THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

Donald Trump recently declared that the U.S. is a “disaster” and a “laughingstock all over the world.” In reality, by many metrics, the economy is quite good, and our recovery from covid has been an international success story. But Paul Krugman recently noticed something interesting: This could create problems for Trump. As Krugman asked on his excellent new Substack, how will he justify radical, across-the-board tariffs and mass deportations if things are going well? We talked to Krugman, who explains how Trump is likely to resort to gale-force levels of propaganda, how he’s threatening havoc with the economy, and how his voters are getting “brutally scammed” in the process. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the weekend, Steve Bannon’s fury at Elon Musk truly went off the rails. Bannon, who has been feuding with Musk over immigration, vowed that he will run Musk out of the MAGA movement by Inauguration Day, suggesting this battle will continue once Donald Trump is in office. This battle exposes major divisions in the MAGA movement—yet Democrats aren’t really trying to exploit them. Why not? We talked to Mona Charen of The Bulwark, who has a good new piece arguing that Democrats need to find their footing as a loyal opposition. She explains what the feud says about Trump, the MAGA movement, and the rise of global authoritarianism and fascism—and how Democrats can rise to the moment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, we learned that Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito spoke privately with Donald Trump to recommend a former clerk for a job. Jamie Raskin just tore into this news, urging Alito to recuse himself from Trump-related matters. This comes as Trump asked the high court to block a New York judge from sentencing him for his hush money conviction. What Raskin got right is to zero in on the corruption embedded in Trump’s relationship with the Supreme Court. After all, between this and Judge Aileen Cannon ordering Special Counsel Jack Smith not to release his report on the evidence he’s collected against Trump, the courts face a legitimacy crisis. We talked to Politico’s Kyle Cheney, who untangles all these stories and explains what’s coming next. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With wildfires raging in Los Angeles, Donald Trump unleashed some ugly and hateful tirades on Truth Social. He attacked California Governor Gavin Newsom with a vile slur, blamed the fires on him and President Biden, and even scapegoated environmental protections, which Newsom’s office dismissed as pure fiction. We think this is best seen as another example of how the MAGA right wing seeks to thoroughly degrade public life at every conceivable opportunity. We talked to Nicole Hemmer, a leading historian of the conservative movement and the right wing media. She explains how today’s MAGA derangement traces its lineage back many decades, and discusses how we should respond. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At a press conference on Tuesday, Donald Trump signaled that things are about to get very, very ugly. He wouldn’t rule out using military force to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal. He celebrated the idea that his threats to jail Mark Zuckerberg might have caused Zuckerberg to surrender to him. And Trump vowed to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. We talked to Jennifer Mercieca, a professor of rhetoric who writes about fascist tropes. She explains how Trump is attempting to acclimate Americans to expansionist nationalism and naked threats to jail people without cause to force them into line, and why that bodes so badly about what’s coming. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

miserable for Republicans in Congress, particularly Mike Johnson. He’s signaling that his demands of the House Speaker will be borderline impossible to meet. He continues to declare that he wants virtually his entire agenda pass in one big bill, which will put Republicans in a deep bind. And he’s empowered Elon Musk to propose huge spending cuts that will create major political problems for Johnson and the GOP. With Republicans already battling over all of it, we talked to congressional scholar Norman Ornstein, who decodes Trump’s latest gambits and the GOP infighting over them—and explains what it all signals about the travails Trump will inflict on Johnson and Republicans, not to mention his own voters. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the weekend, Donald Trump unleashed an angry new rant over the news that his sentencing for his hush money conviction will proceed this week. Buried in Trump’s rage was a key tell: He’s signaling that he’ll use his conviction as a pretext to carry out his own autocratic second-term designs. There are also indications that he hopes to milk his sentencing toward other ugly ends. We talked to Adam Gurri, the editor of Liberal Currents magazine, who’s been making good arguments lately about Trump’s pursuit of “personalist” rule, which shapes everything around the personality at the center of his movement. Gurri explains how Trump is already signaling that this is where his presidency will go—and why that’s so ominous. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As of this recording, lawmakers are still chaotically rushing to avoid a government shutdown. And one thing is already clear from this fiasco: Donald Trump will betray his voters very, very badly. Trump and Elon Musk killed a compromise bill, demanding deep spending cuts that would inflict real harm on Trump country, portending a lot more like this to come. (After we recorded, the House voted down the second government funding bill House Republicans advanced.) We chatted with Paul Waldman, the co-author of White Rural Rage. He explains why all this is happening, the tensions it reveals among Republicans, and how the Trump-Musk alliance looks poised to sell out MAGA voters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, sounded an extraordinary warning this week. After a House GOP report recommended that the FBI prosecute Liz Cheney, Murphy argued in a social media thread that Donald Trump is clearly putting in place a plan to cripple our democracy, one we might never recover from. In an interview with the podcast, Murphy expands on his alarm, arguing that within a few months, some of Trump’s enemies might be in jail, the media might be cowed into submission, and that Democrats need to sound the alarm before it’s too late, lest Trump’s attacks on democracy prove “fatal.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Tuesday, Donald Trump exploded with fury at Judge Juan Merchan after he refused to dismiss the hush-money conviction of Trump in Manhattan. Trump also filed a frivolous lawsuit against pollster Ann Selzer for getting her pre-election survey wrong, suggesting more bullying of the media is coming. Meanwhile, Donald’s daughter-in-law Lara Trump just brazenly suggested that Kash Patel is being installed as FBI director precisely to carry out revenge against Trump’s enemies. We chatted with Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall about his interesting new piece arguing that these targets need to band together in the face of what’s coming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Monday, Donald Trump issued some rambling, tortured claims. He bent over backwards to reassure people about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and vouched for the polio vaccine—while bizarrely clarifying that he sees “problems” with vaccines and even opposes vaccine mandates in schools. We think this reveals a surprising political vulnerability. Trump knows RFK’s extreme views are a problem, but also seems aware that being supportive of vaccine mandates might alienate some constituencies in his base. We talked to Anne Shoup, a senior adviser for the Democratic-allied group Protect Our Care, which is running ads against RFK, about whether stopping him is really possible and what more Dems should do to oppose Trump’s nominees. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

ABC News has abruptly agreed to a $15 million settlement with Donald Trump in his lawsuit against the network. Coming after Trump raged at ABC throughout the campaign, some observers see this as a sign of broader capitulation to him. Indeed, it comes as Trump openly boasted that he’s “tamed” the media. We talked to The Atlantic’s Anne Applebaum, author of Autocracy, Inc., who explains why this outcome has “really disturbing” implications, how Trump is conditioning Americans to accept authoritarian rule, and what the prognosis is going forward. It’s not great. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After Christopher Wray resigned as FBI director, Donald Trump unleashed a long, angry rant on Truth Social, suggesting that a major purge of the bureau is coming—and that the targeting of his enemies will commence the moment Kash Patel is installed. Meanwhile, leading MAGA figures are ramping up pressure on GOP senators not to stand in Trump’s way—and some of them are already signaling they’ll likely fold. We talked to The Bulwark’s William Saletan, author of a good new piece on the dangers of this moment. He explains that this is what it looks like “when a criminal takes control of law enforcement,” and lays out what it will take for us to resist. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Eric Trump has stepped into the international limelight as the face of the new Trump oligarchy. At a conference this week, he told an audience that he and father Donald Trump will work together once Trump is president to push crypto, which the Trump family is invested in. Eric, the executive vice president of the Trump Organization, has also been prominently negotiating the ethics policy—or lack thereof—that Trump will submit to as president. We talked to Casey Michel, the author of several books on American kleptocracy, who explains how ripe conditions are for unprecedented elite corruption to flourish. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In recent days, Donald Trump and his advisers have left no doubt: He will deport as many of the 11 million undocumented people in this country as possible. But on Fox News, Alina Habba, who’s set to be a top White House lawyer, offered some new spin on the coming plan that revealed a lot about how Trump’s propagandists will try to defend the indefensible. We talked to Vanessa Cardenas, the executive director of America’s Voice, who grapples with the hardships that immigrants will soon face, why Latinos moved toward Trump, and how pro-immigration forces should rally in response to what's coming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

These are heady times for MAGA. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Elon Musk are teaming up to slash the government to ribbons as part of Musk’s new Department of Government Efficiency. What could give MAGA a bigger thrill than that high-wattage duo? But Politico reports that some Republicans quietly fear that Greene’s involvement could become a major distraction from the Trump/GOP agenda. We talked to tech writer Gil Duran, a close observer of Musk’s machinations, who explains why the right-wing “techbro” worldview is so dangerous—and how Greene could make it even more combustible. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The New York Times reports that Donald Trump is telling advisers that his biggest regret from his first term was that he appointed “traitors.” As a result, his transition team is grilling prospective nominees to gauge their loyalty to Trump. Is there some way for Democrats to drive home how dangerous all this is? We chatted with Brian Beutler, author of the excellent Substack Off Message. He argues that even as Trump’s second-term plans are getting more overtly dangerous to the rule of law, Democrats need to do a lot more to alert the public to what’s coming—not just because it’s good politics, but because the country needs it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Points for candor to Senator Tommy Tuberville. On Thursday, he admitted he thinks Trump should vet his own nominees, suggesting the Senate GOP should forget about playing its advice and consent role. That’s a stark admission about what MAGA actually expects from Senate Republicans. Yet revelations about Trump’s pick for Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, are so damning that Republicans are finding him impossible to rubber-stamp, and he’s hanging in the balance. We chatted with Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, author of a new piece about Trump, Hegseth and the GOP. She explains how Tuberville said the quiet part out loud, how Trump is expressly trying to build a cabinet of misogynists, and how that’s backfiring, perhaps forcing Republicans to thwart his worst excesses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump’s choice for Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, is hanging by a thread. GOP senators are clearly signaling that he’s in deep trouble. Yet powerful right wing influencers are now angrily rushing to Hegseth’s defense, urging those senators to stand behind him. We chatted with Matt Gertz of Media Matters, who has a good new piece reporting on Fox News’s efforts to save Hegseth. Gertz explains how MAGA is turning this into a test for GOP Senators: Will they surrender to the “liberal media” when it reports facts about Trump, or will they side with Trump and MAGA? If GOP Senators fail now, it bodes badly for what’s coming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump’s administration is already shaping up as a Murderer’s Row of Billionaires. By one count, he’s already picked eight billionaires for top positions. He has now chosen a ninth billionaire to serve as Deputy Defense Secretary, and this one enjoys lucrative contracts with the Pentagon. We talked to Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, about how unprecedented it is to have so many billionaires in the government—and whether there are any post-Watergate safeguards left that can withstand the oligarchic corruption that’s about to hit us. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In an extraordinary expose, The New Yorker has revealed the “secret history” of Pete Hegseth, who’s Donald Trump’s nominee for Defense Secretary. This includes allegations of extreme drunkenness and financial mismanagement of a nonprofit he ran. Along with other highly unqualified nominees, this fiasco raises a question: Do Senate Democrats have what it takes to make revelations like these stick in confirmation hearings? We talked to Tara McGowan, a progressive media executive who often urges Democrats to go on the offensive. She explains how the party can get more serious about fighting the information wars—and why this will be essential during a second Trump presidency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump just announced that his FBI director will be Kash Patel. We know why: Because Patel himself has already suggested that in a second Trump term, law enforcement should pursue Trump’s enemies, and as a result, Trump’s pick already has leading MAGA figures in a frenzy of excitement about the persecution that’s coming. It’s all a reminder that Trump feels zero constraints of any kind, again raising the question: Are the guardrails gone? We talked to Michael Sozan, a senior fellow for the Center for American Progress and author of a useful report that grapples with this very question. Sozan explains how far Patel will be able to get in carrying out Trump’s campaign of retribution, and why there’s cause for deep alarm. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now that Donald Trump has threatened huge tariffs on Mexico, some MAGA figures are suddenly consumed with a dark new fantasy about Trump inflicting all manner of punishment on that country. One top MAGA ally claims Mexico should prepare for a U.S. military invasion. Another says that if Mexico doesn’t do Trump’s bidding, “pain and suffering will ensue.” Trump’s propagandists are laying the groundwork to cast Mexico as a major scapegoat for U.S. social problems. We talked to Douglas Rivlin of America’s Voice, one of the best immigration and border observers out there, about how misguided Trump’s threats are, why MAGA thrills to them, and what all this could portend about the horrors that are coming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Donald Trump erupted in fury at The New York Times. He appeared triggered by a story about a Trump aide named Natalie Harp, who serves as his gatekeeper with creepy levels of devotion. What caught our eye is that in his rant, Trump demanded that The Times show obeisance to him because he won the election, perhaps providing an early glimpse of how he will seek to cow the media into submission. We talked to Margaret Sullivan, the former Times public editor and author of the great Substack “American Crisis,” who explains what Trump’s crackdown on the press might look like—and how well the media will respond to it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As Democrats sift through the wreckage left behind by Donald Trump’s victory, it’s become clear the party needs a major rebuilding effort with the working class. A new analysis from The New York Times finds unnervingly large swings among working class voters during the Trump era, including among nonwhites. We talked to veteran strategist James Carville, who offers a deceptively simple diagnosis: The Democratic Party is simply “in the dark” about how many Americans, especially working class, young, and nonwhite voters, are getting their information right now, and getting to the bottom of this conundrum is urgent. Carville also unveils a new project he’s pursuing that he hopes will begin to solve the problem. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump’s top allies are already at war with each other over the transition, according to The Washington Post. Meanwhile, Trump just tapped anti-Islam extremist Sebastian Gorka for a big national security role, and that’s unnerving even some in MAGA. Trump is so certain he won a massive mandate that he doesn’t feel obliged to run a smooth transition or refrain from appointing wildly extreme people. We chatted with political scientist Julia Azari, author of a great new piece on presidential delusions about mandates. Azari explains why mandates are usually illusory, how Trump is grotesquely overreading his victory, and why it all bodes badly for what’s to come. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After Matt Gaetz abruptly withdrew from consideration as Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, Trump seemed uncharacteristically muted. Intriguingly, he accepted this outcome without once trying to crack the whip on the Senate Republicans who apparently blocked Gaetz’s nomination—which is doubly strange, as MAGA personalities were furiously urging Trump to use recess appointments to put the Senate GOP in its place. What really happened among Republicans here? We talked to Congressional scholar Norman Ornstein, who brilliantly explains what’s really driving the key GOP senators to watch going forward—and whether we’ll see real resistance among them to Trump’s future authoritarian excesses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Donald Trump confirmed that he will use the military to carry out mass deportations. This prompted a surprisingly sharp response from GOP Senator Rand Paul, who denounced the idea as a “huge mistake” that will send a “terrible image” to the world and likely be “illegal” to boot. But why is it left to a fringe figure in the GOP to denounce Trump’s vile threats? Where are the rest of Republicans on this? We talked to Tom Nichols, a writer for The Atlantic and a sharp observer of the MAGA-fication of the GOP, about what will really happen within the military and beyond once these threats get put into action—and why it poses such a menace to the country. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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