The DSR Network

In recent days, Donald Trump has escalated his attacks on CBS News, raging at the network over something they supposedly did involving Kamala Harris’s interview on “60 minutes.” He has now stated repeatedly that CBS should lose its broadcasting license. We think this is a clear warning about what a second Trump term would look like. We talked to Michael Sozan, author of a new report for the Center for American Progress Action Fund on Project 2025. He gets specific about how an authoritarian Trump presidency could use government power to bring independent media to heel.

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Could the 2024 election be decided by Gen Z voters? The Harris campaign seems to think so. With so much effort placed on turning out young voters, expert John Della Volpe joins Riley Fessler and Minnah Stein to explain what makes this group the key to victory in November. 

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Former USG Intel analyst and current Washington Institute for Near East Policy senior official Matthew Levitt (@Levitt_Matt) joins Marc to discuss an extraordinary several weeks in the region. From Israel conducting “open heart surgery” on Hizballah, a Gaza with a significantly reduced Hamas but no “day after” plan, to what to do about the burgeoning Iranian nuclear program, Matt’s views are essential to assessing the CT landscape in the Middle East and ultimately unpacking the policy challenges for both the US and Israel.

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On the DSR Daily for Thursday, we discuss Hurricane Milton’s impact on Florida, a Russian strike on a Ukrainian port, the latest polling from Reuters/Ipsos, and more. 

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It’s a big question in the presidential race: Will Republican and independent voters who backed Nikki Haley in GOP primaries support Donald Trump at the levels he needs? New data suggests the answer may be No. The Bulwark reports that a new poll taken by a Democratic firm finds a surprisingly large percentage of voters who backed Haley defecting to Kamala Harris. And a New York Times national poll finds her making new inroads among GOP voters. How real is all this? We talked to the Bulwark’s Marc Caputo, who’s well sourced among Republicans, about the perils this poses to Trump and what top Republicans think about the race. 

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Elon Musk isn’t taking disinformation seriously. The owner of X has made the platform a cesspool of fake news, bots, and trolls — seemingly by design. Kori Schake, Rosa Brooks, and Ed Luce join David Rothkopf to discuss the grave consequences of disinformation for the election in November and beyond. 

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On the DSR daily for Wednesday, we cover FEMA’s warning on disaster relief disinformation, Hezbollah clashes with IDF forces, a lawsuit alleging Virginia is purging legitimate voters, and more. 

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In a new book, Bob Woodward reports that Donald Trump sent covid tests to Vladimir Putin at the height of the pandemic, and that after leaving office, Trump had up to seven private phone calls with Putin. This drew a harsh response from Kamala Harris, who pointed out that Trump kowtows to Putin because he aspires to be a dictator himself. Which highlights something important: The direct connection between Trump’s authoritarian aspirations at home and the axis of global autocrats rooting for him to prevail. We talked to international relations professor Nicholas Grossman, who writes on these issues, about all these shadowy links, and whether Harris can highlight all this in the home stretch. 

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On the DSR daily for Tuesday, we cover the Florida governor ignoring calls from VP Harris, the Supreme Court dealing another blow to abortion rights in Texas, Russia charging a US citizen for fighting in Ukraine, and more.

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In a new interview, Donald Trump unleashed an ugly, crazed rant about Kamala Harris, calling her “low IQ” and “stupid.” And almost no leading journalists took it seriously. Which points to a larger story: Trump regularly targets Harris with vile attacks that are unapologetically misogynist, yet it barely attracts notice anymore. We talked to writer Susan Milligan—who does good work for The New Republic on Trump’s misogyny—about how overtly anti-woman Trump’s strategy has become, and what Harris can do to exploit this in the race’s final days. 

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