The following is a lightly edited transcript of the January 12 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.
The other day, the Senate passed a measure to block President Trump’s authority to wage war in Venezuela without congressional authorization. Five Republicans voted for the measure. That caused Trump to erupt in a wild fury, attacking those Republicans and saying they should never be elected to office again. We think this is worth revisiting now because we’ve seen other indications that Republicans are slowly turning on Trump. And with Trump himself suggesting in a new interview that his power is basically unlimited, it’s important to remember that, well, no, it isn’t unlimited. And we’re seeing more evidence of this each day. Salon’s Amanda Marcotte is one of our go-to guests to talk about Trump’s psychoses, so we’re talking to her about all this today. Amanda, always good to have you on.
Amanda Marcotte: Thanks for having me.
Sargent: So the Senate passed a resolution that would block Trump from using the armed forces against Venezuela unless Congress authorizes it. Trump exploded on Truth Social, saying, “Republicans should be ashamed of the senators that just voted with Democrats.” He then named the offenders, saying, “Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rand Paul, Josh Hawley, and Todd Young should never be elected to office again.”
He attacked them for impeding his authority, claimed the War Powers Act was unconstitutional, and even blasted the GOP senators for their stupidity. Amanda, your thoughts on all that?
Marcotte: It does seem to me that he wouldn’t be so mad if he really were not going to just invade Venezuela or Greenland or whoever else he’s just got a hankering to unleash the military forces on. But obviously also a huge part of it is that he has decided he’s a king now, that he has unlimited power, that there should be no checks on his power. And like a giant overgrown toddler, he can’t help but freak out if anyone says no to him.
Sargent: Amanda, what’s funny to me about this as well is that there’s no planet on which this measure actually ends up stopping him from doing whatever he wants with the military. The House isn’t going to pass this thing. And even if the House did pass it, Trump would just veto it. So he’s not going to have his powers limited. He’s waging illegal war on Venezuela in many ways with the boat strikes and with the invasion itself without congressional authority. And he’s going to continue to do that. But the only thing that actually pissed him off is that these five Republicans would dare to question his authority.
Marcotte: I’m genuinely worried in a way that is hard to convey because obviously he’s a narcissist. He’s always been a narcissist. But I am genuinely worried that something has changed for the worse in recent weeks, if not months, because the way that Trump and Stephen Miller and all these fools are acting, they seem to be high on their own supply to a degree that I haven’t ever seen before.
They have really truly convinced themselves that their power is unlimited, that there’s nothing that anyone can do to stop them. I think that the success of the Venezuela kidnapping of Maduro—which has convinced them—has gotten into their heads, and they just think there’s nothing that can stop them right now and that there’s no limit.
And I find that scary because when somebody in power gets into that mentality, I mean, that’s Gaddafi levels of delusion. That’s bad. That’s like Hitler’s-last-days levels of delusion.
Sargent: Well, it is very clear that right now Trump and his inner circle are trying to convey the impression in a major way that they are all-powerful, that something has fundamentally changed. Stephen Miller’s interview with CNN this past week was a good example. He said the following: “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. We live in a world—in the real world, Jake—that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power.”
And then JD Vance went out there just the other day and he said essentially that ICE agents have something like absolute immunity conducting their duties, which is simply false. So there are two really good examples of what you’re talking about, Amanda, where they are saying to America and to the world, our power is absolute.
Marcotte: Yeah, I’m trying to be—not sympathetic, but sort of put myself in their shoes a tiny bit to understand how delusional they’ve gotten. And it is a lot of power that you have in the White House.
They did kidnap Maduro, they are orchestrating a cover-up of this killing in Minneapolis that we all saw. And it probably is very intoxicating, especially for people that are not hemmed in by any love of democracy, morality, or anything like that. So I kind of understand it, but I would warn them that I’ve heard this rhetoric before.
I mean, a lot of these people are sadly younger than me, even though they look a lot older. But during the Iraq War, I don’t remember if it was ever confirmed that it was Karl Rove, but some unnamed Bush official told The New York Times that You people in the liberal world and the media are in the reality-based community.
He famously demonized us as the reality-based community, saying that the Bush administration, they make their own reality, that they just sort of will what they want to be true into reality. And I imagine having a lot of power can convince yourself of that.
But we all know how that turned out with the Iraq War. It turns out that you can’t just actually assert that you’re going to be successful, especially in something as chaotic as invading a foreign country, and think that’s going to be effective.
And honestly, even just the domestic thing—I think that part of the reason they are being so loud about this killing in Minneapolis is that on some level they know they’re up against a level of evidence that’s going to be very hard to gaslight and propagandize their way out of.
Sargent: I absolutely agree with that. I want to come back to it in a sec, but for now, there is some evidence that Republicans are growing uncomfortable with Trump on a bunch of these fronts, getting a little more assertive as well.
Seventeen House Republicans just voted to pass an extension of expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies, which Trump opposed. It remains to be seen whether that’ll pass the Senate, but those are real defections.
There were other minor votes where Republicans defected. And on another front, interestingly enough, GOP senators are questioning Kristi Noem’s handling of that ICE shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis.
Amanda, it really does look to me like Republicans don’t want to be tied too tightly to Trump on some major developments right now. Is that overly optimistic, or—
Marcotte: No, I think that’s true because right now we’re looking at a 2026 midterm where just the economic situation is going to put Republicans in [trouble]. I mean, we’re always going to get a swing to the left when there’s a Republican in office most of the time, but I think they are probably looking at polls that suggest it’s going to be a lot worse than they were anticipating because all that ordinary people are seeing from the Trump administration is just terrifying chaos.
And you know, you have those price-of-eggs voters that sort of put him over the top and all they’re seeing is that he’s building himself a ballroom and he’s invading Venezuela and he’s shooting, sending his agents to kill suburban moms in the street.
And it certainly isn’t helping the price of eggs. He’s definitely not focused on the price of eggs. And I’m not trying to do that dumb Democrat thing where they have kitchen-table issues ... but I think it’s just, it’s very clarifying how dumb it was to sort of tell yourself the story that there was an economic justification for voting for him.
Sargent: Yeah, for sure. I think it’s also worth highlighting a bit more this GOP dissatisfaction with Kristi Noem over Renee Goode’s killing. Republicans are uncomfortable with how quickly Noem rushed out to declare the shooting entirely justified. Senator Thom Tillis said this: “It was very unusual to have a senior law enforcement official draw a conclusion about an event where the scene was still being processed.” Tillis added the following: “We are trying to assess the situation”—meaning Republican senators are trying to assess the situation.
I think this is significant, Amanda, because Trump and all of MAGA have gone entirely all-in on saying the shooting was 100 percent fine in every way, and a big part of this is they’re all following the MAGA God King’s command that they never admit he is fallible in any way at all.
So to have Republicans try to introduce a shred of humanity about this situation, this horror, is really telling. I think a number of Republicans really don’t like the way the White House is handling this shooting.
Marcotte: One would hope, because this is really bad. And the thing is, the fact that they all immediately went straight to this ludicrous narrative, accusing this woman without evidence of being a domestic terrorist, and then they also rolled out the playbook of blaming the victim, you know, saying she has pronouns in her bio and she’s a lesbian—stuff that is utterly irrelevant to the situation.
So that’s basically, to my mind, an immediate admission that they’re lying. And we know that they’re lying because they didn’t even wait for evidence. They didn’t even pretend to wait for evidence. The evidence does not matter to them. The facts do not matter. That is what they’re asserting. They can’t wait for facts because in their minds, the most important thing is the narrative, right or wrong.
And so they’re just going to sort of get out there and try to stomp facts out as quickly as possible with their lies. And it’s one of those things where I think a lot of us are hesitant because we don’t have all the facts, because we’re not liars. And we were a little worried: Well, what if they say a thing and it turns out to be true?
And ... it in a sense doesn’t matter because they never cared if it was true. Their impulse is to lie. And if occasionally one of their lies ends up accidentally being true, it was still a lie because that was their intention.
Sargent: The lying is an assertion of power in and of itself.
Marcotte: Yeah. And I mean, I think in this particular case, it makes it really clear because the odds that anything they’re saying about Renee Good are true are basically zero at this point.
Sargent: They’re saying to their followers, You have to follow what Dear Leader is saying. Period.
Marcotte: Yeah. And we’ve all seen the video. There’s not going to be another video that comes out that shows an angle that shows the car suddenly ramming that ICE officer. If that had happened, you would have seen it in the—now how many videos are out there?—of this incident.
Sargent: Right, there was no ramming. I think the reason all of this is significant ultimately is that Trump is trying to create the impression that his power is absolute.
He gave this whack-job interview to The New York Times in which he was asked if there are any limits on his global powers. And Trump said: Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me. I think we have to take care to avoid getting psyched out by this kind of thing.
I thought the Twitter reaction to it was all wrong. People just got terrified and were quaking in horror and so forth. But Trump wants us to think that he believes this so we all demobilize and give up. But his power isn’t absolute, right, Amanda? I mean, is there really any reason to get psyched out by that?
Marcotte: No, I think the opposite. I hear comments like that and I hear somebody who is trying—is beginning to get—his back is against the wall. This is how he acted when he lost the 2020 election. His lies got more—more livid, crazy, louder, bizarre.
His back was against the wall. He was losing and he just tried to escalate the tenor of the lies in hopes that that would make up for the facts sort of overcoming him. And I think we’re seeing similar behavior. It always is like that scene in Game of Thrones where Joffrey is screaming, I am the king! and Tywin says—his grandfather says—A man who has to say that is no king, basically. If you would say it, then you aren’t as powerful as you think.
Sargent: Yeah, I 100 percent agree. And I just want to go back to Minneapolis—the shooting—for a second, because here’s a very clear example where his magical lying powers haven’t been able to control the narrative.
He is going to lose the public debate over that shooting. I’m going to predict that right now.
And they are acting as if they can just wave their magic lying wand and just seduce the entire country into believing whatever horseshit they spew. And yeah, there are a bunch of his supporters who are buying it.
It’s disconcerting, I’ll admit that, to watch a lot of MAGA people just roll over and pretend that this woman gunned the vehicle at this officer when we can all see nothing like that happened at all. But they’re not going to win this one. And he doesn’t have control over what we think, does he?
Marcotte: No. And I think that hopefully we’re going to see a backfire effect, too. Which is, there’s this crescendo of lies that are so ridiculous that I hope they’re breaking on the people’s radars, and they’re seeing this, and it’s probably—and I’m hoping—people are learning a lesson from it: That, A, you should confront ICE in the streets, and B, everyone should have their phone out at all points in time filming these interactions. I think that, luckily, how many people were filming that interaction … and that’s going to matter a lot.
Sargent: Every video that you watch, every video that’s been created by some person somewhere who we’ll never know who it is … it just gets out there and it’s there. You always see all these other people in the background also videoing and that’s—that, to me, is heartening and amazing.
Marcotte: Yeah, I just can’t say loudly and—and more often enough, just keep doing it, people. For two reasons: One, it’s incredibly effective; Two, it’s actually very safe. It’s a way to—to not to confront them without putting yourself in too much physical danger. The more that this happens, I think after a shooting I think we should all understand this is always a risk, but it’s an important risk to take.
Sargent: So true. Let’s close with the comic relief. Here’s Trump speaking with Fox News’ Sean Hannity about the news that Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado wants to give Trump her Nobel Peace Prize.
Sean Hannity (voiceover) Would you accept the Nobel Prize she wants to hand to you?
Donald Trump (voiceover) Well, I understand she’s coming in next week sometime. And I look forward to saying hello to her. And I’ve heard that she wants to do that. That’d be a great honor. I did put out eight wars.
Sargent: So, Amanda—talk about the emperor having no clothes. What’s funny about this is that to Trump, the honor consists in having the physical prize and not in the idea that people actually think he merits it.
And so this is somebody who, to go back to your earlier point, you don’t go out there and say, I am the king, if you actually are the king. You don’t go out there and say, This Nobel Peace … I deserve a Nobel Peace Prize simply because the opposition leader is trying to bribe you with it.
Marcotte: Yeah, it’s like he’s so rich now, why don’t you just buy some Super Bowl rings while you’re at it and pretend you won the Super Bowl? Why don’t you buy someone’s Oscar? Just go buck wild with it.
But I mean, obviously, that’s the logic behind putting his name on the Kennedy Center, isn’t it? He’s just trying to steal JFK’s valor. And now, I mean, I suppose it’s sad. It’s really sad. It’s also unfortunately kind of predictable if you know the sort of psychology of these people, like of people with the myriad of personality disorders he’s experiencing.
I mean, it’s very known that, people with narcissism often will buy medals and wear them and pretend that they earned them or they’ll buy someone else’s trophy and put it up in their house and pretend that it was theirs. He’s just doing it right out in public, and he’s surrounded by so many people who are willing to kiss his ass that he’s lost track of the fact that that is some embarrassing behavior.
Sargent: So how much longer is this going to go on, Amanda? You know, we’re going to have ICE explode in recruitment. We’re going to see more deaths on the streets. We’re going to see them ratchet up the propaganda in a furious way to volumes that we probably haven’t ever really seen before. But in the end, our minds are our own, right?
Marcotte: Yeah. And I think that this is why it’s so important not to be intimidated by these assertions of power. For instance, I know that ICE’s recruitment goals fall very short of them. And I think, for instance, that’s a place where we the people have a lot of power. We can go out there and call ICE agents scum and dirtbags and shun them and exclude them.
And it’s going to create a social cost for signing up for ICE that will further drive down their recruitment. These are things that we can do. This is power that we have.
And I think that people should look at what happened with Renee Good. It’s very unfortunate—I’ve been very upset by her death—but please make something good out of it. Which is: Use it as inspiration that we actually can fight back, and when we do, it can—it can make a difference. Her death will make a difference.
Sargent: Yeah, we have to make it so. And so to just sort of boil this down simply, when Trump tells you that the only thing that’s limiting his power is his own mind—whatever the hell he means by that—don’t believe him. Amanda Marcotte, it’s always really, really good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on.
Marcotte: Thanks for having me, Greg. Always a good time.