The Daily Blast: Trump Spirals into Rage as Brutal Poll Hits and Legal Losses Pile Up

No, not at all. I'm so sorry. You're so sorry.

You're all right? Yes, exactly. I'm so sorry. The story is like a story that I just understood. A story about a job or a dream. - A dream? - A dream? I don't feel like a story. - A story about a story? - A dream? With a story? You're sure. Every day. On the other hand, I'm sure and at home.

You're sure when it's time to be on. And if you're sure, you can tell us how it's done for you. Because with credit, you're just going to get it. Or you're going to get credit on my account. Also my credit, just go online. This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR network.

I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

Donald Trump seems to sense that his power is ebbong. He raged over a birthright citizenship after his arguments on it fell flat in the Supreme Court. He buffoonishly moved the gold posts on Iran to compensate for his war failures. He sustained many new losses in court and his polling just took another huge dive. The throughline to all this is his follows.

Trump is trying to maximize presidential power like no one in recent memory. Yet on one front after another, he's discovering that his powers have limits. One of the best out there at explaining how presidential power really works is Corey Brechneiter, author of several books on the topic. So we're talking to him about all this today.

Corey, good to be on. Pleasure, Greg, always. So let's start here. Trump has suddenly suffered a string of losses in court. A judge temporarily blocked his ballroom.

Another judge ruled against Trump's executive order ending federal funding for NPR and PBS. Still another rejected his claim of presidential immunity over January 6, allowing a lawsuit by police officers to continue. Corey, it seems like the connecting line in all this here is that Trump claimed all these excessive powers and has been told no.

“Is that more or less what happened and what's your take on all these?”

Well, I think it remains to be seen what the Supreme Court is going to do or higher courts will do in these cases. But certainly for now, it does look like he's being stopped. And he's not being stopped by accident. These aren't just one off cases he has as you said in your introduction.

Really threatened democracy itself and been doing nothing less than assaulting the other branches. You're serving, for instance, Congress is spending power. It's powered to make laws by ignoring so much of what it's done. Ignoring prior court rulings and precedents in his executive orders.

I know we'll get to that soon. But you know what's happening I think is that lower courts have had enough. And you're starting to see as much as he's brought a large assault on the constitution.

Judges pointed by various presidents, various parties of those presidents finally pushing back.

“Well, I think also another connecting thread here is that the lower courts are really stepping up.”

This is a really important thing that they're doing. They're doing a ton of really important fact finding, which is illuminating a lot of difficult issues for people, which I find super helpful and very, very heartening to see. But they're also slowing him down in a really visible way, aren't they?

Yes, I think the lower courts in many ways have been the heroes of the moment. On the shadow dock at the Supreme Court of the United States hasn't been as good. We'll talk soon about their hearing today and about birthright citizenship. But they've really enabled a lot of this. I've been calling it on the author and the office podcast of self-cou. We think of military coups as happening from the outside and violent takeovers.

But in Latin American countries, we've often observed chief executive's presidents destroying the other branches. And assuming a kind of dictatorial power.

“And that is I think what characterizes this assault on democracy by this president.”

Now there is something slowing it down, although it hasn't for the most part been the Supreme Court. It's been lower courts and it's been citizens. And I think those two things feed each other. That what the lower courts do is they provide information to people like you and me. We're able to get that information out there. And then when we see no kings, it's not in response to nothing.

It's in response to things that Trump has done that we learn about in part because the lower courts have taken a stand against them. So I think in the same way that citizens have been the heroes of the moment.

Yeah, I think you're making a profound point there. And I want to close on it later.

Another potential loss for Trump is looming right now on his effort to end birthright citizenship. He showed up at the Supreme Court on Wednesday to watch all this. But the conservative justice is seem to reject many of his arguments.

“Corey, can you briefly recap what happened at the court?”

Well, I was really heartened. I've been very disappointed in the Supreme Court as I said in the shadow doc. It's an emergency order to not even write opinions and to just allow so much of the assault on democracy to continue. And today was I my mood is lifted because I saw conservative justices like courtsage really rip into the government's position. And I can't say enough.

This is not a two sides issue.

The constitutions 14th Amendment couldn't be clearer. If you're born in the United States, you are a citizen. Now, Trump's team is saying the phrase subject to the jurisdiction carries with it. Some kind of requirement a parental allegiance for those children born in the United States. And I saw the conservative and liberal justice as alike, especially Barrett and Gorsuch just ripping into that idea.

Well, absolutely.

“And I think there's good reason to think he's probably going to lose here, don't you?”

I put it at least at 63. I don't see more than three votes for the president side. It was a ridiculous moment in embarrassment, really, for not only Trump, but his solicitor general as well. Well, all this got Trump very angry. He's very angry about a bunch of different things.

Earlier this week, he started out by raging at the Supreme Court. Over the birthright citizenship case, calling the courts stupid. That plus him showing up at the court seemed like an effort to bully it into sighting with him. His very active showing up was an act of rage in hostility toward the court. And then after things went badly for him there, he erupted again, tweeting this quote,

"We are the only country in the world stupid enough to allow birthright citizenship." That's a stupid lie. It's just a dumb hair-brained lie. But he's obviously very, very angry that his Supreme Court sort of like the way he used to call his attorney general his lawyer.

He's basically saying his Supreme Court is supposed to be doing his bidding, and they're not,

and that's driving him absolutely bananas. Absolutely, in 2016, when he was running, I wrote a piece called Trump versus the Constitution of God, and my point there was not just that he's proposing thing after thing, including torturing the families of suspected terrorists, for instance, that are obviously unconstitutional. But that he really has no understanding of the way the system works. He doesn't know what a Constitution is. He hasn't read it.

He talks about having an article two that gives him the power to do anything he wants. He thinks that our system makes him a dictator, and that because he was elected, he really is unlimited in his power. And I have to believe as much as he was intending to intimidate the court today, that for them it was an opportunity to face the face, give a constitutional lesson to this president, to teach him that he's not a dictator.

“In fact, he was almost daring to oppose his dictatorship, and if they're going to save face, I think they have to say what the Constitution says,”

that absolutely, you might not like it, but the Constitution's 14th Amendment, we fight a war about this, guarantees birthright citizenship. Now, I don't want to make the mistake of being too kind to this court, but they actually seem to do the right thing today, and I hope you're right. I think they are going to take this as an opportunity to show some sort of independence. Now, they haven't been nearly as independent as they should be, they've rolled over for Trump a whole lot, but this is a big one, and I'll take it, man.

I'm with you, Greg. I mean, I think there are some moments where, especially for the justices like courtsage, who have a professed obligation to the text and fidelity to the text. That's their mantra. When the text is so clear, it would really ruin their credibility to read it in a way that was anyway resembling what the solicitor general and what Trump wants it to say, which is not what it says, and so that commitment to textualism, I think, is really helping here.

We saw it in the Tariffs case, too, of course, that they really refused to read the law at issue IEPA, the International Emergencies Act, as a grandizing presidential power, when, in fact, it did the opposite, it limited that power. And so, you know, that gave me some hope, and I have hope here, too, like you, I don't want to excuse the Supreme Court. They, in many ways, have brought us to this moment by enabling this president and horrific ways. We're still all in its immunity decision, the Supreme Court essentially placed Trump against above the law, above prosecution, the opposite of what a constitution is supposed to say.

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Start your test today for one of your promo. On Shopify.de/record. Well, let's hope it keeps going on another front entirely, Trump is seeding at our NATO allies for failing to help him reopen the straight of our moves.

After he refused to consult them before launching his war with our run, the problem is his creation.

Yet he's demanding that other countries bail him out of it after he's spent the last year, shutting all over them. He told the telegraph that he might pull out of NATO saying it is "beyond reconsideration" apparently meaning his deliberations are far along. Cory, does Trump have the power to unilaterally pull the United States out of NATO? Absolutely not. I mean, one thing that I'm devoted to on my podcast is restoring the idea that the framers were brilliant in realizing that the war powers that a monarch had had to be divided up.

And let me just say a little more about that. The monarch in England had the power to just both initiate war and also to carry it out. And what the framers said is that's two dangers. We're going to give the power to initiate war to Congress and it's going to require deliberation. We're going to need reasons for war.

The American people are going to have to hear that. And then of course, they made the president commander and chief. And Trump is trying to use surplus, launching a unilateral war with no reasoning that we've been given. We don't know what the goals are here. And it really is an action that flies in the face of exactly what the framers were trying to prevent. Well, absolutely. And by the way, Trump is also now moving the goal posts on the Iran war.

He doesn't appear to be ending Iran's possession of nuclear material. So he told Reuters in an interview that he doesn't care about it anymore because it's so far underground. He said, quote, "I don't care about that." Now that leaves me wondering, Corey, what achievement he's going to walk away from this war with. There is none that I can see. He's going to say he decapitated the regime and degraded the military.

That last part is probably true, but we don't even know who's going to be in the power long term.

And the nuclear situation is going to be basically where it was before the war.

I mean, is he again bumping up against the limits of his power? I mean, keep in mind, Corey, when he started this, he dismissed the word of advisors who said, you know, this could be kind of more difficult than you think. They talked about the straight of hormones. They said that Iran might be more willing than one might think to try to bring the global economy to its knees that way. He just kind of dismissed it again because he just had this faith in his own strength and power.

His ability to just bomb his way to anything or whatever the hell he thinks he was going to do.

“I think again, you're seeing the limits of presidential power in a very graphic way here, aren't we?”

Yes, I would say on the one hand, you know, he's not, it doesn't have a sophisticated idea of power. He thinks, you know, me, me, me. So kind of narcissists idea of power rather than to cooperate and to bring the global community on board. And you also saw him domestically refuse to even give us any reasons much less spring Congress on board. And so I think that does weaken him.

He is the commander in tree. If he does control the military, and that's both dangerous domestically as he tries to shut down civil liberties. And as he engaged as much as he talks and rails against endless wars, he might have begun an endless war with no end in sight. And as much as his narcissism, this is brought him into this, it also might keep him in it and there might not be a way out. The Iranian see his weakness, they might continue it and to save face. That's my worry.

Also, we've talked about the danger of this self-cool. There's nowhere where that's clearer than in the war powers.

And courts, especially, despite the war powers act, after Nixon meant to rain in the war powers, have really refused to stop President. So this isn't an instance in which we're going to see the court stop him. And I don't think even Congress will stop him as much as they've got an obligation. They certainly should be trying, and they're failing terribly in their constitutional duty. But that's what worries me about this. You know, both domestically and internationally, he's making mistakes. He's showing signs that might lead to his own demise.

But he also might win. And as much as we hope that he won't, this is not any office. It's an office with enormous power, and that's the danger of the moment. Well, I will tell you one area where he's not winning. It's in the court of public opinion. So to speak, we have an absolutely crushing new CNN poll.

It finds his approval on the economy at an abysmal 31%, 27% said they approve of his handling of inflation, which is like the most important issue to most people right now.

His overall approval is also in the toilet. It's a 35% and 65% say Trump's policies have made the economy worse. That's the highest of his presidency. Cory, those are really terrible numbers, but it occurs to me that once again here, this is entangled with his sense of presidential power, remember the whole idea behind the tariffs was itself an enormous abuse of power, and a very clear authoritarian act, an effort to completely railroad Congress in its its power to tax and to you serve that power entirely for the presidency.

He got rebuked on that by the Supreme Court. He's now trying to scramble his way out of it, and you know, all he ended up doing was throwing his way around a little bit in confusing and haphazard ways that just ended up backfiring on him.

“He's hurting a lot of people on the process for sure, but here's yet another example of his sense of his own power being so crude and just so simplistic that he just stepped on another rake and stepped on another landline really, right?”

That's right, and you know, in his recklessness, he doesn't care about anyone's welfare except for his own and doesn't care about anyone's well-being and cares about his own popularity. What he's scary at the moment is, you know, I think he looks at Nixon and we look at Nixon and we see Nixon's popularity as it began to dip, and as we got the impeachment proceedings in the judiciary committee, you didn't even need to go through impeachment in the full house and the trial in the Senate.

He was embarrassed enough of his own wrongdoing, his own high crimes and misdemeanors that he resigned.

And Trump looks at that and he shameless. He thinks this guy was a sucker. Why would he step down? And as his popularity dips, as hopefully in the next Congress, he faces impeachment for his variety of high crimes and misdemeanors and no question that trying to create a dictatorship is a giant high crime and misdemeanor.

“My worry is he won't step down that he'll just continue to dig in. And that's what's so dangerous because he is commander in chief. He does have control of let's not forget of course.”

What was supposed to be an immigration force is that he's turning into his own stormtrooper force to shut down civil liberties and as he gets weaker and more erratic, he also potentially gets more dangerous. Well, let's recall though, that he's actually had to scale back the use of paramilitary forces and cities and stuff like that. I actually take somewhat seriously these these moves to kind of reorientize. I think we're now reading that the plan for prison camps is being reconsidered. I don't know what's going to happen there, but very very plainly the enormous outpouring of energy from

“incredibly heroic ordinary people across the country has really put a break on one of the most authoritarian things that he has done and I find that heartening. What do you think?”

Absolutely. I mean, what I talk about in my book, the presidents and the people is the idea that really it's not going to be courts and save us. It's not going to be Congress. It has been throughout American history citizens fighting back. The newspaper editors who put John Adams on trial after he had them prosecuted for criticizing him.

We are seeing it, both with no kings and importantly, as you say, in Minnesota, the protests and the heroic people who really risk their lives, it worked. It took two people to be murdered in front of all Americans, but it really is working.

“My worry is that we can't let up that as he gets pushed back in each of these instances, he does back down. He has back down with ice.”

But the moment that he sees the opportunity to rise up again to slap us back, he will because he doesn't view his own power as limited. He believes that the constitution gives him absolute authority. Let's not forget this is a person who admires dictators and has said so repeatedly.

So that's his dream, really. And his own narcissistic fantasy is the thing he cares about the most.

Well, when he does that, we'll just stop him again. Just to close on an optimistic note, I want to return to a point that you raised earlier about the kind of interlocking of some different institutional aspects of the system in a way that's positive.

“You had mentioned that the lower courts, which are doing heroic work, sort of, in fact, finding and really putting the breaks on some of Trump's authoritarian abuses.”

We don't know what happened with the Supreme Court with those, but even in the interim, the lower courts are putting up a real buffer and slowing him down.

And that kind of works in a positive way with the people. And this is something you know, you've written about, as you just mentioned. And so the people get more material to work with. And I think importantly here, Corey, the people get encouraged when they see the courts putting the breaks on Trump. They actually look at what's happening and they say, you know what, our institutions aren't folding. I'm not going to fold. I'm not in this myself, the people say to themselves when they see this kind of thing.

And can you talk a little bit about that to close out like just how the performance, the good performance by our institutions in putting the breaks on Trump kind of feeds positive tendencies and energies among the people at large.

“Is that an important dynamic and what do you think of it?”

Yeah, I mean, I'll begin with this brilliant phrase, no kings that has brought so many millions out into the streets and to break it down, what it really is saying is what's happening here, what Trump is doing isn't just immoral. It's illegal. It's a violation of a constitution of where the people and what the courts are doing, the lower courts in each of these instances is giving us examples. It is, I think, in the abstract when I talk about a self-cou, you know, even the rule of law or even ideas like free speech and equal protection, it can sound abstract.

But when you start to see his shutdown of political opponents, Komi and James and the courts blocking that, when you see them restoring funding to groups like PBS and MPR, when you see his usurpation of power resisted, even if in the end the Supreme Court is going to take his side, we get energy by seeing that we're not making it up. We're not dreaming this attempted dictatorship. And that's what the fact-binding courts, especially our great at showing us. And then, you know, you and I, our kindred spirits, and that we're amplifying each week, each week, each day, what's happening and using those lower courts to tell that story. And the energy that comes from it is fantastic. I am feeling so hopeful, having gone to no kings and seeing all of this.

Well, I'll tell you what, the big story I take from this is we're not out of it yet, Corey. Absolutely, the fight's just beginning. Folks, if you enjoyed this conversation, check out Corey Brechner's podcast, the oath in the office. Corey, pleasure to talk to you and hang in there.

Love to Greg, I'm happy to do it any time.

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