THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

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Trump Text Fiasco Suddenly Worsens as MAGA Knives Come Out for Hegseth Mar 31, 2025

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President Donald Trump’s own allies are beginning to turn on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Politico reports. White House and Pentagon insiders are increasingly questioning Hegseth’s judgment, and see him as the culprit in the disastrous news that Trump’s top advisers discussed war plans in an insecure chat. Yet there’s little indication that Trumpworld is ready for the next Hegseth fiasco, even as Trump allies clearly are bracing for his tenure to get worse. We talked to Jennifer Rubin, co-founder and editor in chief of The Contrarian Substack, who explains how this scandal is revealing the sheer arrogace and untouchability that’s consumed Trump and his team, and why this will grow more politically untenable for them.

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Trump’s ICE Removals Take Darker Turn after Unnerving Rubio Admission Mar 28, 2025

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By now you may have heard that President Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained a foreign student at Tufts under shocking circumstances, for an unnervingly thin rationale. This is only the latest in an escalating trend, in which numerous students are being targeted for removal based in many cases on what appear to be their political associations and viewpoints. In a stunning turn on Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated straight out that the administration is hoping to do this hundreds of times. We think this is a watershed moment: Rubio is not only confirming the scope and reach of Trump’s targeting of foreign students, but he’s also leaving no doubt that he’s occupying a central role in all of it. We talked to Shev Dalal-Dheini, a top official with the American Immigration Lawyers Association. She decodes the legal complexities behind this whole saga—and explains why these removals should unsettle all of us.

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Trump Privately Seethes at Text Fiasco as Hegseth’s Dumb Spin Implodes Mar 27, 2025

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It’s day three of the scandal in which President Trump’s top advisers accidentally allowed a journalist for The Atlantic onto a highly sensitive discussion of a military operation. The latest: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth offered an incredibly weak defense of this travesty. Atlantic journalist Jeffrey Goldberg revealed most of the text chain, which contained lots of operational detail. And Trump is reportedly frustrated over this story, and his top allies are deeply exasperated by his team’s handling of it. We talked to Vox’s Zack Beauchamp, author of a new piece on the scandal’s undercurrents, about the deeper meaning of all these developments: What they say about the failures of right wing populist and MAGA governance, and about the deeper schisms inside MAGA ideology.

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Trump Text Fiasco Worsens as Tulsi Gabbard Implodes and Fox Melts Down Mar 26, 2025

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As the scandal worsens around the news that President Trump’s top national security officials allowed a journalist onto a highly sensitive text chat about war plans, Fox News figures are wildly denying that anything is amiss. Yet under questioning from Senate Democrats, numerous senior administration figures all but admitted that something deeply amiss really had happened, with Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard turning in the most disastrous performance. We talked to Rosa Brooks, an expert in national security law, who explains what these latest turns in the saga really reveal about the woeful dereliction of Trump and his advisers—and why we desperately need accountability for it, accountability that Republicans will never deliver.

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Trump’s Angry Rant about Stunning Leak of War Plan Makes Scandal Worse Mar 25, 2025

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By now you may have heard that President Trump’s top officials discussed war plans on Signal, and that the group chat actually included Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic. After Goldberg published his explosive findings, Democrats called for an investigation, and even the occasional Republican weighed in. But when Trump himself was asked about this, he claimed not to know anything about it. What struck us is what Trump didn’t say: he failed to say that he’s going to get to the bottom of this mess, and that it should have never happened. We talked to veteran national security lawyer Bradley Moss, who unravels why this was such a serious breach, what laws may have been broken, and how Trump’s rambling, vacuous response made this scandal even worse, in a very meaningful way.

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Trump Blurts Out Revealing Aim of Law Firm Shakedown Right to Media Mar 24, 2025

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Faced with President Trump’s shakedown, the Paul Weiss law firm agreed to a “deal” with Trump that sure looks like a ransom payment. Trump then told reporters that firms like these have the option to make similar “deals” to avoid getting targeted—a straight-up extortion threat right in public. We keep hearing that voters don’t care about this kind of thing. But the White House’s top political adviser is warning that Democratic anger could be a big problem in the midterms—and Trump’s lawlessness is a key driver of it. We talked to New Republic editor Michael Tomasky, who’s been arguing that we’re actually facing multiple constitutional crises and that Democrats must find their footing in this moment. He explains what all this says about Trump’s escalating lawlessness, how Democrats can harness public anger over it, and why real heroics are needed to resist it.

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“Terrifying”: Trump’s Rage at Judge Unnerves GOPers as Crisis Worsens Mar 21, 2025

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President Trump is furious with a federal judge who is trying to block his ludicrous deportations of migrants under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. Trump and his allies are demanding the judge’s impeachment. But this has Republicans privately in a big panic. They know they won’t have the votes to impeach the judge, and they dread Trump’s escalating pressure. Meanwhile, evidence is mounting that the Trump administration has violated the judge’s order. And Trump’s attorney general suggested on Fox News that the deportations might continue, even in defiance of the court. In short, this confrontation will intensify, and Republicans will go along with Trump. We unraveled all this with Liz Dye, a legal writer who has a good new piece for the Public Notice Substack on this battle. She explains just how lawless Trump’s conduct has gotten, and why this case is headed in a “terrifying” direction.

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Trump’s Fury at Canada Boils Over on Fox—and Polls Now Show a Backlash Mar 20, 2025

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It’s growing harder to shrug off President Trump’s deranged threats toward Canada. In a new Fox News interview, Trump snarled angrily that Canada is “meant” to be a 51st state, explicitly speaking the language of imperialism. Meanwhile, Trump is adopting a very credulous line toward Vladimir Putin in the Russia-Ukraine peace talks. This comes as a surprising new poll shows that American opinion is shifting against a soft line on Russia, even as other polling shows public rejection of Trump’s anti-Canada stance. We talked to The Bulwark’s William Saletan, who has a good piece arguing that Trump’s views of Canada and Ukraine are connected. He explains how Trump is now adopting the same view of Canada that Putin has of Ukraine, and argues that the public may be turning against Trump on both fronts.

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Fox Anchor Suddenly Panics About Trump Economy as Brutal New Poll Hits Mar 19, 2025

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Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo has suddenly emerged as a leading voice sounding loud alarms about President Trump’s tariffs and the devastating impact they could have on the economy—even though she works for a MAGA propaganda network. On Tuesday, Bartiromo lost patience with a Trump official, and walked through all the reasons why business leaders are unhappy with Trump’s tariff threats. Other Fox personalities have followed suit. Meanwhile, a new NBC poll finds terrible numbers for Trump on the economy. Yet he’s forging ahead with his tariffs and rarely bothers talking about the economy anymore. We talked to Media Matters’ Matt Gertz, a close observer of Fox coverage, about the deeper reasons for Fox’s discontent—and why it’s alla sign that Trump’s project is more fragile than you might think.

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“Chilling”: Trump Press Sec Hints Darkly at More Lawlessness to Come Mar 18, 2025

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President Trump’s lawlessness is escalating. First he angrily tweeted that his predecessor’s pardons of January 6 committee members are invalid, while threatening to prosecute them. Meanwhile, the Trump administration appears to have violated a court order in deporting some Venezuelans. And his border czar flatly declared that the administration is set to ignore what judges say. At Monday’s briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt spun madly about all this, but her lack of clarity strongly hinted that Trump is on the precipice of a new level of lawbreaking. We talked to legal scholar Matthew Seligman, a skilled decoder of complicated legal messes. He explains why Trump’s latest moves are “chilling”—and why Leavitt’s ambiguity is only cause to anticipate more lawlessness, not less.

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