The Daily Beast Podcast - Biden Told ‘Be Bold’ In Order to ‘Save the Republic’

Episode Date: June 21, 2022

Princeton University Professor of African American studies Eddie Glaude tells The New Abnormal’s Molly Jong-Fast why he warned the U.S. President that democracy could die unless he is willing to “go big”. Also on this episode: Journalist Francisco Alvarado takes us inside his reporting on how Nebraska’s voter ID proposal has become mired amid claims of fraud and big money coming from someone very close to the state’s governor. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Invo. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objective. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart, conversations with the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down, and on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. What a great show we have today. We'll first be joined by freelance journalist Francisco Alvarado about his latest daily beast piece on the shady voter ID campaign workers in their behavior that's happening over in Nebraska. Then we'll talk to Dr. Eddie Glaude, who's of course the author of Begin Again, James Baldwin's America and its urgent lessons for our own, as well as host of the new podcast,

history is us. But first, let's have some fun. Andy Levy. Molly Junkfast. It's another day. January 6 hearings, I want to say this, and I think I'm right here. And if I'm wrong, I'm sure people will tell me on the internet loudly. I think the January 6th committee hearings are working. I think they're doing a good job. There's a new poll out that says, I think it's like roughly 58% of Americans think Trump should be charged for what happened on January 6th. So I guess the counter to that, is it's like 90% of Democrats and only like 20% of Republicans think that. So what? Exactly.

So fucking what? They seem to have like lost the point here. Yeah. We can't, we have to stop caring about this. Like if they're, if people are going to support Trump and what happened on January 6th, regardless of the facts that you tell them, say Levy, I guess, that there's nothing you can do about that. You know, all you can do is provide the facts.

which the Jan 6 committee has done in abundance. So I don't see what else you would have wanted from them other than what they are doing right now. Right. I mean, we're only three hearings in. There are two more as we tape those. But I think that the thing that strikes me is they've avoided the number one pitfall of all congressional hearings, which is when things devolve into Jim Jordan screaming at someone. Right.

That's like, you know you're in a bad congressional hearing when you've got to. Jim Jordan without the jacket, red-faced, screaming and banging on the dais. You know, that's when you know you're really just wasting time. And there hasn't been any of that. And I think it's been really powerful to have all Republicans, you know, it's not all Republicans testifying, but it's largely Republicans. And, you know, we'll hear from the left, people saying, well, these are the people who cause this, which is also true.

Yes. But, you know, they're now, they're trying to stop it. And look, they shouldn't have done it in the first place. I mean, that Judge Ludig is a great example. I mean, for sure he, like Dan Quayle and Mike Pence, are certainly culpable in how we've gotten here. But they are all, you know, I mean, I think Mike Pence less. But he is doing the right thing now, which I think is what is really relevant.

So, and it's been largely Republicans. And I also think it's meaningful to hear these Republicans. say, you know, what a lot of us are thinking, I think it's also worth thinking about, and there's been some writing about this. And it is true, but it's also interesting, is that you do have, there are, and again, like this is being used to point out this sort of deviousness of the Republicans on the committee, but I might point it out in a different way, which is there are a lot of Republicans out there who would like to see someone, unlikely Liz Cheney, like, deal the final blow to Trump.

They're not loud because they're cowards. They're not loud because they're worried about their families. Adam Kinsinger had to quote this weekend that someone had threatened to murder his baby. I mean, this is what happens when you go against Trumpism. But there are certainly a lot of people quietly cheering Liz Cheney on. And so some people on the left feel that, you know, that the possible alternative to Trump is actually worse. And, I mean, I think that's worth thinking about. But right now, the fact that we're even having this conversation is proof that the January 6th committee is working.

No, I agree. And, yeah, I saw, I mean, someone sent that letter to Congressman Kinsinger's either house or office, I guess. I saw it on Twitter just a little while ago. And my God, it's awful. Right. I've actually been waiting for him. You know, I'm curious if in the next couple hearings that we have left, if he'll take center stage the way Liz Cheney has been on the Republican side, or if it's just been decided that she is going to be the point.

person for, you know, on the GOP side. Also worth noting, I think that regarding what you said about Jim Jordan, which was obviously 100% correct, that that's exactly what Kevin McCarthy wanted. And he tried to appoint Jim Jordan, among others, to this committee. And Nancy Pelosi, you know, for once got it right and said, no, I don't think we're going to be doing that. Thank you very much, Kevin. Go back and, you know, put your pacifier in and play with your baba. Right. I mean, And I think it is, I mean, just to sort of go back for a minute, I think that that partisan rancor that tends to absorb a lot of the meaning in those congressional hearings is really not evident. And you don't see it. The other thing I would say, so it ends up reading on television more like a trial and less like a hearing, which is actually very helpful.

Yes. The other thing I would say is that I think that there's a. There's a sense when you're watching it, you see that it's successful because Republicans are trying to ignore it or trying to distract from it. And if it were not doing well the way that the Mueller, when Mueller got up there was a disaster. Like 10 minutes into it, we were all texting each other like this. We're, you know, this is not. He's going to get, he's going to get away with it this time. Right.

If these were bad, we would be hearing about it endlessly. Oh, I had one other point I wanted to make, which was because this is not a traditional congressional. hearing, you don't have the thing that you have in traditional congressional hearings where everybody gets their five minutes because they all want a grandstand. And so because you don't have that, it's actually much, much, much more powerful because you don't go to, you know, everybody gets a chance. You really get like the case and not the personalities. And I think that's been really, really good. No, absolutely. Because otherwise what you end up with is they get their five minutes and four and a half minutes of that is them pontificating and saying the same thing

that everyone else already said most likely. A couple of points, you know, you said, well, some people think, you know, this is a ploy to get someone, you know, even worse than Trump in there. I don't care. Like that shouldn't be a factor. What was done was done and there needs to be accountability for it. And it's the same thing when I see people saying, you know, with regard to Merrick Garland and the Justice Department that, well, they have to take into account that people might

get violent if he, you know, brings a case against Trump if he files charges. Who fucking cares? Like that cannot, I'm sorry. Obviously, I don't want violence. But they've already been violent. I mean, you can't live in mortal fear out of part of the population. A, yes, they've already done it. B, they don't get a heckler's veto.

They don't, they don't get to say, well, you know, we're going to do, if you follow the law in the Constitution, we're going to get violent. The response to that is, well, and I guess we won't follow the law in the Constitution. Right, right, right. The response to that is, fine, then you'll go to jail. Also, it brings up the point that, so I guess the response to that is the less. Neft needs to threaten violence if charges aren't filed. So this way, violence can be taken off the table.

And the Justice Department can say, well, there's going to be violence either way. So we just have to do what's right. Anyway, that's a little off topic from the committee. But my point is the committee is doing what the committee needs to do. And whether or not Ron DeSantis is enjoying what the committee is doing, which he very well may be, at least as of now. Right. It would be good for him, ultimately. Yeah, as he seems to be Trump's biggest competition in 2024.

at least as of now in 2022. But that cannot be a factor. It just can't. It shouldn't matter. In the same way, it shouldn't matter. If it's Liz Cheney that, you know, is up there doing it, if it's Adam Kinsinger that's up there doing it, I don't care if it's a Republican or a Democrat. I don't care if it's someone I disagree with on 99.9% of the issues.

And I think this is the one time in their entire life. They got it right. As long as they're getting it right this time, that's all that matters. and that seems to be what the committee is doing. Again, the fact that all the people testifying, for the most part, were members of the Trump administration. And the fact that Fox is not covering these hearings is proof that they're doing something. If the hearings were a circus and weren't proving anything, Fox would be covering them wall to wall so they could say, look. But instead, they're not covering them and then saying, oh, they're not doing anything.

Right, except they did cover. They covered one day. They put the first day on Fox business, which no one watches. But the second day, they actually did put on regular daytime Fox, which, and that weekend, you had the New York Post and you had the Wall Street Journal, both Murdoch owned papers running pieces about how Republicans should dump Donald Trump, which is not to say, again, a lot of people will point out that Murdoch has been very on the fence about Trump for a long time. But, you know, one of the things about Murdoch is he reads the way the wind is blowing. So, I mean, remember, they didn't buy into the big lie at Fox until they realized they were losing market share to Newsmax. Right. You know, so I think there really is a sense in which Rupert Murdoch is very aware of how this goes.

But, yeah, I think that's for sure. There's a lot of evidence that these hearings are working from Republicans. So there's a lot of talk about inflation and Biden said it's not inevitable. Where do you guys seeing here? Gas is mostly $6, some places at 7. Fox News was able to find someplace it was... Fox News is looking for the most expensive gas you can find. So if you know a gas station was really expensive gas,

I suggest you call Pete Ducey. Is that his name? Yes, that's his name. Sure. It's a hilarious name. Yeah, you should call one of those guys if you find really expensive gas. Biden says, that there's some price gouging going on, which there probably is. There's a big difference between

what crude oil is priced at and what refined gasoline is priced at. But ultimately, what I think we've seen from these inflation numbers is that a lot of us, Democrats, Republicans, people who live in the world, had hoped that the inflation was transitory because you had turned off the economy for COVID. And then you had to turn it back on. And when you turn back on an economy, supply chains get, you know, you don't have enough people to fly the airplanes because no one was flying and now everyone's flying. You have all of these sort of issues of turning on and turning off an economy. And so the hope was that this inflation was transitory and not because in 2020, Republicans printed a lot of money. And also, there was a lot of stimulus. But what happens with inflation is when there's more money, when there's a lot of money and a lot of demand, things get more expensive. And that's what we're looking at. right now is one of the ways, again, inflation is really complicated because there aren't really easy ways to deal with it if they were, it would be done. So what the Fed is doing is they're raising interest rates and last week they raised it 0.75. And when they raise it, what happens is it means

that your money is worth more, right, because the money in the bank does better when inflation is higher. But it also means that your mortgage is more expensive, you're less, likely to buy a house and you ultimately get into a problem. The markets don't like it when these numbers go up these, the Fed raises these rates. So the markets go down. And so you have an unhappy stock market. So the basic anxiety here now is, will the federal rate hikes push the stock market down and create a recession? Now, the interesting thing about a recession is you never know. you're in a recession until after. So, ergo, we could be in a recession and wouldn't know it.

But what's happening in America, Republicans will want you to think that it's all Joe Biden's fault, but actually it's happening everywhere. There's inflation. Everywhere, the numbers are terrible in England and France and Italy and here and there. And they don't have full employment. We have full employment. Whatever that means. Again, full employment is, you know, they don't count the people who've fallen off who've stopped looking for jobs. So full employment is a little bit of a misnomer, but it's still. you know, we have much better employment than a lot of these other countries. Anyone who has access to my bank accounts knows I'm as far from being an economist as as humanly possible.

I agree. We do have, you know, full employment. I think a part of the problem is that's mostly podcast hosts in America now. Yes. Yes. And we might need to start diversifying. I don't understand why we still have the Trump era tariffs in place with China. Let's kill them. Tariffs on $350 billion worth of goods. if you lift the tariffs, inflation comes down.

I get that there's issues with it, but if you're looking for things where the president can actually do something, that's one of them. Another thing is, you know, and this is only tangentially related, they just added, the Senate just added $45 billion

to Biden's military budget, $45 billion to what was already, like, I believe the biggest military budget, it was already $813 billion. If we're so worried about $850 billion for the military, come on, let's stop. Let's tamp that down, put the money where it could go to better use. And let's just do things to start helping people. I understand, you know, the Republican take on this, as you pointed out, Molly, is,

oh, all this money was, all this stimulus was done during COVID and it was a mistake and it shouldn't have been done. No, that's the exact, to me, anyway, that's the exact wrong. response to this. The correct response is, yeah, the government, we shut down our economy because of a worldwide pandemic, and we had to take steps. And we did. And the fact that we're now, that maybe there's, you know, a price to be paid now, okay, we knew that that might be the case. We didn't have a choice. So let's deal with what's in front of us now. And let's not say, oh, they shouldn't have done that because they should have done that. And honestly, they probably

should have done more of it. I also think a lot of that stimulus spending started under Trump. No, it absolutely did. But you now have conservatives saying, well, and to be fair to them, conservatives at the time were saying it was a bad idea, actual conservatives, not, you know, not Trump sycophants. But they absolutely did start under Trump. It's one of the few things he got even a little right was realizing that he had to do something. But we have to do something. I would be lying if I sat here and said, I know what to do about inflation. I know how to stop a recession. I don't have a clue.

But it does seem to me that if there are things you can do like getting rid of tariffs and stuff like that, that, you know, we're basically implemented with the stroke of a pen and can be deleted with the stroke of a pen, then do that. And this is, it's not a defense of China. China sucks. China's human rights policies are abysmal. All of that. But if that's what we need to, you know, to at least a little bit stem the tide of inflation,

then I don't understand why we're not doing it. You know, look, the inflation is driven by the oil prices and the food, right? So certainly the inflation, you know, getting rid of some of those tariffs would be pretty useful. But also figuring out the oil prices. I mean, again, you know, these oil prices are higher than they need to be because of the, you know, way in which oil prices are manipulated. Right, and always have been. Yeah. If this isn't yet again another bop on the head that we need to stop being dependent on oil as fuel,

I don't know what is, but nobody wants to say that. Nobody on the right anyway wants to say that. All they do is make. Or even on the left. Or even on the left right now. But the closer we can come to electric cars and solar and all that stuff that is not dependent on oil, whether it's foreign oil or our own, the better off we're going to be.

It just seems like every week, every month, we get another example of why that is true. And right now, in addition to little things like climate change and the fact that we're all going to be living underwater soon, there's also the fact that it's driving inflation. So let's get off our asses and do something, but that's obviously more of a long-term thing. And in the short term, I mean, look, you know, nobody,

I understand that nobody wants to go back to Jimmy Carter telling everyone that they need to budget their money and stuff like that and budget their fuel use. Yeah, Americans don't like that so much. No, Americans definitely don't want to hear that their, you know, Ford Explorer is helping cause this. So there's no chance we're getting that from Biden nor any Democratic candidate, regardless of whether it's something that should be done or not. So I just, look, I'll go back to you, Molly, because this is a topic where I just admit, most of what I know is, is not much.

I still think that there's still time until November, but certainly the more it can look like Biden is trying as hard as possible to address inflation better. Francisco Alvarado is a freelance journalist and a contributor to The Daily Beast. Welcome to the new abnormal, Francisco. Well, thank you for having me, Molly. I appreciate it very much. Let's talk about what's happening in Nebraska. What is happening in Nebraska? Well, in Nebraska, there's a petition underway to require voters to present IDs at elections at the polls.

Because right now, Nebraska doesn't have any voter, doesn't have a voter ID law. And the petitions being spearheaded by state senator Julie Slamma, who believes that voter IDs are necessary to ensure the integrity of elections. You know, she's following the lead of obviously of other Republican-led efforts. across the country to require voters to resent IDs when it comes time to the vote. This petition drive began last summer. It's ramped up over the last couple of months because the deadline is coming up on July 7th. And it seems that there's some hankiness going on with the gathering of signatures for this petition. Last month, you had state senator Carol Blood, who's the Democratic gubernator.

candidate filed a complaint with the Secretary of State claiming that she was in front of a bed, bath, and beyond when she was approached by a petition gatherer who claimed to be with the state of Nebraska. And obviously she was perplexed by that because this person did not seem like it was an employee of the state of Nebraska. She also then encountered another circulator at a Starbucks who made similar statements. And she filed a complaint with the Secretary of State And from there, there was another complaint by a former legislator, Shelly Kyle, and she's a Republican. She said that she had circulators come by her house saying they worked for the Secretary of State. And when she questioned them repeatedly, are you sure about that?

They insisted they did work for the state. And so Kyle also made a complaint about this. And the reason they made a complaint is because in the state of Nebraska, it is illegal for anyone. want to claim that they are a member of an organization or a government agency in order to achieve something for personal benefit. And in this case, the petition or circulators are getting paid by the signature. So this is basically a microcosm of what's going on across the state where you have these circulators working for this voter ID petition drive. Just saying about anything and everything to voters to get them to sign the petition, except telling them what the petition exactly.

is for, which is to require, you know, IDs. This effort is being bankrolled by someone who is fascinating. Explain. You know, any petition drive requires, you know, money to in order to pay the circulators and to, you know, advertise and just like, you know, any other petition drive. In this case, the biggest donor to the voter ID committee is Marlene Ricketts, who is the mother of Governor Pete Ricketts. And she is also a billionaire co-owner of the Chicago Cubs.

And her husband is the former chairman of Ameritrade. And so she donated $376,000 in July of last year. And that's basically what the committee has been running, you know, operating on this entire time. It seems like it's the, the only link pointing back to Governor Ricketts. But he is, you know, kind of like not really, or at least, you know, publicly, he's not, you know, not really involved with this effort other than to say he supports it. It's interesting. The Ricketts family, can you give us a little bit more backstory?

Because the Ricketts family has been involved with giving money to Republican politics for a long time. Yes. Most recently, there was controversy over the, you know, the Republican gubernatorial primary, where they did not back the candidate that Trump backed. And there was a, whole, you know, there's whole, you know, there's this whole drama about, you know, you know, that they don't get along with Trump, that they don't like Trump. And I think for a while, I believe back in 2016, Marlene Ricketts, you know, was someone who donated money to prevent Trump, you know, winning the Republican nomination. She's a very big Republican donor, gives to national races, presidential races. So that's what I know about her.

What happens now with this? Because it's basically, we have a state drive for a voter ID that is a little bit sketchy. I mean, does it still get on the ballot? What is the future there? So right now, the situation is that, you know, the, you know, they have done to those July 7 to submit the signatures and they need to get about, they need to get 10% of the voters in Nebraska in order to make it on the ballot. But, you know, with what's happening, you know, it clouds this, this petition drive.

Furthermore, there's a criminal investigation that has been initiated as a result of the complaints filed by Senator Carol Blood and the former legislator Shelley Kyle, where like there are basically the Nebraska State Patrol under the direction of the Attorney General, open an investigation to determine, you know, if any crimes have been committed. Like I mentioned before, you know, in the state of Nebraska, it's illegal for anyone to claim that they're a member of an organization or a government agency for personal benefit. I don't know if there's any more crimes that I've been committed. But if it's proven that these, you know, signatures were obtained, you know, fraudulently or through, you know, misinformation or disinformation, it is possible that the signatures that were gathered by that by any circulator would be deemed, you know, invalid. And then that would basically like, you know, any signatures that are, you know, determined and valid that could prevent the measure from making it onto the ballot. So it's kind of like right now it's, you know, we don't know exactly, you know, what's going to happen until all the signatures are submitted on July 7th.

But I imagine that there's going to be lawsuits filed, you know, obviously contesting the validity of many of these signatures. that have been gathered. And so that will go to court and it won't, it will probably not end up on the ballot. It could, yeah. I mean, it's, there's a highly likely possibly that it doesn't get on the ballot. Because again, we don't, one thing I didn't, I didn't mean, I wasn't able to find out exactly how many signatures every day they've gathered. If they're any, if they're even close to that 10% mark, you know, I have a feeling that they're not based on the fact that, you know, their circulators are telling everybody anything and everything to sign the particular.

Right. And that kind of indicates that, you know, to me that they're not having a lot of success, you know, getting, getting to that 10% benchmark. But who knows? It's definitely a weird, strange way of going about gathering signatures. And obviously it also shows that there's not, I guess, a swell of support for voter ID laws in Nebraska. As the people I interviewed, you know, they all said, you know, there's no need for it.

You know, that Nebraska has a pretty, you know, runs a pretty tight ship. when it comes to, you know, verifying voters at the polls, even though they don't have to present, you know, a government-issued ID. Right, of course. That makes a lot of sense. Is this something that we should worry about these idea, these sort of sketchy petitions, or do you think that this is unusual? Well, it's definitely unusual, and it's definitely something we should be worried about.

Because one thing I didn't bring up yet was the fact that the company that was hired to gather these petitions is called Van Gogh. Guard political strategies and Vanguard has is embroiled in the Michigan gubernatorial Republican primary signature gathering scandal that we've um, can you explain that to us? So in Michigan, there was a situation where a number of Republican candidates for governor may not make it on the ballot because there are the signatures that they've gathered were deemed fraudulent. Oh, right. I remember this. Yeah. Yeah. In the case of this company, Vanguard, they were working for one of the leading gubernatorial candidates and he had like thousands of signatures that were deemed fraudulent and now this is the same company that's you know in charge of gathering the signatures in

Nebraska so you know i mean this is something that we should definitely be worried about because you know if you have companies that are willing to engage in these kind of tactics um in different states it kind of shows you that um you know we need to keep vigilant yeah and you know election you know, supervisors need to be vigilant about these efforts and do everything possible they can to verify that these signatures are being collected in a, you know, in an ethical manner. Thank you so much for joining us. This was great. Thank you, Molly. Thank you for having me. Dr. Eddie Gawd is the author of Begin Again, James Baldwin's America and its urgent lessons for our own,

as well as the host of History as Us. Welcome back to the new abnormal Eddie Gawd. Hi, so it's such a delight to be back with you, Mom. I'm so excited. So first, I want you to talk to us about your podcast. How did you decide to do this and explain to us a little bit about it, if that's okay? Sure. So, you know, we're so excited about launching history as us. In some ways, it emerged out of my work, my last book, Begin Again,

James Baldwin's America and its urgent lessons for our own. And in some ways, what Baldwin taught me was that, you know, history haunts that, You know, we carry it in us, right? It's in the marrow of our bones. And as we, as I was watching in real time, Molly, the country turn its back on the possibility of being otherwise. You know, I watched, you know, the George Ford Floyd Justice and Policing Act languish in Congress. I watched the attack on critical race theory. I watched don't say gay laws. Watched Roe v. Wade about to be overturned. And I saw that this was really an all out of salt on on the revolutions of the mid-20th. century, that we wanted to go back to something, that there was this nostalgic longing. And of course, at the center of it was the January 6th insurrection. And you heard stop the steal and, you know, we're going to take back our country. And then here was the moment when Senator Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate invoked the compromise of 1877 as a way of addressing, you know, the controversy around the 2020 election. And I was like, did he just invoke the Hayes Tilden compromise? Can you explain to our

listeners, just what the Hayes-Tilman compromise is, just for those who don't know it? Sure. So the hell, Hayes-Tilden compromise. You know, there's, you know, presidential election of 1876. There's a campaign between Tilden and Rutherford B. Hayes. Tilden was the Democrat who actually won the popular vote. But there were some controversies around the electoral count, particularly in Florida. Oh, my goodness. And then there was a commission, a commission put together to resolve the issue. It ended up with Rutherford B. Hayes, the Republican winning by one electoral vote. And, you know, we recently heard some of this from Judge Liddick in his testimony before the January 6th hearing talking about, you know, the presidential, you know, this commission in 1877 or around the election of 1876. And usually historians

describe this as one of the most corrupt moments in American democracy. What happens is that symbolically, in order to get the presidency, Rutherford B. Hayes agrees to remove the remaining troops from the South. And so it's still. the end of radical reconstruction. It signals the end of an attempt to build a multiracial democracy, and it ushers in literally the dark ages of American race relations. And so you will see after 1877, you will see a spate of Jim Crow laws across the South. You will see violence as southern elites and regular white Southerners begin to reassert control and demand that black people resume a subordinate position that they basically disenfranchised. You get it codified in law with the

Plessy versus Ferguson decision in 1896. All of this would not be overturned barely until 1954 with Brown v. Board and the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century. So when I heard Senator Cruz invoke 1876 and what it ushered in, I said, oh my God, history has this by the throat. And so I decided with John Meacham and Cadence 13 to do this documentary podcast. So interesting. We just had John Meecham on here, too. It's so interesting. So I wanted to talk to you about, because a lot of these guests are like modern guests, right? Like Latasha Brown, she's one of your guests, right? Black Brothers Matter? Yeah, she's amazing. But she's dealing with something current. So how did you then pull it back to something historic? Right. So, you know, the first episode, which is about radical, you know, the death of radical reconstruction in some ways. the murder of radical reconstruction begins with the January 6th insurrection. And it begins with Senator Cruz's invocation, as I mentioned, of the presidential election of 1876. And then we go back

and we account for it, right? We talk about this moment. And then we're always moving forward, because what are we trying, what am I trying to do in the, in the podcast is to show the kind, the way in which history is speaking to our moment, our current moment, that, you know, when we think about America as always already on the road to a more perfect union, that that narrative is really about, you know, and this is going to sound shocking to your listeners, it's really about rituals of absolution. We tell ourselves that we're on the road to a more perfect union because we want to absolve ourselves of our sins and give us a moral holiday. And so what I do is I'm always going back to the past to show how the past speaks. You know, that wonderful formulation

from William Faulkner. The past is not dead. The past is not even past. And so Latasha Brown and Senator Booker and Secretary of the Smithsonian and Lonnie Bunch, they, as well as all of the historians and cultural critics that I had the pleasure and blessing to talk with, are always thinking about this in what we might call or describe as in a presentous way. We're looking to the past in order to understand the present. And what are the resources of our history? that we can draw on to actually resist the forces that are trying to strangle our democracy in this current bomb. Can you just give me two more seconds when you talked about absolution? Because that's such an interesting idea.

Yeah, I mean, we have these rituals that are built into how we understand ourselves, how we live our lives. And these rituals are often rooted in the stories we tell ourselves, right? And so we tell ourselves that we're always on the road to a more perfect union, that this kind of perfectionist impulse is at the heart of America's imagining that it is an example of democracy achieved that we are the shining city on the hill, the Redeemer Nation. But this notion of being on the road to a more perfect union allows us to look beyond the ugliness of what we've done and what we are doing. Because we're always on the road, we're always on the road to doing good. We're always on the road to perfection. So yes, we had slaves, but we don't anymore.

Yes, women couldn't vote. But they do now. Oh, yes, we had the yellow scare, right? But no, we're diverse, you know, that's all we need to do is point to the Statue of Liberty and the like, right? So we tell ourselves these stories about who we aspire to be as a way of, how can I say, absolving us of the responsibility for who we actually are. Right, right, right. No, I think that's a really, is such an important and interesting theory that I hadn't even thought about. You just talked earlier on about how few of the things that we had wanted to come from this moment of reckoning that we hoped we were going to have have actually come to fruition.

Were you surprised or did you expect this? You know, our history suggested to me that we were going to fail. And, you know, I was screaming at the top of my lungs in the way that I do. saying that we were in the midst of a reckoning, but every reckoning in this country's history has come with betrayal. So, you know, reconstruction didn't fail. It was killed, right? It was literally killed. You know, we talk about the attacks in Memphis in 1866 or I think it's 1866 or in New Orleans or Cofax or, you know, the violence that these major ritual, you know, these major moments of mob violence in the midst of, in the aftermath of the Civil War. But, you know, what's so fascinating between the end of the Civil War in the 1890s, over 53,000 black folk who engaged in politics were murdered. Part of what I'm trying to suggest by telling or invoking that story, and we talk about it in the podcast, is I knew that there would be a backlash. I didn't know the form it would take, but I knew that there would be those who would cling to the idea that America must remain a white nation in the vein of old Europe.

and that this idea of us becoming a multiracial democracy needed to be undermined. And so I just didn't know, I didn't realize that the speed in which it would happen, the attack on defund the police, the complicity of liberal, of liberal voices, both black and white, in allowing that phrase to become a shorthand for all that was wrong with the protest movements. Then the attack, you know, the moral panic generated around critical race theory, which they really, I mean, they actually told us what they were going to do with this phrase. Yeah, it was amazing. I mean, you literally, there are tweets that were like, we're going to do this.

And then they did it. And then folk just fell in line with the panic, you know. And so to see it in real time, to see it in real time was it was a blow to the gut. But, you know, I kept saying to myself following Sam Beckett, you know, we're going to fail, fail. But at least let's fail better. Yeah. You know, fail again, fail better, you know, but I guess we're not doing that as well. I think that's so right.

You are part of a private chat with President Biden. Come on, man. Jonah Goldberg just wrote about that recently. I heard. Yeah. What was that like? I mean, how do you even translate all the stuff you know into something that's useful for the most powerful man in the Western world?

I wasn't so much interested in the symbolic significance of being in front of the most powerful man in the world. I wanted to bear witness. And I remember saying to something like this to this effect. And this is what I take Goldberg to be chastising folks like me about. Oh, I haven't read it. Is he chastising? Oh, God.

All right. Oh, he says, he says this group of historians will bear responsibility for basically telling the president to go big. Oh, Jesus Christ. Yeah. I had hoped that he was just one of the historic, you know, or he had been invited along. But no. Oh, yikes. All right.

I was like, you know, the scale of the problems we face. requires a response at scale. He had an opportunity historically. I mean, this is the first vice president to the first African-American president, the first president to have the first African-American vice president. He could usher in a new America, change the center of gravity of the country if he dared to be polled. Right.

And part of what we have in our country, you know, we talk about the problems of politicians, feckless, cynical, self-interested. And to a large extent, that's true. But we also need to talk about the dangers of the political consulting class in this country. Oh, yeah. And they keep us, they keep our feet shackled to the ground, as if we can't imagine ourselves otherwise. And so what we see, what I've been, what I've witnessed over the, over President Biden's first term is that our problem in the country cuts much deeper than just simply the illiberalism of the Republican Party. or the violence of Trumpism,

it cuts much deeper than that. It goes all the way to the Democratic Party, to everyday ordinary people who are willing to be complicit in their silence. So we have so much more to do if we're going to save the Republic. Are you surprised? Baldwin has, I feel like,

of all of the people of that generation, his work has held up really, I mean, just so well. And he was sort of so ahead of his time. Are you surprised at how much all of this is still feels so new and so important? It's what happens when, you know, as an artist, you cling to the truth as you see it, when you're relentless in your exploration of the contradictions of the human endeavor. And Baldwin is particular in this regard.

He was so singular in so many ways. I mean, we've talked about this before. I mean, just think about this. His second book was Giovanni's room, his second novel. So he's out. Couldn't even get the book. published in the United States. He had to get a publisher in the UK to publish it. Here he is talking about the reality of love, but it's the same-sex love affair. And so there's a sense in which,

you know, when the nation, how can I put it? When the nation decided to take the bribe that was the 80s. That's a great way to put it. And black communities in particular were enamored with Cosby's sweaters and brownstones in Harlem. Baldwin was still telling his truth. And people didn't want to hear it. They rendered him, they described him as an old man gone bad in the teeth. And so here he is, because he held steadfast, right, his words, of course there are others. You read June Jordan, you read even Ralph Ellison, even though his patriotism kind of grates against rates the nerves at times. They're still speaking their truths.

And I suppose that's why Plato wanted to ban the poets from the republic, right? Because the poets tell the truth no matter what. They give us a way of seeing the world and seeing ourselves differently, it seems to me. It's funny because I'm looking at this interview he did with the Paris Review, and he's talking about the people that he worked with were Trotsky-eyed Socialists. And it's funny because I don't know exactly what my grandfather's relationship with him was or if they knew each other, but I assume they probably did. But it is so interesting because they're really the culture of those people, even if not, you know, Trotsky-I had socialist, even if not the financial ideas, the cultural ideas were really right on. I think so. I just hope that we are as courageous as they were in their moment to speak our truths. Because, you know, if they didn't live in a world like ours, because they were helping to create this world that is ours.

And so, you know, each of us is unique and unprecedented because there's no, there's never been anyone on the planet like you, Molly. You, you are distinct. We are distinct. And what we have to do, as Faulkner says in the Nobel speech, we have to become that inexhaustible voice in the face of all. all of this, but draw on the resources, the funded experience of the past that allow us to be who we are and to be change agents. Yeah, it's so important and it's so relevant for today. And I'm just thrilled to have you on. And I'm so grateful because, you know, every time I talk to you, I both like, you know, remember to go back and read something or, you know, read some interviews with her. And also, you have a kind of optimism, despite all of history telling us the contrary. But, you know, no, I know what you mean, but you have a kind of optimism that really affects me. So I appreciate it. Well, let me just say this. It's not optimism. You know, it's hopefulness. Yeah. But, you know, it's a blue-soaked hope, right? Because, you know, and I say that, and I say that, you know, because I come out of a tradition where, you know, it made no sense to be optimistic. But you had to have a hope to see beyond the misery of today, to see beyond the opacity of one's condition. Otherwise, I would drink too much Irish whiskey.

Thank you so much for joining us. You're a smart pleasure. Thank you so much, Molly. And the podcast is History as Us. Hope everyone will go out and listen to it. Two episodes every Wednesday until the end of June. Andy. Molly.

Who is your fuck that guy? Oh, this was a tough week in the sense that there were a lot of possibilities, not in the sense that it was hard to find one. What I settled on was a whole bunch of people known as the Republican Party in Texas, a.k.a. the Texas GOP. They put out their official party platform over the weekend. And they had a bunch of stuff in there, including, let's see, President Biden was not legitimately elected. Yeah, that was something. Yeah. And referring to homosexuality as a, quote, abnormal life choice. They put some stuff in about abortion, calling for students. Now again, so this is in schools where I thought we were supposed to. to keep the government out of and stop, you know, this. They want schools to, quote, learn about the humanity of the pre-born child, unquote, as they

call it. Free birth. This is what we've got going on down in the large state of Texas. I can't call it great right now. I'm sorry, I would love to call it great. I have some good friends who are Texans, and I've enjoyed the time that I spent in that state. But your GOP is out of control down there. You're going along with the whole stop the steel going.

garbage and you're basically, for lack of a beer, you want gay people to be arrested, I guess, or whatever. And yeah, for those reasons and many, many more, the Texas GOP gets my fuck those guys for today. Also, they want secession, which while being a very good show. They always say that. Also, at this point, given the other stuff in their platform, maybe not a bad idea. All right. So my fuck that guy is Eric Grighton's.

You may know him from his numerous sexual assault and abuse allegations. And also he was, I don't know how far those that went, but he did lose custody of his kids. And there's an allegation that he hit one of his kids so badly that the kid lost a tooth. So he is running for Senate in Missouri because of course he is. And it's in August primary. This is a play we've seen before. A Republican decides that they're going to get the GOP base excited with something very inflammatory. Today it was an ad where he hunts rhinos, Republicans in name only with guns and machine guns.

And I think, like, you know, the ideas then the mainstream media will be up in arms, and Grighton will be able to fundraise off that. And he'll be able to win his primary by showing that he is, in fact, a real, real Trumpist and not one of those just very conservative people that we don't necessarily agree with, but that he's a real Trumpist. But one of the really kind of bleak things that happens when you have a situation like this is that he's, that he's a real Trumpist. But one of the really kind of bleak things that happens when you have a situation like this is that he's sending a pretty clear message that violence is good and that you could do violence against his political opponents. And you know what? Basically, as we've seen over since 2015 since Trump, when you send that message, people listen. So that is why he gets a hearty fuck you from me. This is not a subtle ad. There are no metaphors or similes or analogies going on in this ad.

He literally says, join the MAGA crew, get a rhino hunting permit. There's no bagging limit, no tagging limit, and it doesn't expire until we save our country. That is just straight up calling for people to kill as many quote unquote rhinos as they can. Like there's no cutiness about this. He's just saying it. And, you know, Facebook already pulled the ad. Twitter didn't pull it. They put a warning label on it that it does violate their rules about abusive behavior, but Twitter has determined that it may be in the public's interest for the tweet

to remain accessible. So they're leaving it up. And all of this, the Facebook ban, whatever, that's all baked in when they come up with these. Like, that's part of the strategy is we'll put this out, you know, it'll send a signal to our supporters. And then on top of that, we'll get banned by Facebook or something. And then we can talk about how the, you know, big tech Democrats want to cancel people like you and me. So it's all part of the plan, which still, I mean, you don't have a choice. You got to pull it. It's outright calling for violence and murder.

But it is also part of the plan. So there's almost like no winning here. And it's just this is the GOP in 2022. I wonder what would. I mean, I guess the thinking is that you should ignore it. You can't. No, I don't think you can. And I'm not sure you should.

but like I don't know. I don't know how you do that. But I wonder what the best way to sort of shut that down is. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, like you could ignore it if he was polling at 1%. Right. He's leading at 25% in polls. Well, and also you want it removed because it's violent.

And you want there to be accountability and that, you know, the less people that see that ad, the better it is for, you know, public safety. So it is, it's like, I'm not sure how you deal with it, where it gets the least publicity, but also the least eyes on it. Yeah, I mean, I think the only, like the, maybe the only way you do it is if you're, if you're tweeting about it or whatever, you don't need to retweet the actual ad. You can just, you know, so there's no reason to spread it, which is what he wants. And you can talk about it and say how disgusting it is without actually sharing it. And, you know, obviously people are then going to look it up or whatever, but at least is there an extra step there.

And it's not right in front of their face. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science. We'll 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. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens?

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