THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

In a shockingly brazen move, President Trump is demanding [https://newrepublic.com/article/202132/trump-doj-230-million-shakedown-worse] that the Justice Department pay him $230 million stemming from certain federal actions against him. Representative Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, sent a scalding letter to the White House [https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/democrats-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/2025-10-23.raskin-garcia-to-trump-wh-re-doj-payment-demand.pdf] demanding all internal communications on this shakedown. What struck us was the letter’s forceful indictment of Trump’s corruption and criminality: It denounced Trump’s “blatantly illegal and unconstitutional effort to steal $230 million from the American people” and his “outrageous and shocking” effort to “shake down” the Treasury, labeling this straight-up “theft.” There’s much more, and it made critical legal points as well. We talked to the University of Michigan’s Leah Litman, author of Lawless [https://www.amazon.com/Lawless-Supreme-Conservative-Grievance-Theories/dp/1668054620], a book on the Supreme Court. We discuss Raskin’s letter, the legal nitty-gritty of Trump’s heist, how it exemplifies the MAGA movement more broadly, and how the Supreme Court brought us to this dangerous moment.  Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio [https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

We’re seeing a confluence of events that suggest President Trump’s corruption has crossed over to an ugly new place. Trump is destroying [https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/22/white-house-demolition-sends-shock-waves-spurs-calls-for-pause-00618230] a White House building to create a ballroom for him and his rich friends. He’s demanding [https://newrepublic.com/article/202132/trump-doj-230-million-shakedown-worse] that the Justice Department hand over $230 million in taxpayer funds to compensate him for “damages.” And Democrats from Senator Chris Murphy [https://x.com/atrupar/status/1981052507519369527] to Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries [https://x.com/Acyn/status/1981068541001679103] are going after all this in a newly aggressive way. Into this mess stepped White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who issued an extraordinary new defense [https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1980791112601137186] of Trump’s ballroom fiasco. It was absolutely laden with comically cultish devotion to the Audience of One, but the hagiography also revealed something darker. We talked to New Republic staff writer Matt Ford, author of a great  [https://newrepublic.com/article/202127/trump-white-house-demolition-symbol]new piece [https://newrepublic.com/article/202127/trump-white-house-demolition-symbol] about Trump’s self-dealing. He explains how all this corruption and all this worshipful propaganda reveals Trump’s profound contempt for the rule of law, for DOJ independence, for the idea of the public good, and even for the American people. Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio [https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

Not long after President Trump floated [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/15/world/americas/argentina-trump-javier-milei.html] a $20 billion financial bailout for Argentina, he proposed [https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/20/us/politics/trump-argentina-beef.html] importing beef from Argentina to bring prices down in the United States. This angered [https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/21/trump-argentina-deal-beef-imports-prices-us-cattle-industry.html] American beef producers and produced a backlash [https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2025/10/21/congress/gop-senators-trump-lunch-beef-argentina-deal-00617203] from farm-state Republicans. But the most interesting response came from Meriwether Farms, a beef producer in Wyoming that promises [https://meriwetherfarms.com/pages/about-us] to “preserve the traditions of American ranching.” Meriwether posted a long lament on Twitter [https://x.com/MeriwetherFarms/status/1980296823286952257?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet], professing “love” for Trump but urging him to change course. Meriwether warned that Trump was on the verge of an “absolute betrayal” of the “American cattle rancher” and of “the very people who put food on the table for us.” Does this mean Trump is screwing his own supporters so badly that they’re finally getting angry about it? We talked to Matt Hildreth of RuralOrganizing.org [http://ruralorganizing.org/], whose own family has been in farming for generations. He explains the perfect storm of terrible policies hitting Trump’s rural supporters, discusses whether this will help Democrats rebound in those areas, and details how the party is changing its organizing approach in them.  Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio [https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

In the leadup to the “No Kings” protests, Trump and Republicans widely derided the protesters as extremists, criminals, and terrorists. Then the protests actually happened. They were a wild success: Peaceful, enormous, and representative of a very wide swath of American society. So what did Republicans do in response? They just kept on calling the protesters criminals and terrorists. That MAGA smear is sharply contradicted by countless on-the-scene accounts. We talked to writer Ana Marie Cox, who has a great piece for The New Republic capturing what the protests looked like in a red county in Texas [https://newrepublic.com/article/201950/no-kings-weird-normies-texas]. She explains that the protesters were mostly ordinary Americans who put on a civil and powerfully patriotic display. We think that in their own quiet way, what these protesters really offered, deep in Trump country, was a brutally effective repudiation of MAGA and Trumpism.  Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio [https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]

President Trump’s fury at Democrats over the government shutdown is escalating. First he angrily announced [https://x.com/Acyn/status/1978557549248184503] that he’s “terminated” the big tunnel project connecting New York and New Jersey, basically saying he’d done this to punish Chuck Schumer, an extraordinarily deranged act of direct retribution. Then he unleashed a rambling tirade [https://x.com/atrupar/status/1979249787028304085] filled with lies about “mentally damaged” Democrats’ shutdown stance. All this comes as a new CNBC poll [https://www.cnbc.com/2025/10/17/trumps-economic-approval-rating-drops-says-cnbc-survey.html] finds Trump and the GOP blamed for economic damage over the shutdown by 53-37. This has driven his economic approval down to 42-55, the worst ever in CNBC polling, with his standing on inflation at an abysmal 34-62. We talked to Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, author of “The Hopium Chronicles [https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/].” He argues we should focus on the fundamentals: Trump is doing immense harm to the country, he’s deeply unpopular, and that will matter in the midterms—though Rosenberg also discusses why beating Trump and recovering from our authoritarian slide will be a brutal longer-term slog. Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio [https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices [https://megaphone.fm/adchoices]