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

I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

Donald Trump exploded in fury on Thursday, lashing out at polling organizations and media companies who he said are rigging numbers against him.

He was clearly triggered by the new poll from the New York

Times, which delivered him probably the worst polling on immigration he's ever gotten.

Trump's rage is a reminder that he thinks he's immune to the laws of normal politics, and you can

see why he thinks that. But we're going to argue here that, well, he isn't immune and that he's in real political trouble right now.

We're talking about all this with political theorist Alan Elrod, who has an interesting new piece for liberal currents that digs into this question about whether normal politics can ever constrain Trump or not.

Alan, great to have you on, man.

Great to be back, Greg.

So let's start with Trump. He erupted on Truth Social. He said, quote,

fake and fraudulent polling should be virtually a criminal offense.

Then he ranted that he'd won 2024 in a landslide, and then that all the fake

polls were wildly wrong about that. He ripped into the, quote, failing New York Times, ABC fake news,

NBC fake news, CBS fake news, low-rating CNN, and said, something has to be done about fraudulent polling. I'm going to do everything possible to keep this polling scam from moving forward.

Alan, in reality, Trump won a historically small victory in the polls were actually close to right, but you made an interesting point that Trump's only concern with polling is rooted in vanity, that he doesn't fundamentally think it matters if he's popular. Can you talk about that?

Yeah, I think that Donald Trump cares about his polling numbers in the sense that Donald Trump likes to be able to say that he's great and he's the best.

And so anytime there's a poll that makes him look good,

he likes that. But when it comes to the question of democratic legitimacy, the idea that not only

does it matter that you win elections and that you have mandates if you win them big, and that when

you continue and go about your policies, that voters are generally supportive of those policies,

that those things should be clear signals to elected officials about which direction they ought to go in.

...