THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

At the NATO summit on Wednesday, Donald Trump lashed out wildly at, well, everyone in sight. He threatened more war with Iran. He angrily vowed to cut off all trade with Spain. He hinted again at stealing Greenland. There were many other pratfalls. Amid all this, a Danish journalist had an extraordinary confrontation with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, asking him point blank: What does sitting next to Trump and praising him while he viciously attacks allies, threatens to take whole countries by conquest, and unleashes wildly destructive trade wars do to your “self-respect”? In an understated way, it was a crushing takedown of Trump, treating him as a ludicrous, sidelined figure while essentially saying: All that matters is how the rest of us react to this lunatic. We talked to foreign policy expert Elizabeth Saunders. She explains how deep and lasting Trump’s damage to the alliance will be, how our NATO allies are quietly managing Trump with flattery until he’s gone, and how they’re even trying to “de-Americanize”—that is, move on into the future without us.

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For weeks, Donald Trump’s fury has been growing at Republicans for failing to pass voter suppression legislation, demanding that they end the filibuster to do so. In a late-night tirade, he urged them to attach the SAVE Act to a must-pass defense spending bill, a dramatic move that reveals his deep frustration with them. As everybody knows, Trump sees restricting voting as the only way to stave off a midterm calamity. Meanwhile, in a striking piece, NBC News reports that Trump’s angry pressure has left Senate Republicans at wit’s end. They privately fear Trump is laying the groundwork to pin a midterm fiasco on their failure to pass something. They also blame Trump for letting this obsession take his focus off costs. One GOP Senator even tells NBC: “He’s a bully, and he’s f------ things up as fast as he can.” We talked to congressional scholar Norm Ornstein. He walks us through the details of the GOP predicament, decodes the real reason Republicans aren’t nixing the filibuster, and explains why it’s premature to rule out passage of the SAVE Act, offering a road map to what’s next.

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Donald Trump ended the tortured saga around his gala for America’s 250th anniversary in typical fashion. Trump claimed 150,000 people attended his final speech, which was humiliatingly contradicted by videos of the event. Then Trump made it worse. During the speech he insisted that 375,000 people had been present before storms and an evacuation caused chaos and turmoil, reducing the crowd to 150,000 (again, a baseless number). But then afterward he posted that the initial total had been 422,000. Somehow the number ballooned by nearly 50,000, delivering still another blow to his credibility. We talked to New Republic senior editor Alex Shephard, who writes really well about MAGA’s dwindling cultural relevance. We discuss the deeper failures of Trump’s extravaganza, why he can’t tell a compelling story about the country anymore, why Barack Obama’s national narrative is far superior, and why the World Cup is acting as a perfect counter-narrative to Trumpism. 

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Ever since the Supreme Court upheld birthright citizenship in June, MAGA personalities have really gone off the rails. Many angrily started saying it’s time for the U.S. to find new ways to bar women from coming to this country and having babies. Some are talking about pregnancy tests upon arrival. Others are discussing the possibility of unleashing federal law enforcement on women suspected of pregnancy—and unnervingly, this includes the acting Attorney General. And as a Media Matters roundup shows, some are talking about truly crackpot ideas like forced sterilization. Talking Points Memo writer Sarah Posner sums it up well: “Will every woman now have to pee in cups at airports?” We talked to Posner, a scholar of Christian Nationalism and the religious right. We discuss how all this reflects a genuine and ambitious, if vile, vision for the country, why JD Vance may take up this cause in some form when his presidential run begins next year, and what it all says about MAGA’s deeper misogyny and darkening extreme nationalism. 

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In today’s episode, MS NOW’s Steve Benen makes a strong case that Donald Trump has corrupted the process of awarding disaster aid to states. Trump has been rejecting aid requests from blue states at a lopsided rate. But this week, Trump announced that he’s awarding aid to Democratic-run swing states with critical gubernatorial, Senate, and House races in them. But here’s the key: As Benen details, in these announcements, Trump openly linked the awarding of aid right to his preferred candidates, even suggesting voters should reward them for securing the money. Trump blurted out the scheme, which Benen calls “breathtaking” in its “brazenness.” It all comes as New York Times polls find Democrats highly competitive in six key Senate races that no one expected to be close. Trump’s numbers are abysmal across these battlegrounds, particularly on the economy, even though he won five of them in 2024. Benen explains why Trump’s scheme matters, why the new polling is brutal for him, and why both developments neatly capture this moment. 

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