THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

Earlier this week, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico signed a handful of gun control bills in the face of a terrible spate of gun violence in her state that has drawn national attention. Lujan Grisham is smack in the middle of some big trends in our politics right now: The transformation of the southwest, the success of Democrats in border states, and the rise of the female Democratic governor in the era of Donald Trump. We chatted with Lujan Grisham about all these things—and a whole lot more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled 9 to zero that Donald Trump will not be disqualified from appearing on the ballot in Colorado, despite having engaged in insurrection. Coupled with the court’s willingness to hear Trump’s demand for full immunity from prosecution for insurrection-related crimes, all this raises serious questions about whether it is functionally placing Trump beyond accountability. We chatted with New Republic writer Matt Ford, author of a new piece eviscerating the court’s latest ruling, about the deeper falsehoods about Trump and the MAGA movement that the court is advancing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With Donald Trump set to host Viktor Orban at his Mar-a-Lago retreat this week, it's time to get serious about the rise of the global far right and why its worldview poses such a dire threat. This week, Donald Trump will host Hungarian leader Viktor Orban at his Mar-a-Lago resort. Meanwhile, Congress is on the verge of abandoning Ukraine to Vladimir Putin. Trump’s romance with Orban—and the opposition of MAGA Republicans to helping Ukraine—are part of the same story, in which the American right has grown besotted with international strongmen. We chatted with Jacob Heilbrunn, author of “America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators,” about the rise of the global far right and the deeper threats posed by this perilous moment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, former MSNBC journalist Mehdi Hasan launched a new digital media company called “Zeteo,” which is Greek for “to seek.” Hasan intends this as an answer to the failings of the mainstream media, which he says is enabling Donald Trump’s effort to “usher in a new era of fascism in the United States.” We chatted with Hasan about his new project’s goals, his belief that the conventions of political reporting are failing to meet this moment, and why the far-right information space is flourishing while the small-L liberal media is in crisis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The news that Mitch McConnell will step down as GOP senate leader later this year has led many to argue that he was fundamentally a foe of Donald Trump who is no longer welcome in the party of MAGA. But the story is more complicated than that: In crucial ways, McConnell’s own career trajectory helped bring about the descent of our politics into its current disastrous mess. We chatted with Congressional scholar Norman Ornstein, who was among the first to identify McConnell as key to the GOP slide into dysfunction and extremism. He helped us assess McConnell’s real legacy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In recent days we’ve learned that Stephen Miller is drawing up plans for a shockingly cruel second-term immigration agenda, complete with mass deportations and huge detention camps. Meanwhile, President Biden is set to visit the southern border—and is mulling a new asylum crackdown of his own. We chatted with Jason Houser, a former senior official at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Biden, who explained how operationally absurd Miller’s fantasies truly are—and why new asylum restrictions are a very bad idea. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump’s victory over Nikki Haley in the South Carolina GOP primary has sparked another round of punditry about his supposed political dominance. Yet the primaries have revealed his weaknesses with independents, and he clearly fears his legal travails are a major liability that will get worse. So what if Trump is weaker than he appears? We chatted about this with political scientist Julia Azari, co-author of a new piece arguing that the long shadow of his 2016 victory is still badly distorting our understanding of the present and the majority coalition that continues handing him and the MAGA movement defeat after defeat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the first time in months, a pair of new polls has found that election-denier Kari Lake is trailing in the Arizona Senate race to the Democratic candidate, Representative Ruben Gallego. But she remains a MAGA celebrity phenomenon who cannot be counted out, making this race highly unpredictable with Independent Sinema Kyrsten Sinema also in the mix. So we chatted with Gallego about how he hopes to defeat Lake and Sinema, why Democrats should level with voters about the border, and what’s really driving the southwest’s evolution in a Democratic direction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fox News and other right wing media are currently engaged in absurdities that are as bad as anything they’ve attempted in recent memory. They are struggling to spin away everything from the collapse of an informant’s claims about President Biden to the GOP’s killing of a border security deal that Republicans themselves demanded. Yet in a darker sense, right wing media is also flourishing. We talked to Matt Gertz of Media Matters, who helped us unravel the tangled web those sources are weaving. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s the question that won’t die among D.C. elites: Should President Biden step aside so another Democrat can run instead? Democrats have engaged in some remarkably public handwringing about Biden’s age that just won’t let up. One Democrat who has insistently sounded the alarm is veteran strategist David Axelrod. So we invited him on the show, where he allowed that an alternative is unlikely—while explaining how Biden can address the issue and why he’s still the favorite against Donald Trump. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers signed a new set of maps for legislative districts in the state—an important and overlooked victory that came after a long struggle dating back well over a decade. We talked to Greta Neubauer, the 32-year-old Minority Leader of Wisconsin Assembly Democrats, who explained what Democrats did to prevail, why this was such a significant achievement, and how it shows that reviving democracy is a grueling game of inches. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The stunning news that Donald Trump has been hit by a $355 million penalty in his civil fraud case in New York deals a big blow to his mystique as master of “the deal.” But Justice Arthur Engoron’s ruling also exposes a deeper undercurrent of scamming that Trump has been surfing on for decades and hopes to ride right back into the White House. We chatted with journalist David Cay Johnston, author of a new piece in The New Republic about the ruling, who helped us plumb the depths of the dark ethos of grift that has driven Trump throughout his career. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Donald Trump announced that he wants Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel replaced with a loyalist: Michael Whatley, the head of the North Carolina Republican Party. Behind the jockeying looms a very big story: The Trump-MAGA takeover of the GOP, and the challenges the party faces as it nominates someone facing multiple criminal indictments. We talked to Marc Caputo, a reporter for The Bulwark and author of a great new piece on McDaniel’s ouster, who helped us unravel the mysteries of GOP politics in the MAGA era. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Earlier this week, Democrats executed a remarkable 8-point win in a special House election in suburban Long Island, a race that was all about immigration. Republicans ran millions of dollars in ads on the issue, yet Democrat Tom Suozzi prevailed, flipping the seat of disgraced Republican George Santos. What on earth really happened here? We talked to Mike Bocian, the chief Democratic pollster on this race, who offered a fascinating and detailed glimpse into how his party pulled it off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Tuesday, in a decisive 70 to 29 vote, the Senate passed a mammoth bill containing $60 billion for Ukraine’s self defense against Russian aggression, as well as $14 billion for Israel. Yet House Speaker Mike Johnson is vowing that the House won’t vote on the measure, in part because MAGA hard-liners are raging against it. We talked to Democratic Congressman Jason Crow of Colorado about what’s really driving the opposition, how Democrats can try to get around it with a “discharge petition,” and whether there’s a genuine pro-Putin faction in the U.S. House of Representatives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, the freakout among Democrats about President Biden reached its shrillest pitch yet, after a special counsel report exonerated Biden but included combustible claims about Biden’s mental capacities. While many Democrats redoubled calls for the party to entertain alternatives to nominating Biden, confusion and disagreement reigns among them about what precisely to take away from this moment. We talked to Brian Beutler, who regularly criticizes the Democratic Party’s approach to politics on his “Off Message” Substack, to sort through all the noise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Elon Musk has unleashed numerous tweets lately boosting far right personalities and endorsing MAGA tropes holding that migration constitutes a deliberately engineered invasion. He even endorsed a version of “white genocide theory.” Along with his elevation of Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian president Vladimir Putin, it all amounts to a genuine ideology: Reactionary tech authoritarianism. We discussed this with Gil Duran, author of a New Republic piece called “The Tech Plutocrats Dreaming of a Right Wing San Francisco,” which offers a window into this ugly worldview. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With Nikki Haley set to make a last stand of sorts in the South Carolina primary later this month, there’s a hidden reason that Donald Trump has been so dominant throughout the GOP nomination process: White evangelicals. Their support for Trump has held through impeachments, scandals, revelations about sexual assault, multiple serious criminal prosecutions, and even an insurrection attempt. We talked to Sarah Posner, a scholar of the religious right, about Trump’s extraordinary hold on these voters—and why it’s changing the Republican Party in insidious, alarming ways. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In an extraordinary spectacle, virtually all Senate Republicans joined together Wednesday to block a bipartisan bill that would have given Republicans much of what they wanted on border security. Why? Because Donald Trump told them to. We talked to Democratic Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, who conferred with Republicans throughout this process. He opened up about what Republicans said behind closed doors, noting that they privately admitted that this bill was “aligned with their view of what would be useful for securing the border." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court ruled that Donald Trump is not immune from criminal charges stemming from his effort to steal the 2020 election. With Trump expected to take this to the Supreme Court, how will the timeline of his insurrection-related trial dovetail with the presidential election? We talked to former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade about all the possible scenarios—including one that backfires spectacularly on none other than the Republican Party’s own voters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio declared in an on-air rant that if he had been Trump’s vice president in the run-up to Jan. 6, 2021, he would have told states to send Congress multiple slates of electors so lawmakers could “debate” the election’s supposed improprieties. That may sound like typical MAGA bluster, but it has deadly serious ramifications, confirming that Republicans still think Trump’s effort to overturn the election was in some ways a good thing. So what might they attempt next fall? We talked to legal scholar Matthew Seligman, co-author of “How to Steal a Presidential Election,” who road-mapped all the sordid possibilities ahead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s one of the strangest disconnects in our politics today: By many metrics, the economy is doing extremely well, yet President Biden’s approval numbers on the economy are in the toilet. With the latest jobs report showing an extraordinary 353,000 jobs created in January, we talked to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman about what the boom means, why Trump and MAGA Republicans are in denial about it, and how President Biden should respond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, we learned that Donald Trump’s fundraising committees channeled an extraordinary $50 million toward bankrolling his myriad legal defenses throughout 2023. Such sordid trickery has a long history on the right: For decades, shrewd fundraising gurus have raked in cash from conservative voters with hallucinatory alarmism about leftist villains and other apocalyptic threats. We talked to Geoff Kabaservice, the author of a “Rule and Ruin,” a history of the GOP, to situate Trump in this hallowed tradition of grifters. It turns out Trump may have outdone them all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A frightening new batch of polls this week showed President Biden trailing Donald Trump in all the key battleground states. And yet, as bleak as the polling has looked, Democrats racked up an impressive winning streak in special elections all throughout 2023. This disconnect is why political pros are closely watching an election for state House in the Philadelphia suburbs that’s set for Feb. 13th. We talked to Democratic candidate Jim Prokopiak to gauge what he’s seeing on the ground in swing territory, why Biden is struggling on the economy, and how Trump can still looks strong despite his descent into derangement and severe criminal jeopardy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Far-right personalities are fantasizing about “civil war” again, amid a standoff between Texas Governor Greg Abbott and the feds over border enforcement. That may seem silly, but unbridgeable differences over immigration truly are driving many big stories of the moment, from that Texas battle to Senate negotiations over a border bill to the House GOP impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. If you want to understand what’s really going on with all these complex issues, few voices bring more clarity than Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council. We chatted with him about the deeper conflicts and tensions animating this crisis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Three former Republican governors—Marc Racicot of Montana, Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, and Bill Weld of Massachusetts—have signed on to a legal brief to the Supreme Court arguing that Donald Trump is disqualified from running for president under Section 3 of the 14th amendment to the Constitution. Greg Sargent talks to Racicot about what he hopes this will achieve, whether the GOP is to blame for the rise of Trump and the MAGA movement, and why principled anti-Trump Republican elites are a disappearing species. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices