Trump Press Sec Snaps at Media as Queries about His Mental State Grow

THE DAILY BLAST with Greg Sargent

The New Republic

News, Politics

4.4 • 800 Ratings

🗓️ 18 July 2025

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

President Trump is in more trouble than usual. The Jeffrey Epstein files are killing him with the base. New polls show him cratering on many issues. And questions are mounting about his mental state due to a bizarre story he invented about his uncle and the Unibomber. At her latest briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt grew angry at reporters for questioning Trump’s unhinged responses to the Epstein mess. She also belittled a journalist who probed Trump’s mental state by asking about the Unabomber weirdness. We talked to Mark Jacob, author of the Stop the Presses Subtack, who frequently dissects Leavitt’s gaslighting. He explains how the sycophancy of Leavitt and other Trump propagandists worsens at the most difficult moments, what the media gets wrong about Trump’s unfitness, and why Trump-MAGA pathologies are increasingly threatening our futures. Looking for More from the DSR Network? Click Here: https://linktr.ee/deepstateradio Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is the Daily Blast from the New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network.
0:16.5	I'm your host, Greg Sargent.
0:31.0	President Trump suddenly seems to be running into more trouble than usual.
0:34.7	The Jeffrey Epstein files are killing him with the base.
0:38.8	His mental state is getting mocked due to a bizarre story he told about the Unabomber. He's sinking in many polls with a new associated press survey finding him
0:44.7	cratering on many issues, and his health seems to be deteriorating. We've noticed that when things go
0:51.3	badly, Trump's sycophants go out of their way to say things that aren't just adulatory.
0:55.9	They're things they believe Trump himself wants to hear, as if what's at issue is boosting his flagging spirits.
1:04.1	White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt did some of this at the latest press briefing.
1:08.8	She snapped at a reporter and was unhappy about a question
1:12.2	that seemed to probe Trump's mental state via his strange Unabomber story.
1:18.6	Leavitt is the perfect window through which to understand what's going on in Trump world,
1:22.6	so we're talking about her briefing today with Mark Jacob, the author of The Stop the Press's Substack,
1:28.3	who has done good work digging into Levitt's particular form of dishonesty.
1:32.8	Mark, thanks for coming on.
1:34.6	Thanks for having me.
1:36.3	So let's start with this bizarre Unabomber story.
1:38.9	At an event in Pennsylvania, Trump recounted that his uncle John, who he described as a genius professor at MIT,
1:45.9	had Ted Kaczynski as a student. Trump then said he used to ask his uncle, what was it like to
1:51.8	teach the future Unabomber? But this can't be true. First, Trump's uncle died in 1985 more than a
1:59.5	decade before Kaczynski was revealed as the Unabomber,
2:02.9	so Trump couldn't have had that conversation with his uncle.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The New Republic, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of The New Republic and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.