The following is a lightly edited transcript of the February 7 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.

Rage is mounting among President Donald Trump’s allies over the losses that Trump’s agenda has suffered in court, which are clearly becoming a serious obstacle to him. It’s gotten so bad that Elon Musk shared a tweet from someone who suggested that it may be time to defy the courts. And Musk boosted Trump allies who are seething over these rulings as well. All that amounts to a pretty dark threat from Musk: He and MAGA appear to be steeling themselves to defy the courts. So this is good time to take stock. To what degree have the courts stalled Trump as of now? Will Trump and his allies ignore court rulings? What would happen if they did? We’re talking about all of this today with Norman Eisen of Democracy Defenders, who’s on the front lines of many of these fights right now. Norm, thanks for coming on.

Norman Eisen: Greg, thanks for having me.

Sargent: Over the weekend, a federal judge temporarily restricted Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Treasury Department data. Norm, can you give us a quick recap of what that ruling did and why it’s important?

Eisen: The ruling keeps Musk and his White House DOGE team out of the Treasury Department databases with payment information, other sensitive details about countless Americans, not to mention tax returns. And they can’t get in there and break the code. If they start mucking about, they could cause a calamitous crash of the system with disastrous economic ripple effects. Our order and the subsequent court order that the A.G. secured later in the week are belt-and-suspenders protection against those harms by Musk and the White House DOGE group.

Sargent: This ruling, the one in response to the state A.G.’s lawsuit, is the one that triggered MAGA right now. GOP Senator Mike Lee called it a judicial coup. Senator Tom Cotton called it “outrageous.” Matt Gaetz called for the judge to be impeached. Norm, what’s your reaction to their reaction?

Eisen: My reaction is that the Trump administration’s “flood the zone” strategy has met shock and awe for democracy and the rule of law. And the cutting edge is our order locking non–Treasury people, and even people who have no legal right to look at the data within Treasury, from doing so, and then the New York federal court order doubling down on that. It’s a sign that democracy and rule of law won the week, Greg.

Sargent: It looks like that temporarily. Elon Musk shared a long tweet from someone who was outraged about that ruling and suggested it might be time to defy judicial commands. Musk also actively agreed with Senator Mike Lee’s suggestion that Trump and MAGA are facing a supposed judicial coup. Norm, it looks to me like Musk and leading MAGA lights are in the process of fabricating pretexts to start ignoring the courts. What do you think?

Eisen: Well, certainly Musk was dropping a strong hint with that retweet. He and Trump can be masters of ambiguity, and there’s a strong tradition of, Retweet does not mean agree. But I think it shows that they are thinking about the red........

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