The Daily Beast Podcast - Biden Doesn’t Want to Prosecute Trumpland. But His AG Still Might.

Episode Date: November 20, 2020

Team Biden has made his incoming style of presidency very clear: Keep the peace. Or in his aides’ words, “move the country forward.” Unfortunately, moving forward doesn’t include prosecuting Trump and his band of thieves, er, White House staffers and campaign confidants. In this bonus episode of The New Abnormal, which happened LIVE on Zoom, The Daily Beast’s DC Bureau Chief Jackie Kucinich confirms this to co-hosts Rick WIlson and Molly Jong-Fast: “Where we’re at in the process, it doesn’t seem like that’s going to happen.” BUT. And this is a big BUT: Biden’s Attorney General still could go after Trump, points out Beast Trumpworld Reporter Asawin “Swin” Suebsaeng (“It will be interesting to see how that particular pick moves forward.”) Speaking of “what ifs,” the quad also muse about what the political world will look like without Trump as president, and sorry to say, not too much different. “One of the worst liberal fantasies is that he’s going to go to Mar-a-Lago and not come back,” Molly says, but that ain’t gonna happen. “Biden will be president January 20. But the Trump presidency as it is a state of mind is going to continue. Anyone who thinks the Republican party is going to go back to how they were before Trump is living in a fantasy land,” says Jackie. Rick and Swin have even more sinister predictions: “I don’t want to jump the gun here, but we should see if he tries to run some shadow foreign relations [scheme] from Mar-a-Lago or the Trump organization,” says Swin. Don’t forget the rallies, either! According to Rick, they’ll continue, but “they’ll be ticketed. He’ll use them as a revenue source.” Then! Jackie talks about the chances of Biden’s ole buddy Mitch McConnell coming around and the group makes their pick for which MAGA bot will make the best bachelor or bachelorette. Plus! Will Democrats have to drag GSA official Emily Murphy out of her post? And what the hell is happening in Georgia!? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to another edition of The Daily Beast, The New Abnormal Live series. I'm new abnormal producer Jesse Cannon, and I'll be hosting this fun Q&A with some of the smartest people in politics today. But before I introduce our guests, I just want to lay out the functions of this. As you can see at the bottom, there's a chat, and there's a little tab for Q&A. And that Q&A, you can submit questions and vote them up. So as the YouTubers say, if you smash that like button, we'd really appreciate it on your favorite questions. So there will also be a few fun polls we'll do, which we'll get to in a minute. But without a further ado, I'd like to introduce the new Abnormals host, Rick Wilson and Molly Jong Fast.

And as well, we have some special guests, including the Washington Bureau Chief at the Daily Beast Jackie Kucinich, and Aswin Sup sang, aka Swin, who is a White House reporter at the Daily Beast. And I'm very excited to have everybody here today. I'm a little scared since Swin and Rick have some of the most colorful language in describing our politics, but I think we're going to keep it on rails. And so with that, I believe we have a poll to start us off. What will you be doing on January 20th? And if everybody could answer that real fast, we'd really appreciate it. And from there, I'm going to start with a really fun question that we got submitted beforehand.

that I think everybody will have something fun to weigh in on and says, how do you see the end game playing out with GSA administrator, Emily Murphy? Will she sign the transition authorization letter soon? And that is from Allison Torres, and whoever has feelings can start. I have many feelings. I think what she's going to end up doing is humiliating herself. She's going to drag this out as long as she can. she's terrified that Johnny McEntee, the child who runs the Trump personnel office,

will descend on her and fire her and blow up her career. She should be more afraid, I think, of the approbation of the American people, but that's just me. Can she ever, I have a question, can, so there's like a lot of talk about can Democrats subpoena her, can Democrats arrest her, can Democrats, you know, drag her through the streets? What can Democrats do? Jackie, do you have thoughts this one? So one of the things I know they are doing is they've asked that she come briefed Democrats in the House about what the heck is going on.

It's not so my understanding is it's not a public hearing yet. It's not something to be able to turn on C-SPAN and watch. But they are finally like, okay, fine, we've been patient. What is your process here? What are you doing? Why are you holding this up? So I imagine once that happens, when she tells Congress what's happening, we'll know more. But at this point, the calculus, you know, the Biden campaign could sue.

It doesn't seem like they're going that direction. They've been kind of like, we're just going to remain calm, try to do this, have it funded. Because right now all these funds are locked up, of course. They're having it funded through donors, meaning it's less than transparent right now as a result of that. And so, but, you know, until then, it's sort of in a holding pattern. Because what if they lose a lawsuit, you know? Then Trump would use it in his advantage. I asked Eric Swalwell, and he said that it was just that the court were too slow.

Yes, that's all, yeah. I mean, we're not dealing with a whole lot of time here. So, yeah, it would burn time, but to what end at this point? And also, Molly, you have. like there were people talking about like, oh, could Democrats do any extreme measures like drag her out of there or arrest her? I'm not sure if anybody

of any prominence is actually saying something like that. It would be like a House of Cardin-style fantasy for Libs if, like, Nancy Pelosi were to come in there and slap on the cuss. So no, that is not going to happen. And as Jackie was pointing out, there's not that much political recourse they have at this particular moment

when you have a president and therefore an administration just 100 and 10% devoted to propping up, at least as best they can, from a public relation standpoint, this fictitious alternate reality that Trump won when he very clearly got rinsed in the 2020 election by Joe Biden.

So the original question was, okay, is she going to actually let the transition get underway at some point? And by she, we mean obviously the administration. This is a much bigger problem than just one woman in one position. Yeah, it's not just as one woman. Right. The answer is, of course, yes, by soon you mean sometime between now and January 20th, which isn't that far away.

But we've seen various experts coming out, some of them publicly, going on the record to say, look, the fact that you keep doing this is halting progress between coordinating between, for instance, coronavirus task force officials and the incoming Biden administration. and we are not being hyperbolic about this. These people are actually saying that this could cost lives. A significant number of families destroyed and bodies piled up on the ground. And the President of the United States and everyone who is in position of power on down from him right now do not care about that.

They are not moved by that argument or they're pretending it doesn't exist. So we are at the standstill that we are. And if morgues overflowing isn't going to convince them to move quickly today, then what will? But if Emily Murphy did decide, oh, I'm just going to sign off, they would actually be able to get the fun. So it actually is one person right now that's controlling a lot of the levers. Yeah, I think.

But she's not acting. Go ahead, sorry, Rick. Right, she's not acting. Right. I think that's a real question for Jackie and Swin. I mean, are the people in the White House cackling and rubbing their hands together saying, ha, we're holding it up? We're using this woman, Emily, to hold it up.

or are they just sort of, is it just more of the usual sort of fear and intimidation that anybody in the administration feels of crossing him? Well, most of it is a standard operating procedure of we are a direct expression of the sheltering of Donald Trump's fragility, especially when it comes to his ego and his presidential ego. So it's a direct expression of that. When it's not actively a concern of reprisal, it's an almost. oftentimes an expression of, if not loyalty, whatever that means in the Trump era, but also we are an extension of Donald Trump's ego. And this isn't just something where people go on TV

as a PR apparatus to say nice things about the leader, trying to make him feel good about himself. This is something where vast resources of the campaign, the Trump legal world, and the administration, not just the White House, or being marshaled to protect that very prominent conservative principle right now, which is, of course, the protection of Donald Trump's feelings. We had a story that came out last week, I believe, about how the White House Personnel Office, which helped staff vast quantities of the federal government administration run by Trump Uber loyalists and purgemeister, Johnny McEntee, as you pointed out earlier, Rick, they are still vetting contenders to fill positions for a second Trump term in senior positions in the administration for a term that they know is not happening and is not going to come to fruition.

And yet the personnel office is still actively vetting, calling references, doing lengthy background checks on these potential... Lanky background checks. Come on. Lanky. Sorry, I really should have put it. Right, they Google. They goald. The point is there and

murder. It is not there. They all of them. Sorry, Swin. No, no, no problem. You were right to call it. See, this is why she's my editor.

She catches me on these incorrect adjectives and unnecessary adverbs. And then she yells at me about it. And then the reader is better for an end. But my point is, that these aren't just them saying nice things about Donald Trump on cable news.

These are actual taxpayer-funded resources and man-hours and manpower that they are devoting to this fictitious reality that, oh, yeah, term number two is right around the corner. Even the GOP Twitter account tweeted out that Trump had won. I mean, I don't think there's any sunlight between Trump's fantasies and the GOP at this point. I mean, that press conference was at the R&C yesterday, the Giuliani press conference, that, you know, whatever that was. Which in the all-time annals of bat-shit press conferences, I mean, that's right up there at the peak of Bat-Shit Mountain. There's just nothing. There was, I've never in my life, as a fairly close observer of Rudy, seen him that off the rails and never seen anything so completely.

you know, it really struck me yesterday. I'm like, this is why there are 70 million lunatics in this country because there's a big media apparatus that's going to feed out from there to OANN and the Federalist and Bright Bar and every other damn, you know, sewage pipe leading into the mind of the MAGA. And they're going to be told, it's all done, it's good, Trump won. You know, Louis Gohmert, who as we all know is the smartest member of Congress, today declared that California had gone to Donald Trump.

Wait, how? That's a man at my wedding, Louis Gomer. Yes. Voterifying. What's that? What did you say about Louis Gomer's one? It was a joke. I was kidding.

Best man at my wedding, Louis. He's moving. You're at my wedding, Louis. Why don't we get on to another fun subject? So the top-rated question right now is from Greg Sayer, which says, have any of you had any conversations with competent lawyers, i.e. not the elite strike force, about whether any Republicans have crossed the line into committing sedition. Well, I have a call coming up about that very thing and about the vulnerabilities of certain people who are visiting the White House today in an attempt to overthrow a lawful election. That's Senator, State Senator Michael. All right. No phone numbers this time.

Oh, come on. His pen code is. He has been, you know, he's trying to run for governor against Whitmere, and he has been siding with the Michigan militia. I mean, this guy has a wrong record of Craig. So it's not super surprising that he's gone to the White House. He has no legal, I mean, they're not overturning results. There's no world.

in which that happened. No, and this whole idea that the Wayne County people can resend their certification, nowhere in law or regulation does that appear. This is purely magical thinking. And so these guys going to D.C. to tell Trump whatever they're going to tell him. And I was getting a lot of shit last night online from Magas who were like, how dare you docks them? You said their names.

I'm like, well, they're going to go to the White House. officials, they're going to give a speech, or they're going to meet with the president. They're going to then going to go out and talk about it in either the press room or on the driveway outside the White House, and then they're both going to go on Fox. So, yes, those poor, poor, delicate people are being doxed for, I don't know, trying to overthrow a lawful election. Call me crazy, but they're, I think this is not going to go like the way they think it's going to go.

So nobody knows what the word docs means anymore. No. Yes. I mean, did you post their mothers or their wife's home addresses online? No, we identified who they were and what stayed there from and posted their Twitter handles. Right. Yeah, the publicly available thing that anybody can find that public officials in fact want people to find. Yes.

Okay. Using the sophisticated intelligence gathering method of the Google machine. But again, that's that idea that conservative outrage can be weaponized. Sure. You know, no matter what the phenomenon. Yeah, they're going to play the refs. They're going to play the refs all the time. They're going to bitch and moan about this stuff every day.

And look, it's part of the thing that's part of one of the missiles in their silo that they're always going to say, oh, you're treating us unfairly, you're blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, while looking away from Trump. with, you know, great disinterest at the shenanigans. Do you guys think I'm curious to know what everybody thinks? Like, when do you think this is over, the Trump administration? Like, do you think he, do you think there's any world in which, like, a lot of people have, I think sort of one of the worst liberal fantasies is that he's going to go to Mar-a-Lago and just not come back,

which I actually don't think is what's going to happen. I think he's going to fight this thing to the end. But I'm curious to know what you guys think. Jackie, want to go back? I think in some ways it doesn't end. I mean, Biden will be president on January 20th. I mean, that is going to happen. But the Trump presidency, as it is a state of mind, I think, is going to continue.

And Rick can speak to this more than I can. But for anyone thinking that the Republican Party is going to go back to who they were before Trump, I think are living in a fantasy world. Absolutely right, Jackie. Yeah, the House of Representatives. I mean, more of these people have been elected as, like, Trump Republicans than Ronald Reagan Republicans at this point. I mean, there's almost a complete turnover. More members of the House currently believe in Q&ON than have acknowledged Joe Biden as the president's elect.

Think about that. I mean, it's a shit show. Well, and the reason, one of the main reasons that you don't hear Republicans coming out, and you're starting to see, you know, the usual suspects, who are either A, reelected recently, or B, Mitt Romney, come out in defense of what Joe Biden is doing and saying that he should, you know, get the security briefing and whatnot. But barring that, I mean, most of these people are afraid of the people who vote for them because they know that these people are so close, that they are Trump Republicans at this point. So this isn't going back. So Trump, your question about the Trump presidency, I mean, it's going to. live on in the hearts and minds of his supporters for quite a while.

Look, one thing I heard a White House source say to me last night, he said, look, everybody knows it's over except maybe Don Jr. And maybe Rudy. They all understand that it's over. But he said, do not expect the end of him tweeting every day. Do not expect the end of him pretending to be president. or at any accomplishment of Joe Biden trying to step in and take credit. And he said, and the big thing you should anticipate is that the rallies will start up again soon,

but now they'll be ticketed. So Trump will make money off the rallies. You know, he'll basically have the monster Trump rallies as a revenue source, which I can see it. It could work. Sure, and beyond potential stuff like that, which would largely focus on Trump feeding his own ego and also potentially lining his own pockets. Like another reason he's not going away, even once he actually steps out of the Oval Office early next year, is because he is far in a way the most popular person in the Republican Party right now. Oh, yeah. Loas.

Order and magnitude. Even if he doesn't run for president again in 2024 or whatever, he's still going to be a massive player in the party. He will have all the kingmaker abilities that come with it as the former standard bearer or the current standard bearer, I should say, of the Republican Party at his disposal. But even beyond all of those predictable, well, domestic elements, I don't think you can close the door on the high potential for things playing out on the international realm as well. as we know, foreign dignitaries and foreign leaders love curing favor with former U.S. presidents, especially ones who just stepped out of office because of the massive influence that they will inevitably continue to wield. And one thing we know about Donald Trump is how much he craves the attention of foreign leaders, particularly autocrats, who he loves to call his friends.

So I don't want to jump the gun here, but we should also see if he tries to run some sort of of sort of shambling shadow diplomacy or at least shadow foreign relations from the hub of Maralago or the Trump organization or whatever. It's not, this isn't conspiracy theorizing. It makes sense. This is what foreign leaders do to American post presidents. And Donald Trump, especially as former president and then current businessman, there is no reason why they wouldn't try to do the same thing. But Michael, this is a business. he does so little actual presidenting, right? Like he's never, I mean, I don't know, what was the last legislation he was involved in,

the tax that before the midterms, I mean, pretty much. Like, so. The ones he didn't mess up for the GOP? Right. He's not involved. It's not on like the good set. Right. I mean, he's not a legislator.

And, you know, he's done a lot of these executive orders, but not, but most of them have never materialized into anything. So I'm just curious, like, he clearly is a kingmaker, and he clearly is the future Republican Party. But can you imagine him actually making a king? Because I don't think he would ever give way that power to anyone, not even junior air. No, and look, as long as the guy can be put in a motorized exoskeleton,

he's going to try to run for president again in 24. If only for four solid long years, I'm going to modestly say in those four years, he could probably raise $500 million. And he needs it. He needs every penny of that. So he'll run the email scam. Remember, Trump owns the entire list.

He owns all the MAGA lists. They're his personal property. They don't belong to the RNC or the campaign. They belong to him. That's how they structured it. And so he is going to print money off that. for the first year it's going to be liberals stole the election

from me Maga can come back I love you, you love me help me fight Joe Biden's far left agenda so that we don't have to have you know transsexual gay Sharia marriage

for your pets by George Soros and AOC he'll dig right into the deepest part of the crazy well just like they do in Venezuela you're right just there's no scenario in my mind where Donald Trump says, hey, I'd better focus on good works amongst the poor deserving, building my presidential library and strip mall,

and, you know, holding my tongue on matters of consequence to the nation as my predecessors tried to do. Never going to happen. I am going to put down one marker. one prediction. And feel free to own me within the next four years I'm going to be wrong. I think it would be strangely likely

that sometime in Trump's post-presidency era, you see him making big headlines for helping to get like a hostage or two or something like that out of a foreign country, such as North Korea. I mean, former presidents have been sent on missions like that all the time. the degree of a friendship he has with a lot of these guys

who are holding Americans in their prisons and their jails, as much as we may have distaste for Donald Trump and his policies and him as a person, those things are often leveraged in post-presidencies. So I think it's going to be incredibly funny in a very dark perverse sort of way when he comes out talking about how I'm a former president and look at this amazing job I've done

freeing these hostages. No American has ever done this before. I'm the greatest. That will probably happen sometime in the next few years. So be emotionally girded for that. Yeah, I think that's probably right. I've also noticed he's trying to to pre-claim credit for all the vaccines. These are my vaccines. They happen because of me. Historians, be sure that when you write your text, there's a big old chapter that says Trump did the vaccine. Yes. Yeah. So the Fox and Freds this morning saying to call it the Trump vaccine. That was Geraldo. I'm going to pivot to one of the most popular questions that we have in the chat now from

Deborah Schroier, which is since half the Republicans believe the election was rigged, will this depressed Republican turnout in future elections? And I think there's, you know, an interesting thing with this, too, is we are starting to see some evidence that I don't think is definitive that that may have hurt all his trashing the mail may have hurt him in some places. The Republican... Actually, our numbers, our numbers, particularly in Georgia and in Arizona, there's a meaningful drop-off in Republican mail ballot activity,

and there's no other externality except Donald Trump saying, it's very, very corrupt. You know, your ballot's corrupt, it's shady, you know. But I mean, here's a lot of it. Just that we have some instant, we might have some, to that question, you know, as of in early January, we'll see this put to the test, right, in Georgia in a way, because you have these two runoff elections for Senate. And that's one of the things that we're hearing, people are Republicans down there are most concerned about is the fact that they're saying, you know, they're going through all this rigamarole with the recats and saying that, you know, the Georgia Secretary of State the rhino, blah, blah, blah, and you can't trust it. Well, they have the Senate on the line there. And so Republicans and Georgia saying,

why are you eroding confidence in the vote right now, really? And there's the real fear there that that's what's happening. As, you know, as this continues to get, as the president continues to push forward on this, which we should note, there hasn't, there wasn't any sort of meaningful change in the Georgia vote after this hand recount that we just said. thought. Right. It was the usual sort of statistical

trivial noise in the thing. The Georgia recount number right now, over 770,000 absentee or early ballot mail-in ballots have been requested as of right this as of this morning. That 770,000 primarily comes from the Atlanta metro area. Oops. Yeah. Okay. I mean, do you think My question about Atlanta is we have Warnock, who's actually been on the podcast, and who Jesse and I love.

And we have Asoff who's coming on the podcast soon. And my question is, with the Warnock stuff, like, do you think these attacks, like I saw Marco Rubio attacking him for giving a sermon that you can't serve both the military and God at the same time, which is actually like, to come and, you know, that you have to have one God. Do you think those attacks will hurt him, or do you think it's just? Look, I think the Democrats need to learn that there is a magical word. They need to stop out with both feet, and they're going to use socialism against Warnock more than anything else. And I've been talking to some folks around the Biden world, and it's a major

democratic political operatives nationwide. And every single one of them, who's a responsible grown-ass adult, says they need a sister-souder-movement on socialism. They need to be clear about it. They need to not worry about what AOC or the squad says afterward because it is a bad brand in this country. And it is not even a great brand with African-American voters. Right.

But it's a message. That is a fundamental messaging problem. the Democrats have. Yeah, it's not a policy problem. They're not, look, they're the lightest kind of vaguely socialist party. It's like, it's somewhere between New Deal

liberalism and great society liberalism. Right. Like, I mean, and yes, socialism, internationally and domestically is a malleable term. It means different things in different contexts. Of course. But you're correct that as much as it is a problem for the Democrat party right now,

It actually purely is a messaging problem because they're not advocating. Right, they're not, yeah, Warnock is not out saying I'm going to seize the means of production. And I mean, the joke is the things they are scaring people with are actually sort of more Trumpy things, right? Like people, I mean, I know for, I know for a fact that a lot of these vaccine makers were actually worried that Trump was going to seize the vaccine. and we saw that with the PPE earlier on where they were seizing shipments of PPE. I mean, that's way more South American socialism than no one.

Oh, look, I mean, there's no one in America's political space ever more similar to Fidel Castro and Maduro and Chavez than Donald Trump. No modern American president has even been in the ballpark of the range of the neighborhood of that kind of nationalism and flirtation with authoritarianism. and the statism about telling companies what they can make and where they can make it and how they can make it.

And let's not forget, the very beginning of the administration, one of his first official visits, was out to the carrier plant. And he basically was telling the carrier management, no, you have to build this kind of refrigerator or air conditioner, whatever the hell it was. But you have to build it here. And in these factories, and he was trying to, in the beginning, he was trying to call like Ford and GM and say, no, no, you have to reopen this plant. but keep that one closed. We opened this one in a state that's good to me. I mean, that's not capitalism. That's not free markets.

That is authoritarian statism. And then he dropped it as soon as it got to time-consuming. Right. And carrier deal and it turned out to be built on sand. And he wanted the brief political points you score from a moment like that. No, it's about the sugar high. It's not about actually, you know. Right.

Yeah, exactly. So he wants to dabble in it, but he doesn't actually ever have the policy follow through. Yes, if you had like an authoritarian socialist or whatever you were talking about there, Rick, presumably you would have a grand influx of federal or government money, including during something like a historic pandemic, to at least act as some sort of safety net there.

But he doesn't actually follow through with it. So when I'm curious, Roy said, it's not actually in his program. When I'm curious because you're in that White House, who do you think, I mean, is there anyone in that White House who's, who's like, I'd be surprised is actually smart? Sorry.

Like, where you're like, because there's clearly, they're messaging a lot better than the Democrats, right? I mean, no, I've gotten close to some of the janitorial stuff. guys I got to hop off for a minute I'll be back with you shortly um uh so but Molly but all

seriousness uh yeah I I'll have to think about that for a while because it is I mean it is true like they are messaging geniuses if you look at compare I mean they do nothing and still an enormous percentage of population just worships them

right I mean imagine the Democrat being able to pull that off Well, I mean, didn't they kind of do it with Obama? Like it was a different kind of cult of personality around him when it came to like the party and your average liberal voter. I would argue it wasn't nearly as insane as this is. But I mean, it was just one president ago, Democrats managed to get a president that no matter what he did, enthralled millions upon millions of the voting populace.

though I will say there wasn't the same kind of cultural personality did not affect you know like legislating for example there was no hesitance to speak out against Obama maybe some people but like it wasn't the party writ large they still would defy him they would say you know if they didn't want to do something they wouldn't do it it wasn't it wasn't and probably because it wasn't as if this you know the vindictive

kind of nature of the president and you know that they would come and get you or they would come and you know tear you down the culture of fear really and intimidation that's been built under the Trump White House didn't that wasn't a thing

during the Obama administration it was politics it wasn't you know we're going to come at you and do you absolutely do you guys think it's overly I'm sorry Jesse I'm just asking questions please make me stop I will make you stop if it's not good.

Do you think, like, the narrative I'm seeing a lot in the media, and I'm curious to know what you guys think is that Mitch McConnell has this relationship with Biden, and this is going to mean that he's not going to be as terrible to Biden as he was to Obama. And then I saw, like, two days ago, a reporter asked Mitch what he, you know, what happened, you know, some kind of, like, do you have any words for Biden? And he just, like, left and got in the elevator. So two things. First, Obama was garbage at dealing with Congress, just garbage. Like, that's why Biden got sent back, right? That's why he was that negotiating person,

because Obama just never, though, and I know it's a very different Senate now, of course, but how senators deal with each other, Biden is just much more active, that sort of politicking and horse trading from, you know, being in the Senate for eons. So that was That was partially Obama's That's one piece of this The second piece is no

I mean just because Mitch McConnell And Biden had a relationship Doesn't mean that all of a sudden McConnell is going to be like Oh you know what I love you You helped with the stimulus All those years ago

And my gosh Here you go You can have your Medicare for all Or public option Or whatever they're trying to No McConnell is about power That is what McConnell's about

and he just and whatever he has to do to get what he needs done, he'll do it. Now, is some, you know, is Biden going to get his call return? Sure. They know how to work with each other. Biden also knows this. He knows who Mitch McConnell is. It's not going to be a surprise. So, but the idea, yes, they have a relationship, which is saying something, right?

That sort of matters in D.C. But whether it's going to lead to, you know, all of a sudden the fever breaking in Washington, No, no. We're not there yet. We're not until there's, and the only thing that will cause McConnell to bend is if he doesn't have the votes in his conference to get something done.

Then he will negotiate. But until then, no. There is no reason for McConnell to, you know, to negotiate if he doesn't need to. What about the 2022 Senate map being shitty for Republicans? My dad, I'm not allowed. Okay, all right, right. There you go.

I'm like, I got it. Can I answer to you? Yes. I would like Swind to answer that if he has any insight. The Senate map one? No. The one before, the one before about if McConnell's going to. Harry, do you have anything else to say on that?

No, let's move on. Okay, great. Sorry, Swin. Jackie and D. I'm the, I'm the like weird Congress nerd creature, so sorry. We need to have like a FaceTime you and I just for ourselves, right? Exactly. This one's a little bit more of a fun one,

and I don't know if we're going to be able to answer because I personally have never seen this show, but Adam Matlin wants to know, who would be better as the Bachelor-Bashbachelorette, Don Jr., Tiffany, or Lindsay Graham? Lindsay Graham. No, no, no, I got it, I got it. The answer is Hunter Biden. Oh, good.

Definitely Hunter Biden would rinse to blow all the map of the water. He would. I mean, as a man who follows a lot of leftist people, man, the ladies are thirsty for more Hunter Biden. I sure Biden's laptop as the star. Yes, that's true. I think, you know what, I'm going to go with Tiffany because, you know, it would, it probably would be good to have people just be, like,

nice to her on a consistent basis. And that's what you get during the Bachelorette. Like, everyone's really nice to you all the time. and you're the center of attention. Tiffany could use that in her life. But when it'll mess up her and Matt Gates' relationship. Yeah, I want to just be so on the same page.

Does Tiffany marry Matt Gates? I'm hunting this to Jackie. Tiffany, marry Matt Gates. You know, I like to, I love love. Okay. Okay, with that, a lot of people seem to be, the top voted question by a lot is, can we get Lindsay Graham for election interferes? Do we think, I think a better question for this,

so it will be more interesting you guys to also bring into this is, do we actually see a arm of the government that goes after everybody for all the law breaking and criming that has happened, including Lindsay Graham's obvious, very bad indiscretions? So right now what the Biden folks are signaling is that they're not going, there's not going to be this, you know, retribution after the election because they want to move on. And, you know, members of Congress that Sam Brody spoke to last week, I think it was last week, they all blend, but it was after the election, that Congress is actually going to follow the House, in particular, is going to follow the Biden administration's lead. that doesn't mean that all these investigations go out the window. But in terms of whether the FBI is all of a sudden going to dive into this stuff, I just, I can't, it doesn't seem like what the Biden campaign is putting out there right now.

Excuse me, the income administration is putting out there right now. You know, whether some members of Congress are going to go rogue and decide that, you know, they're going to go after certain actors, we'll have. have to see. But again, where we are right now in the process, it doesn't seem like that's going to happen. Right. And that's like a big reason why who Biden eventually picks and then appoints as the U.S. Attorney General might be one of the most, if not the most consequential decisions of his administration in waiting. And once he actually gets in office, because even though Team Biden and Biden himself are currently messaging or signaling,

like we want to move forward, we don't want to get wrapped up in prosecuting members of the former administration or the president's or whatever. Ultimately, if things go according to plan and if things work the way the rules say that they should work, it's actually not President Biden's decision. It's the decision of the U.S. Attorney General. And so, if it's a decision,

It will be fascinating to see how that particular pick in the cabinet moves forward in the coming months as we get into the start of the upcoming year. But just on a personal philosophical level for a moment, I do understand the impulse that's going on right now within Biden and some of his lieutenant's own heads right now about not wanting to look backwards in that way. because, look, and I'm actually kind of of two minds on this, because on one side, you have, you would have the image of the incoming administration going after and trying, essentially trying to imprison from the DOJ, senior members of the prior administration, which conjures all kinds of bad abstract or not so abstract images that you have in, say, various Latin American countries and republics and authoritarian regimes during the Cold War. the incoming regime comes in, the outcoming regime goes to jail. So yes, I get why people would feel dirty about something like that happening, but then at the same time, you have to think about things like one of the great legal tragedies of the American 20th century was Gerald Ford getting in there and partying Richard N. So the man who committed some of the worst crimes from the federal government standpoint in American history

would never have to stand trial or be held accountable for things. that should get anybody, objectively speaking, sent to prison or at least on trial with the possibility of heavy jail time. So it's a tricky, tight rope to walk. But with Nixon, there were structural changes in the way we accept legislators, you know, that were created in the hopes of not having another Nixon. And I worry that that's not going to happen this time. That's good point. But maybe that is a good follow-up question to this. Let's say we do get the Senate. Do we actually see a Biden administration really going in and trying to change all sorts of things,

like how much power can be done really strengthening the laws around all the business conflicts the last president had to kind of cripple him? So if he does run for 2024, it could be fixed next time. I'm sorry, we, are you talking about Democrats? Yes, I'm sorry. I refer to myself. You're a partisanship, no need to hide my partisanship. No worries. I'm trying to make sure I understood the question. So you're asking if Democrats win the Senate, if they go after and try to change, try to strengthen laws that will prevent Trump from all his lawbreaking in case he runs in 2024 again.

I just don't understand how you strengthen laws that are being broken. I mean, he's breaking laws, right? And so it seems like the law isn't the problem. It's the enforcement of the law. That's the problem? Like, like, hatch act, right? Like, oh, God, another hatchack. Mm-hmm.

And so that's, I mean, that's, I, I understand what you're saying. It's an excellent question. I just, this has been, it's not just norms laws that have been broken. And the way you stop laws from being broken is you enforce them. And should they, that's the question, right? Like in normal world, these things would be enforced, but we've been living in, you know, kind of a Trump doesn't what he wants, reality. And ultimately, the voters waited, right?

And decided that wasn't okay. That's sort of where we're at. But institutionally, I don't know what else could be. It's a great question. I personally just don't know the answer to it. But here's a question for you, just to get a little more dorky. no justice is going to get mad at me. Congress has a jail, right?

I mean, they haven't used it since 1832. But Congress has power. They just don't use it. Yes. I mean, they got, but, um, wouldn't that be awesome if different congressmen just start jailing each other like every other day. They have, they have given up certain levers of power, some of which hundreds, you know, I'm just saying.

More. Right? But there are things theoretically they could do that they never will. But I mean, but that is even like a metaphor for just like certain things with, you know, I mean, I just feel like Congress has not, we've seen over the last two years that Congress has had very little power. Oh, yeah. Congress has been advocating of power on a lot of different levels for many, many years and many different presidents. But go ahead. Go ahead, Sven. Well, also there's a flip side to that coin. And the incredible powers they do have,

And by they, I mean also a hell of a lot of democratic lawmakers have oftentimes served up that power and exercised in the service of giving Donald Trump more power and more of what he wants. Like how many times you have people on the new abnormal to talk to them about at least one Democratic lawmaker, I forget which one, where I think the question came up of like, okay, if you think Donald Trump is this authoritarian, if you think he's this corrupt, and if you think he's this awful in terms of, uh, what he's doing to the American democracy and policy and presidency, why do you vote each time to just hand him all these toys and massive spying powers that he and his administration can then potentially abuse? I mean, there is a cognitive dissonance there where it's like, okay, abdicating power in terms of keeping this ruthless, corrupt, deranged president in check, but then also with the other hand,

giving him as much as he wants when it comes to literally spying on millions of Americans. Or potentially fine on no way it's American. It's a fascinating cognitive dissonance that you really can only have when you are given an extreme amount of federal or legislative power in America. I mean, I think also the

to echo some of the concerns I see at our Twitter replies, when people see these stuff like GSA Emily Murphy that they want to see that partisans can't be put in these roles. Do we see a Biden administration acting to get it so that there's less

hands for a future authoritarian administration to not be a little bit more unable to control some of these levers? That face is saying no. Well, I just don't know that we've seen. I mean, this has never happened before in terms of transition. So whether there would be a very reactive move, right? that that is dealing with something that is beyond the norms that we usually know. So do you change the question is? And again, I don't know the answer to this.

Do you change all of it in reaction just to what the Trump administration had done, kind of assuming that nothing will ever operate the same in this democracy again? I don't know the answer to that question. But it is something that, you know, people smarter than me, I'm sure we'll be grappling with going forward because this has been so. you hear all the time like how can this happen how can this possibly happen and how is this legal so it's an excellent it's an excellent question that I'm just not sure whether they'll change that much because they'll be a lot they have to fix a lot of stuff that's broken and before they they they change stuff and how would they change it anyway

oh no idea idea. I'm not sure this is at least somewhat related. I'm not sure if this exactly weighs in on the question that that person just posed, but I completely lost faith in particularly Democratic and liberal lawmakers

and politicians to actually change things for better in that respect, especially with the anticipation that we will not always be in power. Just to cite one example, how often did you hear people on the left who were against what Obama was doing overseas, particularly when it came to like drone warfare

and the kill list that he presided over in the Oval Office, being like, you liberals aren't always going to hold the White House. What if there is a president Michelle Bachman or President Rick Perry who comes in? Are you comfortable with handing them this incredible amount of power in the form of, oh, like, without due process or whatever, even if they're American overseas who we've declared an enemy, we get to take them out just because the president says so.

I don't remember very, if we tried to like name, okay, who were the prominent liberals at the time who took that consideration seriously, I think he might come up close to the number of zero. And surely enough, they left all of those precious, like, terrifying powers on the table

for a president, Donald fucking Trump without blinking an eye. So. Molly, I think the way you'd change that if you would have to move those positions out of the political realm, right? You'd have to make them more of a career position.

You asked about how that piece. I mean, and I don't know the process to do that, but just from a practical matter, that's, I think, how you would do it, right? You'd have someone who's been there forever who's a career person now, who's to say that they wouldn't try to put someone in there. An administration would try to put someone in there.

That would be more favorable at some point, but that's kind of like what they have at the State Department pre-Pontaya. You've all these, you know, And we saw a lot of them testify, actually, earlier this year. You would put career people in there. But that's the only way I think you changed in terms of like GSA staff, that particular. Can we send Postmaster DeJoy to the Hague?

Okay. The Hague has a terrible batting average for actual convictions. So I'm not sure you want it. Solid point. So we have another popular question from Doug. Perkinson, I'm going to rephrase it a little since I liked with this way, is do we see Joe Biden being president number 46 or 47? Will Trump resign and have Pence pardon a bunch of people? You know, I've asked this question a couple times, and it's very popular in here, but every time I ask it, that's the reaction. I mean, people on the vast online or whatever keep floating that as some sort of fanfic that, oh,

maybe Trump would be clever or nefarious enough to do something. Nine degrees chess or nine dimensions. Well, wait, wait, wait, wait, let me push back on that. He's not this sort of Frank Underwood type figure that people like to imagine when they're like reading Crasinstein blogs or whatever. I'm going to put the chances somewhere between zero and zero point zero point seven that that would actually happen. Why would he need a pardon? He hasn't done anything wrong.

Yeah, exactly. That too. That too. Most innocent president ever. Well, that's what I'm saying. He like the whole impeachment thing, right? Like, he doesn't feel like he has done anything wrong. So if he is given a pardon, that would be an admission of guilt, right, in a way. So just, again, I don't think it's going to happen. I think I've done very much with quit on this. It's kind of like fanfic. Yeah. But I think, but just looking at how the president conduct himself, that would be an admission of guilt if he needed a pardon. I mean, I feel like I wish that, I feel like we keep coming to these points where people are like, and he's going to get some kind of morality, you know, and he never will.

So I do think ultimately that's why. Who thinks that? Well, the idea that he'd resign is this idea that at some point he's going to say, I mean, even, you know, that's. sort of an innate morality of saying, right, like I've committed a crime. And that will never happen. So he'll never do any, like he'll never, you know, they're going to have to march him out at the White House. I think the one devil's advocate argument could be is we're seeing him pull a lot of extremely weird levers right now. And we do always say that his survival instinct is a very interesting driving force in him that he does somehow have lots of ways where he gets creative in that thing.

I don't think it's ever 40 chess, but I think we all agree, though, that that's probably not happening. There's a much better question here from Queen of Yee that I think would be interesting for you all the way in, which is with Beto and Jamie Harrison now, we have the two record-breaking fundraising people. Why does this money do nothing? Well, it's hard to change the... demographics of a state. South Carolina and Republican state. That was always going to be a very, very, very tough race. And Jamie Harrison ran a heck of a race against Lindsey Graham. But just when you look at just, you know, who votes in South Carolina and who votes in Texas. And Texas is, I mean, I don't know how many cycles I have heard from Texas Democrats that Texas is going to go blue.

Like, it is the, I have written some of those stories, and I've edited many of them as well. The Democrats really thinking that this is going to be the year. But voting patterns and who goes out to vote is, it's a hard thing to change. And you can have all the money in the world. But if you're Republican and you want to vote for, and you're going to vote for President Trump, you're not going to, I mean, Lindsay Graham was never. the idea that that was going to be a seat that was going to flip was always a little fantastical and I think some of the money that was going into that race had more to do with

Graham than it did it with Harrison and more it was a lot more wishcasting right just again based on how South Carolina folks I mean it's really that simple Texas a little more complicated but it is uh South Carolina is a is a Republican state and a lot of things will have to change there before that would ever trend a different way. It's sort of reassuring in a sort of way, isn't it

like the premise we've just mapped out? It's actually harder to buy elections than people might have thought in pre-citizens United in violence, which I think is a good thing. I think it should be hard to buy elections, whether you're a Republican or Democrat. But why are the polls so off?

I think there were... That's still being... that's still being, like, figured out, right? Like, why they were so off. We know they were off. I feel like there's a lot of theories right now, whether Trump people are pollable, whether, you know, everyone was working with the wrong data.

Right. I mean, but that autopsy continues, and I think everyone wants to know, but I think a lot of us who are looking at it, I mean, I know Swin and I had these conversations, no one thought that, some of these places where Trump was, where Biden was ending by 13, 14, whatever. No one thought that that was real.

And then, and it just, so it, there was this sense that, like, something is in this, right, Flynn? I mean, I remember I was having these conversations. Like, it felt like something weird was happening. We actually centered some of those questions around Ohio specifically because, like, one, I have been saying for a long time, like, okay. At least I phrased it in the sense of, I will eat my shoe with Biden somehow,

manages to kick Trump's ass in Ohio. It's not going to happen. It's a red state, guys, like, get around to that. It's not the swing state of, like, a decade ago or what you remember from the Obama era or whatever. But then suddenly, towards, like, the very end of this general election, the polls all publicly start showing a massive uptick for Team Biden in Ohio. And all of a sudden, the campaign actually started,

devoting more resources and spending more time in Ohio. And until that moment, until Nate Silver started telling them or whoever that, oh, it's possibility, this could actually flip back to the Democrats in terms of the presidential election, you hadn't really seen them in Ohio at all, which was very telling. They had internalized until the very end that, oh, Ohio is just not going to happen for us. And yet there was this massive cacophony in the public punditry industry that, oh my God Biden could actually take Ohio from Trump

and I just remember during that whole month or two of that happening Jackie and I just kept talking to each other being like like maybe we're talking in Ohio there was no way there was no way they were going to get a turnout

in the places that they needed to and but even you know when you said that Biden's people went there at the end I mean we had sources telling us the reason that they decided to make a stop there was just to make Trump work for it

and make them spend more money in the state, which is, you know, what you do when you think you're going to win, but not necessarily that state, but, you know, the election itself. And they weren't that far ahead of Trump nationally. But it just, it, but you're right. It was like when you actually were talking to people on the ground in some of these states, you're like, I don't think that's right. It's like, it's almost like thinking, oh, Virginia could have gone with Trump.

It's not going to happen. It's not a swing stadium. Right. The color. I don't see the shy Trump voter or whatever that phenomenon is. But like Susan Collins didn't win a single pole and then she blew some of the water. Molly, I think that that is a lovely conversation, but we're getting right to the end and I do

want to wrap with something a little bit more fun. I'm sorry. Spoiled again, Molly. Okay. Since we can't do a full-on fuck that guy, what I would love to do is do a, do a, Fuck that guy in the version of who do you think was the worst person of this election cycle. That's a good one. Swin.

Swin, you have to go first. Let me parinate on that. Oh, oh, yeah. Good answer. Good one. Also, speaking of fuck that guy, what the hell is Rick? He unfortunately had a family emergency. Oh, oh, okay.

I'm sorry. You said that earlier. I didn't hear that. Well, Godspeed, did not know that was a family emergency. I thought it was like a work call or something. So who was your, my, I think I should go first. Please go, please do. And to buy you guys some time. I think that the worst person, the person who has behaved absolutely the worst, or at least, has been Ted Cruz. because Ted Cruz, first of all, Ted Cruz is an asshole, but also Ted Cruz has behaved really badly.

He knows better, right? He is a lawyer. And he, I feel like he's one of those people where had he, you know, he and Marco are the two people who could have behaved even close to decently and perhaps shifted things a little bit. And they both just, you know, and I hope junior primaries Marco in 2020. That would be cool. Yeah.

Jackie, Swin? Two answers or an answer and a half. Whatever you feel like, wherever you feel like. I think a top contender for that position, especially over the past year or so, is Scott Atlas. Dr. Scott, I should say. For listeners and viewers who aren't viscerally acquainted with him, he's the guy who does, I believe his chief background is in radiology. He is not someone who, on infectious diseases,

any rational thinking competent doctor would go to or public health official for a perspective on the coronavirus pandemic. But Donald Trump liked seeing him on, Fox News and Fox business because starting however many months ago earlier this year he started cowing the Trump line and saying

nice things about Donald Trump or why all these like hang on one second hey sorry sorry the cat was invading the screen for a moment anyway Trump liked seeing him on TV so he hired him and much to the consternation of various coronavirus task force officials

made him eight hot COVID-19 advice to the president and advocating all these ridiculous things, including reportedly herd immunity policies, which basically everybody else on the task force, if the president had gotten behind, would have ended up getting a heck of a lot more people killed. He keeps pushing this kind of junk medical science, both to the American people and directly into Donald Trump's year who loves the guy. And he, in doing this, he is able to achieve a much greater media prominence and much greater name recognition for himself.

And I'm sure it's been great for whatever career path he thinks he's building. But I cannot imagine for any amount of money or any type of advanced career path on a personal level doing what he is doing to get that sort of advancement. or at least in part in the service of getting that type of advancement. And it's just mind-boggling. It's as if he's treating it as a game when so many lives and families are on the line. And as a political reporter covering the Trump or in the Trump area, you start getting numb to this sort of stuff.

How can you not get numb to it when the President of the United States is just laughing and trolling his way through 250K dead Americans just piling up on the ground on his watch and him trying to pass his coronavirus response off as some staggering success. It's hard to not get some professional novocating to that, but every once in a while a guy comes along to remind you how depraved it is.

And it just absolutely prank. There's no other word for it. And this era, at least for now, seems to be coming to an end, but the damage has been done. Yeah. Jackie? I can't top that. I mean, I can't top that.

You know, anyone, any, like, but I can expand it. Anyone who has been complicit in putting out misinformation and confusing people on this pandemic, really, really. I mean, it shouldn't be forgotten. We're not going to forget in the media, but it just, it really, it's frustrating on so many levels, both from a human toll and wrapped in that as the economic. economic toll because that has that if you didn't even if you didn't get sick your business may have gone under your family is now you know in a terrible position you know anyone who's in complicit in the misinformation and in not allowing people to protect their families uh i think uh gets that gets that award um yeah well that i thought was great and thank you all so much for watching and coming to another edition of the live new abnormal we would thank you guys so much for being here and thanks to our guests

so much. And I hope you all have a great weekend where you can relax and not think about all these terrible things. Thanks. Thank you. Bye. 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-studed The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.