The Daily Beast Podcast - Are We All Trapped in Tom Cotton’s Authoritarian Wet Dream?

Episode Date: June 5, 2020

Lindsey Graham’s new, Trumpy bouffant. Bill Barr’s little authoritarians’ playbook. Tom Cotton’s statist masturbation.They’re all featured on a very not-safe-for-Democracy edition of The New Abnormal. Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson talk to The Daily Beast’s Pilar Melendez how rough the NYPD is being on New York’s streets, and to Alabama House Minority Leader Anthony Daniels, about peaceful protesters getting teargassed there. Plus! Our dynamic duo ask the important questions, like: Will Cotton’s pseudo-strongman schtick make him a new GOP king? And who is Meghan McCain’s father, anyway? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi folks, it's Rick Wilson, and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, a left-wing pundit, an editor-at-large at the Daily Beast. I'm also an editor at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, best-selling author, and full-time troublemaker. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, business, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. I'll try to keep Rick to the minimum number of F-bombs and try to keep our... kids, pets, and other wildlife sounds from invading our respective bunkers. Rick, I don't understand what Bill Barr is doing. What do you mean you don't understand what Bill Barr is doing? Bill Barr's doing exactly what's in the Little Authoritarian's playbook. He has surrounded the Deer Leader's Palace

with loyal troops. In this case, they are a bunch of guys from mysterious places in the federal government that the Bureau of Prisons and the Customs and Border Patrol and other things that you don't think of as guys who are frontline law enforcement officials, but they're now surrounded the White House and surrounding the president's the Trump and bunker so that he feels secure and doesn't have to weep into his pillow at night because college kids are outside yelling mean things about it. Those cops or whatever, those army fatigue troops in Washington, D.C., with, who are they? Okay, these guys, the ones that have been making a lot of news, in part because they are all there without any sort of ID, they don't have any badges,

they don't have anything that identifies what agency they're from, no name tags, Perfect for war crimes. They're out there on the behest of Bill Barr, who's very much taken it upon himself to deploy a Praetorian Guard for Donald Trump around the Trump and bunker. The White House is putting up fences outside of the fences to provide an additional layer of fences. How many fences? Many fences now. You know, if they really want to go for the whole third world craptocracy thing,

they ought to just go ahead and start spreading out concertino wire and put up HESCO barriers around the place because it's starting to look very much like an armed camp and less like the people's house. It is interesting to me. And there's no Blackwater connection here, right? Well, look, Blackwater itself doesn't exist anymore, but it's called Academy or now. Whatever the hell Eric Prince has renamed it for the 47th time. Very not sketchy.

They always have names like Precision Executive Outcomes, LLC. It's so funny because when I was growing up in the city, there was this place called Crazy Eddies. And Crazy Eddie's. So he changed. Crazy Eddie Antar. Right. So he changed his name to like, it's Crazy Eddies. And it was like The Wiz.

And then they changed the whiz to no. Beats the Weas. So I do feel like if your company continues to change names, you may be really sketchy. The constant rebranding of any company is a giveaway. And, you know, things that were in the 50s like delicious toxic waste incorporated doesn't work as well in our modern sensibilities. Look, a lot of people thought the sudden appearance of all these troops that are all under the part of the Justice Department's purview on the orders of Bill Barr. Initially, people thought they were Blackwater. They thought they were mercenaries because they refused to identify themselves. They had no identifying badges or name tags. And, you know, when you've got guys standing around tooled up to the

gills in their body armor, it naturally raises questions. And it's also a matter of the fact that the president of the United States has ordered the Defense Department to deploy American troops, guys who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan in the streets of Washington and to turn them against American citizens. It should scare the shit out of people who are, A, Americans of any kind. It should scare the shit out of conservatives because conservatives used to say, oh, well, we've got to be very careful about the power of the government, the power of the state to impose its will upon the people by using the police and the military against us. And now these guys are jacking themselves off like, well, why can't we have a spotter on the White House to call in the drone strikes on

these hippie-filled the antifa? It's disgusting. Doesn't this feel like further proof that D.C. should have statehood? No, it feels to me like further proof that Donald Trump should be institutionalized. But if D.C. were a state, this would never go on. There would always be a federal district in Washington, even under D.C. statehood, proposed. There will always be a core federal district downtown. We would still have the same problem. I feel like in New York, I mean, Cuomo is very dicey and he has a lot of problems, but a lot of states did make sure not to sort of say they would absolutely not take federal law enforcement. In fact, all of them.

Didn't all of them? But here's the thing. The president is also calling active duty military forces into the game, which he has the right to do under the law. Look, I'm a lot more concerned by a huge stretch of. Guys from the 82nd Airborne or the 101st, the 10th Mountain Division, where have you, showing up in D.C. than I am from the Vermont National Guard Civil Affairs Unit. That's a whole different matter. And as much as Tom Cotton, the Uber Group in Fuhrer Tom Cotton, wants to spank himself off,

thinking that we're going to roll the troops into the streets of this country. Even conservatives were whispering amongst themselves yesterday like, dude, bro, rich too far. On Wednesday, Tom Cotton, the Arkansas senator who I don't like it all and who writes, the worst op-eds had an op-ed where he said that he thought that it was reasonable to send troops into, I don't know what, civilians. Tom Cotton represents the cutting edge of a Republican party that has abandoned the idea of limited government. This is pure, flat-out status masturbation. This is a guy who believes that it is an appropriate answer to a protest movement nationally that has had some misbehavior and some things on the edges that no one approves of

endorses that no one seeks to perpetuate, describes the problem in hyperbolic terms. You know, if you read his op-ed, it is, the nation cities lie in ruins, we're all dying. It is so over the top and such a distortion of what's going on. And he's basically saying, call in the troops to restore order. This is a precedent this country does not need to revisit. This is not the way you settle this problem. You settle this problem with dealing with police reform. You settle this problem by dealing with justice.

You settle this problem by dealing with these people who have legitimate grievances. And I will say this. There's a reason Tom Cotton is in the Senate now and not in the military because the alternative view of this came yesterday from James Mattis, who was Donald Trump's secretary of defense and his shit filter got full and he finally resigned. But Mattis came out yesterday and he managed to enrage Donald Trump like few other people ever have. He came out with a blistering op-ed in the Atlantic, absolutely took a stick to the way Trump has been handling this crisis, the way he's been dividing the country and talking about the threat to the Constitution. It was an absolutely unsparing takedown of this president at a time when Donald Trump is suffering from wee, delicate hurt feels about the fact that the nation mocked him for his little Bible walk and is mocking him for hiding out in a bunker and behind three layers of fences.

The maddest thing, Molly, I don't know if you read it, but it is just absolutely devastating. I mean, I appreciate that he came forward, and I know that that was not how he was trained. Let me just say it this way. I know how difficult getting there was. Right. Why do you know that, Rick? Because I know things, Molly. How do you, what do you know?

Share with us. I don't know. I know a thing or two. I've been to the rodeo a couple times. I know some people. Are we going to hear more from Mattis? I suspect that he has fired his first shot and is waiting for a BDA on it. And once we know what that looks like, you might because he recognizes as many, many other senior

military officials recognize that this, putting America's frontline military active duty troops onto the streets of our cities, constitutional risk that this country cannot take. It is a danger to this nation that is so spectacularly apocalyptic. If you wrote this in a movie script, they would come back with notes and said, no, dude, this is just too much. Nobody's going to buy this. this explosion in the DOD, where I worked many moons ago and understand this process a little bit, the Joint Chiefs of Staff quite clearly had spoken to all of their predecessors and were getting an earful,

clearly met amongst themselves and went to Secretary of Defense Mike Esper on Wednesday, or perhaps even Tuesday night, we're not really clear, and took him to the woodshed. Can you explain what that means? Because I know that's an expression, but I have no idea what that means. Being taken to the woodshed is a phrase, it's not really a Southernism. It's a sort of ruralism, I suppose, that is where paw takes you out to paddle your ass if you're in trouble. The chiefs clearly took Esper to the Woodshed. They clearly went in and said, what the ever-loving fuck are you doing?

And he came out on Wednesday morning and had to do an amazing press conference that said, I don't favor invoking the Insurrection Act, which the president wants him to do. And we're not going to do illegal things with the troops. We're not going to violate the Constitution. Now, when you have to, as the Secretary of Defense say things like, don't worry, we're not going to deploy troops. to do things that are illegal to you. You know, you're in a country that may not be the most politically stable institution. Right. How worried are you about the election now? Well, there's an upside to downside. The upside is that Donald Trump's corrosion in the states, especially in the

key electoral college swing states, is beginning to get outside of the single digits and scooch into the double digits in some places. He's started to have a significant downturn in a lot of the key states he needs to win. Now, he is still holding pretty firm in Ohio. and Florida, which are two states that if he has those on the board, the game's not over for the long time yet. The weakening of Trump's numbers is meaningful. The impact of the efforts against him is starting to have some significant lasting damage, we think. But I have said this before. Trump is a day trader. He's a gambler. He will do the craziest shit to see if he can get away with it. I am not going to be shocked if Donald Trump comes out and starts floating out the

idea of, well, you took away so much of my time with Russia and you took away my time with COVID that I deserve more time to be president. And these riots, we need 90 days for the election to delay. He's going to try it. Now, can he do it? It's real hard. Is he going to try it? I absolutely would bet good Bitcoin on it because this guy, he's running out of cards. He's in trouble and he's psychologically right now in a huge trouble. You can see this is a man who's broken down. By the way, anytime anyone does a Trump impression, all I think of is Alec Ball. I know. Everyone's Trump impression is basically Alec Baldwin. I'm not making any great claims to my Trump impression, but I just feel like I have to channel it a little bit. Well, I appreciate it.

Molly, Jungfast, very liberal. I don't know her very well, but I don't care for her. Communists in the woodpile. Like, are we going to see other Republicans who have abstained come out against Trump? I mean, we saw W. I don't know if you saw the March of Shame in the Senate on Wednesday. Yes, I did. That was amazing. These Republican senators. trying to ask them questions. Right, with their hands in their pockets, their eyes on the floor, shuffling along as if they were being led to their own executions. Pretty great. And Casey asking, do you have any opinion of the lunch?

I don't know what lunch is. Is lunch a meal? Tell me more. I'm confused. No, they really, they did everything they could not to answer her. It was truly a sad display. You know what it reminded me of. In 1936, during the Olympics in Germany, all the nations walked by, and they all dipped their flags ceremonially.

Well, the American flag doesn't dip for Adolf Hitler or anybody. And I thought, those fucking guys walking by that camera, every single one of them could look in their soul for one second. I need to go over there and tell Casey, fuck this president. He should not have active duty military troops on the street. He should not have ordered an attack on priests and civilians with gas, rubber bullets, and police to clear a pathway for him to go and have a shitty photo lot. They could have all done that. Every single one of them had that moment of testing. and they just walked by that camera

and they were the most pathetic. For all of them that are conservatives, especially the guys in the class of 2010, oh, I'm a liberty conservative. Fuck you, you are not. You're a bunch of chicken shit pussies. Ben Sasse already won his primary. So he's not even worried about a Trumpy primary challenge.

He's just a coward. Right. Oh, can we have another aside? Yes. Can we talk about Lindsey Graham? Can we for a second? The guy who's been basically shaving my head for the last 40 years.

I am not up, shall we say? on men's hair coloring and styling products. It's an area for which I have a small skill set. Right. I am curious if you noticed that Lindsay Graham has suddenly dyed his hair blonde. I know you're obsessed with this. And is now blowing it out into sort of a Trumpian swoopy, buffet-looking thing. I saw that yesterday, and I was just curious if you had noticed that.

I did. I saw you focus on that. Honestly, Lindsey Graham dyeing his hair. So everything is closed. So where did he get it? Did he do it at home? Did he do it himself?

That's terrifying. Was this like Lindsay Graham searching online for Madison Reed or something? Oh my God. I don't know. Lindsay Graham dying his own hair so he can look more like Trump is like probably the only good thing

that's ever happened in 2020. See, there's always something comical even about a healthcare. Right, exactly. Just to get back to Tom Cotton's miserable op-eds, he... You really love it. Tom Cotton. I'm really mad at him because I've read all of his op-eds. And so they're infuriatingly,

they're sort of infuriatingly intellectually dishonest in a way that I myself like to be. And so I see that intellectual dishonesty in a very annoying way. And so one of the opeds that really struck me that he wrote was this one about when Trump said, we're going to buy Greenland and everyone laughed at him. Tom Cotton went and wrote an op-ed saying, we should buy Greenland. which I felt like was sort of the bottom. I looked at the op-ed that he just wrote as Tom Cotton's opening bid for the 2024 election, where his game plan in his head is Trump's going to lose, the nation's going to be plunged into economic chaos, this shit's going to continue on the streets.

I'm going to be the strong savior who comes in with my plan to shoot everybody who fucks with me. Now I'm kind of worried, not that we're going to buy Greenland, but that Trump's going to wake up one morning and sell Alaska back to Russia. And that is the thing. a lot of these Republicans would rather have a fight about the media. And we talked about this, I think we talked about this last week, that they'd rather fight against the media than admit they're racist. Look, fighting against the media has become the definitional characteristic of Trump republicanism.

There is nothing there anymore that they can go back to and say, we believe in leadership with integrity, people who are good people who don't lie and who are good moral character. Gone. We believe in controlling spending and debt and deficits gone. We believe in strong foreign policy. gone, we believe in limiting the power of government. When you've got active duty military troops on the street turned against American citizens, I think we've stopped being able to have an argument about limiting the power of government. Yeah, I think that's about right. Can you tell you get

pretty pissed off about that? I know. Well, you're dismay-see, I've always just thought Republicans were garbage except for you. And so I have no, no, I know. There are good Republicans like Mitt Romney. Sorry. I hope I wasn't too dismissive. there. No, that's fine. You're allowed to be dismissive. I see how it is. I don't feel the love anymore, Molly. Today we're delighted to have Pilar Melendez for The Daily Beast on with us. Pilar's been covering the unrest in New York City on the ground. It has some fascinating insights for us about the way the police are behaving, about the way the protesters are behaving, and about how it looks in the middle of all this combat. Okay, so Pilar, you and I are in the same city in New York City.

You wrote a piece about the massive show of force that's happening with the police department Can you give us like a sort of bird's eye view of what is going on? Absolutely. So I went out on Tuesday night, which was the day after New York saw a lot of mass looting, a lot of systematic seems of show of force to target certain areas. Soho, Midtown, Financial District. On Wednesday, it seemed like the NYPD was fully prepared to respond to these sort of organized looting actions.

When I was out there, I think I counted about almost three. police officers. I was out for about four or five hours and they were not playing around. There was in Soho alone, I counted maybe 200 officers and they were all in SUVs. They all were blocking off streets. I think I showed off my press badge in Soho at least two dozen times. They were very systematic and were very clear of any time after eight o'clock to get out and go home. I think that as we're seeing on Tuesday and on Wednesday, the NYPD is going out all the stops. They are chasing people down the street. I saw four cop cars chasing two teenagers on Tuesday. From what I saw he wasn't doing anything other than being out past curfew, I saw about seven teenagers get arrested within 15 minutes

in Soho. They're really showing out and making it known that they're willing to use as much force as possible to make sure that booting and people after the curfew are no longer. So, Pilar, is that because, if I were to quote a series of right-wing Fox News tropes the last couple of days, is that because New York is now nothing but a burned out radioactive shell, a blistered Mad Max hellscape where no human life can live except for those who scramble amongst the ruins eating rats among the fires? That's been my experience. Yeah, I mean, here in Brooklyn, it's just completely devastated. No, I think that from what I saw in Manhattan, it just seemed, obviously, things are boarded up.

Stores did get hit, and there are, is glass on the ground, but it just looked like, I was describing it to a friend. It looked like around like 4 a.m. in New York, where there's no one really around, and it's a little daunting and confusing. That's what it seemed like to me more than anything else. On Wednesday, obviously, all the debris from the past looting was cleaned up. I'm from Florida, so it looked like a hurricane to me. No. I can also agree with that. Do you feel like the New York City cops are treating the protesters respectfully or now?

It depends. So I did see multiple cops being very respectful. If someone had a sign, they just asked them nicely to try to get home as quickly as possible. Obviously, at 8 o'clock is when NYPD really started to roll out. Before that, I didn't really see any cops on the protest line. They were all kind of hanging back. once every 10 minutes or so I would see a line of them. But after 8 o'clock, they all kind of showed up. But they were all, from what I saw, they were all pretty kind to the protesters.

It was, if you didn't have a clear indication that you were a protester, a sign, a shirt, in a group, what have you, they were a little bit more aggressive. Also, I think they were targeting younger people because we had seen on Tuesday night hordes of younger people targeting stores and in sort of an organized fashion. So I think they were a little bit, judgmental in that point. Sure. So, Palat, how organized do these protests feel to you? I mean, because the New York Police Commissioner had something the other day about there's a sophisticated logistic system to move bricks. And I'm just curious about your, if you've seen anything on that or if you have a take on that. So I think the protest part, I actually think both sides are extremely

organized. I think the process part is extremely organized every day. From what I've seen, there's a list of protests around the five boroughs that are going out. I picked one at random on Tuesday and it was I started at Stonewall at about five o'clock and it was I've never seen anything like it. Not only did people know exactly when to leave. So it started at five. About six o'clock, it was when people started walking from the West Village uptown and they had a completely known route. I think they had spoken with authorities because they knew exactly on 14th Street, we're going to turn and head towards Union Square. Then after Union Square, we're going to turn on and go downtown. And it was very organized where everyone was going. They also made a huge effort to try to keep people as close together as

possible. Obviously, not all the streets are closed, so groups would get taken apart when avenues, when cars were going by. So protesters, there was clearly seemed like there were organizers along the route that were making sure that people were running up and joining the crowd because on the night before, we had seen that people that had kind of dissented from the main group were the ones that were doing a lot more of this rogue looting. And in terms of of that, the road looting, that seemed extremely organized on Monday night because they knew that after, once it got dark, they, if they were following the protest line and just descending and leaving that line of a horde of people, it was a lot harder for police to understand what was

going on. There's not a lot of police inside the protest line itself. So it's easier to kind of just break away and start smashing windows. Another reporter that went out for us on Monday night said it just seemed like all of a sudden it hit dark and these groups of kids and five or six at a time would just hit stores and just start smashing. It was very systematic. Oh, that's interesting. Interesting. I had seen something about like that the looters were driving fancy cars. I saw a lot of SUVs. There were a lot of white vans I saw, but also those had been stolen too. I did see that how a lot of them were driving fancy cars. I didn't do that any personally, but I did read that as well. What's the weirdest thing you've seen so far in these protests?

The weirdest thing I've seen so far is this need to have leaders of authority. Protesters really want leaders of authority to join in. What I think is the weirdest thing is when police kind of heckled back. I saw it a couple of times when I've been out covering these protests. But in those instances, police kind of want to have fun with it and want to seem like, oh, we're not these like bad guys that you guys think we are. We're cool cops. So now either yell back, one of them.

I'm not a regular mom. I'm a cool mom. It's just like this really uncomfortable need to kind of justify that they're not these bad guys as they've been played out to be. And they're all in tactical gear with the shield. And they're kind of yelling, don't yell at us. We're not the bad guys. A couple of cops when I walk by yell go press, which was so weird. That's amazing.

I want to move on to Confederate monuments. Yes. So I think one of the best things that's coming out of these protests are back to that. a lot of Confederate monuments that there are either busts or full-on statues in a lot of southern cities have been toppled down or government officials have made the proactive measure of taking them down. I think the weirdest one to me was the one in Arlington when the daughters of the Confederacy have actually made a point to take down a Confederate statue in Old Town in Arlington as a preemptive measure so people don't destroy it. As misguided as I think that is, I think

as weird as that is that they're protecting the statue. I mean, the daughters of Confederacy is a whole separate issue. But I think that the fact that they realize that that is a point of contention and have made steps, we're seeing a lot of figures that should have been taking down in the first place have come down. And it's more than Confederate statues. Frank Rizzo, the former mayor of Philadelphia, that statue has been taken down the active effort of officials and protesters taking down these statues that show such a historical, contentious view. that we're trying to protest against right now. And this idea of racial inequality is seeing it physically seen and manifested in these

statues, I think the act of people either defacing them or officials making the effort to take them down and side with protesters, which, as we've seen in the past, is a long, outdrawn process. And these are just coming down. Right. But aren't there very good people on both sides? Yes. Exactly.

Right. The police union in New York is actually, they weren't able to, or other police that have been involved in brutality. Can you talk about that a little bit? Yeah. I mean, in New York City specifically, the PBA Police Penelvin Association is one of the toughest I've seen. Not only is that president ready to just come out and completely condemn anyone that

says anything negative about the NYPD, but they fight tooth and nail to make sure that their officers are protected. If there's complaints against them to get them legal help, they're a well-world machine. I think that this idea of protecting your family and, And brothers look out for each other, unfortunately, cultivates this idea that you can do whatever you want because there's such a strong union and backing that will save you. I think, especially in New York, I don't know in other places. I mean, Minneapolis also has said they have a similar culture.

From whatever you're going to read on in New York, it's, if you want to write about the NYPD, you know that you're going to have to deal with the PBA. And it's going to be a nasty email or it's going to be. When I worked for Giuliani in City Hall for a while, the PBA had, there was never going to be a cop that no matter how hanging. it was that wasn't going to get full support. There was never going to be an incident, no matter how egregious it was, where it wasn't going to get, at the minimum, sort of shrugged off, like, oh, line of duty, so what? Or worse. How do you change that? You have to kill the police unions. Let's be honest. You have to reform them in a way where the contracts that get renegotiated, as they do every few years, remove the immunity defense from cops. You also have to have a set of

standards, and maybe it's a federal set of standards that says, if you're a police officer involved in, I don't know, more than three active duty shootings in a three-year period, you're not a police officer anymore. If you're a police officer who turns up in these overtly racist Facebook groups, and there are, there's a giant iceberg of them out there floating around where George Floyd is a figure of humor to them. If you're on those, you're not a police officer anymore. If you're like the guy in Fort Lauderdale who in three years was involved in, I don't know, I can't remember the number was. It was like 68 incidents in use of force in three years. You know, I'm sorry. If you want to have the cops be respected by the community and to have a two-way street of respect and mutual security, then you've got to get rid of those people.

As a conservative, the power of the state is the power to kill you. And that power is going to be abused. The state is going to lose its legitimacy. And so I think that's, you know, sort of where you have to go, Molly. Hey, folks, if you're a fan of the new abnormal podcast, you're going to love The Last Laugh. Hosted by The Daily Beast Matt Wilstein. The Last Laugh is a podcast where comedians get real. Every week, Matt talks to some of the big.

names in comedy, including Sarah Silverman, Sasha Baron Cohen, Samantha B, Larry Wilmore, and Steve Bannon, oh wait, not Steve Bannett, about how they're staying funny as the world falls apart around them. Today we have Anthony Daniels, who is the minority leader of the Alabama Statehouse, and he's going to talk to us about what he sees on the ground, as well as what they're doing to get out the vote, as well as what they're doing to get out the vote down there. You said you spoke at a protest yesterday. Yes. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that and what the protests look like in the South? Oh my God. It reminds me of what I read about and learned in history about the civil rights movement and especially in Selma, the Selma to Montgomery March. But it was

a little bit different to where the overwhelming majority of the audience were non-African American. In Alabama, that is why I believe that there is certainly an opportunity to really where people of all races are starting to come together because they were able to see the injustice relative to George Floyd's death. In previous times when we've had conversations about a death or an African American being killed by police, there was no real video. And so I think that because people see this firsthand and there's no coordination among law enforcement and the media on creating a narrative of the person that is the victim then becomes the suspect in the public eye because of a checker pass. And so I think that right now the narrative, they're trying to change the

narrative to where there are people that are looting and doing different things and coming from out of town. And I had friends that were involved. They got tear gas last night. They called in the state troopers. There are 35 state troopers that came from the state. They made a request. for the National Guard, but it was unable to get the National Guard. But it really was a situation to where the protesters in many instances in all accounts were very peaceful. In fact, they were so peaceful to where, you know, you had individuals videotaping it and scene by scene. And so it's just unfortunate that our law enforcement responded the way they did it. Wait, so you're saying that in Huntsville, Alabama, you spoke at a peaceful protest and you were, and people were tear gassed?

After the protest, the rally, I'm sorry, the rally began at 5 o'clock. There approached me, I would say, about 2,500 people in the park, if not more. The energy was great, and I spoke and a few other folks spoke, and everyone was civil. There was no shouting, there was only cheering, and there was a lot of unity and solidarity there. And so shortly thereafter, I get home with my children and my wife, and we begin to see, receive text messages about individuals, tear gas. We turn on the television and there was live feed. But the feed that I was most interested in is the feed of those individuals that were there. And so here again, that footage is being spread among social media, which is different than the narrative that is being

coordinated by law enforcement here and local leaders. So Anthony, let me ask you this question. In the long struggle for civil rights in places like Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, This has a lot of echoes. This is a very evocative moment for folks who look back on things, who faced up against a lot of aggressive policing. And is that something that's been top of mind with younger folks now, too? Are they sort of seeing this for the first time through that lens? I think so. I think that, you know, they, in many cases, in homes, when our young people are growing up, especially those millennials and those that are younger, they're not growing up with the knowledge and understanding of the things. a lot of the things that happened historically. And so they see it as isolated incidents that things are better because the person that sits next to them in a classroom, there are no more George Wallace's or Bull Connors that they can visibly see. Right now, it's more systematic oppression.

So because it's not visible to the eye, they don't know that it's there. But because of the injustice that happened with Armad Aubrey and George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, is becoming more abundantly clear. So you're the first African-American minority statehouse leader in Alabama, and you're also the youngest. What are you seeing in Alabama and in the South with re-institutionalizing African-American voters? Yes, I think that there's a book that I read. It's called Brown is the New White by Steve Phillips.

And in that book, it talks about the strategy from a Stacey Abramson, and others where the focus has been on infrequent voters. And infrequent voters are individuals that may vote in presidential elections, but they don't vote in local elections and they don't vote in statewide elections. And so in targeting those individuals to turn out in non-presidential years is how you move the needle. Despite having gerrymandering existing in our legislative districts where state representatives and senators are able to choose their constituents instead of their constituents choosing them based upon partisan performance. And so in order to dismantle that, turning out individuals that are considered rare

and sporadic has been the focal point in the last election cycle in 2018 especially. I think Stacey Abrams demonstrated that even states like Georgia have an opportunity to really win statewide. The difference is I believe that there has to be a municipal to legislative pipeline and election focus so that you're able to build sustainable infrastructure on the ground in these communities. The idea of empowering and re-enfranchising, as you like to put it, voters in the Deep South, is that program something you plan to expand and iterate out there beyond just your home state, or are you going to try to move this there first and then try to push it out beyond that? I think that focusing on a municipal to legislative pipeline and turning out voters locally in every election will demonstrate to other states and the rest of the country that focusing just on those super voters is not the key to success.

The Republicans do something similar to this by invoking fear and using religion and issues that really drive fear and tugged the part strings in order to increase turnout of their base voters that are not consistent voters. And so in order to really demonstrate that, I think that doing it in Alabama is key for me. I did a test back in 2018, where in 2017, Doug Jones' election, they spent about 15-20 million to turn out 396,000 African-Americans in that special election. I spent nearly a million dollars and turned out $441,000 a year later. And so, but overall, Democratic performance increased from 400-something-thousand-2014 to 700,000. thousand in 2018. So if you were running Doug Jones's campaign, who would you rather see him up against Jeff Sessions or Tommy Tuberville? It's really hard to say without seeing any real internal polling, but I would tell you that I would likely, I think Tuberville may be a weaker candidate. I think you

give Doug an opportunity to, if done appropriately, to peel off a lot of the educated Republican voters that are in a lot of the suburban areas. I think that he'll have an advantage there. I think that because of some of the things that Tubberville has said and his alignment to the president, I don't think folks that are in the defense industry and other industries are going to be as excited about Tommy Tubleville. And so I think that gives Doug Jones an opportunity to solidify an LX fan, his base voters, which I think he's doing a great job of doing right now. But I think that really the key to Senator Jones's success is going to be turning out rare and sporadic voters and zero in on those because, There are approximately 900,000 African Americans registered to vote in Alabama. But as I indicated, only 441,000 turned out in 2018, but they're registered.

They're not turning out. And there's no apparatus to turn them out. And that's why I feel that the work that I'm doing is. Well, I will say this as a former political hack for our listeners at home, voters are scaled by, in most voter files. A one or a two is a very infrequent voter. A five is a constant voter. And so we tend to focus a lot of attention on the fours and fives.

But I think digging down there into those twos for you guys. The ones are probably not going to come out. But getting into those twos and threes is what made Barack Obama president in 2008. On the ground right now where you are in Huntsville, are the police hostile to the protesters? What are you seeing? Well, I think that what you saw last night and there was another protest on Monday, did see the police engage and tear gas seeing the protesters that were remained active beyond. the time allowed it. And so they took that as an opportunity to really start kind of becoming,

not necessarily, I would say the aggressors in the situation, which is unfortunate. And I felt that they should have handled it different. But let me preface this by saying that I've been a big supporter of law enforcement, but I'm more of a supporter of right and wrong. And so whenever faced with the situation about right or wrong, I'm going to be on the side of doing what's right. And I'm not going to cover up or hide anything to give anyone cover when it comes to that. And so this is a very difficult situation for me, but it's a very necessary situation because this is a very important issue. And it's something that's important to my community in all communities. And I feel that there has to be someone, although I'm standing alone.

Now we go to our favorite segment. My fuck that guy is Megan McCain. She's not a guy. I don't know if you know who she is. Denise. Right. I don't know if you know who she is. She's the daughter of a very famous Senator. Excuse me, Molly. Who are you talking to? You don't know if I know who Megan McCain is? No, I'm just fucking around because Megan McCain is always like, my father. And did you ever see that video where she's like, my father, my father, my father, my father. I feel a real ownership

on people who have gotten where they are because of nepotism because I myself have gotten where I am because of an epitism. So I am very big fan of trashing those people, especially when they're unbearable. So Megan McCain had a tweet yesterday where she said that New York City was like a post-apocalyptic hellscape and that she was really horrified by the state of her city. Except, and I saw that tweet and I thought, you know, I am in New York City. I've been here the whole time. It's been fine. Now, I live uptown in an area that's like a little bit like, it's not the suburbs, but it's a little bit removed from all the excitement. But I saw this and I thought it was kind of nuts because we've had some stuff go on, but it's been pretty controlled. And I had also

heard that she wasn't even living in New York. So it turns out, in fact, that she's not living in New York and she wasn't in New York. And she just had seen it on Fox News. First off, I want to just ding you just for a second. You said you live out almost in the suburbs? Yes. That makes people think at Westchester or something. No, no. I live in New York. But I live in New York. But I I don't live in Midtown. I heard the word suburbs. I was like, the one? So my fuck this guy today is an officer in the Fort Lauderdale Police Department named Stephen Pahorrence.

Stephen Pohorrence has been on the force for three years. He has drawn his pistol 45 times while on duty, mostly in traffic stops. In two occasions, he drew his weapon on mothers with their children in their vehicles who were later released without charges. He became famous this week for knocking over a kneeling protester at an event at a protest event down in Fort Lauderdale. He has had 49 use of force complaints against him since he became a cop. Now, look, not every cop is a Stephen Pahorrence, but the fact that there are Stephen Pahoranses in police departments is a problem. This idiot in Fort Lauderdale is the kind of guy who proves my grandmother's old rule about the turd in the punch bowl. We have a bowl full of punch and you throw

a turd in it. It's not punch anymore. It's turd water. This is the kind of thing where the police departments around this country have got to do something. Jesus Christ. Did she really say that? Yeah, she did. She was a font of unusual wisdom. I mean, it speaks to a systematic. You have a police department where something like that happens. There's systematic rot and enabling that has to be stopped. And it's the kind of thing one of our Twitter buddies used to have on his bio that said, I was a cop in New York when cops could be cops. But when cops would be cops, it was their glory days.

They like to drag black kids into alleys and beat them to death. There was a degree of which Part of the ticket to admission back then was the idea that you got to be a little, shall we say, rough around the edges. There are cops who are psychopaths and who are violent. This guy in Fort Auderdale, the story stuck out to me because three years on the force, 49 violent incidents and complaints. He's taken out his gun 45 times, including nine times with women and children in the car for traffic stops. This is the problem. If you don't get guys like that out of the system, the very good cops, the majority of the cops who are very good people who are people who, who are not driven by racism or the desire to be somewhere where they can abuse their power,

they end up in that turd water, in that punch bowl. 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.

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