The following is a lightly edited transcript of the April 29 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 growing angrier and angrier over polls that keep showing him tanking. On Monday, he erupted on Truth Social, raging that polls sponsored by media organizations are “COMPROMISED AND CORRUPT.” Then he went even further, quoting one of his own pollsters saying that two major new surveys are fake polls. All this raises a deeper question: To what degree are the people around Trump simply lying to him about how things are going right now? It’s becoming clear that they’re lying to him about the state of public opinion, and even lying to him about the legality of his own policies. Today, we’re talking about all this with journalist and author Michael Cohen, who has a new piece up on his Substack Truth and Consequences, suggesting that it really does look as if Trump’s aides are keeping him in a state of delusion right now. Michael, thanks for coming on.
Michael Cohen: Greg, great to be here. Thanks for having me.
Sargent: Trump is particularly upset over new polls from The New York Times and The Washington Post. The Times has Trump’s approval rating at 42 percent, and the new Post poll has it at 39 percent. Trump erupted on Truth Social and said the greatly respected pollster John McLaughlin has said that these are “FAKE POLLS FROM FAKE NEWS ORGANIZATIONS.” Trump called these organizations “SICK” and “THE ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE.” He didn’t mention that John McLaughlin’s firm does polling for one Donald J. Trump. Michael, here Trump is citing his own pollster to claim that polls by news organizations have been deliberately faked.
Cohen: It’s pretty hard for Trump to argue that the polls are rigged against him when pretty much every single poll shows him doing poorly. This is not like two bad polls for Trump. This has been a trend line we’ve seen now basically since February or March. I’m not surprised by it; this is the way Trump lashes out at people and lashes out at bad news against him. But I think it’s pretty obvious that his numbers are bad.
One thing that I am struck by—it occurs to me that it’s very possible that he simply wasn’t aware of how bad his polls are. It wouldn’t shock me if it’s being kept away from him by his own aides. And perhaps there was just no way to avoid it this weekend because these obviously got a great deal of attention in major newspapers, ones that I assume he maybe glances at or maybe has some understanding of what they’re saying about him. So it’s possible that this is the first he’s aware of just how poorly he is polling.
Sargent: It’s worth noting that Trump is actually raging at Fox News as well. He had a bad poll from Fox the other day, and Trump tweeted, “Rupert Murdoch has told me for years that he is going to get rid of his FoxNews, Trump Hating, Fake Pollster, but he has never done so.” So it’s not as if he’s completely insulated from the realities of public opinion. Even Fox News is talking about him starting to slide in their own polling, and his response to even that is to rage and call it fake and rigged and all the rest of it. What do you make of that part of it? If he’s angry at Rupert Murdoch for supposedly trying to hurt him with the wrong kind of polling or a fake pollster, then it’s starting to sound pretty desperate, isn’t it?
Cohen: Yeah, I would say so. I think it’s also interesting that up until this point, Trump and the White House seemed oddly indifferent to their lousy public opinion numbers. Something I’ve been really struck by in this second term—second time around with Trump—is that he’s pursuing policies that are not very popular and doesn’t seem that bothered by them being popular. Like he didn’t back off on any of the tariff and trade policies because public opinion was opposed to it. As far as we know, it seemed like he backed off of it because he feared possibly sparking a depression or he feared the effect of the bond markets, which seemed to have more power these days than the polls do—at least at the White House. So I’m a little taken aback by it, and I can only assume maybe he wasn’t fully aware of just how poorly he’s been doing, because up to this point, this White House has shown a stunning indifference to how popular their policies are or are not.
Sargent: I just want to bear down on one more aspect of this whole thing. It’s important to note that both the Times and the Post poll find very broad disapproval of Trump’s abuses of power in particular. The Post poll finds majorities think Trump has exceeded his authority and disapprove of his lawless abuses of power on immigration in particular. The Times poll similarly found majorities say Trump has exceeded his powers and disapprove of his handling of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was illegally sent to a prison in El Salvador. So if you step back, what you really have here is Trump’s pollster deceiving him about the true nature of public opinion when it comes to his lawless overreach. I think it’s very likely that his advisers are telling him the public is fully behind the lawlessness—at least some of his advisers, the ones like Stephen Miller, who really want full-blown fascism to emerge here. What do you think?
Cohen: It’s not clear to me that he understands even that he’s breaking the law on the Abrego Garcia case. There was an interview he did with Time magazine, the hundred-day benchmark. They interviewed him, and they asked him about this case. They said, The Supreme Court ruled that you have to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back. Aren’t you disobeying the Supreme Court? and he said, That’s not what my people told me. They say that this 9–0 decision was something very different and actually was something in my favor.
And then he goes on to great lengths in this interview to say—on more than one occasion—that he always thinks he should abide by and comply with Supreme Court decisions. In fact, two or three times, he says he abides by lower court rulings. And I actually have to say: Give the man his due on this one. By and large, his administration has adhered to the court orders, many of which have gone against them since January 20. They’ve adhered to them on issues like transgender troops in the military. They’ve adhered on issues like birthright citizenship. When they’ve been told to do things, they generally have done it—but not on this case. And I strongly suspect that what’s happening here is he simply doesn’t know that the Supreme Court told him to facilitate the return of Garcia.
Sargent: Well, there’s something else I want to bring up in the Time magazine interview because it supports what you’re saying here. Trump was asked if he has requested of El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to return Abrego Garcia, and Trump said, No, I haven’t asked him. Then the reporter asked Trump, Well, if you haven’t asked him, then how are you facilitating his release? meaning he’s violating the Supreme Court. And Trump answered that by saying, Well, my attorneys haven’t asked me to ask Bukele to release Abrego Garcia. So he is throwing his own attorneys under the bus here. He’s basically saying, My lawyers have not told me I have to comply with the Supreme Court in the way that you are saying—which, I think, really underscores this basic idea that he’s being fundamentally deceived about the legality of his policies. Did you catch that detail? I thought it was extraordinary.
Cohen: At one point, he says, Nobody asked me to ask him that question, which was, “Are you going to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to United States?” It says, to me, that no one asked him to do it, so he didn’t do it. I just genuinely don’t think he’s aware of how the Supreme Court ruled in this particular case. And if that’s true, that’s a little bit terrifying. First of all, it’s that Stephen Miller’s running immigration policy to a much larger degree than even we suspected before, but also it suggests that Trump is simply not aware what is going on around him at the White House. He’s not aware of what decisions Supreme Court is making. And I think we know this about Trump: He’s not the smartest butter knife in the drawer. I think he’s not going to go look at the Supreme Court ruling and see that it rules against him; he’s going to take the word of his aides.
Sargent: It looks to me like Stephen Miller is starting to sense that the Supreme Court is going to rule against them in the end—in a final way—on Abrego Garcia. If that happens ... As you say, they have been following some court orders. They’ve really dug in hard behind this idea that Abrego Garcia is never coming back. Period. If we bring Abrego Garcia back, it will mean capitulating to the liberal media and to all the hated liberals who think the law should be enforced. So that can happen. So I think Stephen Miller is trying to steel Trump for the eventual need to defy the Supreme Court in one way or another, and the way he will try to get there is by essentially telling him, Everyone else is lying to you. The court has told you that it’s really OK for you not to bring him back.
Cohen: I think there’s a lot to that argument and I think it’s quite possible that you’re right about that. But I think ... Let me go back a second. When they refuse to abide by the Supreme Court ruling to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, I assume they were doing this because they think this is a winning issue for them on immigration. And if there’s any place they’re going to defy the courts, it’s going to be on immigration and deportation because they think this plays in their favor. Look, the polling suggests it’s not actually; it suggests that this is actually really hurting Trump. But I think the view inside the White House is, This is our issue.
In fact, Miller says it. In that Oval Office meeting with the El Salvadoran president, he says, This is a 90–10 issue for us. He literally says those words, so I think he thinks this is a winner for them. That was what I was assuming was happening. They were just going to [say], OK, we’re going to abide by court orders, but not here because this is a good issue for us. I don’t think that’s what’s happening now.
Now, I think that Miller wants the president to take the position that on this issue—on deportation issues—the Supreme Court cannot tell him what to do. And he’s made this argument. He said that the power to conduct foreign relations is unimpeachable and the Supreme Court cannot interfere, which is how Miller interprets the case, the decision—which is also clearly incorrect. So I think you might be right, that he’s steeling him for a moment in which he’s going to continue to violate a court order, continue to ignore the court, and do so, for Trump’s case, out of ignorance.
Now, the thing is that what worries me about this is that the court looking at this could conclude, Right now the White House is refusing to abide by this order to facilitate his return. Do we really want to go there again and say to the White House again, You need to do this? Because if they don’t, if the White House continues to say, No, we are not going to abide by this order, does it then fundamentally weaken the credibility of the Supreme Court, and does it lead to the court basically looking like a paper tiger? I think that’s a real concern. If I’m on the court, forgetting the biological makeup of the court, that’s a legitimate concern. The court has no enforcement mechanism whatsoever on their orders. It basically relies on political norms.
So if they think that Trump’s not going to abide by his political norm, they might just rule in such a way that gives Trump some political out on this issue. I think it’s a real concern, and maybe that’s what Miller’s trying to accomplish here. To my mind, there is no question that Stephen Miller, not Donald Trump, is driving the stubbornness of the White House in abiding by the Supreme Court order. It’s not Trump doing this. This is Stephen Miller who’s doing this.
Sargent: Right. If I understand you correctly, and I think this makes a lot of sense, it’s basically Stephen Miller bluffing the Supreme Court—
Cohen: Yes. Exactly right.
Sargent: —by saying over and over, No, we won before the Supreme Court. He’s essentially saying to the Supreme Court, We’re going to roll over you if you don’t give us a way to claim victory at the end of the day here. This is why, by the way, I think two things are really important: (1) the fact that his aides are lying to him about public opinion, and (2) that the public opinion is about the abuses of power on immigration in particular. Because what we’re learning from this polling is that Stephen Miller is wrong.
When they abuse their power on immigration and act lawlessly and send people to black sites and snatch people off the streets, the public reacts badly. They’re not seeing it through just the prism of, Oh, Trump is just dealing with illegals. Stephen Miller calculated that they would see it that way, but Americans aren’t seeing it that way. They’re seeing it in terms of the lawlessness. So when the polls show that the lawlessness is unpopular, and when Trump’s own people deceive him about what those polls are showing, they’re essentially trying to get to the place where the lawlessness continues.
Cohen: Yeah. By the way, look at the polling aggregators on this; there’s a number of them. The numbers have really declined for Trump in the past week or so. Look, I can’t say this with certainty, but it sure seems as though the Abrego Garcia story—oddly enough, contrary to a lot of media pundits’ takes on this—has actually seem to increase the decline in Trump’s public approval. If you look at it from the mid-April to where it is now, it has dropped rather dramatically in that period of time. So I think you’re right. I think the lawlessness is one that even upsets people who are supportive of president.
Sargent: If the court does say in one form or other, You have to facilitate and effectuate Abrego Garcia’s return, there will come a point where Stephen Miller and those around him that are like-minded are going to want a confrontation with the court. Do you think that’s going to happen? And what happens then?
Cohen: It’s hard to say. I do want to just make one other point here really quickly: If you do read this interview, he does say at one point about Abrego Garcia, “Bringing him back and retrying him wouldn’t bother me.” So I don’t know that he’d be all that bothered by doing it. But what you’re laying out—unfortunately, I think it’s correct. That this White House—and I don’t mean Trump, I mean the people around Trump—concluded that this is a place where they can potentially expand their power.
Part of the problem we’re dealing with here is that ultimately when you have the governing trifecta situation where Republicans control the White House and the House and the Senate, the only real check on them is Republicans. And they’ve shown no inclination to be a check on Trump. So does there come a point when his numbers get worse and they say they have no choice? Maybe. But if I’m a Republican in the vast majority of potential Republicans, I’m in a safe district, right? I’m in a district [where] my biggest risk is of losing a primary, not losing an election to a Democrat. If I’m someone like Thom Tillis, who might be the most vulnerable Republican in the country, what’s a bigger risk to me: losing 2026 to a Democrat or losing a primary to a MAGA Republican? And I can tell you, if Thom Tillis comes out against Trump, you got a primary challenge he’ll almost certainly lose. And I think if you’re Tillis or any other Republican in this situation, your calculation is, I would rather risk losing in 2026 to a Democrat than risk facing a primary that I will definitely lose. And I don’t see any reason to believe that’s going to change.
Sargent: Well, when you put it that way, it sure looks like we’re headed to a much darker place very, very soon. Michael Cohen, thanks so much for coming on with us, man. Great to talk to you.
Cohen: Always a pleasure, Greg. 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.