The Daily Beast Podcast - Biden-Palin 2020?

Episode Date: July 14, 2020

Joe Biden is so far ahead of Trump, James Carville jokes on the latest episode of The New Abnormal, that the former Vice President could win, even with Gov. Youbetcha by his side. The strategy is simple, Carville tells Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson: “Attack, attack, attack. Attack from the right, attack from the left, attack from the center, attack everywhere. People say, ‘Well, you know, you got 89% of Republicans will be for [Trump] no matter what.’ Yeah. Maybe so. But watch the number of people that identify as Republicans go down. 89% of 34 is a lot different than 89% of 30.” Then! The Beast’s Erin Banco describes the Trump administration’s “parallel conversations” on the escalating COVID-19 threat. There’s the one the professionals are leading, Banco explains, and “those tend to be pretty serious and Dr. Birx is not shy about issuing warnings to the nation's governors.” Meanwhile, “you have president Trump seemingly either unaware of the conversations that are happening within the taskforce or deliberately twisting the truth.” Plus! Rick begs to go to Gitmo! Molly ponders how the hell you can close Starbucks and open schools. And our wonder twins ask themselves: Are Trump Steaks actually made of … Trump himself?! Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. 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 and 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. Roger Stone. Rick Wilson, you know Roger Stone, right?

I do know Roger Stone. As I've told people for years, one time in the dawn of my political life, a very wise man in New York who knew both Roy Cohn and Roger Stone was fired from the Dole campaign in the dawn of time in 1996. That was a charismatic man, Bob Dole. You know, a true American hero in every way, a combat wounded veteran in who, Hey man, I love him.

Was a phenomenal historical figure, but a terrible presidential candidate. Sophorific, one might say. But you were asking about Roger Stone and if I know him, like everybody, I knew of Roger as a young guy for years and years in Republican politics, and it was easy to sort of buy into the Roger myth, because if you asked like his fans, they would tell you that Roger personally ran both Nixon campaigns and both Reagan campaigns and George Herbert Walker Bush's campaigns and Trump's campaign that he made every single ad ever that Roger was this gigantic fucking genius of political history.

Right. Womp-w-womp. But there's a guy in New York who deserves a book of his own, lavishly corrupt, amazingly brilliant, a great mentor to me in New York politics. The guy's name was Ray Harding. And Ray was the boss of the New York Liberal Party. And he had this incredible accent. He was a Holocaust survivor child who had fled from Serbia.

And Ray had this deep voice and this big accent. And he would say, The New York Liberal Party is neither liberal nor a party. It's my personal fucking political machine. So let's act accordingly. Well, Ray one day, we're having this conversation. I would sit in Ray's office. Like once a week, I'd go to see Ray,

and I would just suck up every bit of knowledge I could. And the subject of Roy Cohn comes up. And that led to Roger Stone. Now, Stone is like this zealig figure in American politics, okay? And he's always where you don't want him and where you don't expect him. But he's always, you knew one thing about Roger. I knew going in to talk to Ray about this,

that Roger's product was Roger. He wasn't really doing campaigns. He was Roger. He'd get people to pay him a couple grand a month here and there to be their ornament. Like this Ponzi scheme where in Florida had Roger in his office. I think he paid him like 10 grand a month just to be like, Rogers, my advisor.

Whatever the fuck that meant, right? But Ray, one day we're sitting there and he's like smoking these unfiltered camels, right? It's chain smoking these unt filtered camels, right? Yeah, he's passed. And he looked over at me. And this is in, remember now, this is 1997. No, I'm sorry, 99. And he looks across to me, he, like, lights one unfiltered camel off the other, okay?

And he says, you know, Roger parlayed one line of bullshit into a career. The only person who buys his bullshit is that fucking moron Trump. 1999, okay? And he knew Roger because Roger had been a butcher boy for Roy Cohn at some point. some fucking briefcase full of money bullshit that Roy Cohn was pulling off. That's how he knew about him. But it was always very clear that Roger was the conduit between the Russian intelligence front known as WikiLeaks. Right. Clearly.

And Julian Assange. And the Trump campaign. And one of the things Mueller said was, I couldn't get to the truth of Russian collusion. The Trump people always say, well, Mueller didn't find Russian collusion. Well, the report also says we couldn't because people like Roger Stone perjured themselves and lied to us. So Roger, cold guilty, seven-time felon, still a felon, always going to be a felon, because I doubt Trump will do anything more for him. So they're having a big victory dance this weekend. But I think his pardon of stone is actually a sign of tremendous pessimism and weakness.

Explain. I think this is a guy who has figured out he's on the wrong side of everything right now, politics and the trends in the country and the demographics and the public attitudes and a pandemic for which he is meaningfully responsible. and he was looking for some little nugget to feed a base of voters who are getting very dissatisfied. And I think he threw that out there this weekend because he wanted to give the Magas something, anything to think about other than COVID. And another piece of news that I am aware that the White House is extremely unhappy about. Barr told the White House sometime in the last seven to ten days that the famous Durham report is not coming. Really? I'm so shocked. Would you like to explain the Durham Report in seven words?

Go. Seven words. Horshit fantasy theory by desperate Trump rubs. Okay? Now, would you like it in a high-to or an Iandic metameter? So the Durham report was supposedly going to prove the Obama spying effort. It is a masturbatory fantasy by the usual suspects on the Trump right. The broken-brained Devin Nunes.

Broken-brained Devin-Nunez wannabes, the bingos and the Charlie Kirk's and the Trumps and, the, and all these idiots who are just any second now, we're all going to be shipped off to Gitmo because Barack Obama ran a coup against Donald Trump. Man, man, I would go to Gitmo in a hot minute right now. I could use a couple weeks off, a little bit of spear fishing. It's going to be really stormy weather there. That's all I'm saying. If you're wanting to get ahead of your opo drops, and God knows everyone drops op on me constantly lately, at some point you guys will discover that I was ticketed one time for illegal spearfishing in the upper keys. So just a true story, true confession right. Did you have to pay a fine? Did you go to jail? I didn't go to jail. I had to pay a fine. It was a ticket. But yeah, back in the 80s at some point. But yeah, that was illegal spearfishing. I had a big old stringer group brush in my head. But to loop back on the stone thing, I think Trump is really, really desperately trying to, he's trying to get the band back together in his head and get this chemistry back that he thought he had in 2016. And keeping Roger quiet, happy and out of prison was something I think he felt like he needed to do. Roger, by the

the way, kept dropping the hence very broadly like, I was going to say, I could have said something, but I'm so loyal. I could have. And Trump's thinking, oh God, maybe Roger remembers X or Y from not about Russia, something else. So Roger Stone is briefly a free man. Apparently there are some legal flaws in announcing on Twitter that a sentence is commuted. Apparently there's paperwork involved. And I know these guys aren't notoriously strong about, you know, details, but he's out for now. Judge Berman may have other things to say about it, and I don't think he's out of the woods yet. But he is going to campaign for Trump. I will predict to you right now that Rogers' campaigning for Trump will primarily be trying to roll up money for his multi-million dollar legal bill.

Right, yes, no question. And trying to do what he was doing before. Remember, Roger's work, the two years before he got sentenced was going around to local Republican clubs in Florida and giving $500 a pop speeches. So the myth of Roger Stone, brilliant strategiore. is false. Roger was an intern on the Nixon campaign. The myth of Roger Stone as the architect of Trumpism has been set aside. There is no architecture. Even Trump did not keep Stone around in 2016. When you're so incompetent or compromised or besmirched that Donald Trump won't keep you around. Yeah, that's not great. So long story short, Roger will be with us for a little while longer in circulating around and taking a victory lap. But New York is considering some charges that could

apply. And I don't think he's out of the woods yet. By the way, if you're You were going to self-publish a book, Molly. What would you do with the cover? I would make a huge typo in the cover. So people knew that I was serious. A fuck-wit? Yes, exactly. A fuck-wit.

Yes. That was a story this weekend. Don Jr. is coming out with self-published tripe. I don't even know the title. What was it? Triggered? I think it's like Liberals suck. I think is the title.

Right. It's something like, love me. Is it Love Me, Daddy? Yeah. Please. Give me the attention I so desperately need, Daddy. Please, Daddy. You know, I read and.

wrote about the Mary Trump book twice this weekend. And the Mary Trump book is this family is so fucked up. And we see it playing out in front of us with Don Jr. and senior. See, I come from, you know, my grandmother's father was the guy who started Hudson News. So I come from one of those families where, like, people got disinherited and money went to this, you know, none of us got any money. And so I sort of see that as very common trope in these families. So I wasn't as shocked by that stuff, though they were really just awful to the kids of the father who died, Fred Jr.'s kids. Well, they were awful to Fred, too. I mean, he's making fun of his dad when senility is kicking in. Yeah, but Fred was really abusive to that. Of course. I mean, Fred was

a monster. Yeah. I mean, no, these people are completely unredeemable. But so was the rest of the Republican Party. And there is that interesting tidbit, which she puts in the end, which is like Trump will only do as bad as he's enabled to do. Right. And he's been enabled to go completely off the fucking rails. He's been able to go ham every day and we're going to keep going unless it stopped. Right. It really is on the Republican senators. Like they did, they don't enable this nightmare. Like if they had stood up to Trump, we wouldn't be in this situation. Look, the last few days, Republican senators, and they are pissed at my guys and me and the Lincoln Project. Right. All of a sudden, there are these very breathy articles like, how dare they attack that bold leader, Susan Collins. She's the

the future of the GOP. Monsters. Well, guess what? You bought the fucking ticket. You get to take the fucking ride. They knew from the start. It's not been a secret that at any point, one of them could have stood up and said, I'm not playing this game anymore.

They're afraid of mean tweets and they're afraid of Breitbart going after them and writing terrible articles and canceling them. I mean, it's so pathetic. And I know we said this before, Joni Ernst. Joni Ernst campaign, man, do we talk about this last week? Maybe. Did we? Okay, let's talk about Joni Ernst.

Joni Ernst campaign manager. A guy named David Kochel. A guy, by the way, gives this quote about us about Lincoln Project last week. He says, they're shooting the hostages. I'm like, bitch, you're not a hostage. She's Patty Hurst. I mean, are you fucking kidding me? She's knocking over banks.

Right, exactly. With the Symbieneese Liberation Army. I'm old guys. You're going to hear. This is an old reference. You'll Google it. They're fucking U.S. senators. They're U.S. senators.

In the Constitution, they play a role that is prescribed. They are enormously powerful. They could, if they chose, exercise that power. But they chose not to. But they chose not to. They chose to hide in the weeds and whinge about how mean everybody is to them. Oh, my goodness. And it's just, I'm sorry.

I did hear this weekend that McConnell's distress. There's an article about in Politico today about how he was ripping their fundraising people apart. Wait, why? Because they're not raising the money they should raise. Excellent. Small dollar donors to Democratic campaigns and outside groups are killing it, okay? Good. And I can tell you that there was another conversation where his senior people were after all of their media folks. Like, you've got to get in the fight. What's wrong with you people? You're not selling this. You've got to get your candidates away from Trump. It's like too late. Yeah, really, I'll say. It's like coming home covered with stripper glitter and cheap perfume and saying, oh, this is your most Florida example ever. Well, yeah. It's like, yeah, honey, I was at the soup kitchen. Yeah. I wasn't getting a lap dance from a girl named Destiny with. a Y rainbow with a Y. No way. But these guys, they all think that there's an exit path away from Trump

in this election. They're out of their fucking minds. So Rick Wilson, can you explain to me why the Trump campaign canceled Portsmouth? Because there are a number of theories. Well, Molly, there was a forecast for the weekend for Saturday. Of rain. No, actually a forecast of nobody showing the fuck up. Yes. And this White House and this campaign are so snake bit right now. And they have are so terrified of getting one person less than they got in Tulsa. Right. That they told the most absurdly easily checkable lie in political history, there's a giant storm coming.

Right. Well, anybody who could look at the Weather Channel or AccuWeather, to say nothing of common sense, would realize these people were totally full of shit, as they were always full of shit. And Trump didn't want to be embarrassed. He is embarrassed by the fact that his mojo is faded and that even his people are not willing to turn out in, you know, audiences of 20,000 anymore to come in and have a little elbow rubbing with a, with a deadly virus. Right. They're not willing to die for Trump to autograph

their boobs. You know what? I guarantee you, some woman has asked Trump to autograph her boobs in the past. Oh, no question. I mean, I think that seems inevitable. I further guarantee he's signed boobs in the past. Oh, no question. With the Sharpie, that's why he uses the Sharpie. So with New Hampshire, it would have been very traceable to Trump. Yes. If they've got a fairly low contagion rate right now. And remember, whenever this thing happens, whenever the president moves, you have on a lightweight footprint on a trip, dozens and dozens of people, Secret Service, White House staff, campaign staff, various hangers on, their various... The president's kid. Right. There's certainly a lot of contagion in that White House. And it is sort of amazing that Trump hasn't got... Bolsonaro got it and Boris Johnson got it. Everyone who said

it's not such a big deal has gotten it, right? I still think Trump may have had it and he's lying to honestly. There's no way. We would have known. He would have gotten really sick. I mean, he's an old guy. Despite all the golf he plays. Yes, I read his golf excuses this weekend. Yeah, he had a lot of golf to play this weekend. Yeah, a year worth of golf. By the time this is over in November, somebody said the other day, he will play almost a year's worth of golf. I'm like, good God in heaven. He really does play a lot of golf. And in the book, in the Mary Trump book, she talks about how he really doesn't, he really didn't do anything when he worked for the family. business either. No, of course not. The guy has drifted through life like a sort of 290 pound pink balloon bumping into things over the years and claiming credit for things and trying to, you know, the only Trump product really is Trump. Right. And the stakes. Well, those may have been Trump himself

too. Oh, no! No! Yeah! Trump stakes may have been cloned chunks of Trump meat. Soylent Trump steaks. It's people. Soilent Trump. is people. Our poor producer is like, please stop talking. Ladies and gentlemen, joining us today is James Carville, one of the

greats of American political consulting, a man who has elected a president of the United States twice, and that is a damn unique position in politics. The Ragen Cajun, the picker of the electoral lock. James Carville, thank you for being with us today, brother. So we're talking about Democrats' nervousness about siding with never-trumpers. Well, I'm not nervous about anything.

I had people say, well, that's really, cool the way you work with these never Trumpers, that these never Trumpers are really courageous or noble. We're not doing anything noble. We're doing something necessary. This didn't require a lot of thought on anybody's part. I saw it work that with being done. I said, hey, this is good work. We need more of this. Didn't even think about who was a Democrat or a Republican. I mean, we just have this national emergency here. Everybody's credit that they're acting like it. I can't go back and relive the 90s and talk, well, we were right about this. It's just where we are right now. Yeah, I think that's absolutely true, James.

This is the fight we're in right now. The House is on fire, so we've got to put the fire out. Fight about all that other shit later. Right, yeah, we'll talk about how we rebuild the House or anything. The way it has to be done, it has to be done resoundingly. I mean, it's got to be like no one ever wants to touch this again. And I don't know what's going to happen to the Republican Party. I know that this coalition is not going to stay together in a Democratic Party.

You know, retired four-star generals and urban 18-year-old females in the same coalition, probably not going to last. cares. We just got one thing to do. That's exactly it, James. It is all the policy disagreements that people think we slept to fight about as people that have been in the firefighting business here for about a couple years. It is, policy can come later. We just got to get this guy done. I don't know what, at least we'll have competent ambassadors or competent people in agency heads. And this is nothing but it's a criminal enterprise. It's exactly what it is. And criminals are attracted to criminal enterprises. The nature of it. Yep. That old phrase that Steve

jobs used to use of A's hire B's and B's hire C's. Well, Donald Trump hires the guys who are almost inevitably going to go to jail at some point. Right. But that's all the people want to work for it. I mean, it's just, you know, we could sit here and come up with story after story after story, but all know that. It's just one simple strategy here. Attack, attack, attack, attack from the right, attack from the left, attack from the center, attack everywhere. And people say, well, you know, you've got 89% of Republicans will be formed no matter what. Yeah, maybe so, but the number people that identify as Republicans go down, and 89% of 34 is a lot different than 89% of 39. Absolutely.

So you're loosening independence, independent, lean Republican, and all of different categories. It's starting to erode on him every day every time you look at these polls. And they're not wrong. They weren't wrong in 2016. A great myth of all the time. Wait, what do you mean they weren't wrong? They weren't. Real-Corp, the average was 3.2 on Election Day.

She won by 2.1. It can't get much closer than that. It's in the noise. Right. You're right. It broke in Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania, probably plus or minus, one and a half points. We just operate under that they're not wrong. He is not going to get reelected.

The question is by how much. That's what we're dealing with. And convincing Democrats to do. I mean, you had a famous quote, James, from 1992 that I never forgot. You said, we didn't break the electoral lock. We just picked it. And that's where the Democrats have to stay on is they have to play the electoral college game here. That's the only game they got to play.

Right. And if you remember, the Republicans won three elections in a row, came back and then won electoral college in 2000. I can dispute that, but I'm not here to do that. We can do that later. 2016. I feel like Trump World is up to its usual dirty tricks, and it's not working. They don't know what they're doing.

They have no idea. They don't have a, no. You think last time it wasn't some kind of magic? No. I mean, you had about five things that converged at one. time, from the Russians to Comey to the stupid email story to she was just unpopular. Her campaign was based on a false premise. And they didn't even, they had Bill Clinton with college kids in North Carolina to begin the election. Why didn't they use Bill Clinton more? I don't know. I think

they probably wanted to do it on their own terms. They didn't use a lot of the old Bill Clinton people. That was just a conscientious decision they made. They wanted to forge their own future. Do you think that campaign was badly done? I don't care. It's over here. I mean, I know she was polarizing, but when you meet her, she's kind of great. She is, and what's really weird is she's always had a much more popular instinct than he is. Yeah.

A lot of the old Bill Clinton people was, and the whole deplorable things was just, that was the worst. And I just think she got wrapped up in that kind of urban culture or something. I'm not sure what it was. But just it happened horrifically unfortunate, working on it. What's your read on how the Biden campaign is running so far? First of all, I think they're doing fine. All right. Secondly, this is my own view.

I came up and you had these authoritative campaigns and you had kind of celebrity campaign managers. Can you give examples of those two things? Well, you had Lee, me, call, Axelrod. Right. Dodge. I don't know. People knew in the campaign kind of would dictate things. All of Biden campaign is like a, my brother's a general.

contract in Baton Rouge. He doesn't own the shovel. All he does is outsource, you know, it gets electrical contractors, you know, he gets electrical contractors or whatever. There's so much going on. No one's waiting on the audits and headquarters. And I mean, they got kind of one job here. They're doing pretty good. He makes statements. They respond pretty good. They got to get ready for the debates. They got, you know, be sure the convention goes smoothly. But, you know, I said, well, is he going to play in Texas? It don't matter. Texas is in play. Right. And a gazillion people would be spending a gazillion dollars in him. Nobody's sitting there. Nobody's sitting there. they're waiting for somebody from the Biden campaign. You're not, what they need to do, take

inventory, no way you guys are doing something. What other people are doing something. You don't have to, you know, there's so many resources. I'm part of a group. We spent it 90 million dollars in 77 counties, rural counties in Pennsylvania, Michigan, in Wisconsin. Wow. For what? To try to turn somebody's votes around. But we get beat, you know, 7030, not 8515. If you do that, you change sea level. Bob Rubin and Roger Oldman, I think they'll spend almost $100 million in Florida. They're doing that. There's so much other stuff going on, we can't imagine. If I was Biden's campaign manager, I'd just try to take inventory of all of the energy where it is. It doesn't matter.

He will do fine in the debates. Trump and Elephants are even debating. His speeches have been very, very good. It's been fine. And they don't have to respond to everything. It's feeble now. Sleepy Joe, and he cares. It seems like a lot of Trump World's games that worked really well in 2016 are working less well now.

Yeah, it just gets over. We just got down to ideas and people say, well, James, don't say that because if people are going to just get complacent, no, a army on the march that is winning, morale is high. An army that is in retreat and losing morale is low. It's a screwball idea. If I get one more email than lawyers saying, my mother loves you, but you're making a nervous of this talk. No. I think you're right, James. That idea of an army on the march has less to worry about because the map keeps expanding. I mean, when we started a Lincoln project, It looked like we were going to get to play in three Senate races, Maine, Arizona, and Colorado. Well, shit, that map gets expanded every day now. It's Montana and North Carolina and Georgia and Iowa and Alaska and God knows where else. But, I mean, it's just a fact. And morale is good. We're not looking for terms here. I mean, the idea has got to be an unconditional threat.

Absolutely. Race to Berlin. Let's get on the deck of the battleship, Missouri. Are there any states that you're just shocked are in play now that you just historically are so shocked by? Maybe Ohio. Wow. I'm not at all shocked by Texas or Georgia or Arizona. I mean, shit, look what would happen in 2018 in Texas and Georgia?

And the population changes are just huge. I mean, the demographic wave that's been coming up underneath this that Trump stepped on by maxing out non-college white turnout, that wave, even in the last four years, has grown so quickly that... People underestimate 2018. Yes, they do. One thing that happened is it didn't affect Florida or Ohio. Now, that's starting to fall. And that's the big news.

But 2018 had the highest turnout since 19. 14. I mean, that's a lot. People, it could be 160, I don't know with the pandemic now. Who knows? But we're on pace to have 157 to 160 million people vote in this election. And that idea that Florida was an outlier in 2018 was because Rick Scott spent $100 million of his own money. And when it would have turned the other way, I think. They won by 10,000. He won 10,000 votes. Right. Exactly. Would it turn the other way if he hadn't been the candidate. And the margin even then was damn narrow. But Florida's now, by Labor Day, Florida is going to be like pink. I mean, like, how do you? I'm like, how of blue. Powder blue on his map. It's a big powder blue after Labor Day. I'm going to bet Cook and the rest are going to move it to lean Democrat by Labor Day.

Really? Democratic Florida? Look, Amy Walter, they don't use the word potential tsunami. Those are cautious people. I've tried to get them to change. I can't get along with them really well. It's from Shreport. I've never been able to get a change rate.

Nope. Not ever. I mean, I'm serious. You probably talk about it. Well, to them all time too in your career, Rick. You know that? Yeah. Oh, God, a million times. And if they make a call, it's based on math, and you can yell, scream, sweet talk, and they'll be like, no, go fuck yourself. That's our number. When they used to, too worried. Somebody told me to, like, Jeff Garren. I'll call Jeff E.R. He just thinks it's going to be a route. And that's just not where I've been knowing Jeff since shit, early 80s.

And Pollyanna is not a word. No. No. I just don't know anybody in this business whose opinion, I think, anything of that doesn't see this thing coming in a huge way. Do you think that even in spite of the pandemic, do you have any thoughts about voting in a pandemic? I have a lot of questions about it, but it looks like people are finding a way to vote anyway. I guess in Florida, I mean, I can't do anything about that. I'm not a voting expert when it comes to how people vote.

They want to absentee. I mean, all my time in politics, Republicans always beat the shit out of us in my mail. Absentee, politics. That was our secret sauce for a long time, man. Do you think it's possible that we dislodge Mitch McConnell? That's the 57 Senate seat. That's a R-plus-30 state. It's a real high hill.

Really, when it becomes the national life, a good chance that you get Lindsey Graham out of there. Our Carolina is changing and fast, and it's like plus nine. It's all those hedge fund guys from New York and Connecticut moving down to Kiwa Island. You know, it's changing fast. I mean, Greenville's got a lot of college educated people. Charlotte, Suburb, Charleston. Jim DeMitt would not get elected in South Carolina today out of Greenville.

No, Greenville's like one of the best from the United States. So what Senate seats are you excited about? Alaska. We were talking about it. I just found that one early. Obviously, Montana, I know, because I like Boyk a lot. I'm up on the air there. Lincoln's up on the air there.

It's terrific. George is a little tougher than people think, just because you've got to get to 50. And what I'm read of is third party stuff, you get to 49 and a half, then you run again in January. And somebody, I don't know. But I think Biden is going. in Georgia, about more than just a little bit. Wow. But those are two Senate seats in Georgia, right? There's one in November and one in January.

Well, it depends. They'll go to post. If somebody gets 50, which they probably won't, in one of the seats, they'll have to run it off in January. If you don't get to 50 on the general election in the Orsoff seat, the Arsaw-Burdue race, then you have to go to January. It's complicated. I think James is right, though. Georgia has shifted very quickly.

that ring suburb, that donut of counties around Atlanta. The whole northern tier used to be very, very, very red, and now it is light blue. There will not be a legislator or county commissioner from Garnett County after this election. All right. Gwinnett County, Georgia, and Fort Bend County, Texas are the two counties that I would watch above anything else. And if Biden gets 60 percent, it's on election night, just put Georgia Secretary of State and watch Gwinnett. If he gets 60 percent of more, he's going to win Georgia, and he's going to do that. And the same is true in Fort Bend. And it's just if the demographics change, that's Tom DeLay's own district. Jesus.

And they're going to get slaughtered there. That's pretty great. To James point out, there are places in this country that in the last four years have changed so radically. And the baby boom generation and the World War II generation dying off has altered these places so profoundly that they are switching under our feet faster than anybody can keep up with. I think a story coming out of here, too, is going to be outside of the south. Trump is going to do a lot worse with working class fights. Why do you think that?

Look at the polls. Look at Wisconsin. It's already happening. And Michigan is not a swing state. John Anzolone is giving his first job in politics. It's Frank Liverberg came in 1988. It was Gretchen Wittman's poster. Any polls abide. He said, James, it's not a swing state. Oh, it's done. It's over. It's done. It's over. We had her on. He shouldn't have gone to war with a super popular governor and attacked her.

I mean, going to war with Fauci. It just is stupid. They don't have a plan. Let's get up and do something. There's no, it's just madness. There's no method. Do you have any Democrats you're excited? excited about that are sort of new that you or old? Well, I mean, I like Andy Brescia a lot. But a lot of them are Grutchin-Wittmer. You know, she's very talented.

A lot of them around her, I don't know Val Demings, but I'm kind of impressed a little bit about her. Yeah, she's up and coming. Rick and I had a long conversation about her the other guy. She's amazing.

That's a real step up, you know, when you get into national politics. I tell people, look, I don't give a shit. He can pick Sarah people on the six of mine. Let's not do that one. Hey, in case you missed it, the Daily Beast recently launched a crossword puzzle. It's made to let news junkies like us flex our mental muscles with clues based on what's happening in politics and pop culture. Head on over to the DailyBeast.com slash crossword dash puzzles to play now.

It's a great way to pass the time during the coronavirus and it's free. We're so thrilled to have Aaron Banco today. She's a national security reporter for The Daily Beast. So Dr. Bricks has warned that death from COVID is about to rock. while Trump keeps telling everyone the mortality rate, the other day he said the mortality rate is like 99% of people will be fine. Can you explain the dynamic of this? Sure.

So what we know from people like Dr. Fauci and other senior officials on the task force and elsewhere, for example, within the CDC, who we talk to on a regular basis, is that President Trump has not been to a task force meeting in several months. It's unclear how many he's actually been to in total. But the way the dynamics work, at least now that we're halfway through the summer, is that President Trump relies on officials from his own task force to brief him separately from these task force meetings. And the White has not been clear on who is exactly doing that briefing. But basically, we have two parallel conversations going on. We have a conversation that's going on within the task force, you know, between Pence and Berks and Secretary Azar and others on the task force team. And then you have this conversation that's going around, in the Oval Office and within the White House about the pandemic and the virus itself. And so those conversations appear to be quite different. You know, in the governor's calls that we have gotten recordings of where Vice President Pence and Dr. Burks often briefs the nation's governors about

the latest numbers and the latest trends, those tend to be pretty serious. And Berks is not shy about issuing some warnings to the nation's governors. And on one recent call, she, I think it was last week, She said, look, this virus is not going away. There are a handful of states that are seeing increasing numbers of cases and positivity rates and hospitalizations and that she expected to see the mortality rate go up quite a bit in the following weeks. Meanwhile, you have President Trump seemingly either unaware of the conversations that are happening within the task force or deliberately twisting the truth. And so it's very unclear where he's getting his information, but when it comes to the task force itself,

they are the ones who are responsible for coordinating with the state. And so we hope that at least those conversations stay the same. So I noticed today that even Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, is now saying we have a testing problem in this country. And does it strike you as a crowning irony that they spent the weekend dropping opposition research on Anthony Fauci? And yet the White House chief of staff is now admitting that there's a testing problem. Even he's broken with his president. Yeah, it's quite remarkable, actually. I was a little unsure of how Mark Meadows would, how he'd fare in his job.

And this new role that he has, I know him and President Trump are quite close. But I think from what I hear from our sources inside the White House and on the task force and elsewhere, people working on the administration's pandemic response is that there's just increasing frustration over the fact that we're still seeing these cases pop up. And these outbreaks appear in states that we thought were already under control. And they had flattened the curve. And so there's some frustration, like I said, but there's also some real panic about what we're going to see in the coming months. And I think from what we hear and what Mark Meadows has said public, is that things are about to get really bad in some of these metropolitan areas. And so in terms of

testing specifically, we're hearing what people waiting hours and hours in lines again, just as we recorded during, for example, New York's peak, and they're waiting more than 10 days for results. And so you see the National Guard is still out there trying to help states. But some of those deadlines for these federal agencies that have personnel deployed to help states are starting to roll back July 30th in the middle of August. So I don't know. if they'll extend their time out in the field, but we'll have to see. Why do you think America can't get its fucking shit together when it comes to testing? It's been a really interesting story to follow, I have to say, but what we saw in the beginning

is that we had a White House who wanted to run the show, you know, officials who had no prior experience in any kind of federal disaster response. You mean like Jared? Like Jared, yeah. So Jared, you know, ran his own team separate and apart. They went to Jared. That's right. He ran his own team separate and apart from what was going on in the task force, though they coordinated to some extent.

But you had people inside DHS, for example, on FEMA, were shaking their heads saying there's a playbook for this that we can draw from. And we're just not doing that, which is why we saw all these gaps in PPE equipment being delivered and test kits being delivered. You know, I'm actually in Jersey City riding out the storm. And I got a chance to speak to the local mayor here, Stephen Fullop, who said months ago that they, They knew the testing wasn't going to come from the federal level down to the states and then to the municipality. So what they did is the city just contracted through a private lab and they can do 750,000 tests, but that's it. That's just the peak. They're not going to get anymore and they're just having to live with that quota. And so I think what we're seeing now is with a lot of these hotspot

areas having had these sign these private contracts is that they just don't have enough resources because they made those decisions early on, we got to do something. And so if we're not going to be getting the test that we're supposed to be getting, let's just make a decision for ourselves and roll the dice. I'm curious what you think in terms of the second wave that we're in now, which was the maybe this is the one and a half wave. We're not going to be any more really ready for this when the bad stuff hits us again in the fall, are we?

No, I don't think we are at least from an administrative federal agency response level, because we still haven't integrated as much as we should have FEMA and DHS and other federal agencies to help with this response. To a large extent, the White House is still somewhat in control of how the administration is responding to the pandemic. And so I think on that level, in terms of shortages and testing shortages, PPE shortages were not where we should be. I think from what I've talked to doctors in New York about from a healthcare perspective, at least, the hospitals are situated and set up. so they can accept more patients. And I think doctors themselves, obviously now, six months out, understand way more about this virus than they did in the beginning. They know how to treat. They know what patient's symptoms look like. And so from that perspective, that's great, right?

We have doctors who know what this looks like now. But they also caution that we still don't know a lot about this virus. When it comes to therapeutics and vaccines, just no one, no one is sure. And that's, I think, the most frightening thing. Well, you know, and you mentioned briefly PPE there. We're hearing a lot about another wave of PPE shortages as well, aren't we? That's right. So the PPE pipeline, as reporters like to talk to their sources about or call it, the shortages are going to be coming again and soon. And that can't happen again.

And so hospitals are trying to elicit donations from corporate CEOs and other organizations rather than having to once again rely on a broken system. to rely on the states trying to charm Trump into getting more money, that they can then get more test kits, they can then get more PPE. That took too long last time. And so hospitals are really just trying to find their own system and to make their own plans. And I'm not sure if that's going to work out. We'll have to see. But it's going to require a larger sort of initiative on the administration's part in getting that PPE out to the places where it needs to get or the second wave in order for everyone to feel safe.

Spoiler alert, if you donate to the Trump campaign, you're increasing. It keeps feeling like the federal government just isn't doing anything. So I think it can feel like that. I think you're right, Molly. And so what we've really been trying to do at The Beast is to understand what's going on behind the scenes, behind closed doors, what conversations are being had. And what the administration really seems to be focusing on right now, at least, is the data. All they sort of care about right now is figuring out how many cases are there, where are they popping up, and they're still in containment mode, right?

They're not forward thinking at all because they didn't get a chance to sit after that curve flattened and think, okay, what's next? Because they were still catching up with all these new cases that were popping up. We never really, maybe we flattened the curve for a couple of weeks, but then we were hit again with these new outbreaks in the South and Southwestern parts of the country. So Dr. Berks' team has sent people out into the field to know. now to try to work with local leaders to contain communities because, and they didn't do that last time, or at least not on this scale. So they're trying something new in terms of containment strategy, but they're still in that mode. And so they're not yet thinking about what happens in flu season. And maybe some people are in the administration, but at least public facing wise, this is what

task force seems to be focused on. Do you think Fauci is going to get fired? I'm not sure on the rules and regulations around that. I don't believe he can be. fired by President Trump because of the position that he holds at NIH. However, I do think that the backlash against Trouchy will continue to grow. I got a chance to speak with him a couple of weeks ago now quite a lengthy interview and he was very concerned about how he was being portrayed in the media. Him and I spoke for a long time about how he feels like everyone just goes for the sound bites and that doesn't make him look great in President Trump's eyes. And so when that happens, it's really hard for him to handle that backlash as he's trying to get us a vaccine.

So he's very jaded about it all. And I'm not sure how long he can sort of last in this era of Fauci backlash. It seems like the most dangerous place to be is between Trump's ego and facts. Right. Fauci admittedly, in public hearings, I said, yeah, I have made some mistakes in terms of what I've said, you know, at the very beginning of this pandemic. But in my mind, and I think in a lot of people's minds, that can be chalked up to nobody knowing what this virus was or how it worked and making the best educated guess that they could at the time,

not because he wasn't smart or because he didn't understand, but because these things just take time to wrap your head around. And so the administration now pushing out material to news outlets about his mistakes is pretty ironic, given the disaster that was the White House's response to the pandemic in the first place. And it still is. Exactly. Are you seeing any good stuff about vaccines? Tell us something to not be depressed about. It's really hard to actually get access to some of that information.

Everything that has to do with the vaccine movement right now is being very closely held. I think from Fauci's perspective, he's always said that he is optimistic about getting a vaccine out by the end of the year or having one available. My questions are really about who gets it first and there's going to be a mass scramble. Just like we had the testing disaster and the PPE shortages, I'm not confident that that is not going to happen. again with vaccines. And so I think the question, okay, we're going to get a vaccine, but then who gets it first and is it going to be widely available? Are they going to put it into schools like they did with polio vaccines? And I'm just not sure what shape we're going to be in come the end of the year. Well, you almost had me feeling better. Look, we're going to have a vaccine. It's just a matter of when

we're going to get it. And it's really a matter, like some of the officials I keep talking to here on the local level is how long can people continue up with the quarantine and the lockdown before things. really start to hit the fan. And I think with the school reopening conversation, a lot of parents are desperately wanting to get their kids back to school so they can go back to work and get the bills paid, but at the same time, are equally worried about what happens in terms of community spread when that happens. And so without a vaccine, those fears are going to continue to rise. And so, and especially with the flu now coming in the fall, I think it might be this sort of perfect storm. They are talking about getting coronavirus flu test in one, which might help speed things up a little bit in terms of

results and containment and social distancing executive orders on the state level. So we'll have to see how that works out. But things are coming and Fauci and everyone at NIH is working very hard on this and trying to coordinate with other countries. It's a whole system. I feel like the average person just doesn't, and I still don't really understand. And as I understand it, the people I've spoken to, they want to keep the vaccine conversation away from the political conversation. And the longer they can continue to do that, the better their chances are at getting a vaccine out sooner rather than later. Okay, so now we're at the part of the episode where we talk about people who we really

truly, truly despise. And my fuck that guy today is going to be the senator from Texas, the guy. Is it John Cornyn? Actually, I do really hate John Cornyn, too. Did you see his tweet? about Corona, where he had a Corona beer. Yeah, I know. I know. And then even last night, he was like, some journalist was like, trust the experts. And he was like, which experts? Right. I saw that. But it wasn't John Cornyn, was it? It was your very favorite human being. The Zodiac Killer.

The Zodiac Killer. Ted Cruz. Son of the assassin of JFK. Son of Sam. Husband of a hideous wife, if I'm not mistaken. If I'm quoting the president accurately. All Heidi wanted was a second home. It's a very sad story. of a young woman who just wanted a second home. Is there anything more tragic than that? My heart breaks for poor Heidi. All she wanted was a second home.

So anyway, this weekend, Ted Cruz flew on American Airlines, and he did not wear a mask. He didn't wear a mask in the lounge. He didn't wear a mask on the plane. He is coming from a state that has a hotspot to end all hotspots, right? Except for Florida. Except for Florida. He's going to Washington, D.C., which has a relatively low contagion number,

and is much more controlled because it's a blue state. city, and he decided not to wear a mask in a small airplane because he's Ted Cruz, and the rules don't apply to Ted Cruz. Was he seated in douche class, perhaps? I think he was seated in first class if I super spreader Ted Cruz. I think that there's really no question that Ted Cruz, the most beloved figure in Washington, and by beloved, I mean to say that there is seriously not a single U.S. Senator. I think Mike Lee can vaguely tolerate Ted for like several minutes at a time. But in all my time around DC, I have never met anyone who is more despised by his colleagues. They just hate him with the fire of a million sons. If Ted Cruz were on fire on the well of the Senate, no one would

piss on him to put it out. Anyway, so Ted Cruz is my fuck-that guy. Rick Wilson, who's your fuck-that guy? Can I put Betsy DeVos on my fuck-that-guy list this week? Do we do her last week? Please. No, go for it. It all runs together in the end with Betsy. Betsy DeVos has now taken up the thing that the White House, by the way, believes because of Peter Navarro, what I'm told, is the one who's championing this theory that the kids must go back to school and that everything will be normal when the kids go back to school. Well, Betsy DeVos is very keen on saluting smartly and obeying orders. She has decided that she's going to take up the charge of insisting every school reopen in the face of both reality and sense and everything else. And I've got to tell you, she is so high on my fuck that guy list right now. I've been talking to people who have school-age kids all over the place. And I've been observable. that in a lot of these places in Florida, particularly, these counties that are having gigantic outbreaks, they're talking about putting kids back in schools in three weeks or four weeks from now. Bullshit. It's not happening. What makes me the most angry about it is that she's doing it deliberately based on politics. Here's my thought. Our kids are never going back to school, no matter what these idiots say.

If there are anyone or ever who wanted to fucking send their kids back to school, it would be me. They're never going back to school. Because the thing is, I understand Trump world's thinking. They think, while other countries are going back to school, so we should go back to school, too. But the difference is other countries had a pandemic response. They locked their countries down. They flatten their curves. In a lot of these countries, they stopped having infections. You can hear my kids screaming at each other in the background.

So this is a great point. Another notable characteristic of those countries is they're not run by a team of corrupt fuckwits who politicized the response to a deadly disease. Right. But the reality is we all want our kids go back to school because we're going to kill them. But nobody's going to go back to school. It's never happening because these cities, I mean, like Miami, Miami's at stage one. You can't send kids back to school at stage one.

You don't even have, there's not a fucking Starbucks. There's no Starbucks open for drive-thru. You're not sending your kids back to school. So this is like one of these dumb arguments they're having. And in a weird way, the left should just ignore it because it doesn't matter. They're not going to be able to do it anyway. It's such a disaster. But the reason she gets the fuck this guy today is that she's not.

not stupid about what's at stake. She's been told what's happening. She's been told how bad this is going to be. She's been informed by her staff and she's been informed by CDC. This is a bad idea. They're going to bowl their way through this. And I would have made Navarro my fuck this guy on this, but she's the one who's saluting smartly and carrying out the order. And the joke is, there is scientific evidence that says kids don't really spread it to adults the same way. Kids might be okay. But the problem is, you know, and the kids may be less affected by it. But the The problem is the virus is still so prevalent that you can't do it. I mean, if you had a very mild, like, tiny pockets of cases, you might be able to do it. But because America continues to explode with coronavirus and her fucking president refuses to wear a goddamn mask, no one will go back to school, period, paragraph. But Molly, he wore the mask heroically this weekend. I know. Think of all the foundation he had to apply. I will also say this. I noted with great amusement, the same people who are absolutely, were months,

Masks are a liberal hoax. Soros is trying to make you wear a mask and take away your freedom. We're suddenly posting this weekend. Great mask, Mr. President. Looking good, sir. It's amazing how studly you look in that mask. Best mask ever. You are one day away from Trump saying, no one had heard of masks before me. I invented the mask. Some people say a wheel is medieval. A wall is medieval. So is a mask, and I invented it in a time machine. Thank you, Alec Baldwin. I'm sorry. I'm working on it. I'm going to get there. We should have had Carval on to talk about it because... Or we had Carvalon. We're going to have them on again to do a Trump impersonation

because everyone who comes on this show must at some point do a Trump impersonation, except for me. 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 JongFast 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 thedailybeast.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.