The Daily Beast Podcast - Carville: Either Dems Hold On or Kiss Democracy’s Ass Goodbye

Episode Date: October 12, 2021

James Carville talks with Molly Jong-Fast about how to stop the GOP before they “come back in power in 2024 (and) you can kiss this democracy’s ass goodbye.” Plus Alec Ross talks about the Raging 2020s and Ryan Hampton rips apart the Sackler’s great deal in the Purdue settlement: “this whole thing was a set up from day one” in which “victims were sidelined every step of the way.” 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 it's 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 Jong-Fast and welcome to The Daily Beast, The New Abnormal. I'm a left-wing pundit and an editor at large at The Daily Beast. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. Our world has been turned up day down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and figure out how to get ourselves out of it. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon. I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. Today we have an excellent show. Former Senior Advisor for Innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,

Alec Ross, is going to talk to us about his new book, The Raging 2020s, Companies, Countries, People, and the Fight for Our Future. Then we'll talk to activist and writer Ryan Hampton about his new book, Unsettled, how the Purdue Pharma Bankruptcy failed the victims of the American overdose crisis. And he's going to talk to us about the fight on the ground, get justice from Purdue Pharma. But first, we have returning show favorite, the one, the only, James Carvel. Welcome back to the new abnormal James Carvel. Well, thank you, Molly. Glad to be here. You're right. It's not normal. You're a fan favorite. There are so many things I want to talk to you

about. I was going to introduce you as an email slut. You like that? That was pretty great. You know, there was one time of the governor, Louisiana, and other governors said it by it. He'd sign anything. He was sitting in his desk, and the winter was over the fall day, and a leak blew on his desk, and he signed the leaf. So let's talk about this, McAuliffe. This Virginia governor's race is really important. It's critically important, and just to amplify it, it's important. If the Democrats lose that, it will affect retirements. the more Democrats will retire, and it'll help Republican recruitment, so they'll get better candidate. Conversely, if we win, it'll send a signal, well, maybe this is not going to be the way that we thought it was shaping up.

So it's, first of all, I spend a lot of time in Virginia. My daughter's getting married there, three weeks. You know, Virginia's made a lot of progress. It's all we're going to turn into Oklahoma if Young can win. Yeah. Well, these, I mean, what strikes me, and I've written a lot about this abortion stuff in Texas, is that these Republican governors now have power to turn these states into anything they want. Oh, forget everything.

I mean, the Juncker has already said American Britscham on tape saying, well, I'm not going to be elected. We're going to do all of that. And if he wins, he'll probably, the Democrats have the governorship in both houses, but not very much. And we could lose both houses and the governorship. So it's time to hit the button and get motivated here. Yeah, so it strikes me, this is the high-stakes selection.

You know, McColliffe, you have been on the ground there. Are Democrats doing what they need to be doing, and what should they be doing in this run-up? Well, I think the carry strategy of, you know, usually people, the consultants and candidates try to convince you that they're going to win and they're ahead. And no, it's close. We could lose. Get motivated. Now, hopefully this thing follows the same trajectory as California. I don't expect to quite do that.

And, you know, the polling is exceedingly tight, but, you know, the Democratic enthusiasm has a ways to go. I'm hoping we can get there. But I'm checking anything, but I'm very nervous. I think the stakes of this enormously high, and I will not rest easy until the night of November 2nd. Um, Yomkin also has, is, he's a Trump candidate, and he's very much. very Trumpy, and we have, you know, there are these recordings of him saying very Trumpy stuff. This midterm, there are a lot of Trump candidates. Can you talk about what's happening there?

Well, all you have to do is look at that Iowa rally. Yeah. But if you had Chuck Grassee, as I call him, or ancient Greece. I mean, in a Roman Senate. Okay. I mean, he was up there. The government, the congressional people. Trump is just, he just taken the whole thing over.

He enjoys, and they all have to sit there and grovel to him. And, of course, Yonkin said he wouldn't be running if it wouldn't be for Trump. He tries to come across, well, you know, he's very slippery. He wants people to believe whatever they want to invest in him. Now, they're doing a good job of, I mean, Nick Blistering his ass pretty good with the negative. I got to say, they're not, it's not like they're not rolling it up, and it's not like Kerry's not raising money, but we've got to keep. keep on top of this. Yeah. And I mean, what do you think that it looks like we have a lot of Trumpy candidates for open seats. We just had, we just had the guy who's running against the music man in

Ohio. You know, that's a Trump candidate. Yeah, you know, that Josh Mandel? No, well, that's a different Trump candidate. Okay. But yes, you know, in the Ohio Senate race, you have Josh Mandel, you have J.D. Vance. I mean, you have a, I mean, that's a crazy. is the cast of Trumpers, right? The JD Vance, I don't think he's going to win. Right. He was critical of Trump and now he's come down to, you know, he's a kind of Lindsey Graham of Ohio. But Josh Mandel, he's, he's the real deal.

He's a real deal. He's really crazy. Yeah, he's really crazy. And, you know, we got, you know, we have a good kid, you know, Tim Ryan is being a good candidate, but Ohio is a tough nut. Yeah. How can Democrats win the middle of the country? Well, first of all, we can't win, but we can't win, but we can't win. can do better, but some we have to win.

Wisconsin comes to mind, you know, immediately. It seems like if Democrats can't beat Russia, Iran. I'll give you the optimistic scenario. Okay. And none of these things are unrealistic. First of all, Biden gets a deal. I don't know what they're waiting on it,

but to get everybody in there and say, okay, you know, this is what we're going to do. We're going to call this place and the mansions and the center of whatever, whatever. Okay? Whatever it takes. Bernie Sanders, because if we don't hang together, we're going to surely hang separate. Yeah.

You get a deal. The virus is getting better. It's hard to look at these numbers and say, gee, if this continues, it could be pretty good, you know? Right. And the economy is like, there's pin up demand everywhere. So you get a deal. The virus doesn't dissipate, but it gets a lot better and becomes sort of flu-like thing. We've got therapeutics coming.

Pin-up demand starts cracking the economy and, you know, wages go up. And I could see us having a good November 2020. But it takes to say, look, when the United States saw the Biden plan, they had confidence in it, the employers were hiring, people were investing and buying things. And then, you know, you have a story. Right. Right now, we don't have much of a story to tell. Well, I mean, we have a very successful vaccine rollout and a return to democracy. I mean, those are not.

Yeah. But, but, but, you know, Molly, in politics, it's, it's, it's. You know, you start the month and you have 90 grand in the bank and I have 110 grand in the bank. And at the end of the month, we both have 100 grand in the bank. You feel a lot better about your 100 grand. Well, the truth of matter is the country kind of thought the vaccine roll out late Mays, mid-June, like, hey, we're on a row. Right. And it's not Biden's fault, the freaking Delta variant comes along.

And people don't feel as optimistic as they did before. Now, there's a good case to be made. that they'll feel more optimistic come Thanksgiving to Christmas. And if they do, that'll help a lot. It won't help until November 2nd if they don't get a deal. I mean, they're running against buying. So what happens now with this? I mean, if you had to get, I mean, you still have cinema and mansion not sort of back and forth, right?

Right. How would you get these people on board? Doesn't it strike you that Chuck Schumer is not doing enough to get these people where they need to be? Well, first of all, it's got to be by the president, all right? And all of this protesting and, you know, attacking. Mansion is an Italian Roman Catholic Democrat from West Virginia. Right. And Democrat has not carried a county in West Virginia since 2008.

Right. And your choice is not Mansion of Bernie Sanders. Your choice is mansion of Marsha Blackman. Right. That's true. So what do you want? And cinema's Mark Kelly, she might cause Mark Kelly a sentencing. Right.

And I mean, they're just going to have to sit down and suck it up and negotiate and give something here and give something there. Schumer, you know, other, you know, the other center's got to work on this. Pelosi's got to get everybody on page. But this shit is hard. I'm not denying that at all. Yeah. But if you don't do it, then I'm not exaggerating. I don't think people are to say that if they come back in power in 2024,

you can kiss this democracy as they ask goodbye. It's gone. If they come back in power in 2022, you can kiss this democracy thing goodbye. I sure can. I mean, even if you're just a criminality that's going on. What is Merrick Galen doing, by the way? What is Mary Gawley? I don't think that man knows.

knows whether to whine his ass or scratch his watch. I mean, you are Mr. Democratic insider. I mean, can, I mean, how is the DOJ not doing anything? I don't know. Trump is blatantly committing a structure to justice. First of all, he was maligating 10 instances of a structured justice. Trump is telling people not to cooperate would a duty authorized and panel congressional commit.

Yeah. That's against the law. Yes. I mean, I don't understand. And why is this? committee, the January 6th select committee not having hearings, ASAP. Well, they're

working pretty hard. They're moving. I mean, you got to get the subpoenas out. You've got to do the pre-interviews. I mean, they're working hard. But Trump is telling people not to cooperate. You can't just, that's bad. It's against the law. What happens with the people who won't

like Steve Bannon and his claiming executive privilege? What would you do in this case? Well, what they do is, is that they when it's the minute they turn it over the FBI to serve the subpoenas or if it doesn't show up, arrested. Yeah, but you can't, you can't pick in this country, you can't pick that you don't want to show up. You just can't do that. That's against the law. It's, it's wrong and it's illegal. But here's the political question for you. Say you arrest Steve Bannon.

Right. Does Steve Bannon then become the Ashley Babbitt of the Trump administration? I mean, does he use that to his advantage? You cannot let lawlessness go. People say, well, you know, if you indict Trump, it's just, if he's guilty, you're indicted you can't have the most famous person in the United States blatantly committing crime. The hell would the political fallout. Nobody's going to, like, go to the war for Steve Bannon.

They're going to put people I feel sorry for you. I feel like to be a cellmate. How do you think that guy smells? Who shit. It's a little bit of smell like one of rude his thoughts. So you would say lock Steve Bannon up If he doesn't comply, absolutely Right

Well his whole thing is that even though he hasn't been in the executive branch For many, many years And he was there for about a month That he is, in fact, that he has executive privilege Lock him up If you either show up and talk A lock him up By food with a guy like this

Yeah I mean he's already from the indictment of Trump I can't believe that they're not looking into him. Yeah. Jesus, man. But you can't tolerate. Trump blatantly just breaks laws. Yeah.

You can't do that. Yeah. You can't say, well, I'm not a political, you know, worried about the institutional integrity of the Department of Justice. The hell with the institutional integrity and justice. Department of justice is supposed to do one thing, and that is to enforce the laws of the United States. That's their job.

Yeah. That's it. Yeah. I'm serious. No, I'm serious. I'm agreeing with you. I mean, it's, I think a lot of people wonder, I think even Trump thinks he's, I mean, I don't understand why everyone is slow rolling all the time. Well, if you've broken laws all your life and had never been held accountable, why wouldn't you feel that way? By the way, I think they're going to indict him in New York before the year is over. And I think the case they're going to have is going to be so compelling and so strong that it, I'm saying, Chuck. anybody but any sense, but they'll go, wow.

I mean, they're not, if you think this guy, Mr. Palmeran, so I don't even know, I'm told by any number of people as the best criminal law in the United States, is taking a leave of absence from making $4,000 an hour in that FSI, FSIS forensic accounting firm. Right. And they got all these. For you to think that they're not going to indict Trump, you would say, well, Trump is basically an honest man. Okay, try to get that sentence out of your mouth.

Yeah. All right. They're going to indict him. That's coming. Yeah, no question. I'm reading so many pieces now about Biden's polling dips, and there's a lot of, like, anti-Bitamin, sort of sentiment I'm reading in the straight news.

And I just, I can't tell if it's based on something, or it's just where we are in the news cycle. Well, you know, I think it's based on maybe as a grand strategy here. Yeah. And maybe, you know, he knows how to play this out and he's correct the guy. I don't know. But they're not making a lot of positive news right now. Okay.

They're not driving anything. So, of course, there's nothing that the media rather do to show their independence. Right. You know, where they all supported freaking Afghanistan war. And they go, well, the exit was fucked up. No, it was an entrance that was fucked up. Right. Right.

But lost that war 15 years ago. Right. What are you talking about? But that gives everybody. to escape. And so now the son of the defense minister of Afghanistan bought a mansion in Beverly Hills for $20 million.

Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, how'd you like to have one of your kids, you know, fighting for that crap? It strikes me that Republicans are trying to start a civil war. Yeah. I mean, you've been in politics for a long time. Have you ever seen this? Of course not. I wasn't alive in 1812. Right after that. He's not.

I bet he talked about it. We love car. Who has seen anything like this? Who has seen this kind of utter lawlessness? Of course I haven't seen anything like it. And what is like striking is

we may be getting more of it. I mean, and they're calling out and saying these are like tourists coming to the capital. I mean, oh my God. Right now they're leading in the polls. Maybe this is if the country, some chance that it does, Maybe we can get, maybe the government is a no better than our citizens.

Maybe it's the public's fault. George Farland's here. This weekend, Steve Scalise was on one of the Sunday shows refusing to say that Trump had lost the election. We now have a Republican Party that has its own reality. Obviously knows Scalise. I think he knows that he's scared to say it because it's caucus will deposes his ass. Right. Right.

Remember, he's elected by the Republicans. Republican House caucus, which is 80% completely out of their mind. Okay. I will concede that 20% of the Democrats are, I think, politically naive and, you know, too long. That's okay. It's not, I mean, AOC, she's not a bad person, anything. I just think she has some kind of impractical views. More things to say about it.

Right. And politically naive is not the same thing as being completely batched crazy. Correct. Correct. Lauren Grobert, that's a high-class operation there. That goes right in. What about Corey? But they're never going to, I mean, if Republicans never tell the truth, their constituents will never go along with it. I mean, right now they're trying to elect Republican governors and secretaries of state who will make it impossible for Democrats to win elections. I mean, how do you, how do Democrats fight that?

What the Republicans basically telling their constituent is the truth. All right. Well, Jane, wait a bit. What they're saying is the America you know no longer exists. Right. So America I knew, and I graduated in law school in 1973, we had one black student and three females. Right. Right.

Okay. That America doesn't exist anymore. We didn't know what BMW or Sony TV was. Right? Right. And by the way, you're right. The country is changing. Right. In my opinion, it's almost all of it in many ways is a good thing. But whether it's a good thing or bad thing, it is a thing. Right. So when they go and tell people that, and so that's something that somehow or another, I can make it 1958 all over again.

Right. And why would you, you know, because that was the high watermark America. Well, it was, unless you were a woman or gay or, you know, of a non-white person, it was pretty shitty for you. Yeah. But if you were, you know, you were a white kid in Louisiana, it was pretty good, pretty good world he lived in. Yeah. I mean, but that is true. Their basic critique is true. Yeah.

And so that trumps everything because he is going to give me my country back, the country that I knew. Right. That I started out here. There's a word, I think he's called a little banchinist. That may be mispronial. Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. All right, Jesse is sending me lots of text messages that we have to get out.

I can't stop interviewing James Carville. It's just too much fun. Please come back. 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 Soladad O'Brien. 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's 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.com. The DailyBeast.com. Alec Ross is a former senior advisor for innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the author of The Raging 2020s, Companies, Countries, People, and the Fight for Our Future.

Welcome to the New Abnormal, Alec Ross. Thank you for having me. So the Raging 2020s say, what's your central thesis of the book? My central thesis of the book is that we need to rewrite our social country. You know, about every 80 to 100 years or so, we so lose. the equilibrium in the relationship between people, governments, and businesses, we can't sort of incrementally work our way through it. We need to fundamentally rewrite the social contract. So explain to us what that means and what the last time that happened. Sure. When I say rewrite the

social contract, what I talk about is, you know, instead of like taking your car to the shop for a repair, it's like basically buying it. So the best known example, example in the United States is the New Deal. So after the trauma of the Depression, it's interesting. Three countries, Germany, Italy, and the United States were all in relatively similar circumstances. Germany ran toward Nazism. Italy ran toward fascism. The United States embraced the New Deal and just completely restructured the economy. Interesting, which is what the Biden administration has read now. I think so. You know, they're at the beginnings of it, but they're facing hell of a headwind. And, you know, they're trying to do it quickly, which is what they need to do. Though normally, these things take years.

You know, like thinking back to the New Deal, I mean, FDR was first elected president in 1932, and we were still in pretty rough economic shape for six, seven, eight years after he was elected. And nobody gets that kind of time. And there isn't that kind of time. You would compare this the closest to right after the pressure. So I think in the United States, that's the closest. If you're going to really geek out. You would go back to like, let's geek out for like 30 seconds. Yeah, please. The 1840s in Europe, like for 40 years, the world, that Europe changed from being agricultural to industrial. But this was like the Charles Dickens kind of industrial, 11 year olds losing their hands. Then there was the largest wave of revolutions in Europe's history and ideological

movements like communists. The communist manifesto was written in 18th. But then industrialization was made to work because with all this crazy tech innovation that enabled industrialization, we innovated with our public policy and put things in places like child labor laws, a minimum wage, pension, and free public education. So that's like, that's the biggest rewriting of the social contract in the last 200 years. And I think we could use some of that, but I would settle for the new. Do you see other 2020, other 20s? You know, I do. I think that, you know, it's interesting. The 1920s, were such a, you know, the roaring 20s came right off of the Spanish flu and the trauma of World War I.

And you saw this boom, not just economically, but also in things like arts and culture. And I do think that there's going to be, they're going to be booms, artistic and cultural boom this decade. And I think that they're likely is to be a lot of wealth created. The big question, though, is for whom is that wealth going to be created? So when it comes to, you worked in the state of, Department with Hillary. I did. So how did that affect your worldview of that? It affected my worldview because for the four years that I worked for her, I traveled my, my, somebody in my office totaled up 951,000 miles to over 40 countries. Yeah, that's a job.

That is, that is, that is two round trips to the moon with a side trip to New Zealand. Yeah. And so my view of all of this was informed by what I saw. all over the world and you saw the way in which different countries were rewriting their social contract for both good and bad and recognizing that we in the U.S. were not going to be able to just sort of put one foot in front of another and sort of rule the world for decades to come without a pretty significant reorientation of the way that we live in work. Did she do the most miles of anyone? I think she did. I mean, she was an incredible, incredible workhorse. You know, Condi traveled a lot, But I think Madam Secretary did more. She went absolutely everywhere.

What are your sort of suggestions to politicians on how, besides sort of passing buildback better and more sort of the social safety net, what are the other? I mean, you must have ideas about how to deal with America's polarization problem. Sure. And the first thing, and this is a really geeky, boring topic, but it's hugely important. Taxes. We need a global minimum. tax. I mean... That's coming, though, right? Well, we hope so. I mean, if I, if you were to say, what's the single most important thing Joe Biden is done, I would say he's pushed the ball forward on a global minimum. Yeah. I mean, it's the case right now that a single FedEx driver, one, pays more in federal taxes than Federal Express Corporation. A 17-year-old barista at Starbucks making

minimum wage several times over the last five years will have paid more in federal taxes than Starbucks. Yeah. And so, look, that is all because capital is. global, you can put money anywhere. FedEx and Starbucks are not breaking the law, but we have to make what is legal now illegal. If we're going to have the actual money, spend on all the things that we need to spend it on without raising taxes on the middle class. You know, 99% of the people who are to show right now could pay less in taxes if the world's wealthiest individuals and the world's wealthiest corporation pay something within the right of the taxes that they ought to. So what strikes me is Republicans lowered the corporate tax rate with the theory, who knows if they

really believed it, but they sort of said, well, this way more people will pay. It will have more corporations paying. And what happened was corporations were not like, oh, yes, let's sign up and pay more taxes. They continued to do this. You know, I'm based in Ireland. I'm based in Italy. I'm da-da-da-da. To avoid the corporate tax rate. So it strikes me that with this global minimum tax, you could actually have corporations forced to pay taxes, which will be new. That's exactly right. And you know, what's crazy about the Trump tax cut is they corporate taxes, they cut capital gains taxes, then they cut taxes on the topmost earners. So it was a great tax bill if you're like super rich or you're one of the world's biggest companies, but it screws

everybody else. And some of the arguments behind the corporate tax were just a complete joke. Because we live in a world of shareholder capitalism instead of stakeholder capitalism. And all of those additional resources just went to shareholders. It did not fund new research and development. They did not hire more people. They did not reincorporate their, you know, Grand Cayman's Island affiliate it, you know, into Nebraska. None of that proved true. We're now three years past this bill being in place. And what we really saw is that it just sort of sucked, sucked resources out of the federal treasury and reallocated it to shareholders' balance sheets. Interesting to me, yeah. No, it strikes me that we have a situation that is, that is, it's like,

They're sort of brilliant at not paying taxes. I also feel like, I mean, I live in a blue state, so I never understand the point. Like, I'd rather have very good public schools and pay a little more taxes than, like, live in a red state or even like some very good blue states like New Mexico, which is like my favorite non-New York state state state. And they don't have great schools because they have low state taxes. So, I mean, when you're not paying taxes, you're taking that money from. somewhat. No, it's unbelievable. I was born and raised in West Virginia, and my parents still lived there. And when I was growing up, it was like one of the most predictable Democratic-electing states. Like, I think Dukakis. But now the politics of West Virginia are more Taliban than they are sort of 1980s Union Democrat. And when you see the policies of Republicans that are very popular in West Virginia, really destroying the lives of West Virginia. And you ask how in the world could that possibly... I go back.

I see my parents. I talk to people at the bar. And it's because they live in an alternative information universe. Like I was back in West Virginia a couple months ago, and I was sitting at a bar and I had a beer or two in my belly, so I started talking to somebody, you know, and without revealing that I worked for Obama for six years or worked for Hillary, I just started asking.

And this dude was absolutely... convinced that Donald Trump had given him a tax, a tax which of course he had not. And if you actually start asking them question, their politics outside of the cultural issues, but on the economic issues,

are far more Bernie and AOC. Oh, yeah. Than they are country club Republican, but they don't know any. They just, they live in this world of Fox News and right wing radio and, you know, their Facebook filter bubbles. So,

they just, they're actually wrong, just in terms of their factual understanding of what Democrats put forward and what Republican forward. It's, in this case, it's actually black. It's crazy, but let's talk about Facebook for a minute. You know, this week was all allegation of Facebook juicing the algorithm to make people, all the stuff we have been reading for months and months in a lot of really smart places where the tech journalism is really good. And that basically Facebook is juicing. Here's this whistleblower. saying Facebook is using as radicalizing people. So not only, they're making what was already a problem even really. I mean, what would you, what would your suggestion be? I mean, it's, you know, I talk to Mark

Zuckerberg about this. You know, I know Mark, I know Cheryl Sandberg. I know the people who were making the, and the last conversation I had with Mark Zuckerberg was unpleasant. I think that's me being diplomatic. See, this is, this is me using my State Department trained language. It was about two years ago, and I was at a dinner with Mark Zuckerberg, and I tried to have, I was just like, now, Mark, let's go on right now and look at some of this. You know, my big objection was they chose as an official fact-checking organization, you know, one of these. The caller. Exactly. And I pointed that out, Tom, and he sort of looked at me and in the most pissy possible voice, goes, the left is just as bad. And, you know, I think there's a difference between intelligence and

wisdom. And a lot of the folks who work at Facebook are very intelligent. They have high IQs. Zuckerberg has a high IQ. But he's not wise. There aren't very many stamps in that. You know, they don't understand the real force and effect of their work. And so I do think that since they've grown so powerful, the sort of the brotastic boy billionaire that run a lot of these platforms are at the limits of their intelligence and they're showing their lack of. You know, it's interesting because we had someone on the pod who was talking about this. Zuckerberg had sort of been chastised by Peter Thiel and that they had sort of gotten him to go along with some of the Trump language that they knew wasn't true. But I feel like it comes back to this idea that this innate belief that the mainstream media is liberal.

And so the mainstream media does everything it can to prove that it's not liberal. ergo. And I feel like that's where we saw what we saw happening with Zuckerberg. No, I think that's exactly right. And what people fail to fully appreciate is, you know, again, thinking back to the title of this book of mine, The Raging 2020s, there are actually the real world consequences of these decisions about like how are we going to juice our algorithms. Right. It creates a body. It creates rage. When you create, when you have algorithms that pump up misinformation about vaccine. When you have algorithms that that radicalize people in really consequential ways, then it creates a body count. It makes us a less divided, more violent country.

Right. Now, here's a question for you. There was this during that, you know, this week on the Sunday shows, all the Facebook people were out. We saw that the stock went down, which historically never happened. you know, the stock went down, these allegations, the congressional hearings, like, clearly it's affecting Facebook. They sent all their people out on the Sunday shows. One interview I saw, they asked a Facebook executive about January 6th. You know, was the algorithm responsible for January 6th or for, you know, juicing the content towards January 6th? And the guy said that he couldn't answer that question. Well, there's your answer right there. And look, this is again, with great power comes great responsibility. And the responsibility is not to just maximize shareholder value, right? I mean, I think that plenty of wealth has been created. Plenty more is going to be created. Now I think it's time for some real wisdom to be brought inside, you know, how we do govern some of these social media platforms. It cannot just be left to the brotastic boy billionaires of Silicon Valley and their algorithms, because

at the end of the day, they don't really understand what they're produced. I've come to, I've come to believe that. And it's also the case that the lives they live are incredibly isolated. Like, Mark Zuckerberg doesn't travel. And when he, and when he does, he travels like, you know, he on a private jet to his house in Hawaii. Yeah, with like, and if he goes anywhere other than the house in Hawaii, there's like a gazillion security and staff. And so I think that connection of the brotastic boy billionaires of Silicon Valley from reality now is beginning to affect people all around the world in a malignant. I'm going to just read it to you. Facebook's Clegg. If you remove the algorithms, which is, I think, what the whistleblower was saying, one of her central recommendations, the first thing that would happen is that people would see more, not less hate speech, more or not less misinformation.

Look, I think Nicholas Clegg is basically taking dictation from, you know, Nick Clegg, bless his heart. I'm sure he comes from Democrat. Well, you know, he was a social Democrat. Well, he was from this, from the, from a third party in the UK got this big job. Now is holding on, I think, for dear life because it's a, it's a, I'm sure he's making millions of pounds a year and is not going to be able to get a job after that. Right. And at the end of the day, he's not he's not a technology. and I think he has very little understanding of what he's actually. And I say that he's not a bad guy, like I know him, but he's in way over his head. And what we need in, Facebook needs to stop seeing as a PR problem, something to man it. And rather, I think it's a much more existential problem where they need to decide the degree to which they are or are not going to responsibly. Because right now they're on their way to becoming sort of the Philip Morris of the 2020. I mean, ultimately, as distressed as we all may be, I am optimistic that we can get things. You know, when I, you know, I was talking to my kids about the title of my book, The Raging 2020s.

And it was funny, my 18-year-old thought that the word raging was implicitly positive, like raging like a great party at midnight. And so I do think it's a, there's a distinct possibility. It's entirely up to us. we have the agency to determine whether the future looks more like Mad Max or more like Star Trek. Is the world going to look more like, is this decade that started off very, very badly, going to finish on an up note or on a down note? I think we've got two or three years to set the trajectory. Thank you so much, Alec Ross. I hope you'll come back. Thank you. Take care of y'all.

Ryan Hampton is an activist and the author of Unsettled How the Purdue Farmer Bankruptcy failed the victims. of the American overdose crisis. Welcome to the new abnormal, Ryan Hampton. Thanks, Molly. Thanks for having me. Let us talk about Purdue Pharma. They are in bankruptcy. But explain to us what that means,

because it doesn't necessarily mean what we think it means. Right, absolutely. I mean, and I think that was the biggest shock to me, you know, when I was appointed by the Department of Justice back in September of 2019 to represent victims in this bankruptcy. I thought there would be some sort of, sort of meaningful justice, but, you know, I resigned as the co-chair of the official creditors committee representing victims, and actually over 600,000 creditors as someone in

recovery from OxyContin myself last month, because I realized that this whole thing was a setup from day one. Essentially, Purdue is going to be restructured into a new company. It will still sell OxyContin because that's the only way to fund the settlement. But coming out of this, you know, the Sacklers are going to walk away. They're walking into the sunset. They're receiving their highly contentious, non-consensual third-party releases. But you would think with even all of that, with a close to $9 billion settlement, that there would be some sort of justice for those who are harmed the most victims. And unsettled, and the reason I wrote unsettled, which is a much different book than what I had set out to write, is that victims were sidelined every step of the way.

You know, victims only stand to get 7.5% of the entire settlement. 92.5% of those settlement dollars will go to governments and corporations. And I would also argue to say that the way that states are going to be spending the money, you know, the jury's still out on that. So it's a tremendous amount of injustice. And quite frankly, I mean, like I said, set up from day one, and I would go as far to say it's a corrupt process. the bankruptcy system, you know, coming into this, I thought, hey, there's all these great people fighting on behalf of, you know, victims of the American overdose crisis, and we're going to take on Purdue and the Sacklers together. But as I got further into the guts of the process, I realized

it was everybody else versus the victims. And it's maddening and it's wrong and it has to change. And a lot of this bankruptcy legislation that's, you know, front and center right now doesn't even scratch the surface to the things that we need to be doing to ensure that the injustice of Purdue doesn't happen again because the repercussions of this case are going to be felt for decades if the system's not changed. It's going to be felt in Boy Scouts, the Weinstein case, the U.S. gymnastics. What could you legislate in order to make bankruptcy cases more? more fair and more victim-centered?

Well, first and foremost, I like to use this analogy, because I think it's important for people to realize, like, how unjust this case has been. So if there was a chemical spill, and I'm going to use the state of Massachusetts as an example, and actually Boston, and let's say there's this company that was involved in egregious behaviors, and they poisoned the water,

and 130,000 people died in the city of Boston. And the state of Massachusetts stood up and said, We're going to sue that chemical company for, you know, trillions of dollars for the harm that they caused. And the company had to go into bankruptcy. And all of a sudden, all these victims got to place a claim against that company. I can guarantee you that the state of Massachusetts wouldn't stand up in open court and say, but we should get paid before the victims get paid. And quite frankly, we should get paid more, much, much more to prevent future harm.

We're not going to address the past harm, all the dead. families, the 130,000 people that died, they don't really deserve much out of this because we need to build a better water system. That wouldn't happen, but because it's addiction, because it's overdose, and deputy attorney generals in this case actually said in mediation that addicts, that family members, that we did this to ourselves, therefore we don't deserve the same level of compensation that they do. That would never happen, right? So I believe that. The first thing that we need to address in any pending legislation is to ensure that victims always come first, that they're centered first in these settlement agreements. I get what you're saying, but my question for you is, do you think, I mean, are the states, are they like building rehabs?

Are they rebuilding their EMSs? Are they dealing with the consequences of opioids? I know that there are small towns where, you know, their hospital system has been ravaged by opioid use. I mean, what are they using the money for? Look, I'm not saying that the states and the federal government need to, you know, don't need to build a better system because they do. They absolutely do. Is the money going to that? Well, it's supposed to go to that, right? It is supposed to go to that.

And it's kind of embedded in the bankruptcy plan that it does. But let me also point out that I pay taxes for those services. these abatement dollars, these litigation dollars are not the only source of revenue, right, that the states and the federal government have. They need to be doing that anyway. And the dollars that are coming out of this litigation, they're nowhere near what we need to curb overdose deaths. We know that we need upwards of $20 to $30 billion per year. And it's also important to know that the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy case is the only mechanism. that exists for individual victims to actually get any shred of justice in this case. Because in the multi-district litigation, which is happening right now in Judge Polster's courtroom in Ohio, there's no mechanism for individuals to participate. And those companies,

if they reach a settlement, which they probably will, and those pharmacies are going to get broad releases out of it. So individuals aren't going to be able to go back in sue. But in Purdue pharma individuals can participate in that process. So arguably, the Purdue Farma bankruptcy was the only place where people who have lost loved ones, who have suffered as a result of the crimes of Purdue and OxyContin to be able to have any sort of compensation or justice, and that has been stolen from us. So yes, the states need to do a better job. They definitely need funding, but they have other revenue streams. Right, whereas people don't. I want to back up for a second. Why are they keeping to produce oxycodone? Well, let's remember that oxycotton inherently as a drug is not a bad thing.

I mean, I'm sober almost 24 years, so I'm not saying we should have prohibition, but I'm just curious, like, clearly there's been enough legislation and there's been enough testifying to say oxycotton is a very addictive drug, right? Like, we don't give people. cocaine anymore for medical stuff. We don't do it. It's too addictive. You know, we give fentanyl, but we don't give heroin. So, like, my question is, why do we need to give oxy-cotton? I mean, there are a lot of pain medicines out there, and a lot of them are easier, you know, that work as well, maybe not quite as well, but why continue producing oscicotten? Why not just let it die? Congratulations in your recovery, by the way. I'm also in recovery coming up on seven years.

I don't have the two decades plus that you do, but that is amazing. But I think a lot about addiction. Yeah. So, I mean, that was why I was bringing that up. So opioids have been around in one form or another and used, right? In pre-Civil War days, it's the marketing, right? It's the weaponization of the American medicine cabinet that really made it dangerous. So if you're asking me, is there a medical use for OxyContin?

Absolutely. Should it be in every household like it was in the 90s in the 2000s? Absolutely not. There's, there needs to be, you know, stricter controls on who gets it, you know, chronic pain patients, end of life, cancer pain. Like, these are all legitimate uses. But to the second part of your question, why not just let it die? Now, I advocated for the liquidation of the company, right, in my role within the bankruptcy. I was basically laughed out of the room. Nobody in that case is advocating for, you know, just wiping oxycotton off the face of the earth. And you know why?

Because this is all about money. This has only always been about money. There is no settlement. There is no money without oxycotton. It is the only thing that produces money for what is formerly Purdue and now is Newco. You know, they have some new fancy name for it that the states are going to control. But without oxycotton, there's no funding. There's no settlement.

There's no money for the states. It was pure and simple. This whole thing was a melting ice cube, right? And it was who could get to the table quickest, who could make the biggest claims, who could, you know, have sharper elbows and have a big cash grab. Right. You want the money to go to people who've been affected by OxyContin and not to the states. Well, it's, I want the money. The states definitely have a legitimate claim to the money. What I would say is I believe that the victims, the people who were hurt. harm the most, like the claims of the states, if you think about it, the claims of the hospitals, the claims of the cities and municipalities wouldn't even exist without the claims of the victims. I believe those victims should be first in line, okay? Like there are cases of bankruptcies in the past with things like airbags and seatbelts where people got bruises, okay, did not lose their

lives. And the settlement payouts were twice as much money as people are receiving who've lost someone to an overdose, okay? That is wrong. It's absolutely wrong. Now, the money for abatement, I believe it needs to go out, but there needs to be more community control. So there was an, and I write about it and unsettled,

there was an opportunity at the beginning of this case to put $200 million on the ground at the beginning of the case in an emergency relief fund that would have funded things like harm reduction, recovery support services, family services, And the states wouldn't let us do it because they wanted total control. They said if it doesn't go through our state agency, it's not going out at all. It's important, and I think folks need a reminder that thinking about the $750 million

that's going to go out to over 130,000 victims in this case, even add on to that the $200 million that we wanted for the Emergency Relief Fund, which would have been a historic investment into these services for people who need them right now, a handful of lawyers, a handful of less than a thousand lawyers in this case, will personally make over $1 billion. No, of course. I mean, that's why we don't have tort reform. I mean, right? Because that's, they're going to spend half of that on lobbying. I mean, that is a total scam. But it sounds to me, like, the issues that you're having are, like, are larger issues about the way that the, American health care system works. Yeah, there are larger issues on how the American health care system works.

There are also larger issues on corporate accountability, you know, how corporations like Purdue and families like the Sacklers are able to find quick refuge in venues like White Plains, New York, under Judge Robert D. D. D. Drain and walk away with, you know, nothing, nothing more than a slap on the wrist. Let's remember. Walk us through the bankruptcy filing. Yeah. So in bankruptcy, you can't choose your judge, but you can choose your venue. That's important to know. White Plains, New York is overseen by a federal judge named Robert D. D. Drain. He has been very, when I say liberal, not liberal in the sense of like us, like liberal in the sense of he gives out these third party releases liberally. And they chose white planes, but what they were choosing was really

Judge Drain because they knew that the Sacklers could get a third party. release and they also knew that he was very pro-debtor. Can you just explain what a third-party release is? Yeah, a third-party release allows a family like the Sacklers or an outside party that is not bankrupt themselves, nor do they have to file for bankruptcy to actually benefit from all the things in the bankruptcy, right? So the Sacklers were receiving a third-party release, which essentially means they bought their way in, right?

At the end of the day, they're writing somewhere close to a $4.5 billion check, and they're going to receive a release from any claim that has to do with the overdose and the opioid crisis, meaning I can't sue them, you can't sue them, another state can't sue them. It's also a term kind of known as quote-unquote global peace, but I would argue to say it's global peace for them, not necessarily the communities and families that they disrupted. And they're walking away, they will walk away at the end of this after their part of the settlement is paid out, right, which is over nine years the way it's structured. They will actually just assuming a healthy standard interest rate on the money that they have still in the bank, they'll be richer

than they were today at the end of nine years if they don't make another penny. It's estimated their wealth will be somewhere between $15 to $16 billion. Just from interest? Just from interest, interest and investment. They're worth about 11 billion now over the nine years after paying the four and a half, they'll still be in a net game. Right. I mean, I've known this family. I mean, what could have happened? I mean, the bankruptcy laws do really protect corporations and wealthy families. There was actually an option on the table. So a lot of the victims in the process and folks on my committee, I always felt very uncomfortable. I thought it was immoral and wrong that the sacklers were going to be able to watch.

walk away with zero accountability out of this case. And as you can remember, probably remember, sometime around spring, there was a lot of contention with what used to be the non-consenting states, mostly democratic states, who felt the same way. A majority of them actually ended up signing on to the settlement. But when we were in mediation, there was an option that was proposed. That was like, hey, we could actually eliminate the Sacklers completely from this bankruptcy, right? And this is something people don't know and just, you know, allow it to be Purdue, the company and bankruptcy, and fund everything from there. The only issue was that the way the settlement had been negotiated over a course of a year was the victims, right? The $750 million that was

going to victims, most of that money was coming from the Sackler contribution because we had known that we had known about these third party releases for almost two years, right? before Purdue went into bankruptcy. So we went to the states, Democratic and Republican, and we said, hey, states, we're good. Like, let's get rid of the sacklers out of this bankruptcy. Let's just fund the victim's settlement and the private creditor settlements, which was, you know, all in total, a little bit over a billion dollars from the same place you're getting your money from, which is from the future sale of OxyContin and the billion dollars that exists right now in Purdue's bank account. We'll just all be on the same page and just take from the company, right?

to fund the settlement. So protect the victim's settlement, protect the other private creditor groups, and we're good. And guess what the state said? No, because they want the money. They said no way, kick rocks. We're not doing that. So it calls into question, what was the most important thing here? Was it holding the sacklers truly accountable? Or was it one big power and money grab? This is not a conspiracy. It's just the states would rather have the money than let people get the money? Or is it a conspiracy? It's not a conspiracy. It's a small cog and a larger wheel of a system that has to change that favors corporations and billionaire justice. Victims like me, victims, you know, over the 130,000 victims around this country get screwed, right? And we're

going to continue getting screwed until there's systemic changes from the top to the bottom. This will happen again, unless we address meaningful bank, bank, reform in this Congress. Yes, and a meaningful bankruptcy reform and also meaningful pharmaceutical reform. Meaningful bankruptcy reform and meaningful pharmaceutical regulation reform. Like, we need better watchdogs. Yes, or any watchdogs. Or any watchdogs. Because quite, I mean, and I'll end on this. You know, the states and the federal government, they're really upset right now. But we have to remember that they were empowered as watchdogs after the 2007 criminal plea and they were asleep at the wheel.

Agreed. And now they're being rewarded despite their lack of action. That's right. Thank you so much. This was really interesting. Thank you, Molly. Appreciate it. 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 in the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from the Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters 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. Jesse Cannon. Molly John Fast. We are at our one segment. Oh, we, we, you know, I'm cooking up some segments. Maybe we can, maybe we can, we, we, we, We have a new segment coming. We could rescind that. That's right.

Soon it will be, we'll have one and a half segment. We've tried before, and then some of them haven't gotten off the ground. But I'm feeling good about this one. That's in the cauldron right now. Well, we only ever had, we had fuck that guy and a good guy, and we couldn't think of any good guys. So we just, that idea died. But today there was a weekend of a lot of fuckery. It's a long weekend.

Of course, we're working because what else do we do? But my fuck that guy. is a man called Chuck Grassley. You may know Chuck because he has, you know, he's going to be 88 when he runs again for a six-year term, which will make him die file, as we say. Yeah, he's 88 right now, so he will run for a six-year term, in which case he will be 94. When he completes his term. And but this weekend, you know, Chuck Grassley has managed to sort of be a Republican, but not be Trumpy, you know, not ruin himself the way that a Ted Cruz or a, you know, a Mike Lee has.

But this weekend, he really did manage to ruin himself. And he was the opening act for a Trump rally. And it was pretty, it was, I actually think it was more sad. then it just felt really grim to me. And, you know, these Republicans, they, they kidnap themselves and are holding themselves hostage because they're scared of Trump's Twitter, which he doesn't even have anymore. Mama, you know, I hate nothing more than both sidesism. You know, I hate me a siliza. Yeah.

Diane Feinstein and Chuck Cross here are the same age. We finally found liberal and we finally filed left and right-wig parody. Yeah, exactly. That's right. So, Dye Fai, and I'll add Chuck Grassley and Dye Fai, the United States Congress is not the Supreme Court. You don't get to stay there forever. But that's not why I say fuck that guy. I say fuck that guy because Grassley really did ruin himself for Trump.

Well, my fuck that guy is Donald J. Trump. And that is because he called it with a message to Ashley Babbitt's remembrance birthday party. where he said, together we grieve her terrible loss. There was no reason Ashley should have lost her life that day, except for that I incited it. We must all demand justice for Ashley and her family. So on this solemn occasion, as we celebrate her life, we renew our call for a fair, nonpartisan investigation

into the death of Ashley Babette. And another video of the event shows that her mother was cheering in a crowd, screaming, fuck off and die Nancy Pelosi because, You know, as always, there's no civility. And what this whole Ashley Babbitt thing is actually about is that they don't want you to be civil when it comes to defending dear leader. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world.

We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app. and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts.

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