THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

Latest Episodes:

Obama’s Brutal Takedown of Trump at Rally Reveals a Terrifying Truth Oct 21, 2024

Show notes

At a rally in Nevada, Barack Obama offered a blistering new warning: Trump’s vows to persecute the “enemy within” should be taken with deadly seriousness. Trump’s displays are deeply dangerous in someone who would be president with no guardrails left. Yet even now, a sizable subset of voters just doesn’t take his threats seriously. We talked to veteran analyst Michael Podhorzer, author of a good new piece warning that we’re “sleepwalking our way to fascism.” He explains how this election could come down to whether those voters grasp the threat Trump poses—exactly what Obama seemed to be saying—andcriticizes the media for failing to sound the alarm.

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Trump’s Fury at Fox News Over Harris Coverage Takes an Alarming Turn Oct 18, 2024

Show notes

On Thursday, Donald Trump erupted with rage at Fox News over its election coverage, explicitly slamming Fox for making a Kamala Harris presidency more likely. Meanwhile, CNN reports that among Trump allies, plans for another fake electors scheme are in full swing. Which raises a question: What sort of chaos could erupt, if the voting is close and Fox and other right wing media start amplifying Trump’s inevitable lies about fraud in the election? We talked to election law expert Matthew Seligman, author of How to Steal a Presidential Election, who walks us through the potential nightmare scenarios that lie ahead, and what we can do about them.

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Trump’s Unhinged Fox News Ramblings on “Fascists” Hint at Darker Story Oct 17, 2024

Show notes

The word “fascist” has fully penetrated the presidential race. We just learned that a top general under President Donald Trump described Trump as “fascist to the core.” Trump has been threatening to unleash the military on the enemy within, which numerous observers describe as fascist politics. And at a Fox News event on Wednesday, Trump uncorked an unhinged, rambling response to all this, insisting that the real fascists are Democrats. We talked to David Austin Walsh, a historian and author of Taking America Back, who explains how the American right has overlapped with fascist movements throughout our history—and what that says about our MAGA moment.

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Finally, Trump’s Worsening Mental Decline Has Become a Big Media Story Oct 16, 2024

Show notes

Is the media finally figuring out how to cover Donald Trump’s mental unfitness for the presidency? First, CNN’s Jake Tapper dressed down a Trump surrogate for whitewashing Trump’s threat to unleash the military on his enemies. Then Trump held a strange town hall at which he abruptly stopped answering questions, which generated aggressive media coverage. And Kamala Harris has directly engaged on Trump’s mental state in a new way, drawing media attention to it. We talked to Brian Beutler, who often criticizes the media on his Off Message Substack, about the increasing signs that the press is treating Trump’s mental decline as a big story.

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Trump's Angry Rant on Fox News Instantly Wrecks JD Vance's Latest Spin Oct 15, 2024

Show notes

Over the weekend, J.D. Vance tried to argue that Donald Trump will not target his political enemies if he’s reelected president. Yet at around the same time, Trump was confirming the opposite point with several new rants on Fox News, declaring flatly that he’ll use the military to target the “enemy within.” Indeed, Trump regularly says openly at his rallies that in a second term, he will persecute unnamed enemies of MAGA. We talked to Politico reporter Myah Ward, author of a great new piece on what he’s been saying at these rallies, about how blatant he is now being about his second-term intention to grotesquely abuse presidential power.

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Trump’s Rage at CBS over Kamala Interview Takes a Dark, Dangerous Turn Oct 11, 2024

Show notes

In recent days, Donald Trump has escalated his attacks on CBS News, raging at the network over something they supposedly did involving Kamala Harris’s interview on “60 minutes.” He has now stated repeatedly that CBS should lose its broadcasting license. We think this is a clear warning about what a second Trump term would look like. We talked to Michael Sozan, author of a new report for the Center for American Progress Action Fund on Project 2025. He gets specific about how an authoritarian Trump presidency could use government power to bring independent media to heel.

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Trump Suddenly Facing Loss of Crucial GOP Support, Surprise Data Shows Oct 10, 2024

Show notes

It’s a big question in the presidential race: Will Republican and independent voters who backed Nikki Haley in GOP primaries support Donald Trump at the levels he needs? New data suggests the answer may be No. The Bulwark reports that a new poll taken by a Democratic firm finds a surprisingly large percentage of voters who backed Haley defecting to Kamala Harris. And a New York Times national poll finds her making new inroads among GOP voters. How real is all this? We talked to the Bulwark’s Marc Caputo, who’s well sourced among Republicans, about the perils this poses to Trump and what top Republicans think about the race.

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Kamala’s Harsh Takedown of Trump Over Bob Woodward Shocker Draws Blood Oct 09, 2024

Show notes

In a new book, Bob Woodward reports that Donald Trump sent covid tests to Vladimir Putin at the height of the pandemic, and that after leaving office, Trump had up to seven private phone calls with Putin. This drew a harsh response from Kamala Harris, who pointed out that Trump kowtows to Putin because he aspires to be a dictator himself. Which highlights something important: The direct connection between Trump’s authoritarian aspirations at home and the axis of global autocrats rooting for him to prevail. We talked to international relations professor Nicholas Grossman, who writes on these issues, about all these shadowy links, and whether Harris can highlight all this in the home stretch.

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Trump’s Angry, Abusive New Tirade at “Stupid” Kamala Demands Response Oct 08, 2024

Show notes

In a new interview, Donald Trump unleashed an ugly, crazed rant about Kamala Harris, calling her “low IQ” and “stupid.” And almost no leading journalists took it seriously. Which points to a larger story: Trump regularly targets Harris with vile attacks that are unapologetically misogynist, yet it barely attracts notice anymore. We talked to writer Susan Milligan—who does good work for The New Republic on Trump’s misogyny—about how overtly anti-woman Trump’s strategy has become, and what Harris can do to exploit this in the race’s final days.

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Trump Rants at Rally Worsen as NYT Reveals New Signs of Mental Decline Oct 07, 2024

Show notes

On Sunday, The New York Times published an extraordinary piece detailing Donald Trump’s deteriorating mental state, singling out his deranged fabrications and outright fabulism as central to its expose. Meanwhile, Trump held a weekend rally in Pennsylvania where he lied angrily in ugly new ways about the federal response to Hurricane Helene. Can Democrats capitalize on all this in the home stretch? We talked to Democratic strategist Maria Cardona, who suggests new ways to close out this race by highlighting Trump’s profound mental unfitness for the presidency—and depictinghis lying about disaster response as fundamentally disqualifying. Listen to this episode here.

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