This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.

I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

Donald Trump's truth social feed can get awfully revealing at times.

He just unleashed a number of posts that open a window on a lot of negative things about the man and his presidency,

the transactionalism, the amorality, and the utter buffoonish incompetence. In one, he attacked his MAGA allies in a way that accidentally revealed that he has no principles. In several others,

he seemed to show that he has no real grasp on the actual nature of the

problem he faces now with Iran and the Strait of Hormuz.

The clarity of all these missives raises a question, how do we make sense of the fact that

this man is our president?

Political theorist Alan Elrod has a good piece for liberal currents, arguing that the election of Trump, twice, should prompt introspection about what we've become.

So we've invited him on to work through some of this with us on a theoretical level.

Alan, good to have you on, man.

Good to be back.

So let's start with your piece, Alan.

You likened the national drift at this moment to the

atmosphere surrounding Jimmy Carter's Malay's speech in the 70s. In particular, you pointed out that

we're in the middle of an energy crisis, this time created needlessly by Donald Trump. And also

Iran, of course, is front and central as it was then. And we're all reeling, as you put it, from Trump's threat of Iranian genocide.

The mere fact, the American president threatened civilizational erasure and genocide, threatened to kill tens of millions of people, is itself a crisis, is it not? Absolutely. I mean,

we can't take it back. The elected leader of this country who speaks for us, right? Not just

he's our president, speaks for us to the world, said he was going to wipe a civilization off the map.

That's the kind of thing our allies aren't going to be able to forget.

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