The Daily Beast Podcast - Can Somebody Please Check on Ron DeSantis? w/ John Heilemann

Episode Date: January 7, 2022

Watching Florida’s governor offer a long-awaited update on his state’s coronavirus response this week, Molly Jong-Fast noticed something disturbing. “He’s really struggling to breathe,” she says on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. Also on the show John Heilemann of Showtime’s The Circus, The Recount, and the podcast Hell and High Water talks about Jan. 6 and the moment the GOP decided to choose Trumpism over democracy. Finally, Rep. Jake Auchincloss, who represents Massachusetts’ 4th District, explains why he declared on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021. If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes its just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic and Vogue. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down. And on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. What a fun show show we have today. John Howellman, who you of course know from Showtimes The Circus, the Recount, and his podcast, Hell and Highwater, joins us to talk the state of fuckery.

Then we'll talk to Congressman Jake Ockincloss, who represents Massachusetts 4th District. He's going to talk to us about where the Democrats in Congress are at. Oh, and crypto. But first, let's have some fun. We find ourselves watching a video of one Ron DeSantis. yesterday. He's struggling to sentence, but not in the way that Trump struggles to sentence. You know, I mean, it's so interesting to me because he, Trump is such a fucking idiot that you watch him and he like mangles the English language in a million different inconceivable ways. But when you watch DeSantis, he's really struggling to breathe in that video. So what the hell is going on?

Well, there's three possibilities. One is he has a cold. The second is he has COVID and doesn't want to tell anybody. And the third is that he's completely healthy and he's doing it as bait to trick the libs into saying he has COVID and then he doesn't. Right, which is actually possible. I think he probably has COVID. Let's be honest. I hope he doesn't because he's sitting up there giving a speech with no mask and all of that. And I would like to think that even someone like Ron DeSantis has a bit.

basic level of humanity. I know I'm a dreamer and, you know, I'm a giddy schoolboy when I say things like that. I was going to say, it's all that optimism from working at Fox. Exactly. So I really hope he doesn't have COVID beyond the fact that I don't want anyone to have COVID mostly. The fact that if he's sitting there fucking breathing on everybody with COVID, that's like, you know, that's like manslaughter or, I mean, it's not, but you know what I mean. So that's why I'm just like, it would be unbelievable to me if he actually had COVID and that was the reason for his labored breathing, which was incredibly labored. Like, there's something was going on. Yeah.

I would even say that no cold makes you breathe that bad. No, I agree. I agree. And that's why like it's got to be COVID or some kind of respiratory thing or he's doing a bit. Like, you know, even though it's pathetic and sad to think that a politician might be making something like this up. And I guess I don't really believe he is because that's insane. But I would prefer that to him having COVID and breathing on everybody. Like, so I don't know.

But it was weird to watch, I mean, and listen to and just see him, like being unable to finish sentences, like you said, Molly. And just like having to take these struggling kind of breaths in between words. And man, what the hell? Yeah, it's interesting. It's the most interested anyone's ever been on semiconductors on the supply chain. Because you're listening to him, and he's saying we have a supply chain problem. We need semiconductors built in Florida. And honestly, he happens to be right about this. You know, we do have a supply chain problem. The situation in Taiwan is really bad for the Taiwanese, really bad for cell phone users in the world. But he was like, oh, it was pretty bad.

I mean, unless maybe he just gets aroused talking about semiconductors. To get away from that horrifying thought, this did come high on the heels of an article that talked about how Desantis is hiding his vaccination status. Do we see anything about what he might be hedging there for 2024? Yeah, I mean, I think he thinks he's the heir apparent to Trumpism and he possibly is because there isn't anyone else. Yeah, again, you know, all these guys are cowards. I feel like we talk about this every episode, which we need to, because it needs to be pointed out. Of course he's vaccinated. Of course he's boosted.

But he doesn't want to say so because he knows, you know, that a large percentage of the people that like him are anti-vax. And he knows that if he's going to be the heir apparent to Trump in 2024, if Trump doesn't run or whatever, that he needs that insane part of the base. You know, they're just absolute moral cowards. And there is no way in hell he is not completely vaccinated and boosted. I want to drill down on that for a minute. I wonder if he's not boosted. Really? Well, I mean, he's really sick.

He sounds really, I mean, again, we are in the world of speculation here. Neither of us know his vaccination status. And so please do not take this as either of us knowing anything. But just in speculatively, he sounds really sick. And, you know, again, there's a lot. I mean, what's been interesting with this virus, and we've talked to, we've talked a lot of doctors. So I know some things, and I've read a lot of stuff. If he has Omicron, which really is, as we've seen from South Africa and from England, significantly more mild,

right? I mean, less hospitalizations, less death. So if he has Omicron, I would be surprised because a lot of people, if you're a vaccine boosted, I mean, it's probably not all the time, but most of the time, Omicron doesn't go to the lung. And again, Omicron is not as big a percentage in New York. The CDC had said it was a very large percent, and then they went back. and said it was a much smaller percent. So we don't really know what the dominant strain is because America's extremely bad at looking at these viruses and figuring out what is the dominant strain and this kind of virology. So we don't really know.

But I just think, you know, what's happening with a lot of these guys, why they're so sick is because they went, they didn't get the Vax. I mean, he probably did get the VACs because he's smart, but they didn't get the VACs. They got the monoclonals. And then now when you have Omicron, there's only one monocronal. that works for Omicron. And supposedly there's some evidence that if you've had monoclonals before, they may not work as well. I mean, you're getting yourself into a situation that's very different than if you're vaccinated and you get it or boost vaccinated and boosted.

I just, you know, again, as you said, we have absolutely no idea what his vaccination status is. But I would be absolutely shocked if he's not vaxed and boosted or Thraxed, as I like to call it, They talk a big game and whatever, but all these guys are in their narcissists and they're incredibly self-centered and I believe that they will do much like President Trump, you know, who is thraxed. And I just believe that all these guys will do, you know, whatever they can to keep themselves safe, regardless of what they do to keep others safe. So that that's why I, I would be shocked if he's not boosted. But, you know, again, I'm just actually praying that he doesn't have COVID again because

he sat there with no masks surrounded by people giving a speech. And I got to think that if it ever came out that he did that in the midst of COVID and gave a speech unmasked, I think even a lot of his supporters would be kind of horrified. I should say so that we don't sound like crazy speculators that Nikki Fried, who is running against Rodocentis did accuse him of hiding his COVID before last year. Right, right. That is true. He is the closest thing to an Arab parent.

And when Trump left office, there was a sort of, you know, there were all this polling that showed that these Trumpists would go on to Don Jr. And they really, you know, that Don Jr. sort of shopped that same brand of really kind of self-pity politics, for lack of a better expression. And what's happened over the last year is that, you know, and then Laura Trump was going to run and then she decided not to. So the Trump kids have really kind of disappeared, I think, from the ether. And even Trump, I think, is a little bit muted. And so we see that there's really no heir apparent.

Today is January 6th. Tomorrow will be January 7th. Today, this afternoon, Marjorie Taylor Green, and still under FBI investigation, Matt Gates, are going to give a press conference in the hopes of becoming the Trump-era parents. I guess. You know, I agree with you that that's what they want to be and that's what they're trying, you know, oh so hard to be. But they're just not, which is not to say that they might not be down the road. I don't think they are right now. And I do, look, I agree with what you said earlier. I think DeSantis is if there is an error parent to Trump or do Trumpism. Desantis is the closest thing right now that is like a, you know, a viable 2024 candidate. Look, Don Jr. could make a comeback. You never know. I mean, I agree with you that he's sort of, you know, he's faded a bit for now, but there's plenty of time for him to unfade or however you want to call it. And, you know, Gates or Green, they're not going to get a lot of the people, they'll get, they could get the crazy base, which is a large portion of the Republican Party right now, but they're not going to get the,

the sort of independence or the people that voted for Trump who are not full of. on, you know, crazy Q people. They're not going to get those people because they are full on crazy Q people. And someone who Trump appealed to because he, you know, spoke the truth. I mean, all the things that he didn't really do, but somehow convinced a large segment of people he did. Like, and then you've got Marjorie Taylor Green talking about Jewish space lasers. But she's a crazy donor machine.

She is. But I don't think as a national politician, like, and again, this is not. not to say that, you know, six or eight years from now, that could change. Right, right. But me in 2015 was like, oh, there's no way Trump could be president. So what the hell do I know? But I just, if you're looking at it, at an error to Trumpism in the short term on a national scale, I don't think either of them has the juice, you know, or has the appeal to the wider swat

of people that they would need to be elected president. Whereas DeSantis, you know. Now, maybe if. Matt Gates gets arrested for sex trafficking that might boost his national profile and make him more of a Trumpy character. But the truth is you really need to have a reality television show to be a Republican presidential candidate. Do you anymore? Because now you've got all these conservative outlets that are basically, you know,

you've got newsmax and you've got OAN and you still got Fox. And I don't know if you need the, those are all basically. reality shows for Republican candidates right now. Right, it's true. So there's a lot of really hot takes looking back on this awful day that we had last year. I saw Carl Rove is now trying to turdblossom, spleen what happened last year and its effects on our country. What are you two seeing here with all these lookbacks on January 6th? Yeah, I mean, look, it's great that Carl Rove is out there saying that one,

one six was bad. Like, I don't want to, I don't want to say it's not good that he's doing that, but also, shut the fuck up. I'm torn on this. I just, I mean, this is new for Karl Rove, because remember, he was like on, he was, I mean, like a couple of, you know, he's been on Newsmax trying to, like, Rudy Giuliani himself into the Trump administration. Well, that's the thing is, first of all, I don't, you know, you can't trust anything

Carr-Rove says. So if he's, you know, if he's got an op-ed out there talking about how bad one-six is, it's probably because he's looked at some polling and decided that that's the position he should take at this moment in time, you know, and that could change tomorrow, depending on, you know, if there's new polling that he looks at. You know, so first of all, he can't be trusted on anything. And second of all, shut the fuck up, Carl Rove. Just go away. Like, I just, I don't, I don't want to hear from Carl Rove anymore. I don't. I don't, I don't want to hear from car rove anymore i don't want to hear from arie fleischer i don't want to hear from any of these guys freedom fries i just want them to go away you're rich you don't have to do any of this just go live in an

enclave somewhere and leave the country alone like just move to canada i don't know do something just stop weighing in like even even when i agree with you i just stop weighing in that i mean it's like Dick Cheney. I agree with Dick Cheney, but I also can see that Dick Cheney is how we got here. Well, that's the thing. And as we're recording this, you know, that Dick Cheney was on the floor of the Congress. I think it was the

floor of the House. Yeah, because he's supporting his daughter. Yes. Ben Siegel, I think, tweeted one by one Democrats are coming over to introduce themselves to former VP Dick Cheney and shake his hand. There aren't any GOP House members on the floor. I don't want to live in this world. I don't want to live in this world. This

Just put me back in the matrix or something. Like, I don't want to live in a world where Democrats are shaking Dick Cheney's hand and Republicans are staying away from him. This makes no sense to me. And I literally, I can't deal with it. It's exploding my brain. And like, I'm, like you, I am glad that Dick Cheney sees one six as a problem. And he's supporting his daughter, Liz Cheney, who also for once in her life is correct and

sees one six as a problem. I don't need Democrats shaking his hand on the floor of the house as if he's, you know, this is the guy you were calling Darth Vader. Yeah, no, he sucks. Have him sign your container for waterboarding. I mean, the guy is a bad dude. But we're so down the rabbit hole that that's it. That's all there is. I know.

And again, I'm glad Carl Rove is saying one six was bad. I'm glad Dick Cheney was saying one six was bad. But also, I don't know if I said this before, but shut the fuck up. But also, we wouldn't have January 6th. We wouldn't have Donald Trump. We wouldn't be in the place we were if there wasn't black sites and torture and the war in Iraq. I mean, this is a road that we were put on by these two men. That is 100% correct.

And that's why that gets to the heart of why, even though, again, I'm glad. But at the same time, I don't want to hear from you. Like, you're not, you're part of the problem. And it's, you know, it's a little, you know, it's too late by half for you to now be concerned with, you know, American democracy. Like, I just, I don't want to hear from you. I was going to say that I think it's a good time for us when we're talking about this to talk about how the war in Iraq was really, really, really terrible. many, many, many people were killed for seemingly no reason. And it was one of the sort of seminal worst moments in American history.

And I think that it's great that they're doing something now, but I think it is important to realize that these people were treated as subhuman and that Islamophobia is never okay. And that in some ways what we see still with the U.S. Congress is that Ilhan Omar, gets treated very differently. And you saw this with Keith Allison, too, very, very differently than members of Congress who are other religions. And I think that, you know, it's fine to embrace their change of heart, but it is also important to realize, like, that maybe there's an opportunity to look at the horrendous way America has treated Muslims. Well, and the other thing is, like, I might be okay if these, you know, if someone like Harrow or Dick Cheney, and this will never happen, by the way, but.

if they would come out and say that, like, and they would say, look, I, I owe an apology to the American people. I did a lot of bad things and I helped lead us down this road. Like Saul on the road to Damascus, I have seen the light. And, you know, I now am Paul Rove. I am now, you know, a follower of good and I renounce evil. But that's not what we're getting from any of these guys. What we're getting is this one specific thing on January 6, 2021 was bad with no recognition of any possible role they played in moving the country to the point where a 1-6 was possible. And I think that, I think you nailed it right there, Molly. That above all is why I don't want to hear from these guys because there's no self-reflection and there's no taking any bit of responsibility

for helping to get to move this country in that direction. Yeah. No, I agree. I think that's right. There was a lot of joking during the Trump administration that Trump would have a new tone where he would sound slightly less batch it. And people in the media would get very excited. And they would say like this new tone, his new tone, his new tone. But today we actually did see from Joe Biden a new tone. Yeah.

In his speech about January 6th you're talking about. Yeah. I wanted to read some of the lines from that speech, you know, the man is not a and yet he had some really, really, really good lines from this speech, which I think showed that he really was, you can't love your country only when you win. And then he called Trump, he's a defeated former president, and he refused to say Trump's name the entire speech. I thought it was for him very, very good. I agree. You know, it's a bit of a low bar, but still, I agree. It was not, it was not a bad speech at all. And I kind of liked that he never

said Trump's name and just kept referring to him as the former president and stuff like that. I like that he said that that he laid the blame for January 6th at Trump's feet and, you know, talked about how how Trump created and spread a web of lies, I think was the phrase he used. Yeah. And there was a good sentence he said about Trump. He said the reason that he did all of this was he values power over principle. he sees his own interest is more important than his country's interests and his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our Constitution. And all of that is 100% correct.

And none of it is the most original thought in the world, but who cares? It's the president of the United States saying it. And I think it needed to be said. And, you know, I'm happy if he goes back to not talking about Trump again after that speech. But on this day, you know, on this subject, he needed to reference Trump. and, you know, sort of back off from his, I guess it's sort of like an unstated pledge to never talk about Trump, which again, I don't disagree with. I think it's kind of a good move. But I think it was important that on this day he took a break from that pledge and really, you know, talked about what Trump did to lead us to January 6th and why he did it. And yeah, absolutely. Good for Biden on this speech.

I thought he did a pretty good job. It was almost as if he knew how bad things had. gotten and what kind of trouble we were in as a country. Yeah, absolutely. Hey folks, if you haven't heard every single week we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media like Jim Acosta or Soladadobrian. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy

Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's happening in the news. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite. podcast app of choice by becoming a beast inside member where you'll support the beast fearless journalism as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member, head to New Abnormal.com. That's new abnormal.thedailybeast.com. John Heilman is the executive editor of the recount, the host of Showtimes The Circus, as well as his podcast, Hell and High Water. Welcome to the New Abnormal, John. Hey, it's great to be here, Molly. It feels like we've been trying to get this

together for a while and, you know, and then we found this an appropriately momentous, historic, and somber occasion. Right, exactly. It's perfect because it's so depressing. And I wrote about this, and I'm sure that you will talk about this and have talked about this continuously for the last year. But is there a moment in your mind? Because there is in my mind, but I'm curious if it's the same in yours. When the GOP decided, like, democracy will mean that we have to disavow Trumpism, let's go for Trumpism. Three January 6th or post-January 6th? Either one.

I mean, there are no wrong answers to this question. Right. I mean, I guess I think that the, that, you know, this is an unoriginal thought. I'll concede, but because it's been, I wrote it this morning for the Re-Cound newsletter and others have written it. So I feel like it's, but it's still kind of like it's just right, I mean, on some level, I think. So I was, you know, we were shooting the circus during the, that was for our first episode back in January last year when January 6th happened.

And so we, I had gotten down to D.C. on the night of the 5th. We had people, Alex and Jen, Paul Mary, were in Georgia for the runoffs, and I was up there to do, to do the, to be in position for the morning. And Mark McKinnon was going to go to that rally on the, on the mall. And I was going to spend my time watching the proceedings in the chambers, the certification proceedings with Adam Jentelson, Harry Reid's former aide. And we were in a townhouse in Georgetown. And we were going to watch it and kind of narrate it like color commentate what was happening on television. Like, would there actually be any drama? You know, would Pence do anything screwy, whatever?

And then, you know, when the, when the thing started, when you could see it was going to get Harry at the Capitol, we jumped into bands and drove up there. And then we're on the steps of the Capitol for a couple hours from about, I don't think about 3 o'clock in the afternoon until about 5 or 5.30. And so we're there for some of it, not inside the building, but on the outside, which was scary enough. And, you know, I was never highly highly highly optimistic that, as everybody talked about, well, this is the moment. Maybe they'll break with Trump now that, you know, finally kind of retether themselves with the Republicans, that is, to some semblance of reality. You know, but, you know, you heard Lindsey Graham say that thing on the floor, and then you saw Kevin McCarthy say what he said a couple days later. And again, I was never like I was like, okay, this is it. Here they go. They're going to break with Trump. It's going to be clean and we're going to go back to whatever the old abnormal was as opposed to the new abnormal. You know, I was never highly optimistic about that, but you could see that, you know, McConnell, you know, there was that discussion in that period of whether McConnell was going to take a faction of Senate Republicans and maybe vote to convict Trump in the impeachment. and you could sort of see maybe there were enough cracks with people who were resigning in protest and stuff that was happening in the White House, that maybe that was a moment. And I think, you know, that McCarthy deciding to go down to Maralago a couple days after and then doing the about face that he did, that moment and then seeing the combination of that and then Lindsay Graham playing golf with Trump a few days later. And then just how quickly in that moment in there from January, let's say January 8th to sort of January 18th or so, there was about a 10-day period where everybody who had shown some signs of at least trepidation, at least they were contemplating making some break from Trump and Trumpism, they all decided that there was that they couldn't, for whatever set of reasons, they're related to their psychologists, their politics, their emotions or their, obviously their weakness and they're in fact, lack of profound dedication to democracy. They all just did their, spun on their heels and walked

away. And then, of course, McConnell put the caper on it, you know, when he gave the speech from the floor saying Donald Trump's responsible for the insurrection and he's anti-democratic, he's authoritarian and he's an autocrat. But I'm still not going to vote to convict him. And you were like, okay. So that's it. That's the thing, right? Which is McConnell is the purest, in some ways, the purest, McConnell and McCarthy are like the purest windows into this thing of, they both know better. McConnell, I think, hates Trump more than McCarthy does. But they both recognize that the only thing they care about is being in power and being, in McCarthy's case, eventually the Speaker and McConnell's case, eventually being the majority leader. And they both

recognize that to turn against, not just Trump, but to turn against Trump's what they think is the Trump base, what is now the vast majority of the Republican Party, that to do certain things that would involve fundamentally repudiating him would put, would jeopardize their power and that they're just not willing to do that. And I think that in that period right there became clear that we were in that we were fucked in a lot of ways that like that that in that moment it was like no they're not just going to not repudate him this is cool i remember having a clear perception in that moment that not just that they weren't going to break with trump but that we were now on kind of a runaway freight train towards something worse and and that that's i think

where we are a year later is in a much worse place than we were even a year ago i actually thought that same thing it was that moment when he went down to marla ago that where it just was like they were going to give up they needed the fundraising money and they were just going to do it any way they had to. And then McCarthy leaking the picture, which he denied to Trump. When Trump said to him, did you leak the picture? And McCarthy said, oh, I didn't. And Trump said, really? And McCarthy said, no, really, I didn't. Trump kind of winked at him and was like, it's all right. It's good for both of us. You know, that was just like, okay, so that picture, it wasn't just he went. It's like he didn't even go in secret. I mean, it wouldn't have made it any better if it had been secret. But somehow the notion that McCarthy

decided that he would not only do it. He would not only abase himself that way, but he would see political advantage in leaking the picture. You're like, okay, this is like, that's how bad this is. But it is interesting to me, like McCarthy and McConnell, McCarthy is just a moron, whereas McConnell McConnell is like this genius, right? Oh, 100%. Yes, I think that I think that's right. But I think, you know, but they both have reached the same conclusion. And so, you know, I think it's, it speaks to the power of, of, and again, I don't want to give. I really don't think I maintain forever. And I don't know, Molly, where you are on this, but like, I continue to think you can't just talk about, you know, this is a thing that's been building for 20 or 30 years in the Republican Party and that Trump is a was a coagulant and an acerent, but not the cause. It's not like if, and I said this morning or morning, Joe, if Trump got hit by a bus tomorrow, the Republican Party would still be a party with seriously problematic, authoritarian, autocratic tendencies and an increasingly large appetite for political violence. And I I don't think any of that would go away if Trump disappeared tomorrow.

If we'd snap our fingers and God knows if we'd snap our fingers and make him disappear, we would. But I don't think it would fix the problem. And I think what's illustrated of that is that a moron like Kevin McCarthy, who is truly, you know, I'm not sure his IQs and triple digits, but that McCarthy and McConnell, who is not just, I think, a very smart man, I think he is very smart man. Also, A, is truly like a reptilian kind of political genius. and with an incredibly shrewd.

I mean, you watch the way McConnell wins election after election in Kentucky with a 25% approval rating. He just, you know, he dispatches everybody who comes along because he just understands politics and the art of power. And he also got three Supreme Court seats. Yes, of course. Yeah, again, he's gotten so much of his agenda gotten done. He's made all these deals with the devil and he's gotten a lot of what he's wanted. But so he's a genius, McCarthy's dope, yet they both have reached the same conclusion that it's so obvious to them. that the party is what it is now

and that there's no point in fighting it, at least in their calculation, that for their personal and their personal power, I think, to some large extent and some degree of ideological conviction about the other parts of the agenda like deregulation and judges and taxes and et cetera,

that they're just like, you know what, there's no winning this fight. I will not win this fight if I wage this fight, and I don't care enough about the principles at stake. I care more about the power, so I'm just going to do that. But they both reach the same conclusion coming from very different native positions of intellect and analytical ability. It's sort of amazing.

I mean, I wrote about Marjorie Taylor Green today from my newsletter for the Atlantic. Now, there's a genius for you. But she... There's a high-powered intellect for you. Right up there. I mean, she makes Kevin McCarthy seem like Albert Einstein. Right. She did crazy small dollar numbers in the first quarter.

I mean, crazy, crazy. And it's funny because what we're talking about, the long tail of this. I remember in the early 2000s when people would tell. Tell me that small dollar donations we're going to democratize the system. Remember that? Yeah, well, it sort of has democratized the system, but it's not in a way that we, not the way that we like. Democratize the sense that it's raised the power of the rabble in certain areas. I mean, it has.

I mean, it's in that sense, it has done that. And look, I mean, I think if you talk to people who are involved, we, I may even might want to talk about the one-sex committee, but like, you know, there's a lot of action going on there. And I'm both optimistic and always a little bit pessimistic about the future for them. But among the really savvy staff there, right, who are trying to do a bunch of things at once, who are trying to hold Trump accountable, or trying to get the bottom of what happened, who are trying to set precedent, who are trying to conduct a serious investigation. There's this whole other thing, right, which is the big questions of trying to track these domestic extremist groups, like doing the process of looking at all the phone records and all the texts

and stuff. And why do they care about that? Well, they're worried about their being about what happens, again, on the political violence point, when, you know, this movement that has, that is a foot. and is gathering force out there in the Republican base towards an embrace of political violence, towards authoritarian impulses, towards autocratic appeals and mechanisms. Like, okay, so this goes to the Marjorie Taylor Green thing, which is that there's, they look at this and the reason they're terrified is not about like, I mean, I don't, again,

I don't want to dismiss the notion of the accountability for the people who planned it and for Trump and others, but is that this force in American life that's out there in the country, it's kind of surging and seething and throbbing, is like that force is the Marjorie Taylor Greens. Why are the, why, you know, hardcore pro-Trump crazy QAnon districts, the money's pouring in. And it's because this thing that happened, this, they are all political prisoners, these people who rioted at the Capitol,

these people who were part. there are political prisoners and Ashley Babette is a martyr. That movement out there below the waterline where we all see it because we are not out there and we're not looking at all of the media that those people look at. But that movement is gathering force and gathering strength. And that's a thing that's really ominous for the future. I mean, I also think, I mean, I remember going to CPAC, which I never can do anymore, thank God. But when I used to go before I would be.

Have they banned you? No, but I would get the level of harassment every year would get. worse and worse. I mean, what's amazing about CPAC is you see that there are media sites you've never heard of, you never want to hear of, and hundreds of thousands of people are reading them. Yeah, I don't say this because I'm a great student of them. It's not where I spend my time. But the thing is that I'm aware of them. I'm aware of the world, what we, you know, this world of the alternative information ecosystems that exist and that there's this ecosystem that exist of information that is not just the stuff that, you know, the left points at Fox News and at

OANN and at Newsmax and Sinclair, right? Guys, those are respectable voices. Those are the ones you can see. They're not the people you can't reach. And this is not 100 people or 1,000 people or 10,000 people. It's millions of people who aren't watching television who are listening to crazy right-wing, fucking like almost ham radio and of course all of the online stuff which is really the dominant thing and not just Facebook but all the other stuff the four chans and the five chans and the eight

chans and all of this stuff that's going on that's reaching tens of millions of people and radicalizing them and making them having them live in a totally alternative I don't want to call it reality bubble but a totally alternative information bubble and none of us see it and none of us understand how hard it is to pierce it so it's like all these discussions about, you know, the Atlantic, you know, I love, Greg, I love that the Atlantic is doing what it's doing. And I love that issue they put out with Bart Gelman. But like, you know, Bart Gelman can write every brilliant piece in the world. And the tens of millions of people who we're talking about right now are not affected by what the New York Times and Bart Gelman and you and I say on this podcast.

It's not getting through, guys. It's not getting through that. The problem is a lot more intractable and deeply rude than that. I mean, listen, I remember sitting behind a writer for MAGA News one, two, three. I swear to God, I was like, Magid News, one, two, three. And, you know, it's probably something else now who was cheering Trump's speech. And I thought, like, this is the press area.

I don't think this is, you know. And she's like, I have an audience three times yours, Molly's, so, you know, fuck up. She's like, fuck off, fuck off. You can make fun of me. You can make fun of me. You can make fun of me if you want, but I like reach a lot more people.

I'm sure live streaming. Exactly. And you know, Marjorie Taylor Green, I mean, I just was writing about this. She started her. career writing about the Clinton kill list. I know. I know. I know. And, you know, and, you know, and this again, but again, I just, you know, not to belabor it, but it goes back to the thing of, like, this is like, you know, this was, you know, I was in, I went to Oklahoma City after the bombing and

was briefly involved in, like, that's when I first ever encountered things like the militia, Michigan militia, and covering, and covering the early phases of that Timothy McVeigh, you know, oh, there's this militia movement. There are these people out there, the people who, the same people who kidnapped the governor who were planning to kidnap Gretchen Whitmer. That's, they were all there. That was the mid-1990s. This has been, you know, and I covered the Pap Buchanan presidential campaign in 1996 and the clenched fist and camouflage crowd for which that helped that guy become, you know, was the runner-up in the Republican nomination. In 1996, and he was just an early prototype for Trumpism. All the same messages were there.

It was all, you know, xenophobic, racist, white grievance, white. white nationalist kind of anti-Semitic tropes that Buchanan managed to parlay into being the number two candidate for back when there was a Republican establishment that nominated Bob Dole, he was number two. And that was 1996. And so that tells you how long this has been out there germinating and infecting and metastasizing within the Republican electorate. It just took a long time for it to become the center ring, so to speak. You can sort of see a straight line between Pat Buchanan, Sarah Palin, you know, along the road to

Trump. 100%. I mean, it's all their idea. And obviously, you go back further. You can do this historically. You can play this game all day long. But just in my reportorial lifetime, as I guess it's like, it's not this phenomenon. There's like literally not a speech that Trump gave in 2016 that you couldn't trace back

with like a Sharpie, you know, to Buchanan speeches in 1996. You know, I mean, and so that's a very, it's, you know, that feels to me, I mean, when you start talking about, you know, John Birch and the John Birch Society and things that, the Ku Klux Klan rallies in Washington, you know, in the early part of the 20th century, you know, you're kind of like people go, I don't know what? That all seems like very far, a long time ago. I'm like, no, no, no. You know, Buchanan, River President in the year the Fox News was created.

Okay. So this is, it's long enough ago that it makes you feel like it has roots, but recent enough that you can remember it and people can be like, oh, wait, there's not just to spring forward, spring into life and into existence in some unprecedented way in 2016 because of Donald Trump. It's like, no, it's been out there bubbling along in a pretty visible way just in, you know, this last 25, 30 years. I see Marjorie Taylor Green talking about national divorce. Like, this leads nowhere good, right? There's nothing that right now that feels like a bright, shining kind of ray of hope towards like an easy resolution for this.

No. It's not like I think we can't get through this without another civil war. I don't think that. I'm not that pessimistic yet. I don't think we've reached bottom yet. Let's put it that way. I don't think the worst of this has yet happened. And I don't know how it will resolve. And I try not to get into too much prognostication. But there's nothing right now. If you did scenario planning on the basis of the facts on the ground and the empirical evidence we currently have in the trend lines, it's not like there's some, hey, let's just, if we veer 20% in one direction or the other, everything will work out in some kind of completely non-conflictual kind of okay way. I don't really see how that happens. It feels like there's. has, like, there's still more, there's like, there's something beyond something worse than January 6th that still is, that we still have to go through to get to the other side. And again, I, you know, I don't know what that looks like. I'm curious about what you, what you think about, Carla. I've, like, people have had such different views about it all time. I mean, I have a view, but I'm curious what yours is.

I said to Preet at a party, so this is probably like a tweet off the record. I said, are you worried? And he's sort of, you know, he's a little worried. And that did not make me feel good. I think it could go either way. Yeah. There's not much to hold on to right now where you can sort of say, well, Garland has been a killer on X.

And so he's asking us to be patient now, but he's been a killer on X. And so he will probably be a killer on Y. Here's my, here's the thing, the example, the object lesson that I can point to. I do think, though, it could go either way in the sense that I take seriously people, you know, the prosecutors that you and I both know who say, number one, it's clear that in the speech yesterday that he understands the nature of the kind of criticism he's getting, number one, and it was designed to die to address them. And that there is a, again, it's a scenario planning. There is a plausible scenario that says, as some of these prosecutors say, he's trying to send a signal here. And the signal is,

you know, we're on this and here's some coded language for you to let you know that we're on this. And let me also tell you how we do big cases like this and the way that we do big cases like this is we start from the bottom. We move up. And the last person you go after is the big fish. Right. Which is true. And yes, it is true. And there's, and so, you know, if I think you and I would both say, if six months from now Garland did something dramatic to bring charges against Trump, we would look back at this speech and say, oh, it was all there. I mean, he was telling us. He was sending us signals in the way that a careful prosecutor-slash-jurist with a great

degree of probity and that old-fashioned way of communicating, this is how he would do it. It's also the case that if we look up two years from now and nothing's happened, we'll look back at this speech and go, yeah, that was all just piffle, right? So it's a little bit like you're looking at it's a little bit like a... Roershack. It's a Rochak test. It's the Merrick-Garland-Rorschach test. and it kind of reflects at this point more about what all of our predispositions are than it does about necessarily where he's headed.

It is interesting. You do see he would have been a really good Supreme Court justice. I think he would have been a great Supreme Court justice. I will. I mean, I do. I really, I don't know him well. I know him a little bit. And I remember I wrote something about it in New York Magazine back in the day about how I thought that for Obama picked him. I thought Obama would pick him. And I thought that he would have been a really good Supreme Court justice. I thought it would have been. And I don't mean this. Someone will yell at me for saying this. I think he would have been a little bit like the John Roberts of the left, which is to say someone who could build coalitions, who could reach in the way that Roberts, from a totally different perspective, but the way that Roberts has done some surprising things to try to build

coalitions in the center that are institutionalists, that is he's turned out to be more, less problematic than a lot of people on the left thought he would be. I think Garland would have been there kind of being like, I'm basically a liberal, but I'm a liberal who can talk to conservatives, and maybe I can pull the center right over to progressive causes now and then and help make better opinions and help make better law. And I think he probably would have been quite effective at that. And certainly that's what Obama and the people in the administration who were for Garland, who were for nominating him, I think that's what they saw in him. And I think that there's a reasonable case that he would have been quite effective in that way.

Yeah. And instead, we have three complete partisan hands. Yeah, well, you know, again, speaking of your friend Mitch McConnell, who you admire so much for his political. For a shrewd, wait, wait, wait. She's a big fan of Mitch McConnell. She called him a genius today on the podcast. You know, I mean, again, another example of the dark, satanic genius that Mitch McConnell represents. Unbelievable.

I mean, Amy Coney Barrett, Jesus Christ. Thank you. Yeah, I'm Kennedy. Thanks, John. I hope you'll come back. Hey, I will totally come back. It was a real pleasure. Congressman Jake Ockincloss represents Massachusetts fourth district.

and sits on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee as well as the Financial Services Committee. Welcome back to New Abnormal Representative Akkenkoss. It's good to be here. Thanks for having me back, Molly. Thrilled to have you. Where were you on January 6th? I was here in Washington, mostly in my office, partly in the House chamber that night. My day began in Eastern Market where I've got a small basement apartment that I share with another member. And I woke up that morning. this is forgotten now, but the news at that time was that the Democrats had taken Georgia,

both sentences. And I remember calling out from my bedroom when I was reading it, the articles, this is going to be a great day. He really called it there. I called it. One of the all-time worst predictions for a 24-hour news cycle. And really spent much of the morning thinking that the weather and the crowd size was, the weather was going to keep the crowd size pretty low and again got that one wrong. Yeah. I mean, there clearly was a moment where Republicans could have done the right thing, and they really chose to just not. Yes. And a stark reminder of that to me was this morning.

I was in the House chamber for the commemoration, the one-year anniversary. And the Speaker gave remarks, and we had the Pledge of Allegiance in the House floor. And the only Republican there, was Liz Cheney. We're talking about a year out from an attack in our democracy, and that it did not have to be a partisan issue, which I think what you're alluding to, it really did not have to be. It's a constitutional issue. It's an American issue. And yet Republicans have decided that it's become a partisan issue. As a member of Congress, you got a year until the midterms. A lot is at stake now. What do you think is the most important thing that you guys should be focused on? Protecting voting rights and the integrity by democracy. This,

This is a one-year anniversary, but it cannot be an event that treats it like a historical episode. We should not be speechifying about January 6th as though it's in the textbooks already. This is current events. And we are in the midst of a constitutional crisis. We cannot become paralyzed with anxiety or fear that we can't sit here wringing our hands and bemoaning what might happen in two years' time. We need to act. The good news is we actually have a pretty clear sense of what to do.

We got two really strong bills in front of us. One is called Protecting Our Democracy. That bill, whose lead sponsor is Adam Schiff, really works to reinstate the separation of powers and the checks and balances that are the great gift of our founding fathers and that do so much to prevent tyranny in Washington, D.C. So that one bill kind of buttresses many of the cracks

and weaknesses that appeared over the Trump administration. The second bill is the first bill is the Freedom to Vote Act. That one is, was drafted by Senator Manchin in conjunction with many voting rights advocacy groups. And it protects state and local election officials from partisan subversion. It guarantees access to the ballot box. It ends partisan gerrymandering. It gets dark money out of politics. It's an important bill for the guarantee of free and fair elections in our country. We got two terrific bills. It's time to pass them. Yeah. What do you say to people who are saying and they're largely partisans saying that Democrats are overplaying their hand with

the voting bill and they should go for a narrower voting bill. Well, the Freedom to Vote Act already is a narrower voting bill. In fact, it is the next generation of HR1, which was a more expansive House version of this bill. And it has gotten narrower in some sense through the auspices of Senator Manchin. And he has both added and detracted. He has added some protections for state election officials that have become more apparently necessary since the big lie. And he has also taken away some of the campaign finance reforms. So we've already evolved the voting rights bill to meet the concerns of some in the center. And that's healthy.

That's part of democracy. The Protecting our Democracy Act, I know that Democrats in both chambers would be fine passing those bills, that bill piecemeal, one by one, maybe starting with the least controversial and working our way out to the most controversial. Again, that's a healthy, deliberative process that makes a lot of sense. But the point is, we need to start acting. I mean, I know you are in a different chamber than that, but it seems like we keep coming up against this idea that there's no world in which you get 50 Democrats to have a cut out for the filibuster. I'm not ready to throw in the towel on that yet. Okay. My working thesis is that

when you're president of the United States, you get to pick up the phone a couple of times and your administration, especially in your first term, and say to a fellow politician, I need your vote, especially if they're in the same party. And what the Biden administration needs to be thinking about is what are those phone calls and one of the asks. And my prioritization is voting rights. That is where we put our political capital as a party right now. And that's where I think the president should put his political capital. Because if we don't get voting rights done, so much else becomes tenuous. So much else becomes very much else becomes rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

You work in Congress. What do you do when you see a Marjorie Taylor Green or a Matt Gates? I mean, seriously, this is what I think about all the time, right? We have these Democratic congressmen like you, like Mondare, like Richie Torres, who are so smart and serious and thoughtful. Do you smile at them? Do you look away? I mean, how do you work with people who are like set on your destruction?

I mean, the short answer is we don't work with them. We don't work with the Marjorie Taylor Greens and the lower and Boeberts of Congress because they're not here to get stuff done. They're here to be performative. I don't want, though, our listeners to caricaturize the entire Republican Party with Marjorie Taylor Green because I think that I think that's a reflex that liberal Democrats and all Democrats should push against. We should recognize that there is a faction of the GOP that is dangerous and is teetering into lunacy.

We should also recognize that there's a faction of the GOP that wants to talk about policy. Like who? Oh, I mean, there's probably half of them. People like Anthony Gonzalez on the Financial Services Committee, who I've talked to at length about crypto regulation, for example. There are people in the Republican Party who want to be serious policymakers. We need to at once both ostracize those who are here to be insurrectionists, but also try to cultivate relationships with those who are here for the good of their

constituents in the country, even if we disagree with them on things. So speaking of crypto regulation, could you explain to our listeners why that's needed and why Molly shouldn't be mining Bitcoin outside her window? I'm not mining Bitcoin. I have an Ethereum mine in my bedroom. I made 70 cents. Molly, whether you're doing Bitcoin or Ethereum or Solana, it's your business and it's an open market for it. It's right, baby. You know, I'm generally in favor. of Web 3 and of innovation and entrepreneurship in Web 3. I think what's happened in Washington is that there has been this shift over the last

couple of years going from nobody really understood what crypto was and it was sort of ignored as a backwater to all of a sudden everybody has developed their grand thesis over what crypto is going to be for the next decade. And to me there's like this huge leap in there and there's a really a critical middle ground, which is where I'm at, which is to say, hey, this is definitely a real thing. This is a new technology. I don't really have a strong outlook on what it's going to look like 10 years from now. But also, as a member of Congress in Washington, I don't necessarily need to.

That's why we've got markets and investors and entrepreneurs is that they're going to go out there and solve problems or not and have success or not. My job is to create the regulations that will prevent consumer fraud and abuse and that achieve critical U.S. strategic goals like dollar dominance. And that's really been our focus on the Financial Services Committee is, What is the incremental next step of regulation that can keep these innovation and markets healthy, but also protect consumers and strengthen U.S. geo-economic posture? Except that there hasn't been regulation of Facebook or any of this sort of the, I mean, there's like a long list of tech regulation that needs to be regulated, right? There are a long list of challenges that we have, and we've got to confront them in a huge number of different ways.

talking about big tech under one umbrella is really not that helpful because the business model of Facebook and Amazon versus Microsoft, Google. These are all trillion-dollar companies that have massively different business models and trying to apply one antitrust model, one privacy model, to companies, each of which are as big as most countries, just doesn't make a lot of sense. You've got to take them each on their own merits, same thing with blockchain. But clearly the situation with Facebook, I mean, after the Facebook leaks, will that lead to any legislation or no? you think there's no question that both administrative and legislative action against Facebook is coming. I can tell you the dimension that is by far the most concerning to me when it comes to Facebook, which is the Metaverse. I don't know how familiar you are with the Metaverse, Molly. Yes, sadly. You know, Facebook's obviously changed its name to Meta to indicate their investment in

their thesis, but they've hired 10,000 software programmers in Europe and they're trying to create an immersive 3D virtual world. And they're specifically trying to hook the adolescent demographic on their new generation of social media and video game products in this virtual world. And it's just going to be deeply damaging to kids' mental health, to their civic engagement, to our labor force participation, to our relationship with gun violence. It's a real vipers nest of problems that's getting uncovered here. Yeah, they're ruining the real world and then trying to put it. everybody in another terrible world. I've watched so many tech hearings, and you come from a very tech-heavy district, which is one of the reasons why I want to, like, push on this a little harder. I've watched so many tech hearings

where even some of the most savvy Democratic members really have trouble. And again, there's, like, a larger moral issue, but how do you make sense of tech? Do you think that the United States Congress is up for this job? I can't speak to previous. hearings are to all of my colleagues grasp of every single issue. What I can say is I come from a background of tech myself. I feel like I understand the issue well enough to not be intimidated by it, but also well enough to be humble in the face of how much there is to know about it and try to ask good questions. And that's been my goal in the hearings and it's going to be my goal in policymaking is to look before I leap and to try to balance the very healthy tradition we have

of this country of enterprise and innovation with protecting consumers, particularly children. Yeah. Thank you so much. Please come back, Representative Bakun calls. It's a pleasure. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from The Daily Beast,

tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifted. is pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer checking in on the movement of the radical right. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's Fever Dreams,

which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Molly Jongfast? Andy Levy. We come now to a segment of the show that is generally known as fuck that guy. But we were thinking that given the anniversary of January 6th that maybe we should change it up this week and make it fuck those guys. Those guys being all the people that got us to the point of January 6th happening, all those

people who aided and abetted the rioters or insurrectionists or whatever you want to call them. So, you know, we can talk about Josh Hawley, we could talk about Ted Cruz. We could obviously talk about the former guy, the failed president, as Joe Biden, calls him. And really, Molly, I would say, fuck all those guys. Yeah, I think that's right. I also think we can talk about Ali Alexander. Absolutely. Who has still not been held accountable. And the walkaway guy, remember that guy, failed actor who was involved from Stop the Steel, the Walk Away guy, Brandon, whatever his name is, with the long hair. And we can talk about all the people who did Stop the Steel rallies who juiced up the crowd before they attacked the Capitol like Don Jr. and Eric, Laura, and Kimberly

Goffield. Don't forget your favorite representative dead test. I was going to say. Yes, Representative Paul Gosar and the brains behind the organization, Louis Gomer. And the thing is about most of these, fuck those guys, is they will not pay a price for what happened. I mean, I hope they will. Yeah, but they won't. Josh Hawley's not going to... I mean, look, they may... Maybe they'll pay a price politically.

I highly doubt that. In a legal sense, they are never going to pay a price for what they did. And it's just a real fuck those guys. But they could if Mayor Garlane wanted them to. I just don't see it. I don't see it happening

for the elected officials. I just don't. I don't see it happening either, but it could happen theoretically. Yeah, I see what you mean, yes. But it's a real fuck those guys. guys because, you know, the only price they're going to pay is us saying fuck those guys, which granted is a high price. Don't get me wrong.

Listen. And, you know, some of them will cry, I believe. Right. You know, others will just feel sad and maybe not be able to get out of bed that day. But we are ensuring that they pay a price. And I think that's what we do for this country, Molly Jongfest. I'm not in a lot of. we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast.

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