Transcript: Trump’s Late-Night Purge Suddenly Becomes Bigger Scandal

They are in the minority, but they are not powerless. They can speak up, they can use the bully pulpit. And I have said this until I’m blue in the face and I’m sure he doesn’t like hearing it for me for the umpteenth time, but we need a stronger chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Senator Durbin is a very nice man. We need someone far more aggressive. And frankly, Senator Schumer needs to do a better job of communicating. How many of the Democratic committees are actually on Bluesky? It’s a small little thing, but that’s where the Democrats are. That’s where the engaged public is. It has 27, 28 million used or something like that? It’s malpractice for Democrats not to be on all of the relevant social media platforms to explain themselves and to come out. And it is very demoralizing for people out there in the country who are trying to mount a defense or are just trying to keep their spirits alive, frankly, to see such a sporadic, ineffective, nonexistent response from Democrats.

So I certainly hope they get their shit together, excuse my language. I would hope, come next week, we see regular, consistent messaging. I interviewed Governor of Maryland Wes Moore—and that interview will be up at the Contrarian—and he said two things. What you need in a crisis is unified command, meaning everybody saying the same thing together to create unity and volume. And the other is constant communication. You have to tell people what is going on. You have to tell them what you are doing. You have to tell them what progress is being made. If you don’t, you lose the public. And I don’t see either of those things being done by Democrats on the Hill right now. I realize it’s hard when you don’t have the White House. But frankly, when they had the White House, they weren’t that great at messaging either.

Sargent: I want to endorse that 100 percent. It’s very, very clear that one of the key projects for people like you and me and for Democratic and small d democratic and liberal voters across the country will be to get both our media and the Democratic Party to step up to this moment to hold Trump accountable, and communicate what they’re doing in that regard and communicate why Trump is so dangerous. This all has to be explained to people. Trump is the one who’s doing all the explaining. He’s just saying, OK, well, they did a crap job, they couldn’t really be trusted. Where’s the counternarrative, right? It’s really clear to me that Trump and MAGA are using all their media outlets effectively to just portray him as a disruptor, as a reformer. And again, we see this here—John Barrasso said that essentially. He said, Oh, well, you know, he’s reforming the place. He’s knocking heads together. He’s breaking the furniture.