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. 

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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.

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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. 

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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