The Daily Beast Podcast - Armed Forces Would Experience ‘Mass Exodus’ Under Hegseth

Episode Date: November 17, 2024

President-elect Donald Trump’s defense secretary nominee Pete Hegseth could provoke a purge of career military experts from the Pentagon—which appears to be exactly what he wants, explained The New Abnormal co-hosts Andy Levy and Danielle Moodie. Plus! Stephanie Mencimer, senior reporter at Mother Jones, delves deeper into the controversies and allegations surrounding Trump’s attorney general nominee, former congressman Matt Gaetz. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. 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 some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears.

Hello and welcome to another Sunday bonus edition of the new abnormal. We thank you so much for being here. Say we have an extra special guest with Mother Jones senior reporter Stephanie Medsimer, who will talk to us about all the things we need to know about Donald Trump's choice for Attorney General, former congressman, Matt Gates. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Not at all.

But clip us. Clips? I don't blame you. Can I ask one favor, Jesse? Mm-hmm. Can there not be clips of anyone that I used to work with? Oh, well, then we'll have to throw out the whole segment. Yeah, I got bad news this week.

Oh, boy. Yeah, I think you know what happened. So, Fox News is Pete Hakesith. Our future Christian extremist secretary of defense has had some interesting comments about women serving in the military. And here's veteran Senator Tammy Duckworth with her thoughts. There are millions of women who have served in the U.S. military, as you know, as someone who has not only served, but you're also someone whose helicopter was hit by an RPG. You lost your legs in partial use of your right arm because of it.

What did go through your mind as a woman who has served when you heard him saying that women should not be in combat roles? Well, he's shown that his absolute lack of experience. and his lack of suitability for the job because anybody that truly knows the military knows that we cannot go to war without over 225,000 women who are serving on active duty right now.

Our military cannot go to war without our female service members. You know, this is not the revolutionary war where there's some sort of a line in the sand and, you know, combat is on one side and the rest of us can stay behind the sign and that's not combat. I would ask him, you know,

where do you think I lost my legs in a bar fight? I'm pretty sure I was in combat when that happened. And, you know, it just shows how out of touch he is with the nature of modern warfare. If he thinks that we can keep women behind some sort of imaginary line, which is not the way warfare is, you know, today. And you mentioned what he said about the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That's General CQ Brown.

Points he has implied that he was only hired to that role because he was only given and nominated to that position because he is black. I should note that General Brown is an Air Force fighter pilot who has 130 combat flying hours, 40 years of service. Do you think he'd actually be able to get him fired? I mean, what would it look like at the Pentagon do you think if Pete Higgseth is confirmed as the secretary? Oh, I think that when the morale would plummet, I think you would see a mass exodus of professional military officers. And I think that we would face a hollowing out of our military. It is absolutely alarming what would happen if you have somebody like that appointed a secretary of defense.

And again, you know, General Brown is more than well qualified to serve. And frankly, it is astonishing that, you know, you've got Donald Trump, a guy who's a five-time draft dodger. I call him Cadet Bonespers, would nominate someone so wholly unqualified for the job. I agree with all of that. Everything she offered was 100%. But here's the sticking point when Senator Duckworth just said like, oh, the morale will drop in the military and they'll be in Exodus. This is exactly what they want because the people that will leave are the people that they want gone to begin with. I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if they reinstitute the draft and they bring in, you know, and they bring in, you know, militia-minded, proud boys.

They go in and they tap white supremac organizations and they do a full. and complete purge because I will say it again. The new goal of a Trump military has nothing to do with being activated abroad. It has everything to do with being activated on American soil. I was going to say the same thing about the draft. The only problem with reinstituting the draft is, of course, the draft is colorblind and all of that. So it might be at cross purposes with the idea that they want to purge the military

of certain types of people slash thinkers, whatever you want to call it. Look, we talked about this on Friday's show. He is unbelievably unqualified to do this. The fact that he's unqualified is the least of it, because you know what, you could put someone in there who's unqualified, and the Defense Department would probably be able to muddle through because you have career people there. He is actively bad. like he's not going to be just an empty suit, an unqualified empty suit who has no idea what they're doing. He's going to have no idea what he's doing, but do bad things anyway. I agree with Senator Duckworth. I mean, I think it's going to be catastrophic for military readiness, military preparedness.

But I also don't think you're wrong, Danielle, in that at least among some people in this Trump administration, their view of the military is more within than without. out in the sense of that's where they seem to want the weapons pointed within the United States as opposed to, you know, at external enemies. And Pete Hectat is going to go along with that lockstock and smoking barrel. So, yeah, it's going to be bad. I just appreciated that all throughout the campaign. People like JD vets were telling us that we were bedwetting. And, you know, it's not that they don't hate women.

And then, like, can't even wait a week, basically. They're like, yeah, well, not many of the guy who says something like this. So, you know, that's going to be fun. Okay, here we have the human skin tag Steve Bannon on his Wharroom podcast discussing the absolutely hilarious news that the onion has purchased Alex Jones Info Wars. I have never seen a process like this in my entire life. Bankruptcy processes are normally very orderly and always looking at the company that's going through bank bankruptcy or being sold in some sort of court-sponsored auction. And my understanding is that Roger Stone and others had taken a long time and put together a very competitive bid that I think had no financing outs. And I think the court owes it to the American people to see what the bids were.

And if the Stone or other people who are affiliated with Alex actually put a bid in that was competitive or higher. Shut up. I need to note something for everybody here. He has a sign in back of him that says there are no conspiracies, but there are no coincidences. What? What does that even mean? It's basically trying to, I think, you know, in some of my branding work, we do this thing, positioning where you try to say where you are. And he's trying to say, look, I'm not Alex Jones, but I sure sound like him.

Yeah. Saying there are no conspiracies, but there are no coincidences is what he's saying is there are conspiracies. Yes, yes. It's double negative territory here. Yeah. Look, I don't know the details as to how this went down where the onion ended up in control of info wars.

I think it's fantastic. And I, for one, do not need to see anything from a judge or anything else. I am satisfied. The one bit of deference I would give is I bet you Steve Bannon has a lot of experience with Banks for Upsi courts, just like his best buddy, Mr. Trump. Okay, well, time to get in the mud here. We play a lot of clips from Fox News' The Five, but I think this is one of the most disgusting ones.

We're going to hear Greg Gutfeld say some pretty vile shit here. God. You could have listened to us. We were talking about this. I was talking about the trans issue for the last, I don't know how many years, five years. I was called transphobic. I was called bigoted.

But every day I talked about it because I felt it was the most – and I'll tell you why it was the most important issue in a minute. But Scarborough only talked about it as a political issue. He was mad that they were doing it because it didn't play well in politics. He didn't talk about the parents or the families destroyed or the doctors who should be executed for butchering children in order to make a buck. We talked about on this show, this is the biggest moral story, probably since abortion, because it shows you how a toxic ideology can grow exponentially. if it's left unchallenged. Suddenly, we were voluntarily butchering children.

Again, a crime that would end in the death of a doctor. You know, now we were talking about it was a choice among children who cannot even make these decisions. Think about Elon Musk, you know, he has an estranged, transgender child. He knows what wokeism has done. It took one of his kids from him, and that radicalized Musk. I don't even know how to react to that. Go ahead, Andy.

I'm at a loss. Wow. Wow. The extent to which he's changed is absolutely amazing. And Greg, I know you're not listening, but you are a transphobe and you are a bigot. Nobody is mutilating children. You're making shit up, which is what you do. And you're right about this being comparable to abortion in the sense that you want to police people's bodies. And you're on the wrong side of both of those issues. So you're absolutely right in comparing it to that in that sense. Yeah, this is fucking disgusting. And look, I haven't talked to him in a bunch of years. And I don't see that changing anytime soon. That's just pigish. Yeah.

And when he's bringing up Vivian Elon's daughter, this is a person who aside from her father's bullshit is thriving and enjoying a really great life. Yeah. Except for when her father makes that turn into a hell for her by saying disgusting things a parent should never say about their children. but he's a fucking horrible parent. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Do I have time to tell just a quick little story? Sure.

Back when we were doing Red Eye, which for people who don't know was a late night news comedy show on Fox News that ran for like, I think it was 12 years or something like that. And Gutfeld was the host. We did a guest segment with an actor named Leslie Jordan. He played Beverly Leslie on Will & Grace among a whole bunch of other roles. He passed away not that long ago. Absolutely delightful man, gay man. And I bring that up for a reason.

We did this interview. We were a pre-tape show. So we taped earlier that day. And then someone got really mad and said that we can't air that segment because it was, quote, unquote, too gay. And Greg, I mean, all of us were like, go fuck yourself. And that includes Greg. And we ran the segment. So when I say he has changed a lot, this is what I'm talking about.

I am flabbergasted to hear him talking. I know I shouldn't be at this point because so many of the people there have gone down this road. And whether it's for money or fame or they are true believers, I guess that's not for me to say. But they are different and he is different. And it's just it's truly sad to me to see what he's become. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal senior reporter at Mother Jones, Stephanie Mensimer, who a few years back wrote a really in-depth piece on Matt Gates. Matt Gates, who is now been announced as Trump's pick for Attorney General of the United States,

which absolutely makes zero sense, but we don't live in reality anymore. Stephanie, talk to us about Matt Gates and what it is we need to understand about this now ex-congressman who is about to be the most powerful attorney general in the United States. Well, I think maybe one of the most basic things people should know about him is he's never really been a lawyer. And usually when you're going to run the Justice Department, it helps to have actually practiced law. And I think he only really practiced law for about a year. He graduated from the William and Mary Law School in 2007, and he went to work for this kind of politically connected firm near where he lived in Florida. And he was a junior associate in this tiny town. And

like the cases that he worked on were pretty pedestrian. So like he represented a homeowners association that was fighting the county over the placement of a beach volleyball net. It was very, you know, hard-hitting legal practice there. And he did some debt collection work, including a case that involved an elderly woman who couldn't pay his dad's home health care firm. The thing about Matt, and I guess maybe this was the sort of point of my story, is that he really got his start and became who he is today thanks to his dad. Like, he is really a very much kind of a nepo baby, and his father was wealthy, and he served in the Florida State Legislature, and he was incredibly politically connected.

So when Matt decided to go into politics, like the way was paid for him from the very beginning by his dad, both with money and political connections. And so he didn't have to work that hard to get where he was going. And he was kind of, I think actually, what do people call? People called him the meanest member of Congress because of, he kind of got there also by, you know, Matt Gates is basically that, well, he used to be.

things have changed a little bit. For a long time, he was Congress's biggest troll. No, no. I still think he, I still think he still has that crown, even though he is like to take on various members of his own party in terms of trolling. But I think that he's still number one. Well, that's good to know. He's, he's maintaining his spot there because he was kind of an early adopter of Twitter, you know, he was early on Twitter. He got social media, I think, in a way, a lot of other people didn't. He was really young when he went into the state legislature in Florida. And when he sort of figured out how to leverage that when he got to Congress. And it's funny, there was another member of Congress, Jason Chaffetz, who's not there anymore, but he's from Utah where I'm from. And he also

was kind of good at this. He, I think he paved the way a little bit from that to figure out how to use television and specifically Fox News to raise his profile far above his status as a congressman, a junior congressman from some backwater Florida district. It's so wild. But as I was like reading through your piece and even now listening to what you're saying, you take out Matt Gates's name, put in Donald Trump, switch out Florida for New York, and he's basically Donald Trump. They basically kind of have the same daddy's help, the wealth and the power that allowed you to

you know, parlay your name and your, you know, access into something greater. Donald Trump did the same thing as dad gives him a shit ton of money and he blows through it. Dad bails him out, but he's able to create this smoke and mirrors experience of Donald Trump being the king of real estate. Donald Trump being, you know, the man that hangs out and marries models and creates this image. And Matt Gates has been able to do the same, even though he's labeled as the meanest member of Congress or the ultimate troll or congressional troll or what have you. The fact is is that he was still able to get to Congress, be reelected, and, you know, and now is making the ascension to attorney general as like the, I guess, the troll. general, what do you foresee, given all that you know and have written about him, how this is going to go down for America and for the Trump White House?

You know, I wish I knew because it's hard for me even to just get past the idea of him even surviving a confirmation hearing. But I guess we're not having confirmation hearing. I was going to say, everybody's so concerned with like, oh, well, this will be fun or this will be interesting or grab your popcorn for confirmation hearings that are never actually going to happen. They're going to be recess appointments, which is within Donald Trump as president of the United States, his entire purview to use recess as a way to appoint positions that he doesn't want to go through the rigor of the light of day. And even if they did, it doesn't matter. They have the Senate and no one is going to go against Donald Trump at this point and stage in the game. So I'm just curious,

how you think that it plays out with this man who is a lawyer-ish, I guess, with no real experience, but he doesn't need any. He just needs to be loyal to Donald Trump. A lot of, maybe even most of Matt's colleagues in Congress hate him. And that includes the Republicans. So, I mean, I could actually see a few, like, I think Susan Collins has already been making some noise about this, about, like, getting in the way of the, you know, confirmation or his nominations. So things could be different, maybe only for him because he's so unpopular. At the same time, I think actually the house would be like, ooh, good riddance. Like, go be attorney general. We don't have to work with that fucking guy anymore. You know, so there's that. But let's just say hypothetically

that somehow he manages to get confirmed and he's overseeing this gigantic agency. But I think, you know, he's sort of a useful idiot in the sense that he's there just to make sure that Trump's agenda gets implemented. And I don't even know if Matt himself has much of the agenda, although he has spent the last couple of years holding these kind of like fake hearings on the weaponization of government. And he's been kind of a defender of the January 6 people. And so, you know, I could see him being involved with the pardons. They'll have to run through the, I think there's an office in the Justice Department that deals with pardons. And so he also could, there are still a bunch of January 6 cases pending, which the Justice Department could just drop.

Which they will. Yeah. And some of those guys actually, the most recent one, the statute of limitations is coming up pretty soon. So it's not going to go on forever. But there are a few of people left. And some of them are actually people who are quite violent and, you know, may have had weapons and stuff. And I can see all of those cases just vanishing because the Justice Department decides not to prosecute them anymore. And, you know, I guess if he's going to help Trump go after his enemy, then he just takes the agency in that direction. And, you know, there's a long list of people. I think, you know, I guess he's going to prosecute Liz Cheney. It's crazy some of the people that are on those lists. I don't even know what sort of charges they would bring against them,

but they could try. And you can really ruin somebody's life by just prosecuting them for nothing. I mean, you still have to hire a lawyer and defend yourself. So his troll instincts could be really, really dangerous in that sense, that he could just ruin people's lives. None of them will ever go to jail, but you could destroy people pretty effectively with the power in the Justice Department. And, you know, they'll probably get rid of the Civil Rights Division. Or actually, I read somewhere today that what they will do is use it.

And this happened, I think, during the Bush administration, the Georgia would be a Bush administration. They might bring back this where they use the Civil Rights Division, but only to defend the civil rights of white people. So, like, what? Yeah, that seems accurate. So like white people who have been discriminated against will find a real ally there. At the same time, Matt Gates is a big fan of legal weed. And that's the thing that he and Trump actually, by the way, they do not have that in common. Trump doesn't even drink.

You know, he just drinks a lot of Diet Coke. But Matt Gates, you know, was pulled over allegedly drunk driving back in like 2008. Like there's been this sort of cloud over him for a really long time about substance abuse issues. You know, I think that's something that might be in this ethics committee report. that hopefully, God willing, someone will leak in the next day or two. Here's my question, because I did want to turn attention to the ethics investigation. This is an investigation that has been going on in the House since 2021. Don't ask me what the hell is taking them about three years in order to pull together.

I feel like what could have been done in a couple of months. Well, I think it was the Justice Department asked them to put it on hold while the Justice Department investigated. And then when the Justice Department dropped it, then the Ethics Committee took a back up again. So I don't think it was really them just dragging their feet all that time in their defense. Fair. I have no love lost at all for Merritt Garland and his lackluster approach to being attorney general that will go down in history. But we won't have books anyway, so it won't matter. But my thing about Matt Gates that I find the most troubling is what has come out about the

parties that he has attended or thrown with underage girls looking into him for potential sex trafficking, bringing young girls across state lines, the ecstasy, the alcohol, the weed, just the, you know, the environment in which he has been alleged to be a part of. Can you talk to us about that? And I don't see Republicans at all in the Senate if this actually goes through a normal confirmation process, which I don't think that it will. But if it does, I see Democrats bringing this up, but I see Republicans just kind of shrugging it off. What will you make of anything that comes out about the real Matt Gates? Well, I actually think there are a few Republicans who won't shrug this off because honestly, they don't really need him.

I mean, there's like 9,000 other Trumpy lawyers they could make attorney general, you know, who would kill themselves for that job. So it's not like the whole agenda, you know, or project 2025 stuff hinges on Matt Gates. So I think that there are a few people who might just see this as a bridge too far and they're not going to vote for somebody with that kind of record. But I could be delusional. You know, I keep thinking there's still hope for some part of the Republican Party. You know, I'm not, you know, whatever, to each their own and their belief system, you know, I'm not going to tell you. I mean, how many times has Susan Collins disappointed us, you know, but yet we keep open? How many times that she said the word disappointing?

Or how many times has she told us that a sentinagarian is going to grow up and really, really take the role and responsibility of the office seriously? So many, too many to count. But on a serious note, like, Matt Gates has been connected to. loosely connected to underage girls for quite some time. And I'm just curious as to why that has never gotten him removed. Because Matt Gates, like, he doesn't have, again, the same charisma or power that a Donald Trump has that makes people want to be around him. So, like, why has he been allowed to exist so long in these halls of power, you think?

I think one thing you kind of have to understand about him. is he comes from this teeny tiny district. His district is in Pensacola and it's super Republican. Like, it is more Republican than a lot of places in the country, even in a lot of places in Florida. A lot of military people retire there. They have military installations there. So his family, they have like a really tight fist control over that little district. You know, so he may have all these issues in Congress, but in order to really get rid of them, Someone in Florida in Pensacola has to knock him off in an election. And that just has not happened.

Like no one has even come close to knocking him off at home because they all, I mean, like Fox News penetration in Pensacola is probably like 100%. You know, they love Matt. And can you name very many other junior congressman from Florida? Like I can't. But, you know, he's made in it. He's like given them this leverage. And he does occasionally throw a bone to the people in his district.

to keep them happy. So, you know, like he extends like the fishing season for, I don't know, mullet or something, red, red snapper. He did that or like he does enough to keep his constituents at home happy. And then he does all these other things in Congress to annoy people. And, and they can't really do much about it. You know, Congress isn't very good about policing its own. But, I mean, it'll be interesting to see what's in the Ethics Committee report because I do think that he's pissed off and enough people in Congress that they're not going to hold back. they found anything. And they don't have the same standard in the ethics committee that the Justice Department did. Like, they don't have to prove that what he did was illegal or a criminal activity.

They just have to prove that it was unethical and it was not befitting what you expect from a member of Congress. So they could, you know, pile in on that report if we get to see it someday. So that would be interesting. But he has resigned two days before they were to vote on. on the release of this report, he has stepped down. Someone told me today, actually, that he's punking us. This is my boss actually came in. He's like, I can't believe it. Oh, that he's not resigning.

Well, no, he did resign, but he also just got reelected. So he can be sworn in again in January. And then they have to reset the ethics investigation because he was just reelected in November. So he's resigning his current seat, but I guess technically, I don't know if this is really accurate, but that's some of the thinking that. But let me ask this is that so because this ethics report again is contingent upon him being a member of Congress,

are they still able to release what was found if he's no longer a member of Congress? I would just like to say here that Congress leaks like a sieve. So I don't think there's anything really preventing them from if they want to release it, I think. They can and they will. So it would be interesting. I mean, it's just so juicy. There's no way that somebody's not at the copy machine right now, making a copy to send at the New York Times or whatever.

You know, it just seems like it's going to come out. But again, maybe I'm just delusional. But I just know that people love that sort of gossip. They really hate Matt Gates. And there's really no downside at this point to releasing it. Yeah, I mean, in all honesty, like to me, I don't see the downside. I also don't see him not being confirmed. So I don't know.

It's like choose your poison. Do you want to know all the nitty gritty of a person who now will be above the law? Or do you just let it lie? Because at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. I'm unsure. You know, I'm somebody that likes information. So I want to know what's inside of it. But I don't like in the political climate that we are now in, I just don't know at the end of

the day if it matters. But I will say this, your piece, Stephanie, was very eye-opening. It made me hate him more, which, you know, I didn't think was possible, but here we are. So I just, you know, thank you for doing this in-depth on him, for giving us a better picture into who he is just as a person. And I guess, you know, why the star is aligned between him and Donald Trump. Folks, if you're interested, the piece is how Matt Gates use Daddy's money to become Trump's favorite congressman. And it is at Mother Jones. Stephanie, thank you so much for making the time for The New Abnormal. Really appreciate you.

Well, thanks for having me. It was fun. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production. Production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens?

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