The following is a lightly edited transcript of the June 20 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.
President Donald Trump is feeling angry about his dwindling support in this country right now. He’s raging about a Fox News poll that found him underwater on many major issues. He followed that up with a bunch of tweets hyping other polls that he scrounged up, which miraculously found him with majority support. But the surest guide to Trump’s worries about this is that White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt went full North Korea with a long tirade designed to create the false and ridiculous impression that Trump has the support of a very sizable majority of Americans. What makes this so absurd is that Trump and MAGA are waging war on an enormous chunk of the American public right now, while simultaneously commanding us to think that he’s representing Americans in all walks of life. Former U.S. attorney and podcaster Harry Litman has a good new piece for The New Republic arguing that the core fact about the Trump presidency is that it’s fundamentally hostile to blue America. So we’re talking to Harry about all this. Thanks for coming on, man.
Harry Litman: Hey, good to be here, Greg. Thanks.
Sargent: So Trump is very angry about this new Fox News poll, and it is indeed very bad for him. It finds that 54 percent of respondents disapprove of his performance while only 46 percent of voters approve. Trump raged about this on Truth Social saying Fox’s pollster is “crooked,” that Fox polling is “always wrong and negative,” that “MAGA hates Fox News,” and that Fox’s pollster has been “discredited.” Harry, my favorite thing about this is the direct claim that MAGA will hate Fox News for delivering them hard truths about Trump. It’s true that he’s unpopular. The Fox poll matches what the polling averages show. Your thoughts?
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.
Sargent: Well, we do know that crowd size is very much on Trump’s mind right now because he just had his little military parade—and that was pretty rinky-dink. And at the same time, we had millions turning out in cities across the country. So he’s clearly—and you know that—focused on that fact.
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.
Sargent: Well, glad to have that. At the White House press briefing on Thursday, press secretary Karoline Leavitt rushed in to Trump’s rescue, rushed in with the pump to inflate the ego. Listen to this exchange in which a reporter brings up a quote from Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett.
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?
Karoline Leavitt (audio voiceover): She is a rising star. It’s quite something to behold, actually. I hope that she continues to be a rising star for the Republican Party, at least. I think it’s incredibly derogatory to accuse nearly 80 million Americans of mental illness. Last time I checked, Jasmine Crockett couldn’t dream of winning such a majority of the public as President Trump did. And the America First movement, which President Trump has built, is filled with hardworking patriots, the forgotten men and women, business owners, law enforcement officers, nurses, teachers, and middle America.
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?
Litman: It’s that last point, Greg, that really comes home to me. He actually—remember in the campaign—tried to make some bromides about being a president for all Americans. He has been the antithesis of that. In fact, the piece that you kindly mentioned is about the really remarkable, and I can’t think of a precedent except possibly the Civil War, deploy of executive power literally to attack, intimidate, insult the other party—the Democrats here—including at times where it’s so patent that what a president needs to be doing, for instance, when there’s an assassination, is to try to be unified. He not only doesn’t have that in his personality or his DNA [but] his only governing strategy, it seems to me—and this is what I wrote—having gotten his brains beaten in in so many of the things he’s trying to do legally, is to just try to use his immigration powers to trash and humiliate and dominate—his one-trick pony sensibility—Democratic politicians within the country.
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.
Sargent: And blue America as a whole. want to get to that in a minute, but first I want to go through some of these numbers from the Fox News poll. Trump does poll well on border security in isolation, but he’s underwater on immigration more broadly at 46–53, striking given that this is supposedly his best issue. On foreign policy he’s at 42 percent to 57 percent. On the economy it gets even worse at 40 percent to 58 percent. And on inflation, it’s at 34 percent to 64 percent. Those are terrible numbers and they’re from a Fox News poll, Harry. He’s an unpopular, failing president.
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.
Sargent: You pointed out that Trump recently said explicitly that he’s ramping up law enforcement crackdowns on migrants in blue cities in particular. I think that was deliberately designed to do the thing that we’ve been talking about, which is it was deliberately designed to be understood as a war on blue America. Can you walk us through that part of your argument?
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.
Sargent: And I just want to reiterate that on immigration, Trump is underwater. Fifty-three percent of the country disapproves while only 46 percent approve. We’ve seen that—
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.
Sargent: I want to highlight another thing about what you’re saying here, which is that when Trump did this big tweet saying we’re going to unleash ICE in blue cities. And again, he listed several cities, all of them were in blue states. When he did that, it came right after he had previously said—admitted—on Truth Social, that his mass deportations were hurting farmers and the economy. He signaled that he was going to start dialing some of that back. It was hurting red constituencies, right? Farmers, agriculture, people he knows in the hospitality industry are picking up the phone and saying, You’re killing us here, Trump. You got to do something about this. You can’t just keep getting rid of our workers, right? But the point is that what Trump said there was I’m going to unleash ICE in blue cities at a time when he had just said he was going to dial it back in red areas. So he was literally saying he was only going to do this immigration crackdown in blue areas.
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.
And by the way, this point—this is one of the things that people said from the start, You’re going to do this, you’re going to harm certain industries. It seems he’s finally realize that because some people have called the White House and said, What are you doing? We know anecdotally of different industries being shut down. They can’t continue because so many of them depend on both unlawful but also lawful, by the way, Greg, alien workers who just are scared to show up now. People are scared all over the country. So what does he do? He says, Well, here’s your get out of jail free card, red America. And now I’m doubling down blue America and I’m doing it not just with ICE, but ICE in mask and military gear, the biggest deportation ever but just for blue America. What president has ever done that in office? I can’t think of a single one that’s been so blatantly yay for our team, boo for your team. And that’s what I do with my presidential—my really outsize claims of presidential—power.
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.
Litman: That’s right.
Sargent: Just like that. No more invasion. They’re not invaders. They’re hardworking people.
Litman: They’re not eating pet, apparently. That’s right. That’s right.
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.
Litman: They’re all worst of the worst somehow. And of course that’s what’s happening in California, the reason they don’t want him there. You have Newsom making the claim, but also people everywhere saying, Look, you’re talking about folks who are part of the.… I understand nobody can really support the complete amnesty for when people need to follow the rules for getting in the country, but we’re talking about an outsize federal government effort to get at what clearly are longstanding members of the community, people who have made the economy what it is. I read a figure recently, Greg, that 10 percent, a million people, in Los Angeles are possibly at least undocumented migrants. So what he has in mind with this false phony anecdote is really just completely eviscerating the economies of these different places. But which places, as you say? Blue places. It’s already as if the the midterms are next week.
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.
Litman: I really think that’s right. To me, Greg, he’s a one-trick pony. What I say at the end of this piece is there’s been an element of shock and awe, as others have said, as he’s done so much since January 20. They haven’t been his ideas. All he is is a mouthpiece, and he’s a mouthpiece for the most vile resentment of blue America or just aspects of America. He’s divisiveness personified. So when it comes time to do whatever he’s doing, he’s just got one speed and one voice to use. Now in addition, all the other possibilities he could try to use that voice on, as you say, have been closed down to him. So we have a government now that’s not simply an attack dog against blue America—but that is all it is, [as] he gets piles up loss after loss in every other area. So it’s a real shit show in political, legal, personal terms.
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.
Sargent: There’s a deep irony to this as well. He reverts to that position whenever he’s feeling weak in the polls, and yet it’s precisely that posture that’s playing a big role in making him so unpopular. And you can actually see this, right?
Litman: Great point. Great point.
Sargent: So he’s underwater on immigration, and that’s clearly driven by things like sending the troops into Los Angeles, treating blue America like enemy territory—occupied territories, maybe what we should start calling it, right? He’s underwater, as you pointed out, on the courts. And by the way, that’s also another element of waging war on blue America. It’s like when his people go out there and they say, Maybe Trump won’t listen to the courts anymore, that’s a “fuck you” to us, right? That’s who he’s saying “fuck you” to.
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.
And I really do think, getting back to that NBC News poll and the 81 percent, we’re always worried: Are we moving toward a Hungary model or a model of democracies that actually fade? And in those instances, I’ve tried to go to school on them, the would-be or successful authoritarian leader starts from a point of much greater popularity before then leveraging and commandeering the legal apparatus. He, from his position underwater, I don’t think can pull it off, especially with the tradition and ballast that this country has from everyone saying the Pledge of Allegiance in first grade.
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.
Sargent: Let’s not forget that he won an extremely narrow victory to begin with. It was the narrowest victory in recent memory. And his people went into this thinking that they were going to shock and awe us into accepting this type of authoritarian rule in the Hungarian model, as you say, and it’s not working. Harry Litman, thanks so much for coming on. And folks, we should tell you that if you enjoyed this, make sure to check out Harry’s podcast, Talking Feds. Harry, thanks for coming on, man.
Litman: Thanks, Greg. Good to be here.
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