THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

In a blow to Donald Trump, Politico reports that GOP Senators are privately telling him that Matt Gaetz has little chance of getting confirmed as attorney general. Yet these Republicans hope Trump doesn’t make them “walk the plank,” meaning they remain reluctant to publicly challenge him, even to sink the profoundly unfit Gaetz. In short, it’s now clear that one of our only bulwarks against an authoritarian Trump will be the GOP Senate. We talked to writer Jill Lawrence, who has a new piece for The Bulwark arguing that Trump is assembling a “team of outlaws” to run the country. She explains what it means that Republicans are drawing a line against Gaetz—and why the pressure on them will be intense to challenge him when it really counts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump has angrily put Republicans on notice: He may bypass them with recess appointments to get his personnel picks through in a hurry. In a scary turn in this saga, a top conservative lawyer is warning that Trump may well resort to a nuclear option that threatens devastating consequences: House Speaker Mike Johnson can trigger a complicated scenario clearing the way for those appointments, wrecking the Senate’s advice-and-consent role. With GOP opposition brewing to Matt Gaetz and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., MAGA is raging at any signs of opposition. We talked to the Brookings Institution’s Sarah Binder, a leading expert in congressional rules, who explains how this would all unfold, why it plausibly could happen, and how it would threaten our constitutional system. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

First came Matt Gaetz. Now The Washington Post is reporting that Donald Trump’s pick for Defense Secretary, Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, paid a woman who accused him of sexually assaulted her as part of a nondisclosure agreement (he insists the encounter was consensual). One Trumpworld source is even describing internal frustration over the failure to vet Hegseth in advance. We talked to leading Never Trump strategist Rick Wilson, who’s launching a new effort to conduct opposition research on Trump and his most prominent allies. He explains why Trump’s initial personnel moves are putting Republicans in a terrible spot—and how they betray his intent to destroy our institutions. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re now in Day Two of an extraordinary GOP meltdown over Donald Trump’s pick of Matt Gaetz for attorney general. Numerous Republican Senators are strongly opposing the move. But on Thursday, Trump’s appointments got even worse with his choice of anti-vax conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the secretary of Health and Human Services. It’s hard to say which of these will be more of a disaster. We talked to Nina Burleigh, author of a great new cover story for The New Republic called “Trump 2.0: Here Comes the Night,” about how deeply worrisome these developments truly are—and whether GOP senators will hold the line against them. The prognosis is not good. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Wednesday, Donald Trump unleashed a rambling announcement explaining his choice of Representative Matt Gaetz as attorney general, lying manically about Gaetz’s supposed work revealing how the Justice Department had been weaponized against him. Translation: Trump wants Gaetz to use DOJ to carry out his personal vendettas. This comes as Trump has picked the Putin-friendly Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence. We talked to Ben Meiselas, co-founder of the Meidas Touch Network. He explains why these choices signal chaos ahead, and why the Gaetz pick in particular shows he’s fully determined to subvert the rule of law to punish his enemies, just as he advertised in his rant. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump has picked three anti-immigrant hard-liners for his administration: Stephen Miller will be deputy chief of staff for policy; Tom Homan, his former head of ICE, will be “border czar”; and South Dakota governor Kristi Noem will be Homeland Security secretary. Which means Trump will act on his threat to carry out mass deportations. We talked to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has a great new column arguing that mass deportations will cause a large spike in inflation. He explains why Trump’s policies will likely backfire; how he’ll corrupt government information to cover it up; and why Trump voters may soon be shocked at how badly he misled them. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During the campaign, Donald Trump openly advertised that as president, he’ll use the state to retaliate against his enemies in every way he can. Now The New York Times reports that some of his advisers are urging him to absolutely make good on that threat. And right on cue, Trump erupted on social media, calling for investigations into people supposedly spreading false rumors about his intention to sell shares of his Truth Social—a revealing indicator of the types of abuses of power that we can expect from a second Trump term. We talked to New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser, author of a great new piece on what’s coming. She explains in alarming detail how Trump will be far more liberated—less constrained by the law, by the Republican Party, and by guardrails of any kind—than ever before. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, after Donald Trump won the election, Jeff Bezos issued an extraordinary tweet: He didn’t just congratulate Trump; he also bent over backwards to hail his extraordinary political comeback. We think this is a bad sign of what’s coming: People in key institutional positions going out of their way to curry favor with Trump in advance. How bad will this get? We talked to Philadelphia Inquirer national columnist Will Bunch, author of a good column about Bezos’s bended knee to Trump. Bunch explains what all this portends about the surrender of key institutions in the face of Trump’s coming strongman rule—and what we can do about it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After Donald Trump won the election, Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt, who is becoming a senior figure in MAGA-world, declared on Fox News that he has a big mandate to govern exactly as he campaigned, while specifically listing what’s coming. This is alarming, since Trump campaigned relentlessly on a platform of explicit threats of authoritarian retribution and violence. We talked to David Kurtz, executive editor of Talking Points Memo and author of a good new piece on the election results. He reflects on how sobering it is that voters chose Trump in full awareness of the cruelties he’s planning to unleash—and discusses the immense task that lies ahead in containing the damage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If Donald Trump is going to be defeated, it will probably come down to this: Female voters look poised to vote for Kamala Harris in numbers that we can only guess at. And on Monday, Liz Cheney went on “The View” and flatly predicted that women will save us from Trump, laying out why she believes right leaning and conservative women should—and will—reject Trump and his increasingly unstable hatreds. We talked to Stella Sexton, the vice chair of the Democratic Party in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, about what she’s seeing on the ground, how women are turning on Trump in the home stretch, and why it will be in places like Lancaster that women may decide this election against him. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump’s allies reportedly fear Trump’s recent hate rally might have badly hurt him, and worry their internal polls aren’t getting it right on how shaky his standing is in Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, new polls show surprising movement among women and undecided voters toward Kamala Harris. Trump raged at a rally about the highly regarded Des Moines Register poll showing him down three in Iowa and tweeted madly about other less-reputable polls he likes better. His campaign put out a crazed memo accusing pollsters of conspiring against him. With the race still a coin flip, we talked to Danielle Butterfield, executive director of the Democratic PAC Priorities USA, about what must happen now for Harris to win. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kamala Harris’s campaign just released a hard-hitting ad featuring Donald Trump’s quotes about the need for a “punishment” for abortion, and tying them powerfully to horrific stories about women suffering and dying under GOP abortion bans. If Harris wins, it’ll probably be due to women who are motivated by messages like this one. We talked to Jennifer Mercieca, a professor of political communications who writes about how political rhetoric functions. She explains how Harris is effectively tapping into a deep cultural moment—and why we may be underestimating the political energy of women in the post-Dobbs era. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The presidential race is tied, and Donald Trump very well could win. But he is now scapegoating others for a possible loss: He’s reportedly angry with Republican National Committee chair Michael Whatley, he’s raging about supposed voter fraud in Pennsylvania, and his allies are sounding new alarms about his ground game in key states. Meanwhile, new polls show engaged voters tilting to Kamala Harris, which means more pressure on Trump’s ground operation to turn out low-propensity voters. We talked to Joel Payne, a senior official at MoveOn, who explains what’s really happening with both sides’ ground games, why it could make the difference, and what could still go wrong for Democrats. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the backlash to Donald Trump’s hate rally in New York intensifies, he defended the event as a “lovefest” in a rambling monologue on Tuesday. Why? Because the vile “joke” at the rally comparing Puerto Rico to a pile of garbage is infuriating Puerto Rican voters, a surprisingly large constituency in Pennsylvania. We talked to GOP strategist Mike Madrid, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, expert on the Latino vote, and author of The Latino Century. He explains why this could be the “October Surprise” that has put Trump in danger of losing the state—and the election. As Madrid tells us: “Surprise, Donald Trump, you blew yourself up.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

MAGA suddenly seems very, very out of sorts. Donald Trump raged at Fox News on Monday, blasting the network for its supposedly favorable coverage of Democrats. Meanwhile, a number of Trump’s allies suddenly seem very worried about the backlash to his hate rally at Madison Square Garden. We spoke with Democratic strategist Anat Shenker-Osorio, who regularly does research into disaffected voters and explains why Trump’s rally at the Garden could provide last-minute motivation to vote against Trump among people who are at risk of sitting out the election. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the weekend, Michelle Obama delivered an extraordinary speech that reminded us how catastrophic Donald Trump’s presidency was, harshly criticized his debased moral character, and asked why the press expects Kamala Harris to meet basic standards of public conduct that aren’t expected of Trump. Could this closing message win over the undecided voters who will decide the race? We talked to Reed Galen, a former GOP strategist who’s working to pull remaining fence-sitters away from Trump for his group Join the Union.us, about why Michelle Obama’s message might reach undecided women and how it puts the media to shame. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a new interview, Donald Trump seethed with anger at Jack Smith, and confirmed that if elected president, he’ll fire Smith as special counsel immediately. On top of that, Trump also boasted that the Supreme Court has now given him immunity from criminal prosecution. Which suggests Trump really does think that if he wins, he’ll be able to function as president with something like absolute impunity, unaccountable to any laws. We talked to former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade, who explained what actually would unfold if a newly elected President Trump fired Smith, and how dangerous he could get as a totally unshackled president. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, John Kelly, just revealed that he believes Trump will rule as a dictator and a fascist—and that he mused aloud about having his generals function as Hitler’s generals did. Kamala Harris jumped on this news to highlight the dire threat posed by a second Trump term. Can Harris translate this bombshell into a strong closing message in swing states that will decide this election? We talked to Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler, who walks us through what Harris must do to win the state—and what a closing argument about the dangers posed by Trump might accomplish. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With two weeks to go, the presidential race couldn’t be closer. But if Kamala Harris is to win, how exactly would that happen? Veteran journalist Ron Brownstein has a new piece in The Atlantic laying out what Harris’s path to victory looks like. The short version: She has to run up massive margins in cities and affluent suburbs, while limiting Trump’s gains among nonwhite and working class white voters. That may sound unsurprising. But the details on how this might unfold are complicated, fraught with uncertainties, and actually plausible, if very difficult. So we invited Brownstein on the show to demystify all of it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The other day, Donald Trump playacted as a worker at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania. But he ran into trouble, evading a question about whether he would support a minimum wage hike, producing scalding headlines. Which gets at a larger scam: Trump enjoys public approval on the economy, even though his agenda for working people is borderline nonexistent, whereas Harris has a detailed economic agenda for working and middle class people alike. We talked to HuffPost senior reporter Jonathan Cohn, author of a good new piece on the McDonald’s saga, who explains how this stunt captures the fraudulence of Trump’s economic plans—and the authenticity of Harris’s middle class biography. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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—and criticizes the media for failing to sound the alarm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 depicting his lying about disaster response as fundamentally disqualifying. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump keeps pushing the vile claim that federal officials are withholding disaster aid from GOP areas devastated by Hurricane Helene. This has now backfired, focusing media attention on Trump’s own hyper-politicization of disaster relief as president. To wit: Two former Trump officials told Politico that Trump initially refused to approve disaster aid for California after wildfires in 2018 due to the state’s Democratic lean. We talked to one of those officials—Olivia Troye, a senior homeland security official in the Trump administration and now a leading critic of the former president—about Trump’s disastrous tenure, and what she told is is not pretty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the vice-presidential debate, the CBS News moderators fact-checked one of JD Vance’s lies—and that was all it took to trigger an epic attack on CBS from Donald Trump and his MAGA allies. Which highlights a larger story: The degree to which Trump’s campaign is built on an immense superstructure of endless, shameless lying. Bullying the media into not fact checking Trump and Vance is essential to that project. We talked to Jamison Foser, who writes about the media and the right on his Finding Gravity Substack, about the ways our institutions are capitulating to authoritarian attacks and threats—and what can be done in response. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With five weeks until Election Day, Donald Trump has decided to win over swing voters by rhapsodizing about police violence, threatening to prosecute anyone who displeases him, and unleashing disgusting insults toward his opponents. His latest? Raging that Tim Walz is a “moron” and “sick.” We talked to A.B. Stoddard, columnist at The Bulwark and author of a new piece suggesting a closing strategy for Kamala Harris, about how Democrats can use Trump’s angry, unhinged eruptions to fashion a winning endgame against him. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Western North Carolina is enduring full-blown catastrophe. In the wake of Hurricane Helene, towns have been destroyed, roads have been washed out, people are frantically trying to locate loved ones, and dozens have died. Enter Donald Trump, who just declared that the federal government—and Democratic governor Roy Cooper—are deliberately neglecting MAGA parts of the state, and charged that the Biden administration is consciously letting Americans drown. We talked to state Democratic Party chair Anderson Clayton about the horrors that the state is suffering, and about Trump’s ugly reaction to them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At a rally in Wisconsin over the weekend, Donald Trump really cranked up the rage and hate speech about immigrants, and viciously savaged Kamala Harris as “mentally impaired.” But this deserves special attention: Trump also attacked Fox News for the mere act of carrying a recent Harris speech about immigration on the network, seething that Fox shouldn’t be “allowed” to do that. We talked to Salon columnist Amanda Marcotte, a skillful interpreter of Trump’s violent threats, about the clear signals that this and other recent Trump utterances are sending about his intention to suppress dissent and persecute MAGA’s enemies during a second term. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump has been quiet about January 6th lately. But this week, he suddenly unleashed an epic rant on social media about Special Counsel Jack Smith, raging about false new claims on the right that the “deep state” deliberately allowed the insurrection to go forward—against Trump’s will. The real cause of Trump’s fury? Smith is set to submit a court filing detailing his evidence of Trump’s alleged January 6th related crimes—some of which may become public. We talked to Politico reporter Kyle Cheney, author of a new report on these machinations, who helps illuminate what new revelations we may soon learn about—and why Trump should worry about them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If Kamala Harris can defeat Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, she almost certainly will win the presidency. It’s must-win for him. Yet the state remains a coin-flip—which is why both candidates campaigned in the state this week. So what is Harris’s path to victory? We talked to Governor Josh Shapiro, who explained why the race is so close—and why he thinks she’s “on her way” to winning there, in part due to concerted communications with non-college voters. Shapiro also responded at length to Trump’s lies about Haitian immigrants living in Pennsylvania, pronouncing them “utter bullshit.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump and his allies have been pushing Nebraska’s GOP-controlled State legislature to change how the state’s electoral votes are allotted, to prevent Kamala Harris from winning the election with just the blue wall states. But Nebraska’s GOP governor just announced that he will not hold a special session to change the rules, dashing Trump’s hopes. How did this happen? We talked to Joe Perticone, who has been covering all this as national political reporter at The Bulwark. He unpacks why Trump couldn’t get this done, what the impact of this will be, and what it all says about the GOP in the age of MAGA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The scandals are getting worse for Mark Robinson, the GOP candidate for governor in North Carolina. After CNN broke the news of his incendiary comments on a pornography message board—including describing himself as a “black Nazi”—much of his staff quit. Now the national GOP has stopped funding his ads. You’ve heard talk about how Robinson’s collapse could help doom Trump in must-win North Carolina. But how exactly would that happen? What would it look like? We talked to Morgan Jackson—chief strategist for Attorney General Josh Stein, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate—about the state’s deeply interesting demographics, how Kamala Harris can win there, and what could still go wrong. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In two bizarre rants over the weekend, Donald Trump openly fumed about female voters, lecturing them about why they should be supporting him and dismissing concerns about GOP abortion bans and all they’ve wrought. Meanwhile, a new NBC News poll shows Kamala Harris leading Trump by 21 points among women. Is Trump even trying to speak to them effectively anymore? We talked to Joan Walsh, national affairs correspondent at The Nation who writes well about the politics of abortion. She explains how Harris’s appeals to female voters really work—and why Trump is alienating them so badly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If Donald Trump loses Pennsylvania, he almost certainly will lose the presidential election. Now, all of a sudden, we have four new high-quality polls showing Kamala Harris ahead, though some others show it tied. Why the heck is Pennsylvania so close? What is really going on there? Should we believe the polls? Or not? We chatted with Democratic strategist Rebecca Katz, who is from Pennsylvania herself, worked on Senator John Fetterman’s victorious 2022 campaign, and knows something about winning there. Katz explained what Harris’s path to victory in the state looks like—and the looming obstacles that still keep her awake at night. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At a rally in Michigan this week, Donald Trump unleashed a strange monologue about how we should only build gas-powered cars in the future, because we have lots of gasoline and China doesn’t. Translation: China has a huge lead in electric vehicles, so we shouldn’t even try to compete. Why isn’t all this more central in the presidential race? We chatted with Princeton professor Jesse Jenkins, a sharp observer of the energy transition and host of the weekly Shift Key podcast. He explained how Trump’s bizarre comments are essentially an admission that he’d surrender the future to China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the first time, Kamala Harris’ favorability rating has crossed into positive territory in FiveThirtyEight’s latest polling averages. That’s a crucial threshold, as Harris is introducing herself to votes within a highly compressed timetable. But there’s still work to do: Harris has not yet fully rebuilt the coalition that ousted Donald Trump in 2020. We talked to Nick Ahamed, deputy executive director of the Democratic Super PAC Priorities USA, who walks us through the group’s own interesting new polling in the swing states—and explains what now must be done for Harris to finish the job. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a reference to the apparent assassination attempt against Donald Trump over the weekend, the former president unleashed a long rant on social media blaming it all on Democrats. He insisted that because of Democratic rhetoric about Trump, the “bullets are flying, and it will only get worse.” Trump is systematically recasting any and all criticism of his attacks on democracy as incitement to violence—and in this, he’s fully backed up by other Republicans. We talked to Corey Brettschneider, a political scientist and author of The Presidents and the People, about how Trump is echoing Richard Nixon—and why we can’t let him get away with it. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the weekend, Donald Trump’s rage over his debate fiasco appeared to get darker. In one splenetic social media post after another, he fumed he actually won the debate, while erupting repeatedly at ABC News’ moderation of it. All this comes as a whole bunch of new polling shows that Kamala Harris has made some surprising post-debate gains against Trump. We talked to veteran Democratic pollster Celinda Lake about the deeper causes for optimism inside the new data, what Harris still needs to do to win, and the deeper theory of the case driving all the successful baiting of Trump. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At this week’s debate, Donald Trump spread the deranged lie that immigrants are eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. Tensions are escalating and terror is spreading: Haitian immigrants living there say they fear for their safety, and on Thursday, Springfield’s City Hall was evacuated due to a bomb threat. What if these searing tensions are exactly what Trump and his MAGA allies want? Not that they want violence, but rather that they see supercharged social rifts as desirable? We talked to Andrew Egger, a writer for The Bulwark who has a good new piece on Springfield, about how this saga opens a window on the darkness and malevolence of the MAGA movement. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After Kamala Harris’s shellacking of Donald Trump at the debate, Trump ventured on to Fox News, where he attacked the moderators as deeply biased against him. Incredibly, he even said their network, ABC News, should have its broadcasting license revoked. This is really a show of weakness: what enraged him is that real scrutiny was applied to the lies he can air unchallenged on right wing media. We talked to Media Matters senior fellow Matt Gertz—author of a new piece on Trump’s debate struggles—about Trump’s retreat into the MAGA media bubble, why that’s so politically perilous for him, and what it all says about today’s GOP. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In recent days, the Trump campaign, J.D. Vance and other prominent MAGA figures have pushed a repulsive falsehood: That Haitian immigrants are eating people’s pets. Though this was decisively debunked, Vance issued a long, twisted rant on social media calling on supprters to keep pushing versions of the lie. This saga exposes something disturbing about MAGA dehumanization campaigns. We talked to Matthew Sheffield, a writer and podcaster at Flux and former member of the conservative movement who is now an illuminating critic of the right. He explains how this vile trope illustrates how MAGA propaganda really functions. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Tuesday night, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will face off in their first debate. It goes without saying that the stakes are very high, as polls now show the two of them effectively tied, with perhaps a slight edge to Harris. Yet some analysts out there have made good arguments holding that the pieces really are in place for her to win this thing. We talked to Lakshya Jain of the data firm Split Ticket, who digs into what Harris has to accomplish at the debate—and why he’s cautiously optimistic that she will ultimately prevail. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In an unhinged weekend rant on social media, Donald Trump made his most expansive threats yet to prosecute his enemies if he wins. He also flatly threatened at a rally to unleash “bloody” mass removals of migrants. Meanwhile, new polls show a very tight race. So why isn’t Trump paying a political price for running on explicit threats of authoritarian rule? We talked to A.B. Stoddard—a columnist for The Bulwark and a clear-eyed Trump critic—who explains how he is priming his supporters for violence after the election, and why the Trump threat is so hard to communicate to voters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices