THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

Latest Episodes:

Trump’s Corrupt Firing of Lisa Cook Backfires as Brutal New Poll Hits Sep 09, 2025

Show notes

There’s been an amusing turn in the saga involving President Trump’s vile effort to remove Lisa Cook as governor of the Federal Reserve. Trump has relied on his flunkies to cook up allegations of mortgage fraud against Cook—and other foes as well—but now news organizations have blown big holes in the scam. They’ve reported that numerous Trump officials, and even relatives of his top ally in the anti-Cook effort, have done similar things on their mortgages. Meanwhile, a new CBS News poll contains brutal findings for Trump across the board. Crucially, it finds that truly huge majorities oppose Trump’s efforts to interfere with the Fed—yet another way this whole charade is backfiring on him. We talked to New Republic staff writer Matt Ford, who covers legal affairs. He explains why Trump’s use of this tactic is so corrupt, why the stakes in the battle over Cook are larger than they appear, and what might happen when it all lands at the Supreme Court.

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Raging Trump Suddenly Facing Worsening Legal Losses on Many Key Fronts Sep 08, 2025

Show notes

President Donald Trump’s losses in court are suddenly piling up on many crucial fronts at once. Most of his tariffs were just ruled illegal, prompting him to explode in fury. An appeals court blocked Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act for deportations. And a judge invalidated Trump’s cancellation of grants to Harvard. There’s a big through line here that deserves attention: Judges are taking a very hard line on Trump’s use of pretexts to justify his illegal actions, on many of the issues where his abuses of power are most flagrant. But what happens when all this collides with the highest court in the land? We talked to Michigan University law professor Leah Litman, author of Lawless: How the Supreme Court Runs on Conservative Grievance, Fringe Theories, and Bad Vibes. She explains why Trump’s manufacturing of pretexts is central to his consolidation of authoritarian power, why it’s temporarily heartening that he’s facing many setbacks in these areas, and what it will look like once it all goes to the high court.

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Fox News Accidentally Makes RFK Fiasco at Hearing Even Worse for Trump Sep 05, 2025

Show notes

At a Senate hearing on Thursday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. got massacred by harsh questioning from Democrats and Republicans. They called out his anti-vax views and condemned his decapitation of our public health system. But Matt Gertz of Media Matters noticed something funny: Fox News’ coverage bent over backward to portray him as pro-vaccine, as someone working to make vaccines available to Americans, not trying to restrict them. We think that reveals just how shaky President Trump’s political position has become amid RFK’s reign of destruction. Fox accidentally demonstrated just how deeply split Republicans are over this ongoing anti-vax fiasco—and how desperate Trump’s propagandists are to cover up the truth about it. In this segment, Gertz relates more of the evasions he saw on Fox, explains how Fox is struggling to navigate many conflicting currents inside MAGA, and predicts RFK’s lunacy is hurtling us toward a much bigger reckoning.

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Epstein Survivor Nukes Trump in Emotional Speech as WH Quietly Panics Sep 04, 2025

Show notes

The pressure is escalating on President Trump and Republicans to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. Survivors of Epstein’s sex trafficking spoke out on Wednesday, and one of them, Haley Robson, directly took on Trump in a very powerful way. She denounced him for calling the Epstein files a “hoax,” and called on Trump to recognize that the victims are human beings whose suffering should not be minimized. Meanwhile, a discharge petition to force release of the files is close to passing the House. And the White House is reportedly pressuring Republicans behind-the-scenes not to support the petition, a clear sign of panic. We talked to Representative Jim McGovern of Massachusetts, who has been in the middle of this debate as a member of the House Rules Committee. He explains why he thinks the petition might pass, why Republicans can’t hold off the pressure much longer, why they’re so terrified of Trump on this, and what’s coming next.

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Trump’s Angry, Crazed Rants to Media Unnerve Legal Experts: “Very Bad” Sep 03, 2025

Show notes

President Trump suffered a major loss Tuesday when a federal judge in California ruled that his military occupation of Los Angeles was illegal. Trump’s response was highly unsettling. Speaking to reporters, he sounded entirely unconstrained. He threatened to resend the military to L.A. and declared that the military is now definitely going into Chicago. He let out a strange, angry rant about crime in DC that sounded frankly pretty nuts, worrying a variety of legal observers. And he abruptly ended the presser amid another display of anger. We talked to former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade, who explains the nuts-and-bolts of the judge’s L.A. ruling and looks ahead to the possibility of a major inter-branch confrontation with Trump if the courts continue to block his military occupations. McQuade explains why all these displays from Trump show that we’re in “a combustible situation waiting for something very bad to happen.”

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Trump Threat to Occupy Cities Takes Ominous Turn in Vile Fox News Hit Sep 02, 2025

Show notes

In an ugly move, Fox News contacted Republican Senators and asked: Should President Trump deploy the National Guard in your states’ blue cities? Fox News got back the answer it was trying to generate: GOP Senators actively want Trump to use the military in their states’ urban areas, ostensibly to fight “crime.” This is an unnerving turn in the saga that makes Trump’s threat look worse. Congressional Republicans expressly want Trump to employ troops to intimidate their own constituents, provided it’s confined to largely Democratic areas—and they’re saying this openly, egged on by Fox, making additional occupations more likely. Meanwhile, Democrats are consumed in a big debate over whether they can talk about this topic at all. We talked to media critic Jamison Foser, who has a good piece about all this on his newsletter, Finding Gravity. We discuss why the media is wrongly describing this as a political winner for Trump, what the polls actually say, and how the media storyline is encouraging Democrats’ worst duck-and-cover instincts.

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Trump Press Sec’s Dimwitted Spin Implodes as RFK Firing Fiasco Worsens Aug 29, 2025

Show notes

The White House is trying to fire Centers for Disease Control director Susan Monarez for opposing Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine policies. This has sent the CDC sliding into chaos. On Thursday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt struggled to spin what’s happening. She said Monarez had never been subject to a vote—but the Senate voted to confirm her. Leavitt insisted the White House had fired Monarez—but Trump’s direct word appears to be required, and as of this recording, he hadn’t spoken. Leavitt pretended Trump is defending the integrity of our vaccine system—but RFK is destroying it. We talked to the University of Michigan’s Don Moynihan, author of a good Substack called “Can We Still Govern?” We discussed how Trump will struggle to defend this move, how the American people will recoil at the looming loss of a professionalized bureaucracy, and how all this is sowing the seeds for catastrophe later.

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Trump Explodes in Rage as Dem Governor’s Harsh Takedown Draws Blood Aug 28, 2025

Show notes

This week, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker delivered an extraordinary takedown of President Trump over his deployment of the military in U.S. cities. Trump then exploded about Pritzker’s impudence, calling the governor names and instructing him to bow down and beg for his “HELP” in fighting crime. Trump has threatened twice to occupy Chicago no matter what the city’s residents and their elected representatives think about it, another window into his seething anger. In this standoff, Pritzker did something unusual: He communicated with his constituents from the heart, vowing to use all his power to protect them from Trump’s authoritarian takeover. Rather than let Trump pretend he cares about crime, Pritzker cast Trump as the primary threat to his state’s people. We talked to Brian Beutler, who has a great new piece on his substack, Off Message, taking stock of Pritzker’s response. We discuss how Pritzker is shrewdly reading the moment in a way many Democrats are not, why Trump is vulnerable on crime, and what the punditry is getting so wrong about all of it.

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Trump Is Screwing His Voters So Badly that it Shocked This GOP Senator Aug 27, 2025

Show notes

Thanks to President Trump’s big budget bill, funding has been canceled for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This is cutting funding to hundreds of radio stations in rural areas that rely on them for critical information. Speaking to The New York Times, GOP Senator Lisa Murkowski, who opposed the bill, sounded absolutely shocked that Trump and the GOP would harm their own voters so cavalierly. She said this is driven by a “blind allegiance to the president’s desires,” adding that fear of Trump’s anger overrode GOP lawmakers’ concerns for their own constituents. Yet this has been the story on many other fronts, too. Will Democrats ever be able to capitalize? We talked to Lynlee Thorne, a Democratic organizer in rural areas as the political director of RuralGroundGame.org. She explains why rural radio is a lifeline, how Trump’s agenda is shafting those areas particularly hard, what rural voters think about him right now, and how Democrats can repair the party’s deep problems with them.

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Trump’s Fury Erupts in Many Directions, Unnerving Experts: “Insanity!” Aug 26, 2025

Show notes

In recent days, President Trump has reached new levels of emboldenment when it comes to his ongoing authoritarian takeover. He’s vowing retribution at news organizations that displease him with greater audacity. He’s responded to Democrats and others who criticized him by threatening to send troops to their cities or unleash state power against them in other ways. In recent days, something plainly has changed, and many observers are taking note. We talked to journalist and historian Garrett Graff, who has a great new piece on his Doomsday Scenario Substack arguing that we really are seeing the advent of “American fascism” right before our eyes. He explains that transformations like this are incremental and often hard to recognize, but that Trump’s escalating brazenness strongly suggests we’ve crossed over into something new. The pile-up of new offenses Trump is committing daily, Graff says, amounts to “insanity.”

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