The following is a lightly edited transcript of the July 30 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.
Donald Trump is confronting the limits on his power in fresh ways, and it’s rattling him badly. His inner circle is leaking word that he’s frustrated at his inability to force Iran’s hand, and he’s seeing some of his most corrupt designs crash and burn on many fronts at once.
Yet there’s something sobering about it all. Placing limits on Trump has required immense effort. Paradoxically, the more he’s thwarted, the more dangerous he’s becoming. And in constraining Trump, our institutions are still on a knife’s edge, with the endgame still too murky to predict.
We’re trying to make sense of all these strange dynamics with Talking Points Memo editor at large David Kurtz, whose excellent newsletter delves into this stuff regularly. David, always good to have you on.
David Kurtz: Hi, Greg, good to be with you.
Sargent: So let’s start with a very visible and jarring failing: Trump’s effort to jail former FBI director James Comey, based on his social media posting of seashells arranged to spell “86 47.” We just learned that Secret Service agents who questioned Comey about this were ordered to quickly send a summary of the interrogation to Trump himself, which shows how intently and corruptly he’s controlling DOJ. David, can you explain what happened here and why it’s important?
Kurtz: Sure. It’s really a remarkable series of filings in the Comey case last night, where they’re making a claim that this is the second vindictive prosecution of him—meaning that Trump has directed DOJ to go after him because he’s one of Trump’s political foes. And so this is the politicization, the weaponization of DOJ that we’ve all been covering for so long.
And what makes this especially remarkable is how difficult it is to make a vindictive prosecution claim. But here you have so much evidence, right? It goes all the way to Trump aboard Air Force One, tracking the investigation in real time, getting reports from Secret Service as he’s returning to the U.S. from Europe. You just don’t get that kind of evidence in these sorts of cases.
Sargent: So Comey’s lawyers are trying to say, we have smoking gun evidence that this prosecution is a vindictive one and therefore should be thrown out. And the smoking gun evidence is that Donald Trump is micromanaging the prosecution of Comey in real time, demanding to know exactly what happened in these interrogations as they happen.
Kurtz: I mean, we could do like a whole semester seminar on the many reasons that this is so messed up. And it really comes down to: prosecutors have an obligation under the law to conduct prosecutions in the public interest and in the interest of justice. And that goes beyond even sort of complying with whatever the policy directives of a particular president are.
They can set broad policy parameters, but they’re not supposed to be directing individual prosecutions. And they’re certainly not supposed to be conjuring up prosecutions as bogus as this one out of thin air—or for any reason, frankly, in order to target political foes for any reason that goes to their personal interest, to their political interest, and isn’t in the interest of justice.
And I know that may sound, in the year of our Lord 2026, maybe a little pie in the sky. But up until this point, in the 250-year history of the country, it has not operated that way, with a few rare exceptions like Watergate, which are hugely scandalous, but frankly which don’t come near to how bad this is.
Sargent: Yeah, and it looks to me as if this revelation is yet another sign that this prosecution is likely to really fall apart. And on that front—on the front of Trump becoming more and more aware of the limits on his power—The Atlantic had this interesting report on his deliberations over Iran.
A senior official says Trump is frustrated by his failure to get Iran to budge, to the point of wanting to order a heavier attack on Iran. But he and his advisors decided against it because it could further deplete our weapons stockpiles. And David, get this: Trump told advisors that he fears that an escalation could cause a global economic meltdown and, quote, “turn me into a Hoover,” as Trump put it.
That’s a real admission. He doesn’t have the power to force Iran’s hand, and he’s acknowledging that Iran has leverage over the global economy. And it’s, of course, because of what he did, right?
Kurtz: Yeah, it’s because of what he did. And there’s no clear way out of this box canyon for him. And it is a quagmire. And Iran continues to have cards that it can play to keep him at bay. And I think what he’s describing there is, in part, acknowledging that, right? That there is a limit as to what he can do, and Iran has him in a box.
So, I think what’s interesting, Greg, is it’s hard to look at all of these data points and see a single common thread. I think there’s some things—in this case, it’s like a geopolitical limitation he’s running into. In other instances, it’s like the limits of the powers or the abilities of his people.
In other cases, he does run up against limits in the law. But you’re right, there are an increasing number of examples where we see him bumping up against the limits of his powers. And it’s, after a year and a half of feeling like we were watching a rogue or renegade president sort of trammel all limits, it’s good to see that there may be some limits to that that will hold, at least for a time.
Sargent: And making this even more buffoonish on the Iran front, these revelations about Trump holding back because he knows he can’t really force Iran’s hand come even as he just said to Fox News the following: “We are going to beat the effing shit out of them, and we will be hitting them hard. They’re going to get a beating.”
David, Donald Trump has managed to degrade his own threats so badly through repetition that Iran no longer seems to fear his mightiness. What do you make of that?
Kurtz: Well, Greg, this all comes after—didn’t we declare victory in this war like a month or two ago? I mean, we’re just at a point where I think one of the dynamics of the whole Iran fiasco has been that it’s revealed the perils of trying to narrate this kind of conflict through a president when the president is like a Donald Trump.
Because every week, every day, for the six months this has been going on, there’s a new line from the White House, a new declaration that peace is at hand, or a new declaration that we’re about to bomb them back to the Stone Age. And it really feels like it is as mercurial and unpredictable as Trump’s personality itself.
And so, taking a long view on it, I think it’s been an ongoing conflict this whole time. There’s been ebbs and flows to it, but I don’t think it really matches in any way what we’ve heard from the White House in terms of an accurate description, a reliable narration of what has happened. And so, I hope we’re at a point now where they see some of those limits and take those into account.
But I’m afraid that we’re in just an ebb that could very well—as you suggested a moment ago—that in some ways he gets more dangerous the more he gets boxed in. And you could see a lashing out, even if it has global economic consequences, even if it’s not going to be effective in advancing U.S. interests, which this hasn’t been, even if he really can’t knock Iran back on its heels in the Strait of Hormuz.
Like, there’s a million ways here in which this could still go wrong. And the way this has been so erratic and unpredictable and in fits and starts the whole six months we’ve been engaged in this, I think it’s just representative of him and the underlying strategy that epitomizes him. It’s an extension of this personality, is what I’m trying to say.
Sargent: Yeah, it absolutely is. I think to me the most representative thing is that it was only a few weeks ago, or maybe a month ago, that Trump threatened to obliterate Iranian civilization entirely, meaning he threatened to eliminate Iran’s 91 million people from the face of this earth. And that didn’t force Iran’s hand. And so now he’s saying, I’m going to blow up a bridge. Right? And so it’s like, do you remember what you yourself said just a month ago, and how comically ridiculous it sounds for you to make this new threat now in relation to that one?
But still, I agree with you a hundred percent, because when he talks about bombing, all of Iran’s power plants, as he’s been saying lately, that would be a threat of a massive war crime and serious atrocities. And it’s not hard to see him going down that road if he can’t force Iran’s hand, just in order to appear like he’s doing something. And of course, Iran will just absorb the pain that is inflicted on its own people, and it won’t do anything.
Kurtz: Yeah, I think there’s one way of looking at this that I think is actually a helpful prism, which is that it is one long, ongoing negotiation. And if you see it as a negotiation in which war is one of the negotiating techniques—in which escalation, de-escalation of the violence is part of the negotiation—it all makes a little more sense. But the problem with Trump is that he sees negotiation as a zero-sum game. He’s got a very limited understanding of it. You know, for the “art of the deal” guy, it’s kind of remarkable how little he understands.
And part of it too, as you suggest, is that it’s not just Iranian interests versus U.S. interests. It’s like this triangulation of Iranian interests, U.S. interests, regional interests, Trump’s own personal political interests. And there’s no way for him to sort of do a 3D chess move on any of that. I mean, this is beyond his capability. It’s beyond how he even thinks, right? Negotiation for him is a zero-sum game. And I think the longer Iran holds out, the harder it is for him to figure out how to make sense of it, given the prism he looks at this through.
Sargent: Absolutely. So here’s another one. Trump’s acting director of national intelligence, Bill Pulte, who’s about to get replaced, spent his final time in his job tweeting boastfully about how he’s fired huge numbers of intelligence officials and so forth. But as it turns out, no one can figure out who exactly he fired and whether that’s close to accurate.
We should note that Pulte is the person who previously used his federal housing agency perch to fabricate pretext to prosecute Trump critics like Adam Schiff and so forth. Those have all failed pretty badly as of now as well. And now here we are with Pulte boasting about taking on the deep state in ways that might not even be real. Talk about revealing the limits on Trump’s power. Can you explain this one?
Kurtz: Yeah, this has a few different layers to it. We know that Pulte was put in place as acting DNI while they worked on getting Jay Clayton confirmed. He was confirmed this week, so Pulte will soon be done. And Trump, I think, both publicly and reported privately, was saying that he wanted Pulte to knock heads while he was at DNI, right? Trump has generally been very skeptical of U.S. intel. He’s been particularly skeptical of DNI. And I think he sees it as a seat of the deep state. And so he wants to purge that.
Now, there’s been a fair amount of reporting that Pulte was doing that, but this most recent reporting suggests that part of it may be performative. Which speaks to what the incentives are that Trump puts in place for people to do the things that he wants them to do—or at least to pretend to do the things he wants them to do. It has a very “emperor with no clothes on” sort of vibe to it.
Sargent: And I think I saw in Politico that Pulte might be in line for a Cabinet slot. So he’s going to get rewarded for feeding grist to the MAGA circus, even if it’s not real grist.
Kurtz: Yeah, that’s right. And it’s not out of character, in the sense that none of the mortgage fraud cases were real mortgage fraud either, right? Which is what he was drumming up around Adam Schiff and Letitia James and others. So it is consistent with his MO to this point.
Sargent: OK, and here’s yet another one. He’s seeing his schemes collapse on other fronts as well. Huge numbers of ICE arrests of protesters are not ending with convictions. That’s an area where Trump is abusing his power most flagrantly, perhaps. You’ve written on this. Can you talk about this one?
Kurtz: Yeah. So there have been a number of examples, in LA, in Chicago, in Minnesota, where it seemed clear that the White House was directing sort of a maximal response to protesters who were protesting ICE in their cities—either at raids themselves or at ICE facilities within those metro areas. And the charges that DOJ brought were in some cases way over the top, in other cases utterly unsupported by the evidence.
And in a few cases were brought on the basis of either misstatements or outright falsehoods by agents who were bringing the charges. So there’s like a whole array of things happening there. But those have slowly melted away. Sometimes charges were reduced from felonies to misdemeanors, other times they were dropped outright. In some cases, both.
Sargent: So let’s tie all this together. Trump is running the most imperial, most corrupt presidency in modern memory, and it’s not even close. No president has abused his powers the way Trump has. And yet in key ways he really is being constrained, and he’s really angry about it. But that, again, paradoxically, means the areas where he wields less fettered powers are ones we really need to worry about. What’s your overall reading here? Are we holding him back or not?
Kurtz: I think it is a very tenuous moment, where in some areas I think we’ve seen some modest success. I think how things go in the November elections will really dictate how much more he’s able to run amok over the last two years of this term. At the same time, Greg, I am really cognizant that we only know what we know, and that this administration has done myriad things to reduce transparency and accountability and ready access into what they’re doing and how they’re doing it.
I’m thinking about things like the high-seas strikes on drug smuggling boats. I’m thinking—you talk about areas with unfettered power—I’m thinking special operations activities around the globe. I’m thinking other military actions or activities we might not know about. And I’m not suggesting some dark, hidden conspiracy, I just mean we don’t know. And so while we are trying to gauge how well things are going, I suspect that we may be spending the next several decades unearthing things that happened during this period that we just didn’t know about.
And at the same time, Greg—and I think this is kind of what you were getting at—you know, in the example, for instance, of these vindictive prosecutions, in a lot of ways the damage has already been done. You know, let’s say Comey succeeds again in making this one go away. He’s had two come up now, and there’s other people who have been subjected to this. Abrego Garcia’s case has succeeded on a vindictive prosecution claim in Tennessee.
But the turmoil, the emotional cost, the financial cost to people of this—and I think this is really key, Greg—the sense that it creates of fear in the populace, of fear in other officials, and fear in people who would oppose Trump. That’s real damage, right? And it’s real damage that’s done to the institutions of government that are being abused. It’s going to take us decades to recover from.
So in a lot of ways, what we’re seeing are him bumping up against limits, but around his feet—if we’re going to visualize this—it is the litter of institutions that he’s kicked over, and of people that he’s trammeled, and of sort of basic civil liberties that we’ve long valued as sort of fundamental to who we are. And all of that, I think, he has laid waste to, to one degree or another, in a way that will take some time to recover from.
Sargent: I just want to try to salvage one optimistic note from all this, while acknowledging everything you just said is right there. I can’t help but feel like there’s a pattern of resilience that we’re seeing. The backlash to ICE that we saw in places like Minnesota and Chicago—huge numbers of people banded together in really creative and unexpected ways to defend immigrants against heavily armed paramilitary goons at great risk to themselves.
Lower court judges are doing tremendous fact-finding work—I know you agree with this one—and they’re really putting a real record out there for us, a factual record of what this administration is doing on front after front after front. People are not being dissuaded by these buffoonish efforts to prosecute ICE protesters. People are going out there at great risk to themselves, putting their necks out there to try and defend the country.
And I think nobody’s going to be dissuaded by Trump’s efforts to persuade everybody that voting can’t work. Nobody’s going to be persuaded by that. I think we’re going to see tremendous turnout in the midterms. We’ve seen this in two dozen special elections, huge outpourings of political energy. I really hate to sound Pollyannaish, but it seems like there’s a pattern of resistance and resilience that’s worth talking about.
Kurtz: No, I agree, Greg. And I think you’ve probably seen the same thing I have, which is that sort of in the depths of things a year ago, I think people started to feel a sense of hopelessness and a sense of that he was kind of running the table. And what I’ve noticed is that each setback, each reversal, each time he’s been at least halted, if not outright stopped, it has energized folks.
I think it’s given people a sense that there are avenues here towards protest, towards resistance, towards pushing back, and just sort of living our civic lives in a full way, that makes a difference. And people feed on that. And so I think it can build on itself as well.
Sargent: I agree a hundred percent with that. David, really well said. Folks, stay in the game. We can win this. We really can, I promise you. David Kurtz, really, really great to talk to you. Folks, if you want more of David Kurtz, make sure to check out his daily newsletter over at talkingpointsmemo.com. David, great to have you on.
Kurtz: Great. Thank you, Greg.