THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

Donald Trump’s case for invading Iran took a big blow Tuesday when top counterterrorism official Joe Kent resigned. Though Kent is a crazed extremist with vile views, his letter directly undermined the core rationale Trump has offered for his war and made big news in doing so. This comes as MAGA figures are splitting badly over the conflict. Some (Megyn Kelly, Tucker Carlson) are raging that the United States is doing Israel’s bidding, and others (Ben Shapiro) are denouncing them for blaming Israel for the war, and their battle has grown truly vicious. We talked to Emily Horne, a former National Security Council official under Joe Biden who also worked at the State Department and writes the Spin Class Substack. She explains what Kent might know about the weaknesses of Trump’s case for war, why that case is collapsing, and how the deepening MAGA fractures suggest the bottom is falling out under Trump’s adventure.

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Over the weekend, Donald Trump unleashed two crazed tirades at the media over Iran. In one, he angrily accused news organizations of rooting for the United States to “lose the war.” In another, he openly urged his Federal Communications Commission chair to employ state power against media outlets that displease him. And in a weird rant to reporters, he angrily rebuked other countries for refusing to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. All this comes as a New York Times expose reveals shocking details about Trump’s failings: In internal conversations, he appeared disconnected from basic realities about the strait and unable to grasp why his alienating of our allies is working against him. He also apparently got badly played by Benjamin Netanyahu. We talked to international relations expert Molly McKew, author of a good piece on the stakes of the moment. She explains how Trump’s treatment of allies is backfiring on him, why Trump might attempt a domestic press crackdown, and what to expect next in the war. 

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Republicans are reportedly “incensed” at Donald Trump for pushing them to pass voter suppression measures when they don’t have the votes for it. Yet he’s raging at them over this almost daily, openly declaring that making voting harder is the only way to salvage the midterms. Republicans want to focus on the economy, but Trump won’t let them, and Politico now reports that worsening GOP losses in state-level races has them very worried about the elections. One operatives says: “I’m ringing the alarm.” We talked to Tara McGowan, a former Democratic strategist and publisher of the progressive news site Courier. She explains why Trump’s demand for voter suppression has the GOP in a trap, why his bad economy, widely hated deportations and war-of-choice in Iran are worsening GOP chances, and why Democratic energy on the ground will likely remain supercharged through the fall.

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Donald Trump has been all over the place on the global oil shock created by his war amid Iran’s closing of the Strait of Hormuz. Earlier this week he angrily claimed that the price hikes are a small price to pay for world peace, adding: “ONLY FOOLS WOULD DISAGREE!” But on Thursday he offered some bizarre new spin, claiming that the U.S. “is the largest Oil Producer in the World, by far, so when oil prices go up, we make a lot of money.” The idea that “we” all benefit prompted intense criticism and underscores his chaotic approach to this fiasco. Meanwhile, CNN reports that Trump officials have started to “panic” and are in a state of “alarm” about the situation, even as its global impact is rapidly worsening. We talked to international relations expert Nicholas Grossman, who’s been arguing that the Iran saga is catching Trump off guard. We discuss why the oil shock’s consequences are so dramatic, how this all reveals the limits to Trump’s bullying powers, and what it all says about MAGA’s tendency to underestimate resistance to its designs.

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For Donald Trump, the news is getting worse on his war against Iran. The New York Times reports that the Trump team badly miscalculated Iran’s response to the American invasion, leading to a developing energy fiasco. The Times also reports that some officials are pessimistic about the lack of any real strategy to end the war, adding this: “They have been careful not to express that directly to the president, who has repeatedly declared that the military operation is a complete success.” Their fear of telling Trump the truth about our fix is highly unnerving. We’re also learning that the United States was likely responsible for bombing the Iranian elementary school. We talked to Columbia political scientist Elizabeth Saunders, author of a new piece on this whole mess. We discuss Iran’s closing of the Strait of Hormuz, why Trump can’t easily end the war even if he wants to, what it means that officials are leaking dismay about the war’s direction, and what likely lies ahead. 

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Donald Trump claims Iran is responsible for the bombing of an elementary school that killed scores of children, even though the evidence continues to mount that the United States is responsible. In a striking exchange with a reporter, Trump was asked point blank why no other government official will confirm what he’s saying. He said straight out: “Because I don’t know enough about it.” But in saying this, Trump admitted that he'd made an incendiary factual claim about an extraordinarily serious matter without having the foggiest idea what the facts actually are. Trump’s assertions about the school bombing also forced White House Karoline Leavitt to undertake a clumsy clean-up effort. We talked to Paul Waldman, author of a piece at his Substack, The Cross Section, discussing a new analysis showing that Trump’s war is the most unpopular U.S. war in modern history. We discuss why that exchange was so humiliating to Trump, what it revealed about the White House’s indefensible war and his inability to sell it, and the deeper reasons why Americans are not reflexively rallying behind the “commander in chief.”

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In recent days, President Trump has angrily demanded that Republicans pass the SAVE Act, a massive voter suppression measure that already passed the House but almost certainly can’t pass the Senate. In one tirade on Truth Social, he threatened not to sign anything else until Senate Republicans get it done. That echoed a second rant demanding the same. After we recorded this episode, Trump gave a speech doubling down on this demand. But a funny thing is happening: This is trampling all over the midterm messaging of Republicans, who badly want to appear focused on the economy. We talked to veteran Congressional scholar Norman Ornstein. He explains why the SAVE ACT is such a heinous piece of voter suppression, why it’s probably doomed in the Senate despite Trump's pressure, and how his demand has trapped Republicans, given their cultlike thrall to him. Ornstein also walks us through the nightmare scenarios in which Trump and/or Republicans could conceivably steal the midterms. 

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We’ve noticed that whenever the news is bad for Donald Trump, Karoline Leavitt dials up the cultlike obsequiousness to 11. She just let out a strange rant basically declaring that Iran will have entered into “unconditional surrender,” as Trump wants, whenever he says it has. In another odd moment, she dismissed widespread MAGA criticism of Trump’s war by essentially declaring that MAGA is whatever Trump says it is. The two displays really went full North Korea in other ways, too. And that’s no accident:  an average of high quality surveys now shows that support for his Iran war is at an abysmal 38 percent, perhaps the lowest initial support for a war ever. Another analysis finds that Trump’s net approval on immigration has dropped by 20 points since last year. And his economic numbers are awful. We talked to Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, a skilled decoder of MAGA. We discuss how this presidency is in trouble on multiple fronts and the role of cultlike praise in managing the base at such difficult moments. We also ponder how his physical decline, and the prospect of a world without Trump, is hovering in the background of all of it.

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This week, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt lashed out at a reporter and accused the media of trying to make Donald Trump “look bad.” The occasion was a question about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who had previously accused the media of the same. What’s truly strange is how Leavitt flatly denied Hegseth had said what everyone heard him say, followed by an unhinged, extended tirade at reporters. Why the rage? Well, Republicans are growing anxious: Punchbowl News reports that they expressly don’t want to vote on the war to keep their distance from it, and many of them are straining to avoid even using the word “war.” We talked to New Republic deputy editor Tori Otten, who co-wrote a good piece with TNR’s Grace Segers dissecting White House social media strategy. We discuss the real sources of Leavitt’s anger, the importance of fantasy and unreality to MAGA politics, and why it's all actually working against Republicans. 

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In this week’s Texas Senate primaries, Democrat James Talarico triumphed, while GOP Senator John Cornyn and MAGA extremist Ken Paxton are headed for a runoff. Talarico, who speaks openly about his religious commitments and about the need to win over MAGA voters, might have a shot, especially against Paxton. That caused Donald Trump to explode in an agitated, panicky tirade on Truth Social, where he warned that the GOP primary could cost Republicans the seat and “MUST STOP NOW!” He vowed to endorse soon and insisted that the other candidate will have to “DROP OUT OF THE RACE!” This comes as other Republicans are publicly airing their fears of a Talarico-Paxton matchup. We talked to Democratic operative Sawyer Hackett, a veteran of Texas races. He explains Talarico’s unique appeal, why Texas is so hard for Democrats, what has to happen for them to win, and why they could fall short of this dream yet again. 

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