The Daily Beast Podcast - A Breakdown of That Tucker Carlson Testicle Video

Episode Date: April 19, 2022

Tucker Carlson’s constant pushing of junk science on his Fox News show reached an apex this week when he discussed “testicle tanning” with Kid Rock. Of course, The New Abnormal hosts Molly Jong-Fast and Andy Levy had to break down that video immediately. Also on the show: Democratic strategist James Carville, co-host of the Politics War Room podcast, holds no punches blaming the Democrats for Biden’s approval rating and Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow at American Progress, explains why a handful of Hispanic voters voted for Trump last election despite the awful things he’s said about them. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Info. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objective. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down, and on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. Today we have a themed episode for you. We're going to talk to two voices who are loudly calling for Democrats to shift to the will of the voters. First we'll talk to legendary democratic strategist James Carvel.

Then we're going to talk to Ruey Tashara, who's a fellow at the Center for American Progress, is also the co-director of the States of Change, Demographics and Democracy Project. But first, let's have some fun. Andy Levy Molly Jongfest Today's episode is called Testicle Tanning Finally I'm sure the Daily Beast

will be thrilled when I send them that title When I saw I just want to say this weekend I was watching I was staring at my phone sitting on the sofa as I do for 23 hours a day

I saw the video and I thought this cannot be real I thought because I saw the naked guy with the light on his unmentionables. And I thought, this cannot be real because this is the craziest thing I've ever seen.

And also, why was he outside? Why wouldn't he be outside? The tanning thing is outside because you want to be seen naked by as many people as possible. I mean, so I saw it and I thought this has to be some kind of like Randy Rainbow kind of weird parody thing.

Good for them. And then it kept coming up on my feet and I thought, no, wait, is this possibly real? And then I watched the video and I thought, how, why, you're Tucker Carlson, you have four million people every night listening to you say pretty demented stuff and agree. So you're going to just push it to testicle tanning? Well, I think it showed that first of all, there's a fine line between Tucker Carlson and Randy Rainbow. and the line is shrinking every day. I don't know if this is the right way to look at it, but there's a serious way to look at this,

which is like... So the whole point of this is to raise testosterone levels, because according to Tucker Carlton, testosterone levels are falling, which the science really doesn't say that. How would you even measure testosterone levels in a large group of people? Very carefully, I would hope.

Right, sorry to continue, yes. I mean, I think there are ways of getting, like a median testosterone level. I guess they can look at blood tests. Yeah, I don't know the answer to that. But the science, apparently there have been like a couple of studies that show that there might be a decline, but a lot more studies that show that actually there's no decline. So it's sort of junk science.

Really? I'm shocked. Well, that's what I'm saying. This sort of goes hand in hand with pushing Ivermectin and pushing hydrochloroquine. And it's just, it's all of a piece. And what it all does is it's basically, he's turned into like, he's like a male version of goop. is what is going on here now.

And it's all this like idiotic, quote unquote, alternative medicine or alternative science. And what it does is it weakens the respect that people have for actual science and actual medical information. And this is good for people like Tucker. So, you know, that's the serious way of looking at it. The sort of non-serious way of looking at it is that I just, you know, look, I used to be on a show called Red Eye. I was on Fox News that aired at 3 in the morning, and we did a lot of homoerotic humor or whatever, but it was never out of a place of hate or anything like that.

It was, you know, whatever. And we would get yelled at and told we were being too homoerotic. And then Tucker Carlson puts out this video that is nothing but like bare-chested, it's things we used to joke about on Red Eye. It's all, it's like bare-chested dudes. And it's got, as you said, Molly, it's a guy outside naked, you know, with UV light on his testicles, which, by the way, he was outside and it was sunny. Why not just lie down and get

their UV rays on your testicles? I have so many questions about, like, where are people doing naked UV testicle lights in the world? I think it looked like it was on, like, a mountain top or something like that. Right. Where are they getting the electricity for that?

That's a fair question. They're running wires? I mean, you know, I mean, you know, I mean, you're saying, like, you know, like, I think if you're running wires up a mountain, there are better uses for it. I'm sorry. I hope they're not running the wires to the testicles is all I'm going to say about that.

Yeah. There's a lot of problems with this. You two both have this wrong. This is like in 2001 when that thing gets dropped from space, that's like what it is. The monolith? Yeah, it's the model. Oh, okay. But I think the point is like this is the far right embracing junk science because junk science is better.

for their brand. And especially if you're living in a post-truth, post-fact, post-debate, GOP debates, which we'll talk about in a second world, then you might as well live in a post-science world, too. Right. And that's what I'm saying. You know, again, this is good for, this is good for Tucker's brand. I'm, apparently one of his future episodes is, features some farmers who are going to talk about UFOs. I'm not making this up.

Like, I saw this. No, I know. I saw that too. Yeah. So, like, this is, apparently he's just leaning into this stuff. And, again, you could look at it, you could just roll your eyes at it and say, well, this is goofy. But it really is of a piece with all the stuff he's been doing, at least since COVID. That's when this sort of anti-science, anti-standard medicine thing sort of kicked in for the right. So this is sort of a logical, you know, next step, I think. I also think that it's important to remember that Tucker Carlson is a huge.

voice in the GOP. He is not, we are not elevating him by talking about him. Right. You know, he has millions of, you know, most watched cable network show, period, and at least in the news world. And then he also is really a thought leader and be in, and again, thought, in quotes. But he is a GOP thought leader. And he may very well be one of the smartest people in the GOP.

I mean, I think he's deeply evil, but I do think he's very, very smart. And so what we are seeing is, like, this will have reverberations, right? And we'll have reverberations in in House races, in GOP House races. We'll see things that related to this in GOP Senate races. I mean, everything is downstream of Tucker. Well, that's the thing. And you can easily mainstream this by saying, you know, well, I don't know about this testicle-tending stuff, but Tucker is absolutely right that testosterone levels have been shrinking among men,

and this is because of the libs and they want all these different genders and men can't be men. And so you can obviously, you can easily mainstream this into, you know, what has become the sort of dominant GOP philosophy of we need to bring back the manly man. And you're absolutely right. This is not Alex Jones, you know, who himself has unfortunately had to, an effect on the GOP. But he at least, you could say, well, that's just crazy Alex Jones. You can't do that with Tucker because, as you said, he is, in many ways, he is one of the

faces of the GOP. And so it's just, you know, it's easy to make fun of, and we should make fun of it because it's ridiculous. But there's a thing behind it. You know, there's a seriousness behind it of intent and where, you know, how this is going shape where the GOP goes in the future? Speaking of where the GOP goes in the future, the GOP has decided that debates are not for them.

And they are no longer going to do debates for presidential debates. I don't know. I mean, again, Rhonda McRomney, you may remember her as Mitt Romney's niece, who changed her when Donald Trump told her to, is pretty excited about removing Republicans from presidential debates because, you know, they are not going to be owned by the libs with actual facts or anything. And again, their complaints have been that they were fact-checked, that's the one of the hose had worked in 1978 as an intern for Joe Biden, of which he was not paid. You know, they're just going for anything they can. But this, I think, is a larger sign of the GOP saying they're

not going to play by any of these democratic rules anymore. Well, there's two things here. One is I think of Ron McRomney-McDaniel as the person who wouldn't debate Marjorie Taylor Green when Marjorie Taylor Green called her uncle a pedophile. So it doesn't surprise me that she wants to pull out of the debates. What I do think is that the Democrats should not go along with this. And my fear is that they will because they just want to get on a stage with the Republicans. And I don't think they should go along with it. And I think they should say, I think they should turn up to every commission on the presidential debates debate. And if, and if, you know, look, this is, I mean, this is for, obviously the, we're talking about for the primary. So the Republicans can do whatever they want in the

primaries. And if they want to get, you know, if they want to get Tucker Carlson to moderate the Republican debates, they can do that. And there's nothing anyone can do about it. But if they refuse to show up for general election debates, I don't think the Democrats, I think the Democrats should say, well, all right, we're here. And there should be an empty podium where the Republicans, you know, where the Republicans should be. And that should be that. And they can do the Klinniswood thing and debate an empty chair or whatever. Correct me if I'm wrong, Molly. But they've been sort of leaning towards, like, they've been threatening this for years, right? Like every year, they think the debates are stacked against them because their candidates are idiots and generally perform badly. Tell us how you really feel. I also think that some of it is that, again, like, the Republicans have had a pretty good run of not talking about their platform. And I think, like, it comes back to what happened last week with Mitch McConnell and Rick Scott, where Rick Scott released, actually, maybe this was three weeks ago. Rick Scott released his plan for America, which was, like, a glossy folder where he said he's going to tax people who don't have any money. And he needs them to have skin in the game.

And, you know, Mitch McConnell was like, don't say the quiet part out loud. We do fine when we don't tell people what we're up to because our policies are so unpopular. And I think that this is more of that. Like, there's no win for them if they have to tell the truth. And it's much better for them just to have Trump or whoever go on Tucker and say, you know, the idea of doing a real debate where you get to see what the person is actually believes doesn't work for Republicans. Right, because they become, you know, they're the party of owning the libs right now. And if you have a debate moderator who's not going to let them answer questions on the economy and on foreign policy and on, you know, everything else with some form of owning the libs instead of saying what their policy would be, you know, they don't, like you said, they don't want that at all.

So they want an own the libs debate. They want to be able to get their candidates up there in front of a moderator who will, you know, quote unquote moderator who will let them own the libs for. an hour or 90 minutes or whatever. And no, I think that's absolutely right. So this is not, like, again, this is, they've been threatening. I feel like every election cycle, the Republicans make a bunch of noise about not participating in the debates. And now they've actually gone ahead and done it. And, you know, this is just, uh, it's just a symbol of where the party has gone post Trump. And, well, if you even want to call it post Trump or in the Trump era, I think we should still call it, even though I want to make this clear, he is not president right now.

I do not believe that he is president. And hopefully he won't be again. I think ultimately they know that they're not popular. What they want to do is not popular and that the more they can obfuscate what they have to do, what they want to do, the better for them. And that is why you have them not doing the debates. Yeah, I know. I think that's absolutely right. I think everything about this is just, you know, it has absolutely nothing to do, of course, with the moderate.

You know, being anti-Republican or having interned for Joe Biden in the 1980s or whatever, it has absolutely nothing to do with that. They're just throwing stuff out there as an excuse for what they really want to do, which is not be part of real debates. But the real thing they do want to do is take books out of libraries. Yeah. So, while they're against, theoretically against cancel culture, they are pro-censorship. So there's a sticky wicket.

Make sure that Joe Rogan is available to all men, women, and children. But Mory Sendak, not so much. Yeah, this stuff is getting really scary. And it's, you know, it's not that it hasn't been scary from the start. And it has. And we've talked about it on this show. We talked about the school district that took mouse out of the curriculum and stuff like that. But the library stuff is just, boy, they are just, you know,

there's the story that the Washington, Post ran of a town in Texas, they basically abolished the governing body of the library and then reconfigured it and put everyone on it who has this right-wing view. So now what they're doing is they want a whole bunch of books taken out of the library. They want, including Maurice Sandack, as you said, this in the night kitchen because there's pictures of the little boy in it appearing nude. It's again, it's a drawing. It's not a photograph. you know, which, by the way, it's a tiny little boy. It's not sexualized.

It's just he's naked because he's a little kid. And he's in milk. I mean, it's really, it's so. It's insane. Yeah. It's important to point out, I think this all stems from, this is all like right-wing Christian stuff. Right, right, right.

And they're very upset with that stuff that they think is, as they would put it, against God. This is like an old-school move. their playbook. Absolutely. This goes back, God, this goes back to even before you were born, Molly, I think. And back then, it was the same as it is now. It's a right-wing Christian thing. You know, you have, here's a member of the library board saying, God has been so good to us, please continue to pray for the librarians that their eyes would be open to the truth. The truth here being that all these books need to be out of the library. That's what, that's what this is about here. What they're

doing is they're going back to the local level, which is what they used to do. It's the kind of thing that can fly under the radar. It's like with the school boards. It's the same exact thing. People focus on senatorial races and presidential races. And meanwhile, you've got the Republican Party and right-wing Christians also focusing on these very, very local movements. And a lot of change can be done locally because of the way that's the way this country

is set up. You know, and they are aware of that and they are using it. And people who don't believe what they believe, need to get on board and realize that just how serious this stuff is and need to start looking at their local politics, you know, as well. James Carville is a democratic strategist. Welcome to New Abnormal James Carval. Well, thank you. Always good to be here. I wanted to have you on because you're a brilliant genius, but also because I want to talk to you about, I feel like there's a wave of pre-midterm panic.

We're in the pre, pre, pre-midterm panic. I think you're having it too. A little bit, but we're in mid-April. Maybe late April, call it what you want. There's a lot of time. Molly, the thing about these guys, they get weird about a date. We're now down to testicle tanning. The whole Mar-a-Lago scene with people coming down there and like kissing his ring and begging him for favors.

I mean, this is like you have a major American television network. openly pulling for Russia. Right. I mean, this doesn't compute. This is just really, really, really. To put it in the Tyler Show, this is abnormal. Everywhere you look. And now they want to tax, you know, hotel mates, you know, nursing home workers, transit drivers.

Is that the Florida Rick Scott tax you're talking about? Yes, there's a big debate in the Republican Party. Mitch McConnell says we have no agenda. And Rich Scott says, yes, we do. we're going to tax poor people. Right, of course. It is weird. The whole thing.

Lauren Bowdo at meeting her husband. They're talking about pedophilia. Look at Matt Gates. Look at Denny Hatchet. Look at Jim Jordan. By the way, there's a big, big documentary coming out by big name, being sponsored by a big name Hollywood personality on Jim Jordan's approval of pedophilia at Ohio State.

And, I mean, people have stopped and think of just how weird and goofies. that entire political party has become. Yeah, agreed. They become crazy, but the Tea Party really set this in motion. Well, it did. What largest set an odd motion was Bush v. Gore because the right figured out that the left, they got no guts. And it just ran over us.

And look at what's happened in the area of women's health, right? Roe has a 72, 73% approval rating. It used to be, well, you had to go through a lot of things. Of course, you know, exceptions to rape and incest. We don't want to criminalize the doctor. We don't know. They just passing this crap left and right. And the Supreme Court is going to overturn it.

If they don't do it in the exact words, they'll in effect overturn it. And what they would say is, why not? These women's pro-Washington groups, they're useless. They're getting meat everywhere. And they don't care. Why are Democrats not braver when it comes to abortion? I mean, I've heard a lot of theories about this, but it seems like a winning issue to me. Well, Roe is the winning issue.

You can ask people about abortion, and they will be some conflicted views. There's not much of a convicted view that it should be legal. They need to defend the legality of it, and they're losing. They used to go to great pains to exempt rape and incest. they don't even try anymore because what they have discerned is that the women's health lobby is completely ineffective, just like most other things that are sort of Washington centric. And they're just going to lose. And is that going to motivate young people to come out and vote?

I don't know. You know, we talk about how we don't have young people and young people that color don't want to vote. But if you watch what they did that Justice Jackson, if that doesn't motivate them, to motivate you to vote. I don't know what I can do for you. They were sitting there. They were rude. They were condescending. They were misogynistic. They were racist. And asking her about pedophilia when their parties overrun with pedophile. But that was, that was strategic to try to get people to think about Q and on when they think about her. That was a way to try to delegitimize her because they had, also they had

nothing else, right? But not only was it crazy, it was also condescending, it was intemperate, it was rude. I mean, they don't even go through, can I mean, go through the mechanics of acting like they're human. If you look at Ted Cruz, how weird is that guy? What calls his wife a hag and his daddy a murder? If somebody called my wife a hag or said your daddy was a murderer, you know, you think he would be sucking Stop telling them like Ted Cruz does. I don't think.

Here's a real question about that. Some of this, the way that these Republicans were so aggressive was to sort of obfuscate the fact that this is this very conservative court now. And Democrats are not even in the minority. They're in the minority, minority, minority. And while this was happening, the court struck down this Obama-era clean water bill. I mean, on the shadow docket. They're going to strike everything down. In their calculation, and they get in the cloak room and they're discussing it, we're going to provoke a political response.

You didn't know such thing. Why do you think they have control of the court? Because they stole the 2000 election. They wouldn't have a majority. They just went right in front of the entire country and pulled down their pants and shit on the country. And you know what the country did? That smells good. You're a Democrat, but you're very pragmatic.

and some might say a little more conservative. Do you think that Biden should expand the court? I mean, the Supreme Court, it seems like that's the block to everything. I actually consider myself a liberal Democrat, but that's the topic for another. It's all right. Why don't you build a stairway to heaven? You got as much chance of doing that as you do expanding the court. They can't pass gas.

They got 50 Democratic senators. Right? It can expand nothing. The only way you can do it is not. going to help to win elections. We have won six out of the last seven presidential elections. You have to win elections big. This is all abstract conversation about me going to take physics at MIT. And it's just not going to happen. So we don't even, we don't need to worry about that. But what they're going to do is in not just in women's health, they're going to gut these regulatory agencies where no one can do anything. don't even think about being an employer or anything like that, you're going to get run over.

And if you don't care, if you don't go out and vote, if you don't do something, you're going to get run over again. You've got to understand they don't care. They do not have any fear. When you have an imbalance where somebody in politics has no fear that we're going to do whatever we want, we're going to gerrymander whatever we want, we're going to make voting laws to put the people out. want to vote, not the people we don't want to vote. To hell with the Senate in the House, we're going to overturn these statutes. And that's just what they're going to do. And they're doing it right in front of God and everybody in the world. No one, none of all of them interest groups in

Washington are having wine and cheese parties talking to each other. This exactly what's going on. What should Democrats be doing? Well, one of the things we can start out by talking about just how weird they are and talk about what an insane idea it is to raise income taxes on 40% of the people in the country. That's not a very good idea. It's a terrible idea. And we could also talk about why we're for the United States and we're not for Russia. That seems to be a pretty compelling case to be made that Russia is the bad actor in this operation. And yet you got a third in a Republican Party pulling for Russia. That's weird. That's way out of bounds. I've talked to a bunch of people many of them friends of yours who are pollsters and involved in democratic politics.

And I'm hearing a lot that Biden is not doing enough to support down-ticket candidates. But my question is, is that the correct calculus if Biden's polling is so bad? And why is Biden's polling so bad? Right now, where there's numbers went, hell, I'm not sure there's a lot of down-ticket candidates. flarking. Secondly, we just lost control of the narrative. And one of the reasons that is polling so bad, to be very frank with you, is the number among Democrats is very tepid. All right, he's clocking in about 75 approval among Democrats. Trump come in at 95% approval on Republicans. Why is this happening? Because you have Democrats going out there and actually saying Joe Biden hadn't done anything for you.

Well, when people hear that, they say, well, gee, you must not be doing very much for me. When, in fact, if you're a Democrat, you purportedly care about hourly workers. Well, hourly workers have more leverage than ever had ever. You're supposed to care about child poverty. Well, child poverty, you know, after the first year, the Biden administration was the lowest it ever been. The job market was the strongest to have a bit. You know, people have been talking about infrastructure for the last, I don't know, since the interstate highway system. I mean, this is going on.

And yet you have Democrats saying we haven't done enough. We haven't delivered. Biden hadn't delivered. Okay, that's going to get you a lot of votes. Democrats are 40% of the country. If you went from 75 to 90, that's 15 times 4. That's 6 points. Instead of being at 42, you would be at 48.

The reason you're at 42 is, yeah, some Fox, but all the people watch Fox would ever be for Biden. His support among Democrats is far weakly. than it should be. And they're still out there saying he hadn't done enough. You know, now's the time to talk about what you've done, not what you didn't do. But there's a significant part. And of course, if we lose and they'll say, well, we didn't canvas enough. There's some stupidity like that they come up with. It better get moving and get behind this because we can get beat bad. You know, you talk to these posters and I talk to them. And it's a pretty challenging situation I

death. You've got to try to change it. The sense is that Biden really can't do anything on inflation. Do you agree with that? For the most part. I mean, does anybody have an idea of what he could do? There's talk about the gas tax. The gas tax, you know, funds highways in almost every state. I mean, one of the things they could do, and they're doing the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, if they wanted to increase drilling, because it takes a long time to drill a well and to get it up and running, most people understand that, they could release more from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is, I think, $670 million barrels, and then promised two years later to buy it back from drillers at a, at a full place. But what all people will tell you is, we don't go out and drill a bunch of wells right now,

because we don't drill them what price of oil is today. We drill them with the price of oil is going to be when we start pumping oil. We don't know that. We've gotten burned by this. I mean, you could try that, you could do some direct cash rebates to people. You could give some relief on the payroll tax, although they really don't like to do that. And some of it will take care of itself. I mean, the core inflation rate is actually not so bad. It's being affected a lot by energy and food, of course, but that's most people spend money on. But that's a possibility of something you do. If the inflation rate goes down to five percent and wages are six and a half, Well, you got a pretty good shot. And by the way, the last University of Michigan consumer confidence number was up 10 points. I don't know how good a news it is, but when you had any water in six months, a little sip tastes pretty good. And hopefully that's something that keeps, you know, moving in a better direction.

How much of this do you think is just caused by, like, endemic, not that we're totally at the endemic. I know that the COVID still goes on, but like this sort of sense that they're. or it's like kind of a misery that we're sort of in this period where everyone is particularly unhappy with everything all the time. You know, I mean, just think of your old life and your friends. And I mean, this is a hard two years. Yeah. I mean, it has been particularly hard on younger people. Of course, as they do with everything, they just published this gigantic lie that says that

the Ron DeSantis policy worked, of which they just blew it open, you know, like it blew a hole in that Russian naval ship to Moscow or whatever they called it. But they just don't, they're going to lie about everything. And Democrats in the press, which is a large, large part of this. You can't find a story about staggering job growth you've had. And it's been staggering. It's been like the best, he had the best. In Biden's first year, there was more jobs that created than anybody else's first year.

And another little factored, it was the biggest year of deficit reduction. I definitely see that there's a lot of political punditry that feels like it's way more focused on repeating Republican lies versus debunking Republican lies. Do you think some of that is because Democrats aren't as leaky and the Biden White House has been very unleaky and the Trump White House gave journalists a lot of content? Maybe, you know, sometimes if you don't create your own news, they'll create it around you, but Biden couldn't do the things that Trump did. Right. No, no.

But I mean, he, but in Trump world, they were constantly people, you know, telling their side of the story, which you don't have in Biden world. I finally get some talking points on, but yes, and they need to enforce more discipline. You know, it's become Democrats sort of get away

with, like, chiding Joe Biden publicly. Right. Which people hear, which is very harmful. I mean, their lack of enforcement is in a large, part while we're running 15 behind points behind where we need to be with Democrats. They should be ruthless in enforcing messaging and really calling people and getting on them when they criticize the president. Yeah, you have free speech. You can say what you want. Also, I have free speech, too. I can tell you what I think of you. If I tell you, I think you're making a fool of yourself.

You say, well, I have free speech. I have free speech too. Thank you so much, James Carvel. I have to cut you off because we've gone too long as always. But please, please, please come back. All right. I love you. Ruey Tashara is a fellow at the Center for American Progress. Welcome to the new abnormal, Rui. Glad to be here.

You wrote in December 2021 about something that now in April 2022, the political pundit world is just starting to talk about, which is Democrats' problem with Hispanic voters. Explain to us what the problem here. I loved your headline. It's not as bad as you think it's worse. That was triggered as it were by, you know, fundamentally I'm a data guy, so I was following the data very closely. And it was very clear from looking at the data from 2020 that had been a dramatic crash in democratic support among Hispanics, particularly working class Hispanics. And I thought this was like, well, kind of a real problem. Because if you're looking at it from the

standpoint of what was the 2020 election about, who was the Republican candidate, what had he said about immigrants and so on, what was his profile in the general political discourse? It was this flaming racist to any God-fearing Hispanic should be voting against without even thinking about it, but that didn't happen. So I was very interesting. Why would that be? Why would these voters who presumably should have been all teed up to give Biden an overwhelming majority among their group? in fact, wind up moving toward Trump by around, you know, 16 or 17 margin to points, depending on what data set you look at, and particularly, it's not just in Texas, not just in Florida, in Philadelphia, and Chicago, basically all over the country. So that was fascinating to me.

And then you start looking at what are the actual views on sort of hot button issues, a lot of these voters. It turns out they're not really immigration voters. These are voters who are oriented toward upward mobility, toward their economic well-being, the economic well-being of their communities, toward basic kitchen table issues, weren't particularly animated by the Black Lives Matter movement, weren't particularly interested in a racial reckoning in the country, didn't view the United States as a white supremacist society in need of radical transformation. In fact, they're quite patriotic, hardworking, working-class constituency who Democrats, by virtue of their rhetoric and how they were presenting themselves were

We're starting to move some of these Hispanics toward the other side because these voters are finding it hard to identify with the Democrats. I want to talk about this for a second because Trump in 2015 came down the golden escalator and said Mexicans are rapists and some, I assume, are good people. How do working class Latinos feel that this is their candidate? Well, I mean, I guess we should make it clear to begin with that he wasn't their candidate at any time in the sense that a majority of them supported him. It's just a matter of if you look at Hispanics as a, you know, vast working class population, many of whom have somewhat conservative social views and who are primarily, as I say, orne in toward economic mobility of the state of the economy, which they thought was actually pretty good under Trump prior to the COVID epidemic. I'm kidding. And you can sort of see where they would not necessarily vote on the basis of what, of things that Trump had said in the past that they had heard he'd said. They voted more on the things they were concerned about today and the things they were most interested in.

So, you know, in other words, if you have, you know, the Democrats didn't even do that well among Hispanics in 2016, really relative to, you know, 2012, especially given, again, the way Trump was presenting himself. given that by the time he reached 2020, that's not really the issue. He's not really as high profile in terms of the bad things he's saying about immigrants and so on and so forth. These voters were a lot more free to vote on the basis of some of their underlying conservatism on issues, particularly since a Democratic Party and the way it was presenting itself was moving as far as they would, because then seemingly to the left weren't that interested in reopening the economy,

were preoccupied with social issues that they weren't very concerned about and in fact, to some extent, felt differently about things like to fund the police and so on. These are not social issue voters. They are not, I mean, in the sense that Democrats thought they could get away with doing whatever, you know, moving as far left as they did on socialists,

partly because their profile among Hispanics was not defined by those social issues prior to relatively recently. It was defined by, their views in economic issues, their views on social services, education, health care, and being generally friendly to an immigrant population. So that was their profile. But underlying that among Hispanic voters had always been a fairly conservative views on issues having to do with a lot of these other.

Right, because of Catholicism. Catholicism, a generally conservative, hardworking, upperly mobile outlook. I mean, they're family-oriented. These are not voters who are into, you know, sort of querying. the zeitgeist, as it were, and defunding the police. It's just not at all their interest, but they were willing to overlook it. Right. Where the Democrats seem to be more in their wheelhouse is these, they're just on our side. They're going to try to, you know, do good things for us in terms of services. They want us all to be prosperous and they're against the corporations and the bad guys.

But that really now has started to change, oddly enough, because of the way the Democratic Party itself has evolved, where it's becoming more difficult for these conservative-leaning Hispanics, working class Hispanics, to vote for the Democrats despite their views on social issues. In a way, the Democrats had succeeded in getting Hispanics to overlook the relatively conservative views on some issues. And now they're succeeding and sort of enabling them to vote on the basis of some of their underlying conservative inclinations. So where do you think Democrats are losing Hispanic voters. Well, we know where is like all over the country. I mean, but you mean like no. No, I mean, so to fund the police, right, what other things are they losing? Is it canceling student

debt? Is it? I mean, what are the things that are really alienating them? Well, no, I don't think it's anything to do with canceling student debt. That's not a big issue in that, you know, particularly demographic. It has to do with the Democrats seemingly being distracted by a lot of issues that are not at all, as far as they're concerned in their interests. The whole attitude toward everything from the way the schools were handled, not only at school reopenings, the way COVID was handled. So COVID. COVID was a big deal because Democrats became associated with a sort of,

you know, we're going to keep the economy closed down willy-nilly, no matter what happens to working class people. Isn't that sort of that disinformation messaging worked? I think the disinformation thing is what Democrats, like to tell themselves. In the old days, we used to call disinformation, you know, partisan messaging, right? I mean, as far as far as one party is concerned, the other party's partisan messaging is disinformation. But I think that the only reason why Hispanics voted the way the 2020 are now continuing to some extent to move toward the Republicans is because there are these

disinformation networks that have been produced by the Republican Party that are feeding Hispanic voters, these vastly untrue things. I think this is, this is like whistling past the graveyard. This is kidding yourself. They are people who live in the real world. They're voting on the things that they see in their community, the things they read in the newspapers, just the general way that they perceive the country evolving and their place in it. I mean, the Democrats are not doing themselves any favors when they seek to portray a group that's moving away from them and has real questions about them, that they're just, you know,

you're just being dupes of the other side. I don't think that's how you win them over. Shouldn't Joe Biden be out there sort of, this is his message, ultimately, right? Right. Well, I think he should be, but he's not. I mean, I think the problem with Biden is that, well, I think those are probably as inclinations

and instincts and his background. I think that to some extent he's a prisoner of the party at this point. He's always been sort of guy who sticks to this, perceived center of his own party. He wants to broker peace among the factions. He's not a guy to go out in a limb. You can see that in how he handled his victory in the primary campaign, so he tried to bring everyone in board after that. And you can see it out in the way in his administration. It's handled a lot of these issues during his administration. He wants to compromise among the factions. And to do that, it becomes very difficult to draw lines within the coalition about the things Democrat should stand for

and the things they do not stand for. He's very reluctant to do that. Now, in a state of the union address, for example, he did say, you know, sort of make a point of saying, well, no, do you find the police bad idea? We want to fund the police, you know, public safety is important, blah, blah, blah. But I think it's fair to say that those occasional mentions of an issue like that do not change the basic profile

of the Democratic Party and those kinds of issues. It would take a much more sustained turn in that direction and a willingness to call out directly some of the people in the party who are on the other side if you really want to make it stick with your average voter. As I said in one of the pieces I wrote, it may not be time for a sister soldier moment, but maybe it's time for a Chesa Budin moment. You've got to give people a clear, very, very clear message of where you come from and what your party should stand for. If it makes some people mad within your own coalition, you're just going to take the heat. Okay. So the complaint I get a lot is that Biden isn't out there enough. I just want to drill down on this again.

If he's the messenger, if he is the perfect messenger for this message to Hispanic voters, why is he not out there more? Well, yeah, I don't know if there's too much more drilling down to be done in it. And other than I think he's like chicken at this point. I think that, again, he's a pretty. of his party. He is he is not willing to mix it up in a way that would really move this kind of thing forward and have him out there, get him out there out front, making it clear and definite and unmistakable stand on some of this stuff and trying to rebrand the party as being more in the cultural mainstream. He's scared of doing it. And I think he's surrounded by advisors who don't want him to do it. So I think, you know, I'm not holding my breath on on that happening anytime soon,

though I will say this, that given what seems likely to happen in the 2022 election and given some of these debates are already emerging, obviously, I think after 2022, assuming the Democrats get their clock clean, which I think is highly likely at this point, I think there may be a lot of voices in the party more so than we see now and more willing to be public trying to push him in that direction. And perhaps in that case, he would respond. There's nothing like a, you know, is the prospect of a hanging in 2024 to concentrate the mind. And I think that's the situation we may be in post this November. I don't understand why it needs to be.

And maybe this is like a problem with my brain. But why does it need to be that Democrats are, have to reject part of the agenda? Like, why can't the party be big enough for, I just don't understand. Like, what you're saying basically is, is that the left is hurting Democrats with Hispanic voters. Yes.

But why can't the left exist and the center appeal to Hispanic voters? I mean, Democrats are a big ten party. Right. Well, I mean, we have, there are a lot of reasons for that, but one of the most pertinent ones at this point is how heavily politics in general the United States has become nationalized. Very difficult for candidates to tell us. their views like that just a particular constituencies for candidates who run in particular

states or district to escape the brand of the national party very difficult it was easier in the past partly because america was different partly because the democratic coalition was itself more ostentatiously big ten and far flung we're now in a situation where it becomes pretty hard for a democratic candidate in ohio to escape the overall national brand of the party and it becomes hard for a Biden to say X at one point in an effort to appeal to working class Hispanics and say why at another point to appeal to left us in greater Brooklyn. That's just it's not it doesn't work. I mean, bottom line, that doesn't work. Maybe it would have worked in the past. It's not going to work today. We're not throwing anyone under the bus here. We're not asking, I would certainly never ask

people on the left to give up on whatever it is they happen to believe in in terms of maybe to have a long-term goal of having a less policed society. Well, okay, groovy man, but, you know, right now we have to win elections. Let's get on winning elections. Nevada has a Senate seat where nobody is talking about it nationally. She's there. Cortez. Talk to me. That's a state where if you're getting creamed with working class Hispanic voters, you could lose it. Talk to me about what you think she should be doing. Well, I think some of the things she's doing now are pretty good. I think she's trying to introduce herself as more of a, you know, regular. I'm from a military background. You know, I'm for the little guy and the little gal.

I want the economy to, you know, be as open as possible. I think she's doing some things to try to escape from that brand. Now, it's a little hard for her because she's not that high profile of senator to begin with, and partly because she's viewed as a generic Democrat, because she's She's never defined herself in any different way. It's going to be a little hard for her to escape that. But, you know, I think she's trying and she realizes she needs to try and she needs to dissociate herself from, you know, this gets back to what we're talking about about immigration. I mean, if she's trying to win in Nevada right now and she's so dependent on Hispanic support, why is she ostentatiously going out there and saying, please, Mr. President, do not get rid of Title 42. This is not a good idea.

This hasn't been thought through. It's going to lead to a surge at the border. If Hispanics, working class Hispanics are truly immigration voters in the way a lot of advocates like to think they are, then that would be the reverse of what she should be doing. But they're not, right? But they're not. They're not. They're not at all. I mean, the Hispanic citizens who vote in elections and places like Nevada are not at all interested in anything that's remotely like open borders. That's not the case. They think it's, you know, not what America's all about, just like letting anyone in who wants to come. And then, you know, we're sort of everything's out of control. Thank you so much for coming on the pod. This was super fascinating. Yeah, no, this was fun. Good conversation. These are, you know, difficult issues, but they need to be talked about. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one in the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from the Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to

retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer, checking in on the movement of the radical right. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's Fever Dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Andy? Molly. Do you want to know who my fuck that guy is this week? I do. I would love for you to go first for once. I want to because I really want to hear who you or fuck that guy is. He's a man in the great state of Texas. I mean, Anne Richards had that job.

Anne Richards had that job. She doesn't anymore. Greg Abbott, besides overturning Roe, he's like absolutely doing everything performative and Trumpy that he can do. And his newest move in his performative Trumpism, Abbott was mad about Biden reversing Title 42. And so he decided that he would make these more stringent restrictions and inspections on the trucks coming from Mexico. He said it was to prevent human trafficking. We all know that he is doing this to snarl the supply chain because he hopes it will hurt Joe Biden. And also, it's costing millions of dollars.

fruit is being ruined, stuff coming from Mexico is not able to get through. There's snarl in traffic. It's all because Abbott is trying to hurt Biden and also to hurt local business. And this is not the first time we've seen Republicans fighting with local businesses. We've seen it with DeSantis. It's unbelievable. And also, I still don't understand why Republicans get such good polling on the economy. when they pull stunts like this.

And for that, Governor Abbott is my fuck-that-guy. Yeah, this whole thing is weird because my understanding is the governor of a state is supposed to want to help the people of his state? Am I wrong about that? Not in Texas. Oh, okay. All right. Things really are different in Texas.

Wow. Andy Levy, who is your fuck-that guy? Well, my fuck-that guy, Molly, is someone a little closer to home for us. He is a New Jersey resident, and yet he is the mayor of the city of New York of all five of the boroughs. And he, when he first got elected, told the press that he was going to be unbelievably transparent. He said he was going to be the most transparent mayor that we'd ever seen. And now he will not commit to making his tax returns public, which is something that New York mayors do routinely. You could almost say it's a little Trumpian to say that there's going to be transparency like you've never seen.

And then to do the exact opposite of that. It just feels like, you know, something we heard a lot of from 2016 to 2020. This isn't the first time he's been my fuck that guy. It will be far from the last. And this is fresh off of holding a press conference to say we did it when the guy who shot up the subway was taken in by police. last week, and of course, that guy called the police himself and turned himself in. And then, I believe, a bodega worker actually pointed him out on the street to the police so they could arrest him. So he's just really having a hell of a week. And they even asked me,

say, can we get a firm commitment from you that you're going to release your filing? And he said, no, you can't. Oh, there we go. It's not like he works for us. No, but look, I'm sure that the, you know, his tax filings are going to show a residency. in New Jersey, probably. So he really, really doesn't want that to be public because he keeps claiming that he lived in a Brooklyn apartment that he very clearly didn't. So he gets my fuck that guy for this week or for today. You know, it's a big red flag if an elected won't release their tax returns.

Yeah. And it should just be a rule that if you're not going to, like Democrats should not have candidates who don't release their tax returns. Agreed. Absolutely. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world.

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