The following is a lightly edited transcript of the June 4 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.Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified before the House Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday. An extraordinary extended exchange took place between Rubio and Democrat Ted Lieu, and it was all about Trump’s tendency to fall asleep at public events. Ted Lieu cornered Rubio on this and forced him to lie to Congress about what all of us can see with our own eyes. That might seem trivial, but the way Representative Lieu handled this moment captures something essential about how our politics works today. And it shows why Democrats need to relentlessly center Trump’s ongoing physical and mental decline.We’re talking about this moment with Brian Beutler, because he writes regularly on his excellent Substack, Off Message, about the need for Democrats to fight the information wars aggressively. And this Rubio moment raises some important issues related to that. Brian, always good to have you on.Brian Beutler: Great to be back.Sargent: OK. So this moment started when Representative Ted Lieu got to question Rubio. First, Lieu played video of Rubio talking at a recent Cabinet meeting with Trump slumbering away right beside him. Then Ted Lieu asked Rubio about that. Listen.Ted Lieu (voiceover): Secretary Rubio, have you been at more than one meeting where President Trump has fallen asleep?Marco Rubio (voiceover): That’s false. That’s false. I’ve never seen him fall asleep. On the contrary, the guy doesn’t sleep, which is a big problem because he calls me at two in the morning. He calls me at five in the morning. And, you know, I like to sleep a little bit.Sargent: Brian, just to start off, Rubio is actually undercutting himself here because he’s admitting that Trump is up at all hours of the night. And that’s part of the problem, since it’s another symptom of his ongoing decline. But otherwise, what do you make of this move by Lieu here?Beutler: Part of the reason he’s falling asleep in Cabinet meetings is that he’s this erratic person who is outraged all night, stays up all night tweeting, and then is too exhausted for the work that he actually finds boring—the work of the president that happens during mostly normal business hours.But I think that the point here is to put Rubio, or whoever happens to be testifying before Congress, in a bind and make them say ridiculous things under oath that are contradicted right there by video evidence, so that they make the rounds on social media and you and I talk about them on this podcast. What Lieu is saying is, I know that you know the truth and you are here misrepresenting it to the public—and just putting a lot of pressure on Rubio. Because somewhere deep down in Marco Rubio, one assumes, is a conscience, is somebody who is in character, and the character will break down under enough pressure.Sargent: Right. Well, let’s listen to more of the exchange. It continues this way. After Rubio had denied that Trump falls asleep at the meetings, Lieu played more video that showed Trump sleeping away right next to Rubio. And then Lieu said this. Listen.Lieu (voiceover): You are literally talking about issues of war and peace and Donald Trump is sleeping right next to you. If Donald Trump cannot stay awake at these important meetings where the cameras are rolling, imagine what he’s like when the cameras are not there. So I’m going to ask you—have you been at classified meetings where Donald Trump has fallen asleep or had trouble staying awake?Rubio (voiceover): I’ve never been at any meeting where he—the things you’re showing me now, he was not falling asleep.Lieu (voiceover): So you’re lying again. You’re consistently lying to Congress. You’re lying to Congress, Secretary Rubio. So I’m going to show you another video in a moment. The president’s inability to stay awake on the job has caused other countries to perceive him differently. They mock him. They see he is weak and he is feeble.Sargent: Brian, what interests me about this is Rubio’s trying to plead that this is too trivial a matter to be discussed before the Foreign Relations Committee. But Lieu just doesn’t let himself get knocked off course by that. Everything here is all about Trump’s fundamental unfitness for the job, about how he shouldn’t be making these decisions and he shouldn’t have this power and that this is a disaster for America and the world. Your thoughts on that?Beutler: Yeah, I mean, in a way—obviously it requires a bit of explication and Lieu couldn’t interrupt himself in the five minutes or whatever that he had to question Rubio to point this out. But there’s an almost obvious contradiction here where Rubio is on the one hand saying he wasn’t asleep, but also, if he was asleep, it’s no big deal.