The Daily Beast Podcast - Bob Menendez’ Diet Might be Worse Than His Crimes

Episode Date: July 26, 2024

Sen. Bob Menendez ate at one particular D.C. steakhouse hundreds of times a year—and The New Abnormal guest host David Roth demands to know how. Then, a conversation with New Republic staff writer Alex Shepherd about Kamala Harris’ chances and his recent piece: “Donald Trump Is Now the Weaker Candidate.” Plus! Judd Legum, the founder and author of the newsletter Popular Information, joins the program to discuss the brazen—and often false—Republican attacks on Kamala Harris. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current Campbell News conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Kedden, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have today.

Senior editor at the New Republic, Alex Shepard, joins us to talk in depth about Joe Biden's decision to step down from the presidential campaign in how Vice President Harris is handling the transition. Then we'll talk to popular information, Jud Leger. We'll give us all the details on the right wings, more out there attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris. but first, let's have some fun. All right, new abnormal listeners, I am here today with a special guest co-host. Danielle is off gallivanting across the planet. So I have a special guest co-host here today. A gentleman by the name of David Roth, he is an editor at and co-owner of Defector.

He is co-host of the Distraction Podcast. And he, along with Jeb Lund, co-hosts the It's Christmas Town podcast, He's pretty much everywhere. Oh, he's at Flaming Hydra now. Oh, yeah. I'm all over the place. We need to get that in. So, David, welcome to the show and thank you so much for helping us out. Thanks for having me. It's nice to talk. All right. So let's start with, I guess it was Wednesday night, Joe Biden addressed the nation. And, you know, I guess it was already official that he was not going to seek re-election. But he gave the reasoning behind it. And he talked about that it had become clear to him that he needed to, quote, unite my party in this critical endeavor. He said, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes

personal ambition. So I decided the best way forward is to pass the torch to a new generation. It's the best way to unite our nation. And he said the cause of the nation is larger than any one of us. So I think that gives you a fair indication that his speech was about putting party over personal and about putting country above all. I watched this speech. And I had the same feeling I had when I watched him do the press conference after the NATO summit where I thought, you know, he's saying good things and the message is good. But he's just very clearly, he's not the best messenger anymore for those messages. And I thought the same thing when I watched him Wednesday night. And again, you know, I liked everything he said.

He talked about Supreme Court reform. He talked about a whole bunch of things. And really no shade to him. He's just, he's, you know, he's 81. and he sounds like it. And it really does feel like no matter how good the message is, if the messenger isn't great, then it's probably good that we have a different one now. Yeah, I absolutely think so.

I think that the sort of groundswell of enthusiasm around Kamala Harris is like some of it has to do with Kamala Harris and don't take anything away from her. Like it's been a pretty sure-footed first, I don't know, whatever, five days. as we record this of the campaign. So I think some of the enthusiasm has to do with her. And I think some of it also is just the removal of that feeling that you were talking about from the equation. Because he hasn't gotten some stuff wrong that I think is really bad, like unconscionably bad in the case of Israel and Gaza. But I also think that he's been a pretty good president.

It's just like the diminishment of it means that you're kind of watching him and hoping for not just that he's going to, you know, that this. will be a good day that we're getting the five out of 10 Biden instead of the one out of 10 Biden that we got from the debate. But those numbers only go down. He's 81 years old, you know? And so that feeling of anxiety and just kind of like trying to carry this thing over the line and then, you know, see what happens from there. Like that's a really difficult position just not just to run a campaign from, obviously, but to be a citizen from, I guess, it's really hard to feel the sort of not just like optimism like mourning in America shit, but like the basic optimism that you need to feel like you're not wasting your time paying attention to it, if you know that this is only about diminishment.

And by taking that out of there, I think you can see that like people are, you know, and I'm not going to make any predictions of which way the election goes or whatnot, not that anybody's asking for, you know, the internet's saddest Mets fan to make that prediction. But there is there is this sense to me of like, people want to hope. They want to believe that it could be. different. And, you know, now that's there. That, like, Biden was only ever going to be able to be so different because of just, you know, what happens to people as they age. So I'm glad that he was able to, I mean, he'd been talking about, you know, like some things are more important. We have to save democracy or whatever. Like, all of that's been true. I think it would be disastrous to like Donald Trump.

But this is really putting his money where his mouth is in a way that, like, I think I had not let myself believe was really possible. Yeah. No, I'm kind of with you, at least. I was at first, and then, you know, over the past few weeks, I started shifting just as I saw that obviously this story wasn't going to go away and everything about Biden was going to be about, is he staying in? He needs to drop out. So, you know, another senator today called for him to drop out. And suddenly you're running a campaign that is entirely about whether or not you are going to continue that campaign and not about issues or anything like that. My biggest fear with him dropping out was that the Democratic Party was going to Democratic Party and go to pieces and you'd have a bunch of people

supporting Pete Buttigieg and a bunch of people supporting Kamala Harris and a bunch of people supporting whatever, Josh Shapiro and probably Mike Bloomberg or something like that. And I am like unbelievably pleasantly surprised that that wasn't the case. You know, I've thought all along and we've talked about this on this podcast that if it weren't going to be Biden, if he was going to drop out, it had to be Harris at this. late date. I was not even remotely sure that was going to happen as sort of quickly and as thoroughly as it did. Yeah, because I think we've been primed. I mean, like, this is the other sort of issue with this is that, you know, as a fellow high volume news consumer, not to brag. It's everything that you're reading about this. All the, all the sourcing is from party elites. And then all of the, you know, that is sort of run through the filter of the, you know, the bigger newspapers that are trying to create this.

other sort of issue because they're like doing like TV recaps every day, you know, like they're not like talking about the thematic or the sort of Lord knows policy aspects of any of this. It's a question of like who's up and who's down today. And so I was dreading, I think even more than I was dreading the possibility of having to just like get together with a bunch of other sad people and carry this mummy across the finish line so that we can vote in another election in our lifetimes, which is really what it felt like for a while. The thing that I had been given to understand, I think, by a lot of the coverage, especially in the Times, but I mean the Post, Politico, whatever, was the idea that, like, when that space opened up, that it was going to be chaos and that it was going to be filled with just the worst ideas that Nancy Pelosi has ever had. And that wasn't it. I mean, like, I don't believe that every party elite or that, like, every former elected

or whatever was necessarily on board for Kamala from the jump. I've seen no indication to that. And yet when it was time to get in line, everybody got in line. The less inspiring version of this was Bernie making noise in 2020 and then the entire party cohering around Biden and just ending that or was less inspiring to me as somebody that supported Bernie Sanders. But it is also like a reminder of like what the actual remaining institutional strengths of the Democratic Party are.

Like a lot of times will look at the way that they are messaging stuff or the way that they're behaving and just find it impossible to understand the thought process that generated those behaviors. But in this case, I think it's like so far, and you know, like you keep waiting for the other shoe to drop on this just because, not just because it's the Democrats, but because, you know, it's American politics. Something stupid generally happens. Right. Of course. But so far, it seems like the response, regardless of what people want, is actually, you know, and starting, I think, in some ways with Biden making a decision to drop out, shows that they're meeting. the moment insofar as like they're actually taking their rhetoric seriously. Like if you really cared

enough and you really meant that like this could be the most important election that the future of democracy is on the line and nothing less, if you do that and then you go have a convention where you're, there's a fucking bathing suit competition and everybody's like jacking around trying to like impress Lin-Manuel Miranda. Like at that point, like I don't take you seriously. Yeah. That's you treating it like a TV show. Yeah. And you know, like so far like if you're going to say that it's too important to treat like that, then you have to do it, and they've actually done it. Yeah, it's been wild. Let's move on to the other side and talk about not so much Donald Trump, but his running mate, J.D. Vance. Yeah, I love him. Great stuff. I just like looking at pictures of

them, you know. You've been a longtime fan. You're not a Johnny come lately on this. You're not jumping on the bandwagon. Before he was playing arenas. I saw him at the gold dollar in Cass Corridor. Yeah, you used to see him at little holes in the wall in Brooklyn. According to polling, he is the first non-incumbent vice presidential nominee to have a net negative favorable rating after convention since 1980. So I don't follow politics very closely. Is that bad, Andy? You know what? I've been doing this podcast a while now, so I have a little bit of a handle on the jargon. And yes, it is bad, David. His net favorable rating is minus six points. He's not having the best week in the world.

There have been a bunch of people are surfacing old tape of him saying very nasty things about Mr. Trump. Being very unfair to Mr. Trump, David. It's been very nasty and unfair. Yeah, which is to me, like, I know he also said a lot of stuff about how if you don't have kids, you shouldn't get to vote and families where they're like a blended family of divorce, whoever is in a real family. I know that people get mad about that. And that's fine.

That's their prerogative. But for me, from my perspective, if you were nasty or rude about Mr. Trump at any point and you haven't made a fulsome apology. To me, that's a deal breaker. And that probably explains the, what did you say, negative nine? Negative six. Negative six, right. Sorry, yeah, I'm rounding up. I'm sure that number is going up as we speak. But this is, it's a, you know, this isn't a live broadcast. So it's hard. I wonder if there's any sense in which the old Trump, because I feel like at this point,

every Republican, more or less at some point, like has a comment about Trump. When he started running where they were like, well, he's disgusting. because he is. They've all had to repudiate that in the most humiliating way. At this point, like, that's kind of old news for Vance. You know, like, he went to get Trump's endorsement in his Senate race in 2022. Like, he had to go to Mar-a-Lago and fucking do all the stuff and be like, you know, I really do believe that you're the best golfer of all the rich people, sir. You know, that like, once you've had to do all that shit, it's like, what new humiliations would there be? No, for sure. And I've already seen talk, as I'm sure you have, as a self-proclaimed

major consumer of news media. Guys, can we shorten that to newsie? No. Oh, yes, as Jesse points out, we're just going to call you a newsie. Because I'm always singing while hanging off a lamp post. Exactly. Exactly. You got yourself one of those caps.

Extra, extra, hey, Mr. J.D. Vance said that Mr. Trump was a pig. You can't see it, but I'm flipping you a shiny dime. Thanks. But we're already seeing talk from, you know, the quote-unquote GOP insiders, because I don't think anyone's actually put their name to this yet. That picking Vance was a big mistake and that it was, and not to pat myself on the back, but it was, as some prognosticators said, it was maybe a little bit of hubris, a little bit

of, we are so sure we've got this in the bag, that we can pick a guy who is not particularly charismatic and whose main claim to fame is he wrote a book that is probably filled with lies. But he's, you know, at least in his current incarnation, he is an ideologue. He will get out there and fight for Christian America, et cetera. Even a week after the convention, there seems to be some buyers' remorse. Yeah. I mean, some of that I think is kind of just baked into like who are we talking about here, you know, like not even about Vance, like who is indeed a dud. Like, he's sucks and he's identifiable as a dud from a hundred paces. But like the insiders that we're talking about here are like the crabiest crabs in a barrel that we have like ever seen as political

observers. Because this is like to make it in the, you know, and I don't want to say a single good thing about any of the like participants in the Brooks Brothers riot or whatever that like every generation of Republicans has produced creeps and chuds. But to make it in the Trump universe, It's like you have to be one of those like deep sea creatures that lives near like a gaseous vent and has learned to like just eat sulfur out of the seawater. That's how you survive. But like that's what all of these people are. Like they all hate each other. They all completely understand their jobs as backstabbing each other and sucking up to the boss.

So in this case, it's like you don't want to say it was inevitable that this was going to happen to Vance. But like I sort of feel like it would be happening to some extent to anyone. but it is happening most hilariously and most obviously to him because like he really does suck and all of his ideas really are deeply unpopular. And, you know, whatever, just that idea that he got the job because he was the oiliest supplicant or whatever is, you can't say he's not getting what he deserves to some extent. To the full extent, I would say he deserves every little bit of what comes his way. I guess the surprise is how quickly it happened.

But also that's obviously because of what happened on the Democratic side. And I suspect you would not see all these Republican bottom feeders publicly trashing vans if it were still Joe Biden running. Yeah. Because if they were, I mean, even beyond the whatever, I don't want to give these people credit for being not just strategic, but like tactical. I just don't think they're generally just out there doing whatever feels good at that moment.

But I think that like when they were projecting certainty that they were going to win in a landslide, at that point, it kind of doesn't matter who the vice president is. As soon as they get scared and they're like, oh, my God, this is. the like the one person on this ticket with a functioning brain is like that dude like i completely understand the anxiety and i have enjoyed watching them squirm so while you were talking david i was just randomly googling j d vans find anything new has his approval rating got down since we started talking no but again just randomly i put in the word couch interesting oh because to see if he had been endorsed by uh former cleveland browns and university of kentucky quarterback tim

couch. Well, that and I also thought, you know, he seems like a guy who might have both Raymore and Flanagan's backing. Oh, yeah. He's good. Huge. But that's not what I found, David. Oh, really? Well, I'm sure that you didn't find anything disgusting. Well, remember Rick Santorum? Yeah, sure. Oh, good guy. Yeah. So the first thing I saw was an associated press story that says, no, J.D. Vance did not have sex with a couch. Oh, okay. Well, that article has now been removed. They had to retract. They were able to demonstrate. They proved conclusively that he did have sex with a couch. That is really the only explanation I can think of. They claimed it didn't go through the proper editorial process. Again, as a newsie, can you explain this whole J.D. Vance couch thing to me?

Oh, I love doing it. I explained it to a coworker the other day and I was like, just the facts of this are enough to get me written up to HR. Like, she did ask. All right. So the story is a poster, did a post claiming that on page, pages 179 to 181 of Hillbilly Elegy, the best-selling memoir that J.D. Vance wrote about how disgusting everyone that is poorer than him is, that he claims in, well, the Post claimed that Vance has a story that spread over those pages that involves him turning a latex glove inside out, putting it between two couch cushions and humping it, the glove, sexually humping it. Uh-huh. That section does not appear in the book. That is just straight up was made up.

And it was done artfully in the sense that it's a book that anyone who read it probably feels kind of bad about having read it. A lot of people that own it have not read it. It seems plausible enough. And, you know, if you've read Port Noise Complaint and stuff, you're like, I don't need to do it different in Ohio. You know, it's like people do be humping things. Sure. So anyway, that story, I am impressed that it broke contain from that being something that I saw people joking about on social media. media to the AP cosign, even if it was, and Snopes had something on it too, that any of the, like, once you try to debunk something like that, you have made it permanent.

Yes. Like, I can understand why the AP felt moved to take it down, but that is far funnier and far worse for J.D. Vance than leaving it up as far as I'm concerned. It is one of those sort of social media posts or memes, whatever you want to call it. That really did, like you said, it left containment. I'm looking at a search page. And I see J.D. Vance faces most embarrassing rumor from Yahoo. I see also from Yahoo, AP declares that J.D. Vance does not have sex with a couch. Then from Mediaite, I see AP takes down debunked of claim J.D. Vance fucked a couch. Which even if you're somebody, you've read a lot of headlines in your life, that Mediaite one, when you read that, you're just like, oh, they bunked it. They proved it. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It is just absolutely wild how that story spread. And, you know, as we were saying earlier, honestly, it just, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Yeah.

I mean, this is the thing. I don't like the idea of anybody getting bullied by fake news shit online. I think we both sort of expected that this kind of thing would happen in an uglier way, like to the Biden campaign, you know, that they would be just like, and because the people that would be doing that are greasy little freaks, even by the standards of people that post online, it would have been uglier. This is just the right version of like, I think it sort of. speaks to a veteran poster's taste.

The tradecraft is really good. I, again, can't get over citing the page numbers. Just excellent work. And then it's something that is like, it's perverted, but it's not disgusting. It's just bad. You know, it's like the sort of thing you wouldn't want to put in a memoir, but they're not like accusing him of like, whatever, having kidnapped a bunch of people. It's not like legally actionable.

It is just the right temperature of humiliating, unshakable fake news. And, you know, again, I would have to say that the, uh, The person that's receiving it, the person that wants to basically make it 1850 again in the United States. Sorry, man. It's your fault for wanting to be vice president and having all these bad ideas. Yeah. It does sound, though, David, troublingly like you think that a couch is capable of consent. Is there somebody you forgot to ask?

Yeah. That's on me. I apologize to any. Like, I will actually. I'm going to do some outreach in the sexual. I think you should. Yeah. I'm going to do a press conference.

with Jennifer of Jennifer convertibles. What I said, you'll love it at Levitts. I didn't mean. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal staff writer at the New Republic, Alex Shepard, whose most recent piece entitled Donald Trump is now the weaker candidate. Beating the former president isn't hard if you have a nominee. who can press the case against him. Joe Biden wasn't that person.

Kamala Harris is. Alex, unpack it for us because we have had a seismic shift in the political landscape with the Democratic nominee that kind of we're still feeling the reverberations of and I think we'll be probably

for the next week or so. For three weeks, it had been nonstop news about Joe Biden, about his age, about him aging. And even though him and Donald Trump are only a couple of handful of years apart, it has been something that the media has beat down,

the Republicans have beat down, and finally, President Joe Biden has stepped aside making the pathway for Kamala Harris, his vice president, very clear. Talk to us about now it being a major pivot to guess who has the oldest candidate in the race and guess who is the weakest? Yeah.

So I think if you look at what's happened over the last month or so, it was really the media and Democratic political elites catching up to where voters, and including Democratic voters, have been for a really long time. Voters have for at least two years now said with overwhelming and growing majorities they thought that Joe Biden was too old. And I think what Democrats saw in the media to an extent as well on the debate on June 27th was a candidate who was not capable of delivering a re-elect.

message. And I think Biden's efforts to kind of clean up that performance over the last month only made that clear that he was just someone who's always going to have stumbles, regardless of how serious you thought those were, that would kind of overwhelm the message that he was trying to deliver. And this was a huge drag. It had been a huge drag on Biden for a very long time. And now the Democrats don't have to deal with that anymore. And not just that, they have a candidate in Kamala Harris, who has run, you know, relatively unsuccessful, but still capable presidential campaign before. She has been very strong on abortion.

But most importantly, she's someone who can just go out and deliver speeches that will be covered for their content and not for her mixing up a name or her losing her train of thought. And that, I think one just clears up the Democrats' biggest vulnerability. But also, it allows them to go out and make the case that they have people who can capably run the country because what they were running into for the last two years was voters saying, look, you know, we like a lot of Democratic positions, particularly on issues like abortion. They're concerns about inflation, but people generally think that the economy is okay,

or at least they like the full employment quality of it. But what they did not like was the fact that the president was showing signs of aging and that they worried that he couldn't be president for another four years. And that's all out the window now. I want to read one of the parts of your piece, which says this, Trump is a deeply unpopular, eminently, beatable politician. He's a man that most Americans do not like and do not want to vote for. We say this, I believe it, yet having watched the Republican National Convention, having listened to corporate media fawn over Donald Trump and the Republicans during their clown show of a week, do you really believe that he is deeply unpopular? I think there are two ways of looking at this.

And one is that Donald Trump has one of the highest floors of any political candidate that we've ever seen. So there's a sizable base there. It's probably about 30-ish percent of the electorate that will just follow him anywhere he goes. And a lot of those people are non-traditional voters do, so they're hard to poll. And that's how you end up in situations like in 2020 where a candidate with a 40% approval rating still garners 70 plus million votes, 74 million votes, I think. But the other way of looking at it is he's got a really, really low ceiling. His popularity numbers have always basically been about the same. They hover between 42 and 44%.

Unfavorability number is usually between 52 and 54%. People do not like the chaos that he brings. They do not like his positions on issues like abortion. They have grave concerns about his ability to run the country in a crisis. I think that those concerns were borne out to a large extent during the pandemic. And I think that what Democrats need to do or what they did successfully, in 2020 and not in 2016 is run a live body who doesn't have severe electoral risks in a similar way that Trump does, right? So Hillary Clinton was somebody that polarized voters in the exact same

way that Donald Trump does. Joe Biden wasn't that figure in 2020, but he was in 2022. Now, there are questions about Harris's popularity, but she is the opportunity now to, I think, go out and make a really forceful case that she can run the country, but also that she represents a party that has values that align more strongly with a larger group of people. To the point of popularity, within hours of the announcement, 44,000 black women gathered on a Zoom call and raised a million and a half dollars and began their grassroots organizing for the vice president of the United States. And while I was lamenting Democrats' ability to be able to fall in line,

they have done so in a miraculous way. And I wonder if, you know, if that enthusiasm do you think will continue and kind of push us, right, through the next three and a half months? Like, what is it that you think that the vice president on top of prosecuting the case against a convicted 34 count felon that she needs to do in order to woo the supposed unicorn swing state voter? Yeah, I mean, I think that's a great question. I think most issue just needs to get out there. I think the convention is going to be something. I mean, I've covered more of them than I would like to say. They're almost always drab and boring affairs.

I think that one of the reasons why the unity narrative took off in the media that you're talking about earlier at the RNC was just that, well, you know, there's usually no stories that come out of the convention. So we'll just have this kind of, you know, it's a party that's holding hands and singing kumbaya about deporting millions of people and destroying reproductive rights. But, well, that's a story that's different than, you know, know, the boring narratives that we usually have here. But I think mostly she just needs to kind of ride this unity narrative.

In the lead up to Biden's announcement, one of the things that he and his allies were trying to do was essentially threaten a kind of murder suicide, that, you know, if you pushed Biden out, the coalition would be divided. You would still get the Democrats in disarray narrative. And I think for those of us, you know, myself very much included that wanted to see Biden step aside, the sort of outpouring of unity that we've seen over the last 24 hours. is a really strong sign that the Democrats can come together and just push the case that the party itself is all aligned behind Harris. They're all kind of rowing in the same direction, that this

month-long period of chaos and extreme chaos was an outlier. I think the other thing that people are going to want to see is just a sign that she's grown since the 2020 campaign, that she understands the sort of coalition part. And I think that that, again, just by virtue of being vice president, that that should be easier. In 2020, this was the post-Bernie, post-Hillary failure, Democratic primary. And those candidates were all kind of guessing about where the party's positions were and a host of issues. I think at least in terms of domestic policy, Democrats are pretty aligned right now.

Biden has run a really strong kind of industrial policy, full employment-focused, domestic policy. And I think that Harris can pick that up and run with it. And again, while she has one big liability, which is that she was given the, arguably, well, I guess the worst job in the country is vice president, but the second worst is borders are. But I think that she can still use that experience as a way of saying that, you know, she understands these issues and that going back to the Trump years, you know, is just a risk that's not worth taking for the country. Yeah. You know, one of the things, and you just brought it up,

and I want to unpack a little bit more, was her candidacy in 2020. And how much of a different space that we find ourselves in four years later, you know, you said, in your piece that she ran a relatively, quote, mediocre run for the presidency five years ago. What do you mean by that and how do you think that where we are, where America is, finds itself in a different place? And she finds herself in a different place, obviously, having been vice president for the last three and a half years. Yeah, I mean, I think the big issue with Harris's primary campaign was that it raised questions about her capability as an administrator, but also as someone who can synthesize disparate strains within the party to come up with

winnable positions, right? And I think that there were concerns about her ability to handle foreign policy and to a lesser extent domestic policy as well. That I think are worth scrutiny and are certainly pretty serious. She's never been, she's a prosecutor. Joe Biden's policy chops are overrated, but she's not a wonk in that way. Nevertheless, I think what we have seen particularly since the midterms or a little bit before, is Harris embracing a larger and more out front role on a host of different issues? And she's been a capable communicator. She's always been a capable communicator. And unlike her last primary campaign, you know, she's inheriting a campaign infrastructure. There are going to be some changes at the top, which are probably more

than warranted at this point. But for the most part, that's already there. The policy that she's running on is, for the most part, Biden administration policy. I think you're going to see, I hope that you're going to see some moderation on issues like Gaza. But for the most part, you know, she is running on Biden's policy. But unlike Biden, I think she can kind of capably stand up and make an affirmative case for that policy, which again, is not what we saw at the debate. And it's not really what we saw in any of the sort of interviews that Biden did after that either. I want to switch gears a little bit to another piece that you did staying obviously on the campaign trail. But you did back in June lift up a story about how the billionaires have captured Donald Trump. And, you know, and this is, again,

something, you know, I appreciate your reporting so much because this is something that was not lifted up by corporate mainstream media, which was Donald Trump essentially inviting a bunch of CEOs to Mar-a-Lago oil tycoons as you would and basically saying, look, give me a billion dollars and I'll reverse every single, you know, Biden policy that there was. And basically making it very clear what many have articulated on the Democrat side, which is that Donald Trump is running a presidency that has a for sale sign in front of it, that every piece of it, he's saying, do me a favor, though. It's the Zelensky call on steroids. So talk to us about the dubiousness of his pleas to billionaires, but also how they continue to line up for him. Yes. I think, you know,

this was a story back in June. It was based on reporting in the Washington Post and some conversations that I'd had with folks in that arena too, that basically Trump had gone to a bunch of oil and gas magnates and said, hey, you guys give me a billion dollars and I will reverse whatever environmental regulation that you want. In some ways, that is as Donald Trump has often done throughout his political career, taking the subtext of American politics and making it text as only he can. But I think it's a revealing window into the way that he thinks. And look, his fundraising has since then, and particularly since his conviction in New York, has increased, but this is someone who needs a lot of money and he needs a lot of money for existential reasons,

right? He's facing a number of criminal charges that have bankrupted him or came close to bankrupt him. They threatened to. He could end up in prison. I'm a little skeptical of that possibility, but nevertheless, he is taking it very seriously. And the only way to make sure that all this goes away and that, again, he can use the presidency as he had. between 2016 and 2017 and 2021 to make sure his businesses benefit in various ways is to regain the presidency. And I think that, you know, if you look at what's happened since then, yes, his small donor donations that skyrocketed, but these stories haven't stopped, right? There are still signals that Miriam Adelson is backing him because of possible promises

that he made about allowing Israel to annex the West Bank. And then you saw this real outpouring of financial support from tech billionaires, most notably Elon Musk. But also the selection of J.D. Vance suggests an alignment with Peter Thiel. And if you look at what these people believe and how they think the government should run, I think you can see the outlines of what a Trump presidency would be. And I think that a lot of this look is just classic Republican plutocracy stuff, that what they want, you know, they are extremely alarmed by Biden's push for a capital gains tax. I think in the tech side, they really, really do not like Lena Khan, the FTC commissioner,

and other folks that are responsible for various regulations. And because they see artificial intelligence as a financial windfall, they do not want to see that regulated. But again, with Musk as well, right, you can just look at his timeline and see the kinds of priorities that he's advancing, he's obsessed with, you know, healthcare efforts for children. Oh, Lord.

Yeah, right. And again, because Trump is actively going out there and promising to build this administration around the priorities of billionaires, what you're seeing is a real horror show. And that's what I want folks to be able. to focus on, right, as we go into this election, is that Donald Trump, like, and I think, again, just to go back to the brave and courageous move that President Biden made by stepping aside, again, is also a direct contrast to Donald Trump, who will never put the country above his own

needs, who will never be creating policies that are about and centered around the American people. It is about what the 1% can do for him and what he in a place of power will then, in turn do for the 1%. And it is a constant, like, revolving door of quid pro quo. You wash my back and I'll wash yours. Who cares if the water runs out by the time it gets to, you know, the 99%. And so I wonder, again, you know, just going back to the ability of Democrats in the coming weeks as we head into convention to make this case extraordinarily clear, do you see Alex like any holes in which, the Republicans will have an easy win or an easy shot at bringing down the VP in the way that they were able to weaponize Biden's age and aging process to make Donald Trump seem as if somehow he was like this robust 35-year-old man. Yeah, I mean, on that point, I think it's worth highlighting a couple of things, right? And I get it. And I think in the piece I read about Harris on Sunday, I acknowledge some democratic frustrations with the fact that, you know, Trump is only four years younger than Biden. I mean, look, Biden just looks and sounds older. And I think to some extent we have to realize that that's what's driving the bus here. However, with with Trump at the debate, one of the things that stood out to me in between, you know, my panic texts with, you know, my editors and various Democratic sources.

You know, it dawned on me that Trump himself was a severely diminished figure. I think his debate performances in 2016 were wildly overrated in a lot of ways. But, you know, he knew when to strike. And what you saw in that debate was Biden flailing around for a long time. And Trump just also seeming kind of lost. And I think that, you know, the Trump from eight years ago wouldn't have let that opportunity go to waste. But similarly, his speech at the RMC was just kind of rambling and weird. He's never been the clearest communicator in some ways.

He favors a kind of stream of conscious rambling approach to public speaking that's occasionally enticing, but often just kind of off-putting and weird. But what you're seeing is a guy who looks and sounds kind of like Joe Biden did four years ago when guess what? He was the same age as Donald Trump. So I think that there is an opening here, at least for the Democrats, to say, hey, look, you know, we should have concerns not just about this guy's, you know, moral fitness for office, but also his physical and mental fitness as well. And I think that the other thing to sort of

tie it all together is that, you know, I think for better and for worse, the Democrats are really wedded to this kind of pro-democracy message. And that's all well and good. But at the end of the day, they still have a really strong argument that has worked for Democrats for decades, right, which is that the Republican Party is the party of big business. They're the party of rich people, they do not care one iota for anyone who isn't a millionaire or a billionaire. And, you know, Trump himself has tried to use that to his advantage saying, look, I won't take advantage of you because I'm already rich. Like, I don't need help here. But what you're seeing and what you saw when he was president before is a Republican who largely governs like a normal Republican, right? His biggest

accomplishment as president was cutting the corporate tax rate. The idea that this is not a kind of bog standard heritage administration and practice, you know, is ridiculous. And I think that Democrats often lose the plot with him because he's so zany and crazy and authoritarian. But like at the end of the day, you know, I think the most effective message, and it's the one that Democrats used to win in the 2018 midterms and to kind of win in the 22 midterms was just that, look, voters don't like Republicans. They know how their policies help rich people. And so the strongest argument to make is just Actually, Trump isn't all that special. He might talk a big game, but at the end of the day, he just wants to cut his own taxes.

Yeah. Well, we will have to leave it there today. Alex, I greatly appreciate your reporting that you're doing. And just I can't stress enough how important it is for people to stay completely and totally informed. Please tell folks quickly how they can follow you and follow your writing. Yeah, I'm at Alex underscore Shepard. And I write at new republic.com, usually a few times we

Amazing. Thank you, Alex. Thank you. We've all seen the big attacks the GOP has launched on Vice President Kamala Harris in the days following President Biden dropping out of the race as she ascended to the presumptive Democratic nominee, calling her a DEI candidate, among other racist things, saying that because she hasn't born children, she's not qualified to be president, among other sexist things, her laugh, et cetera. Here to tell us about the other kinds of attacks she'll face in the months ahead is former think progress editor-in-chief, Judd Legham, the founder and author of Popular Information, an independent newsletter dedicated to accountability journalism, which you can find and subscribe to at popular. Dot info. Judd, thanks so much for coming on. Thanks for having me.

So you wrote a guide to these coming attacks at Popular Information. I want to go through them because quite a few of them, in addition to being false, require explanation. So let's start with a tweet from the Trump War Room that read, Kamala Harris helped raise money for a far-left organization that bailed a rioter who shot at police out of jail. Ignoring the atrocious grammar there, what are they referring to? Yeah, this one is interesting because there is a certain truth to it in that Kamala Harris, this was around 2020, did tweet a link and encouraged people to donate. to an organization called the Minnesota Freedom Fund, which helps people who need assistance with cash bail. Now, bail, I think it's important to note kind of at the outset, is not designed to protect the public from dangerous people. It's designed to ensure that people who are accused of

crimes show back up in court. If there's somebody who's dangerous, the judge is not supposed to allow bail. So anyway, Harris made this tweet. She's soliciting donations to the Minnesota Freedom Fund. The Minnesota Freedom Fund gets a lot of money, not just because of Harris's tweet, but because a lot of people were encouraging donations to this fund because of the protests around George Floyd and a lot of people were getting arrested. As it turns out, not a lot of those people even needed bail, but the Minnesota Freedom Fund ended up with a lot of money, a couple million dollars. And they did pay $75,000 to get a man named Jaliel Stallings out of jail. And Jaliel Stallings was charged with attempted murder for allegedly shooting at the police. The issue is this was four years ago. And now we know what really happened because there was a trial.

And as it turns out, Stallings, who is not a rioter, as they described in this, but actually an army veteran who has a gun permit was involved in a protest, was from an unmarked white van shot at with rubber bullets. He had no idea what was going on, fired back in an effort to defend himself. He then realized that this was a police fan, dropped his weapon. The police then beat him up very badly, fracturing his face. When this went to trial, he was found not guilty because the police admitted they did not identify themselves. And also, their story was completely contradicted by the dash cam video and other surveillance video. After that, one of the police officers who beat up Stallings actually was charged and then pled guilty to felony assault for beating up Stallings.

Stallings also sued the city and got a $1.5 million settlement. So anyway, what this is really about is a story about police brutality. And Jaliel Stallings absolutely should not have been in jail any longer than he was. He shouldn't have been in jail at all because he was a crime victim. Right. Not somebody who perpetrated a crime. So it shows how a tweet, or I guess we call them a post now on X, can actually be mostly factually true if you look at the individual facts, but there couldn't be anything more dishonest than what they're doing. And this one, they're continuing to push, too. I mean, it's really incredible. In fact, I saw there was a subsequent tweet since I wrote this article that actually showed a picture of Stallings. And it shows his,

you know, his faces all bruised and, you know, his eyes are kind of swollen shut. It's because he was just beaten by the police. It's a pretty incredible attack. Yeah, that's absolutely amazing. Talk about another tweet. I still call them tweets. The RNC research account tweeted that Harris wants to ban the eating of red meat. Where is this coming from? This is from a CNN, Hall. It's interesting because you can actually just click the video to debunk this tweet. It's trying to suggest that she wants to ban red meat. Actually, in this video, she talks repeatedly about how she likes to eat cheeseburgers. And the point she is making is that the government should look to educate people about the climate impacts of their diet and encourage people to make informed

choices, but not ban certain behaviors. But they take that word, ban certain behaviors and say, oh, well, that's what she was saying. When actually the opposite. That's like the old joke about movie reviews when they quote a reviewer, but they have an ellipsis in the middle of a sentence that completely changes the tone of, like the movie reviewer was saying something not nice, but they avoid that by taking out words and replacing them with an ellipsis. Yeah, that's just incredible. Fox News is Guy Benson, who I used to know, and really he should know better and used to know better, he tweeted out a 2019 headline from NBC News saying that Harris, quote, wants to end private health insurance. Regardless of how you feel about this issue, whether you think we should

end private health insurance or whether you think we should not, it's simply not true that she said that, right? Yeah, this was a sort of mini controversy that came up in the 2020 presidential campaign. Obviously, Bernie Sanders was a very prominent contender in that campaign in the Democratic primary, and he was a big, a single-payer health care person, still is, as far as I know. And they were, all of the candidates were asked this question, who here would abolish their private health insurance in favor of a government-run plan? And Harris raised her hand. Now, after this happened, she clarified that.

what she thought the question meant was, would she personally be willing to give up her private health insurance for a government run plan? And she was willing to do that. She did not think that the question meant, do you oppose all private health insurance? And she clarified that she actually would continue to support supplemental health insurance, the ability to buy supplemental health insurance, even in the existence of a government run plan. That's something that's actually very common in Europe and countries where they do have government health insurance. People do still buy private plans to handle things that aren't necessarily covered by the government health insurance. It kind of depends on how comprehensive it is of how big a world that kind of

private health insurance plays. But that was her position. And it's sort of this tweet is kind of taking a headline that was written in the middle of a little confusion and pretending like that's her actual position when it's not. And as you point out in your piece that most people, or at least many people, took the question the same way that Harris did, right? Yeah. I think if you look at it, it's pretty confusing. And it seems to be more, they're talking about who here would abolish their private health insurance, like the one that they have. Right. So it seems like that was a very fair interpretation of the question. Yeah, absolutely. One more from your piece. Talk about an ad, the official GOP Twitter account put out,

claiming that, quote, as a prosecutor in San Francisco, Harris allowed illegal immigrant drug dealers to enter job training and have their criminal records wiped clean. This was actually a pretty successful program that Harris was backing and started called Back on Track. and it basically looked to take young people who were first-time drug offenders and who agreed to plead guilty and diverting them into job training programs rather than jail. You know, the idea being instead of giving people who are caught up in drugs who are young and setting their whole life on a path where they're not going to really be able to enter the legitimate job market, let's give them a second chance and try to get them on the right track, back on track. And so it was successful, reduced recidivism rates to 10% was also a lot cheaper,

as it turns out to give people job training and to send them to jail. Now, the program was not intended for undocumented immigrants because they could not work legally, even if they got job training. So it really wasn't supposed to enroll them. There was one undocumented immigrant who was able to enroll, and he, while subsequently stole a woman's purse, the woman jumped onto the hood of a car, got injured. It wasn't a good thing, but Harris acknowledged that this person was admitted to the program in error. She said that she would put in place safeguards so that undocumented immigrants wouldn't be admitted again. And this is then spun by the GOP account in this attack ad as saying, that, you know, Harris was really purposely taking immigrant, undocumented immigrant drug dealers

and putting them into drug training on purpose. Right. The image that they put along with this is this car that's overturned and completely smashed. I did a reverse image search on this, and it is not from the incident that happened in July 2008. It actually is an image from earlier this year of a one-car crash in San Francisco. So the whole thing is just, it's a Willie Horton-style attack. And I think we're going to see quite a few of these in the days to come. Yeah. And I want to talk about that phrase, a Willie Horton-style attack. I suspect most of our listeners are old enough to know what that means, but give a quick rundown of what

that means and what you think we're going to see in the coming months. There's a very famous ad that was produced by supporters of George H.W. Bush, the first Bush, in his 19. 88 presidential campaign against Dukakis. And it basically is about this man, Willie Fortin, who was a convicted murderer and he committed rape while he was furloughed from prison under a program that was in place in Massachusetts when Dukakis was governor. It really played on a lot of racial stereotypes. It wasn't a program that Dukakis himself had put into place. It was something that was existing. And obviously it was, you know, this is somebody who committed, committed rape. So it's, it wasn't something that was it all positive. But the idea of basically,

you know, juxtaposing Dukakis and this, you know, menacing black man and sort of the idea that he's going to unleash these people, you know, on the public is just a very racially charged way to engage in politics. And I. I think, you know, we're already seen its early days, but we're already seeing, you know, Republicans take that tactic and try to apply it to Harris, especially since she has this career as a prosecutor and then also as attorney general. So there's, you know, people commit crimes, even if you're a good attorney general or a good prosecutor. And it's not that hard to sort of link up those kinds of people with those prompts. Yeah, and we've already seen articles about how Republican leaders are

warning party members against using racist and sexist attacks against her. If you were a betting man, would you place a large wager on them being able to actually do that? It doesn't seem to be going great so far. No, it doesn't. It seems like every day there's another member of Congress or, you know, another Republican elected official or commentator who's making these claims that, you know, Harris is a DEI vice president or, you know, some other racially charged attack. I saw Vance claim that, you know, she's never had a real job. She's just lived off a government paycheck, government salary, which is a really weird and I would say racially charged way to describe somebody who was, you know,

United States Senator, a state attorney general, a prosecutor, you know, people don't go around with public to public school teachers and say, oh, you're just taking advantage of the government and if you've never had a real job, it's a real job. But, yeah, I think we'll see more of it. Yeah, and also, I mean, she was a prosecutor and an attorney general, which are jobs that Republicans are supposed to like. Yeah. And I think in a lot of ways, she was fairly conservative in those roles or I don't think she was one of the types of folks that people, you know, like to characterize as sort of soft on crime. She didn't have, I would say, aggressively progressive policies in these roles. I think it's pretty fair to say she was moderate. Yeah, for sure. And you brought up the J.D.

Vast thing. And he basically said that she's done nothing but collect a check. And I saw that. And my first thought was, oh, I guess there's the unsaid word of. the day comes before check there and it's welfare. Because to me, that sounded exactly like what, that was sort of the tie he was trying to make. Yes, I think that's right. And it's interesting because, you know, what has, what has J.D. Bates really done? He's been in, he's been in the Senate for a year. He received checks, not welfare checks, but checks from Peter Thiel and others. And then he took those checks and split them up and gave them to some other people. That's his experience for what it's worth, but Harris has a resume that's much more typical of somebody who's running for

president or vice president. All of what you said is what strikes me as weird about even trying the DEI candidate stuff other than the fact that it's just another word for, well, to be kind, it's another word for she's black. The other thing that I want to talk to you about, these attacks on her not having children. Tell me if I'm crazy or not, the fact that she already has two stepchildren, and even if she didn't, I feel like this attack is going to backfire. I don't think it's wishful thinking on my part. I legitimately think stuff like this is going to turn off a lot of voters, including a lot of these mythical undecided voters.

Am I crazy? Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And I think it's because the issue of children, and I think people know this because of their own experience, the experience of people that they know, is much more complex than just, I don't have children because I hate children. There's no reason to suspect that Harris believes that. But there's people who have fertility issues. There's people who haven't been able to find the right partner.

There's people who haven't been able to get into the place in their lives where they feel comfortable that they could give children the support that they would want to give them. So just saying that if you haven't gotten to that point in your life or you're never able to get to that point in your life, that your life is somehow less valuable, I think it's offensive to a lot of people, either because it matches their own. experience, or if it doesn't match your own experience, everyone knows someone who has gone through those kinds of struggles. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, good. Well, I'm glad to know that if I am crazy, I'm not alone. Judd, thank you so much for coming on and walking us through all these,

and particularly your explanation of these various attacks and what they actually mean and the reality of what the situations were is so necessary. Thanks again. Thanks for having me. Andy, who is your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy. My fuck that. guy is it's someone, it feels like someone you would write about in a sports context in the sense that it's, it's someone who, she was a big name for a while, and then we heard nothing from her. And now she's trying to pull off that sort of late comeback and be relevant again. The dark Scott Casimir return. Yes, exactly. It feels like someone who was on the Mets and really struggled. And then the Mets traded him for like a gumball machine. And then five years later, he was winning the

Sy Young Award. Yeah, yeah. Although I don't think she's going to win the equivalent of the Cy Young Award here, but she's trying. Okay. And I'm talking about Kim Davis. Kim Davis, you may remember she was a county clerk who ended up being thrown in jail because she refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, which was against the law for her to do.

And we haven't heard from her since then. And now she has filed a brief or the legal team Liberty Council. That sounds legitimate. I'm sure there's no Coke money behind that shape. In this day and age, if you see a group named Liberty Council or Alliance for Liberty. Basically, any of the things that you think would sound good if you didn't follow politics, you're like, an alliance that defends my freedom? Thank you. Exactly.

Yeah. But now you know instantly that it's a bunch of people who have questionable collections of old war memorabilia. Yeah. So they have filed a brief arguing that she was entitled to religious accommodation when she discriminated against saying. same-sex couples. In this appeal, they are eventually seeking to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, which was, of course, the Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. Shockingly, and by that I mean, not at all shockingly, Liberty Council is basically saying, hey, look at the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. And we are saying the same thing

needs to happen to Obergefell for the same exact reason, which of course is what everybody said was going to happen, except the people on the right who wanted to pretend, it was never going to happen. So, yeah, so I wanted to bring Kim Davis back. Yeah, the streets were demanding. It's a little thing I didn't even know that I'm learning from wuky.org, which is NPR Rocks 91.3 in Kentucky. Liberty Council is designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Oh, really? That's cool. Yeah. Well, anyway, I'm sure that they will have a very difficult time.

convincing Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito. Yeah. I'm assuming they cite both of those arguments in their brief. I would assume they do as well because they do cite Dobbs. And again, that's why I'm highlighting it. It would be nice to say, yeah, this ain't going anywhere. But as we have learned, we can't really ever say that anymore when it comes to shit like that. Even though it is the sort of thing we're like, yeah, the country doesn't want it,

but there's five assholes that do. Yeah. So really just for that reason, Kim Davis gets my hearty, fuck that guy. Wow, that's a good one. So, Dave, send us out. Who is your fuck that guy? Mine's more qualified because it comes with a level of respect and appreciation, but also plenty of disgust.

Robert Menendez, Senator of New Jersey, where I grew up, announced this week that he will be stepping down after two more Senate paychecks. So that's August 20th. He was convicted recently on federal bribery charges, which is the sort of thing that, like, you don't technically have to leave the Senate after that happens, but it's considered very rude if you don't. And I have been binging Menendez news this week because I feel like we're going to have a hard time getting the volume of it that we've become accustomed to over the last year or so. I mean, he's been a frequent getting indicted or accused of things, but the stuff never happens sort of guy.

The bribery case was a gift. There's a lot of stuff in it that I really enjoyed, not just because of the fact that as Politico notes in a story with the delightful headline of diners, drive-ins, and bribes. He did so much of his corrupt shit in restaurants that like my parents took me to as a kid. He did a deal in the bar area of the hotel where my prom was in high school. Like it's just all the backyard that I grew up with and also his own literal backyard. In court it came out that he summoned his wife from the house with a little bell that he rang after saying Omanamour. And then she came out to like take a bribe from one of the people he was getting bribed by. The bribery stuff is bad.

Don't use your spot on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to fucking sell guns to Egypt. It sucks. Like, it's rude and it's a waste of money. But the bit that I respect, and I did write about this at Defector, but I suspect I'll be thinking about it for a long time, is that it came out during the case. It's a lot of the federal investigation of him involved, like, sort of snooping or recording stuff that he was doing at restaurants. You would have a lot of his meetings in public. And his lawyers at one point mentioned that there was nothing. remarkable about him having gone to the Morton's Steakhouse on Capitol Hill with some people that were bribing him because he ate there 250 times per year.

Oh, my God. Which is every weeknight for 50 weeks, which is way more than Senate is ever in session. Or, which I guess, again, then you have to consider that some days that's lunch and dinner. I don't know how to process any of this. Like, it's an expensive place. I'm sure that it's good. I like going to steakhouses. I probably go there maybe two times a year.

Every time I do it, I'm like, they shouldn't let people make cream spinach at home. It's not safe. This is the only place where anyone should be allowed to consume stuff like this. And so I started off, I think, sort of trying to write a Menendez thing that was it wasn't like, how does he live with himself? Because I know how he lives with himself. He's a New Jersey politician. Like he's in some ways, like just zero wins above replacement, totally normal type of guy.

The question I finished it with was how is he? he alive? How did this man eat a steak at a steakhouse, presumably with like scallop potatoes and cream spinach and like bacon wrapped scallops or whatever? Like two times a day, and he's 70 years old, I left it with a sort of grudging respect for either, not necessarily for the man, but like for the work that his GI track does every day to keep him accepting bribes and upright. So it's to fuck that guy to Bob Menendez for being corrupt and embarrassing. but also like after that wag of the finger, I got to give him a tip of the cap for knowing what he likes and knowing how much of it he can eat, which is I guess as much as he can eat. Now, I do just want to point out before we go that you are making the rookie mistake, I think, of assuming that Morton Steakhouse only has stakes as a main course.

And in fact, they have a featured Orica salmon. Yes. They have a miso-marinated sea bass. Look, we're adults here, Andy. Do you think that Bob Menendez is ordering that shit? They also have something called chicken Christopher, which I thought was really nice. I don't think they've ever sold one. Oddly, that was named after Warren Christopher.

He was a huge poultry guy. He used to call him old bird meat around the White House. This is giving when Eric Adams claims to be vegan and eats a Keene Steakhouse all the time. Yeah, 100%. Exactly. Yeah. David, thank you so much, man. Thank you for having me, man.

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