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After Matt Gaetz abruptly withdrew from consideration as Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, Trump seemed uncharacteristically muted. Intriguingly, he accepted this outcome without once trying to crack the whip on the Senate Republicans who apparently blocked Gaetz’s nomination—which is doubly strange, as MAGA personalities were furiously urging Trump to use recess appointments to put the Senate GOP in its place. What really happened among Republicans here? We talked to Congressional scholar Norman Ornstein, who brilliantly explains what’s really driving the key GOP senators to watch going forward—and whether we’ll see real resistance among them to Trump’s future authoritarian excesses.
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This week, Donald Trump confirmed that he will use the military to carry out mass deportations. This prompted a surprisingly sharp response from GOP Senator Rand Paul, who denounced the idea as a “huge mistake” that will send a “terrible image” to the world and likely be “illegal” to boot. But why is it left to a fringe figure in the GOP to denounce Trump’s vile threats? Where are the rest of Republicans on this? We talked to Tom Nichols, a writer for The Atlantic and a sharp observer of the MAGA-fication of the GOP, about what will really happen within the military and beyond once these threats get put into action—and why it poses such a menace to the country.
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In a blow to Donald Trump, Politico reports that GOP Senators are privately telling him that Matt Gaetz has little chance of getting confirmed as attorney general. Yet these Republicans hope Trump doesn’t make them “walk the plank,” meaning they remain reluctant to publicly challenge him, even to sink the profoundly unfit Gaetz. In short, it’s now clear that one of our only bulwarks against an authoritarian Trump will be the GOP Senate. We talked to writer Jill Lawrence, who has a new piece for The Bulwark arguing that Trump is assembling a “team of outlaws” to run the country. She explains what it means that Republicans are drawing a line against Gaetz—and why the pressure on them will be intense to challenge him when it really counts.
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Donald Trump has angrily put Republicans on notice: He may bypass them with recess appointments to get his personnel picks through in a hurry. In a scary turn in this saga, a top conservative lawyer is warning that Trump may well resort to a nuclear option that threatens devastating consequences: House Speaker Mike Johnson can trigger a complicated scenario clearing the way for those appointments, wrecking the Senate’s advice-and-consent role. With GOP opposition brewing to Matt Gaetz and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., MAGA is raging at any signs of opposition. We talked to the Brookings Institution’s Sarah Binder, a leading expert in congressional rules, who explains how this would all unfold, why it plausibly could happen, and how it would threaten our constitutional system.
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First came Matt Gaetz. Now The Washington Post is reporting that Donald Trump’s pick for Defense Secretary, Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, paid a woman who accused him of sexually assaulted her as part of a nondisclosure agreement (he insists the encounter was consensual). One Trumpworld source is even describing internal frustration over the failure to vet Hegseth in advance. We talked to leading Never Trump strategist Rick Wilson, who’s launching a new effort to conduct opposition research on Trump and his most prominent allies. He explains why Trump’s initial personnel moves are putting Republicans in a terrible spot—and how they betray his intent to destroy our institutions. Listen to this episode here.
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We’re now in Day Two of an extraordinary GOP meltdown over Donald Trump’s pick of Matt Gaetz for attorney general. Numerous Republican Senators are strongly opposing the move. But on Thursday, Trump’s appointments got even worse with his choice of anti-vax conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as the secretary of Health and Human Services. It’s hard to say which of these will be more of a disaster. We talked to Nina Burleigh, author of a great new cover story for The New Republic called “Trump 2.0: Here Comes the Night,” about how deeply worrisome these developments truly are—and whether GOP senators will hold the line against them. The prognosis is not good.
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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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Donald Trump’s allies reportedly fear Trump’s recent hate rally might have badly hurt him, and worry their internal polls aren’t getting it right on how shaky his standing is in Pennsylvania. Meanwhile, new polls show surprising movement among women and undecided voters toward Kamala Harris. Trump raged at a rally about the highly regarded Des Moines Register poll showing him down three in Iowa and tweeted madly about other less-reputable polls he likes better. His campaign put out a crazed memo accusing pollsters of conspiring against him. With the race still a coin flip, we talked to Danielle Butterfield, executive director of the Democratic PAC Priorities USA, about what must happen now for Harris to win. Listen to this episode here.
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Kamala Harris’s campaign just released a hard-hitting ad featuring Donald Trump’s quotes about the need for a “punishment” for abortion, and tying them powerfully to horrific stories about women suffering and dying under GOP abortion bans. If Harris wins, it’ll probably be due to women who are motivated by messages like this one. We talked to Jennifer Mercieca, a professor of political communications who writes about how political rhetoric functions. She explains how Harris is effectively tapping into a deep cultural moment—and why we may be underestimating the political energy of women in the post-Dobbs era. 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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MAGA suddenly seems very, very out of sorts. Donald Trump raged at Fox News on Monday, blasting the network for its supposedly favorable coverage of Democrats. Meanwhile, a number of Trump’s allies suddenly seem very worried about the backlash to his hate rally at Madison Square Garden. We spoke with Democratic strategist Anat Shenker-Osorio, who regularly does research into disaffected voters and explains why Trump’s rally at the Garden could provide last-minute motivation to vote against Trump among people who are at risk of sitting out the election.
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Over the weekend, Michelle Obama delivered an extraordinary speech that reminded us how catastrophic Donald Trump’s presidency was, harshly criticized his debased moral character, and asked why the press expects Kamala Harris to meet basic standards of public conduct that aren’t expected of Trump. Could this closing message win over the undecided voters who will decide the race? We talked to Reed Galen, a former GOP strategist who’s working to pull remaining fence-sitters away from Trump for his group Join the Union.us, about why Michelle Obama’s message might reach undecided women and how it puts the media to shame. Listen to this episode here.
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In a new interview, Donald Trump seethed with anger at Jack Smith, and confirmed that if elected president, he’ll fire Smith as special counsel immediately. On top of that, Trump also boasted that the Supreme Court has now given him immunity from criminal prosecution. Which suggests Trump really does think that if he wins, he’ll be able to function as president with something like absolute impunity, unaccountable to any laws. We talked to former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade, who explained what actually would unfold if a newly elected President Trump fired Smith, and how dangerous he could get as a totally unshackled president. Listen to this episode here.
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Donald Trump’s former White House chief of staff, John Kelly, just revealed that he believes Trump will rule as a dictator and a fascist—and that he mused aloud about having his generals function as Hitler’s generals did. Kamala Harris jumped on this news to highlight the dire threat posed by a second Trump term. Can Harris translate this bombshell into a strong closing message in swing states that will decide this election? We talked to Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler, who walks us through what Harris must do to win the state—and what a closing argument about the dangers posed by Trump might accomplish.
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