The Daily Beast Podcast - Adam Schiff on Bob Mueller’s Biggest Mistake

Episode Date: May 15, 2020

On the eighth episode of THE NEW ABNORMAL, the House Intelligence Committee Chairman talks about the moment Devin Nunes went off the rails, Paul Manafort’s suspiciously-timed release, and the serious strategic error Robert Mueller made during the Russia probe. Plus! Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson discuss “boob bait for the conspiracy-addled,” “the saddest, dumbest moment in the Trump presidency,” and whether leeches, crystals, or hydroxychloroquine work best on COVID-19. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi folks, this is Rick Wilson, and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly Junkfast, novelist, an editor at large at The Daily Beast, and the person who tells Rick not to tweet the things he wants to tweet. I'm an editor at large at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, bestselling author, and full-time troublemaker. The new abnormal is about one nation under a pandemic and how it's changing all of us. We'll talk about what's happening in the country and the culture and look at good and bad people, leadership, and ideas. Molly and I come from very different political worlds. But what brings us together is that we both love America. And we realize that putting our country over party and ideas over ideology might be the only thing that gets us through this.

We'll be joined by smart guests from media, politics, culture, medicine, and science. I'll try to keep Rick to the minimum number of curse words and try to keep our pets and other wildlife sounds from invading our respective bunkers. So, Rick, I downloaded the Trump TV app on my phone. I know I'm going to regret it. I used a fake name, but my real phone number, so I've already gotten like 50 text messages. I started reading the reviews, and they are exactly what you'd expect, right? Are they glorious? Top-notch, train American flag, American flag, little cloud, MAGA.

It's top-notch, explanation point, explanation point. I'd like to see it replace Facebook all together. It's a great innovative beginning to the Trump presidency. I love the app and think it's great to connect with more Trump supporters from all over the country. Keep on pressing towards the goal. Win, win, win. Winners aren't losers. God bless America.

Does it also include reviews that say things like, This app will allow me to ascend to the comet and live forever with Donald Trump? I think that's for his second term. It's just amazing. The ads are incredible. Women for Trump prayer. sign. I read a little bit about the Trump app and the fact that they're talking about how it gamifies the Trump experience. You can strive for points. Have you done anything for points yet? Your Trump

points? You know, I'm competitive, but I'm still not that competitive. You know, what's like horrifying is you open it up and immediately they're sort of like fake news, right, which I guess makes sense. Fact check. Governors in Joe Biden's roundtable praise the Trump administration, right? I mean, The idea that the Trump app is offering a fact check. Irony abounds and nowhere more so than the iTunes App Store apparently. And also, I have to say, like, Eric's wife is the face of the app, which is terrifying. I think that this theory that the Trump app is the opening gambit for the establishment of Trump TV, so win or lose, they form this new media outlet, which they're kind of road testing right now

with these web shows that they're doing to the app with deep thinkers like Laura Trump and Kimberly Gulf Oil and Katie McFarland. Katie McFarland. And is Tammy Laurent doing those yet? Not yet, but. But it's only a matter of time. And I predict that Diamond and Silk will soon migrate to the Trump app so we can get there cutting edge insights on virology, epidemiology, law enforcement, and national security matters

once again. I miss them. They're great on coronavirus. I have to say that Team Trump, I'm looking at the app right now and it's a is Team Trump online with Mercedes Schlapp, KT. McFarlane and Michael Pillsbury, and then it's got a hashtag Beijing Biden. So I just want to point out once again to America that it is Donald Trump who has been in Chinese President Xi's pocket from the beginning. He has desperately kissed up to the sky. He was praising him for his corona response for months and months. He kept thinking he was going to execute this trade deal with the Chinese and they rolled him on it over and over and over.

again. So if it's Beijing, Biden, this is one more case of the Trumpian projection experience, just massively playing out. There's been, since our last pot, we have witnessed the rollout of Obamagate. Obama Gate, the greatest scandal of all time. It's shaking the very foundations of Western civilization to its core. It's Obamagate. And when asked what Obamagate was, he said, very bad stuff, he knew what he did. So they've sort of figured out at a narrative for it and it's unmasked. So as folks will hear later, we're going to dismantle the unmasking a bit. I have to say the excitement that is built up over Obamagate will fade away once again, like all of these things that come from the bullshit canon of Donald Trump. It is a

momentary blip just as the Hunter Biden was going to absolutely positively, oh, let me, let me wind that back. Horowitz was going to absolutely positively destroy every opponent to Trump. The Hunter Biden story was going to destroy everyone opposed to Trump. John Durham is going to destroy everyone opposed to Trump, blah, blah, blah. It's these guys understand that they're throwing out boo-bait to the conspiracy addled Trump followers. And they know it won't last, but they do everything they can inside that bubble to turn this into a news event, turn this into a fundraising event, turn this into a political weapon they can use for some brief but loud moment. I just want to go back to the Trump app, though, because I find it fascinating that they are setting up.

an alternative media structure. And the people at Fox who continue to suck up to Donald Trump, who continue to play his lead defenders, his chief advocates, his propagandists, from everybody from Frozen Fish Boy to Sean Hannity to Frow Ingram, all these people that are absolutely bought all in on Donald Trump, they can't see what's coming. They're building this app and this data platform at the campaign

to flip it out and become Trump TV. They're going to buy up O-A-N-N-A-N-A. or some other mid-tier channel 797 on direct TV provider and form the Trump TV network and screw Fox to the floor. I got to be honest, there's a little bit of Deutcheonfreude here where I just love the thought of Rupert one day waking up and Lachin one day waking up and going, wait, what? They're watching what channel? They're not watching the curvy couch?

What? I think it's well-deserved, you know. There's a great article actually this week at The Daily Beast by Stefan Smith called The new Trump app is a death star of fake news and the frightening part, and it reaches more people than daytime cable news. This is actually, we treat it lightly because it is obviously a farago of lies, bullshit, Trumpian excess and whatnot. But it is dangerous when you look at the fact. They have weaponized the attention mechanisms that Facebook uses and all these other gamified apps use. They're doing all the worst practices of attention marketing.

They're going to use this thing to have a separate side channel to their people and look. I don't think it reaches people outside of the base. Although you can tell me in a few weeks if it's working on you. You could do sort of like what Philippe? I'm very impressionable. So it's possible. I'll be wearing hats and praying for your soul. You're going to get a bejeweled Trump brooch or some kind.

I have to say, I read a piece in the Atlantic today about Qaeda on. And it was just really disturbing. It's like you can draw a line from the automation. to propaganda to the conspiracy theories. And so things like Trump TV are really, really scary. The QAnon phenomenon, which we make a lot of fun of, and rightly so, has actually motivated a lot of Americans. QAnon is basically the theory of the cases.

Dan Scavino is the conduit for Q&on inside the White House. It's the guy who used to run 4chan, Jim Watkin, who is a pig farmer in the Philippines, which is like, should be the opening of a great comic movie, but is instead something that, people have built letter bombs because they believed in it guys like Caesar Seyok. These people who believe in this shit are radicalized and activated. And it's ironic to me that the same people who believe that being a Muslim has some sort of immediate power to cause people to instantaneously strap on a bomb vest don't have the same fear that QAnon and these weaponized apps and this Facebook bubble that they live in has equally radicalized people who support

Donald Trump and has equally caused a sort of separate reality chamber. And when they collide with the fact that everything they think is going to happen doesn't, there will be people in that group who do stupid shit and violent shit. I am not looking forward to it. Me neither. Somali and our daily viewing into the maw of current horrors. I don't know if you caught the House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing today with Dr. Rick Bright, who used to be in charge of the, I guess, the vaccine development efforts

of the U.S. government. Did you happen to see that particular moment of peering into the abyss? I watched some Republican congressman yell at him, yes. Well, yes, he went out there today and in chipper and really upbeat testimony said, we're about to have the darkest winter in modern history if the virus rebounds and basically said, we're in deep shit, which is not a thing you hear in many congressional testimonies. As a whistleblower in this government, your life is always going to turn to a burning hell. But I don't know if you caught like right after the hearings today, Alex Azar and Trump both blasts

the guy. It's one more example of if you're off message, if you're off agenda with them for the reopen everything, throw open the doors, everything's great, everything is awesome. Philosophy, they're going to blast you. It was one of those things. You watched it and that new Washington thing, where the Republicans are

there performing trying to get hits on Fox News and this guy's trying to get the story out and he's basically bang on a pot lid with a hammer, screaming, pay attention, this is bad, it's coming, you've got to straighten this out. I think it's interesting to Trump tweeted about him and said, I don't know the so-called whistleblower.

It's so funny because he's got such a narcissistic lens. The whistleblower is talking about the administration's response to the pandemic. It's not about Trump, right? I mean, it's about his incompetence, but he's like, I never spoke to him. I mean, it's just kind of amazing. Donald Trump's like one of those philosophical constructs where, unless he sees it in person, it's not real. Antarctica, I don't believe in it.

I've never seen it. Reminds me of when he wanted to buy Greenland. That was like the saddest. dumbest moment in the Trump presidency, and there have been many, when Tom Cotton wrote an op-ed defending Trump's want to buy Greenland. A lot of those young Republican gentlemen who all are eyeballing 2024, and Tom is certainly one of them. Therefore, they will chase any dumb rabbit that's out there. I watched the hearings today. It was so interesting because there were so many Republican congressmen who wanted to talk about Laura Ingram's favorite malaria Trump.

Dr. Trump's miracle elixir, hydrochwaka-whac-wha-wha-wha. Whatever. You know I can't even pronounce it. Hydrochloroquine, right? Hydrochloricine, yes. So they all wanted to talk about hydrochloricone, even though this hearing wasn't even about that, but I saw a bunch of different Republican congressmen who are like, I've heard it work, people say it's good, and I thought that was pretty great.

You know, if I'd been him, I would have been tempted to, like, relentlessly fuck with them. No, sir, what really works? is leeches. A poultice of earthworms and mustard will cure you, sir. If you place the appropriate crystals on your head during the winter solstice, you'll find that you're healed. Look, the hydrochloroquine thing has become this moment of woo with them. And because Trump said it, and because his followers, and because Fox cheerleading this thing, like almost as if they were in the market invested in this thing, I think that that, it's got this like echo effect with these guys. They can't let it go.

They just can't quit it. Yeah. It's interesting because, I mean, he has no larger financial stake in it, or at least not a large one. And it's not like the Trump face masks or something. It's just that he can't have ever been wrong. Correct. But, Molly, have you checked the Trump TV app store? Do they sell hydrochloroquine on there? Why are you even asking me this?

Now you're going to make me check it. I think they're missing a real market opportunity. I now feel like I have to check it. I don't want to check it. Don't make me check it. All right. I'm going to let you not check it. You should delete that app from your phone like as soon as you.

you possibly can. No, I have to keep it now. One of my kids saw me doing it and was like, what do you do it? Mommy's got news. Right. Look straight at them and say, I'm going to travel around the country and go to rallies. It's as if I've taken up going to fish concerts, only with more racism. I think if you're going to do that, you've got to go all in.

You do you get the red sequined cowgirl hat with the gold, make America great sequined letters. What is wrong with you? I'm in a dark place. Monster. I don't realize. Well, I want to just say, first off, we're absolutely delighted to have Congressman Adam Schiff with us today. Because as you may have heard, if you watch Fox, he's one of the leaders of the giant Obamagate conspiracy. Oh, wait, sorry, I was doing a different podcast.

In reality, Adam Schiff is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a man who has led some of the probes into the behavior of the Russians and their friends and allies and acquaintances inside the Trump administration. And the Trump Enterprise has launched what I call a. slogan in search of a scandal, Obamagate. And we're going to have a great conversation. So, Congressman, thank you so much for joining us today. Well, thank you. It's great to be with you. So my first question for you is about Paul Manafort. Do you think his release is merely because of the coronavirus outbreak in the jails? Or do you feel like there's something else going on there? The problem with the Bill Barr Justice Department and the justice system right now under Trump's leadership is you just don't have any way of knowing. And you can't be confident that this

are being made for the right reasons. There are prisons not far from my district in Lompoc, as well as Terminal Island. 40 to 70 percent of the inmates have tested positive for COVID. And I'm sure the families of those inmates are looking at the release of Paul Manafort and saying, well, why isn't my family member being released? They've served more of their sentence than Paul Manafort did. And is it because they're not named Paul Manafort and they're not a pal of Donald Trump? You just don't know. There's so many indicia, frankly, a preferential treatment in the most gross and abusive way by the Bar Justice Department that breeds skepticism that these decisions are made on a solid basis. Well, I mean, so many of them, I think probably lack an ostrich jacket to go home to.

So in the last few days, the Trump enterprise from the White House to the campaign to Fox News to the various other media outlets that are pushing the Trump message. They have gone all in on what they consider to be the greatest scandal of all time, which is the great unmasking scandal. First of all, this is, as I'm sure you're well aware, a response to the fact that 80,000 Americans have died in the pandemic, and that's something the president can't deal with and doesn't want to talk about and doesn't want people paying attention to. But if we ignore it, then more Americans are going to die. The political response from Donald Trump is, let me distract with whatever I can, and I'm going to make up Obama gate. You can ask me what it is, it's the crime of the century, and I will be hard-pressed

to tell you what is I think actually happened. Unmasking is just one of the more recent chapters. It's actually not even that recent. It was kicked around quite some time ago by Devin Nunes. You know, I suppose, and I have difficulty sometimes following the contortions of the conspiracy theory. I suppose this, the theory is that either this is some version of Trump's Obama was spying on me, of course, which was never proven or in evidence, but it was merely a bald claim made by Donald Trump to some nefarious plot that I don't really understand. I can't say this on the basis of what was declassified by Rick Rennell, and people should understand just how abnormal, unusual, unprecedented that action was. He chose to selectively declassify some unmasking decisions,

but the memo that accompanies them from the director of the NSA says that all the people that requested that certain generic or blacked out names be unmasked were authorized to do so. And it went through the standard NSA process and NSA approved the unmasking requests. And so we have a very selective snapshot of requests that were made that Rick Ronell is releasing to help fuel the conspiracy theories without much explanation. And it's really hard for me to follow them down the rabbit hole. I think they think that by virtue of insinuation and innuendo and selective declassification, they can somehow deflect attention from the pandemic. I don't think it will succeed because Americans right now are most concerned

with whether they're going to survive the pandemic, whether their families are going to remain healthy, whether they'll survive economically. And I think this distraction is pretty transparent. Do you ever feel like you're targeted? Like I notice it seems like they just decided to target you again last week. Do you have any insight into why that was? I think it's several things.

There's certainly no one bigger on Donald Trump's. target list than I am. I was the lead impeachment manager and Trump has repeatedly bemoan the fact that I haven't paid a price for it and he wants me to pay a price for it and all the rest of that stuff and think that they go after people they think are doing them damage that are being effective, that are effective spokespeople. And so I'm a natural target for them, I think for many reasons. It's really a retread of what they did after Barr misled the country about the Mueller report. There's nothing particularly new. It's the same recycled attacks. They trot them out. I think whenever they need to deflect from the president's incompetent, and in this case, deadly

incompetence. So, Congressman, I think we've all sort of marveled at Bill Barr emerging not only as sort of the Trump family retainer, the Trump family lawyer essentially in this play. Is there anything in the purview of the House? How do you address a Bill Barr who's essentially a lawless person in charge of our criminal justice system? Well, it's very difficult. I think we're doing what we can.

The Judiciary Committee has called for an Inspector General investigation into Bill Barr's action and seeking to dismiss a case against the advice of career prosecutors in contrast to the Justice Department's consistent position in the prosecution. And in light of the fact that Flynn has pleaded guilty not once but twice and admitted that he not only lied, but he lied materially. Now, he wasn't represented by some unsophisticated lawyer. He was represented by major D.C. law firm. So it's not like he had inadequate counsel or didn't know what he was doing. In a normal world, in a pre-pendemic world, we might haul people like Bill Barr in for questioning and others in the Justice Department. Those that disagreed with what the Justice Department was doing and find out what was driving it, private conversations between, potentially between the White House and the Justice Department. Although Bill Barr seems perfectly free and willing to do the president's bidding without much being asked. In fact, when the president is vocal about it, he has protested that the president would,

be better off essentially letting him do his dirty work and quiet. But it's hard to be quiet when you're dismissing a case against someone who lied to the vice president, lied to the FBI, pleaded guilty to it. I'm very impressed that the federal judge is not taking this lightly that he has appointed an expected report judge as an amicus and intends to hold the government accountable for this unprecedented and politicized action. But, you know, Congress right now can do oversight. We can probe for answers in terms of a subsequent administration. It may be easier to get to the truth of what Bill Barr is doing and has done. But frankly, it's so transparent that, as you say, Bill Barr views his job as being the political and criminal defense lawyer for the

president, doing whatever he believes will suit the president's interests and the public interest be damned. I think a lot of Americans watch the impeachment proceedings with a kind of sense of the dread that Mitch McConnell could and did pull the plug. Does it seem like he's even more. more lawless and more reckless at this point. I suspect that if Vladimir Putin got on the phone, he'd be like, yeah, do it. He actually was on the phone with Vladimir Putin recently, and of course called Russia's intervention in our election to help him the first time a hoax. Now, the president is ambiguous when he describes the Russia hoax, but that's, of course, what Vladimir Putin hears. And so here you have the guy who perpetrated the intervention,

Vladimir Putin, extensive involvement in our election. And the President of the United States is essentially saying, hey, Vladimir, I'm with you, man. I don't believe you did it. And I don't care what my intelligence agencies tell me, well, that's an open invitation for Putin to interfere again. You know, I think the message that Putin is getting is, as long as he interferes to help Donald Trump, he can count on Trump not sanctioning him or doing anything that would be adverse to Russia. And in fact, Trump may even thank him. So all the good work that people in the federal agencies are doing right now to try to protect our elections and try to deter Russia. None of that is successful when you have the President of the United States

completely undermining and undercutting it. But I'll tell you that part of the impeachment trial that hunts me the most is a different part, where we knew that we would have to answer the question, even though it wasn't posed specifically in this term, if the senators found him guilty, and increasingly we could see that even Republican senators were acknowledging his guilt of what he was charged, did the senators really need to vote to convict and remove him? After all, there was an election coming up in nine months. And so I posed a rhetorical question, how much damage could he really do in nine months

and answered it by saying an awful lot? And, of course, none of us had any idea the gross magnitude of the damage that he would go on to do in the months ahead. And how many Americans would pay with their lives for his toxic mix of narcissism and incompetence? Mmm, a delicious cocktail of narcissism and incompetence. Speaking of narcissism and incompetence, can we talk about Devin Nunes for a minute? The congressman's trying not to laugh out loud right now, Molly.

That was a heck of a segue. So what has happened to Devin Nunes, and is he an unwitting or witting assent of a foreign power? And like he's going back and forth the White House in the middle of the night. I mean, what is going on there? I think you put your finger on a seminal moment in sort of the evolution of what Devin Nunes has become. He didn't used to be this crazy ideologue. He was a John Boehner, kind of a moderate country club Republican. In fact, you know, I used to quote Nunes when he said that the Tea Party were Lemmings with suicide vests.

That was the old Devin Nunes. But when we had the first public hearing in the Russia investigation with James Comey, and he disclosed to the country for the first time that there was not only an investigation of Hillary Clinton's emails, but far more consequential there was an investigation of the Trump campaign and its potential collusion with Russia. That hearing, we were very well prepared for, and we outlined why an investigation was necessary and what we needed to look into. The Republicans were very ill-prepared, and all they were concerned about

it appeared was tacking Comey or asking questions about leaks. They looked completely detached from a reality, and it was a disaster for them, and they admitted to me afterwards that that hearing was an unmitigated disaster for them. There was also a disaster, apparently, for the guy in the White House,

and I have to think that he was on the phone to Devin Nunes, who had gotten to know during the campaign, and really let him have it, because it was the very next day that Nunes did that now, infamous midnight run. Now, when that midnight run blew up in his face, and it was revealed that the place he'd gone at midnight to get documents that he needed to then to present to the White House with, in fact, the White House, he was so humiliated and forced to step down as chairman that he decided at that point, I'm all in, no matter how crazy, no matter how nuts and down the rabbit

hole, I am totally in. And he hasn't been ever since. And, you know, it's resurrected his fortunes. He's become a hero among the fox crazies. But that's the kind of sad story of Devin Nunes. I used to be a guy who helped elect these folks. And a lot of them, especially in, you know, 17, we're so privately say, it's crazy, I can't believe we're doing this. This is a disaster. We're going to get wiped out. You must have had that same moment where their public-facing statements are so at variance with what they say behind closed doors about this guy, that they had to know that they looked clownish and reckless. They've learned to play that role of the public Trump supporter who's absolutely immovable. Oh, that's absolutely true. I mean, during the Russian

investigation, which the Trump and Fox Acolytes are going after me for, during the Russia investigation, I would have senior Republicans tell me, in hush tones, keep doing what you're doing. They knew the investigative work had to be done. They knew what Donald Trump was doing in the country and what a danger opposed. They could never say it themselves, but they knew that the work needed to be done to protect the country. I think it's obviously gone far worse from that point on, where now so many of them have expressed the most craven support for the president publicly. I've often said that when this chapter of history has written, some of the most damning language will be reserved for the members of Congress

that did nothing or worse in the face of this unethical and immoral president. Did you feel there were things you saw that you were not able to release that would have made Republicans have to vote to remove? No. Honestly, I felt that at a certain point, and the Republicans made this very clear, even publicly, it didn't matter how strong the evidence was. they were not going to have sufficient courage to remove him.

I remember watching Lamar Alexander, the latter part of the trial, go on a Sunday show to try to justify why he was voting against hearing from other witnesses like John Bolton. And I don't remember his precise wording, but it was something to the effect of, the House has proved its case 15 ways. Do we really need them to prove it 16 ways? When senators, Republican senators are of that view that the House proved its case, but nonetheless, we're not going to remove him. then it doesn't matter how much additional evidence you add on. The greater importance, frankly, than convincing senators who were not going to do the right thing

was to be able to share with the American people the full facts of what happened. That was really the greater significance of allowing or disallowing these witnesses to testify. And people like Alexander could never explain why, if they wanted the voters to decide, why they didn't want the voters to know the full truth. So I don't think there's anything more that we could have shown, classified or unclassified, There were certainly things that we wanted to share that we weren't permitted to and witnesses we wanted to call that we weren't permitted to. But would that have made the difference to the senators?

I think probably not. But I have to say that what Mitt Romney did, the courage that he displayed, the courage that Joe Manchin and Doug Jones displayed, that left me feeling quite uplifted, that the founders were right after all. There are people of sufficient virtue to justify self-governance that we don't need to be ruled by a despot. Can we get back to Mueller for one more second? When you look back on that, because you've seen

all of it classified, unclassified, the thing that keeps me up at night is, why didn't he bring in Junior? I think there were certainly mistakes that the Mueller team made as good a group of prosecutors as they were. I would put even above Don Jr., the cardinal mistake being not demanding to interview the president. And they needed to start that early. They should have recognized early on that he was playing rope-a-dope with them and use whatever compulsion was necessary. And I think that was a big mistake. You know, I also think the overall policy that you can't indict a sitting president is a mistake. But I didn't expect that Mueller would, as conservative as he is, pushed to overturn that policy. The policy should be you don't indict a sitting president. You don't try a sitting president,

but you can't indict them and postpone the trial if necessary until after the presidency. But nonetheless, I do think that was a mistake on the Mueller team's part not to push more aggressively to interview father and son. When you watched Mueller testify, I think a lot of people, I think a lot of people, were really shocked by that. Were you shocked by that? I was. I've known Bob Mueller for a long time. I have tremendous respect for him. I think he's just an amazing human being and public servant. And he was not the man that I knew just in terms of his strength of presence. So it was quite surprising, yes. I do think a lot of folks had projected on Mueller a level of aggression that was not present in that testimony, in that hearing. If you could roll back the hearings and the impeachment process,

Is there any inflection point where you feel like you would have done something differently? You know, it's very hard for me to identify that. I think that we did a pretty remarkable job, honestly, considering the obstacles we faced. We put together a compelling, indeed, overwhelming case of the president's abuse of power. And we did so without getting a single document from the administration. The Russian-Ukraine investigations were essentially large, global, white-collar crime cases. And to be able to put together the kind of pre-exam. that we did without getting any cooperation from the administration, any documents in administration,

relying solely on testimony of witnesses who were told not to appear, it was, I think, pretty extraordinary team effort. So I'm not sure that I can point to anything that we might have done differently to affect the outcome. For the most part, I think all of us that were involved in the effort are enormously proud of what we're able to do and recognize the solemn constitutional responsibility that we had to do it. There's a big Wall Street Journal article that everyone on the right is pushing around today about you and an op-ed piece. It's really a retread of the same attacks they made earlier when Bill Barr came out and misled the country about the Mueller report. Look, the Wall Street Journal editorial page has the same essential content as Fox Prime Time and the same joint ownership.

And, you know, I've had Wall Street Journal reporters tell me how embarrassed they are by their editorial page. This is the same group of editors that repeatedly called for Mueller to be fired when he was doing the investigation, who said that Trump did include with Russia, but that Hillary Clinton did collude with Russia. So they have really no credibility, as I'm concerned, and I think millions of Americans, but it's part of that media onslaught. And, you know, I've seen now how this ecosystem works. The president will push stuff out on Twitter. Different of his acolytes in government will echo it. He's got the willing help of Bill Barr and Rick Rennell. Fox News, host will prime the pump further. And the editorial page is always happy to add their

voice. That's probably the, I don't know, maybe 20 or 30th, the editorial by the local people are packing. I've lost count. I think part of the same decision by News Corps, that there was no money in being the conservative network when Donald Trump got elected because he was not a conservative president. The money was being in a Trumpist network. And the Wall Street Journal editorial page is a Trumpist page, just like the Fox News and Primetime are and Breitbart and the rest of that ecosystem. Has there been any Republicans where they've really shocked you with their partisanship? Certainly there have been really too many to count. There have been a number of painful revelations of the last three and a half years. But among them is the fact that I really thought more highly of

so many of my GOP colleagues that I thought they believed in what they said. I disagreed with it, but I thought they believed it. And I find out, no, they don't believe any of the things that they've been saying. They only believe in the maintenance of their power or their office. And they're willing to sacrifice their principles, their ethics, whatever commitment they had to being honest. And that's been a bitter disappointment. Now, I won't say it's true of all of them. Some have chosen just to remain silent and hunker down and try to do the minimum necessary. You know, I guarantee you what we're going to see when this president is gone is you're going to see all of these people reinvent themselves as people who never agreed with Donald Trump about this or that and did their best to stand up

to Donald Trump and really disagreed with what he was doing on separating children from their families and whatnot. In the same way, these same people at Fox now who are attacking me and saying that I'm responsible for the pandemic, in the early weeks and months of the pandemic, were echoing the president's tragic false information that this was no worse than the ordinary flu. It was going to go away on its own. It was a hoax. The coverage was a hoax. So the members of the president's party will reinvent themselves when he's gone. But while he's there, I got to tell you, it's dangerous and tragic and disappointing that they have so little commitment to their constitution and their oath. One final question. Could you talk to us a little bit about the Patriot Act reauthorization from

this week? Because that seems to have generated a little bit of a story about why Democrats didn't vote it down in the Senate. If you had any insight on that, I would love to just have that as our last question. This is, I think, still a moving target. As I understand it, the Senate has adopted the Lee Leahy Amendment on the amicus provisions. We've in the House bill adopted amicus reforms to strengthen the amicus provisions. We tried to go further in the House, and we're told by the judicial conference of the courts that they would impose the entire bill if we went with a further strengthening of the amicus provisions beyond what we ended up doing. I don't know what position they're going to take on the additions that the Senate made.

The challenge, I think, is to try to resolve now differences on this bill in the midst of a pandemic. I think as a practical matter, the House will need to accept what the Senate is. done or accept that the authorities which have lapsed will continue to lapse. But this is something that we're analyzing in real time. Hey, in case you missed it, the Daily Beast recently launched a crossword puzzle. It's made to let news junkies like us flex our mental muscles with clues based on what's happening in politics and pop culture. Head on over to the DailyBeast.com slash crossword dash puzzles to play now.

It's a great way to pass the time during the coronavirus and it's free. We are at the very important segment called Fuck That Guy. And today, Rick, who is your Fuck That Guy? Perennial favorite in all time, we're turning champion. Attorney General of the United States Bill Barr is today's Fuck That Guy. I feel like you always pick him. If he would stop being such a goddamn destructive prick destroying every shred of the rule of law and our legal system, I'd stop picking him. But instead, he has to keep doing what he's doing.

Although I do think that although he's richly earned his fuck that guy status today, I think Judge Sullivan may be about to spring a few surprises on Bill Barr in his attempt to spring from the arms of justice, Mike Flynn. And I think Bill Barr may be appearing before Judge Sullivan at some point. And I certainly don't think it's going to be the easy skate where Barr waves his magic wand or his stubby little fingers and says, Mike Flynn goes free. This is obviously going to be a big test of where the rule of law stands. but Bill Barr is continuing to act as a personal attorney for the Trump's, and so he has earned today's Fuck That Guy.

Yeah, it's a good one. Look, it's an Evergreen, but it's a good one. So my Fuck That Guy is Clay Lacey Aviation, a private jet charter company in California, which has received the largest grant of any private jet company on the list, and it's owned by Drumroll, a Trump donor, and it got $27 million in government funding. We're going to look back on this time and not believe the kind of corruption that went on with these grants. And this is just a little taste of it. All right.

It's a very, very, very, very old and long story. But I one time chartered a jet from Clay Lacey Aviation to film part of a commercial many, many years ago. And it was very, very, very expensive and also pricey and also costly. But yeah, a lot of these struggling private jet firms in the country and a lot of the struggling cruise lines and these struggling major airlines with billions in cash in the bank are getting their checks this week. At a time when we've got another 3 million people who join the unemployment rules this week.

So at least during our next Great Depression, we will have continued private jet charter companies available for us. That's right. But only ones owned by Trump supporters. Well, clearly, as one does. As one should. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast.

In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science who will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm Molly JongFest and he's the Rick Wilson. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, the last. laugh and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts.

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