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

I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

President Trump has been raging at Bruce Springsteen for days now, demanding investigations of him with an intensity that borders on the comical.

It's easy to dismiss this as the unhinged ranting of the very unwell person who just happens to be president of the United States, but in the

background, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey has just charged a House Democrat, La Monica

McIver, with supposedly assaulting and impeding a law enforcement officer

outside an ICE detention facility.

Guess who's bringing those charges?

Alina Haba, a top ally of Donald Trump.

Asu and Sub-Sang, a writer at Rolling Stone Magazine, has a new piece arguing that we need to take

Trump's demands for investigations into Springsteen more seriously.

And we think that New Jersey episode shows why.

Little by little, Trump's use of investigatory power against political opponents is escalating.

So we're talking to Aswan about all this.

Good to have you back on, Swin.

I'm so fucking sick of this shit.

I mean, not talking to you.

I love coming on here, whatever you invite me on.

It's awesome.

But you know what I mean.

Well, I'm really glad that my intro got a rise out of you because that means it drew blood.

So Bruce Springsteen has been criticizing Trump pretty ferociously at his concerts, calling him corrupt, incompetent and treasonous, attacking him presiding with dictators, kidnapping foreign students off the streets streets and destroying our university system.

...