The following is a lightly edited transcript of the August 17 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Donald Trump just had two very strange outbursts that won’t make Republicans happy. In one, he angrily ridiculed the idea that anyone would be upset about higher costs created by his war. In the other, he brushed off the concerns of military families about the length of overseas deployments. All this comes as Trump is pushing through dramatic new changes to aircraft carriers that are roundly rejected by military experts.
And that prompted a scalding takedown from a Democratic senator who actually knows something about these topics. It occurs to us that all this captures something essential about the fix we’re in. Trump has been faking it all his life, and it’s finally catching up with us. We’re going to work through it all with MS Now’s Steve Benen, who caught a really interesting pattern buried in all this lunacy. Steve, good to have you back on.
Steve Benen: Thanks, Greg. It’s great to be here.
Sargent: So let’s start with what Trump said at a rally just now. Listen to this.
Donald Trump (voiceover): For you to pay a tiny little bit more for your gasoline, just remember, you’re doing it so that a very evil country cannot have a—it’s really the number one state sponsor of terror in the world. We don’t want to have them have a nuclear weapon. So remember that when you have to pay a little bit more. You’re at four dollars. It’s OK. I mean, it’s—I’m not, I’m not—I’ll never apologize. I did the right thing.
Sargent: Steve, that is really something. Note the pure seething contempt for anyone who’s concerned by the added costs created by his war, his unnecessary war. He’s unable to grasp these voter concerns through any frame other than how it reflects on him. I think this is a big deal, big news. What do you think?
Benen: Yeah, I think you’re right. I mean, here we are, twelve weeks out from the midterms. Polls showed that affordability and the cost of living are the number one issue on the minds of the vast majority of voters. And so one would like to think that the head of the Republican Party, the sitting American president, would have the wherewithal to express some empathy and to say, maybe I can try and help you. Maybe I care about the pain that you’re dealing with right now, and I’m going to maybe promise you new policies or a better tomorrow in some way.
But no, he doesn’t do any of those things. Donald Trump instead stands in front of a crowd full of supporters, mocks the very idea that they’re suffering in any way, and denies any responsibility for the fact that he’s to blame for these circumstances that people are suffering through.
And so, you said you think it’s a big deal. I agree with you. I think this is the sort of thing that can resonate with most voters, who see this and will be disgusted by it. And so I would not be the least bit surprised if this is one of those quotes that just lingers in the public mind for the next several weeks.
Sargent: Yes. And this is something that Democrats really have to grab onto. I don’t want to hear anything from any Democratic strategists about how Trump’s negatives are baked in or whatever. Grab this and use it. That’s what I think they should do.
Benen: Well, wait a minute. It’s a gift handed to Democrats on a platter. I mean, here we are, looking at a set of circumstances in which Democrats are saying that they want to focus almost exclusively on kitchen-table issues. They want to avoid social issues altogether, nothing about the culture war. They want to talk about the economy. Well, great.
The head of the Republican Party just said he doesn’t care about higher gas prices. He laughs off affordability as a scam. He doesn’t accept responsibility for the fact that he’s ultimately to blame for the fact that people are suffering through these higher costs, higher cost of living, higher prices. And so, I think you’re quite right. For Democrats who are looking for a strategy for the final 12 weeks, for this home stretch between now and November—well, here it is. Donald Trump just handed it to you.
Sargent: He absolutely did. This is the sort of thing that could really seep into the coverage. So let’s now go to this other Trump outburst. Reporting had indicated that on the USS Lincoln aircraft carrier, living conditions were poor, in part because it had been out at sea for far too long in the Mideast.
Now, the audio of this exchange is not great, but listen carefully and you can hear that a reporter asks Trump to respond to families’ concerns about these long deployments. Trump just brushes it off. Listen.
Reporter (voiceover): Family members of U.S. servicemembers are concerned with the conditions aboard the USS Lincoln…
Donald Trump (voiceover): Well, no, that ship is moving. No, they’re not. That ship is moving right now, or very shortly, and it’s being replaced with another very similar ship.
Reporter (voiceover): Have the deployments gone on too long?
Donald Trump (voiceover): No, not nearly long enough.
Sargent: So there Trump says that the families just aren’t concerned about all this, because he says so. And then he says, you know, the deployment hasn’t gone on long enough, by which I think he means, we’re going to continue this until we win. But again, the seething contempt is the story here.
Steve, I recognize that Trump has rewritten the rules of our politics, but this plus the other thing together paint a picture of a president who feels zero obligation of any kind to take ordinary people’s concerns seriously.
Benen: I think that in both instances he had an opportunity to show empathy, but he’s simply incapable of doing so. It’s just not in his nature. It’s not part of his MO. He can’t bring himself to recognize that this was an opportunity to show some sympathy, to show some empathy, to show that he cares, that he understands the suffering of people who deserve sympathy—and yet he can’t bring himself to do it.
Now, in the case of high gas prices, it’s a much larger group of people, but at the same time, it’s just as important, if not more so, to sympathize with the sailors and marines on the USS Lincoln and the loved ones back home, who are concerned about the fact that they’ve had this modern-day record for the longest possible deployment, and now they’re running out of soap and food.
What is the president’s response to this? It’s to express indifference, to just shrug it off.
Sargent: Trump instantly converts everything into a question of whether he is getting the esteem and the adulation that he knows is due to him.
Benen: If he were to acknowledge the fact that these families exist, that these loved ones who are worried about the sailors and the marines on the USS Lincoln—if he were to acknowledge the fact that their concerns exist, it would reflect poorly on him. It would reflect poorly on his administration, on his poor judgment, on Pete Hegseth’s judgment, for an illegal war that he doesn’t know how to end.
And so if he were to acknowledge their existence, it would reflect poorly on him. And so therefore he has no choice, in his twisted mind and his twisted perspective and worldview, but to say, well, then therefore they don’t exist, because they can’t, in his mind. And it’s just so offensive on its face. A normal human being, much less a normal American president, knows not to behave this way. And yet here we are, seeing him once again demonstrate the fact that his entire worldview is broken.
Sargent: Yes, and it’s in this context that Trump is directing the Navy to completely uproot a system it uses for launching jets from aircraft carriers and replace it with steam catapults. Now, I don’t claim any expertise in this area, OK?
Benen: Neither do I.
Sargent: But a lot of experts are saying it’s a terrible idea that will needlessly cost billions of dollars. And the Navy has been battling the idea for years, because it’s been a longtime obsession of Trump’s. Steve, can you sort of sum up what this is all about?
Benen: Well, sure. About a decade ago, apparently, according to Donald Trump, he spoke to some sailor who said that the current system of launching jet fighters off of aircraft carriers was too complicated. And so apparently, as part of this conversation, this sailor—who may or may not exist, whose name we do not know—said that he preferred the steam catapults.
And ever since then, Donald Trump has said, for whatever reason, that he disagrees with the Navy, disagrees with the experts, disagrees with all the engineers and everyone who could possibly lend him good advice. He disagrees with all of them and says, no, no, we need steam catapults, not electromagnetic catapults.
And so, early on in his first term, he apparently directed the Navy to start pursuing this change. And they blew him off because—and this is the important part—they know what they’re talking about. Unlike the president, who doesn’t, they knew what they were talking about, and so they ignored him.
And yet here we are, second term, and we have an official document posted to the White House website that shows that Donald Trump has actually gone to the Pentagon and said, I am directing you to move forward with plans to swap out the existing system and replace it with steam-based catapults—because, according to the president, this is the smart thing to do, despite the fact that the Navy has told him that it is not.
Sargent: Yes. And so you caught this interesting, broader pattern in which Trump just declares himself to be one of the world’s foremost experts, or even the world’s leading expert, in all sorts of different areas, in whatever comes up at any time. You looked back and found that he said this on construction, on tariffs, on firearms, on health care, on drone technology, even on grass. That one, I didn’t know what to make of. Trump is an expert on grass. What kind of grass? I might be leaving a few out.
Tell us what you found when you looked at this pattern.
Benen: Well, you know, last week, in an offhand comment, Donald Trump said, quote, “I know more about grass than any human being, I think, anywhere in the world,” end quote. Now, if you’re laughing, as you should, because it’s hilarious—I laughed at it too. But in context, this is something that he does all the time. No matter what the subject is, he is the world-renowned authoritative source on every subject.
He not just claims to have familiarity with the subject, or a basic competence—he claims to have limitless expertise, without rival anywhere on the planet, on all of the subjects. Now, on the one hand, of course, we can laugh about that, because it’s absurd. But on the other hand, that arrogance, that misplaced arrogance, leads him to believe that he’s capable of making decisions about things he knows nothing about, because in his mind he is the foremost expert on these subjects.
And so when it comes to things like how best to launch jet planes off of an aircraft carrier, he doesn’t turn to people who know what they’re talking about. He instead says, well, I am the foremost expert on this subject. I talked to a sailor 10 years ago who likes catapults. So therefore, we’re going to go with that steam-based approach.
Sargent: Donald Trump is a devotee of positive thinking. He’s someone who genuinely believes that you can make things true by saying them. This has been true about Trump all his life. And all his life as well, it has also applied to him saying that he knows more than anyone else in the world about any subject.
But I can’t help but feel like, after a lifetime of Trump getting away with this, we might finally be at the point where he’s not going to be able to get away with it much longer. Is that too optimistic, or what?
Benen: Well, I don’t think it’s too optimistic. And the reason I believe that there’s something to this is that right now we see his approval rating sinking. We see his popularity collapsing. And I think that that is a reflection of the fact that the American mainstream has had an opportunity to get a good look at this guy, to get a good sense of where he’s leading the country, looking at the results of his approach to governance over the last year and a half—in fact, over the last five and a half years of his presidency. And they’re rejecting it roundly and soundly. And they’re saying, you know what? I’m sick of it.
There are a lot of people who voted for him who now regret that. There are a lot of people who voted against him, or who are now eager to vote in the midterms. And so I don’t think it’s overly optimistic to think that we’ve really turned a page here. We’ve got congressional Republicans kind of separating themselves from him. We see voters definitely rejecting the White House.
And so I think that combination of factors, plus what we’re seeing in terms of the special election results and primary turnout—all of these factors lead me to think that there is a blue wave taking shape, that there is a movement taking shape to reject what we’re seeing out of the White House. And so I think that optimism that you described, I think, is well grounded.
Sargent: I think a lot of people will listen to you and me talking about this with a little bit of pessimism or skepticism. They’ll say, OK, well, we went through this in Trump 1.0. And in a few years, everybody just forgot about what Trump had done, even though, you know, hundreds of thousands of people needlessly died and the economy was crashed into the shitter. And that’s true, right? But there is reason to think that things are different this time.
For one thing, voters wrongly, I think—but still, they concluded that COVID was kind of an external event that wasn’t Trump’s fault. It was imposed on him, and that that’s what crashed the economy, right? I don’t think that’s right, but I can see how voters concluded it. For another, during Trump’s first term, he actually did listen to people to a degree that he simply does not right now. And I think that’s a critical difference.
We’re seeing in his second term Trumpism unshackled on every front—immigration, tariffs, America First in the world. And I think that that fact, that the three major pillars of Trumpism, of MAGA, of right-wing populism, were really tried in this new kind of way and are failing so miserably, kind of creates an opening for a different level of rejection of Donald Trump and Trumpism. Do you think that’s too optimistic?
Benen: I don’t. And I want to back up for a second, because you were saying that a lot of people who are listening to this are going to think that, well, we’ve been through this, but Trump had kind of worked his way out and he ends up on top anyway. But I’d remind folks, in his first term, his first midterms were a disaster for Republicans. Democrats took back the House. And in a presidential election, Trump lost roundly, by more than five million votes to Joe Biden.
And so I don’t want to make it seem as if somehow Trump has always persevered under these circumstances, because I think we look back in recent history and that hasn’t been the case. But putting that aside, even looking at more contemporary conditions, I think that what we’re seeing now is a wholesale rejection based on a wholesale failure.
I mean, I think that the benchmarks that you just identified are true. I think that right now the fact that Democrats have an advantage on immigration for the first time in many, many years is a reflection of the fact that people see the status quo and they’re not satisfied with it. They are rejecting it, and they’re opening the door to something fundamentally different.
Sargent: Some polls are showing that Democrats have the advantage on the economy for the first time in many years. So immigration and the economy and national security—three areas where Republicans have had traditional advantages, all thrown away by Donald Trump’s incompetence. That’s the story, I think.
Benen: Right. And it’s fueled by fact. This is not just based on perception, it is fueled by fact. I think that ICE and the immigration agenda has been a spectacular failure. We look at the economy, we see the economy losing jobs and with stagnant growth. These are not just based on perceptions. It’s not just based on media narratives. This is about facts. This is about reality. This is about the daily lives that Americans are experiencing, and they’re seeing failure, and they’re sick of it.
Sargent: These are really the three pillars of right-wing populism more broadly, right? Immigration, economy, America First in the world. And so I think, as you said earlier, the American people might be ready to hear something different. I think really they may have their ears open in a way that maybe they haven’t in a very long time. I sure hope so, anyway.
Benen: I think you’re right. And I think that there’s ample public opinion research that shows that this is not just something that we’re kicking around as a possibility. It is something that is absolutely happening right now as we speak.
Sargent: Well, let’s conclude on Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona. He responded to Trump’s craziness about the Navy and the uprooting of the system. Listen to this.
Mark Kelly (voiceover): By the way, Donald Trump knows nothing about this stuff. Not in any world would I ever suggest to the Navy to change the design of some system on a ship at this point. I mean, does the guy know nothing about the way our government is supposed to work and how it’s supposed to be managed? For him to get in these details, especially with his background? I mean, what is his background? He’s a marginally failed real estate developer, right, with multiple bankruptcies. He shouldn’t be weighing in on systems on aircraft carriers. But for some reason, like something like six years ago, somebody said something to him, and he’s been fixated on this issue that, to a president of the United States, should not be an issue.
Sargent: That’s quite a takedown, Steve. I think that Democrats have an opening to really recapture national security in a very broad sense here, by putting people like Mark Kelly out there to just scaldingly ridicule the idea that this guy has any idea what he’s talking about on any of these fronts, especially when we’re in the middle of such an absolute global catastrophe as the one he’s drawn us into. What do you think?
Benen: It reminds me a lot of what the political landscape looked like towards the end of 2008. You know, the economy was in ruins, and Americans were not only upset about the Great Recession, they were also upset about the fact that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney had launched two unsuccessful wars in the Middle East, in Iraq and Afghanistan, respectively. And at that point, there was an opportunity for people to say, you know what, I’m sick of this, I want to be ready for a change, not just on the economy, but on foreign policy too.
And I think the fact that Trump is failing so miserably in Iran, and the war continues to drag on—here we are, it’s nearly six months in. Americans were told that this was going to be a quick war, this was going to be an easy war, that this was going to be a casualty-free war, and none of those things have happened. And so now we have people like Mark Kelly, who has a lot of credibility on this, clearly speaking out, but others are speaking out as well.
And this message is getting through. The war is wildly unpopular with the American mainstream, nearly as unpopular as Trump’s economic performance. And that one-two punch is absolutely devastating, not only to the White House and its agenda, but to the Republican Party at large, especially here we are in this critical election period.
Sargent: Just to take your 2008 and George W. Bush comparison one step further—everybody should recall that in 2004, after George W. Bush was reelected, he looked absolutely untouchable. I remember the atmosphere at the time was that because of September 11, and because of, you know, all the sort of theatrics that Karl Rove was doing, which at the time looked really formidable, right?
The sense was that he had absolute dominance over our information space, that there was no way they could lose arguments, that Democrats were just scattered and listless and without direction. And then, in two short years, Republicans lost both chambers of Congress. And, then we got 2008 and one of the biggest Democratic victories in, I guess, our lifetimes.
Benen: Exactly. You know, it’s so easy to forget that after 2004, we heard the same things that we were hearing shortly after 2024—that we had entered an era of Republican dominance, that Republicans were going to be leading for the foreseeable future, that they’d cracked the code, they’d rewritten the alignment, everything was going to be different from here on out. That’s what we heard in 2004, when Republicans were running the show. They had the White House, the House, the Senate, and the Supreme Court. And as far as we were told, the conventional wisdom from most of the pundits was that Democrats were just lost at sea for the foreseeable future. Two years later, Democrats took back Congress. And then two years after that, they controlled the show. They were in charge.
And so I think that when you heard similar talk in 2024, after Trump won, that he had somehow realigned American politics, I couldn’t help but laugh at the time, thinking, yeah, let’s get back to me in a year and a half. Let’s see what’s going on as we approach the midterms. And here we are. It’s exactly what’s happening. History is repeating itself. They didn’t really earn a mandate in 2004 or in 2024. They overplayed their hand. Americans rejected the poor economy and a failed war in the Middle East. And it’s happening just like it happened then. It’s happening again now.
Sargent: And Trump was supposed to be the guy who was much shrewder than the Bushes and the Roves of the world. Steve Benen, all of that was beautifully said. Thank you so much for coming on. Folks, if you want to check out Steve Benen’s stuff, make sure to check out the MaddowBlog over at MS Now. Steve, great to talk to you.
Benen: See you soon, Greg. Thanks.
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