THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent Greg Sargent

Today’s pod tackles a subject of profound importance: The sheer, inexplicable weirdness of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. There’s Representative Matt Gaetz’s bizarre speech, in which his face was so taut that one Republican derided him as an “AI sex doll.” There are all the ugly “Mass Deportations Now!” signs, the cultish rituals in which attendees treated Trump as their MAGA God King, and much, much more. We talked to Ron Filipkowski, who closely tracks the right wing as the head of Meidas Touch News. He helped us find meaning underneath all the ugliness and insanity. Listen to this episode here.
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Surprise, surprise: The Republican convention is turning into a festival of media bashing. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene did something that deserves special attention: After fielding a question about J.D. Vance that displeased her, Greene erupted, repeatedly dressing down the reporter in strikingly vicious terms. Arizona senate candidate Kari Lake, meanwhile, used her convention speech to similarly smear the press. All this is a bad omen: If Donald Trump wins the election, the assault on the press is going to shift into authoritarian overdrive. We talked to Media Matters senior fellow Matt Gertz, who explains why a Trump crackdown on the press could get alarmingly far. Listen to this episode here.
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Now that Ohio Senator J.D. Vance is Donald Trump’s running mate, everyone is combing through his old quotes, and a striking one has surfaced: in 2016, Vance warned that Trump threatened to take the white working class to a “very dark place.” In short, Vance once understood that MAGA ideology, at its core, is really, really toxic. And that’s a big political vulnerability. We talked to Sarah Longwell, the pollster and prominent Never Trumper, about how the Vance pick will showcase the worst aspects of MAGA throughout this race and how Democrats can try to use that to win swing voters. Listen to this episode here.
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In the days after the horrific effort to assassinate Donald Trump, MAGA figures have widely sought to exploit this moment of national crisis, by arguing that Democrats invited or even encouraged the shooting. The leading proponent of this absurd claim is Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, and on Tuesday, Trump announced that Vance will be his running mate. We talked to Alex Shephard, a senior editor at The New Republic and author of a great new piece on this new MAGA agitprop, about why the Vance pick—and other assorted signs—suggest that the politics around the shooting are going to get a lot more poisonous. Listen to this episode here.
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At the time of this recording, we know little about the attempt to assassinate Donald Trump. He was hit in the ear, but thankfully doesn’t appear seriously injured. The 20-year-old gunman has been identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks. He was registered as a Republican but donated $15 to a progressive group in January 2021, and we know nothing of his motive. Political violence is absolutely unacceptable no matter who is targeted. So for now we will focus on the bigger picture: We talked to Zack Beauchamp, author of a new book called The Reactionary Spirit and a piece for Vox called: “America is not ready for what comes next,” about whether this horror will lead to an escalation and what it says that American society is again at this point. 
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In recent days, Donald Trump has angrily claimed he knows nothing about Project 2025, the blueprint his allies are drawing up for an authoritarian second term presidency. But CNN is now reporting that at least 140 people from the Trump administration have a hand in the Project 2025 plan. And NBC News has unearthed video showing that Trump expressly praised the plan’s creators for their work in 2022. We talked to Amanda Becker—a reporter for The 19th News and author of a forthcoming piece on Project 2025’s minutiae—who explains why Trump keeps running from Project 2025 and what its darker designs really have in store for us. Listen to this episode here.
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