Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
It’s very unnerving to imagine how we’re going to get through the next two and a half years of this. Molly Jong-Fast, the host of the Fast Politics podcast, has a great piece for The New Republic with editor Michael Tomasky on just this topic. So we’re talking to Molly about all of it today. Molly, really nice to have you on.
Sargent: So on Monday, Iran announced that it was walking away from the talks with the U.S. over Israeli attacks in Lebanon. Trump has lurched wildly back and forth over this. First, he said he doesn’t care at all if the talks are on hold. Then he said he’s personally intervened to get Israel to stop and the talks are suddenly back on track, he says, and proceeding rapidly.
Jong-Fast: No. I mean, I think that what’s happened is one of the functions of this second term of Trumpism is that Trump now has a world that fits whatever he wants. Surrounded by sycophants, people don’t tell him the truth. He also has people not telling him what’s actually happening.
Sargent: Yeah, that’s not ideal when you put it that way. Let’s talk about what Trump is saying now. He talked to CNBC on Monday and he was plainly livid over Iran pulling out. Let’s go through some of these quotes. First, he says he doesn’t care if the talks are done, saying, “I don’t care if they’re over. Honestly, I really don’t care. I couldn’t care less.”
Molly, he’s been saying for weeks and weeks and weeks that if Iran doesn’t open the Strait of Hormuz on terms that are entirely favorable to him, on terms that he dictates entirely, then he will obliterate Iran, he’ll wipe it off the map, and now he’ll blow it to kingdom come.
Jong-Fast: Well, I mean, I think he’s stuck. Look, the Iranians are in a position that’s 10 times better than they were before this whole thing started, because there had been the fear of them closing the strait. But no one actually thought—we hadn’t seen how well it worked for them. And now we have. Gas prices are—Trump can’t get the genie back in the bottle.
If you look at the polls, if the polls end up being right, he could lose the Senate too, by a lot. And he could—the point is, you need a certain number of senators to remove. I mean, it’s unlikely, but it’s not impossible.
What I think is the most—I want to say soul-crushing—part of this whole experience of watching Republicans, and Democrats have had problems too, is that they have really just sold the entire country out, whereas Democrats have fought with each other. But the thing that’s the most upsetting about Republicans selling each other out and the country is that this group of Republicans, the YOLO caucus—it was in The Wall Street Journal, the “you only live once” caucus.
This YOLO caucus is really, really mad. And that’s why Trump—we just have this breaking news that Trump may stop this weaponization fund, that this may be dead now. So that’s because this crew is really mad.
And so as disappointing as that is to me, it’s also instructive. Because as we cruise into a midterm where Trumpism becomes less and less tenable as he gets underwater in more and more states, you see a world where two or three months into the 2028 cycle, people decide that they could impeach and remove him because they want to get reelected. And it comes back to this theory that really all these people care about is keeping their jobs.
That’s really not that far in, and things could get a lot worse, particularly if he really spirals out of control with Democrats in control of one or both chambers.
There’s ICE still getting enormously scaled up, new prison camps coming into existence, FBI Director Kash Patel promising new arrests, Trump wants to invade Cuba and Greenland—and that’s just a partial list. You don’t paint a very reassuring picture of what’s in store for us, Molly.
It feels like his frontal lobe is not firing on all four cylinders. And so he is unable to not say stuff. Like he called the journalist a “piggy”—”quiet, piggy.” That kind of thing didn’t happen in Trump’s first term. He would fight with people, but in a very calculated way. He’d lose his temper, but he’d sort of figure out a way to spin it.
Sargent: Well, I want to go back to one other quote that Trump gave to CNBC because it goes to the core of a lot of this. He was talking about whether NATO will help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. He said this: “We don’t need them. We don’t need NATO. They were very, very weak and very sad.”
Jong-Fast: There is a number where these people become brave. And that number is because they realize that they can’t win. Part of the calculus is that they’re waiting until all of the primaries are over because they know that you can’t—they know from the John Cornyn story that you can’t win a primary without Trump.
I do think there’s a temptation to want to see these people as having a come-to-Jesus moment or a moment of moral clarity. And that is not what’s happening here. What’s happening here is just the most craven calculus.
But as of this moment, it looks like Senate Republicans are really unwilling to back it. The Republicans might try to pass language as part of reconciliation that will prevent any fund from being set up. A little unclear.
And it really looks like we’ve crossed a threshold where Republicans are experiencing a new level of frustration. Their frustration with him and the White House really seems to have boiled over. Is that too optimistic?
So these people don’t give a fuck about the American people. They want to get reelected, they want power. There’s a whole alchemy here, but none of it is good for anyone.
So the idea that this is a bridge too far—whatever. But I do think it’s good. It’s good that there’s some spine, because Donald Trump is basically running roughshod over our government. And it’s another moment to point out that it’s not popular with the American people—wildly unpopular, which is why these Republicans are standing up to him.
And so the people who used to pretend to be liberals—the Elon Musks and the Jeff Bezoses and the very, very, very wealthy—have just shown us that they are not only not good stewards of our mainstream media, but they are also just truly atrocious people who should not have any say in anything that happens in our government.
Jong-Fast: We’re at $5 gas. We’re seeing the supply is starting to—there’s some supply that is keeping the prices down. Eventually, we’re going to see another spike in gas prices. And what is the number that kills the Republican Party? Is it $6 gas? Is it $7 gas? I mean, that’s really the question.
There’s no historical precedent for a guy who gets elected and just does exactly the opposite of what he’s going to say. It’s one thing to run for office and say, I’m going to do this, and then not be able to do it, but at least you’re sort of trying. I mean, that was the Biden story, right? They wanted to bring back manufacturing. It was a heavy lift. They tried. They couldn’t necessarily do—they wanted to get Netanyahu under control. They couldn’t, but you could see they were trying.
Sargent: And on top of that all, just sort of typifying what you’re saying or capturing what you’re saying perfectly, he’s out there saying, I don’t care, I don’t care how long it lasts.
But he wasn’t defying actual political gravity like inflation. And that’s what we’re seeing now—the nuts and bolts of wheat prices and beef prices and the prices from the tariffs, the trade wars, that stuff is real political gravity and he doesn’t have an answer for it. Even a really skilled politician would suffer with this.
Sargent: Exactly. I really don’t think the fight is going to help him. I think it’s going to only hurt him because it just sort of smacks of this self-idolatry and this building of monuments to himself and the kind of Marie Antoinette vibe you’re talking about. Molly Jong-Fast, so nice to have you on finally. Thanks for coming on.
Jong-Fast: Thank you. Have me back. It’s really fun and I’m happy to be here.
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