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.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With two weeks to go, the presidential race couldn’t be closer. But if Kamala Harris is to win, how exactly would that happen?  Veteran journalist Ron Brownstein has a new piece in The Atlantic laying out what Harris’s path to victory looks like. The short version: She has to run up massive margins in cities and affluent suburbs, while limiting Trump’s gains among nonwhite and working class white voters. That may sound unsurprising. But the details on how this might unfold are complicated, fraught with uncertainties, and actually plausible, if very difficult. So we invited Brownstein on the show to demystify all of it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The other day, Donald Trump playacted as a worker at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania. But he ran into trouble, evading a question about whether he would support a minimum wage hike, producing scalding headlines. Which gets at a larger scam: Trump enjoys public approval on the economy, even though his agenda for working people is borderline nonexistent, whereas Harris has a detailed economic agenda for working and middle class people alike. We talked to HuffPost senior reporter Jonathan Cohn, author of a good new piece on the McDonald’s saga, who explains how this stunt captures the fraudulence of Trump’s economic plans—and the authenticity of Harris’s middle class biography. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At a rally in Nevada, Barack Obama offered a blistering new warning: Trump’s vows to persecute the “enemy within” should be taken with deadly seriousness. Trump’s displays are deeply dangerous in someone who would be president with no guardrails left. Yet even now, a sizable subset of voters just doesn’t take his threats seriously. We talked to veteran analyst Michael Podhorzer, author of a good new piece warning that we’re “sleepwalking our way to fascism.” He explains how this election could come down to whether those voters grasp the threat Trump poses—exactly what Obama seemed to be saying—and criticizes the media for failing to sound the alarm.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Thursday, Donald Trump erupted with rage at Fox News over its election coverage, explicitly slamming Fox for making a Kamala Harris presidency more likely. Meanwhile, CNN reports that among Trump allies, plans for another fake electors scheme are in full swing. Which raises a question: What sort of chaos could erupt, if the voting is close and Fox and other right wing media start amplifying Trump’s inevitable lies about fraud in the election? We talked to election law expert Matthew Seligman, author of How to Steal a Presidential Election, who walks us through the potential nightmare scenarios that lie ahead, and what we can do about them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The word “fascist” has fully penetrated the presidential race. We just learned that a top general under President Donald Trump described Trump as “fascist to the core.” Trump has been threatening to unleash the military on the enemy within, which numerous observers describe as fascist politics. And at a Fox News event on Wednesday, Trump uncorked an unhinged, rambling response to all this, insisting that the real fascists are Democrats. We talked to David Austin Walsh, a historian and author of Taking America Back, who explains how the American right has overlapped with fascist movements throughout our history—and what that says about our MAGA moment.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is the media finally figuring out how to cover Donald Trump’s mental unfitness for the presidency? First, CNN’s Jake Tapper dressed down a Trump surrogate for whitewashing Trump’s threat to unleash the military on his enemies. Then Trump held a strange town hall at which he abruptly stopped answering questions, which generated aggressive media coverage. And Kamala Harris has directly engaged on Trump’s mental state in a new way, drawing media attention to it. We talked to Brian Beutler, who often criticizes the media on his Off Message Substack, about the increasing signs that the press is treating Trump’s mental decline as a big story. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the weekend, J.D. Vance tried to argue that Donald Trump will not target his political enemies if he’s reelected president. Yet at around the same time, Trump was confirming the opposite point with several new rants on Fox News, declaring flatly that he’ll use the military to target the “enemy within.” Indeed, Trump regularly says openly at his rallies that in a second term, he will persecute unnamed enemies of MAGA. We talked to Politico reporter Myah Ward, author of a great new piece on what he’s been saying at these rallies, about how blatant he is now being about his second-term intention to grotesquely abuse presidential power.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Sunday, The New York Times published an extraordinary piece detailing Donald Trump’s deteriorating mental state, singling out his deranged fabrications and outright fabulism as central to its expose. Meanwhile, Trump held a weekend rally in Pennsylvania where he lied angrily in ugly new ways about the federal response to Hurricane Helene. Can Democrats capitalize on all this in the home stretch? We talked to Democratic strategist Maria Cardona, who suggests new ways to close out this race by highlighting Trump’s profound mental unfitness for the presidency—and depicting his lying about disaster response as fundamentally disqualifying. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump keeps pushing the vile claim that federal officials are withholding disaster aid from GOP areas devastated by Hurricane Helene. This has now backfired, focusing media attention on Trump’s own hyper-politicization of disaster relief as president. To wit: Two former Trump officials told Politico that Trump initially refused to approve disaster aid for California after wildfires in 2018 due to the state’s Democratic lean. We talked to one of those officials—Olivia Troye, a senior homeland security official in the Trump administration and now a leading critic of the former president—about Trump’s disastrous tenure, and what she told is is not pretty. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the vice-presidential debate, the CBS News moderators fact-checked one of JD Vance’s lies—and that was all it took to trigger an epic attack on CBS from Donald Trump and his MAGA allies. Which highlights a larger story: The degree to which Trump’s campaign is built on an immense superstructure of endless, shameless lying. Bullying the media into not fact checking Trump and Vance is essential to that project. We talked to Jamison Foser, who writes about the media and the right on his Finding Gravity Substack, about the ways our institutions are capitulating to authoritarian attacks and threats—and what can be done in response.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With five weeks until Election Day, Donald Trump has decided to win over swing voters by rhapsodizing about police violence, threatening to prosecute anyone who displeases him, and unleashing disgusting insults toward his opponents. His latest? Raging that Tim Walz is a “moron” and “sick.” We talked to A.B. Stoddard, columnist at The Bulwark and author of a new piece suggesting a closing strategy for Kamala Harris, about how Democrats can use Trump’s angry, unhinged eruptions to fashion a winning endgame against him.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Western North Carolina is enduring full-blown catastrophe. In the wake of Hurricane Helene, towns have been destroyed, roads have been washed out, people are frantically trying to locate loved ones, and dozens have died. Enter Donald Trump, who just declared that the federal government—and Democratic governor Roy Cooper—are deliberately neglecting MAGA parts of the state, and charged that the Biden administration is consciously letting Americans drown. We talked to state Democratic Party chair Anderson Clayton about the horrors that the state is suffering, and about Trump’s ugly reaction to them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At a rally in Wisconsin over the weekend, Donald Trump really cranked up the rage and hate speech about immigrants, and viciously savaged Kamala Harris as “mentally impaired.” But this deserves special attention: Trump also attacked Fox News for the mere act of carrying a recent Harris speech about immigration on the network, seething that Fox shouldn’t be “allowed” to do that. We talked to Salon columnist Amanda Marcotte, a skillful interpreter of Trump’s violent threats, about the clear signals that this and other recent Trump utterances are sending about his intention to suppress dissent and persecute MAGA’s enemies during a second term. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump has been quiet about January 6th lately. But this week, he suddenly unleashed an epic rant on social media about Special Counsel Jack Smith, raging about false new claims on the right that the “deep state” deliberately allowed the insurrection to go forward—against Trump’s will. The real cause of Trump’s fury? Smith is set to submit a court filing detailing his evidence of Trump’s alleged January 6th related crimes—some of which may become public. We talked to Politico reporter Kyle Cheney, author of a new report on these machinations, who helps illuminate what new revelations we may soon learn about—and why Trump should worry about them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If Kamala Harris can defeat Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, she almost certainly will win the presidency. It’s must-win for him. Yet the state remains a coin-flip—which is why both candidates campaigned in the state this week. So what is Harris’s path to victory? We talked to Governor Josh Shapiro, who explained why the race is so close—and why he thinks she’s “on her way” to winning there, in part due to concerted communications with non-college voters. Shapiro also responded at length to Trump’s lies about Haitian immigrants living in Pennsylvania, pronouncing them “utter bullshit.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump and his allies have been pushing Nebraska’s GOP-controlled State legislature to change how the state’s electoral votes are allotted, to prevent Kamala Harris from winning the election with just the blue wall states. But Nebraska’s GOP governor just announced that he will not hold a special session to change the rules, dashing Trump’s hopes. How did this happen? We talked to Joe Perticone, who has been covering all this as national political reporter at The Bulwark. He unpacks why Trump couldn’t get this done, what the impact of this will be, and what it all says about the GOP in the age of MAGA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The scandals are getting worse for Mark Robinson, the GOP candidate for governor in North Carolina. After CNN broke the news of his incendiary comments on a pornography message board—including describing himself as a “black Nazi”—much of his staff quit. Now the national GOP has stopped funding his ads. You’ve heard talk about how Robinson’s collapse could help doom Trump in must-win North Carolina. But how exactly would that happen? What would it look like? We talked to Morgan Jackson—chief strategist for Attorney General Josh Stein, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate—about the state’s deeply interesting demographics, how Kamala Harris can win there, and what could still go wrong. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In two bizarre rants over the weekend, Donald Trump openly fumed about female voters, lecturing them about why they should be supporting him and dismissing concerns about GOP abortion bans and all they’ve wrought. Meanwhile, a new NBC News poll shows Kamala Harris leading Trump by 21 points among women. Is Trump even trying to speak to them effectively anymore? We talked to Joan Walsh, national affairs correspondent at The Nation who writes well about the politics of abortion. She explains how Harris’s appeals to female voters really work—and why Trump is alienating them so badly.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If Donald Trump loses Pennsylvania, he almost certainly will lose the presidential election. Now, all of a sudden, we have four new high-quality polls showing Kamala Harris ahead, though some others show it tied. Why the heck is Pennsylvania so close? What is really going on there? Should we believe the polls? Or not? We chatted with Democratic strategist Rebecca Katz, who is from Pennsylvania herself, worked on Senator John Fetterman’s victorious 2022 campaign, and knows something about winning there. Katz explained what Harris’s path to victory in the state looks like—and the looming obstacles that still keep her awake at night. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At a rally in Michigan this week, Donald Trump unleashed a strange monologue about how we should only build gas-powered cars in the future, because we have lots of gasoline and China doesn’t. Translation: China has a huge lead in electric vehicles, so we shouldn’t even try to compete. Why isn’t all this more central in the presidential race? We chatted with Princeton professor Jesse Jenkins, a sharp observer of the energy transition and host of the weekly Shift Key podcast. He explained how Trump’s bizarre comments are essentially an admission that he’d surrender the future to China. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the first time, Kamala Harris’ favorability rating has crossed into positive territory in FiveThirtyEight’s latest polling averages. That’s a crucial threshold, as Harris is introducing herself to votes within a highly compressed timetable. But there’s still work to do: Harris has not yet fully rebuilt the coalition that ousted Donald Trump in 2020. We talked to Nick Ahamed, deputy executive director of the Democratic Super PAC Priorities USA, who walks us through the group’s own interesting new polling in the swing states—and explains what now must be done for Harris to finish the job. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a reference to the apparent assassination attempt against Donald Trump over the weekend, the former president unleashed a long rant on social media blaming it all on Democrats. He insisted that because of Democratic rhetoric about Trump, the “bullets are flying, and it will only get worse.” Trump is systematically recasting any and all criticism of his attacks on democracy as incitement to violence—and in this, he’s fully backed up by other Republicans. We talked to Corey Brettschneider, a political scientist and author of The Presidents and the People, about how Trump is echoing Richard Nixon—and why we can’t let him get away with it. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the weekend, Donald Trump’s rage over his debate fiasco appeared to get darker. In one splenetic social media post after another, he fumed he actually won the debate, while erupting repeatedly at ABC News’ moderation of it. All this comes as a whole bunch of new polling shows that Kamala Harris has made some surprising post-debate gains against Trump. We talked to veteran Democratic pollster Celinda Lake about the deeper causes for optimism inside the new data, what Harris still needs to do to win, and the deeper theory of the case driving all the successful baiting of Trump. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At this week’s debate, Donald Trump spread the deranged lie that immigrants are eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. Tensions are escalating and terror is spreading: Haitian immigrants living there say they fear for their safety, and on Thursday, Springfield’s City Hall was evacuated due to a bomb threat. What if these searing tensions are exactly what Trump and his MAGA allies want? Not that they want violence, but rather that they see supercharged social rifts as desirable? We talked to Andrew Egger, a writer for The Bulwark who has a good new piece on Springfield, about how this saga opens a window on the darkness and malevolence of the MAGA movement. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After Kamala Harris’s shellacking of Donald Trump at the debate, Trump ventured on to Fox News, where he attacked the moderators as deeply biased against him. Incredibly, he even said their network, ABC News, should have its broadcasting license revoked. This is really a show of weakness: what enraged him is that real scrutiny was applied to the lies he can air unchallenged on right wing media. We talked to Media Matters senior fellow Matt Gertz—author of a new piece on Trump’s debate struggles—about Trump’s retreat into the MAGA media bubble, why that’s so politically perilous for him, and what it all says about today’s GOP. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In recent days, the Trump campaign, J.D. Vance and other prominent MAGA figures have pushed a repulsive falsehood: That Haitian immigrants are eating people’s pets. Though this was decisively debunked, Vance issued a long, twisted rant on social media calling on supprters to keep pushing versions of the lie. This saga exposes something disturbing about MAGA dehumanization campaigns. We talked to Matthew Sheffield, a writer and podcaster at Flux and former member of the conservative movement who is now an illuminating critic of the right. He explains how this vile trope illustrates how MAGA propaganda really functions. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Tuesday night, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will face off in their first debate. It goes without saying that the stakes are very high, as polls now show the two of them effectively tied, with perhaps a slight edge to Harris. Yet some analysts out there have made good arguments holding that the pieces really are in place for her to win this thing. We talked to Lakshya Jain of the data firm Split Ticket, who digs into what Harris has to accomplish at the debate—and why he’s cautiously optimistic that she will ultimately prevail. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In an unhinged weekend rant on social media, Donald Trump made his most expansive threats yet to prosecute his enemies if he wins. He also flatly threatened at a rally to unleash “bloody” mass removals of migrants. Meanwhile, new polls show a very tight race. So why isn’t Trump paying a political price for running on explicit threats of authoritarian rule? We talked to A.B. Stoddard—a columnist for The Bulwark and a clear-eyed Trump critic—who explains how he is priming his supporters for violence after the election, and why the Trump threat is so hard to communicate to voters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

During an event billed as a speech about the economy, Donald Trump was addled and confused, rambled incoherently, and launched into strange non sequiturs. Yet The New York Times’s initial news story made the event sound far more normal than it was. Is the press doing an adequate job of analyzing Trump’s deteriorating mental state? We think the answer is an emphatic “no.” We talked to former reporter Meredith Shiner—author of a recent piece for The New Republic about the successes of GOP media ref-working—who explained why the press largely fails to scrutinize Trump’s mental unfitness for the presidency. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a rant on Sean Hannity’s radio show, Donald Trump floated a new absurdity about his campaign’s use of Arlington National Cemetery as a political setting. He declared that there had been no conflict whatsoever there, even though the Army flatly confirmed that an employee had been shoved aside by Trump’s campaign goons. We think this turn in the story exposes something dark about MAGA. So we talked to David Kurtz, the executive editor of Talking Points memo and author of several good pieces on the scandal, who explains what it reveals about the role of bullying and violence in MAGA politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a striking piece, Politico reports that many GOP operatives are alarmed about a new dynamic in the presidential race. It’s that the surge in enthusiasm among Democrats for Kamala Harris’s candidacy is driving a big disparity in fundraising between the parties, leaving GOP Senate and House candidates underfunded and in danger. As Politico puts it: “Panic is starting to set in.” To gauge how serious this is, we talked to veteran organizer Leah Greenberg, co-founder of the progressive group Indivisible, about whether on-the-ground enthusiasm and organizing strength constitute a hidden advantage for Democrats that the media is missing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the weekend, Donald Trump did a long, bizarre Fox News interview, flatly declaring he had a “right” to interfere in the last presidential election. He also mused that “God” may have chosen Trump to fix our “sick” country,” and seethed about an “enemy within” that’s out to get him. It’s unhinged stuff that gets at a bigger story: Trump’s feeding of his MAGA audience’s various pathologies has been getting darker and uglier. We talked to writer Anne Lutz Fernandez—author of a good new piece at The Unpopulist website about MAGA—who helps us decode how Trump is communicating to the increasingly radicalized elements of the MAGA movement these days. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By now you’ve heard that Donald Trump’s campaign aides had a physical confrontation with an official at Arlington National Cemetery who tried to prevent them from filming in a restricted area, which apparently violated the law. This scandal worsened Thursday when the Army sharply rebuked his campaign. Democratic Senators are getting involved, which could bring a fuller accounting. We talked to political scientist Jonathan Bernstein—author of a good new piece about this saga—who details how Team Trump’s actions are now signaling a larger deterioration of the rule of law and democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kamala Harris’s campaign just released a harsh new ad attacking Donald Trump, Project 2025, and his threat to prosecute enemies for “revenge.” Notably, the ad frontally goes after Trump’s naked corruption with real force. Which raises a question: Why aren’t we seeing more discussion of Trump’s corruption in this campaign? We talked to David Sirota, editor-in-chief of The Lever and narrator of Master Plan, an ambitious new podcast about 50 years of corruption in Washington. Sirota explains how Trump and Project 2025 represent the culmination of that long and sordid history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s often said that Kamala Harris’s entry into the race has transformed this campaign. But does this also mean that Harris has a real chance at changing the composition of the electorate, by bringing more low-propensity Democratic voters into the process? A new analysis finds striking surges in voter registration among Dem-leaning voter groups during the week of July 21st, after President Biden left the race and endorsed Harris. We talked to the author of that analysis’ author, Tom Bonier of the Democratic firm TargetSmart, about why he’s optimistic—but also realistic—about Harris’s chances. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump keeps throwing his own advisers under the bus. The latest example: The battle between the campaigns over the upcoming debate. First Trump’s campaign insisted mics must be muted for the candidate who isn’t speaking. Then Trump himself said he’s just fine with unmuted mics throughout. We think this gets at a larger dynamic: With Trump still struggling with Kamala Harris’s surge, Trump clearly doubts that his own advisers have any idea how to fight back. We talked to veteran Democratic strategist James Carville, who explained how all signs indicate Trump thinks he’s in trouble—and what could still go wrong for Harris.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the weekend, Politico reported that Donald Trump has privately suggested to advisers that he knows he’s in danger of losing without dramatic changes to his campaign. Trump also raged over reports that he called in to Fox News during Kamala Harris’s convention speech to deliver an on-air response, whining that Fox had called him instead. We think Trump is rattled because the aura of his inevitable victory has been shattered. We talked to global affairs expert Asha Rangappa—author of a good new piece on her Substack about the sources of Harris’s momentum—who explains why the puncturing of that aura is critical to defeating authoritarians like Trump. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the Democratic convention in Chicago, many of the speakers—from Barack and Michelle Obama to Tim Walz—have warned Democrats not to get complacent about a Kamala Harris victory. Yet something subtle is also going on here. Democrats are keeping complacency at bay—without letting Donald Trump balloon into a psychologically frightening figure in their minds. Democrats are going into this election with the correct level of guarded confidence. We talked to Brian Beutler, who has a good piece on all this coming out Friday on his Substack, about the careful balance Democrats are striking—and why it may be the key to shrinking Trump into a diminished figure. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

After Barack and Michelle Obama ripped into Donald Trump at the Democratic convention, it unleashed a flood responses from the former president. He ranted that the Obamas had called him names, blamed his advisers for constraining him, and vowed to unleash more personal attacks on Kamala Harris. We think Trump is rattled by the likelihood that the convention is currently uniting the anti-MAGA coalition. We talked to data analyst Lakshya Jain—co-author of a good Politico Magazine piece about new numbers showing a shift toward Harris among many disparate voter groups—who explains what all this says about that coalition’s prospects for success. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

According to a new report in The Hill, GOP aides and strategists fear that Donald Trump’s inability to adjust to Kamala Harris’s surge is shifting the Senate map against them. That’s striking, given how heavily the Senate map is tilted towards Republicans. So we checked in with Justin Barasky, a veteran Democratic operative who has worked on many Senate races over the years and is now involved in contests in Ohio and Arizona. He helps us break down the map, and assesses how realistic these GOP fears are, as well as what all this says about the true nature of Harris’s surge and Trump’s struggles.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some of the biggest far right figures on the internet are deeply worried that Donald Trump is in danger of losing the election to Kamala Harris—perhaps by a large margin. The Washington Post reports that these extremists are now turning on the Trump campaign, which could fracture the MAGA movement in the race’s final stretch. We talked to Jared Holt, a senior researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue who closely tracks the far right, about what this moment reveals about the MAGA right when it faces extreme pressure—and what these far-right personalities really fear most about a Trump loss. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two major new polls of the presidential race released over the weekend show fresh gains for Kamala Harris—and illustrate how she is now putting the Sun Belt states fully in play. That gives her multiple routes to an electoral college victory over Donald Trump. So is Harris on her way to reversing Trump’s gains among Latinos and young voters? What does a winning Harris coalition look like, anyway? We talked to Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something, which recruits young candidates for state and local office, including many in the Sun Belt. Litman explains how the region’s evolution opens up new possibilities for Democrats—and is helping to transform our politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Because Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign is under a month old, Democrats see next week’s nominating convention as a unique opening to do more than usual to define her in the minds of swing voters. But there’s another opportunity here as well: A successful convention will deeply rattle Trump, and when he fears he’s losing, he does himself tremendous additional harm. We talked to veteran journalist Ronald Brownstein, who has a new piece for The Atlantic on the task ahead for Harris in Chicago, about what she might be able to accomplish—and how it could frustrate future Trump attacks. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In some good findings for Kamala Harris, the Cook Political Report’s new polls find her leading Donald Trump or tied with him in six of the seven key swing states. Other polls show her doing surprisingly well among key demographics like noncollege whites and Latinos. So far, despite GOP attacks on Harris as a crazy leftist, she appears to be widely perceived as broadly acceptable. We talked to Reed Galen, a veteran former Republican strategist working to win over centrist voters to Harris for the group Join the Union, about why Harris seems to be withstanding the GOP attack machine—and whether it will last.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In recent days, Fox News personalities have begun urging Donald Trump to get more “disciplined.” Many seem to fear Trump is in trouble, as evidence mounts that his sleazy, racist attacks on Kamala Harris are backfiring. Yet Trump’s Fox allies aren’t telling him to stop smearing Harris with falsehoods; they’re just telling him to adopt a more civil tone in doing so. We talked to Steve Benen, author of a new book about the GOP called Ministry of Truth, who explains how the Fox News panic shows the limits of Republican propaganda—and why the Trump-MAGA-GOP addiction to lying is pushing our system to the breaking point. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

To defeat Donald Trump, Kamala Harris must do far better among young voters than President Biden did. Guess what: An important new poll of young voters finds that Harris’ entry has dramatically shifted their preferences in her favor and against Trump. Which confirms a larger story: The Democratic-leaning constituencies who had drifted toward Trump now may be swinging to Harris, exposing a weakness in his previous support. We talked to John Della Volpe, an expert in the youth vote who conducted this poll, abut what’s driving all these shifts—and why they might enable Harris to triumph.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the weekend, The New York Times reported that Donald Trump is deeply unsettled about Kamala Harris’s successful launch, even as polls show her edging into a small lead. His anger has led him to escalate the private conspiracy-mongering about Democrats supposedly cheating in the election. We talked to Amanda Carpenter—a leading Never Trump conservative and an editor at Protect Democracy—about why it’s so disturbing that Trump is already laying the groundwork to overturn a loss, a novel way he might try to pull this off, and whether the GOP will ever move beyond MAGA.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With Republicans running from Donald Trump’s ugly attack on Kamala Harris’ blackness, new reports paint a picture of a party that is deeply worried about Trump’s chances. Meanwhile, Trump is raging about another piece of bad news for him: that reporter Evan Gershkovich is getting released from Russian captivity. We talked to Stuart Stevens, an operative with extensive experience in Republican politics who has forcefully renounced his former party, about why the GOP is suddenly hitting the panic button, and what has really happened to his former party as it fully embraces Trump. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump’s public statements about Kamala Harris are getting weirder. After Harris had a huge showing at a Georgia rally, he erupted, claiming that “Crazy Kamala Harris” had relied on a concert to draw the crowd. Then, speaking to black journalists, Trump melted down spectacularly while suggesting that Harris had long disavowed her black identity. The connecting thread here: the Trump-MAGA worldview doesn’t allow for any real grasp of how Harris is viewed by the American mainstream. We talked to Professor Nicholas Grossman, author of a new piece for The Bulwark about the MAGA right, who explains how these eruptions show that MAGA assumes it has a broad based appeal that it just doesn’t really have. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump’ campaign just rolled out a new multimillion dollar ad campaign that blasts Kamala Harris on immigration. Oddly, it does so in part by mocking her dancing. That might seem like typical MAGA buffoonery. But underlying the link that the ad draws between Harris’s dancing and her handling of immigration is a bigger argument that demands a serious Democratic response. We talked to Douglas Rivlin, a senior official at the advocacy group America’s Voice who has deep experience on the immigration issue, about the darker subtext of Trump’s messaging—and how to counter it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

According to a new report, many allies of Donald Trump and other Republicans are now sharply second guessing his choice of J.D. Vance as running mate—and Vance’s bizarre public moments are driving the panic. Will Vance enable Democrats to make a strong case against MAGA-style culture-warring – one built on demonstrating just how deranged and offputting to most Americans it has truly become? We chatted with veteran reporter Jill Lawrence, who has a new piece for The Bulwark on Vance’s terrible rollout, about how the sheer, unchecked weirdness of the Trump-Vance ticket has suddenly become a big campaign issue—and how Democrats can exploit it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump took his authoritarian threats in a dark new direction during two new public appearances. He suggested our next election might be our last, reiterated in advance that the election will be rigged against him, and admitted all the post-assassination “unity” talk was nonsense, openly declaring: “Maybe I’ve gotten worse.” We talked to Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of the “Lucid” newsletter and the book “Strongmen,” who helps illuminate how Trump’s form of politics requires keeping his followers in a frenzy of excitement about what the authoritarian leader plans to inflict on their imagined enemies. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In recent days, Donald Trump and MAGA media figures have ramped up the attacks on Kamala Harris’s laugh, her personality, and her temperament. That’s vile stuff, but MAGA’s strategy also suggests an inability to entertain a remarkable possibility: What if Harris’s laugh and energy are actually well suited to this moment in American politics? Jenifer Fernandez Ancona, co-founder of the progressive strategy group Way to Win, has been advising Democrats to respond aggressively to racist and sexist attacks on Harris. We talked to Ancona about whether Harris’s temperament might prove to be kryptonite to MAGA’s negativity and hate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A vile quote from J.D. Vance just surfaced in which he described Kamala Harris and other Democratic leaders as “childless cat ladies,” and spun out a whole theory based on this absurdity. Then Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg sharply dressed down Vance for poking his nose into other people’s family decisions. With this response, Buttigieg showed that Vance has invited a much larger national conversation—one that won’t help Vance and Donald Trump. We talked to Melissa Gira Grant, a staff writer at The New Republic who closely tracks Vance’s ideas, for help in illuminating what this saga tells us about the New Right’s tortured views on gender, natalism and nationalism. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we learned that Donald Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance repeatedly suggested in 2016 that he believed Trump committed sexual assault. Vance has since softened his views, but this saga captures the essential Vance: He knows exactly what he has now attached himself to, but sees Trump as a vehicle to accomplish some truly radical societal transformations. We talked to tech writer Gil Duran, author of a good piece in The New Republic tracing the “techno-authoritarian” worldview driving Vance, about what his evolution from clear-eyed Trump critic to full MAGA devotee says about today’s red-pilled right—and about our politics more broadly. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ever since President Biden suspended his campaign, Fox News and right wing media have been scrambling madly for an effective attack on Vice President Kamala Harris. They’ve ridiculed her laugh. They’ve mocked her as a product of DEI. They’ve attacked her as too soft on crime and too tough on crime. All of which gets at a larger story: Kamala Harris is very hard for the right to pigeonhole. We talked to Elaina Plott Calabro, a staff writer for The Atlantic who reports trenchantly on Harris’ political career, about why the right’s contortions could prove a major dynamic in the presidential race, and how Harris’s own struggle to find her political identity could now loom large. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At a rally in Michigan over the weekend, Donald Trump uncorked one of his longest rants ever in praise of the world’s autocrats, strongmen and dictators. He hailed Xi Jinping of China as “brilliant” for controlling 1.4 billion people “with an iron fist,” and described Xi, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Hungary’s Viktor Orban as “tough” and “smart.” We talked to Rick Wilson, the prominent Never Trumper and Substacker, about Trump’s explicit campaign promise of authoritarian rule, the GOP’s enthusiastic embrace of it, and the media’s utter failure to alert voters to what’s coming. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s pod tackles a subject of profound importance: The sheer, inexplicable weirdness of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. There’s Representative Matt Gaetz’s bizarre speech, in which his face was so taut that one Republican derided him as an “AI sex doll.” There are all the ugly “Mass Deportations Now!” signs, the cultish rituals in which attendees treated Trump as their MAGA God King, and much, much more. We talked to Ron Filipkowski, who closely tracks the right wing as the head of Meidas Touch News. He helped us find meaning underneath all the ugliness and insanity. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Surprise, surprise: The Republican convention is turning into a festival of media bashing. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene did something that deserves special attention: After fielding a question about J.D. Vance that displeased her, Greene erupted, repeatedly dressing down the reporter in strikingly vicious terms. Arizona senate candidate Kari Lake, meanwhile, used her convention speech to similarly smear the press. All this is a bad omen: If Donald Trump wins the election, the assault on the press is going to shift into authoritarian overdrive. We talked to Media Matters senior fellow Matt Gertz, who explains why a Trump crackdown on the press could get alarmingly far. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now that Ohio Senator J.D. Vance is Donald Trump’s running mate, everyone is combing through his old quotes, and a striking one has surfaced: in 2016, Vance warned that Trump threatened to take the white working class to a “very dark place.” In short, Vance once understood that MAGA ideology, at its core, is really, really toxic. And that’s a big political vulnerability. We talked to Sarah Longwell, the pollster and prominent Never Trumper, about how the Vance pick will showcase the worst aspects of MAGA throughout this race and how Democrats can try to use that to win swing voters. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the days after the horrific effort to assassinate Donald Trump, MAGA figures have widely sought to exploit this moment of national crisis, by arguing that Democrats invited or even encouraged the shooting. The leading proponent of this absurd claim is Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, and on Tuesday, Trump announced that Vance will be his running mate. We talked to Alex Shephard, a senior editor at The New Republic and author of a great new piece on this new MAGA agitprop, about why the Vance pick—and other assorted signs—suggest that the politics around the shooting are going to get a lot more poisonous. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At the time of this recording, we know little about the attempt to assassinate Donald Trump. He was hit in the ear, but thankfully doesn’t appear seriously injured. The 20-year-old gunman has been identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks. He was registered as a Republican but donated $15 to a progressive group in January 2021, and we know nothing of his motive. Political violence is absolutely unacceptable no matter who is targeted. So for now we will focus on the bigger picture: We talked to Zack Beauchamp, author of a new book called The Reactionary Spirit and a piece for Vox called: “America is not ready for what comes next,” about whether this horror will lead to an escalation and what it says that American society is again at this point.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In recent days, Donald Trump has angrily claimed he knows nothing about Project 2025, the blueprint his allies are drawing up for an authoritarian second term presidency. But CNN is now reporting that at least 140 people from the Trump administration have a hand in the Project 2025 plan. And NBC News has unearthed video showing that Trump expressly praised the plan’s creators for their work in 2022. We talked to Amanda Becker—a reporter for The 19th News and author of a forthcoming piece on Project 2025’s minutiae—who explains why Trump keeps running from Project 2025 and what its darker designs really have in store for us. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With President Biden forcefully declaring that he isn’t leaving the presidential race, the latest polling looks frightening. The Cook Political Report just released new polling averages showing Donald Trump leading Biden nationally by three points. FiveThirtyEight’s averages also look grim. New swing state polls show Trump dominating. But Ron Klain, the former White House chief of staff to Biden, nonetheless maintains that Biden is still the Democrat with the best shot against Trump. We invited Klain on the show, and he fielded some hard questions while making an expansive case that Biden still has a path.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Although the Democratic Party remains mired in infighting over President Biden’s disastrous debate performance, congressional Democrats now appear increasingly convinced that he will survive as the nominee. They seem resigned to this even as many appear convinced he will lose to Donald Trump in November. What happened here, exactly? We talked to The American Prospect’s David Dayen, who has a good new piece called “Why the Bid to Push Out Biden is Losing,” about how Biden seems to have shut down the opposition, what it says about the Democratic Party, and why there’s still grounds for deep anxiety about what comes next. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Monday, we learned that the committee for the 2024 Republican convention is debating a new platform, proposed by Donald Trump, that purports to soften the party’s positions on abortion and same sex marriage. This will be widely interpreted as a savvy effort to woo swing voters and suburban women. But what if it’s really an expression of fear that the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the horrors it has unleashed will remain a major problem for Trump and the GOP this fall? We talked to Jess McIntosh, a Democratic strategist and longtime defender of reproductive rights, about what’s driving this shift, why it’s a scam, and how Democrats can make sure voters know it. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Sunday, Donald Trump erupted at The New York Times, slamming it in crazed and bizarre terms for its supposed unfair treatment of him. Yet if anything, in recent days the Times has crusaded relentlessly against his opponent, President Biden. Which is why this moment helps explain how Trump games the media—and how the media lets Trump game them. We talked with Will Stancil, an active social media presence who has prominently skewered the press for an immense double standard toward Trump and Biden. He explains why the Times and the media often seem to crusade more aggressively against Biden’s age than against Trump’s obvious mental unfitness for the presidency.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Donald Trump shared some deranged images on social media that called for the jailing of Liz Cheney. Taking his rage in a new direction, one image even called for her to face a military tribunal. Meanwhile, new reports suggest Trump is preparing an unexpectedly vicious wave of persecution if he wins. So what can Trump actually do to his political opponents if he unleashes all the powers of the presidency on them? We talked to Kristy Parker, former federal prosecutor and counsel at Protect Democracy, who explained why Trump’s coming crackdown on his enemies could be more disturbing than we expect—and how to fight back against it.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yesterday the Supreme Court released its shocking new ruling in the case involving Donald Trump’s demand for absolute immunity from prosecution for insurrection-related crimes. The court gave Trump much of what he wanted, notably ensuring that his trial for the insurrection will be delayed indefinitely. But what’s really worrying is what this ruling could allow Trump to get away with if he wins back the White House. We talked to legal expert Richard Hasen, who just published A Real Right to Vote and regularly writes about Trump’s attacks on democracy, about why the case for alarmism is real and serious.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At last week’s debate, Donald Trump ranted that the January 6 defendants are “so innocent,” raging that President Biden is “destroying their lives.” Then at a rally, Trump called for their immediate release, while proclaiming victory over a big Supreme Court ruling that seemingly weakens the cases against the attackers. Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann just co-authored a good new piece explaining that the ruling will only impact a small percentage of those cases. Still, if Trump wins, he’ll pardon untold numbers of those convicted. So we talked to Weissmann, who went deep on on that ruling and on why Trump’s pardon threats endanger the rule of law at its foundations. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

MAGA personalities raged at CNN when it refused to allow a Donald Trump propagandist to smear journalists on air. They exploded again when CNN announced that the debate would be fact checked. We think this provides an unexpected glimpse into what Project 2025’s implementation might look like. This thought was driven home by a must-read thread from writer David Roberts about Project 2025’s true aims. So we talked to Roberts about what MAGA’s hostility to neutral journalism portends for a second Trump term—one that wrecks the professional, fact-based civil service and transforms government into a tool for manufacturing propaganda. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

President Biden and Donald Trump are set to hold their first debate, after Trump and his allies spent weeks mocking Biden’s age with doctored videos and dumb jokes about Biden’s supposed plan to rely on performance-enhancing drugs. Is all that agitprop just chum for the MAGA masses, or does it reflect a genuine belief that Biden actually is so deep into his dotage that he can’t possibly be a worthy debate adversary? We talked to veteran reporter Marc Caputo of The Bulwark, who has a good new report on Trump’s debate prep. Caputo is highly illuminating on what the Trump brain trust is really thinking as we head into the first showdown.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Judge Aileen Cannon gave Donald Trump two more big assists. She agreed to hold a multi-day hearing on the constitutionality of the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith. And she appeared skeptical of Smith’s demand for a gag order on one of Trump’s most deranged attacks on law enforcement yet. We talked to law professor Corey Brettschneider, author of a new book called The Presidents and the People: Five Leaders Who Threatened Democracy and the Citizens Who Fought to Defend It. He vividly explains how Cannon is enabling Trump to attack the rule of law itself— and the dark antecedents this has in U.S. history.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In recent days, Donald Trump’s spinners have worked hard to build up images of his supposed political invincibility. But what if it’s all smoke and mirrors? In an important new piece, Politico reports that behind the scenes, many Republicans are suddenly feeling quite uncertain about Trump’s chances. We talked to Never Trump conservative Mona Charen, an editor and columnist at The Bulwark who has written shrewdly about the GOP tendency to overestimate Biden’s weaknesses, about what’s really driving these sudden new doubts—and whether the race is really turning in Biden’s favor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At two speeches over the weekend, Donald Trump ramped up the dangerous language about migrants, floating the idea of Ultimate Fighting Championship matches between migrants and native born Americans. This comes as Trump and MAGA are escalating their propaganda tactic of highlighting isolated murders to smear migrants as dangerous criminals. We talked to Brian Beutler, who argues regularly on his Substack that this sort of shameless, degenerate politics is itself a big story, about how the press should cover the Trump-MAGA demonization of migrants as a major scandal in its own right.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Donald Trump raged at a Fox News poll finding behind, and lashed out at Fox for featuring a guest who dared criticize him. Trump regularly unloads on Fox when it doesn’t follow his script, which is remarkable, given that Fox is usually committed to deceiving its viewers on his behalf. Both Trump and Fox draw on a long history, in which grift and scams have been deeply intertwined with the American right for over a half century. We talked to journalist Joe Conason, author of a new book called: “The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism,” about the place of the tortured Trump-Fox relationship in that long, ugly story.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Any day now, the Supreme Court will rule on Donald Trump’s demand for immunity from prosecution for alleged insurrection-related crimes. Depending on how the court rules, it’s still possible Trump’s trial will begin before the election. But what if the damage is already done? Veteran labor strategist Michael Podhorzer has an important new piece on his Substack arguing that the MAGA-friendy justices and the court have already interfered in the election by delaying the trial to the degree it has—and that this is about to get worse. We talked to Podhorzer about why he thinks the court is pushing our country into a deep crisis.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

MAGA deception seems to have gone nuclear. Fox News’s Sean Hannity is floating strange new theories about President Biden’s upcoming debate with Donald Trump. Republicans dishonestly doctored numerous videos to make Biden look befuddled and senile. And we learned that the Sinclair media apparatus is blaring out all that deception to huge audiences. We talked to well-known writer and podcaster Thom Hartmann, author of a New Republic piece, “From the Border to Bump Stocks, the MAGA Lie Machine Is Heating Up,” about whether we’re approaching a point of no return that will make this election like no other.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Politico released a new poll with some pretty big surprises: A larger-than-expected percentage of Americans say Donald Trump’s criminal conviction in Manhattan makes them less likely to vote for him. The finding is even more striking among independents. The poll also took the innovative step of trying to gauge how important Trump’s conviction is to voters. And the answer is: Pretty important! We talked to Ankush Khardori, a senior writer for Politico Magazine who oversaw this poll, who walked us through its findings, what they mean, and whether Trump’s pressure on Republicans to protect him from the law will backfire on the GOP in November.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Dr. Anthony Fauci’s new book comes out, and it contains a disturbing chapter about Donald Trump’s ignorance, explosive rage and megalomania during the coronavirus pandemic. We think this should be covered as a loud, clanging alarm bell about the dangers of a second Trump term. So we talked to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, who has written a series of columns on voter amnesia about Trump’s 2020 performance, about the horrors unleashed on the country by his unfitness for the presidency—and why recent events suggest he’s gotten much worse.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New reports are emerging about Donald Trump’s tightening grip on the GOP, and the upshot is this: It’s crazier and more dangerous than you thought. First we learned that Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson privately schemed over how to sabotage ongoing prosecutions of Trump. Then Trump met with Republicans and reportedly unleashed numerous strange rants, calling the Justice Department “dirty no good bastards” and spinning out a wild tale about Nancy Pelosi’s daughter. We talked with A.B. Stoddard, a columnist at The Bulwark and shrewd observer of GOP politics, and she trenchantly explained why this moment is very much not a drill.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An influential group called the True Texas Project is hosting a conference in July that will actively promote Christian Nationalism and the racist great replacement theory, the Texas Tribune reports. The group, which subscribes to the idea of a “war on white America,” has ties to many Texas GOP officials, the report says, including Senator Ted Cruz and Attorney General Ken Paxton, a major supporter of Donald Trump. We talked to Sarah Posner, author of several books on the religious right, who sheds much-needed light on this ugly tangle far right ideologies—and how they’re being mainstreamed at the highest levels of Republican power.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump is now leveling his authoritarian threats right out in the open. He appears supremely confident that none of it will alienate swing voters. Now NBC News reports that the Biden campaign hopes to draw out this side of Trump at their upcoming debate—but if Trump doesn’t see these things as liabilities, he may advertise them all over again when voters are paying attention. We talked to Slate legal writer Dahlia Lithwick, author of an excellent new piece outlining how Trump is running on an overt promise of authoritarianism, about whether voters will awaken to the threat he poses—and how this could cause his confidence to blow up in his face.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the wake of Donald Trump’s criminal conviction, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Republicans are ramping up with sordid new efforts to use their congressional powers to protect Trump from other ongoing prosecutions. This gives Democrats an opening to hammer Republicans for aiding and abetting Trump’s nonstop quest to place himself above the law. Yet some Democrats seem reluctant to engage this fight. We talked to California Representative Eric Swalwell, who breaks down the absurdity of the GOP’s various tactics—and how Democrats can go on offense against them.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Some Republicans are reportedly worried that Donald Trump’s ongoing public attacks on his criminal conviction show that he’s overly focused on lathering up his base, and refuses to grasp that the verdict will likely alienate swing voters. We think this highlights a deeper truth about Trump and the MAGA movement itself: They cannot acknowledge that such Trump-centrict obsessions might be unpopular with the broader electorate, as this would constitute showing weakness. We talked to Washington Post reporter Isaac Arnsdorf, author of an excellent new book called Finish What We Started: The MAGA Movement’s Ground War to End Democracy, who helped us unravel this tangle of MAGA pathologies. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A judge just ordered longtime Donald Trump adviser Steve Bannon to surrender to prison on July 1st after his conviction for defying the Jan. 6th committee’s subpoena. Not surprisingly, Trump and MAGA have already exploded in rage. Making this worse, Bannon is one of the leading pro-Trump figures calling on Trump to jail Democrats without cause if he wins the White House—and Bannon’s jail time will only fuel that mania. We talked to Eric Columbus, a lawyer who represented the Jan. 6th committee, about the alarming signals this sends about the perils of a second Trump presidency. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Wednesday, The Wall Street Journal published a dodgy hit piece about President Biden’s age. Then something unusual happened: Democratic lawmakers went nuclear on the piece, going on record to forcefully undermine its core assertions. This deserves some discussion: Could Dems better “work the refs” the way Republicans do? When liberals do criticize coverage, why do newsroom leaders shrug it off? Why do editors insult our intelligence with phony justifications for the overemphasis on Biden’s age? We chatted with Aaron Rupar, a shrewd media observer and author of the “Public Notice" Substack, about the deeper problems with the press this episode reveals.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

MAGA loyalists have been relentlessly pushing a silly talking point: The American people are in full scale revolt against the criminal conviction of Donald Trump. Guess what? The polls are telling a different story, finding majority support for the verdict. One of these, from the progressive firm Data for Progress, finds that this is also true among swing voters. We chatted with Data for Progress’s executive director, Danielle Deiseroth, about what all these numbers are really telling us, most (though not all) of it good news. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the wake of Donald Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts, Republican anger at the verdict is getting darker, with GOP leaders talking about holding hearings and even defunding other prosecutions of Trump. But Democrats are not engaging this debate nearly as intensively, and appear divided over how to proceed. This is puzzling: The furious GOP defense of Trump is deranged and reckless, and would almost certainly be deeply unpopular—if voters are made to understand it. We talked to veteran Democratic strategist Celinda Lake, who suggested ways the party might find a stronger and more unified posture in this battle going forward. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The other day on CNN, prominent Never Trump lawyer George Conway did something you rarely see in Washington. He dressed down a GOP commentator for lying his ass off about Donald Trump—and then, right on the air, he asked why CNN was paying this Republican to spread lies on Trump’s behalf. We think this episode illustrates a deep problem with the media’s handling of pro-Trump propaganda. So we chatted with Conway about why he unloaded—and in the process, he revealed some interesting things about the network. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Earlier this week, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito refused to recuse himself from hearing Jan. 6-related cases amid controversy over an upside-down U.S. flag outside Alito’s home that’s associated with Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” effort. Then, on Thursday, Chief Justice John Roberts denied Democrats’ demand for a meeting, adding to the imperiousness around the conservative justices and making the Alito scandal look worse. We talked to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, about what he called the “omerta” code for right wing justices—and whether it’s time for hearings into the Alito mess. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump recently said he’s “looking at” imposing restrictions on contraception if he is elected president, and even promised a concrete policy. Then he quickly walked it back. But certain constituencies on the right have not given up—far from it. We chatted with Politico reporter Alice Miranda Ollstein, co-author of a great new piece detailing the blueprint that Trump’s MAGA allies are developing for him to restrict birth control through executive action, about how far this could get if he regains the White House. It isn’t pretty. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Tuesday, Judge Aileen Cannon temporarily denied special counsel Jack Smith’s latest request for a gag order on Donald Trump’s lie that the FBI was set to use lethal force on Trump at Mar-a-Lago. In keeping with a shady pattern of favoritism to Trump, Cannon said No, but she may feel pressure to grant the gag order later, lest Smith seek her removal. We talked to legal scholar Matthew Seligman, who has done great work road-mapping Trump’s legal travails, about why Cannon’s move may not help Trump in the long run—and why it’s premature to assume he won’t face a federal criminal trial before the election. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump and his media propagandists have been preposterously suggesting the FBI under President Biden was set to use “lethal force” against Trump when it searched Mar-a-Lago. This fabrication was summoned into existence by Fox News and the right wing media. We talked with media reporter Brian Stelter, author of a great new piece on Trump in The New Republic’s “American Fascism” issue, who put all this in its larger context, explaining what the right wing media has become under Trump, and how he will bully non-compliant media outlets if reelected president. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Thursday, Donald Trump tweeted that Vladimir Putin will release Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter detained in Russia, after the election—“for me,” meaning for Trump. In other words, elect Trump president, and Putin will release him. We think this saga gets at a larger story about Trump’s approach to politics and foreign policy. So we talked to Nicholas Grossman, a professor of international relations who writes about Trump’s Putinist inclinations. He explains how Trump may be sabotaging U.S foreign policy to help himself politically, while aligning himself with the world’s autocrats and dictators. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Trump and MAGA Republicans are floating the crackpot idea that President Biden’s FBI was ready to target Trump with lethal force when it searched Mar-a-Lago. This is based on a wildly absurd reading of FBI policy, but beyond this, we think this saga says something larger about the fascistic politics of Trump and his MAGA allies. We talked to Federico Finchelstein, an expert on fascist movements and author of a new piece in The New Republic’s issue on “American Fascism,” who explains why Trump is best seen as a “wannabe fascist.”  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Monday, the prosecution rested its case in Donald Trump’s hush money trial in Manhattan. This comes after Trump’s defense team concluded their efforts to destroy former Trump fixer Michael Cohen’s credibility as one of the chief witnesses against Trump. So has the prosecution proven its case? We talked to New York Law School professor Rebecca Roiphe, who has prosecuted cases like these in New York, about why she thinks a conviction is now likely—even as it still remains very possible that Trump could beat the rap. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The GOP’s embrace of Donald Trump’s authoritarianism is growing more blatant. Republicans have joined him in attacking his criminal trials as illegitimate. Those angling to be his running mate say they wouldn’t have certified his 2020 loss. And many Republicans are echoing his refusal to say he’ll respect the 2024 outcome. We talked to Tom Nichols, a leading Never Trump conservative and staff writer at The Atlantic about why he is now arguing that his former party’s support for Trump has driven it into the abyss. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s running mate, Nicole Shanahan, dropped a bomb: She announced a donation of another $8 million to his campaign. That’s substantially more than her initial $2 million, and suggests much more is coming. Which is a reminder: It’s still very plausible that RFK Jr. will get on the ballot in many of the swing states that will decide the election. We talked to veteran Democratic strategist Stephanie Schriock, who explains why Shanahan’s wealth suggests it’s time to take the RFK Jr. spoiler threat very, very seriously. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Earlier this month, Donald Trump refused to commit to accepting the outcome of the 2024 election, shamelessly declaring he’d only do so “if everything’s honest.” Translation: He’ll only treat the outcome as valid if he wins. Infuriatingly, Trump has crucial backing for this project: Fox News and other MAGA propaganda outlets are already laying the groundwork to treat the outcome as illegitimate, should he lose. We talked to Matt Gertz of Media Matters, author of a new piece detailing how these right wing media figures are “warning” that Democrats intend to steal the election, and why that could produce another Jan. 6th or worse. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Tuesday, when Michael Cohen testified against Donald Trump, the former president’s lawyers reminded jurors that Cohen was once slavishly devoted to Trump and used to lie relentlessly on his behalf—before Cohen turned on him. Cohen responded by admitting it: Yes, he was once a member of the Trump “cult.” Which is apt: Again and again, Trump’s own lawyers have seemingly designed their strategy around flattering Trump as much as serving his legal needs. We talked to Ankush Khardori, a former federal prosecutor and senior writer for Politico Magazine, who explained how Trump’s lawyers are making serious mistakes that are rooted in his demand for absolute devotion.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, The New York Times released new polls that sent shock waves through the Democratic establishment, finding Donald Trump leading in all six key swing states, in some cases by startling margins. While President Biden has fared better in other recent polls, the bottom line is that he is trailing in all the swing-state polling averages. So we talked to Jefrey Pollack, a top pollster for the Biden campaign, who laid out why he thinks it’s premature to read too much into these polls, and why the current data set, in his view, actually shows a hidden path to reelection for the president. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump constantly claims that crime is out of control. In reality, it’s substantially down under Biden, after soaring during the pandemic that Trump catastrophically botched as president. Now the Democratic group Third Way is releasing a new study finding that this year, congressional Democrats secured substantially more funding for public safety projects across the country than Republicans did. We talked to Jim Kessler of Third Way, who explains how Democrats can go on offense on the issue and beat back Trump’s relentless lies about it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Thursday, Stormy Daniels faced tough cross examination from Donald Trump’s attorneys in his hush money trial in Manhattan. By most accounts, she responded with humor and harsh mockery directed at Trump, which helped parry their assaults on her credibility. The ridicule, however, could serve another purpose: It could help convince the jury that Trump had a clear motive for committing crimes related to the hush-money scheme. We talked to former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade, who explains how Daniels’s testimony may have damaged Trump more deeply than it first appears. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the Indiana GOP primary on Tuesday night, Donald Trump lost 22 percent of GOP primary voters to Nikki Haley. That’s surprising, since Haley ended her campaign two months ago. So it’s clearly a trend: A sizable bloc of Republican voters in GOP primaries has resisted Trump again and again. We chatted with David Drucker, a senior writer at The Dispatch and author of a new piece about the Indiana outcome, about whether President Biden can poach these voters away from Trump and why it’s a warning sign for MAGA in November. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is deciding whether to call a snap vote to oust Mike Johnson as House Speaker. She has a list of demands, and if they aren’t met, she will pull the trigger. If so, Democrats seem prepared to save Johnson. Which raises some questions: Can Democrats leverage anything in exchange for protecting Johnson? Are Greene and MAGA losing power inside the House GOP? We talked to Representative Ted Lieu, the Number 4 in the House Democratic leadership, about how Democrats should proceed—and where all this is heading next. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump’s hush-money trial in Manhattan has already served up some extraordinary moments. On Friday, former Trump aide Hope Hicks’s tearful testimony undermined the defense that Trump’s legal team will attempt to mount. On Monday, new evidence tied the payments to mistress Stormy Daniels tightly to Trump, and he was again held in contempt for attacking jurors, this time threatened with jail. We talked to Kim Wehle, a professor of law and former assistant U.S. attorney, about why these developments signal still more damning revelations ahead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In his much-discussed Time interview, Donald Trump threatened to use the military to carry out mass deportations in a second term. The proposals he offered are appalling on their face. But beyond that, by regularly using vicious tropes about undocumented immigrants and other domestic enemies within, Trump is trying to acclimate voters to the ugliest forms of authoritarian, dehumanizing language. We talked to Maria Teresa Kumar, the president of Voto Latino, about a new effort she’s launching with other Hispanic leaders to alert voters to the grave threat Trump poses—before it’s too late. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Unexpectedly, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been making a huge number of appearances all over right wing media of late. Trump advisers are loudly warning that this threatens to take voters from him, helping President Biden. But we’re skeptical: It’s still more likely that in the end RFK hurts Biden more than Trump. And there are cynical reasons why right wing media sources might be boosting RFK Jr. right now. We chatted with Matt Bennett, a co-founder of the Democratic group Third Way and a shrewd observer of U.S. party politics, about the true RFK effect, how RFK is functioning as a stalking horse for Trump, and what MAGA media might be doing to help along the scam. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new consensus is settling in among political analysts: Donald Trump’s poll numbers look unexpectedly formidable in states like Arizona and Georgia, which means President Biden’s most likely path to victory requires winning Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. And yet Trump will almost certainly lose if he can’t win one of those three. That’s why Democrats can stop Trump if they beat him in Wisconsin. We talked to Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, who explains how years of painstaking organizing is laying the groundwork to defeat Trump by thwarting his designs, first and foremost, in the Badger State. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a new interview, Donald Trump gave away the game: If he wins the White House, he’d be fine with anti-choice crackdowns in red states going to horrific extremes. Trump vowed (unconvincingly) to leave abortion to the states, but when pressed, he suggested he’d be okay with prosecutions of women who get abortions and even with states monitoring their pregnancies. In addition to revealing what Roe v. Wade’s demise has wrought, that could give Democrats a boost in this fall’s state-level elections. We talked Arizona state senator Eva Burch about how the future of reproductive rights will raise the stakes in these contests—and about her own personal and emotional experiences with the issue. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Recently Elon Musk triggered outrage by promoting a vicious speech by a Dutch activist that pushed virulent white nationalist ideologies. Musk added that Europe is threatened by “population collapse” that could lead to “dead civilizations.” What often gets lost amid such controversies is that Musk is pushing ideas that are part of a genuine political movement shaped around long term demographic anxieties. We chatted with reporter Gaby Del Valle, author of a great new Politico piece about the first ever “Natal Conference,” in Austin, Tx., and the far-right movement to get (some) people to have more babies, who helped place Musk’s talk about low birth rates in a global political context. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the weekend, a CNN interview with former attorney general Bill Barr went viral after Barr performed a spectacular on-air capitulation to Donald Trump. The former president had posted an unhinged rant that mercilessly belittled Barr, yet Barr affirmed his endorsement of Trump and downplayed the threat he poses, including a bizarre aside about Trump talking about “executing” rivals. We chatted with Amanda Carpenter, the prominent Never Trumper and an editor at Protect Democracy, about what this whole saga says about today’s GOP and its broader capitulation to MAGA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new Politico report has exposed deep tensions between The New York Times and the White House. President Biden’s team believes The Times isn’t adequately capturing the threat Donald Trump poses to democracy, while The Times responds that Team Biden is out to micromanage the paper of record’s coverage. We think this debate is badly muddled and in need of some major clarifications. So we chatted with Substacker Brian Beutler, a frequent media critic, about today’s flawed conventions of political reporting, why they aren’t meeting the challenge of this moment, and what’s needed to change them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now that the House has passed military aid to Ukraine, MAGA personalities like Donald Trump Jr. and Tucker Carlson have joined Marjorie Taylor Greene in attacking House Speaker Mike Johnson as a traitor to the cause. Yet this isn’t just typical right wing ranting. It reveals very specific expectations of what Donald Trump would do to our international alliances if he wins back the White House. We talked to A.B. Stoddard, columnist at The Bulwark and author of a new piece digging into these dynamics, about what this MAGA vision for the world really looks like—and why a second Trump term would be so dangerous. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

New polls this week offered something of a surprise: They show Robert F. Kennedy’s presidential run pulling more support from Donald Trump than from President Biden. And even some Republicans are publicly insisting that they fear the same. One person who is deeply skeptical of this reading is veteran Democratic strategist and podcaster Joe Trippi. We chatted with Trippi about his grand theory of the election, why he thinks the only threat RFK poses is to Biden, and how Trump and Republicans are attempting to disguise all of it with a clever bait-and-switch. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Now that Mike Johnson allowed Ukraine aid to pass the House on a broad bipartisan basis, an enraged Marjorie Taylor Greene is ramping up her threats to oust the Speaker. But a funny thing has happened: For many reasons, Greene’s efforts could end up accomplishing little for the MAGA right, even as they do more to endanger GOP control of the House. We chatted with Democratic Representative Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, a shrewd observer of all these dynamics, about the possibilities of more coalition governing, the future of MAGA in the House, and the threat posed by the ticking time bomb otherwise known as MTG. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, arguments begin in Donald Trump’s hush money trial in Manhattan, and he’s raging over the unfairness of it all. Amazingly, some are rushing to insist the trial won’t pose a serious problem for his presidential chances. But progressive political strategist Anat Shenker-Osorio disagrees: She writes in a new piece for Slate that due to some hidden public opinion dynamics, the case is already damaging him. So we chatted with Shenker-Osorio about why the trial and Trump’s impulsive conduct at it is so alienating to voters outside the MAGA bubble—and why this dynamic will only get worse. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At a fundraiser with oil and gas industry executives last week, Donald Trump reportedly ranted angrily about, of all things, wind power. “I hate wind,” Trump told the executives. That may seem like a joke, but it gets at a deadly serious topic: If Trump wins this fall, he’d very likely try to repeal President Biden’s climate policies. We chatted with David Roberts, author of a great energy Substack called “Volts,” about Trump’s prospects for success at that project, about its potential consequences for the world, and about an intriguing concept known as “petro-masculinity.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Kari Lake, a diehard MAGA Republican who’s running for Senate in Arizona, told a rally this week that it’s time for supporters of her and Donald Trump to “put on the armor of God and maybe strap on a Glock just in case.” There you have it: God and Glock, side by side. We talked to Elizabeth Neumann, a Homeland Security counterterrorism official during Trump’s presidency and author of a new book about Christian extremism, about how MAGA rhetoric normalizes political violence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here on the podcast we’ve repeatedly argued that Mike Johnson might ultimately allow a vote on military aid to Ukraine, even if it might get him ousted as speaker by MAGA forces in the House. Thankfully, this now looks real: The House GOP leadership is preparing to move forward with Ukraine aid as part of a broader set of bills—and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is furious. We talked to Democratic Representative Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, a former U.S. Navy Pilot and member of the Armed Services Committee, who helped us unravel why Johnson is doing this now, its prospects for success, and the true extent of Russian influence over MAGA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential run is inspiring new fears among Democrats that he will help Donald Trump win the White House again. Meanwhile, Kennedy’s campaign is now expressing confidence that he’ll appear on the ballot in all the key swing states and beyond. So it’s notable that the Kennedy clan is taking urgent new steps to mobilize in response—against their own family member’s candidacy. We chatted with Jill Lawrence, a veteran journalist and author of a new piece for The Bulwark on this dynamic, who explains the remarkable role the Kennedys are poised to play in stopping RFK Jr. from serving as pro-Trump spoiler. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With jury selection in Donald Trump’s hush money trial beginning this week in New York, some have dismisses the case as weak. Yet Trump, who is accused of falsifying business records to conceal payoffs over his alleged affair with Stormy Daniels, is not acting as if he’s out of the woods. Dave Aronberg, a prosecutor in Florida who writes for Meidas Touch News, has argued that it’s not necessarily a weak case at all. We chatted with Aronberg about what to expect from the trial and how surprise evidence could emerge that badly complicates Trump’s defense. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign has been hit by a lot of bad news lately. His former vice president declined to endorse him. His legal travails are getting worse. And some states are lurching to new extremes on abortion, making it impossible for Trump to shrug off responsibility for the end of Roe v. Wade. Yet as Media Matters has documented, Fox News appears to be dramatically downplaying a lot of these stories. We talked to Media Matters news director John Whitehouse about Fox’s evolution into a pro-Trump propaganda network and what that says about today’s right wing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Wednesday, Donald Trump declared that he won’t sign a national abortion ban if elected president, a clear sign he recognizes the issue poses a severe threat to his prospects. But this week, the Arizona State Supreme Court upheld an 1864 law banning almost all abortions, demonstrating that Trump will be forced to answer for every extremist lurch in the states from now until the election. We chatted with Elvia Diaz, the editorial page editor of The Arizona Republic, who explains how deeply personal this issue is for millions of women and why that’s a serious problem for Trump and the GOP in Arizona and beyond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At a recent fundraiser, Donald Trump promised big tax cuts to some of the richest donors in the country. He also suggested he wants more immigrants from countries like Norway—hint, hint—while blasting Latin American migrants as criminals and worse. This corrupt bargain—offer huge giveaways to wealthy elites so they embrace far right governance—is an old story. In today’s episode, Harvard professor Daniel Ziblatt—who studies what happens when conservative elites ally with authoritarian movements—explains why it’s extraordinarily reckless for corporate leaders to calculate they can work with Trump despite his promise of a lawless second term. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Mike Johnson finally appears set to decide whether to hold a House vote on funding military aid to Ukraine. If so, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has threatened to try to oust him as Speaker. Yet something funny has happened: A lot of House Republicans want to vote on Ukraine aid. Is there any chance it might pass? How will Donald Trump react? We talked to Julia Ioffe, a journalist for Puck and a leading voice on Russia-U.S. relations, who shed light on the brutal road ahead for Ukraine and explained how the MAGA-Putin alliance really works. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s a new trend: GOP legislatures are advancing bills that place onerous new kinds of restrictions on public and school libraries in states like Idaho, Alabama, Georgia and others. On the front lines of taking on this trend is Emily Drabinski, the president of the American Library Association, who also grew up in Idaho and is openly gay. So we invited Drabinski on to the show to shed light on what it takes to battle the book banners targeting LGBTQ materials in states like her own, and what sort of toll this is taking on communities across the country. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, The New York Times reported that Donald Trump recently spoke privately with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. Trump’s team won’t say word boo about what was discussed, and we can guess why: His private business dealings with the Saudis are going gangbusters even as he’s locking up the GOP presidential nomination, creating all kinds of opportunities for corruption. We talked to Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who explained why the Trump-Saudi relationship is absolutely crying out for serious scrutiny. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, special counsel Jack Smith made a surprise move in his prosecution of Donald Trump for stealing classified documents. He called on Judge Aileen Cannon to make a quick decision on a key matter, flaunting his frustration with her over numerous rulings putting the thumb on the scale for Trump. We chatted with Philip Rotner, a veteran lawyer who has written a series of pieces for The Bulwark arguing that Cannon is killing the case against Trump right in broad daylight. Rotner explains in unsettling terms why her interventions for Trump are likely to get uglier. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

One of Donald Trump’s central campaign promises has been to pardon untold numbers of rioters who attacked the Capitol—people he’s described as martyrs, victims and “hostages.” Now, an important new analysis finds that many of the inmates Trump has referred to are ones who violently attacked law enforcement officers. We talked to Tom Joscelyn, lead author of that analysis and a former senior Jan. 6 committee staffer, who explains how his findings blow apart a lot of Trump-MAGA propaganda about that dark and terrible day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

GOP members of Congress facing tough races are suddenly worried that having Donald Trump at the top of the ticket might present them with a problem, according to new reports. They fear having to answer for Trump’s degeneracy and extremism, even as the GOP’s small donor base is not delivering at the very moment as Trump is siphoning off party money for legal fees. What explains this sudden GOP epiphany about Trump? How likely is it that these fears will materialize? We chatted with Tim Persico, a top Democratic operative involved in House races in 2022, who provided insights into how this Trump effect really works. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump’s announcement that he is now peddling something called the “God Bless the USA Bible” drew outrage from some religious figures, but one group that’s been conspicuously quiet about it are evangelical leaders. Why? Perhaps because Trump is making subtle promises to give them what they want. We talked with Katherine Stewart, a journalist who covers the religious right, about all the ways Trump is signaling a second term shaped around ideals of Christian Nationalism. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You’ve probably heard someone say we’re in the midst of a “racial realignment.” The idea is that Donald Trump is surprisingly strong among nonwhite voters, helping explain why head-to-head polling looks rough for President Biden. But political analyst Ron Brownstein has written an important new piece that adds sorely needed nuance, finding that the flipside to Trump’s strength among nonwhites is Biden’s unexpected support among white voters. We chatted with Brownstein about why his thesis shows that Trump’s position is more precarious than it seems. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two days after a major bridge collapsed in Baltimore when a cargo ship rammed into it, we still know little about six bridge workers who are presumed dead after an intensive search. Little by little, we’re learning that police were just about to alert the workers about the crash but were a hair too late, and that they were immigrants who were supporting children and families. Who were these workers? Could they have been saved? We talked to Maximillian Alvarez, editor in chief of the Baltimore-based Real News Network, about what this horror tells us about immigrant life in America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All of a sudden Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene seems to be attacking House Speaker Mike Johnson almost daily over all kinds of things, especially his promise to find a way to pass military aid to Ukraine. Does that mean Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans will successfully thwart that effort? Why is the House GOP in such chaos, anyway? We chatted with GOP lobbyist Liam Donovan, a Twitter virtuoso and shrewd observer of Republican politics, who helped demystify all the crazy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

NBC News is reeling over its decision to hire former Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel as a political analyst. McDaniel actively participated in Donald Trump’s effort to steal the 2020 election, pressuring state officials not to certify the outcome, and personalities like Joe Scarborough and Chuck Todd have been harshly critical. We chatted with New York University’s Jay Rosen, one of our most incisive media critics, about whether the uproar will prompt the media to grapple more deeply with its struggle to capture the true threat Trump and MAGA pose to our democracy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In recent days, Donald Trump opened the door to cutting Social Security, and he’s also threatened to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which would throw millions off health insurance. All this comes as President Biden’s economy is doing quite well by many metrics. Yet Trump is favored on the economy, and his MAGA support remains solid, even though his policies would badly sell out his base. We talked to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, author of a series of columns about the economies under Trump and Biden, who helps us make sense of all these disconnects. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With Donald Trump’s fundraising badly trailing that of President Biden, the RNC’s new “election integrity” lawyer, Christina Bobb, is emerging as an important player in the Trump-MAGA campaign apparatus. Bobb, who was deeply involved in Trump’s Stop-the-Steal efforts, will help reassure the MAGA faithful, perhaps firing up the small-dollar donations that Trump desperately needs. We chatted with Andrew Egger, who has a great new piece for The Bulwark about Bobb’s role, about why she’s so pivotal for Trump and how she’s become the face of the new MAGA establishment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump just announced that he’s likely to campaign for the presidency on a promise of a 15-week abortion ban, even as political commentators are wondering whether reproductive rights will be as salient this fall as they were in 2022 and 2023. An interesting test looms in deep red Alabama, where Marilyn Lands is running for a state House seat in a special election set for March 26th—a campaign that Lands has made about her own agonizing abortion story. We talked to Lands about what she’s hearing on the ground and how voters are reacting to her personal journey. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is there any chance that Congress will not abandon Ukraine to the Russians? With Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans determined to cut off military aid to Ukraine, it’s looking grim. Yet there are glimmers of hope. Some Republicans are reportedly pushing a proposal that would offer aid to Ukraine as a loan. And there are signs that House Speaker Mike Johnson does want something to pass. We chatted with Democratic Congressman Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, who offered a keen understanding of the tortured dynamics surrounding this deeply dispiriting debate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Donald Trump’s lawyers admitted that he’s failed to secure a bond to cover the half-a-billion-dollar penalty he faces in his civil fraud case in New York. As The New York Times delicately noted, “he does not have enough liquidity” to persuade any company to provide that bond. Translation: He doesn’t have the cash. This is humiliating to Trump, relative to his self-mythology. But it also points to his broader, largely-overlooked weaknesses in the 2024 campaign. We discussed this with The New Republic’s Timothy Noah, author of a great new piece on Trump’s financial travails that predicts he will soon declare bankruptcy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In Ohio over the weekend, Donald Trump delivered one of his most unhinged and dangerous rally speeches yet: He used appallingly dehumanizing language about migrants, saluted the Jan. 6 rioters as patriots and heroes, and predicted a “bloodbath” if he loses the election. We talked to New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser, the author of an excellent new piece about Trump’s use of violent and authoritarian language at rallies like this one, about why the media urgently needs to do better at conveying the full threat to democracy that Trump poses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer gave an extraordinary speech lacerating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel over the horrific civilian toll in Gaza. This is an important moment in U.S. politics: The highest ranking Jewish Democrat stood strongly for Palestinian rights at a time when the war in Gaza is badly dividing the Democratic coalition. To navigate these complexities, we talked to Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers, which is promoting a peace effort called Standing Together, and Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, who writes regularly about intra-coalitional tensions among Democrats. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg has prominently argued that it’s premature to freak out about Donald Trump’s lead in the polls. Rosenberg’s case is partly that the Democratic Party is strong and has been winning lots of elections lately, as readers of his “Hopium Chronicles” well know. But there’s another, less-appreciated side to his analysis: That the people who make ads and run campaigns and do politics for a living know that Trump’s unfathomably high pile-up of negatives is, in the end, probably insurmountable for him. So we chatted with Rosenberg about this side of his theory — and about why the Biden team appears quietly confident of victory. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, a group of prominent “Never Trump” Republicans and conservatives announced that they will spend $50 million to defeat Donald Trump this fall. The group, Republican Voters against Trump, hopes to appeal to independents and moderate Republicans who backed him in 2020 and might be persuaded not to in 2024. But how big is this pool of voters, and what’s the best way to reach them? We chatted with strategist Sarah Longwell, who runs the group and regularly conducts focus groups to figure out what really makes these elusive voters tick. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the weekend, The New York Times published a news analysis entitled, “The Biden-Trump rerun: A nation craving change gets more of the same.” This has become a constant refrain in the press: One of the candidates is running on an explicit set of promises to destroy American democracy, yet the press keeps calling this a “rerun” of 2020, almost as if it’s all a sporting event. We chatted with Mark Jacob, a former veteran journalist who writes the “Stop the Presses” newsletter, about all the insidious ways that press coverage is sanitizing the threat posed by Donald Trump and MAGA. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Have you heard of Bridget Ziegler? A co-founder of the far right Moms for Liberty, she is embroiled in a three-way sex scandal involving her husband, Florida GOP chair Christian Ziegler. Now some Florida parents are running brutal ads attacking her, even as the Moms for Liberty movement is unexpectedly losing ground everywhere. We chatted with journalist Jennifer Berkshire, the author of a forthcoming book on our cultural battles over education, who explained the bigger, deeper story here: The right are the ones now on the defensive in the school wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. triggered an online explosion with a very weird defense of himself for spending time with Jeffrey Epstein. Everyone laughed, but we think this saga is revealing: It opens a window on his underappreciated appeal to disaffected young men. So we chatted with Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, a New School professor who specializes in politics and culture and has dissected the Kennedy phenomenon in surprising ways. Petrzela helped us uncover the darker undercurrents driving Kennedy’s popularity and the ugly truths it reveals about our politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Texas is a state that keeps breaking the hearts of Democrats everywhere. But hopes are rising again this week, after Representative Colin Allred, a former NFL player and civil rights lawyer, captured the Democratic nomination to unseat Senator Ted Cruz. Six years after Beto O’Rourke fell three points short of beating Cruz, what will be different this time? We chatted with Allred about his path forward, how Democrats can compete in rural America, and why Republicans have turned the border into a fantasy zone. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Earlier this week, Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico signed a handful of gun control bills in the face of a terrible spate of gun violence in her state that has drawn national attention. Lujan Grisham is smack in the middle of some big trends in our politics right now: The transformation of the southwest, the success of Democrats in border states, and the rise of the female Democratic governor in the era of Donald Trump. We chatted with Lujan Grisham about all these things—and a whole lot more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled 9 to zero that Donald Trump will not be disqualified from appearing on the ballot in Colorado, despite having engaged in insurrection. Coupled with the court’s willingness to hear Trump’s demand for full immunity from prosecution for insurrection-related crimes, all this raises serious questions about whether it is functionally placing Trump beyond accountability. We chatted with New Republic writer Matt Ford, author of a new piece eviscerating the court’s latest ruling, about the deeper falsehoods about Trump and the MAGA movement that the court is advancing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With Donald Trump set to host Viktor Orban at his Mar-a-Lago retreat this week, it's time to get serious about the rise of the global far right and why its worldview poses such a dire threat. This week, Donald Trump will host Hungarian leader Viktor Orban at his Mar-a-Lago resort.  Meanwhile, Congress is on the verge of abandoning Ukraine to Vladimir Putin. Trump’s romance with Orban—and the opposition of MAGA Republicans to helping Ukraine—are part of the same story, in which the American right has grown besotted with international strongmen. We chatted with Jacob Heilbrunn, author of “America Last: The Right’s Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators,” about the rise of the global far right and the deeper threats posed by this perilous moment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, former MSNBC journalist Mehdi Hasan launched a new digital media company called “Zeteo,” which is Greek for “to seek.” Hasan intends this as an answer to the failings of the mainstream media, which he says is enabling Donald Trump’s effort to “usher in a new era of fascism in the United States.” We chatted with Hasan about his new project’s goals, his belief that the conventions of political reporting are failing to meet this moment, and why the far-right information space is flourishing while the small-L liberal media is in crisis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The news that Mitch McConnell will step down as GOP senate leader later this year has led many to argue that he was fundamentally a foe of Donald Trump who is no longer welcome in the party of MAGA. But the story is more complicated than that: In crucial ways, McConnell’s own career trajectory helped bring about the descent of our politics into its current disastrous mess. We chatted with Congressional scholar Norman Ornstein, who was among the first to identify McConnell as key to the GOP slide into dysfunction and extremism. He helped us assess McConnell’s real legacy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In recent days we’ve learned that Stephen Miller is drawing up plans for a shockingly cruel second-term immigration agenda, complete with mass deportations and huge detention camps. Meanwhile, President Biden is set to visit the southern border—and is mulling a new asylum crackdown of his own. We chatted with Jason Houser, a former senior official at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Biden, who explained how operationally absurd Miller’s fantasies truly are—and why new asylum restrictions are a very bad idea. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump’s victory over Nikki Haley in the South Carolina GOP primary has sparked another round of punditry about his supposed political dominance. Yet the primaries have revealed his weaknesses with independents, and he clearly fears his legal travails are a major liability that will get worse. So what if Trump is weaker than he appears? We chatted about this with political scientist Julia Azari, co-author of a new piece arguing that the long shadow of his 2016 victory is still badly distorting our understanding of the present and the majority coalition that continues handing him and the MAGA movement defeat after defeat. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

For the first time in months, a pair of new polls has found that election-denier Kari Lake is trailing in the Arizona Senate race to the Democratic candidate, Representative Ruben Gallego. But she remains a MAGA celebrity phenomenon who cannot be counted out, making this race highly unpredictable with Independent Sinema Kyrsten Sinema also in the mix. So we chatted with Gallego about how he hopes to defeat Lake and Sinema, why Democrats should level with voters about the border, and what’s really driving the southwest’s evolution in a Democratic direction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fox News and other right wing media are currently engaged in absurdities that are as bad as anything they’ve attempted in recent memory. They are struggling to spin away everything from the collapse of an informant’s claims about President Biden to the GOP’s killing of a border security deal that Republicans themselves demanded. Yet in a darker sense, right wing media is also flourishing. We talked to Matt Gertz of Media Matters, who helped us unravel the tangled web those sources are weaving. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s the question that won’t die among D.C. elites: Should President Biden step aside so another Democrat can run instead? Democrats have engaged in some remarkably public handwringing about Biden’s age that just won’t let up. One Democrat who has insistently sounded the alarm is veteran strategist David Axelrod. So we invited him on the show, where he allowed that an alternative is unlikely—while explaining how Biden can address the issue and why he’s still the favorite against Donald Trump. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers signed a new set of maps for legislative districts in the state—an important and overlooked victory that came after a long struggle dating back well over a decade. We talked to Greta Neubauer, the 32-year-old Minority Leader of Wisconsin Assembly Democrats, who explained what Democrats did to prevail, why this was such a significant achievement, and how it shows that reviving democracy is a grueling game of inches. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The stunning news that Donald Trump has been hit by a $355 million penalty in his civil fraud case in New York deals a big blow to his mystique as master of “the deal.” But Justice Arthur Engoron’s ruling also exposes a deeper undercurrent of scamming that Trump has been surfing on for decades and hopes to ride right back into the White House. We chatted with journalist David Cay Johnston, author of a new piece in The New Republic about the ruling, who helped us plumb the depths of the dark ethos of grift that has driven Trump throughout his career. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Donald Trump announced that he wants Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel replaced with a loyalist: Michael Whatley, the head of the North Carolina Republican Party. Behind the jockeying looms a very big story: The Trump-MAGA takeover of the GOP, and the challenges the party faces as it nominates someone facing multiple criminal indictments. We talked to Marc Caputo, a reporter for The Bulwark and author of a great new piece on McDaniel’s ouster, who helped us unravel the mysteries of GOP politics in the MAGA era. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Earlier this week, Democrats executed a remarkable 8-point win in a special House election in suburban Long Island, a race that was all about immigration. Republicans ran millions of dollars in ads on the issue, yet Democrat Tom Suozzi prevailed, flipping the seat of disgraced Republican George Santos. What on earth really happened here? We talked to Mike Bocian, the chief Democratic pollster on this race, who offered a fascinating and detailed glimpse into how his party pulled it off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Tuesday, in a decisive 70 to 29 vote, the Senate passed a mammoth bill containing $60 billion for Ukraine’s self defense against Russian aggression, as well as $14 billion for Israel. Yet House Speaker Mike Johnson is vowing that the House won’t vote on the measure, in part because MAGA hard-liners are raging against it. We talked to Democratic Congressman Jason Crow of Colorado about what’s really driving the opposition, how Democrats can try to get around it with a “discharge petition,” and whether there’s a genuine pro-Putin faction in the U.S. House of Representatives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, the freakout among Democrats about President Biden reached its shrillest pitch yet, after a special counsel report exonerated Biden but included combustible claims about Biden’s mental capacities. While many Democrats redoubled calls for the party to entertain alternatives to nominating Biden, confusion and disagreement reigns among them about what precisely to take away from this moment. We talked to Brian Beutler, who  regularly criticizes the Democratic Party’s approach to politics on his “Off Message” Substack, to sort through all the noise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Elon Musk has unleashed numerous tweets lately boosting far right personalities and endorsing MAGA tropes holding that migration constitutes a deliberately engineered invasion. He even endorsed a version of “white genocide theory.” Along with his elevation of Tucker Carlson’s interview with Russian president Vladimir Putin, it all amounts to a genuine ideology: Reactionary tech authoritarianism. We discussed this with Gil Duran, author of a New Republic piece called “The Tech Plutocrats Dreaming of a Right Wing San Francisco,” which offers a window into this ugly worldview. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

With Nikki Haley set to make a last stand of sorts in the South Carolina primary later this month, there’s a hidden reason that Donald Trump has been so dominant throughout the GOP nomination process: White evangelicals. Their support for Trump has held through impeachments, scandals, revelations about sexual assault, multiple serious criminal prosecutions, and even an insurrection attempt. We talked to Sarah Posner, a scholar of the religious right, about Trump’s extraordinary hold on these voters—and why it’s changing the Republican Party in insidious, alarming ways. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In an extraordinary spectacle, virtually all Senate Republicans joined together Wednesday to block a bipartisan bill that would have given Republicans much of what they wanted on border security. Why? Because Donald Trump told them to. We talked to Democratic Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado, who conferred with Republicans throughout this process. He opened up about what Republicans said behind closed doors, noting that they privately admitted that this bill was “aligned with their view of what would be useful for securing the border." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court ruled that Donald Trump is not immune from criminal charges stemming from his effort to steal the 2020 election. With Trump expected to take this to the Supreme Court, how will the timeline of his insurrection-related trial dovetail with the presidential election? We talked to former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade about all the possible scenarios—including one that backfires spectacularly on none other than the Republican Party’s own voters. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio declared in an on-air rant that if he had been Trump’s vice president in the run-up to Jan. 6, 2021, he would have told states to send Congress multiple slates of electors so lawmakers could “debate” the election’s supposed improprieties. That may sound like typical MAGA bluster, but it has deadly serious ramifications, confirming that Republicans still think Trump’s effort to overturn the election was in some ways a good thing. So what might they attempt next fall? We talked to legal scholar Matthew Seligman, co-author of “How to Steal a Presidential Election,” who road-mapped all the sordid possibilities ahead. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s one of the strangest disconnects in our politics today: By many metrics, the economy is doing extremely well, yet President Biden’s approval numbers on the economy are in the toilet. With the latest jobs report showing an extraordinary 353,000 jobs created in January, we talked to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman about what the boom means, why Trump and MAGA Republicans are in denial about it, and how President Biden should respond. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, we learned that Donald Trump’s fundraising committees channeled an extraordinary $50 million toward bankrolling his myriad legal defenses throughout 2023. Such sordid trickery has a long history on the right: For decades, shrewd fundraising gurus have raked in cash from conservative voters with hallucinatory alarmism about leftist villains and other apocalyptic threats. We talked to Geoff Kabaservice, the author of a “Rule and Ruin,” a history of the GOP, to situate Trump in this hallowed tradition of grifters. It turns out Trump may have outdone them all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A frightening new batch of polls this week showed President Biden trailing Donald Trump in all the key battleground states. And yet, as bleak as the polling has looked, Democrats racked up an impressive winning streak in special elections all throughout 2023. This disconnect is why political pros are closely watching an election for state House in the Philadelphia suburbs that’s set for Feb. 13th. We talked to Democratic candidate Jim Prokopiak to gauge what he’s seeing on the ground in swing territory, why Biden is struggling on the economy, and how Trump can still looks strong despite his descent into derangement and severe criminal jeopardy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Far-right personalities are fantasizing about “civil war” again, amid a standoff between Texas Governor Greg Abbott and the feds over border enforcement. That may seem silly, but unbridgeable differences over immigration truly are driving many big stories of the moment, from that Texas battle to Senate negotiations over a border bill to the House GOP impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. If you want to understand what’s really going on with all these complex issues, few voices bring more clarity than Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council. We chatted with him about the deeper conflicts and tensions animating this crisis. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Three former Republican governors—Marc Racicot of Montana, Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, and Bill Weld of Massachusetts—have signed on to a legal brief to the Supreme Court arguing that Donald Trump is disqualified from running for president under Section 3 of the 14th amendment to the Constitution. Greg Sargent talks to Racicot about what he hopes this will achieve, whether the GOP is to blame for the rise of Trump and the MAGA movement, and why principled anti-Trump Republican elites are a disappearing species. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices