The following is a lightly edited transcript of the June 2 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.Donald Trump is furious over the news that Iran has walked away from the talks with the U.S. over the war. He unleashed some angry and strange quotes to CNBC that suggest he has no idea what to do—none at all. It’s hard to escape the sense that we’re in a new place with Trump’s mental state. He seems caught in a loop and he appears unable to think his way out of it. All this comes as Republicans are mounting a genuine stand against Trump’s corrupt slush fund for insurrectionists because the politics of it are so terrible for them. As one plugged-in reporter put it, Republicans are “screwed.”It’s very unnerving to imagine how we’re going to get through the next two and a half years of this. Molly Jong-Fast, the host of the Fast Politics podcast, has a great piece for The New Republic with editor Michael Tomasky on just this topic. So we’re talking to Molly about all of it today. Molly, really nice to have you on.Molly Jong-Fast: Thanks. Thanks for having me.Sargent: So on Monday, Iran announced that it was walking away from the talks with the U.S. over Israeli attacks in Lebanon. Trump has lurched wildly back and forth over this. First, he said he doesn’t care at all if the talks are on hold. Then he said he’s personally intervened to get Israel to stop and the talks are suddenly back on track, he says, and proceeding rapidly. Molly, before we get into the details here, do you believe Trump when he says everything’s back on track?Jong-Fast: No. I mean, I think that what’s happened is one of the functions of this second term of Trumpism is that Trump now has a world that fits whatever he wants. Surrounded by sycophants, people don’t tell him the truth. He also has people not telling him what’s actually happening. I think about… we’ve been in this war for almost three months, more, and he doesn’t get a PDB the way a normal president would. He gets, supposedly, the reporting says, a video of things blowing up. So he doesn’t have a great sense of what’s happening on the ground. He’s like a Fox News grandpa, except that he’s running the country.Sargent: Yeah, that’s not ideal when you put it that way. Let’s talk about what Trump is saying now. He talked to CNBC on Monday and he was plainly livid over Iran pulling out. Let’s go through some of these quotes. First, he says he doesn’t care if the talks are done, saying, “I don’t care if they’re over. Honestly, I really don’t care. I couldn’t care less.” Then he lurched into his usual stuff about how Iran can’t get a nuke. And he said this: “If they want to try and have a nuclear weapon, I will blow them up to kingdom come.”Molly, he’s been saying for weeks and weeks and weeks that if Iran doesn’t open the Strait of Hormuz on terms that are entirely favorable to him, on terms that he dictates entirely, then he will obliterate Iran, he’ll wipe it off the map, and now he’ll blow it to kingdom come. It’s just over and over, right? It’s really hard to escape the sense he’s just caught in this kind of weird mental loop. He just seems stuck to me. What do you think?Jong-Fast: Well, I mean, I think he’s stuck. Look, the Iranians are in a position that’s 10 times better than they were before this whole thing started, because there had been the fear of them closing the strait. But no one actually thought—we hadn’t seen how well it worked for them. And now we have. Gas prices are—Trump can’t get the genie back in the bottle. So he wants gas prices to go down. He needs gas prices to go down. He has a midterm election spiraling towards him. He knows what happens when he loses the House because he had that experience before.If you look at the polls, if the polls end up being right, he could lose the Senate too, by a lot. And he could—the point is, you need a certain number of senators to remove. I mean, it’s unlikely, but it’s not impossible. And when you’re talking about places like Alaska and Texas being in play—I mean, right now it’s 53–47, but there are like seven, eight seats that are in play. So there’s a world where Trump loses the House, loses the Senate, gets impeached, maybe gets removed. People are mad and the polls are bad.What I think is the most—I want to say soul-crushing—part of this whole experience of watching Republicans, and Democrats have had problems too, is that they have really just sold the entire country out, whereas Democrats have fought with each other. But the thing that’s the most upsetting about Republicans selling each other out and the country is that this group of Republicans, the YOLO caucus—it was in The Wall Street Journal, the “you only live once” caucus. The Republicans who have lost their seats or given them up because of Trump—that’s Tom Tillis, who decided not to run again. That’s Bill Cassidy, who lost his primary. That’s John Cornyn, who lost his primary. In that is Mitch McConnell, who’s just not running again because he’s a million years old. And also in that are Collins and Murkowski, who have their own set of rules.This YOLO caucus is really, really mad. And that’s why Trump—we just have this breaking news that Trump may stop this weaponization fund, that this may be dead now. So that’s because this crew is really mad. But this crew is not mad because Donald Trump is destroying our democracy. And they’re not mad because of the war in Iran that has no purpose and has not been sold to the American people. They’re mad because Trump is hurting their careers and chances of getting reelected.And so as disappointing as that is to me, it’s also instructive. Because as we cruise into a midterm where Trumpism becomes less and less tenable as he gets underwater in more and more states, you see a world where two or three months into the 2028 cycle, people decide that they could impeach and remove him because they want to get reelected. And it comes back to this theory that really all these people care about is keeping their jobs.Sargent: Yeah, it is interesting to center what’s going to happen in the next cycle, because for a lot of these Republicans—whichever ones are here after the midterms anyway—they’ve got to now start thinking to themselves, what’s going to happen over the remaining two years of his term? We’re only a year and a half in here. That’s really not that far in, and things could get a lot worse, particularly if he really spirals out of control with Democrats in control of one or both chambers.You and TNR editor Michael Tomasky had this very good piece looking at Trump’s ongoing crackup from many angles. And you illustrated very well that not only is he unfit for the job, there’s very good reason—actual reason—to think his deterioration will accelerate. And you talked about the unknowns ahead, and this was unnerving, right? There’s ICE still getting enormously scaled up, new prison camps coming into existence, FBI Director Kash Patel promising new arrests, Trump wants to invade Cuba and Greenland—and that’s just a partial list. You don’t paint a very reassuring picture of what’s in store for us, Molly.Jong-Fast: So Trump—I really do believe, and I think it’s important when we cover this to realize—that the reason that every state is not Minnesota at this moment is not because Donald Trump has had an about-face on immigration. It’s because Donald Trump sees the midterms coming down the pike and he knows it’s not popular. I think he’s got certainly an inability to steady himself, to prevent himself from doing things, to prevent himself from saying things. It feels like his frontal lobe is not firing on all four cylinders. And so he is unable to not say stuff. Like he called the journalist a “piggy”—”quiet, piggy.” That kind of thing didn’t happen in Trump’s first term. He would fight with people, but in a very calculated way. He’d lose his temper, but he’d sort of figure out a way to spin it.So the question is, what does a Donald Trump that is not hemmed in by the midterms look like? And I think it looks a lot more like a country of Minnesotas. Noem lost her job because it was loud and it looked very corrupt and it was bad for business. But that doesn’t mean that that kind of corruption couldn’t come back after the midterms. He just doesn’t want to lose the House because he doesn’t want to get impeached.Sargent: Well, I want to go back to one other quote that Trump gave to CNBC because it goes to the core of a lot of this. He was talking about whether NATO will help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. He said this: “We don’t need them. We don’t need NATO. They were very, very weak and very sad.” So, Molly, this is just wildly unhinged stuff. A few weeks ago, he was raging at NATO and demanding that they help bail him out of the fiasco he created. But now everything is just all nonchalance. He doesn’t really care how long it takes to reopen the strait. But the thing is, the strait remaining closed is absolutely crushing GOP chances in the midterms.Jong-Fast: There is a number where these people become brave. And that number is because they realize that they can’t win. Part of the calculus is that they’re waiting until all of the primaries are over because they know that you can’t—they know from the John Cornyn story that you can’t win a primary without Trump. So they’re waiting for the primaries to be over and then they’ll make the calculus to be brave. So some of this is just electoral math. And then some of it is the polling.I do think there’s a temptation to want to see these people as having a come-to-Jesus moment or a moment of moral clarity. And that is not what’s happening here. What’s happening here is just the most craven calculus.Sargent: Just to switch gears for a second here, you mentioned the weaponization fund, the slush fund, which is Trump’s billion-dollar fund to dole out to allies, including the January Sixers. There are various reports saying that the White House may temporarily kill it. It’s a little unclear exactly what’s going on. But as of this moment, it looks like Senate Republicans are really unwilling to back it. The Republicans might try to pass language as part of reconciliation that will prevent any fund from being set up. A little unclear. But reporter Jake Sherman of Punchbowl News was quite unsparing about the situation Republicans are in. He said, “Senate Republicans are absolutely screwed.” And they really are, right? This is a very bad situation for Republicans. This thing is absolutely toxic. This was yet another example of Republicans really being forced to swallow the absolute political worst for Donald Trump. And it really looks like we’ve crossed a threshold where Republicans are experiencing a new level of frustration. Their frustration with him and the White House really seems to have boiled over. Is that too optimistic?Jong-Fast: Look, again, the question is, are they so mad because it’s morally reprehensible, or are they so mad because they see the polling that this is not popular? My guess is it’s the latter, not the former. They put RFK—the doctors, some of these senators are doctors—put RFK Junior into Health and Human Services and he is now basically trying to change the vaccine schedule. So these people don’t give a fuck about the American people. They want to get reelected, they want power. There’s a whole alchemy here, but none of it is good for anyone.But the good news about this standing up to him is that if they’re standing up for this, it means it’s easier for them to stand up for other things. And as disappointing as this is—because they’ve had many an opportunity to stand up, including—I mean, Mike Pence. Mike Pence said we don’t—they shouldn’t fund the weaponization fund. They were trying to kill Mike Pence. “Hang Mike Pence” was what they were chanting. So the idea that this is a bridge too far—whatever. But I do think it’s good. It’s good that there’s some spine, because Donald Trump is basically running roughshod over our government. And it’s another moment to point out that it’s not popular with the American people—wildly unpopular, which is why these Republicans are standing up to him.And then the other thing is that the American people don’t like this. It’s not popular, but they’re also much braver. And the people who have really been atrocious and appalling and just grotesque at every level have been our billionaire class, who have just been willing to do anything in order to get the regulatory approval they want. And so the people who used to pretend to be liberals—the Elon Musks and the Jeff Bezoses and the very, very, very wealthy—have just shown us that they are not only not good stewards of our mainstream media, but they are also just truly atrocious people who should not have any say in anything that happens in our government.Sargent: A hundred percent agree. Just to spool this out from here—most likely Democrats win the House, maybe they win the Senate. It’s in play now, but who knows what things look like in five months. But there’s an actual chance. It’s most likely one or both chambers flip control. And at that point, Molly, Republicans are going to be even more frustrated and angry because Trump will have fucked them. Right. He will have fucked them.Jong-Fast: We’re at $5 gas. We’re seeing the supply is starting to—there’s some supply that is keeping the prices down. Eventually, we’re going to see another spike in gas prices. And what is the number that kills the Republican Party? Is it $6 gas? Is it $7 gas? I mean, that’s really the question. These are people who voted for Trump on two things. Trump said he’s going to make things cheaper. He’s going to stop having foreign wars. So he’s had a foreign war that’s made things more expensive.There’s no historical precedent for a guy who gets elected and just does exactly the opposite of what he’s going to say. It’s one thing to run for office and say, I’m going to do this, and then not be able to do it, but at least you’re sort of trying. I mean, that was the Biden story, right? They wanted to bring back manufacturing. It was a heavy lift. They tried. They couldn’t necessarily do—they wanted to get Netanyahu under control. They couldn’t, but you could see they were trying. This is like, I’m going to make things cheaper. Whoops, no, I’m just doing whatever I want. So instead I’m going to build a triumphal arch in the middle of Washington, D.C. This sort of Marie Antoinette–style governing, while your people are going to food banks and can’t afford to fill up their cars—there’s a number where that just becomes toxic politics for the Republicans.Sargent: And on top of that all, just sort of typifying what you’re saying or capturing what you’re saying perfectly, he’s out there saying, I don’t care, I don’t care how long it lasts. Jong-Fast: And Trump has had this thing where he can defy political gravity, but he wasn’t—I mean, the one thing I would say is he was defying his own gravity. Like he got indicted but he was still popular. But he wasn’t defying actual political gravity like inflation. And that’s what we’re seeing now—the nuts and bolts of wheat prices and beef prices and the prices from the tariffs, the trade wars, that stuff is real political gravity and he doesn’t have an answer for it. Even a really skilled politician would suffer with this.And what Trump has is charisma and an ability to communicate. And I think what is worth realizing is the reason he’s building this amphitheater behind the White House is because he thinks that if he can get in the culture, he can get the low-frequency voters out. But what he doesn’t realize is you get one bite of that apple. You don’t get to say, yeah, gas is three times more expensive, but trust me, I’m doing a war that none of you want.Sargent: Exactly. I really don’t think the fight is going to help him. I think it’s going to only hurt him because it just sort of smacks of this self-idolatry and this building of monuments to himself and the kind of Marie Antoinette vibe you’re talking about. Molly Jong-Fast, so nice to have you on finally. Thanks for coming on.Jong-Fast: Thank you. Have me back. It’s really fun and I’m happy to be here.