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

I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

President Trump seems even more angry at the media than usual.

His lawyers just filed a bat-shit insane lawsuit against the New York Times that's literally chock-full of crazy rants that sound like they were dictated by Trump himself. And on two other occasions on Tuesday, he snapped

at reporters in ways that seemed strange even by his standards. Is Trump angry because his

magical political powers are failing him?

That's the argument that Paul Waldman made recently on his substack, the cross-section.

And in fact, a new poll just landed that reveals a surprisingly steep drop for Trump among independence,

a key metric for gauging political strength or weakness.

So we're talking to Paul about all this today.

Hey, Paul. Good to see you, man.

Good to see you too, Greg.

So let's start with some audio of Trump.

A reporter asked him if it's appropriate to engage in so much business activity while in office.

Trump said his kids are running the business, but then Trump asked for the

reporter's nationality, and the reporter answered that he's Australian. Then this happened.

In my opinion, you are hurting Australia very much right now. And they want to get along with me.

You know, your leader is coming over to see me very soon. I'm going to tell them about you.

You said a very bad tone.

So Trump actually threatened to tell Australia's prime minister about this reporter's impudent

question.

But Paul, what struck me about this is that Trump thinks his self-dealing should be

...