Politicus Pod

The Daily is fighting the oligarchs with outside the Beltway journalism. Please help us by becoming a subscriber.The Trump/Putin meeting turned out no differently than any of the other Trump/Putin meetings. It was shrouded in secrecy and ended with Trump showing his subservience to the Russian dictator.During her latest appearance on Chew’s Views, Sarah Jones brought up some key points.Sarah said: We've seen this coming for so long because Russia helped him get elected in 2016. And Republicans keep pretending that's a big hoax, and it isn't a hoax. It happened. It's a horrible, this has been an ongoing assault on Western democracy that Putin has engaged in very successfully thanks to the Republican Party and why were they so open to help from him because they know that they can't win elections without lying and tricking people. And so here we are. That has brought us to this moment. Yes, that was a horrifying moment. And I think afterwards, a lot of the press corps were saying that they saw members of the administration looking ashen and almost frightened by what had happened behind closed doors. And I actually, before they even reported that, when I first saw Donald Trump after that, he looked so shaken to me and I thought, what did Putin say to you? The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.And the problem with, there are so many problems with Donald Trump, but one thing I think, I'm not sure people, because there are so many crises and so many scandals going on at the same time with him, that people probably don't realize. We used to get readouts. You would always get a readout of whenever a president talks to you on the phone or has a meeting with any foreign representative.We would get a readout of what they discussed, and there are other people in the room to document what is discussed so that you can't, there can't be, you know quid pro quo blackmail happening backroom deals. That doesn't happen anymore. We don't get that information because of him.He came into office and a lot of the stuff that they usually put out to the White House press pool, it doesn't come out anymore. And so, when I saw his face, I thought Putin said something to you. We're never gonna know what it was. Was it about the Epstein files? Did they, did he say I have because he has something on Donald Trump that is very clear.The meeting was called by Putin, who rehabilitated his image on the world stage by having a literal red carpet rolled out for him by the Trump administration. In the days after the meeting, Trump has been carrying out the Putin agenda.What does Putin have on Trump? We can only guess.It is not good, and it is endangering US democracy.What do you think Putin has on Trump? Share your opinions in the comments below.

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Please support The Daily by becoming a subscriber.In the video above, I talk about JD Vance’s attempt to make the Epstein scandal go away.It has been clear for a while now that without the propping up by Donald Trump, JD Vance wouldn’t have won the Ohio Republican Senate primary and the general election. Without Trump, Vance wouldn’t be vice president. Anytime JD Vance has been put on the national stage, disaster has followed. Vance has to go into hiding when he goes on vacation because he gets protested. Vance was sent to Greenland and had to cut the trip short because he was completely unwanted, and he even broke the college football national championship trophy.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. JD Vance is the kind of vice president who would try to hold a secret meeting at his house with other Trump administration officials, have it get leaked to the media, cancel the meeting, then go on the friendliest show on planet earth to Trump administration officials and screw up the response. Maria Bartiromo was throwing JD Vance softballs, and he kept swinging and missing.The Trump administration has apparently decided to blame Joe Biden for Trump being in the Epstein files, and, if that doesn’t work, Vance tried to shift the blame to Bill Clinton.Vance’s response was astoundingly bad, and the mainstream media hasn’t said a peep about it.In fact, the coverage was centered on Vance as a potential 2028 presidential candidate, which should make Democrats say, “yes, please.”JD Vance has a unique mixture of unlikability, incompetence, and the strong scent of white male entitlement. Vance is the ideal lackey for Donald Trump. JD would never let the Constitution get in the way like Mike Pence, but Vance is also the embodiment of why the second Trump administration is failing. Presidential elections are like snowflakes. Every single one is unique, so it is too early to predict how 2028 will end up, but if Vance’s attempt at Epstein damage control represents how he will run MAGA, Trump’s movement may be facing a fake hillbilly extinction event.What do you think about how Vance handled the Epstein meeting question? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Please support The Daily and the fight for democracy by becoming a subscriber.This is getting embarrassing. In the video above, I break down the Speaker of the Texas House’s reply to Democrats who left the state to deny Republicans a quorum to pass a new gerrymandered congressional district map of the state. The Democratic Party is supporting the Texas Democrats, but they need to be doing more. Republicans have nothing. The big move from Texas state Republicans is to take away the Democratic House members’ ability to have their checks direct deposited. Supposedly, this is going to make the Democrats show up in Austin to get their checks and then boom!! The Democrats will be detained and forced onto the House floor until Republicans have a quorum and can pass the Trump-mandated gerrymandered map.That’s the “big plan.”Thanks for reading The Daily! This post is public so feel free to share it.The Texas House Democrats are not running away; they're not criminals. They voluntarily left. They took a principle to stand and left. The Republicans don't have much in the toolbox to bring them back. Greg Abbott is saying he's gonna call special session after special session until the Democrats come back and he can pass his map.But Greg Abbott also has a deadline. Greg Abbott's deadline is the end of the year. If this map is not gerrymandered by the end of the year, then it doesn't go into effect at all for the midterm. My proposal, being from a union household is very simply this. If Democrats had their act together, which I know is sometimes really stretching it, what they should do is they should go to their donors set up basically, what is a democracy fund, A strike fund we would call it, in terms of union workers.Go to every person who voted for the Harris/Walz ticket and ask for a dollar. And don't go through a super PAC. Don’t take a cut out for “administrative costs.” Raise $60 or $70 million to cover these expenses for these Texas Democrats to pay their fines so that it doesn't matter how much Greg Abbott and the Texas Republicans fine them.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.It's covered so that it doesn't matter, so that they can bring their families wherever they've gone and keep those Democrats out of Texas for the rest of the year. Wouldn't that send a message? Wouldn't that send a message? Wouldn't that make everybody go, Wow, the Democrats are serious about this. And it wasn't just the 50 Texas Democrats, it was every Democrat in the party that stepped up and said, we got you. We got your back. We're not gonna let this happen. We're gonna fight. We're not just gonna talk about democracy as a threat. And then once Donald Trump wins the election, say democracy didn't play well with voters, so we're not gonna talk about that anymore.It's ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous that these people were so big into talking about democracy for years, and then when they found out it wasn't a winning campaign issue, they stopped. What does that tell you? Is this a group of people that are serious about protecting democracy, or are they listening to some high-paid consultants who are just telling them this polls well with voters?And then when they lost the election, a lot of them stopped talking about democracy. A lot of them stopped. Why did they stop? This is our situation. What are we gonna do? You have a choice. You can sit on your hands. You can watch cable news, and you can just follow the coverage and maybe tell some people, tell some friends, and whatnot about what's happening, or you can step up. You can demand that the Democratic Party take care of these Texas Democrats.You can demand they take the fight to the next level.Republicans have nothing, and they are humiliating themselves right now. It’s time for Democrats to step up and strike a blow for democracy.What do you think? Have Texas Republicans been exposed? Join the conversation and share your thoughts in the comments below.

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The Daily is independent media that needs your help. Please support our work by becoming a subscriber.Republicans have used many tools to legally reshape the electorate to benefit themselves. Everything from restrictive voting laws to voter suppression efforts to gerrymandering has become part of the GOP's electoral manipulation toolbox.After Barack Obama’s victory in 2008, the Republican Party shifted from trying to win elections with ideas to trying to win elections by changing the composition of the electorate.In this context, a historically unpopular president and his party have reached their logical next step by attempting a mid-decade gerrymander. As Sarah Jones said on WPCT’s Chew’s Views, now is the time for Democrats to do whatever is necessary to protect democracy:At this point, I'm not sure how anyone can be against Democrats doing what they have to do to keep our democracy, because it's very clear that if we don't get power back in the US House in this midterm election. Things are going to get much worse than they are right now, and that is not a positive direction.Thanks for reading The Daily! This post is public so feel free to share it.And so I, and I say that as somebody who I have been an institutionalist the entire time I've been writing, so I think it's 15 years now. I, this is the opposite of where I was until the second Trump term, when it was clear that America is broken and that the institutions aren't gonna save us. And I think, President Joe Biden really tried to shore up all those institutions, and he did so much good work to do that, that he won't get recognized for.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.And I saw that he was in like the lowest position in one of the polls. It's just really sad how Americans have been so misled about what's going on in their government. But at any rate, so I don't know what the exact argument is, but and I see a lot of Republicans saying, oh, Democrats do it just like us.And that's not true either. CNN came out and said that's not true. Republicans really started this in 2010. That was the backlash to President Barack Obama and to Obamacare, which has now saved so many people's lives.And again, like that's another example. 'cause progressives were part of that backlash. They abandoned him over that. And that's part of how, what I'm, I wish that the Democratic Party that liberals and progressives could look at that, look at 2010 and say to yourselves, do we wanna redo that? We have to learn how to come together when it's important. It's good to have vigorous debate. That's part of being a big tent party. That's part of being a coalition of people who are challenging ideas instead of worshiping a person. And it's not a cult and that's really important, but I think there's a big failure on the part of the base, basically to recognize when it's time to come together and put aside individual desires, individual issues that are keeping people divided. Democrats have realized that they have to be in power before they can protect democracy. Getting back into power should be the first and only goal. Moral victories and principles don’t count when democracy is on the line, and that is why the entire party must come together and do whatever it takes to win in 2026.What do you think? Should Democrats be doing whatever it takes? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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The Daily needs your help to continue to survive as independent media. You can help us by becoming a subscriber.When Donald Trump returned to the United States from Scotland, it became obvious. Instead of getting front and center in front of the cameras, it almost looked as if Trump was trying to hide behind a pillar and shout his answers to reporters from a distance. Video:Trump also appeared to be using the pillar to hold himself up while he talked.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Here is the transcript of CNN’s Kaitlin Collins asking Trump about Epstein:COLLINS: Mr. President, you said earlier that Jeffrey Epstein was stealing young women. You said Jeffrey Epstein was stealing young women from your spa. Did that raise alarm bells for you?TRUMP: Be quiet.The dam appears to be breaking. Trump has tried to hold back the political floodwaters for more than a month, but the questions keep coming as the president’s defenses appear to be weakening.Trump has now been reduced to telling reporters to be quiet when they ask about Epstein.The president’s policies are failing. The economy is slowing. Trump’s poll numbers are in the dumpster, and the Epstein questions refuse to go away. Trump has never faced a time like this during his political career. Donald Trump is no longer controlling the political conversation, but is instead at its mercy. The president has tried all of his old tricks to change the subject and none of it has worked.Something feels different this time. Trump is older and weaker, and unable to hijack the conversation through an onslaught of distractions.Republicans put all of their eggs in the Trump basket, and now the basket is on fire on their front porch. Trump will still linger if he lives long enough to finish his term, but the dam is breaking, and Republicans have no backup plan.What do you think about Trump hiding from Epstein questions? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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The Daily needs your help. Support us by subscribing.In the video above, we dig deeper into Trump’s meltdown in Scotland.It would be easy to dismiss it, as more Trump crazy, but there is more happening than the usual. The first sinister part of this video was the racism, as Trump just tries to get Europe to also deport anybody who isn't white. You could miss that really easily if you just let it slide by.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Secondly, what's even more sinister is his promotion of the fossil fuel industry while diminishing a cheap source of renewable power and energy. Yale University found that one of the main reasons why electricity prices have felt stable in the United States over the last 10 years was the growth of renewable energy.Trump and the Republican Party hacked out the renewable energy tax breaks and tax cuts and are attacking renewables. And that's gonna raise your energy prices. You're already seeing energy prices go up because of all the necessary power for AI. Donald Trump is trying to raise your energy bills.He's trying to deprive you of a cheap source of energy that will lower your cost, that will be better for your health, better for your welfare, better for your family, better for the world that you live in. If you enjoy nature, then you shouldn't believe any of this crap at all. It's a lie. It's a total lie.Trump went off the rails. Trump can't have a sane conversation. By the way, the topic here was immigration. The question was immigration. They were not talking about windmills. Trump went over the edge, broke, and showed his mental decline in front of the entire world, and went off on one of his windmill tangents.There is also something very ugly here that shows that Donald Trump is owned and operated by the fossil fuel companies, and it's easy to look at him and be like This is crazy. Okay. Yeah. That sets the surface level, but there's an undermining and as sinister element to this, that's an actual agenda that goes beyond Trump's mental decline and Trump's inability to be president, and the things that are happening.The deeper look shows that he is intentionally doing very destructive and harmful things to America. It may sound like madness, but there is an agenda at work that could be devastating for the country and the planet.What do you think of Trump’s fossil fuel agenda and lies about renewables? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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The Daily needs your help. Please support us by becoming a subscriber.Could there really have been any other ending for Trump? A man whose constant companions have been failure and scandal for his entire adult life has now seen both of his defining traits combine together in spectacular fashion within six months of returning back to the White House.Donald Trump never had a superpower. The idea that he was some sort of political superhero who could defy political gravity was a myth that was started by the mainstream media and was embraced by Donald Trump.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Donald Trump’s power is derived from the protection that Republicans in Congress have given him. This dates back to Trump’s first term in office. Remember, two Trump impeachments failed because Republicans in the Senate refused to convict him.Trump’s other power came from the media. Why did the media build up Trump so much and treat him the way that no other president gets treated, a.k.a. the Trump rules, as MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell has called them?The answer is money. During Trump’s first term in office, he made corporate media relevant again while making them lots and lots of money. That money led the media to push for Trump to win the 2024 election, only to see TV ratings fall, website traffic plummet, and Trump-related books flop. Everything that worked in the first term is failing in the second.Trump’s fall makes sense because he is a two-term president, and presidents not named Bill Clinton always lose popularity in their second term. The media thought that they could relive their Trump good old days, but the American people have not played along.The polling is an absolute disaster. Trump is three points away from the worst job approval rating of his first term. He has a negative approval rating on every issue in the Gallup poll, and the Big Beautiful Bill appears to be an anchor around the necks of Republicans.If Trump continues on his current trajectory, Democrats will at minimum take back the House majority, and this will be the end of the line for relevancy and his presidency. Trump could spend his final two years in the White House as his de facto retirement home, as the nation’s attention turns to the 2028 election.

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Please consider supporting The Daily by becoming a subscriber.Another dot was connected on Monday, as Speaker of the House Mike Johnson told reporters that he would not be allowing a vote on a resolution urging the release of the Epstein files before the House goes on summer recess for the month of August.Johnson said there would be no vote because the House and Trump are on the same page:Here's what I would say about the Epstein files. There is no daylight between the House Republicans, the House, and the president on maximum transparency. He has said that he wants all of the credible files related to Epstein to be released. He's asked the attorney general to request the grand jury files of the court. All of that is in process right now. My belief is we need the administration to have the space to do what it is doing. And if further congressional action is necessary or appropriate, then we'll look at that. But I don't think we're at that point right now because we agree with the president.Video:There is so much agreement with the president that Johnson is working on a plan to kill a petition to force a vote on the Epstein files because so many members of his own conference support it.That’s not agreement.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. Toreceive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.The GOP’s Anti-Woman Agenda And The Epstein Cover-UpSarah Jones put the Epstein scandal and the GOP’s anti-woman agenda together during an appearance on Deadline DC with Brad Bannon.Sarah said: I do wanna connect this to the Republican anti-abortion stance just for a moment. I know that might sound wild, but it is to me as a woman, very important to make the connection that when when you make abortion illegal, you incentivize rape and you incentivize domestic abusers who use rape and pregnancy as a way to control women. And so the fact that they did they are pushing anti-abortion. They're pushing to make abortion illegal. And then here we are. Now, President Trump is hiding. The Epstein files, whatever exists there the information, the materials that were not released, he's hiding.And those two things aren't disconnected in my mind. And I think that when it tells you about somebody, the things we knew about him the things that have come out that he was an is now an adjudicated sexual assaulter, all of those things are very relevant to this conversation. You can’t have the Epstein conversation without also having the conversation about what Republicans have done to reproductive rights because it is all part of the same thread.The Republican Party is behaving like a pro-rapist party that is an accessory to a potential Epstein cover-up.What do you think about the link between Epstein and the Republican Party’s attack on reproductive freedom? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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The Daily is outside the Beltway news for the people. Please consider supporting our work by becoming a subscriber.In the case of Jeffrey Epstein and the fallout that continues to follow Donald Trump, the crime really is worse than the cover-up.The political class is doing what it always does by talking about the political impact of the Epstein files situation, but what is being overlooked is what Donald Trump and his administration are working so hard to hide. Sarah Jones put the light back on the women and girls during an appearance on Chew’s Views on Monday.Sarah said: I hear that everyone is talking about this whole Epstein thing and what I feel is left out of this conversation. And as a woman, I really want to center this for a moment for everyone that's listening.This is about elites taking advantage of women and girls, and they've been allowed to do that by this corrupt legal system and corrupt politicians. Epstein didn't even deny doing these things, but he compared it to stealing a bagel. And for all the women and the girls in this country who have been really struggling because all of this is very triggering for women.Most women have, they know somebody or it's happened to them. They have been on the side of being dehumanized in this culture. And that is the light motif of Donald Trump's existence. He dehumanizes women and girls. He's done it from sexualizing his young daughter, to becoming an adjudicated sexual assaulter, to burying his former wife and mother of his children on a golf course for tax break.And the only people who have paid any price for the Epstein files, the Epstein horrible sex trafficking and abuse and rape of young women and of girls are women. Ghislaine Maxwell. And I just wanna say for everyone, I see you. I know how hard this is. It's so wrong. This is an injustice of such epic proportions.To have a president who we all knew this was who he was, and all of these people supported him, and it is a horrible thing every day for women and girls to know that and to live in this culture. The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Society never wants to talk about the abuse of women and girls, so it is not surprising that a mainstream US media that is owned and dominated by white men in the most powerful positions would rather talk about the political dynamics to avoid contemplating the horrors that were inflicted on girls who were abused and sex trafficked. What Donald Trump is trying to cover up is so heinous that 89% oppose what he is doing, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll.We should never forget the women and girls, and the elites who protected Jeffrey Epstein and allowed his crimes to go on for years. Donald Trump is one of those elites who has protected and continues to protect Epstein and others through his cover-up, and what he is covering up is the abuse and rape of women and girls.What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Please consider supporting The Daily by becoming a subscriber.Trump responded to Putin playing him and showing no sign of wanting peace by threatening him with tariffs. Trump’s DHS Secretary is being called incompetent, and it is being suggested that her decisions caused the deaths of children in Texas. Economists are warning that prices are going to begin to rise this summer as non-tariffed inventory is running low and increased costs will soon be passed on to customers. The president’s approval rating is in the dumpster, and the nation has turned on him over his signature issue of immigration.All presidencies face challenges. Good presidents build administrations that are staffed with competent people who can weather the storms.Donald Trump has chosen to staff his administration with loyalists who aren’t qualified for the jobs that they currently occupy. Trump wants to be a strongman, but he has constructed a weak and flimsy administration whose guiding principle is saying yes to Donald Trump.What took months and years for the American people to figure out during the first Trump administration happened in a matter of weeks. Even when a president is opposed to democracy, the guardrails of democracy still restrict that president. An administration that was serious about toppling democracy would need to be built on competence and popular support.The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Donald Trump’s administration has neither.The Trump regime is crumbling, and the president can’t fix it. Instead, Trump will likely do what he always does, and continue to try to sell failure as success and hope that just enough Americans buy it.If voters take Trump’s House and Senate enablers away from him in 2026, it will be over for him. Trump is a weak man being propped up by even weaker Republicans in Congress who fear him.The regime is crumbling, but it will take a push from the people to make it collapse.

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