The Daily Beast Podcast - Can Dems Keep It Together Long Enough to Beat McConnell?

Episode Date: November 9, 2020

Joe Biden is asking Americans to turn down the heat. Some of his strongest supporters are busy lighting one another on fire. Biden and Kamala Harris hadn’t even been declared the winners of the election when members of their far-flung coalition began attacking one another: Blue Dog versus Democratic Socialist, the Squad versus Abigail Spanberger and other purple-district Dems. “You would think that they would want to enjoy their victory for, like, 30 seconds. You would think that after toppling a sitting president, they would want a high five once,” Daily Beast Editor-in-Chief Noah Shachtman tells Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson on a special edition of The New Abnormal. Especially because there are two big run-off elections in Georgia this January—races that will determine whether Mitch McConnell runs the Senate or not. Rick, for one, smells blood: “There may be some Republicans who now look at McConnell as the Alamo,, but no one has ever like gotten up on a rainy January morning and thought, ‘My God, I must defend Mitch. McConnell's honor! He is one last knight standing on the hill!’” Plus! Molly talks about the deeply weird dynamic of cable news hosts trying to get Trump to GTFO. Then she gets Rick to admit that Americans love a bit of socialism—when it’s called something else. The gang ponders what constitutes a giant raft of horseshit. Rick addresses his GOP past. And Trumpists scramble to find new jobs. (“My favorite piece of intel from election day was from one sources in the campaign. I said, ‘What you doing?’ And the response was: ‘LinkedIn.’”) Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi folks, it's Rick Wilson, and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, a left-wing pundit and editor-at-large at the Daily Beast. I'm also an editor at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, best-selling author, and full-time troublemaker. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, business, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. I'll try to keep Rick to the minimum number of F-bombs and try to keep our... kids, pets, and other wildlife sounds from invading our respective bunkers. Let's talk about Saturday. Rick Wilson?

Hi there. What do you think? I think it was a day like any other, but a day like no other. The inevitable thing happened on Saturday that was going to happen starting on election night. And remember, I kept saying, everybody needs to calm the fuck down over and over and over and over again. Everybody needs to calm the fuck down because math is our friend. The red mirage election night was just that. The numbers are now inevitably locked in.

All the legal shenanigans that Rudy and all these other guys around Trump are trying will not work. They will not overturn the results of this election. And Joseph Robinette Biden is going to be our 46 president. And he's going to have Flip Georgia, which is pretty amazing. We are joined by our Fearless Leader, Daily Beast Editor-in-Chief Noah Shackman. Hi, welcome Noah. Hey. So where were you at 1130 yesterday?

Where was I? It was a glorious time at 1130. I was at a enterprise car rental in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. When the news came in. As one does. And not only did I get the news that CNN and NBC had joined Decision Desk in projecting Biden to be the next president, but also they gave me a Mustang convertible for free. Hell yeah. And so I drove with a top down from, Brooklyn up to my family in Vermont, listening to Fox News the whole time on satellite radio. And it was a good day. The sun was shining. And you could hear the wailing, the gnashing of teeth,

the rending of garments. You know something? Actually, though, the thing that was wild was how little teeth gnashing and garment rending was going on, at least in the hours that I listened to Fox. It was more like, hey, Don, take a breath. Your legacy is secure. you're a great guy, your name's still going to be on those towers, and it's time to respect the process. And it was amazing how they'd go to reporter after reporter, pundit after pundit that was like the electoral fraud stuff is not true. And it is true, Don, that it is time to shuffle off to Mar-a-Lago. Yeah, you know, I've been really struck by the fact that Rupert Murdoch seems to be using Fox News and the New York Post directly. to speak to Donald Trump.

He is, and I think it's, I think part of this is that as much as Rupert enjoys the financial power of Fox News, and he is, and as much as Rupert is a conservative, he's always been as far back as I could find in my writing, eye-rolling about Donald Trump personally. It's always been like, this is a guy who thinks he's a billionaire, but he's not. And I think at this point, the threat of Trump TV is not, is not as high in Rupert's mind. as I think some people expect it is. But I also think it's not absent either. But I think, and I'm curious to know what you think about this, Noah,

Murdoch has to be worried that Trump is going to keep going and not. It feels like he's trying to talk him off the ledge. Yeah, it sure does. Just to go back to a point Rick was kind of making, look, we had reporting back, I think, a month, maybe even six weeks ago, from Lock and Carpillar to the Beast that Murdoch was predicting a Biden win. And so, you know, this day he knew, like many of us knew, was going to come. And yeah, I think he is trying to talk him off the ledge and bring him out because, look, let's get real.

Actually, a Biden presidency is going to be pretty good for Fox, right? They get to be the conservative resistance. And it's also interesting to hear Fox News starting to bargain with Biden through the TV, too. For example, they were saying, oh, Joe, wouldn't you rather deal with Mitch McConnell than those nasty, liberals and those leftists? Wouldn't you rather reach across the aisle to Mitch McConnell? It was a bold bit of gaslighting. It's hard to imagine it working, but that is what they were trying to do.

Yeah, reaching out to Mitch McConnell, you're going to pull back a stump. But you do have this dynamic of like the television trying to talk to politicians, which I feel like that has not been a thing in previous worlds. I don't think so either, and I think it's going to be great when that habit stops and, like, really great. And from now on, only digital news sites should talk to politicians. And influential podcasts. Yeah, absolutely, 100%. You have a little bit of news you're going to break here today with us, right?

Noah? Yeah, well, look, we've got some reporting from Aaron Banco, from The Beast, who's been covering the COVID Task Force. you know, since its inception. And, you know, members of that task force and people at work with the task force are absolutely petrified that Trump is going to make things exponentially worse on the COVID front before he leaves office. And so while Biden on Monday is set to announce his COVID plan, the fact of the matter is he's only got a limited number of things he can do between now and January 20th. You know, Donald Trump is still going to be the president. And his capacity to stir up mischief is great during this time, especially in the throes of the pandemic. Oh, yes.

In particular, people on the task force are worried about a couple of things. Number one, they're worried that some top health officials may either be ousted or quit before the transition is official. And number two is that Trump seems to be officially or increasingly in the throes of this Rasputin-like figure, Scott Atlas, who's a radiologist who seems to believe that that everything will be better if we all get the coronavirus and develop herd immunity, which is a recipe for millions of people dying. And I mean, that's just sort of the beginning of his bat shittery. And so there's a real concern that the pandemic that is already, you know, at record highs now

could be far, far, far worse once Biden actually takes the reins in January. Yikes. There's other members of Trump World are sort of fleeing too, right? I saw that members of the administration have started the woman who does various people have started leaving. My favorite piece of Intel from Election Day was I signaled one of our people that's been a source in the campaign. I said, what you do? And the response was LinkedIn. And you've got to figure there's some people that were already on the outs in the administration that might take the opportunity to leave early.

Oh, sure, absolutely. There's been some reporting, not by us, but by Politico, I believe, that Asper, the Secretary of Defense might leave early. I mean, there's definitely a bunch of others that might leave early. I mean, we haven't really talked about it yet, but I think one thing to really, really celebrate almost more than the outcome of the election is so far, there hasn't been, you know, the kind of nightmare scenario of Civil War. Yeah. I mean, that's what I. Trump demanding that people load up the Secret Service. Beast car with gold bars and race to the airport.

But I mean, like we haven't seen like a Lafayette Square style bars, thugs on the streets happening at least not yet, thank God. And, you know, there's a lot of wargaming and a lot of teeth gnashing that that might happen. And so far, it's been peaceful. And I think we got to keep our fingers crossed that will stay that way. Yeah, no, I think so, too. My whole neighborhood is all plywood.

I think that there are a lot of people in the edges of the Trump world, in the boogalus and the three percenters and the militia types who we may be, we may actually be past the moment of maximum danger, but I don't know. In the space between Election Day and yesterday, there was a lot of chatter online. Like, this is war. They're stealing it from us, et cetera. But I think we might be past the worst of that because there's a understanding now that if 306 electoral college votes is a landslide, I was reliably assured by Donald Trump that it was, then this is a landslide, too, and there's not a lot of ways to undo it.

Even the crazies in Trump world understand there's not a path out of this thing right now, even with a successful lawsuit, unless you have five successful recount lawsuits, which is not going to happen. Well, I also think the fact that you've got Rudy and Pam Bondi out there and Eric, and not like Bill Barr or anyone who even has any sort of level of competence.

My favorite story this week was that Jared Kushner was looking for a, quote, James Baker type to lead the recount effort. And I read it and I stopped dead in my tracks. I was in an airport and I started laughing. And then I sat down on a bench because I was laughing so hard that anyone in Trump world could be ever considered a James Baker type. You mean an erudite brilliant negotiator with an ability to handle people and operate complex multivariate, problems, many of them simultaneously? Yeah, no. Although, to be fair, James Baker was a mild anti-Semite as are many people in Trump World. Right. That's true. Say what you will about James Baker. At least he had an ethos.

But I'm curious to know what happens, you know, like who out of Trump World gets a CNN contract, who gets to Harvard? I mean, where people got, like, will it be Sean? Spicer. I promise you, you will see a bunch of these people who will get jobs at the Heritage Foundation and who will get jobs at CNN and Fox. You will see a lot of these people because no matter how mendacious they are, no matter how scuzzy they are, there's this sort of inevitable gravity of the media world where they will go, okay, well, I know Kaylee mendacity. I mean, Kaylee McIntyny is a lying liar who lies and was abusive to the press, but she's, She's got a unique voice that needs to be heard.

I don't know. There's going to be a lot of pressure to stay away from these folks. I can say this. I'm going to relentlessly beat the shit out of any board member of any corporate C-suite that hires some of these people. And I think in some ways, Kelly was a preview because he couldn't get a great gig. He just couldn't after this whole thing was over. A lot of these people are going to be trying, though, and trying very hard.

So I was watching Lindsay Graham. this morning, unfortunately. The thing I'm very sad I still have to do. And it seems he was teeing up that the new grievance culture for conservatives will be that this election was stolen from Trump. A lot of them were out today on the Sunday shows already teem this up and this is what they'll be crying at about for years to come. What do you guys see as the future for this?

You know, as we've talked about before, the stab in the back myth is essential to all fascism. They have to have a story of how they were betrayed. They can never lose because they were a bunch of grievously stupid, who were led by a man without the intellectual capacity of a bowl of tapioca to handle the worst crisis in our lifetimes. All those things are ignored, but, and that he was a repugnant racist scumbag and divided the country in profound ways.

It was cruel and everything else. It has to be the mysterious forces of they. I mean, look, nude Gingrich came right out today and just poked right into it. He goes, maybe it was George Soros. with everything but the protocols of the elders of Zion from Newt this morning, because it's like George Soros, you know what he is. But Newt Gingrich is the worst person in the world. Well, yeah.

I mean, his wife is the ambassador of the Vatican, right? For about a minute. Right, but I mean, they're the worst people in the entire world, and Trump put them with the Pope. Yes. I just want to take a moment to talk about that. Irony is abound. I'd love to talk about in the Trump team office,

they have those doctored covers of the Washington Times that have Al Gore as president. There's going to be a lot of desperate retconning about the election, about, you know, the vote count. Some Trump dingus went out and did a go-fund me because they're going to catch those crooked dims. No, I think what they can do is they can set up their ongoing grift. Right.

Right? I think that's the key here. Like Mike Huckabee. This is like a Tom Fit. Yeah. And so even if you don't think that this is necessarily like stab in the backness too, there needs to be an ongoing way to kind of form the Trump fans for dollars. And that I think is the main thing that's going on here.

Because it always seemed to me that these guys were grifter's first and neo-fascist second, you know? I think that's right. Well, I mean, and all of the, all of the fundraising emails that the Trump, Trump world is sending out right now. These lurid save the president. We need you for the lawsuit defense fund in Pennsylvania. Your donation we matched 400 times. Okay. Like the day he leaves office, it will be supported the MAGA 2024 campaign. Your donations will make it possible. And he'll suck down that money. And there's for a candidate committee, for a federal candidate committee, he can keep the money if he doesn't run.

That's unbelievable. Is that true? Yeah, it's true. Wow. You know, to me, right, so he's going to need money because not only does he have hundreds of millions of dollars in loans coming due, I mean, the chances he's not going to need substantial legal help is zero. Right. Right. Even if, okay, let's say even if Biden really goes and says, okay, you know what, in the name of national healing, I am not, I will pardon, pro-action.

effectively Donald Trump. Even if he does that, right, there's still going to be an array of state, local, civil. He never escapes this. Right. I think the question really is, will he resign and get pardoned first? None of the state stuff is pardonable. He's at more risk on the state stuff in some ways than any federal thing. And you can't preemptively pardon somebody.

You can't just go out and say, no matter what you do, here's your get under your get under your free card. Do we have any concern about how DJTJ is out there tweeting that they should declassify everything? Is that part of trashing the house a concern to any of you? These guys are arsonists, every one of them. They will never undo. The bell will never be unwrung. There's never going to be a moment that they're not willing to destroy everything to aggrandize themselves or enrich themselves.

Or to punish us for our sin of not supporting him. Yeah. I thought it was actually an interesting foreshadowing for what might come in the future. Spencer Ackerman at The Beast had a great story on Saturday, I think right before the call came, that basically talked about the coming Trump deep state and the coming Trump hashtag resistance and how, you know, this sort of weird shotgun marriage of former intelligence officials and moderates and liberals that popped up during the Trump years, you're going to see sort of the Zara World EarthS version of that, now under Trump, where you're going to have former Trump

officials like Rick Rennel, like Ratcliffe, that have had access to secrets, teaming up to weaponize those against Trump's enemies potentially, or at least using their stature to lend a seriousness to their often completely insane allegations. And so I think that this declassify everything call, you know, could be sort of like an opening shot of that. Previously, you may recall that when they've called to declassify, you know, some memo or some intelligence or something like that, it either is, A, been so in the weeds as to not matter. Right. Or B, it's kind of backfired on Trump.

And so, um, like Radcliffe, right? Yeah, exactly. There were a lot of nothing burgers in the unmasking memo that they touted for ages. But don't we think ultimately this will end up hurting like Jared and other Trump officials because they have such nefarious relationships with other countries? I think Jared's a separate track of potential downsides. As these things become revealed, they will once again try to selectively do what Grinnell did, which was to cherry pick through reports and intelligence to leak to either

leak to send an allies who could put it out with a fair amount of impunity or to spin and leak out into the Trump world press. There will be a lot of, I think there will be a lot of that coming. What do you think, Noah? You have so much experience in this. Yeah, so I'd say the barriers, the bar is going to be pretty high. And a good example of that was how Ratcliffe tried to use unfiltered, you know, basically Russian propaganda. He basically declassified that in the 11th hour of the campaign. And nobody bit, like nobody.

But I think it will feed a Trumpist base. And there's a potential to keep a fever high with this stuff. and it shouldn't be completely discounted. Yeah. I agree. I agree. It's still a giant raft of horse ship, but. I don't understand.

Is the shit that makes up the raft or is the shit on the raft? I believe the shit is on the raft. I mean, I don't think shit really has much like waterproofness to it. Wait, I thought the raft was riding a river. Of horse shit. Yeah. We have many questions, right? So as the river of shit flows down from the top of dumpster fire mountain.

Oh, good. Oh, good. Through the valley of burning tires. Oh, good. We had hoped for a more in-depth explanation, and we are getting it. And now you know. That's right. We got to hear about your dreams the other episode.

Now we get this vision of what goes on in your imagination. We're always learning. Yes. So there's been a call for unity in the Democratic Party. I don't know if you've heard it. Go on. I am intrigued by your views and wish to subscribe to your newsletter. Noah, have you heard a call for unity in the Democratic Party?

Yeah, there's this guy Joe Biden who got up on Saturday night and said, you know, it's time to heal, it's time to, you know, to come together. And it seems like the least receptive years for that call or coming from within the Democratic Party where you've seen, you know, the sort of blue dog Democrats and the squad kind of instantly start going at each other's throats in a way that honestly, I find fucking mystifying. You know, you would think that they would want to enjoy their victory for like 30 seconds. You would think that like toppling a sitting president, they would want to high five once before. Or at least 24 hours. Yeah. And instead,

it was like, you know, there was a congressional meeting that the Washington Post reported out where, you know, some of the Blue Dog Democrats, you know, went after the squad right away. And then, you know, you've seen AOC give some really tough interviews in the last 24 hours. And it's, I got to say, it's surprising to me. I knew that this kind of broad faction or this broad coalition that went against Trump, I knew it wouldn't last. I'm shocked. We're already seeing fissures this quickly. Yeah.

It's not great. Well, there's no point where this is part of why the Democrats have, as I like to say, are they're holistically bad at politics? They're good at some things and they're terrible at others. For all the Mitch McConnell is a horrifying shipbird. He let his Susan Collins types get away with various apostasies this year to win. Right. Okay, he gave them the freedom to say, you know, to get off the reservation here or there, not necessarily on Trump per se, but on issue stuff.

This idea that you're going to have the purity posse enforcing for Democrats, it's just. But I would say one thing, which is in that AOC interview, AOC has a lot of really good points. And she talks about digital and she talks about messaging. And fundamentally, there will be other messaging Republicans will use again. Democrats, right? Some of those messages were better than others. And right, socialism, obviously, that's a word that gets a lot of people crazy. And especially because what they're talking about is Medicare. I mean, it's just expanded Medicare. You've got to bifurcate the question. The socialism accusation broadly is often about health care, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.

But the socialism question in Florida and partly also, partly in Texas also, came down to Fidel Castro, Maduro, you know, and the Cuban and Venezuelan community that got where Trump was able to snag a campaign or a Florida winning number. You know, Joe Biden was advised by some people, I'm sure, I'm actually sure, to go down there and say, Fidel Castro was a monster who deserves to burn in hell forever. Right, but the message of we need better messaging in the Democratic Party is not wrong. Better messaging, it never gets you home. Right, but better messaging is what you're saying about the socialism word. I'm actually saying that socialism is a, Americans love socialism when it's not called socialism. Right, exactly. They're okay with a little bit of light, they're okay with a light dusting of socialism over their, over their government safety net programs.

So you're fundamentally describing a messaging problem. Well, it is a messaging problem, but here's the thing. Ted Cruz one time said something like, I can't quote it exactly, but I'd rather have 35 true Tea Party conservatives than the majority. I'm like, what the fuck are you kidding? Get out of here. Get the fuck out of here. And speaking of which, so there's a, there are two big elections coming up on January 5th, right?

And so to my year, I actually hear two kind of purity parties simultaneously going on in the Democrats, where you have one from the Blue Dogs and one from the left, which is like that's some, it's double redick. I got to say, I'm surprised that they're not even putting aside, putting the knives down until January 5th, when they've really got a chance to take out McConnell, or to take them down. That, to me, is shocking.

Yeah. But that's Nancy Pelosi needs to get on that. Well, I mean, she needs to. I don't know that she can. But Mitch McConnell, I mean, part of Mitch McConnell's success, is that he rules with a sledgehammer. And he, you know, nobody ever goes out and says, like, we're going to challenge Mitch, you know, you never see a Susan Collins being like, I'm very concerned with Mitch McConnell.

Let's kick him out. No, they never will and they never do. Right. And you're right. I mean, look, on the one hand, the reason the squad has, they have social facing power because of AOC's social media presence and the sort of progressive infrastructure out there. But they have relatively little effective power inside the caucus. Right.

Because Pelosi just doesn't hold with it. But if she could get control of things. I mean, I don't know. I think that AOC offers something to the progressive side of the party that is not being offered other areas. And that if that didn't exist, you would lose those people. So I feel like she's very useful for Democrats and that Democrats should figure out a way to harness. And she even said, I mean, today on the Sunday shows, she was saying, we have things we can use to help you.

And that is true. Both sides hate that you have to be in a coalition. Both sides hate it. They can't stand. It makes them crazy. And unfortunately, that's what the country's like. The country's much more variable than the ideologues on the right. I mean, look, the ideologues on the right believe that the whole country is ready for, you know,

libertarian fun house where you have to kill someone to get your medical treatment in an on a pay-per-view TV's channel. And on the other hand, a lot of a lot of folks on the far left of the Democratic Party are like, seize the means of production, motherfucker. It does. Yeah, I don't have a, I don't have a great sense of how this ends. But I do have a sense of what happens if Democrats don't back off the circular firing squad talk. Right.

Then I think we know what happens in Georgia. If that's the case. Before we get into things, we have a fun little treat. There are so many insane things happening in the world right now, and two episodes a week just aren't enough to cover it all. So, the new abnormal is going to release a limited run series of bonus interviews over the next few weeks for Beast Inside members only. We'll release a new one each Sunday. But listen carefully.

Only Beast Inside members will have access to these. So head over to the New Abnormal. Dot the Daily Beast.com to become a Beast inside member now. That's new abnormal. Dot the DailyBeast.com. Hey, can we talk about Georgia, actually, real quick? Traditionally, you would think a runoff election in Georgia means Democrats are dead, right? That, you know, they're usually super low turnout elections.

They're the kind that traditionally Republicans clean up on. Is that for sure the case in these two? Is there anything that happened in the first round that impacts? This is a definitely. different creature than an ordinary Republican or an ordinary runoff. We're just about to go in the field on Monday to start studying this. Our analytics guys are already digging in. We suspect, do not know, suspect that Republicans are going to be disheartened. It's going to be tough to motivate them because the hottest part of the Republican turnout machine last cycle here was Trump. And it's

going to be hard to go down there and fire up the Maga Maniacs to say, get out there and do it for Donald because he's going to be president. Oh, wait. You know, so this is a math problem. This is a game of small numbers. I mean, like tight, small numbers. And if you if you gamble this thing out, you know, as a low turnout race, you're in good shape. But we could see like under a million votes statewide. It could be crazy low. Yeah. Yeah. And so we're going to be very careful. And other groups are going to be very careful. You know, you've got to build an African-American. turnout model here that is through the roof, which is doable. Which Dacey Abrams has been doing, too. Let me tell you, I will say the strongest turnout model for African Americans right now is future Vice President Harris, who needs to be down there. Oh, yeah. Who needs to be down there several times during this election, I would encourage to do events

down there to drive turnout. We also need to get down there with some messaging in that, those ring suburbs of Atlanta to talk about making this a referendum on Mitch McConnell because a lot of those older soft, the soft Republican voters have flipped over. And so do you think that like, you know, the Republican or, you know, former Republican or right-leaning independent, you know, suburban men or woman who, you know, is definitely anti-Trump, do you think that they've also turned on McConnell or do you think that McConnell or maybe having a check on Biden actually kind of appeals to them.

Well, I think there may be some Republicans who now look at McConnell as the Alamo. But no one has ever gotten up on a rainy January morning and thought, my God, I must defend Mitch McConnell's honor. Here's the last white knight standing on the hill. Yeah. So, I mean, Rick, I mean, I'm curious, man. And AOC and D. Elon Omar brought up the Lincoln Project. And I think at least one of them brought up you by name.

And I'm curious, you know, what you make of those attacks. Look, you know what? I've got like 350,000 tweets. And if anybody missed the memo that it was an asshole Republican political consultant and a dick, you know, I'm sorry for them. But look, they're going back and digging out like tweets from 10 and seven or eight years ago. And I've said plenty of things in my life I regret. The tweet that she brought up in question was my response to a bunch of Islamic school kids being killed by Boko Haram back then.

And, you know, but here's what I'm not going to do, Noah. I've got a checklist, a punch list to do in Georgia right now with like 185 items on it for Lincoln. So I'm focused on beating Purdue and Loughlin in Georgia. I'm focused on making sure that Mitch McConnell can't rat fuck Joe Biden for two years at the minimum. And so if people want to go back and dig through old stuff, that's their prerogative. They can decide they want to disqualify people who want to help them. But you're very different now. But Molly, here's the thing.

I have a sharp tongue. I have a sharp pen. And the people that are trying to do this, I think you have to ask the question. Why is it you want to destroy somebody who's been an ally? Is it because you want credit? Okay, take all the fucking credit you want. I don't care. Is it because you don't want anybody else outside of your ideological pool?

Okay, that's your call. But, and look, hate me all you want. Hate what I was all you want. But I've been on a mission now for five years. That mission was first to eliminate the threat of a second term of Donald Trump. The folks I work with are proud of the work we did, proud of the role we played. I'm proud of the role I played. And that mission continues because I view Trumpism, the authority.

authoritarian statism around Trumpism as a threat that continues. It's why I'm working and my team is working right now to beat Mitch McConnell in Georgia and why we're working so hard to make sure that Trumpism doesn't spread and that the enablers of Trumpism are held to account. I'm going to continue to press on as much as I can. I'm going to continue to do the work that I've undertaken for the last five years. It's a very different path I've been on the last five years than I was for the first 25 years in my career. But it's something I sleep well at night. And if you want to try to cancel me, that's your, that's your business, but I've got work to do. You know, for all the criticism, y'all, I deal with death threats. And I dealt with death threats for five years, for myself,

for my children, for my family, for my dogs, for fuck's sake. And this week, it has gotten very loud. And the threats online and off have been extraordinary. And I will not stop. I will not get off mission. I will not walk away from what I've committed to do against Trumpism and against Trump and its enablers. I deal with enough threats all the time. I'm not going to worry about social media fuckery. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science.

Who will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast. app and share the show on social media. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm Molly JongFest, and he's the Rick Wilson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studied The Daily Beast podcast at

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