Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Meanwhile, his new press secretary, Katie Zacharia, has turned in a debut performance that was so bad that even MAGA allies and White House insiders are cringing over it.
Mark Jacob: Thank you.
Katie Zacharia (voiceover): I am so honored to work for President Trump and the American people as the new White House press secretary. I want to thank President Trump for the trust that he has placed in me. I have wanted to work for him for a very long time. I’m looking forward to working with each of you as well, especially as we are in the middle of the midterm blitz, with energy and excitement never seen before in the history of midterms, thanks to President Trump.
Jacob: Well, I mean, it seemed like she was doing the bit where you just talk to an audience of one. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks, as long as you just kind of, you know, glaze the president, everything is fine.
Sargent: I don’t want to be too cruel about this. Like, there’s a lot of real piling on going on on the internet now. But this is important, right, Mark? Like, it matters who the press secretary is, and it matters how she understands her job. Can you explain why it’s bad for her to conceive of her job as essentially propping up the feelings of the audience of one? Like, that’s bad, right?
And the job of the press secretary is not to lie for the president, it’s to tell the truth to the American public. And unfortunately, we’re in such a horrible time that people seem to forget that.
That needs to be understood—that these briefings are a way for the public to learn things, because the reporters are asking the right questions. But if she doesn’t even take the right questions, they’re not going to get any information. And it’s just—I mean, it’s really kind of North Korean telecast kind of stuff going on here now.
Jacob: It’s its own scandal that Trump is announcing major government policies on a social media site that he owns. That’s monetizing his personal property, you know, through the White House. I mean, that alone is scandalous, but it’s, you know, number 1,265 on the list of scandals.
Megyn Kelly (voiceover): Part of it is the look. You know, she’s got very heavy makeup on. She’s got the long curls. She’s got some chest showing with the tight—like, I think she needs to dial it back. I’m just going to say, like, I know she’s auditioning for a job on Fox News. They all are. Look at Dana Perino, she was too. Like, it’s been a long line of Republican press secretaries whose real goal is to wind up on Fox News. I get it. But Roger Ailes would be the first to tell you, when you are in a job in which you need to be taken seriously, you need to present as a serious person.
Jacob: Right. And not only is the Scaramucci thing coming out, but there’s also the picture of her next to a head of lettuce and asking which one is going to last longer, which is a reference to the prime minister in Britain a while back.
I mean, unfortunately that’s his pattern. You see the same—I mean, Hegseth has no business being defense secretary. Or RFK Junior is, like, the opposite of what a decent HHS secretary would be. So this is just part of the whole same thing, this kind of enshittification of the U.S. government.
It’s the property of the public. He is merely a steward of it. He doesn’t understand it in those terms. He thinks that her job is to glaze him. That’s what he actually thinks.
She was asked that question, initially, and we didn’t get a very good answer. Some bizarre thing about how that happened before she went to China, because she worked in China for a couple of years.
Jacob: Well, we shouldn’t accept members of the Cabinet being chosen merely because they’re good on TV, supposedly. I mean, that’s how you get the treasury secretary talking about the war repeatedly. And you’ve got people whose only job seems to be going on Fox News, and they’re in charge of major departments in the federal government.
And so all of this is going on because he’s totally incompetent. Trump is incompetent, but he’s got wholly incompetent people around him. And the only thing that they care about is, I guess, if they could just say something snotty on Fox News every day.
One advisor said that Trump is, “used to snapping his fingers and having the whole world—Republicans, world leaders, the media—come to attention, and he is losing his mind that Iran won’t listen.”
Jacob: Well, I mean, he’s just getting weirder. And he was weird to start with. But I mean, at a rally in Ohio, he’s talking about Senator Jon Husted’s ass. I mean, he used the word—he’s talking about, he’s admiring the senator’s ass. So I mean, it’s crazy town.
And then they asked Trump and said, hey, nobody seems to be following this ceasefire, why did you say you had an agreement? And he responded that he told them that they needed to come to an agreement, and that was enough. So he has these bizarre delusions of grandeur, where he thinks he can just kind of magically transform reality into what he thinks it should be.
He never stopped to wonder if there are limits to his powers. And that, I think, is revealed very neatly by this Atlantic reporting, which is quite extraordinary, really—to hear that he’s in this fury over feeling powerless and paralyzed.
I’ve got to tell you, Greg—and I wrote this in this week’s Stop the Presses newsletter—you know, all Trump’s weakening power is really good for America. But this is when authoritarians are dangerous. When they see their powers ebbing and they don’t know why, and all these sycophants who were on their side suddenly disappear on them—this is when they’re really dangerous.
They may take—and they’ve got ICE showing up near polling places. I mean, we have to really be vigilant about what’s going on here, and insist on a fair election, and not let them do all the crazy stuff they’ve been doing.
And what’s striking to me about what you’re saying here is, it sort of puts a finger on something else, which is that Donald Trump is genuinely and truly shocked when other people, other leaders, institutions aren’t as corrupt as he is.
Jacob: Yeah. I mean, his idea of making a deal was just this thought that everyone had a price. And it is gratifying to see that some people don’t have a price. And also just to see that the lies aren’t working anymore.
I just feel like—I think that it is, yeah, finally, after a decade, you’re starting to see a little more feistiness out of some people in the major press. But still not much. And I don’t think I’ll ever forget that White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which was just, you know, capitulation to a dictator, and just shockingly horrible.
And back to what you were saying—yes, when law firms and universities cave, it encourages more law firms and universities to cave. And when more stand up, it encourages more to stand up. And I mean, this kind of resistance to tyranny is contagious. And that does give me hope in these times.
Let’s just close by talking about Trump’s ebbing powers in another sense. He’s really lost a step. I mean, in many ways he is politically an extraordinarily formidable figure. I think it would be hard to deny that.
The two big October surprises we’ve seen—and credit to Rick Wilson for making this point—but the two big October surprises that we’ve seen here are Trump making this big, quote-unquote, deal with Russia to bring in diesel there. There’s that.
Jacob: Well, yeah. And he’s getting really oddly desperate. The thing that gets me is that they’re not focusing on any of the stuff that would actually help them now. I mean, Trump is still, like, talking about the helipad. He’s still talking about the ballroom. And he’s still in a big fight with a federal judge over cutting down trees in, you know, a park in D.C.
And his inability to talk about things that voters want to hear is shocking. I mean, it’s shocking kind of political malpractice from somebody who seemed to have some sort of, you know, magic dust that turned regular voters into sycophants and gullible people who believed everything.
But they’re not believing him anymore. I mean, I think the vast majority of people—I mean, he’s not even doing well with people who voted for him in 2024, according to the polls. I mean, his approval rating has gone from 95 percent at the start of this term with his voters to something like 67 percent.
Sargent: Mark Jacob, really good to talk to you. Folks, for more of Mark Jacob, make sure to check out his Substack, Stop the Presses. It’s great work. Mark, good to have you on.
Jacob: Thanks a lot.
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