Intriguingly, Fox News has lately been hitting Donald Trump with terrible polling news. In recent days, Fox has found Democrats slightly ahead in Senate races in Maine, Texas, and Iowa, and up by a lot in North Carolina. Critically, Trump’s own favorability numbers are very bad in all those states, even though he won three of them, two by double digits. In all four, his numbers among independents are shockingly awful. Meanwhile, on the Iran war—which is central to why his standing is cratering—Trump aides are privately feeding him hopium. The Atlantic reports that they’re showing him data on Iran’s economy, which supposedly illustrates that if he does nothing and bides his time, Iran will surrender any day now. Doing nothing is the smart play, sir! Yet as Democratic strategist Caitlin Legacki argues in this episode, Trump’s inaction on Iran is a big albatross for GOP Senate candidates. Legacki explains why Iran is central to the battle for the Senate, why those Fox polls should give Democrats grounds for cautious optimism, and what could still go wrong for them.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

By now you’ve heard that when Donald Trump left the NATO summit in Turkey last month, he was clandestinely transferred from Air Force One to an alternative plane to avert a credible Iranian threat. It appears many of his cabinet members were left on Air Force One. Now new leaks make the story look darker: It turns out Trump brought several of the aides who are personally closest to him on the safe alternative flight. This, even as he left numerous journalists on the original plane, which effectively turned them into a decoy that might have been targeted. None were informed of the operation. It all perfectly captures Trump’s contempt for the media, so we talked to Margaret Sullivan, author of the excellent press-critiquing Substack “American Crisis.” She explains why this saga is so irregular, why the media faces a moment of uncommon challenges, and why journalists often won’t directly confront authoritarianism, even when it gravely threatens their own institution.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

While interviewing Donald Trump, a MAGA media personality urged Trump to consider declaring a national emergency to seize control of our elecctions. Trump’s response was ugly. “Let me just say that stranger things have happened,” Trump said. “I’ll leave it at that.” In other words, Trump wants it understood that declaring a national emergency absolutely is being considered. This comes as Politico reports that Republicans are privately bracing to face Trump’s “wrath,” now that the Senate has gone on recess without passing the voter suppression legislation he wants. Republicans fear he’ll erupt at them anew over this in coming days. In short, Trump is intensifying his search for ways to rig the midterms or steal them outright. So we talked to Professor Rick Hasen, the author of the excellent Election Law Blog. He explains what’s wrong with Trump’s “national emergency” threat, how it signals genuine intent to delegitimize our elections, what election-theft options Trump has that really should worry us, and what ordinary voters can do—right now—to prepare for the worst. Listen to this episode here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In a fascinating new analysis, CNN’s Harry Enten calculates that Donald Trump’s net approval on the economy is 33 points underwater. That’s a shocking 42-point swing from during the 2018 midterms, when Trump was in positive territory. On top of that, Enten notes that in the most recent CNN poll, Trump’s net approval on inflation is 50 points underwater, and that this hasn’t been rivaled by any other president. Meanwhile, Republican pollsters and strategists tell The Wall Street Journal that they fear that under Trump, the GOP has thrown away its traditional advantage on the economy. And they suggest time is running out to turn that around. We talked to New Republic senior editor Alex Shephard, who has been arguing well that Trump’s unpopularity is the story of our politics. We discuss why the bottom fell out so quickly for Trump, what the punditry still gets wrong about 2024, and why Democrats won’t make a big case that on the economy, their party tends to be far better than the GOP ever is. Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://dsrnetwork.substack.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In an interview with Punchbowl News, Donald Trump said straight out that his voters just might not show up for GOP candidates this fall. That’s a striking admission of one of the thorniest problems the GOP faces. But it gets worse. Trump also declared that “a lot” of his voters are “not angry at me,” but “are very angry at Republicans.” That will likely be read by his supporters as a declaration that Republicans are failing Trump, and as encouragement to stay home. Meanwhile, polling shows MAGA voters turning against his war in large numbers. And MS NOW interviewed Trump voters and found them deeply disappointed with his second term. In short, MAGA is cracking up. We talked to Shripal Shah, who runs ad expenditures for the Dem-aligned House Majority PAC. We discuss whether Trump voters are gettable by Democrats, whether the current Democratic lead in the generic House matchup is enough, and how big a challenge the tattered Dem brand really poses.  Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A striking new Washington Post report reveals that Donald Trump privately raged at Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, demanding to know why he’d been caught off guard by depleted munitions stockpiles. Yet these leaks actually reveal his own serious screw-ups: Trump wrongly concluded that the munitions situation had been fixed, showing that the commander in chief utterly failed to keep track of the impact his decision to go to war was having on the U.S. military. Meanwhile, other leaks suggest that Trump is feeling privately humiliated by his failure to defeat Iran, which freshly exposes just how deep his miscalculations have been all along. We talked to Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, a skillful interpreter of MAGA pathologies. She explains why authoritarian regimes rely on slavish loyalists like Hegseth, discusses why voters’ rejection of Trump is so important to salvaging the American experiment, and deciphers a conundrum known as “the MAGA paradox.”  Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Democrats just nominated left-wing populist Abdul El-Sayed in the Michigan Senate race. Yet his victory was razor close, suggesting he faces big challenges ahead. What’s his theory of the case? In his victory speech and in remarks to reporters, El-Sayed offered clues. He described Trumpism as a fusion of the “worst” of neoconservatism and of MAGA, an apt description of the horrors Trump has created. He cast his GOP opponent as a Trump bootlicker, essentially saying this is what Trump demands of his party. And he juxtaposed Trumpism with the ethnic diversity of his coalition and with the immigrant heritage of himself and his children, an effective indictment of Trumpian white-nationalism. Is this enough? We talked to Ron Brownstein, senior political analyst at CNN and columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. We discuss El-Sayed’s many challenges in the general, how he absolutely can assemble a winning coalition, and what he's learned from Barack Obama’s understanding of American politics.  Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump has been raging at Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for Washington, DC, because she dropped those high-profile prosecutions for alleged vandalism of his Reflecting Pool renovation. That pressure is corrupt on its own. But new leaks are making it look even worse. CBS News reports that Pirro actually carried a box of evidence to the White House showing that the facts simply didn’t support those prosecutions. The meeting got “heated,” per CBS, seemingly meaning Trump wanted prosecutions in spite of what the facts and the law said. Meanwhile, we just learned this fiasco triggered private “tirades” from Trump, further underscoring his quest for lawless prosecutions. We talked to former federal prosecutor Barbara McQuade, author of The Fix: Saving America from the Corruption of a Mob-Style Government. She walks us through just how deeply irregular this presidential conduct truly is, discusses what has been lost at DOJ, and reflects on how a Democratic House and/or Senate can rein in all this madness next year. Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On Monday, CNN analyst Harry Enten flagged a truly surprising finding in a Fox News poll that had eluded our attention: Trump’s approval is nine points underwater in Texas, which he won by 14 points in 2024. That’s not all: The Fox poll, which shows Democrat James Talarico up by three points, finds Trump's approval at an astounding 18 percent among independents in Texas, with 50 percent disapproving strongly. That’s remarkable, especially given how key independents are in the Texas Senate race. All this comes as Trump unleashed a long tirade claiming “my REAL poll numbers” are “the best they have ever been.” Trump also bizarrely listed a long litany of accomplishments that were, well, entirely made up, showing he has zero intention to help his party by recalibrating. We talked to Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett, who knows Texas and has worked on midterms. He explains why Trump’s standing with Texas independents is “absolutely shocking,” what the path to victory there looks like, where Talarico still must improve, and how numbers like these could open up other red states for Democrats.  Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Donald Trump unleashed an epic tirade at Senator John Cornyn for blocking his IRS lawsuit settlement slush fund, which would let Trump reward allies and grants the Trumps a form of tax immunity. Cornyn is holding up the nomination of Todd Blanche as attorney general until it’s killed. Trump gloated that he’d endorsed Cornyn’s victorious primary opponent and seethed that the American people want him to have this corrupt fund. In response, another foe, Senator Thom Tillis, landed a hard blow, asserting that Trump’s rage over the fund is exactly why it must be killed. Humiliatingly, Tillis treated Trump like a toddler who must be told, “no.” Plus, a defeat would show that Trump’s license to corrupt DOJ is not limitless. (Underscoring this humiliation, after we recorded Trump petulantly exploded again, saying he absolutely will have his fund.) We talked to New Republic staff writer Emma Janssen, author of our great new politics newsletter all about Democrats, The TNR Blue Book, which you should subscribe to, folks! We discuss her installment on how Dems are exploiting these splits, the deeper reasons for them, and how they reveal Trump’s diminishing power more broadly.  Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices