Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
So we’re working through all of it with Michael Cohen, who does good work on his Substack, Truth and Consequences, dissecting both Trump’s weakness and his authoritarianism. Michael, good to have you on.
Sargent: So Trump just tweeted this: “Just finished my six-month physical at Walter Reed Military Medical Center. Everything checked out PERFECTLY.” Michael, I don’t know how his physical went, but the symptoms are constant.
Cohen: I mean, there’s no question about it. You’ve seen a significant deterioration. I think one of the problems with Trump is that he’s always been somebody who has never appeared to be the most coherent individual in the world. Certainly not the healthiest person in the world, either physically or mentally. But it does seem as though he’s gotten significantly worse.
I mean, maybe some people are that stupid in this country. But I think most Americans are not that dumb. And they realize the man’s falling asleep at public events.
The Twitter feed then ridiculed them, saying they must be asleep and that they should be forthcoming about their health. This was directed mostly at CNN journalists like Brianna Keilar, Kevin Liptak, Kate Bolduan, and Dana Bash. For instance, one White House tweet said, in all caps, “Dana Bash falls asleep ahead of her 55th birthday next month. What is going on?”
Cohen: Well, I don’t think it’s going to work. First of all, I think people can see clearly that he’s falling asleep. But I think the bigger thing here is this is what happens when you have a president who is such a malignant narcissist as Trump is.
He has to seem strong—not just strong, by the way, the strongest person. Not just healthy—he’s the healthiest person. What Trump has done is surround himself with all of these people who basically their only job is to stroke his ego. And so they will make these insane comments like the ones you mentioned a second ago, because that’s what Trump cares about.
Sargent: I want to get into another element of this, which is the degree to which it really resembles an authoritarian cult. It’s also obvious that Trump and the White House are only drawing more attention to his health and his physical and mental state by insisting, like a bunch of lickspittle North Korea propagandists, that his health is absolutely perfect and his strength and virility will be unquestioned.
Cohen: It is. And by the way, I think for the record, even the North Koreans are like, guys, take it down a notch. It’s a little much. Honestly. I think it is partly what you said—it is a sort of authoritarian mindset of the administration where they have to project strength all the time. But I think it’s also a product of just his particular psychology, and not healthy psychology.
We are able to get contrary points of view that point out that in fact the man was falling asleep, the man’s not the healthiest person in the world. He can’t outrun that. You can’t run the authoritarian playbook in a society that isn’t fundamentally authoritarian, at least not yet. So I just think that it’s not an effective political strategy.
Sargent: It’s interesting that you say that they really understand themselves to be trying an authoritarian strategy and that this can’t work in a society that’s still, at least to some degree, a free society. Because they very consciously, I think, did try to run this playbook right at the outset of the second term in a way that they really didn’t during the first term, as bad as it was.
And at this point, it should be pretty damn obvious that it has failed, and yet they continue to do it anyway. I find that a little tough to understand. Why do you think they do that?
And there were a lot of people, to be honest, in the corporate world especially—all the social media folks, Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos—who sort of played into it and kind of fell for it. But as time has gone on, that effort has largely, I think, failed. The so-called vibe shift we talked about in January, February 2025 has long gone.
This is why you had a great article in The New York Times over the weekend looking at how cabinet members talk about Trump. And they described him as though he is saving the country—the most glowing terms imaginable. They know that’s what Trump wants to hear.
But again, I think there is this huge gap between doing that and the reality of what people see. And to bring up one point here, you see this in some of the Republican primaries. Trump’s word remains golden. If Trump says vote against Thomas Massie, Kentucky voters are going to vote against the guy who’s been a congressman for several years and they’re going to pick the person Trump supports.
Sargent: Yeah, and not only that, I think his support is actually slipping among elite Republicans as well, because he’s now jammed them into a position where they have to just play along with the authoritarian cult worship in a way that now is exposing them to really serious political liabilities in the coming midterm elections, right? It looks to me like MAGA world is cracking up in a new way over this.
Don’t know what it’s going to be—maybe Paxton’s going to win, it looks like—but right now we don’t know who’s going to win it. Still, the fury among Republicans is really notable, because what’s got them ticked is that Cornyn was mostly loyal to Trump yet Trump screwed him anyway.
Cohen: I mean, if only there was some indication previously over the past 10 years if this is who Trump really is. I mean, what’s crazy is, is anyone surprised by this? So my pet theory as to why Trump came out in support of Paxton is because he wants to be associated with the winner of this runoff election, and that’s likely to be Paxton.
But the thing is, I was struck by how many Republican senators were just so frustrated with Trump that he endorsed Paxton. And again, my response is, how are you surprised by this? You have carried water for this guy over and over and over again for how many years? And when the, you know what, hits the fan, are you really surprised that he is going to sell you guys out? Because that’s what he always does.
No Republican wants to take that risk because no Republican can win without strong Republican support and they will lose that Republican support—or they risk losing it—if they come out against Trump.
But this is the problem for Republicans. They are caught between an unpopular president—a deeply unpopular president—who, however, remains popular within the party and will basically get Republican voters to do whatever he asks them to do.
He tweeted this: “The failing New York Times, the corrupt and now irrelevant CNN, and all other members of the fake news media will headline that Iran had a masterful and brilliant victory over the United States of America. The Dumocrats and media have totally lost their way. They have gone absolutely crazy.”
He’s clearly aware that there’s a confluence of slippage here working against him—slipping health, slipping control of the GOP, his inability to force Iran to do his bidding. It really feels very clear to me that things have crossed a new threshold of him not really being able to control events anymore.
I just think the problem again is that Trump is unpopular. He’s at 37, 38 percent. He can keep saying these things that clearly are not true, and it’s just going to further erode the support that he has. He’s lost Democrats. He’s lost independents at a pretty large margin. He still maintains Republican support, although some recent polls suggest even that’s slipping. I mean, how much longer can he even maintain that support if he is describing things that are completely counter to reality?
And so I just think that this, to your point, is going to get worse, because there is just no check on what he is doing and saying. And again, the gap between what he is doing and saying and the reality—what Americans are dealing with, whether at the gas pumps, whether what they’re seeing in the news—you can’t square the circle on these things. You just can’t.
Cohen: Great, my pleasure. Great to be here.
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