Transcript: Angry Trump Urges GOP to Rig Midterms as Polls Turn Brutal

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the July 24 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 exploded at Senate GOP leader John Thune during a Wednesday rally, demanding that Republicans pass voter suppression legislation immediately. This prompted an angry response from Thune, which in turn triggered MAGA rage in response. It’s no accident that this comes amid new polls showing the GOP midterm position deteriorating, including in a major Fox News survey. Trump thinks voter suppression can save the party. This is all coming to a head because the House just passed something, and the pressure on the Senate is getting brutal.

This whole situation has gotten weird and complex, so to really understand it, we’re talking to the great voting rights reporter Ari Berman of Mother Jones. Ari, always good to have you on.

Ari Berman: Hey, Greg, great to talk to you again. Thank you.

Sargent: So House Republicans just passed a massive $95 billion budget with new war funding, and it also contains $10 billion for provisions related to the SAVE Act, which is the big voter suppression legislation Trump wants. The idea is to pressure the Senate to then pass these things via the simple majority reconciliation process. Ari, before we talk about the Senate, can you just explain what these provisions are in the House budget resolution, and how would they work?

Berman: Well, that’s a good question, Greg. And I can’t really answer it, because we don’t really know. All we know is that the House passed a resolution that says that states are going to get $10 billion in grants if they pass parts of the SAVE Act. But they didn’t release any more details, so we can only speculate on what they’re trying to do. But this seems to me a backdoor way to try to pass the SAVE America Act.

So if you look at the core provisions of th…