The following is a lightly edited transcript of the March 10 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.After we recorded this episode, Trump gave a speech demanding for a third time that Republicans pass the SAVE Act, reinforcing the dynamic we discuss 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.President Trump has been demanding that congressional Republicans pass the SAVE Act, which is a massive voter suppression measure. In several angry rants, he’s demanded that they do this rather than doing anything else. But a funny thing is happening. Trump’s order to Republicans is actually trampling on the GOP’s midterm message. Republicans badly want to appear really, really focused on costs and the economy, and a new poll shows they’re in a big hole in the midterms—yet Republicans are still totally in thrall to Trump. So now what do they do?Few people are better at explaining what’s really going on among House Republicans than congressional scholar Norm Ornstein. So we’re asking him to decode the latest madness for us. Norm, good to have you on.Norm Ornstein: Always good, Greg.Sargent: So let’s start with Trump. He erupted on Truth Social, demanding that Republicans pull out all the procedural stops to pass the SAVE Act. First, very briefly, Norm, what’s in the SAVE Act?Ornstein: Let’s say, Greg, to start with, that every Republican out there talking point is, this is about voter ID, which is supported by 90 percent of Americans. That’s not what the SAVE Act is about. The first thing it’s about is proof of citizenship before you can register to vote, much less vote. And you have to go physically now, even if you’re registered, to a voting office to re-register with a passport, a passport card, or a birth certificate. And to get a passport or passport card if you don’t have one, you need not just any birth certificate—an embossed birth certificate—all of which are costly.That’s bad enough, but then it gets much worse, because the SAVE Act requires every state to hand over all of its sensitive voter information to the Department of Homeland Security. And that includes a lot of stuff people don’t want shared, which then will cooperate with the Social Security Administration and the IRS, which is a danger to Americans. But they also require the states then to use a program in the Department of Homeland Security called, ironically, the SAVE program, which is a faulty and biased voter-purge software. This software, which has a 14 percent error rate, would then take many voters off the voter rolls, unable to vote, requiring an enormously costly appeal, which most people would not take. And you could be sure that far more of the ones who are purged from the voter rolls will be those who don’t like or would not vote for Donald Trump or Republicans.It is nationalizing the election process in a bad way.Sargent: I mean, that is a massive, massive voter suppression effort.. It would really knock out millions and millions of voters. Trump really wants this to pass — on Truth Social, he said the following in great anger: “It must be done immediately. It supersedes everything else. MUST GO TO THE FRONT OF THE LINE. I, as president, will not sign other bills until this is passed, and NOT THE WATERED DOWN VERSION GO FOR THE GOLD...DO NOT FAIL!!!”He’s really worked up. So, Norm, he says he doesn’t want the watered-down version. I guess he’s referring to the fact that the House already passed a version of the SAVE Act, which had a lot of these pieces, but not the functional end to mail-in balloting. He wants more. You don’t have 60 votes for this SAVE Act, right? Like, is that the fundamental problem?Ornstein: The fundamental problem that Republicans have is that the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to pass, is one that they have used over and over when Barack Obama was president, when Joe Biden was president. Democrats, even when they had 59 votes, couldn’t get anywhere if all the Republicans opposed it. That’s where they are now. They have 53 Republicans and they don’t have seven Democrats to pass the SAVE Act. So if they’re going to do this, they are going to have to violate their own promises and change the rules so that you can get to a point where a majority can pass the bill.Sargent: Right. And in another eruption on Truth Social, Trump said the Senate should focus “exclusively, if necessary,” on the SAVE Act. Now it seems to me there’s no way this thing passes the Senate.