Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Olivia Troye, a former national security official during the first Trump administration, got an unusually close-up look at Trump’s mental unfitness for office. She just announced a run for Congress [as a Democrat]. So we’re talking to her about all this today. Olivia, thanks for coming on.
Sargent: Let’s start with House Speaker Mike Johnson. Recently the Pope criticized Hegseth for praying for maximal violence and killing of the enemy. The Pope said that God does not hear the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them. Now listen to Johnson.
Sargent: Let’s break this up into two pieces. Johnson said there that Trump has access to all this classified info that somehow makes our attack on Iran acceptable, seemingly meaning that the threat posed by Iran justified the attack. That’s not at all true. Is it, Olivia?
This is something that he has wanted to do for a very long time, but there were prevailing minds in the room that were able to navigate the situation and show him what the ramifications would mean. And so one of those being the Strait of Hormuz, which we are seeing play out right now in very, very plain view—the complications of what happens when you do that. And it ultimately impacts us here domestically.
Troye: I think the issue right now is that you have an ongoing escalation that is happening in this conflict, where now I don’t think that they even know where to go from here. I mean, I don’t think they know how to de-escalate this. I don’t know how they’re going to navigate this internationally. And this has become more of a regional thing as we’re seeing. And I think that in many ways, the United States—this leadership that we have unfortunately at the helm—has been outplayed.
Yet Hegseth has talked about killing people who surrender, and our war has killed well over a thousand civilians. Can you talk about the perversity of this, of Johnson invoking just war doctrine?
Troye: Yes, absolutely. Look, I think the bigger concern with Pete Hegseth is just their invocation of this being like almost their holy war to fight. That’s the irony to me about this entire situation—of Trump having the audacity to take on the head of the Catholic Church and attack him just for wanting a de-escalation of this conflict, for wanting less loss of life, for innocent lives not to be lost in this situation.
Sargent: It really is. Hegseth is just absolutely saturated in bloodlust and sadism. Let’s listen to JD Vance now. Here’s what he said about the Pope’s criticism of the Trump administration.
Sargent: That’s just amazing stuff. The Pope needs to be careful about these debates, but Vance would never say that Trump needs to be careful when he viciously attacks a spiritual leader for a billion people. I’ve got to say, Olivia, it’s just so dark that they put Trump above the Pope and treat Trump as a quasi-deity. It’s clear that these religious conservatives see their highest allegiance as being to Trump. I find this a mask-off moment. What do you think?
I mean, that’s pretty rich coming from these two individuals, certainly pretty rich from Donald Trump, who to me is like the antithesis of anything having to do with religion, considering how he conducts himself and all of the history of everything that he’s done in his life.
I mean, that meme of Jesus was disgusting. It was atrocious. And also the hypocrisy of the no-wars campaign, right? I mean, we’re engaged in conflicts, we’re sending military service members, people are being killed. I mean, this is just so, so heinous that I just don’t see how it ends. And I also think it’s only going to get worse—the more unfit, I would say, that he has shown himself to be, and his instability going forward.
Troye: Yeah, absolutely. And with this circle, especially unlike what I witnessed in the first Trump administration—back then there was some pushback, there was definitely recovery afterwards of like, how are we going to navigate whatever the madman in the Oval Office just said?—this is a totally different dynamic where you have a circle of complete, all-in loyalist enablers who are there for their own power quest and enabling. And so they are not going to take this on. They are not going to be willing to put their own power on the line to push back on this, which is why I think this is so dangerous overall in terms of the kind of demeanor.
Sargent: The New York Times had this extraordinary piece with the following headline: “Trump’s Erratic Behavior and Extreme Comments Revive Mental Health Debate.” The piece ran through Trump’s threat to obliterate Iranian civilization—his attack on the Pope for being weak on crime—that was the first attack. Trump’s tendency to wander off on weird tangents, his confusion about basic facts such as mixing up Greenland and Iceland. The piece very well documented that his former allies are talking about the need for the 25th Amendment now. This includes Marjorie Taylor Greene, Alex Jones, former White House lawyer Ty Cobb, who called him “clearly insane,” former chief of staff John Kelly, who concluded Trump is mentally ill, and so forth. Olivia, as someone who ran with those people a little bit, I just wanted to get your thoughts on that piece.
Trump aside, what it is doing to the global dynamic and the disruption here is going to be the aftermath of this. It’s going to last for years, Greg. The dynamics here, the rest of the world and the dynamics and how they have completely disrupted the world order—our allies don’t trust us. Why would they? Why would they? They have no idea what’s coming next and they’re left to deal with the fallout. Right? I mean, Europe is watching this conflict and they’re trying to figure out within themselves how they’re going to navigate this because it’s obviously impacting them as well.
Troye: I would say that when I observed him, he was certainly unpredictable. Obviously, the last person in his ear manipulates him. So easily manipulated with [that]. And I think also just short attention span, inability to really take in information unless you really are drawing it like a cartoon artist on pencil and paper—like, drawing it out to make sure that you can take it in, because you certainly can’t take in intelligence briefings. So that is a kind of persona. I do think that there was some, like, obviously he’s got the narcissistic qualities, the neurosis and the manipulation factor there. He’s very power hungry, always self-centered, always seeking the attention.
He’s going to continue to decline. And I think this insanity and this recklessness is only going to get worse over time. And we are going to see someone that is going to continue to lash out, especially as he becomes sort of a lame duck and his power is coming to an end. I just foresee him slash-and-burn in a way that we’ve probably never seen before, especially if he’s not all there.
I’ve never bought this line before. It seems to me that a lot of Americans don’t want to have a madman as president. And I want to ask you, as you sort of embark on this candidacy, are you going to talk about this kind of elephant in the room, so to speak, that the president is a nut?
Nevermind the fact that my mom, who’s 82 years old, is actually fearful right now because of ICE and what ICE is doing to torment our communities because they’re targeting people like her. I mean, so like when I look at the combination of this, yes, we care about affordability. We care about these issues, economic issues. But the thing is, a lot of these things are driven from the very top. They’re driven by Donald Trump’s actions and his recklessness. And so that is what I plan to do. I plan to tie it back to people and explain to people as much as I can, to educate people that, yeah, I want to work on that.
But the issue is that Trump at the helm, and MAGA Republicans and what they’re doing, are actually making our lives worse by the legislation and the things that they are focused on and passing, that feed back into that loop of these issues. And that’s why it doesn’t help to have a madman and unstable individual in the office who’s getting us into global conflicts that actually impact the kitchen table issues on a daily basis—and govern in this type of way, right? I mean, that is where my concern is as someone who witnessed this firsthand. I was there as a career person serving. Plenty of people are there in a career capacity right now that are having to live this daily nightmare firsthand and trying to navigate inside the government.
Troye: Yes, 100 percent, because it all impacts, it all boomerangs here domestically. So instability, conflict—he’s making our world less safe, right? He’s making our communities less safe, but he’s also creating the increases in the things, by the way, that he ran complaining about. Let’s not forget during the campaign, he blamed Kamala Harris and they said, oh, if you elect Kamala Harris, there would be war with Iran. The price of eggs, all of these things were the Republican narrative in 2024 that I was out there countering every day on the campaign trail when I was traveling to swing states. That is what you would hear. Well, guess what? We’re in those situations right now that Donald Trump has gotten us into.
Can you talk a little bit about that? Like, we don’t want the president to be saying that we’re going to use the American military to commit mass atrocities and extraordinarily serious and grave war crimes. We want our president to not do that kind of thing, correct?
I mean, to me, when I saw that, my concern was the after-effects and the implication of watching the president of the United States use such language globally and how the international community and how everyone perceives that, right? Because what that does is it antagonizes people against the United States. It radicalizes people against the United States. It makes people angry and overall it makes everyone much less safe.
Troye: Thank you. I appreciate the support. And if you want to learn more about me, visit OliviaTroye.com.
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