Some More News - Even More News: Close The Gaetz, Get Your Mace w/Ana Marie Cox

Episode Date: November 22, 2024

Hi. Ana Marie Cox joins Katy and Cody to talk about House Republicans' attack on trans rights and centrist Democrats throwing the trans community under the bus. They also discuss Matt Gaetz withdrawing his name for Attorney General, Dr. Oz, Pete Hegseth, and how to talk with your Trumpy family over Thanksgiving (if at all). For a very limited time, shop the biggest sale of the year and find your forever cookware @hexclad at https://hexclad.com/MORENEWS Get 15% off OneSkin with the code SMN at https://www.oneskin.co/ Every week of November, AG1 will be running a special Black Friday offer for a free gift with your first subscription, in addition to the Welcome Kit with Vitamin D3+K2. So make sure to check out https://DrinkAG1.com/morenews to see what gift you can get this week!  Stay comfortable this holiday season without compromising style—because with Public Rec’s Dealmaker Pants, you really can have it all. And for a limited time, our viewers and listeners get 20% off their entire order with code SMN at https://PublicRec.com  SimpliSafe is offering our viewers and listeners exclusive early access to their Black Friday sale. This week only, you can take 60% off any new system with a select professional monitoring plan. Head to https://SimpliSafe.com/morenews to claim your discount and make sure your home is safe this season.  With top-quality coffee from the nation’s best roasters, Trade truly has something for everyone. Give the gift of great coffee with Trade – visit https://drinktrade.com/MORENEWS  Give the gift of practical luxury that benefits everyone in your household. For a limited time, our viewers and listeners get 10% off their first bidet order when you use code SMN at https://hellotushy.com Check out our MERCH STORE: https://shop.somemorenews.com   SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh  

Hello and welcome back to Even More News, the first and only news podcast. Remarkable. My name is Katie Stoll. Hi, Katie Stoll. Hi. Don't fact check that claim, except the name you can fact check because that's your name. I'm Cody Johnston. How are you doing?

Great. I'm doing great. Part of the reason I'm doing great is because we have an awesome guest today. Very excited to welcome political columnist and host of the podcast Another Day and Space the Nation. It is Anna Marie Cox.

Hi. It's really good to be here. I was very excited when I knew that we had you coming up soon. I was like, perfect. I want to talk to you. I wanted to meet you. Yeah, a lot of things. Not to make everybody listening and watching jealous, but we've been chatting for a while now, and she's great.

I am great. You are. I am, actually. Yes. Very fun. We're all in for a treat this week. That's true. Back check it.

We do have some holidays folks, holidays to. We also have some Jonathan who's also here. Oh shoot. Cody, you don't have to force that in, it's fine. I will wait right here. No but you are. I just was so busy giving Anna Marie her roses. Which is good.

You know what, I almost like it when you don't because then all the commenters are like, you didn't say the thing about Jonathan. And then I have to be like, ah, all these people, they wanted to say it. That's great. Well, whoever was just talking, nevermind. It makes it interactive.

So they feel like you want viewers to feel like they're pulling things out of your content rather than just you giving them stuff. Exactly. That's a good tip. They're like, I also saw Jonathan. Sometimes we shouldn't even do the news and let them say like, where's the news? I think we also have to acknowledge that your cat is also also here. Yes. You want to introduce her. She is also also here. Yes.

If you want to introduce her. She also has very strong opinions about lots of things. I don't know if we're going to touch on wet food or swirls. It depends on what the holidays are. We'll see. That's true. What are the holidays that we're talking about? We'll see.

Friday, November 22nd is National Flossing Day. Oral hygiene, not the dance. Okay. Great. I assume the dance has a day, I don't know when it is. It's gotta have one. I used to be a little anti-flossing, which is not a stance I'll back up. Wait, what? Not really, not really.

I just didn't like it and I was like on a kick. I was like, it's not important. It's very important, especially as I've aged and I realized that food gets stuck in my teeth all the damn time. So I retract that if anybody remembers my ill-advised youth, me pretending to have a grudge against big floss. You were an anti-floss activist for a while.

Young people, the reason why you get food stuck in your teeth more as you age is you lose your enamel. Your teeth get less slick. So young people, in addition to having like smoother bodies and smoother skin, have smoother teeth. Slicker teeth. Let's harvest their teeth. But yes, go floss.

It's like sleep for your teeth. I'll also highlight a real holiday that we had this week, which we will almost certainly get to when we discuss the events, the news this week is November 20th was Trans Day of Remembrance. And I think it's very important to acknowledge and highlight that, especially with all of the scary stuff that we've already been dealing with and will be facing in the coming years. And which we will be talking about soon today. There's news. There's lots of news. Jonathan, why don't you start us off? What's been going

on? Oh, I know what's been going on. Yeah, he's also here. But let's just give an overview for our conversation. Yeah, there's kind of two things happening in tandem here. One is the conversation among, I don't know, broadly we can say centrist Democrats who are arguing that perhaps it was the left's and the Kamala Harris' campaign question mark? The Harris campaign. Insistence on talking about pronouns and gender fluidity all the time that cost her the election, and we should not do that as much. So hold that in your mind.

The other thing that's happening is that Republicans in the House are smelling blood on this issue, and in response to the incoming representative Sarah McBride of Delaware, who is set to be the first openly transgender member of Congress. Representative Nancy Mace introduced a bill to ban transgender people from bathrooms that align with their gender identity in all federal buildings. And House Speaker Mike Johnson has put forth a rule for bathrooms at the Capitol. He did it on Wednesday, Transgender Day of Remembrance. Perfect.

He also gave a... We're not going to play this clip, but he said that I want to- It's so enraging. I just have to say that's so enraging. I said the perfect sarcastically. It's so fucked up. Just whenever they do scum stuff like that, yeah. Yeah. It's scummy stuff.

Mike Johnson was like, well, I'm a Christian, so I believe in treating everyone with respect and dignity, and I think we can do that while still having the rules so that women deserve to have their own spaces. And it was weird because he was kind of co-opting this what seemed like language of the left to do his thing where he's banning one person specifically from using- Wolf's Shoe Theory. Well, I will push back slightly. It's not one person specifically, I mean, one member of Congress, but there are trans

staffers, interns, people on the hill that this dramatically affects. And you know, Sarah does have her own bathroom, probably I would presume, in her office. I saw somebody say that. Across the street. Across the street. It's awful. I'm not saying that that's okay, but I'm saying that there are more people than just her affected by this. I mean, there's like, okay, I mean a few things. There is also just the thing that's going

to happen when Sarah McBride goes into a men's restroom on Capitol Hill, which I don't think is going to make any, it's probably probably gonna make some people pretty uncomfy. I would throw out the reverse of that as well, whereas like, do you want trans men coming into your bathroom then, ladies? Like, Nancy Mace, are you gonna be welcoming to the trans men that you're forcing use the wrong bathroom?

And then there is the problem of like, they let, you know, there are all sorts of sexual predators on Capitol Hill. We're going to talk about one a little later. And they're allowed to go, you know, kind of wherever they want. I also think while this is really enraging, I think that the comments by centrist Democrats saying that Kamala Harris was too woke are maybe more damaging in the long run. I agree.

I do agree. Because this is for sure. I mean, it's not just for show. It is important. And our mutual friend Parker Malloy has pointed out a thousand times that when you get this kind of messaging at the top in any way, it devalues the life of trans people. Absolutely.

It leads to violence. Anytime you dehumanize someone, you will enable violence somewhere down the line. And allowing them to control that narrative and being like, well, maybe it's, yeah. I can't imagine what it feels like, honestly, to be a trans person right now. And the party that welcomed them is so quickly throwing them under the bus. When you can just look at the fact that it's just a bald-faced lie

that this campaign was too woke. We have distanced ourselves from wellness and nobody wants to push back or even point out the fact that lots of people are like, well, it's just, we talk about it all the time. Like, no, the other side talks about it and then we're in a position where we have to respond to it. Like, these are just, just accept it.

These are people are part of- And if you're always playing defense, then you're validating their position instead of vocally, proudly defending people. Historically, this never ends well for the appeasers, right? I mean, the United States has a not great history in a lot of ways, but we have made some progress on some things. And it's the people who said maybe we shouldn't care about the marginalized who wind up looking like evil idiots. And we didn't even go that far. I mean, I speak not as a

Democrat, right? But as a leftist, I want to be very clear about that. Yes, yes. Me too. And it's feeling more and more like them. There was this moment, especially because I do genuinely love Tim Walz and I think he's a really good example of a politician. Yeah. A good example of a politician, period. Like his quote about you earn political capital to burn it.

Yes. Like put that backwards on the forehead of every Democrat consultant in America because that is something that everyone forgets. I can't, it's like the one reason, not the one reason I'm in love with him, but one of the many reasons. Also, he's the most prominent Democrat I've ever heard

say housing is a human right, which I guess we've all forgotten about, but he said that. He's saying that. He said that. There's a lot of things that we seem to have forgotten about. And if more people said it in that position, people would start to hear it and remember it,

and then it would stick, and then it would become an issue that we're repeating. And this is why the trans stuff is important, right? And that's why talking about AIDS was important, talking about the rights of black people was important. Like people started to do that at the top, and there was the work of activism on the ground level of decades, right?

And those are the people that are really pushing. But the way that there is this sort of top down, bottom up way that progress works, you have to have people normalizing this conversation at the top. You have to have them keep talking about it, keep talking about it, keep talking about it. And between the two of those things, you kind of like create a pincer movement, I guess, like getting all of you kind of create a pincer movement, I guess. Getting all of society kind of...

Well, it normalizes the conversation. It becomes something that's not foreign or weird sounding. It just becomes normal and you get used to it. And resistance that people might have initially over time wears down, but you have to keep repeating the message. And we have come so far adrift from so many progressive ideas in the last eight years. I just wanna be so careful with you saying we, Katie. I know, I know, I know you're right.

I know what you mean, but let's just shit on this. Actually that is such a good note for me in general. Well, it is hard. It's frustrating because I don't know where's my party? Where's the people that represent me? And I do, when I talk about Dems specifically, it's them, but I want desperately for there to be a space where we can talk about these issues

that they aren't, that they won't. There's not a nominally left party. There's actually somebody out there vocally talking about these things. Yeah. Yeah. And with this issue, it's speaking of like planting seeds with people and stuff, this like bathroom bills were a thing of like 2015.

And then we kind of like it seemed, you know, your mileage may vary on how much you bought into the fact that like they don't care about the bathroom thing anymore, but they pretended to not care about that anymore. And it was like, oh, it's trans people in sports, it's this, it's this, it's this. And I think it might be helpful if you're out there to point out to maybe people who were kind of came around about the bathroom thing Like it's actually fine. I don't really care people should be able to use the bathroom that that they're comfortable with in this way

And point out they're still doing it everything they say everything they pull back on is a lie They're maneuvering so that they can get to a place where they come back to these issues so that they can get to a place where they come back to these issues. Thinking about like even gay marriage, people sound hysterical when they say like, well, they're going to come for this too. And then eventually they're going to do that. And like they do with all these issues. You know, the facts and logic thing, again, I think has very limited use when talking to someone who is a true believer on the right.

It has some more utility if you're talking to someone who's nominally on the left. But I think history is really important. It's not a facts and logic thing, it's just history, which is fascism never stops with the first, I mean, it's a fucking Nazi poem, right? But there's a reason why that's a cliche. And just over and over,

there has never been an authoritarian party that's like, you know what, we're done now. Like, all right. To change their minds. Yeah. And we're good. All we want to do. We've accomplished this.

All we're going to do is just this one group, and then we're never going to oppress. Then we'll stop. Then we're done. We're never going to marginalize anyone ever again. And that's something, I think, that some Republicans got a very healthy sort of reminder about when IVF, you know, it became clear that IVF was on the table

for the pro-forced birth party, right? They won't stop, they won't stop. This is like, you're not, you may be like pro-life because you think people use abortion as birth control or whatever. Like you may think that you're pro-life for other people except your daughter, but they're gonna come for you, right? And they're going to come for-

It's a party of having targets. They have targets, and that's what they're always going to have. Whether it's a specific group of people, a policy, social security, Medicare, all these things are just their targets to dismantle. Which is why it would be really nice right now if prominent Democrats, other than just AOC, had a backbone and would say, listen, we're going to draw a line in the sand right here. Not only is this the right thing to do, but we're going to say it and stick by it even if the polling says it's going to hurt us politically.

Because voters respect if you stand for... It's the old George W. Bush thing. You may not agree with me, but you know where I stand. Democrats have that problem right now. Big time. I don't know where they stand on so many issues, but again, if you want to look at all this finger pointing place that we're in right now, there's so much data. There isn't one answer for anything, but there's so much data to support

that the primary concern of so many voters was economic issues and inflation. And okay, let's work on our messaging in these arenas. Or Dems, work on your messaging in that arena. I'm learning. But you don't need to throw the baby out with the bath water. This is a part of what has,

this is part of what's drawn people to your coalition. And it's all economic. It's all, there is no distinguish between economic and culture war, right? Like you, if, well, for one thing, like, I mean, the state of Texas is gonna learn real quick. If you make this an unfriendly place for people who are anything but straight white folks to live,

they will leave. Yeah. They will leave. Like, I was looking at some really scary numbers about, like, the number of people who are doing residencies and women's health here has dropped 20%. Oh my God. There are 20 or 30% of practicing OBGYNs are thinking of retiring early.

There's just going to be, and you want to hire people who aren't straight to work for your tech company, they're not going to come. You want to hire women of childbearing age to work for you? They know women who... People who have 10 kids, let's go ahead and say people, know that there's a chance they might get pregnant and want to live in a place where that's not going to be a decision that they can't make. So I think Democrats can make that argument.

We want as much people to work as many places as possible. We want people to be able to make money. We want that. You can protect all these people, all these groups while also talking about these economic issues and they're not contradictory. I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I think a prominent politician who's used the word fascist to describe the party vocally. He's like, yeah, they're a fascist party. They wanna do these things.

And be vocal about what's going on and be vocal about what you wanna do about it. Didn't Kamala and then walk it back or something. She agreed with Charlemagne the God when he called it fascist. Yeah. You know what? She was like, you could call it that.

I heard Charlemagne the God interviewed on the fucking New Yorker radio hour after that and he was amazing. I loved him so much. Like Charlemagne the God for president, I am totally on board. I think maybe he could do it. I knew he seriously just talked about anti-racism

and like anti-blackness in a way that was really compelling and also kind of made the point of like, yeah, we need to call them this. Black people know they are. What's the reticence about this? I wanted to say something about centrist Dems, too, which is there's all this talk about adopting

the policies of the right as a way of winning office. My thought, and maybe I'm gonna write something about this, is that why don't we adopt their tactics? Not the voter suppression part. That will let, or though we should play with voter laws. Totally. We need to open them up. Or the massive propaganda campaigns of misinformation.

Yeah, sure. But the thing that I would do is get radical, actually. Let's present radical ideas at the local level like they have done. What is the radical version of banning books? Let's do free lunches. Let's do all this stuff that sounds off the chain, but just present it and really believe in it and have it happen at the local level and run the moms for the roms for liberty of the left

and get those people on school boards. I agree with you. Exactly. I mean, even- Take the playbook. Take their playbook, but not the place. Well, not the, I don't know. I'm not in a football place right now. But our version of something that is radical that so many people, at least anecdotally,

whatever, like they want change. Right. They want something different than the establishment of both the conservative and democratic party, and for whatever reason Donald Trump represents. I don't know what'll happen with him, but something's gotta change. Let's show them something, ways that things can change that actually benefit their personal

lives on, yes, the local level. And to be fair, I presented this idea before and someone corrected me on this, which is the ideas of free lunch and breakfast, the ideas of allowing people to use school for the entire day and night to be able to turn that into a genuine hub for people, the ideas of having even something I know like turn your community away from law enforcement and towards intervention, for mental health and for social services. Those are actually not radical ideas. Right.

Those are ideas that in the rest of the world are actually just what they do. Well, no matter what you say, they're gonna be framed as radical. So just do the things that you wanna do and that you think are good and say that they're good. And enough people will hear that good and say that they're good and enough people will hear that

and be convinced that they're good. Absolutely, and I'll take a step further. I think we should be doing that. But then there are actual, none of it's radical. I'll accept that. But Obamacare was radical. And now, yeah, even people up here, it's like, well. Just don't call it that.

It's not perfect, but I don't know what else we've got. Now people are used to it and expect it. And now people, well, they don't, I think we all need to expect a whole hell of a lot more than the ACA. I would love to get us back to that. But I've said this several times on the show. There are a million, pick your poison in any industry

or thing, I keep banging the drum about the insurance crisis for people with homeowners literally not getting coverage not being able to unaffordable rate raising and Something has got to give whatever party decides to tackle that is going to get the attention of or Whatever party says that they're going to tap it. Or says it, whatever. As we've seen.

You know what I mean? But to me, that's the bare minimum of what I would be expecting from our government as we're looking at this situation. And it shouldn't be that radical. But that would make a radical change in a lot of people's lives. Well, if we gave people a different way

to earn wealth in this country than home ownership, that wouldn't be. Or that. It's still an issue, right? But because that's how you get into the middle class and keep going up is by owning real estate. It diversifies your portfolio. I mean, UBI, once you introduce UBI, it will be popular.

Once you get it going, no one's gonna want it to go away because number one, and I'm sure y'all know this, but the more widespread a government benefit is, the more popular it is in terms of once it gets established. Like, it's hard to enact that stuff at the beginning because of white people. But once you have it, you take it away, people don't like things taken away. And also it becomes perceived as not like a special benefit

and not as something that like gives something to people who don't deserve it. Right, it's no longer framed as like a zero sum game in their minds where it's like, well, if they're getting a thing, but I'm not, then they're taking away something from me. It's just something, oh, we all get it. Before we move on to another topic, I want to circle back to where we started on this one.

Sarah McBride, Sarah, you know, put out a statement saying, I'm not here to fight about bathrooms. I'm here to fight for Delawareans and to bring down costs facing families. Like all members, I will follow the rules as outlined by Speaker Johnson, even if I disagree with him. Just jumping on that, because I understand there's a big conversation

happening about, and I don't feel comfortable actually weighing in on that to that degree. I certainly respect all the trans voices out there that have different opinions about that. I'm of two minds because both, like I said earlier, there are other trans people working in these buildings and what a terrible position we put this woman in and to be the brunt of this and to specifically be there wanting to serve a specific job. So I, I don't have firm opinions on it,

but I did want to acknowledge that this is a part of this conversation that's happening right now. And you know, I know Parker has talked about this as well. And yeah, so I'm just acknowledging that that's part of it. So that people don't think I'm brushing right past it. And as, as Parker pointed out, like, you know, if you cave on these things, not to frame it like, oh, she's caving or whatever,

but if you give them ground, A, they're gonna keep going, as we talked about. That's not where it stops. And they're gonna keep attacking you no matter what. They're gonna frame it. Jonathan pointed out, Jesse Waters, who one day I'll throw pointed out, Jesse Waters, who one day I'll throw up on, God willing, but

is like calling her like attention seeking and stuff. And it's like, well, she's literally saying like, OK. And so they're going to do that anyway because they don't care. They don't. Yeah. You know, thing you need to

decide when engaging with people that disagree with you is how safe you feel. And so I think I've won a grant, a lot of grace to Sarah McBride to pick and choose her own battles. And I mean, we all love Parker. And I need to say that I adore Parker. I love Parker.

We all love Parker. Hi, Parker. But, you know, she gets to think about her, like literally her safety. And what battles she wants to fight and where she puts also her just emotional bandwidth, how much she wants to deal with this in the context of working for Delawareans. Is that how you say it? Delawareans? I just really took a long time Yeah, I just really took a swing there. Delawareans?

Delawareans? I don't know. Never said it before. And she might change her mind. Like let's not, let's also just maybe that there is a calculation here of like, I'm gonna get sworn in. You know?

Yeah, everybody's like, people do it well and poorly, but like everybody's doing politics. And everybody also has to have like a take and response to every single little press release that goes out, every single message, every single tweet. And that's just not how it works. Things are much, take much longer and develop over time.

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That we alluded to earlier when we talked about the sex pests. That we know about. That we know of. One of the many sex pests. There are so many. Oh, sex pest is like a fairly soft term for him and a lot of these people.

Pedophile, let's go with the pedophile. And I would say that most of these cabinet nominees have some sort of sex pestery associated with them in some capacity, which is honestly remarkable. Good job, you found them all. Yeah, it is interesting. You didn't find them all. Before we get into the details of the case thing,

it's just interesting. There are a lot of them with a lot of these accusations, and it seems like for some of them at least, it's going to stop them from being appointed, which is very interesting because, well, hey, Trump is the one with all of the accusations. He's the king pest. And he seems to be the one that gets away with it.

And nobody else seems to have that weird Teflon juice just like grease covering them. But I think, as we'll see, it's not going to be the case for everybody. I think that we can take an ounce of comfort from this. The scariest thing with all, that day when it started, the floodgates started and all the nominations coming down the pipeline felt real bad.

And I'm not saying that we should feel good, but this is good. Gates was one of the worst, if not the worst. I just like, you're saying we should feel neither bad is good. Gates is one of the worst, if not the worst. I just think we should feel neither bad nor good. It's like this is great in between plays. It's the same between plays. But the first day when I was like, I have a hard time. I do not want to accept that Matt Gates

will make it through this process was my thought. And I thought if any of them aren't gonna do it, maybe it's him. And we didn't even get to the process, that's great. Granted, there is an outstanding amount of evidence that seems to be coming down the pipeline. Hackers hacked in and got the unreleased report, which also makes me slightly nervous because there are anonymous women involved.

So I don't feel good about that element of it, but I do feel slightly bolstered by the fact that he wasn't gonna make it through and so he's dropping out. I actually just wrote a piece about this that should be up tomorrow, mainly about Pete Hegsath, who is somebody that I hung out with a bit back in the day.

Yeah, I know. And I had an interaction with him that I think, I don't know, I'll go out on a limb. Katie, have you ever gone out for drinks with someone who thinks they're really hot? And then they kind of like hug you in a way that's like, huh, this person really is like testing the doors out. Like the way that juvenile delinquents will go down a row of cars and just be like, is this one open? Is this one open?

Is this one open? Is this one open? The responses here, yep. I know exactly what you're talking about. And it happens so often. I don't think women talk about it at all because like, why would you? It's just that thing that happens

if you have an at all charged interaction with someone, especially over drinks. So when I found out about that, about Pito, I was like, oh yeah, he jiggled that. He tried that door and it didn't come willingly, but he got it part way open. So people don't know what we're talking about. And I'm sorry for the extended metaphor. There is this police report that documents a woman, Jane Doe, who reported being raped by him. Sexual assault. I mean, she says she does not remember a lot of it.

There's some details I won't go into because they're very upsetting. The first parts of this came out just as a settlement that he made with this woman for an undisclosed amount of money in order to sign an NDA. Trump was still behind him. He was still like, he led a prayer call, I believe, saying that this was the beginning of the battle. Trump did? No, oh, Hegsath did. Hegsath. I was like, wait, what?

He's just like an odd duck, which there's more out there about what an odd duck is. But my theory about him is that the sexual assault is in keeping with all the other stuff that the Trump appointees have in common, which is mainly they are just wildly disqualified, unqualified, right? And what all these things have in common is an assumption of a right to power and a right to access and a right to just take what is rightfully, just take what is yours, you know? Like they don't, like P. Dex, I don't think he probably,

he doesn't know what consent really means because it's already his. It's his right, it's what he's got, yeah. Like when he says, he said that that interaction was consensual and I'm sure, I think he probably in a way believes that that's true, you know, because he doesn't think that there is a need to consent, like it's his, a woman's body is his.

Right. Like it doesn't need to, she doesn't need to give permission. She gave permission by the fact of being a woman. Yep. Right? And power is the same way. Like, why, and also the other thing about these appointments is that if you start asking questions

about qualifications for appointees, then you have to start asking questions about what goes up the chain for qualifications. Like, you know, it's sort of like, if no one's qualified, then everyone's qualified. We don't want to ask too many questions about this. To me, what's happening is it's saying not just that being unqualified is not a problem, it's actually being unqualified is something to celebrate. Because you have now taken something that they said you couldn't have.

And that goes to sexually assaulting women as well. Hegseth has this amazing quote about the grab them by the pussy tape, which I guess I won't pause to look it up, but the gist of it is that Trump stood up against the stacked deck that threatens not just him, but all patriotic Americans. And this weird thing of like, wait. What a spin. And the other thing-

That's the Fox News. And I'm- Hilarious. Is that in this whole document interaction, which happened at a conference for Republican women, at one point, a hotel employee is called because Hegseth and this woman are

disrupting, making, or having an argument out by the pool. And the hotel employee tries to break it up, and Hegseth screams, I have First Amendment rights. Wild. He's doing what he's Stan Marsh or Randy. Randy Marsh, I thought this was America. Yeah.

God. Ripping his shirt off as a black underneath. That's a little bit of a monologue. Sorry, y'all, but like. Do you all feel that Trump is surprised that, because he must have just been like, I can do whatever I want now, and all of a sudden, they're coming to him saying, sir, Mr. Trump, sir, Matt Gaetz is not going to get through this. He must be like, what are you talking about?

I won the thing with the most overwhelming victory. I'm the guy now. And it's not that easy. He's not the dictator yet. Don't you think that the Gates thing, the thing that actually sunk it is probably the under 17 piece and also the money. Because that's not, because the thing about like,

Hegseth and like some other, I'm sure other people out there is like, you take it, you don't need to pay for it, you take it. That's certainly the element. It helps that I think a lot of people in the Republican Party just don't like him. It's sad to think that those other things didn't really do it but I think so much of it is like we hate this guy. Thank goodness there's this thing we

can point to as something as a reason to not confirm him because otherwise I feel like they they might be like Gates he's great he's he's loyal like we gotta try to get this guy through. Trump presumably had this information and understood that, I mean, knew the investigation was going on. They probably bragged about similar things to each other. To what degree, I don't know. It can't be a surprise that this stuff was circling him. That would be astounding to me if it was.

But I don't know, part of it was like, did he want this to be- He is the most incurious man to be in public eye. And I don't, I mean, my study of American history does not go back far enough to say for sure ever, but like he is just- Up there for sure. That is his defining characteristic, I think, is his incuriosity. That's what makes him like the is just, that is his defining characteristic,

I think, is his incuriosity. That's what makes him like the narcissism, the implicit, the way that he is a sociopath, not just a narcissist. He doesn't care about other people at all. So I actually think it is possible. You think? I think he did know.

But I feel like his incuriosity. And also, again, it might have been a bonus. Can we inject bleach? Can we nuke a hurricane? He's very curious. But I feel like his curiosity. And also, again, it might have been a bonus. Can we inject bleach? Can we nuke a hurricane? He's very curious. He asks questions all the time. Very curious. But I feel like his incuriosity doesn't necessarily bridge over to this topic specifically.

He might be into that, actually. He's the kind of guy where he's like, oh, we share our stories, right? He's in that trailer bragging about what he can do to Billy Bush. He's probably doing the same to Matt Gaetz. And Mattetz is like yeah me too. Look at look at all the stuff I've done so I feel like that is that is this sort of I'm really not sure what the move here was because in my mind deeply unpopular person so much baggage so blatant that this is not an appropriate much baggage, so blatant that this is not an appropriate person for this job. There's not even like a little bit of a way to spin it.

I mean, it could be a trial balloon to see what they can get away with. Exactly. What I was getting at was let's see how far it goes. He's a sacrificial lamb a little bit. See what he can get away with. And then who's I don't know. I don't necessarily think I don't think that it just I don't think that it's just, is that complicated? I think it's more like, look, they elected me. I'm a sex pest.

Like I've paid women off. Let's get my guy in there. So much of it is about loyalty. Like I want my loyal soldier. If the American people would elect me, who won't like, who could they possibly reject? And who can stop me is Is the sort of mindset. He's probably pissed.

I bet he's super pissed about this and at everyone. He probably doesn't have like the ability to like small bore figure out who he's mad at. Like, oh, he's going to get so angry, so much. He'll yell at Elon about stuff.

Hopefully. I do just want to sort of highlight that at the very least, it is really funny that Gates resigned and then didn't get the job. So now he's just a sad man. Newsmax by the end of the year. He will get on Daily Wire Plus or whatever. He has more time to spend with his adult son. Yeah, get on Daily Wire Plus or whatever. There's more time to spend with his adult son.

Yeah, God. Honestly though, probably this, you're right, it is funny, but he was gonna have to resign regardless. Because if he didn't resign, then they definitely would have released a report. No, I know. And so it's like, sure, you might as well grab onto this olive branch and see if you can climb your way out

of it, but you're done. Unless he's not somehow. And I'll eat my words. Well according to Elon, he's got a very big brain, so. Oh. I think he's just mistaking that Botox look. Oh yeah, he's got a big head, Elon. He has a big forehead.

He has a big forehead, not a big brain. Do we have even a minute for Dr. Oz? Yeah, let's talk Dr. Oz real quick. Let's put away the calipers and let's talk about, yeah. Because I went back and listened to the maintenance phase on Dr. Oz from before he was even a candidate for Senate or anything back when he was just kind of a new agey, grifty TV host.

I mean, whatever, this is like the sixth TV host that Trump has nominated. He's nominated to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Just putting it out there, Dr. Oz, qualified heart surgeon, not qualified to manage thousands of employees who oversee the health insurance programs that cover 150 million Americans and all the nation's nursing homes, which go under, like they do inspections for all the nursing homes. I mean, he's literally just trying to pick people that have some sort of recognition

that are also super supporters. He's going, yeah. There's nothing about this man, or what's the WWE wife? Linda McMahon. Linda McMahon. Linda McMahon for the secretary of education. Sex test adjacent. Sex test adjacent, that's what I'm saying.

All of them have something associated with them. It's just like trying to get your, an episode of The Apprentice, your cast for the season of The Apprentice. More so than the first term too Than the first term, too. It's why it's just like, oh, TV guy. Oh, a TV guy. Oh, like an entertainment person.

Another TV guy. It's so terrible way to operate. But I don't know what we could have expected. It is a piece of what we were talking about before is I think he's in the space of who's going to stop me. Like you all led me the wrong, I think there's a lot of resentment about his first term in terms of like surrounding himself

with fairly mainstream, if right wing, like I shouldn't say mainstream, like people who had been in the Republican party for a while, let's put it that way. Acceptable Republicans, whatever that means to you, but you know. People who had been in the Republican Party for a while. Yeah, acceptable Republicans Whatever that means to you, but you know, right, but they put back too much yeah, they push back too much and he is now like I'm just gonna pick people who I like and who remind me of me and Who's good? Who is going to stop me? And the question now is

Exactly that who is going to stop him. So the question now is exactly that. Who is going to stop him? So hello Senators Bill Cassidy and Murkowski please. Well this is a time for, I mean I do hope everyone has gotten lots of sleep and eaten and done some things that fill them with joy and connected with people who can support them because now like some fucking work begins, y'all. Like there's gonna be, call your senators, be willing to like, Pharma is gonna probably campaign against RFK, right?

Because they also like vaccines and fine, right? Let's get- There are different reasons to like vaccines if there's, you know, that's- Just it's gonna be, it's a little all hands on deck. We cannot count on senators and congresspeople to do the right thing. And my biggest concern with what happens now to the left is My biggest concern with what happens now to the left is resentment and resignation. I know that people at the very ground, ground level, like my anarchists, my mutual aid folks, they're going to just continue doing the work that they do. Borschen access folks, disability rights activists, they never stopped fighting. But people who might be listening to this podcast, who love this podcast and who want

and who are active in some way and maybe worked on the campaigns in various ways, like just start looking on the ground level for people to support and to look to for organizing in direct action, for organizing and like making calls, because none of this is a done deal. Right, absolutely. Yeah, he's not unstoppable. This whole movement isn't unstoppable. For better or for worse, I mean, not for better or for worse.

We will have midterms in two years. Yeah. And then another election in four years. I know we're all afraid of what he might do between now and then. From all that we have to work off of, we have these elections and ultimately they know they're probably going to lose, especially in the midterms. And you can't, if we're upset, if we're organizing, if we're doing shit what we can, that is important

and it's gonna matter. I would say people were bringing this on our, we have a Patreon Google Hangout once a month with people and this is a question that a lot of people are bringing up, like what can I do? We're gonna start, you have to start looking in your local communities, we're gonna start looking into this as well and sharing resources,

but straight off the bat, your local LGBTQ centers and other places, other, you know, if you don't have, there will at least be that where you can find like-minded people. I actually have some ideas about that if you want to talk about it online. Please, please, I would love that. Like there are free fridge programs in a lot of places that are kind of like anarchist organizations that are just like, and you can include this if you want, but like, of like anarchist organizations that are just like amazing. You can include this if you want. But like, yeah.

And that's the kind of ground level work that I think we really need to pay attention to now. You know, mutual aid organizations that wind up doing a lot of stuff in Western North Carolina, you know, after Hurricane Helene. Like these are people who have already decided the government's not going to help them. Yes. And and help others who are who are gonna be slipping through the cracks. Yeah, they're already kind of organizing it. And people are like, I wanna be a part of the Underground Railroad or whatever.

You're not, the people who are gonna be a part of the Underground Railroad are already a part of the Underground Railroad, right? And I think of what I do, which is, there's Austin Mutual Aid who throws up Google spreadsheets when there's an emergency weather thing. I go walk around and hand out bottles of water, but that frees up someone who has more experience than me, who has more contacts than me, who can maybe do more direct aid and direct action.

That person can go do that if I'm handing out water. Absolutely. So I think just look for the... Think of it that way. There is so much unglamorous shit to do that will allow the people who are already doing the work do the things that maybe you think are kind of more glamorous, like driving people across state lines to get an abortion. Your Listens Podcast, I mean,

maybe some of y'all are doing that, but like, let's face it. Like, most of us who care about politics are not doing it like there. People have been. And we all have different availability and experiences and backgrounds. You can bring your own, but just being involved. Exactly, you've got that as a skill set.

If you're a lawyer, there is right now places you can sign up to help people get their birth certificates and passports changed before the Trump administration comes in. Yeah, I said, I have a bunch of stuff about this. There are practical support organizations out there that will vet people for other organizations. You go through their training, and you kind of get vetted so that there's not a NERC.

Yeah. I mean, this is all amazing. And yeah, but to your point, it doesn't have to be glamorous. Do what you can to show up. And you know, if you find the right group, which you will, you can start to learn from there. You will learn other things. You can become more available.

You can find out, maybe you're a graphic designer and they need help with this. Maybe you're really good at spreadsheets. I don't know. But we all have something valuable to bring to the table. Even if it is, yes, handing out water and being a person that is there, a body of support, because that also means a whole hell of a lot to people.

It's going to be different for every place too. For a lot of these things, it's a lot harder to be like, oh, just like support this national organization or do this big national thing. It is on the ground. It is localized. And so some of that is, yeah. And part of me would say, actually, don't look at national organizations first right now.

Yes, yeah. Exactly. I think there is, you know, Kamala Harris got a lot of money. Yeah. Where'd all that money go? Yeah, a lot of national organizations, I don't particularly want to name names, but there are organizations

that, especially after Trump won in 2016, were flooded with donations. And I think it's time for people... Maybe this might segue to another conversation. I think one of the lessons for me of 2016 is the institutions that got us here won't help us get out. And so the Democrats actually are one of, I mean, allowed Roe to fall by constantly giving ground, constantly giving ground on abortion protections. Other organizations that received a big windfalls after Trump's election, also you could say,

we're part of making the ground ready for Trump. And something I know is near and dear to y'all's hearts is the mainstream news organizations who saw increases in participation and subscriptions after 2016. I think a lot of us have learned, don't do that again. I'm sure y'all can put it. The worker-owned, journalist-owned publications, publications that exist on Patreon, subscriptions, newsletters that maybe aren't through Substack, although mine is in Substack, but I want to move it.

And in the organization piece, organizations that aren't associated necessarily with large umbrella institutional places. Like just look elsewhere because they yeah, they a lot of them got us there and kind of want it to be there. There's a Chuck Todd tweet from a few days ago of like sleepy eyes Chuck Todd. Sleepy eyes. Yeah, sleepy eyes Chuck about how like, oh, these these hearings might save cable news for now or something like something along those lines. It's like you can't say that, man. Don't say it out loud. Like, we know you're salivating right now, but it's just so craving and they don't deserve your support.

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And again, I love this product. I'm using it every day. helps all of us. And again, I love this product. I'm using it every day. One of the things we've been discussing on this show over the past few weeks is our relationship to Trump supporters and moving forward and what kinds of conversations are productive, what ones aren't. I know you originally from years ago with a former podcast you had called With Friends Like These. You know, you live in Texas. You're here with us today, the holidays are approaching

and we wanted to bring up the topic of, you know, talking politics with your family over Thanksgiving, people entering situations. A lot of people aren't going to Thanksgiving this year or are canceling it. And I don't know, do you have any advice for listeners navigating this space? I think my first thought, and maybe this is an obvious one,

but I just wanna validate it, is that everyone's first priority is safety. Yes. Right? And there is no obligation to be with anyone, whether it be family members or not, who you don't feel safe around. Yes. Right?

Absolutely. And so I think that tapping out is, there is no reason to have to feel like this is your purpose. And in fact, like in general, there's no need to feel like this is your obligation if you don't have the mental or emotional space for it right now. I do think it's incumbent on white, straight people to have a lot of these conversations with those who disagree, but also you don't have to be the one all the time. I think self-care gets a bad rep, but I wrote something for TNR last week about the radical history of self-care and how it has become a pillar of capitalism, but the idea of it

is that you take care of yourself now so someone else can take care of themselves later. Preserving your autonomy, preserving your safety is really important. And the first thing I'm going to say, then the second is to follow up on the idea that it is incumbent upon people with privilege to talk to other people with privilege rather than making that the job of people who are on the outside of things. Your white straight relatives will hear things from you if you are white and straight, right? That they won't be able to hear if it was said by someone who's not that. So that's something there. But the thing that actually, I did a lot of research on this at one point for the show. I did a series on deradicalization and how people change their minds. And something that's backed up pretty strongly by science

is you can never batter down a door that's not already a little bit open. Right, right, right. Confronting people's confronting misinformation head on is just going to drive that idea deeper into people's brains. And that's actually like a thing that they show in MFRIs. If you present someone to believe something with a piece of contradictory information,

they'll just believe it's stronger. They'll just believe the previous thing's stronger. So depressing, but yes. It is. You can see it as an evolutionary adaptation because it's safer to believe something scary and dangerous that even if it's a lie, because if someone says like, oh, there's a saber tooth tiger there, you know,

behind the bushes and someone tells you there's not, it's much safer to continue to believe. Protect yourself, yeah, exactly. So you gotta open the door. That's the thing. You gotta open the door. And I think part of the way, first off, I agree with you completely, everything you've said. That is absolutely imperative for people to know

if you aren't in an unsafe situation, if you yourself are marginalized, and I would not recommend putting yourself out there for people, especially with specific types of people that are the most extreme and the most hateful, but could even be less than that, because we're dealing with a lot right now now and maybe you don't have the emotional capacity or physical safety to do that. And there are others of us that do have a certain

amount of privilege that are in a position where we might be able to have a productive conversation, but again it's not, to me it looks different than just, yeah, you can't just bang down the door. You start off, I guess it can look different in every situation. I'm thinking of certain ones for myself where it's like, I start off a conversation and I genuinely try to get people's opinion.

I want to hear that. And then, you know, and I try to not make, and I try to make them feel safe with talking to me. If they're saying something terrible, I push back on it, but I think it's about creating a sense of safety with each other to then be able to continue the conversation. I only would recommend doing this if you think

this is somebody that might hear you and is going to respect you in return. I'm not saying that that's everybody's family's Thanksgiving conversation though. Yeah, there's ways to knock on the door and get them to open it a little bit. But if there are no solicitors and all these signs on it, then maybe that's just not worth your time or effort because some people are going to be able to do that. And actually, the door-to-door salesman example is not too bad because what do door-to-door

salesman people do? They establish a connection first and maybe don't even bring up the vacuum cleaner or whatever until the person starts to ask about it. And in my experience as a reporter, I used to cover the right almost exclusively back in the day. And my experience from that is if I'm coded as someone who's not right wing, like a reporter or whatever, I don't, people feel like they know what I believe.

Right? But if I show curiosity about what they believe, eventually they're gonna ask me about what I believe. It's amazing. I mean, it's a human thing that I find actually really like heartening, which is that if you ask enough questions of someone else, eventually they're going to be like, and you? Exactly. And because you treated them with a way, because you gave them the grace and the space to share what they thought. Most people, this is a

generalization, but generally speaking, they now are going to return that to you. And I'm not saying that in this interaction you're going to change their mind, but you are going to make an impression. And you are going to say, leave them with like, well, that person was okay, actually. The other thing I want to say about this is if you feel like you're safe, if you feel like you actually genuinely, this sounds weird, but if you do genuinely love your family and you have these preexisting connections, what another thing that de-radicalization studies show is that it's from those people and establishing those connections that will pull people away from radical beliefs in part because people get drawn to radical beliefs because they

might sense a lack of community. Yes, yes. It's a program like we say in the 12- step program I'm in, it's a program of attraction not promotion. And there are ways to, if you show people, like my life is really cool because I'm not on my computer. Well, I'm on my computer. Because I'm not going down the rabbit hole of something and getting all scared and

hateful. And, you know, I enjoy a variety of friends and, you know, I don't know, like our lives are pretty cool, right? I mean, yeah, don't you want to not be so angry all the time? Don't you want to like experience that? You can join us. It's fine here, actually. Yeah. Because also a lot of these conversations, I imagine, have been happening for about eight years. You know, and like, is this the first time you're talking about why this is a mess? Probably not. And I think a lot of people probably are also feeling this sort of like, still, like, again, like he's it's again. Funnily enough, facts and logic are real, real useful.

Not only enough, facts and logic are really useful. What is often useful is to kind of testify from your own experience and not use a lot of like... Because for one thing, they're likely not to believe you about your numbers and statistics and whatnot. And so one thing that I recently had a conversation with a Trump supporter and got to a place that was like an inflection point of listening, let's say, where the changes that might happen after the election came up and he was like, oh, it's good, well, actually what he said almost,

he was like, well, you don't have to think about politics anymore. And I was like, mm. And actually I said, we know a thing that I'm thinking about is I have preexisting conditions and if the ACA goes away, like I'm kind of in trouble. Yeah. And he was like, well, it won't. I'm like, let's, well, you know, put a pin in that. Like, yeah. Do you want it to go away for me? Like you don't. He's

like, well, no, I won't. You'll be able to get in transom. I will. It's just. That's exactly what I do. I would say let's put a pin in that and like let's continue this conversation as more information comes down the pipeline. Maybe we'll have to revisit that, yeah. And I'm not expecting to completely change people's minds but I am hoping for movement on certain issues. All right guys, I think we've done it.

What a great conversation. I mean, I could talk with you for hours. So please come back soon. Can you please tell our listeners where they can find you and support your work, follow you? Are you still on Twitter? I am not on Twitter. I left Twitter a while ago.

I am on Blue Sky. A whole other conversation I would love to have. We almost did today. I know, some other time. So I am on Blue Sky at Anna Marie Cox. Another day with Anna Marie Cox is sort of what happened after I was doing an election countdown show called 90 Days with Anna Marie Cox. It's not me that keeps naming these things with Anna Marie Cox.

Like, I know it's just a really good name, though. I guess. But another day, people will draw in. Yeah, it's a patron.com slash Anna Marie Cox. In a kind of separate zone of my life, I do do a science fiction podcast. Ooh! Called Space the Nation, that's the intersection of science fiction and politics.

I do it with Dan Dresner, who's a political science professor at Tufts. We are doing right now a Battlestar Galactica rewatch. Oh! Cody and I just both got it. I want to watch Battlestar Galactica again. We talked a lot about having Podstar Galactica. It is so good.

Ron Moore's best work. One of the best ever to do it. Sort of sadly, like of all the stuff he's done, like it really is his best work. And watching it right now has been really interesting because it is, to go back to height of like war on terror stuff, part of it is like kind of quaint concerns.

Like they were really worried about George W. Bush, guys. Yeah. Yeah. Ooh, baby. I wanna say, I just love your show. I get so much out of it. It is one of my regular, when I get my little YouTube alert

that y'all have done another show, like it's very, y'all are more regular than a lot of the other long form podcasts I watch, which I get all disappointed, like Jenny Nicholson, like once a year or something. Yeah. So, anyway. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Yeah, we really appreciate that. And to all of our listeners and viewers at home, I hope you're doing well. I hope you enjoyed this show. What are you gonna say? I hope you hear me when I say, What are you gonna say?

We love you very much. Much, okay. And it's true. It's true. Okay. Okay. For years, Tim Ballard has been championed as a modern day superhero.

The first time I saw one of the kids from the video and it like changed my life. He was the face of Operation Underground Railroad, a movement that inspired hope around the world by rescuing children from human traffickers. However, Ballard's crusade to save innocent lives has always hidden a darker secret. Well, I think he's a pathological liar.

Beneath the accolades and the applause, a dark storm has been brewing. I mean, I can't find a time that he's told the truth about anything. Shocking allegations of sexual misconduct have surfaced, casting a shadow over his once unquestioned reputation. I am host Sarah James McLaughlin, and in this new season of The Opportunist, we explore the rise and the fall of Tim Ballard. Join us this October for Tim Ballard Unmasking a Hero.

Subscribe to a new season of The Opportunist now, wherever you get your podcasts.