Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Amanda Marcotte: Thanks for having me.
He attacked them for impeding his authority, claimed the War Powers Act was unconstitutional, and even blasted the GOP senators for their stupidity. Amanda, your thoughts on all that?
Sargent: Amanda, what’s funny to me about this as well is that there’s, like, no planet on which this measure actually ends up stopping him from doing whatever he wants with the military, right? The House isn’t going to pass this thing. And even if the House did pass it, Trump would just veto it. So he’s not going to have his powers limited. He’s waging illegal war on Venezuela in many ways with the boat strikes and, you know, with the invasion itself without congressional authority. And he’s going to continue to do that. But the only thing that actually pissed him off is that these five Republicans would dare to question his authority.
They have really truly convinced themselves that their power is unlimited, that there’s nothing that anyone can do to stop them. I think that the success of the Venezuela kidnapping of Maduro—which has convinced them—has gotten into their heads, and they just think there’s nothing that can stop them right now and that there’s no limit.
Sargent: Well, it is very clear that right now Trump and his inner circle are trying to convey the impression in a major way that they are all-powerful, that something has fundamentally changed. Stephen Miller’s interview with CNN this past week was a good example. He said the following: “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. We live in a world—in the real world, Jake—that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”
Marcotte: Yeah, I’m trying to be not sympathetic, but sort of put myself in their shoes just a tiny bit to understand how delusional they’ve gotten. And it is a lot of power that you have in the White House.
I mean, a lot of these people are sadly younger than me, even though they look a lot older. But during the Iraq War, like, I don’t remember if it was ever confirmed that it was Karl Rove, but some unnamed Bush official told The New York Times that you people in the liberal world and the media are in the reality-based community, right?
But we all know how that turned out with the Iraq War. It turns out that you can’t just actually assert that you’re going to be successful, especially in something as chaotic as invading a foreign country, and think that that’s going to be effective.
Sargent: I absolutely agree with that. I want to come back to it in a sec, but for now, there is some evidence that Republicans are growing uncomfortable with Trump on a bunch of these fronts, getting a little more assertive as well.
There were other minor votes where Republicans defected. And on another front, interestingly enough, GOP senators are questioning Kristi Noem’s handling of that ICE shooting of Renee Goode in Minneapolis.
Marcotte: No, I think that’s true because right now we’re looking at a 2026 midterm where just the economic situation is going to put Republicans in [trouble]. I mean, we’re always going to get a swing to the left when there’s a Republican in office most of the time, but I think they are probably looking at polls that suggest it’s going to be a lot worse than they were anticipating because all that ordinary people are seeing from the Trump administration is just terrifying chaos.
And it certainly isn’t helping the price of eggs. Like he’s definitely not focused on the price of eggs. And you know, and I’m not trying to do that dumb Democrat thing where they have kitchen-table issues, but it’s like, I think more it’s just, it’s very clarifying how dumb it was to sort of tell yourself the story that there was an economic justification for voting for him.
I think this is significant, Amanda, because Trump and all of MAGA have gone entirely all-in on saying the shooting was 100 percent fine in every way, and a big part of this is they’re all following the MAGA God King’s command that they never admit he is fallible in any way at all.
Marcotte: One would hope, because this is really bad. And the thing is, the fact that they all immediately went straight to this ludicrous narrative, accusing this woman without evidence of being a domestic terrorist, and then they also rolled out the playbook of blaming the victim, you know, saying she has pronouns in her bio and she’s a lesbian—stuff that is utterly irrelevant to the situation.
And so they’re just going to sort of get out there and try to stomp facts out as quickly as possible with their lies. You know, and it’s one of those things where I think a lot of us are hesitant because we don’t have all the facts because we’re not liars. And we were a little worried: Well, what if they say a thing and it turns out to be true?
Sargent: The lying is an assertion of power in and of itself.
Sargent: They’re saying to their followers, you have to follow what Dear Leader is saying. Period.
Sargent: Right, there was no ramming. I think the reason all of this is significant ultimately is that Trump is trying to create the impression that his power is absolute.
I thought the Twitter reaction to it was all wrong. Like, people just got terrified and, you know, were quaking in horror and so forth. But Trump wants us to think that he believes this so we all demobilize and give up. But his power isn’t absolute, right, Amanda? I mean, is there really any reason to get psyched out by that?
His back was against the wall. He was losing and he just tried to escalate the tenor of the lies in hopes that that would make up for the facts sort of overcoming him, right? And I think we’re seeing similar behavior. It always is like that scene in Game of Thrones where Joffrey is screaming, “I am the king!” and Tywin says—his grandfather says—a man who has to say that is no king, basically. If you would say it, then you aren’t as powerful as you think.
He is going to lose the public debate over that shooting. I’m going to predict that right now.
It’s disconcerting, I’ll admit that, to watch a lot of MAGA people just roll over and pretend that this woman gunned the vehicle at this officer when we can all see nothing like that happened at all. But they’re not going to win this one. And he doesn’t have control over what we think, does he?
Sargent: Every video that you watch, every video that’s been created by some person somewhere who will never know who it is… it just gets out there and it’s there. You always see all these other people in the background also videoing and that’s—that to me is heartening and amazing.
Sargent: So true. Let’s close with the comic relief. Here’s Trump speaking with Fox News’ Sean Hannity about the news that Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado wants to give Trump her Nobel Peace Prize.
Donald Trump (voiceover) Well, I understand she’s coming in next week sometime. And I look forward to saying hello to her. And I’ve heard that she wants to do that. That’d be a great honor. I did put out eight wars.
And so this is somebody who, to go back to your earlier point, you don’t go out there and say, I am the king, if you actually are the king. You don’t go out there and say, this Nobel Peace… I deserve a Nobel Peace Prize simply because the opposition leader is trying to bribe you with it.
But I mean, obviously, like, that’s the logic behind putting his name on the Kennedy Center, isn’t it? Like, he’s just trying to steal JFK’s valor. And now, I mean, I suppose it’s sad. It’s really sad. It’s also unfortunately kind of predictable if you know the sort of psychology of these people, like of people with the myriad of personality disorders he’s experiencing.
Sargent: So how much longer is this going to go on, Amanda? You know, we’re going to have ICE explode in recruitment. We’re going to see more deaths on the streets. We’re going to see them ratchet up the propaganda in a furious way to volumes that we probably haven’t ever really seen before. But in the end, our minds are our own, right?
And it’s going to create a social cause for signing up for ICE that will further drive down their recruitment. These are things that we can do. This is power that we have.
Sargent: Yeah, we have to make it so. And so to just sort of boil this down simply, when Trump tells you that the only thing that’s limiting his power is his own mind—whatever the hell he means by that—don’t believe him. Amanda Marcotte, it’s always really, really good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on.
Marcotte: Thanks for having me, Greg. Always a good time.
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