Make It Make Sense with Grant Hermes

On July 4th, America's 250th birthday, the White House published a report on its own website calling the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History "un-American." The report, authored by the Domestic Policy Council, said the museum focuses too much on Black and Brown communities, immigrants, women, and LGBTQ Americans, and accused it of dividing the country. Marc Stein i...

The ceasefire Trump called a once-in-a-generation peace deal is over. It lasted three weeks. Grant has bread on his counter that lasted longer. Trump declared the ceasefire officially over while at a NATO summit in Turkey, a meeting that did not go well for the United States by any measure. He threatened to cut off trade with Spain over NATO spending. He claimed the US once owned Greenland and gav...

A New York Times/Sienna poll just found that for the first time, the key states needed to flip the Senate from Republican to Democrat are either Democratic leads or within the margin of error. North Carolina, Maine, Texas, Alaska, Iowa, and Ohio. If Democrats flip those seats and win the House as expected, the math for impeachment starts to work. Then everything started falling apart at once. The...

One week before America turns 250, Congress set aside money to celebrate the country. Trump's private organization, Freedom 250, is siphoning that money into a celebration that is increasingly about him. The Great American State Fair on the National Mall was supposed to open with a concert celebrating America. Musicians pulled out. It became a Trump rally. Trump said 45,000 people attended. T...

The most bipartisan housing bill in 40 years passed the House 358-32 and the Senate 85-5. Trump himself called it "the most comprehensive and consequential housing legislation in the history of our country" in a presidential proclamation two weeks ago. Republican leaders were mid-press conference, celebrating its passage, when Trump posted on Truth Social that the signing was off. A Nort...

A convicted felon named JJ Cafaro, who runs a company called Greenwater Services, was awarded a no-bid $1.7 million contract to paint the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool "American flag blue." It ballooned to $16 million, took months instead of a week, the paint is peeling off the bottom, and the water turned bright green with algae. Trump's response was to blame vandals, threaten 1...

Two weeks before America turns 250, Grant sits down with NYU Law Professor Melissa Murray, co-host of the Strict Scrutiny podcast and one of the country's leading legal scholars, to talk about her brand new book: The US Constitution: A Comprehensive and Annotated Guide for the Modern Reader. The conversation covers what the framers actually got wrong (they were elitists who didn't trust...

Trump gave his longest speech since the State of the Union at a press conference in Paris, then flew to the Palace of Versailles to sign the Iran memorandum of understanding.  For those keeping score at home: Versailles is where Germany signed its humiliating defeat at the end of World War I, the document widely credited with planting the seeds of World War II. The White House finally released the...

Over the weekend, on Trump's birthday, the US and Iran announced they'd reached a deal to end the war. The actual text has not been released. What we know so far is that this is a memorandum of understanding, not a signed treaty, and by no measure does any foreign policy expert consider that a real deal yet. The Strait of Hormuz, which 20% of the world's oil flows through, did not r...

Barb McQuade spent her career as a US Attorney prosecuting organized crime, including the conviction of former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick on extortion, bribery, and fraud charges. Trump later pardoned Kilpatrick. In her new book, The Fix, she argues the Trump administration is running the exact same playbook she spent her career prosecuting. Her words: "it's just crime." Grant a...

103 days into a war Donald Trump promised would never happen, the United States is striking targets inside Iran and along the Iranian coast for the third straight day. The Secretary of Defense announced the US would target bridges and power plants. Legal scholars say those strikes are unconstitutional. International law experts say targeting civilian infrastructure is a war crime. This morning, Tr...

California held its primary last week. Six days later, votes were still being counted. That's normal. But Trump, Elon Musk, and Mike Johnson decided it was evidence of massive fraud, with zero evidence, which they have admitted publicly. Grant breaks down exactly why California's count takes as long as it does, why a Republican surge followed by a Democratic catch-up is just math and not...

Zach Everson is the research director at Public Citizen and the head of their Trump Accountability Project. He is a former Forbes reporter who has spent a decade tracking how Donald Trump uses the presidency to make money. This term, he says, the scale is incomparable to the first. Forbes estimates Trump has made roughly $1.9 billion from crypto since being reelected. That includes the meme coin,...

Trump went seven full days without a public appearance. When he resurfaced, it was first in a pre-taped podcast interview with a friendly outlet where he didn't look well, and then in an unscheduled Oval Office press conference where he struggled to follow questions, compared a flat reflecting pool to skyscrapers, and told Kaitlin Collins to smile more. That press conference also produced the...

Two federal judges have now stepped in to freeze Trump's $1.8 billion anti-weaponization slush fund. One judge in Virginia halted all payouts. A judge in Miami reopened the entire IRS lawsuit after 35 former federal judges called the settlement a fraud on the court. The DOJ quietly backed down Monday and said it would comply. That means the Trump loyalists who were promised a payout for their...

Steve Cash from The Steady State is back on the show this week. He spent his career as a prosecutor, CIA counterterrorism officer, and DHS intelligence official. He also lived and worked in countries run by authoritarian leaders. What he's watching happen in the United States right now looks familiar. In this conversation, Grant and Steve break down how "national security" has becom...

It's a grab bag episode, because everything is happening at once. Iran launched missiles at Kuwait AND drones near the Strait of Hormuz while reportedly agreeing to a 60-day ceasefire extension. Troops are massing in the Caribbean ready to invade Cuba. Trump's DOJ is investigating E. Jean Carroll, the woman he was found to have sexually assaulted in civil court and owes $91.6 million. DH...

Trump spent the weekend claiming an Iran deal was basically done, just some last-minute details to iron out. Except that those "details" were Iran's entire nuclear program and the Strait of Hormuz. Then Qatar had to take over the negotiations. Then the deal wasn't a deal. Then bombs started falling again. Grant breaks down the full Iran saga, the not-deal-deal, the Abraham Acco...

The Department of Justice has lost over 10,000 employees. The acting Attorney General, Todd Blanche, appears to be auditioning for the permanent job by doing whatever the President wants. The FBI Director, Kash Patel, has faced serious misconduct allegations, and nothing has been done about it. So what does it actually mean for the rest of us? Grant sits down with Stacey Young, founder of Justice...

The Democratic Party just released its long-awaited autopsy of the 2024 Harris campaign, and it's not what voters were promised. The 192-page report has no executive summary, no conclusion, no sourcing, and is riddled with basic factual errors. The DNC itself won't endorse it. So what does it actually say, and why was it released at all? Today, Grant breaks down what's in the report...

The ceasefire in the Iran War officially expires TODAY and the White House is searching for a loophole to restart military strikes without Congressional approval.  Meanwhile, Trump's DOJ just created a $1.776 billion fund that shields the Trump family from IRS audits, forever , and could pay out taxpayer money to January 6th participants. Grant breaks it all down.  CHAPTERS:  00:00 – Intro: T...

36 doctors, psychiatrists, and Nobel laureates just signed an open letter, now part of the official Congressional Record, saying Donald Trump's mental and physical decline makes him too dangerous to hold the nuclear codes.  Grant sits down with Dr. Henry Abraham, one of the letter's lead authors and a former Harvard Medical School psychiatrist, to break down exactly what they're see...

Inflation just hit 3.8%, the highest in three years, and wages can't keep up. Gas is nearly $4.50 a gallon, groceries cost more than ever, and the war in Iran is in its 11th week with no end in sight.  Today, Grant breaks down what the numbers actually mean for your wallet, why last week's "good" jobs report is more complicated than the headline, and what Trump is trying to do...

Why is the Democratic Party so lost right now,  and is there actually a path forward? Former presidential campaign manager and Democratic strategist Maya Rupert joins Grant Hermes to break down the real state of the Democratic Party six months out from the 2026 midterms. We get into the DNC's 208-page playbook that says almost nothing about voters, why Chuck Schumer's days as leader are...

The White House is claiming a peace deal with Iran is close, but The deal on the table looks almost identical to the Obama-era agreement Trump tore up in 2018. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio openly told the press that the administration doesn't feel bound by the War Powers Act, and one Republican congressman from Michigan is trying to force the issue with a new bill. We break down...