Transcript: Trump Explodes at GOPers as Defiance of Him Visibly Grows |
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 was 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 ... 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........