP Heckler Shows How to Fight MAGA Oct 21, 2026

Show notes

With less than two weeks until Election Day, the Michigan Senate race is more or less on a knife’s edge. Amid all this, Democrat Abdul El-Sayed has had some hugely viral moments lately, tangling with a MAGA plant over a question about the Muslim Brotherhood and battling with JD Vance over the vice president’s vile attacks on him. We think El-Sayed is developing an interesting way of doing politics that seems attuned to the information wars of the Trump era. Will it work in a swingy state that’s coming down to the wire? We talked to El-Sayed about the state of the race, the affordability crisis, his high-profile viral battles, and how it all reflects his deeper theory of politics in the Trump-MAGA era.

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Trump Hits Brutal New Polling Low—and GOP Leaks Grow Truly Humiliating Oct 20, 2026

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Donald Trump’s approval just sank to an abysmal 33-66 in the new Washington Post poll, a record low in Post polling. The survey also finds Democrats leading in the battle for the House by eight points. Meanwhile, the new NBC poll also finds Trump below 35 percent and puts the Democratic lead at 10 points. The polling averages also suggest a Democratic lead pressing double digits. Small wonder that Republicans are leaking to Politico that they blame this debacle squarely on Trump. One says Trump is clueless about what “voters care about,” adding: “It’s insane.” Others are sharply criticizing Trump’s super PAC operatives, revealing that they’re trying to shift blame onto Republicans and away from Trump himself. That’s deeply embarrassing given Trump’s constant claim that he’s giving Republicans a huge lift. We talked to Madison Andrus of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. She discusses how wide the map is getting, what the role of Trump’s unpopularity is in putting deep red areas in play, and why Democrats are bullish about pulling off a sweep of House districts in South Texas.

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Trump Erupts in Angry Panic over Texas Senate Race—and Fox Is Unnerved Oct 19, 2026

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In recent days, Donald Trump has exploded over James Talarico’s Senate candidacy in Texas. In a long, tortured tirade, Trump repeatedly called him “James TalaFREAKO” and raged at Karl Rove for supposedly wanting Ken Paxton to lose. He even ordered Fox to stop airing Rove. In another tirade, he fumed that Paxton is the “greatest attorney general” in Texas’s history and angrily wondered why Talarico hasn’t been defeated already. Meanwhile, in a striking exchange, a Fox anchor and a GOP Congressman appeared rattled as they wondered aloud why Texans appear prepared to vote for Talarico despite him obviously being a woke leftist whackjob. Translation: Why, oh why, aren’t MAGA-GOP smears working? We talked to Texas-based Democratic strategist Nancy Zdunkewicz. She explains the deeper reasons why attacks on Talarico aren’t sticking, walks through the state of play in the race’s final days, and grapples with whether the tightening polls amid the GOP’s avalanche of home-stretch spending should worry Democrats.

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Fox News Just Nuked Trump with His Most Disastrous Poll Yet Oct 16, 2026

Show notes

The new national poll from Fox is absolutely awful for Donald Trump and the Republican Party. It finds Trump at a record low approval, shows him absolutely cratering with independents and Latinos, and even finds him underwater with noncollege whites and non-MAGA Republicans. It also finds Democrats expanding their lead in the generic ballot matchup to nine points and shows them with commanding leads among many key voter groups. But what if the polls are wrong? Republicans are betting on this, and it’s the topic of a big and serious debate among many observers. So we talked to Natalie Jackson, a polling expert who founded the Centerline firm and wrote well about this debate as a columnist for National Journal. She puts the Fox numbers in historical context, explains why the big question is just how good a night Democrats will have, walks us through the debate over polling accuracy, and details how polling firms are trying to avoid a big miss.

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Trump’s Boast about Rallies Backfires as Humiliating New GOP Leaks Hit Oct 15, 2026

Show notes

Earlier this week, Donald Trump made some audacious claims. He insisted at length that his rallies are having a “tremendously positive impact” on Republicans’ chances in the midterms, because it causes their support to “go up.” He also insisted costs are plummeting. But on Wednesday, the new Consumer Price Index report demolished that claim by showing inflation getting worse. Meanwhile, numerous Republicans leaked to Politico that the House is all but lost. And critically, they cited Trump as the main overarching reason for this. As one lamented: “Trump has made this election all about himself.” Another griped that “the biggest problem” is Trump’s “unfavorables.” That wrecks his boast about his rallies, too. We talked to MS NOW’s Steve Benen, author of a good piece about the hollowness of Trump’s bragging. We discuss why Trump’s public standing is uniquely bad, look at how the GOP’s latest money moves show Republicans believe the bad polling news, and dig into the true state of the Senate map.

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Trump Rages as New Press Sec’s Debut Humiliatingly Mocked Even by MAGA Oct 14, 2026

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In a remarkable piece, The Atlantic reports that Donald Trump is privately furious over his inability to force Iran to stop the war. As one adviser notes, he is “used to snapping his fingers” to control Republicans and the media, so he is now “losing his mind that Iran won’t listen” to him. This comes as his new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, turned in a debut performance that’s drawing serious fire from the right. White House officials are sharply criticizing it as “brutal.” One right-wing media personality harshly mocked her as not “serious,” claiming that “she’s auditioning for a job on Fox News.” These stories are connected: They both reveal Trump as an emperor-has-no-clothes figure who can’t fathom why his control over events is deserting him. We talked to Mark Jacob, who skillfully dissects White House follies in his Stop the Presses newsletter. He explains why having someone like Zacharia as White House press secretary is a deadly serious matter for the country, how institutional cowardice persuaded Trump of his omnipotence, how that’s now cracking up under him, and why all this will make him even more dangerous.

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MAGA Voters Turn on Trump in Focus Group Bombshell: “Nothing but Lies” Oct 13, 2026

Show notes

Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark recently held a focus group with people who voted for Donald Trump in 2024 that took an extraordinary turn. After being shown Trump’s vile taxpayer-funded ad, in which he rages about expelling “globalists” and “Marxists” and the “fake news media,” they were revolted. They called Trump “despicable” and “power hungry” and a “narcissist” who spews “nothing but lies.” We think this suggests Trump may be alienating right-leaning voters not just over costs, but with his totalitarian-dictator rule as well. So we talked to political theorist Paul Crider about the possibilities this focus group raises. We discuss his new piece arguing for the creation of a broad anti-corruption, anti-authoritarian coalition, dissect new GOP panic about losses in deep red areas, ask whether Trump’s dictator-megalomania is turning even those places against Trump, and examine how Democrats are creating a new politics in response to it all.

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Trump Rage at Fox Backfires as Aides Leak Humiliating Motive Behind It Oct 09, 2026

Show notes

Donald Trump rages regularly at Fox News. But Axios now reports that there’s more behind this than meets the eye: White House and GOP operatives have privately pressured Fox for months to change how it’s covering Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. The problem? By giving El-Sayed airtime and covering him in a somewhat factual way, it’s made it harder for Trump and the GOP to smear him as a crazy radical jihadist. Translation: Don’t let voters learn the truth about this guy; it’ll make it harder for us to beat him! That is so deeply humiliating. But it also gets at a bigger story about how the manly men of MAGA get so whiny when the electoral going gets tough. We talked to Jennifer Rubin, editor-in-chief of The Contrarian. We discuss her new piece on the flimsiness of MAGA machismo, probe the deeper reasons Trump can’t allow the truth about El-Sayed to be told, and dissect a new Pew poll showing Trump’s approval down to an abysmal 30 percent.

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