Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Harry Litman: Hey, good to be here, Greg. Thanks.
Litman: Yeah. Well first, there’s no bridge he won’t burn, right? We’ve seen it again and again with all his former closest colleagues, most recently Musk, the Federalist Society, his alliance or loyalty lasts as long as the next piece of bad news. And the second thing is his obsession with numbers, which he’s always had even predating his presidency. But the first thing that gave us on the national landscape the real awareness of it was when in his very first inauguration—we’re talking 2017—he made his press secretary go out and give a complete false number about how many people were there to see the great new leader. There’s a lot of things he’s just completely ignorant about as best I can tell, but that—what are the numbers, where do they stand?—he is totally focused on and, as you say, to the point of lying about it wherever necessary.
Litman: By the way, if I can say, I happen to be in D.C. around the parade of the time, and 200,000 is a robust probably overexaggeration of who was there. A lot of them wanted to see the tanks and such. And as you mentioned, what is it, five million, six million who gathered around the country in the “No Kings” protest? So the feeling of it being really tepid, [like] air out of the tires, at the actual rally I can personally attest to.
Reporter (audio voiceover): Really quick on Jasmine Crockett. She said, I believe, that Trump supporters are “mentally ill” before calling for bipartisan support against the president. Can you respond to that, especially considering she’s a rising star in the Democrat Party right now?
Sargent: So I’m not even sure that’s what the congresswoman said. I tried to check the quote, and it looked like it was much more benign than that. But note how Leavitt falsely says Trump won a majority of voters in 2024; that’s not what happened. Then Leavitt tries to portray his support as broad, deep, and reaching into all corners of American life. It’s a preposterous depiction. What’s your reaction to that?
That seems to be what he’s doing broadly now. People are being arrested. He’s bringing troops against the will of governors. People are being charged and investigated. And it really seems like the administration is focused not just on individual Democrats, but the party and the cities that are Democratic strongholds as a whole.
Litman: If I can just interject [with] a poll that I found encouraging in the last few days: It’s the NBC News poll that says upward of 80 percent of Americans, including even 50 percent of MAGA, say that if courts tell the administration to do something, they need to obey. And if that holds—and if he doesn’t have the popular goodwill and support, as you just mentioned, to try to ignore the courts—then I think basically a lot of damage he can do, but the democracy will hold. So as a lawyer, that was the poll that really buoyed me.
Litman: Sure. I mean, the truth [is] it’s hardly an argument. It’s more just a documentation. [In] that Truth Social quote that you mentioned, Greg, the next sentence says Democrats in the big cities, this is their failure. So he’s wanted from the start—this goes to the rhetoric of the campaign—to (a) exaggerate, [though] exaggerate hardly being the word, to completely fabricate a crisis of violent immigrants and marauders taking over the country and eating our pets and totally lay that at the feet of Democrats and Democrats only. That seems to be the one tried-and-true trope that he can continue to use. And that’s part of my piece as well, besides trying to gather things together: As he gets his brains beat in by courts, as the Senate seems to reject his efforts to ratify DOGE, everything basically seems to come up empty. Here’s the one thing he returns to, and this is his basic governing strategy at this point. Trash Democrats, make them falsely try to own a false immigration issue. So it’s not simply to say he’s doing it but also to say that’s all he’s doing right now. So it’s quite a record—or nonrecord you could say.
Litman: And let me proffer one more datum. Fewer than 10 percent, it appears, are these kinds of violent immigrants with criminals—fewer than 10 percent of the people who have been deported. They’re just basically going at anybody to make the appearance that they’re really being aggressive. But Trump’s rhetoric has always been the country’s being taken over by violent marauding, raping, murdering immigrants. That’s been false from the start, but he certainly doesn’t have the numbers to show for it in the people that he is actually moving to deport.
Litman: That’s right. So he’s not only making these excessive and I think, as all the courts have said, unlawful claims of excess power to do this stuff but literally this is the president of the United States now. I talked also in the piece about the Minnesota shootings where any president would come out to unify, express national sympathy; he comes out and calls the governor of Minnesota completely incompetent and basically expresses no sympathy. Likewise here—so he’s not simply making these outsize and just false claims of the problem and of his own power but he’s literally doing it in plain sight to aid the MAGA faithful or even just red America and harm blue America.
Sargent: A hundred percent. And by the way, the absurdity of it is also that he’s saying straight out that migrant workers in red America and in industries that he cares about and industries that his supporters populate—they don’t count as an invasion anymore.
Sargent: Just like that. No more invasion. They’re not invaders. They’re hardworking people.
Sargent: Right. They’re not pet-eating invaders. They’re not criminals all of a sudden just because he said so. And yet the ones in blue America, the ones in Los Angeles, the ones in New York, the ones in Chicago—they are invaders.
Sargent: Sure is. There’s another dynamic here I want to get at, you hinted at it earlier. As you point out, Trump is losing badly on a bunch of fronts. He’s faced one setback after another in court. He’s had no legislative wins. I’d add that he’s floundering around in all directions on immigration; as we’re saying, one day he admits that deportations are hurting the economy, then loudly doubles down on them the next. And he’s unpopular, as all this polling is showing. And yet at the same time, while all that’s happening, that’s exactly when Trump ramps up the war on blue America explicitly. I think these things are connected. Whenever Trump is losing and feeling weak, the default position is always to go out and tell his base that he’s going to make people in blue America suffer more.
This is a time where for different reasons, mainly caused by him, the country needs leadership, the country needs unity—and he’s there to both set the flames and then light them and pour more fuel on them. That’s all he knows how to do.
Litman: Great point. Great point.
Litman: All of this is a “fuck you” to us. The university is. The law.… If you really analyze it down, who’s hurt? Everyday Americans, including in red America, where they need these things more. But I totally agree with you, Greg. And I think I’m long past trying to psychoanalyze Donald Trump, but honestly, his playbook, I’ve always thought, is pretty damn thin. And that’s all he can do: aggress, double down, be an asshole. That is his instinct, anytime his back is against the wall. It’s one thing to try to do in courts. It’s one thing to try to do with enemies in business. But it’s not the way to get above water in America.
So as you say, it’s ironic because the rule of holes [is] when you’re in a hole, stop digging—and he’s making it worse. And also again, for me and lawyers trying to have the lookout as best we can of what existential menace are we in, I think it just hurts him and makes it all the less tenable for him to try the ultimate power grab of ignoring the courts and aggregating everything to himself.
Litman: Thanks, Greg. Good to be here.
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