The following is a lightly edited transcript of the February 26 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.
A lot happened at White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s most recent media briefing on Tuesday. Leavitt announced that the White House will now be deciding who attends these briefings going forward, an effort to insulate President Trump from tough scrutiny. She also offered some bafflingly awful spin about the developing fiasco around Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. At key moments, Leavitt was visibly seething at the media, and we think we know why. On Tuesday, we also saw Trump hit by more bad economic news as consumer confidence registered its biggest monthly drop since 2021. James Downie, economist for MSNBC.com, recently wrote a piece observing that Trump actually doesn’t want to talk about the economy these days. The Leavitt briefing illustrated what’s going on nicely, so we’re talking to James Downie today. Good to have you on, Jim.
James Downie: Good to be with you.
Sargent: Let’s start with the big announcement. The White House has barred the Associated Press from the White House Press Room because the AP is refusing to literally parrot Trump’s propaganda—that is refusing to use the phrase “Gulf of America.” Here’s what Leavitt added on Tuesday.
Karoline Leavitt (audio voiceover): As you all know, for decades, a group of D.C.–based journalists, the White House Correspondents Association, has long dictated which journalists get to ask questions of the President of the United States in these most intimate spaces. Not anymore. I am proud to announce that we are going to give the power back to the people who read your papers, who watch your television shows, and who listen to your radio stations. Moving forward, the White House press pool will be determined by the White House press team.
Sargent: Jim, the key tell there is that she almost says straight out that independent journalists shouldn’t determine who gets to ask the president questions. Now, I don’t know where this is going, but clearly the White House wants a big distracting fight with the media right now to keep the base in a lather. What’s your reaction to all of it?
Downie: It’s a tactic straight out of authoritarian governments trying to dictate who reports on their news. And obviously the White House does not like that the AP is not bending the knee, and they’re sending a signal to other outlets, Hey, if you don’t play ball with us, we can revoke your pool access and bar you from press briefings, from press events, all sorts of things. They’re trying to get people to play along, and the response so far from the press outlets has been relatively muted. There’s been some strong language today from the White House Correspondence Association since Leavitt’s announcement, but we’ll see what happens there going forward.
Sargent: They seem to really want this big fight with the media. They milked the fight with the Associated Press for all it was worth, and they don’t seem to care how ludicrous it is that they’re demanding that a media organization call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. This is not for the middle of the country. It’s for their media sources. It’s for their podcasters. It’s for the whole right-wing propaganda apparatus. It’s all for them. Why do they want this fight with the media? Why are they giving this chum to their people so aggressively right now, do you think?
Downie: I think the first thing is, as you said, this gives them some fight that they can point to and say, Hey, we’re taking on the liberal media, at a time where they’re running out of executive orders, which have basically functioned as stunts for the first couple of weeks—that we assigned this executive order that does this thing or that thing; sure, it’s not a law; sure, it can be reversed later or maybe it’ll be taken up in the courts, but we’ve done this executive order, that executive order.
They’re running out of those, what was pre-prepared through Project 2025 and other avenues. This is a new stunt that can try and distract their base. Obviously, I don’t mean to downplay the craziness of the White House trying to tell the AP or another independent outlet what to do, but for the purposes of the right-wing base, I do think it is a distraction from the news.
Sargent: I think it’s a critical point that they’re running out of executive orders. That was their big bang, going out right out front. And to the degree that that got the liberal media screaming and it got all of us saying that they were behaving dictatorially, all the better, they think. But they picked all the low-hanging Project 2025 fruit, and now they’re running out of things to do. They have to create the impression that they’re taking on the elites, and this is what they’re going to use.
Downie: Yeah, and if I could add, as the record of Trump’s second term starts to come into focus more as you start to get more data on that, this conflict is going to come into play where it’s going to be, OK, if we say the unemployment rate is this and you say the unemployment rate is that, well, we may revoke your press access. It’s not that far of a jump from Gulf of America to saying, Unemployment’s at 2 percent.
Sargent: This has been something that we’ve all been anticipating, which is that we’re going to see a level of manipulation of government data that is unparalleled in recent memory. And they’re going to really try to strong arm the press into pretending it’s all real. Speaking of data really starting to bring into focus the Trump presidency, we just heard that the consumer confidence index fell for the third straight month. This time, it was the biggest monthly drop since August of 2021. Clearly, something’s going badly for people right now out there. A recent Reuters poll found that only 32 percent approve of Trump’s handling of prices. Gallup found that 59 percent say the economy is getting worse. You had a piece recently saying that Trump really doesn’t want to talk about the economy, and that’s the frame for understanding why Trump keeps talking about annexing Greenland and the Panama Canal and so forth. Can you talk about that a bit?
Downie: That’s right. As you were saying, the consumer confidence index is lowest since last summer, largest one-month drop since August of 2021. That matches other surveys we’ve seen recently showing Americans concerns about future inflation rising. Some of this is what people are seeing in the grocery store and prices are up 50 percent since this time last year. One thing that’s really interesting about these data points, and one reason Trump doesn’t want to talk about it, is that in these surveys, they ask for comments from businesses, consumers, etc., and a lot of people mentioned Trump’s tariff policies—Trump policies in general, but specifically the tariff policies.
There was a Washington Post–Ipsos poll that found seven in 10 Americans expect tariffs to raise prices. And that means they’ve taken a course in basic economics. Unfortunately, the president doesn’t seem to have taken that course in basic economics; he said yesterday that we’re going to go ahead with those tariffs on Canada and Mexico that were put off last month. I think people recognize that he’s plowing ahead with these tariffs, he’s plowing ahead with these policies, and they’re not going to be good for prices. They’re not going to be good for people who are hoping to get a bit of a break from the cost of living crisis that’s been really on and off hitting Americans for years now.
Sargent: Yeah, and I think it’s plausible that Trump and his people sense a problem with their base right now. Trump has been losing a lot in court. He’s privately angry reportedly that the deportation numbers aren’t high enough. The press has mercilessly picked apart the fake DOGE savings that Musk keeps buffoonishly finding. Trump recently commanded Musk to get more aggressive, which is another way of saying, You better find a bit more, man. And that was what precipitated Musk’s crazy email, which is now blowing up in their faces again. So they’re really running aground on a number of fronts. And I’ve got to think they’re worried that the base is a little unhappy about that. What do you think?
Downie: Absolutely. They are right to be concerned about a problem in his base specifically. While there are lots of very well-to-do people in his base, a lot of his voters are lower income now than they were the first time around and they are experiencing the same inflation pain that a lot of other people are. And obviously, I think anyone can tell you that a lot of Trump voters were always going to vote for Donald Trump, regardless. But there is some portion of that base—and we’ve seen this in focus groups and we’ve seen this in the polling data—that either didn’t vote for Democrats or they voted for Trump because they thought he would fix prices as he promised, that he will bring down prices on day one. That’s what he promised—and he started back away from that. He started back away from that almost immediately, and he was telling, for example, his agriculture secretary last week, We got to do something about eggs because I keep hearing about eggs. So they are hearing about this from their base, and they’re seeing it in their internal polling.
Sargent: Such a critical point you raised there, which is that the new, more MAGA-fied coalition that elected Trump the second time really has a bunch of low propensity, minimally engaged, working-class voters, some young, some nonwhite. Those are people who are really going to be put off by the continued bad economic news because they’re the ones who, I think, really took a flyer on Trump thinking that this guy can work some magic. He’s not the guy in charge while prices rose; Biden was. He’s the guy I’ve seen on Celebrity Apprentice. He’s the guy who I know built all those big buildings. He’s the guy who keeps firing people on TV. Trump’s cultural penetration, which was really a remarkable thing, was what got him elected. That, at the same time, is his Achilles heel. Those voters want results.
Downie: Absolutely. And because it’s been nearly 20 years, or getting close to 20 years, since the last huge economic recession, we’ve forgotten how seismic that was politically to the two parties. Barack Obama was an incredibly talented politician, make no mistake, but the overwhelming victory for Democrats in 2008 was in no small part due to the economy. We talk about the difference that inflation made in 2024; whatever difference that made will look tiny compared to if there’s true economic recession troubles or another spike in inflation. It’s going to be, I think, something that we can barely understand right now.
Sargent: Yeah, absolutely. I was looking at Trump’s Truth Social feed, and he’s been tweeting a lot of charts that supposedly show that he’s winning everywhere: big lists of his supposed accomplishments, big lists of DOGE’s supposed savings. It’s all nonsense, but he’s clearly looking a little bit anxious right now. They know that they’ve got a bit of a short leash here and they’ve got to start delivering fast.
Downie: The biggest problem for them also is their vote margin in the House. And we’re seeing this happen to come to the fore again this week because every president, from the moment they’re inaugurated, they are on…. We talk about the [first] 100 days, and we talk about it partly because people associate with the New Deal and big sweeping change but also because the momentum from inauguration goes away extremely quickly. That’s an even bigger problem when, as we’re seeing in the House, they have a one-vote margin. They are struggling, as we speak, to try and pass some budget blueprint. And it’s such a narrow margin that they haven’t even moved ahead with Elise Stefanik’s nomination for U.N. ambassador because they can’t spare her seat—Mike Johnson literally can’t spare her vote.
So, in addition to Trump is already losing momentum just like any president would as you get farther and farther away from inauguration, where are the big victories going to come from? They have such a narrow margin, particularly in the House, to steer things through, and they have to appeal to both the few remaining moderates and an even bigger far-right caucus. That’s going to be a real struggle to bring in the sweeping big changes that he promised.
Sargent: A hundred percent. I just want to switch back to Leavitt’s briefing for a second. I want to highlight two other quick moments. First, a reporter pressed Leavitt on the fact that Elon Musk’s email demanding that federal employees list their accomplishments was defied by multiple top agency officials. Here’s what she said.
Reporter (audio voiceover): So some of those cabinet members were caught off guard by the email from Saturday.
Leavitt (audio voiceover): Nobody was caught off guard.
Reporter (audio voiceover): A few departments said they were caught off guard. The FBI was, the DOJ was.
Leavitt (audio voiceover): Did anonymous sources say that or did the cabinet secretary say that?
Reporter (audio voiceover): The cabinet secretaries and others have said that they were not aware that this was happening.
Sargent: Then another reporter pressed Leavitt to name the administrator of DOGE.
Reporter (audio voiceover): Can you tell us who the administrator of DOGE is?
Leavitt (audio voiceover): Again, I’ve been asked and answered this question. Elon Musk is overseeing DOGE. There are career …
Reporter (audio voiceover): Who’s the administrator?
Leavitt (audio voiceover): No, Elon Musk is a special government employee, which I’ve also been asked and have answered that question as well. There are career officials at DOGE. There are political appointees at DOGE. I’m not going to reveal the name of that individual from this podium. I’m happy to follow up and provide that to you, but we’ve been incredibly transparent about the way that DOGE is working.
Sargent: Jim, you can hear the anger there. She can’t admit that Trump’s own officials defied Musk’s vacuous command for obvious reasons, and she can’t say who the administrator of DOGE is because Musk is running it—and that may very well be unconstitutional. Take this all together, isn’t this a pretty clear sign that they just can’t explain their way out of the box that Musk’s DOGE disaster has put them in?
Downie: Yes, I think that’s completely correct. This afternoon, less than an hour or two after this press briefing, the White House said, This woman, Amy Gleason, who no one had ever heard of, is now the acting administrator of DOGE. And when people tried to contact her for comment, she was actually in Mexico on vacation. It’s absolutely crazy.
In terms of Musk’s role—also in that clip and in that briefing, she refers to Musk as overseeing DOGE, even as she says that there’s a separate administrator, which I don’t understand how that’s supposed to work. It’s complete nonsense, and it shows a real tension in the administration. Trump is trying to empower guys like Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth, and all these people are supposed to be their own wrecking balls. They’re supposed to be taking on these bureaucracies and so forth and enacting these big changes that Trump wants, but then you’ve got Elon Musk over here who’s undercutting them constantly and demanding access to, like at the Treasury, the private payment systems, and demanding their employees answer questions [or] I’m going to fire them. In a lot of ways, they’re hamstringing themselves because you’ve got Musk working a little bit against the rest of the Trump administration and the rest of the appointees.
Sargent: Yeah. In fact, they’re really suddenly becoming guardians of their own turf. And it’s a funny thing—if you step back and look at all this, I think what you see is that a number of traditional things in our politics are sneaking forward and asserting themselves. Everything is completely abnormal and crazy on the one hand: Trump is an authoritarian, he’s trying to rule like an autocrat and so forth; and the level of incompetence is perhaps unprecedented. But there are these things that we’ve seen before: economy mattering; the margin in the House being a problem for Republicans in the sense that if they run into some government shutdown difficulties, they know they’ll take the blame. Trump can’t use his magical propaganda powers to get around that. And yet again, another traditional thing: These agency heads are becoming guardians of their turf, and we’re seeing a little bit of typical interagency tension. You know what I’m saying, Jim? We’re seeing some traditional stuff assert itself right now.
Downie: Another traditional thing we’re seeing assert itself is these business guys coming from outside of government being like, I’m going to fix things. I know how government should work. I figured out how to get rid of the inefficiencies and crack the code that nobody in Washington knows because they don’t know how to run a business. And then they get to Washington.
First of all, setting aside that a lot of times those guys are coming from companies that get a lot of taxpayer subsidies or aren’t exactly as free market as they claim. But they get to Washington and realize, Wait, no, there’s a reason that the system works this way. It’s not a “deep state,” which, by the way, has not shown up. There hasn’t been a deep state suddenly showing up to tell Kash Patel, You need to stand up to Elon Musk; He’s just been doing it himself. Once again, these so-called business geniuses are realizing in real time, Oh, I’m actually not a master of the universe. I’m actually not some secret genius who knows how to do things that no one else knows how to do.
Sargent: Right. We’re actually discovering one more traditional thing, which is that the bureaucracy is actually, it turns out, run by professional civil servants and not nefarious “deep state” plotters. And a traditional thing as well in our politics has long been that voters tell pollsters that they support spending cuts, but then when the specifics start coming, they rebel pretty damn quick. We’re seeing that too.
Downie: That is absolutely something that I hope Democrats remember. We haven’t really talked a lot about the Democrats right now, and there’s good reasons for that. As they contemplate what help to give or what votes to give or not give Republicans together with the funding deal next month, I hope that Democrats remember they’re in a position of real strength here. They’re of real polling strength, of real political strength. Also, it’s just good policy not to be in favor of these approaches.
Sargent: A hundred percent. And what we’re seeing from Leavitt right now—these weird seething moments, these efforts to throw chum into the water for the base—reflects that they’re really adrift right now, and they’re heading into some much rougher waters as well, don’t you think?
Downie: That’s completely correct. We talk a lot about who voted for Trump and why they voted for Trump, and what gets lost sometimes is that there’s really no one answer there. There’s a big portion of his vote who was always going to vote Republican, who are always going to believe what they’re told on Fox News or conservative media outlets. But then there’s a smaller portion of —and I think somewhat distinctly smaller portion of his voters who voted his way or who just didn’t show up last time—who are not going to swallow whatever propaganda line you get coming out of the now White House Press press briefing. So we have to remember that that just because it’s getting repeated on Fox News or Newsmax doesn’t necessarily mean that that line is what all of Trump’s voters are hearing and/or believing.
Sargent: I agree 100 percent. Let’s keep all that in mind. James Downie, thanks so much for coming on, man. Really good to talk to you.
Downie: Great to talk to you. Thanks for having me.
Sargent: You’ve been listening to The Daily Blast with me, your host, Greg Sargent. The Daily Blast is a New Republic podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.
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