THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

Democrats have signaled that they’re running in the 2026 midterms on “affordability.” This week, Trump unleashed several angry, wild-eyed rants about their “affordability” message. In one, he raged that this message is a “con job.” In  another, he seethed that it’s a “Democrat scam.” He’s angry because these attacks are working, and because he knows it means the GOP’s midterm woes are getting much worse. And right on cue, in this week’s special election in Tennessee that Republicans won, the vote shifted 13 points to the left relative to 2024. That shocked Republicans into a panic: Representative Elise Stefanik openly fretted that Republicans are “underperforming.” Senator Ted Cruz urged Republicans to sound the “alarm.” And a senior GOP strategist called the result a “flashing red warning.” We talked to Amanda Litman, the president of Run for Something, which is recruiting candidates across the country. She digs into the special election results to explain why they’re good news, details how Democrats can keep the momentum going through 2026, and reflects on what could still go wrong.

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Suddenly, on many fronts at once, President Trump and his allies are demonstrating how central sheer sadism is to his agenda—and to how MAGA conducts politics. Trump just unleashed a hateful rant to the media about Somali immigrants to set the stage for a coming campaign to arrest them en masse. Meanwhile, MAGA excitement over the Caribbean Sea bombings is spiking: Pete Hegseth tweeted out a deeply sadistic cartoon celebrating these extrajudicial killings. A prominent MAGA personality just declared her desire to see bombing victims “bleed out.” And MAGA figures are raging at reporters who broke the story of the follow-up strike killing two men in the water. We talked to Paul Waldman, who has a good piece on his Cross Section Substack about all of this. We discuss the centrality of hate and bloodlust to Trump-MAGA politics, how the administration’s social media strategy utilizes sadistic imagery, and why the public backlash to all these depravities is heartening.

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President Trump’s illegal boat bombings just got even worse. We’ve now learned that after demolishing a boat allegedly carrying drug smugglers in September, two survivors were left behind, and they were both blown apart in a second strike. That’s probably a war crime. On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt struggled mightily to spin this as perfectly lawful. But all she revealed is how hard it is to defend all this when actual facts are known. Meanwhile, the latest turn in this saga is clearly rattling some Republicans, who feel forced to appear as if they want to exercise more oversight. We talked to Jennifer Rubin, editor-in-chief of The Contrarian, about her good new piece on this latest fiasco. She explains why we should take GOP angst over the bombings seriously, why people inside the chain of command should fear they’re on the hook for illegal acts, and what it will really take to impose accountability. 

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President Trump dreads being seen as weak. He exploded in a long, crazed rant about a harsh new piece in The New York Times about his ongoing decline. Though the piece documented his deterioration in careful detail, Trump insisted in all kinds of ways that, no, really, he’s as physically energetic and cognitively sound as he’s ever been. We think this gets at a bigger story: The illusion that Trump is strong, powerful, and wields absolute mastery over foes is essential to his political mystique. As his wildly unhinged overreaction to the piece demonstrates, he knows this better than anyone. Yet that eruption only confirmed the thesis: The whole fracas even got medical professionals to weigh in on his obvious mental decline. We talked to David Lurie, who writes for the Public Notice Substack, about his new piece depicting Trump as a “lame duck dictator.” We discuss the collapse of Trump’s aura of strength, how the combination of his political debilitation and consolidation of authoritarian power poses new dangers, and the importance of depicting him as the naked emperor figure he truly is. 

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This week, the White House leaked plans to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies for some of the millions of people who stand to lose out from their expiration. But that’s on ice after Republicans declared it a nonstarter. That could hurt them in the midterms, and oddly, it comes as President Trump just exploded in a wild tirade about the elections. He falsely ranted that Democrats will open our borders and unleash DEI, and urged the Indiana GOP to hurry up and gerrymander to stop Democrats. Meanwhile, Republicans tell Punchbowl News that they’re losing the House, that resignations are coming, and that “morale has never been lower.” But if so, why not renew ACA subsidies to try to save yourselves, Republicans? We talked to New Republic staff writer Monica Potts about her good new piece on the GOP predicament. We discuss the roots of GOP anti-ACA hatred, why Republicans bank on election-rigging, and how it all explains GOP plutocratic politics in the Trump era. 

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This weekend, President Trump raged over a video from Democrats that warned against carrying out “illegal orders.” That led him to get his Defense Secretary to launch an investigation of one of those Democrats, Senator and former Navy captain Mark Kelly. But things kept spiraling downward for Trump when a judge tossed out his corrupt prosecutions of James Comey and Letitia James. The ruling—that his appointment of a stooge U.S. Attorney was illegal—shows that his slapdash targeting of enemies is what backfired. In all these stories, Trump is corruptly weaponizing the system to get revenge on enemies for corrupt purposes, and it’s running aground for him. We talked to David Kurtz, who covers legal issues for Talking Points Memo’s excellent Morning Memo newsletter. We discuss how Trump’s own corruption is blowing up in his face, how the failing prosecutions are connected to his vile effort to get revenge on Kelly, and why we’re going to need another post-Watergate-scale reform effort to salvage the system once all this is over. 

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Suddenly, media outlets seem to have figured out that President Donald Trump is really, really unpopular. There’s been a palpable shift in the discourse: The New York Times reports that Republicans are quietly looking beyond Trump, suggesting he’s losing his grip on the party. Axios claims that it’s “red alert” time for Trump and the GOP. Politico describes how Republicans are getting routed in school board races, a sign that MAGA culture-warring has lost its sway and is even backfiring. And one CNN analyst offers a brutal reading of recent approval numbers on Trump, pronouncing them “atrocious.” We talked to Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, who regularly dissects MAGA and media foibles alike. We discuss why the political media smells blood, how deepening splits in MAGA show Trump’s weakness, what it means that the Trump-MAGA culture war and immigration raids are badly alienating ordinary voters, and how Trump is in a potentially irreversible tailspin. 

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On Thursday, President Trump called for the execution of a number of members of the opposition party. This came after Democratic lawmakers released a powerful video informing military and intelligence officials that they are not obliged to carry out illegal orders from Trump. Then he raged in several ranting tweets that this was “sedition,” punishable by “death.” Democratic leaders forcefully hit back. And White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt spun madly in response, struggling to deny that Trump had given illegal orders. In other words, it all backfired badly on Trump by forcing a public conversation about whether Trump actually is giving illegal orders. We talked to Representative Chrissy Houlahan, an Air Force veteran herself, who is one of the Democrats in the video. She explains why Democrats needed to do this, why service-members need to know they have support from lawmakers like her, what they’re hearing from inside the military, and why it’s so important to have a big public debate over Trump’s violent lawlessness. 

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President Trump is cratering in two new polls. A Marist survey has his overall approval rating at 39 percent, and a Marquette poll has his approval plunging on the economy (36-64), tariffs (37-63), and inflation (28-72). Yet Trump and his advisers don’t have much of an answer to this problem. Trump just unleashed a long, rambling tirade angrily insisting that prices are really going down, not up. And he ranted bizarrely about Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, saying of the latter, “I’d love to fire his ass,” another sign of his anger over inflation. So what happens if the economy really dips? We talked to New Republic staff writer Timothy Noah, who has been writing well on this question. He explains what’s going on with the gathering economic storm clouds, why Trump is uniquely ill-suited to handle a worsening economic crisis, and what things might look like for Trump if the bottom falls out.

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Suddenly, President Trump’s effort to rig the 2026 midterms with corrupt gerrymanders appears in trouble. A panel of judges just blocked the GOP gerrymander in Texas, which had added five seats. In Indiana, Republicans currently lack the votes to redraw their congressional map. Trump is angry about all this. He lashed out at Indiana Republicans, threatening primaries and calling one opponent “weak” and “pathetic.” So is the scheme dead? No Several aspects of it still remain unresolved. The Texas seats are in doubt, but that’s being appealed, and Republicans have added four other seats. Meanwhile, Democrats are adding 5 in California and one in Utah. Now what? We talked to Heather Williams, who’s been fighting against the GOP schemes as president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. She explains the hurdles that lie ahead, how it could all turn out relatively well for Democrats, and why rank-and-file voters need to take state-level contests way more seriously.

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