The following is a lightly edited transcript of the April 6 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 very frustrated over his mounting failures on multiple domestic fronts. Having fired his attorney general and Homeland Security chief, he’s now looking at purging more top officials. As one report puts it, “he’s very angry.” Meanwhile, Trump’s advisors are reportedly very worried about the war’s deep unpopularity. One senior aide fears he’s being given a rosy picture of how the war is being received and that he’s deeply misled as a result. The through line to all this is that Trump is bumping up against the limits of his magical thinking. Yet there’s no sign of any willingness to adjust. New Republic staff writer Kate Aronoff has been writing really well about the reality check his policies have received. So we’re talking to her about this weird tension between this and his refusal to course correct and the real damage it’s all doing. Kate, really nice to have you on.Kate Aronoff: Nice to be back.Sargent: So Time magazine reports that top White House advisor Susie Wiles fears that Trump is being fed a bill of goods about the popularity of the war. She fears it’s really hurting GOP chances in the midterms. Trump’s pollster Tony Fabrizio has conducted studies showing its unpopularity and a small group of aides delivered this bad news to Trump. Kate, I think it’s hard for some pundits to accept that Trump’s war has made him even more unpopular. That’s not how things are supposed to work.Aronoff: Yeah, I don’t want to be too kind about the history of American wars, particularly in the Middle East—but this is an exceptionally unpopular one. And they didn’t even have the dignity to haul out a Colin Powell–type figure to hold the little vial up before a panel and tell us a lie about weapons of mass destruction. They just kind of went in, and there was no lead-up, there was no sort of attempt even to cultivate some sort of popular support or even a real sense that Iran posed a threat. What was it—Tom Cotton said that an imminent threat for 47 years from Iran? It boggles the mind that anyone would imagine that this would make Trump popular and do anything other than crater already pretty shaky public support. But, I hope that means this war can end as soon as possible.Sargent: Well, that’s actually a reasonable supposition in some sense, because if Trump’s pollster is conducting surveys showing the war is very unpopular and Susie Wiles is telling Donald Trump, Sir, whoever’s telling you that this is going well is lying to you and this is going to kill us in the midterms, then there actually is something of a chance that Trump looks for a quicker way out. Aronoff: One would think that that would be the most likely outcome—that this thing would be wrapped up soon because it’s sort of dragging on multiple fronts, whether it’s gas prices in the United States or just the fact that, you know, American soldiers are starting to die.Sargent: Trump knows things are going very badly on many fronts. He just fired his attorney general, Bondi, and Politico now reports that he’s weighing firing Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer. One administration official tells Politico: “He’s very angry and he’s going to be moving people.” Kate, I thought that’s interesting because obviously Lutnick has a big economic role and a big role with the tariffs. So clearly Trump’s ticked about his economic approval being in the toilet and he’s looking to make it appear like he’s acting to fix things. But Kate, would firing Lutnick do much?Aronoff: Well, it wouldn’t open the Strait of Hormuz, for one. And that is ultimately what he’s trying to deal with, is that he started a war of choice alongside Israel to provoke a country that can control the Strait of Hormuz. And somehow the Defense Department did not think about that possibility—that you could close down 20 percent of the flow of crude oil for the entire world, along with a host of other very important commodities, by starting a very stupid and illegal war.Sargent: There’s an interesting dimension to this that we should try to draw out a bit. Trump is in a rage over the Supreme Court striking down his tariffs. And in some sense, he’s probably taking that out on Lutnick. But the thing is, the tariffs were struck down because they were illegal. And Trump is incapable of grasping that. He’s incapable of understanding that his power is not absolute. So someone has to be at fault. Other than him, somebody. So we’re in this weird place where Trump is tanking in the polls in part because his belief in his own omnipotence was so delusional. Kate, that seems less than ideal, right?Aronoff: Well, it’s all less than ideal at this point. But yeah, that’s exactly right. I mean, these tariffs are illegal.