The Daily Beast Podcast - Chill the Fuck Out. This Isn’t Another 2016, and Here’s Why

Episode Date: October 30, 2020

Molly Jong-Fast, like many of us, is nervous about the election. Sure, the polls look pretty decent for Biden; they looked good for Hillary, right? Not exactly, Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report tells Molly. In the last couple of weeks of the last campaign, there was so much attention on those freakin’ emails. “You could see the race tightening. Hillary went from up 11... and then in the very last NBC poll, she was up four points, with 16% undecided,” Walter recalls on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. This time, though, the pandemic is the focus. And Trump has basically surrendered to the virus. “Now Biden's up, nine, 10 points with very few people undecided and very few people thinking they're going to vote third party. So it's just, it's a different environment. Biden's a different kind of candidate. And Donald Trump is the president at a time when we're in the middle of a crisis that the majority of Americans don't think he's handled well.” Then! Sen. Sherrod Brown talks about whether Biden has a shot in increasingly-Red Ohio. Plus! Rick Wilson debuts the Lincoln Project Time Machine! MAGA junkies chase the Dragon of Cray! Jared Kushner attempts to outsmart a sack of hair! Steve Bannon gets ready to punch out license plates instead of lies! And Eric Trump takes a delightful trip to Frog Dick, Alabama! On election day The New Abnormal is going to do what we always do and talk about what's happening with the election and you can listen in if you Join Beast Inside today where you'll gain access to an exclusive Zoom version of our podcast where you can ask your own questions. We’ll help you stomach the last moments—or so we hope—of the longest, weirdest, crappiest presidential campaign in modern history. Join Beast Inside today and then join us on election day when we pull back the curtain, New Abnormal-style.To hear this along with the rest of our upcoming bonus episodes head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com. That's newabnormal.thedailybeast.com. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

Are you prospering? Are you doing fine? I mean, it's rained every day here for a year. Where I'm at it never rains. It's like four degrees where you are, so let's not. Yeah, well, close enough. Molly, there are mysteries I've contemplated many times. And I think we've all had a lost package with Amazon or UPS.

I'm sure you've had that experience, right? Yes, I have. Have you ever had one loss that contained? the game-changing election-ending, critical data that only Tucker Carlson could bring to the American people to reveal the deep-seated corruption and perfidy of the Biden family. And then it was lost in the mail by Postmaster to Joy. They lost it in the mail somehow or another.

I don't know what service they used to transport it, but somehow secret deep state ninjas intercepted the Tucker package. By the way, the Tucker package is usually something that women's scream and horror when they hear about. But in this case, the Tucker package was supposedly a trance of damning documents from the Hunter Biden scandal. The scandal that Fox News has attempted to pull from its ass for the last several weeks, failing utterly.

So this morning, it was all debunked by the Daily Beast, Will Somer, who found out that, in fact, the mail has found the package. And they are actually, despite Postmaster DeJoy's best efforts, the mail is. still, you know, a little slow, but for the most part, largely working. They had the biggest Fox-style hissy fit, desperately trying to find the deep state conspirators who stole Tucker's magic notes. Why do we think that Fox has been so bad at putting together a conspiracy theory around Hunter and Joe Biden? Because they did it were able, I mean, remember Benghazi, the almonds, mustard, Michelle Obama's sleeveless dress, nothing here.

Part of this is that a percentage of the Republican slash Fox base has moved on to greener pastures for their crazy conspiracy theories. Right. You know, this is pretty mild stuff compared to the idea of, you know, cannibal sex predator rings operated out of a pizza restaurant with Hillary Clinton and John Podesta. Adrenaglome harvesting. Right, bowing down to the ancient Molochian gods, some deep conspiracy theories. So a lot of them have moved off to more fertile pastures for cray.

Fox just doesn't have the same degree. If you look even at the more or less gentry versions of Breitbart and Federalist and Gateway Pundit and Alex Jones, that sort of stuff is almost losing its power to titillate. What they're looking for now is the really like weapons grade bat shit craziness. It's not enough that Hillary Clinton had a set of emails that she's actually a reptilian overlord trying to impose gay Sharia marriage or something. They want more and more lurid, vivid, kooky details. And all those things are so appealing to them because they just, they can't accept the fact that Donald Trump right now is getting his ass beat for one thing. Can we also talk about hackers stealing millions from Wisconsin's GOP Trump re-election fund?

You hate to see it. But when the admin uses the same password on his porn hub and on its various other sites with their ACH account, I mean, I guess it's the same thing, right? I mean, I don't know, because here's the question for you. They're missing a lot of money, too, right? That's not from hackers. That's from Parscalors. Right. You know, if I were a GOP donor, I might be a bit pissed, as they say. I would say this. Due diligence concerning not letting your campaign money be stolen.

I put it fairly high up there. But, you know, as we've seen Trump campaign consultants have not exactly been shy with robbing the campaign blind. There's somewhere between $130 and $170 million just missing. And as many times as Tim Murtok comes out, goes, there has never been an audit. there has been a fucking audit. They've been looking for the money for months. They don't know where it went. Tim, go back to knocking. Wait. What?

Rick. Yes. Those billboards. Can we spend a little time talking about the billboards? Are you going to... Everyone does. Turns out Jared Kushner, there are... Lordy, there are tapes.

This is why we were so amused by the threat from Jared Kushner. lawyer to sue us because we were very straightforward. We just said, okay, we'd love to depose you. We were happy to go to, discovery will be a delicious and ongoing torture for you. If you'd like to play that game, we would be happy to oblige you because let's talk about everything that happened in those meetings, especially March 31st in the cabinet room, because we'll go there. So long story short. Those billboards have stayed up, somehow or another. They haven't managed to... Are we going to get some billboards about the Jared Kushner, Bob Woodward, were taking the government back from the scientists? Well, obviously, the government was stolen from them by the scientists because,

you know, scientists just love dead people. No, um, look, this, this whole shenanigan with, with these guys talking to Bob Woodward, it is still a gift that keeps on giving, because Because there's a great quote in the movie All the President's Men about Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's coverage of Watergate. And at one point, they're in this garage talking to Deep Throat, who was Mark Felt, and Felt said, you know, the truth is, these are not very bright guys. And things got out of hand. That iterates so clearly forward because Trump is telling Woodward in one of the new tapes, oh, talk to Jared. He's A plus. You don't find people like Jared.

He's so super smart. No, you don't find people like Jared. You really don't. Jared is real dumb. Jared, by all public evidence, is dumber than a sack of hair. There are bags of hammers with a higher IQ than Jared Kushner. He's one of those people who's been told he's smart his whole life and his dad bought him a place at Harvard. But he's just not bright.

He's really not bright. And so when you go out and you say something like, we can get away from the doctors, you don't just sound like a fucking moron. You prove it. Yeah. I mean, you prove it. This is one of the ongoing things we're going to see as we, as we, unwind the Trump administration, okay, as we unwind all this bullshit, we're going to discover

that these guys in the White House never knew what they were doing, never had a goddamn clue how to manage this, never gave a damn about anybody out there. And it's going to become this ongoing, you know, revelation that guys like Jared are always going to be guys like Jared, which is not that smart. Yeah, I think that's a pretty generous assessment. There's not that smart. And there are the smart ones who are, of course, completely fucking insane. Like your boyfriend, Stephen Miller. We call him Santa Monica Gerbils for those keeping track at home.

Yes. Santa Monica Gerbils. He kind of knows that they can't possibly get reelected without big-time homages to QAnon. Right. Because Q&ON is like part of the Republican Party now. Part of, hell, it's wired into the DNA of the Republican Party. So Stephen Miller dog whistling to them from the White House. And ordinarily, Stephen Miller only uses a dog whistle to lure his dinner nearby.

Dog whistling to Q&R from the White House, it is just, I would say it's astounding, but it's not astounding anymore. It's completely predictable. These guys have completely bought in, even if they think it's a scam and a fake and a con, the hilarity of it is they're going to play along. When Stephen Miller does something like that, he knows what he's doing. He knows who he's signaling to. what he's talking about. He's not, he's not, you know, fooling anybody. He's not convincing anybody. But they're going to keep doing it because they love the cray. And again, like I said earlier, they're attracted now. The audience for Trumpism is not even attracted to the old

level of crazy you get at Fox or O-A-N-N. Now they need a whole new level of crazy. They're always like chasing the dragon of cray. We're five days from the election right now. We are. our last free and fair election, as I like to think of it. Hopefully not. Everybody who hasn't voted yet, unless you're going to early vote on Friday or Saturday, and a couple states have Sunday early voting, but not many.

Unless you're going to vote early, it is now too late in most states to vote by mail. I strongly, strongly encourage our listeners who are going to get out and vote, and by the time you hear this, you'll be down to one day of early voting, most likely. get out and vote early or make a plan for election day. You cannot just count on going to the polls this year and getting in and out in 15 minutes.

It's probably going to be a very big day. Try to make a plan with friends, socially distance appropriately. If you go with other people, you can swap out of line and get something to eat or go to the bathroom during the course of the hours. You're probably going to be in line. But I will say, make a plan. Do you think at this point the Trump administration, which is also the Trump campaign, interestingly, as you see with Larry Cudlow doing campaign calls, even though he's a member of the administration. Do you see that just they will do anything, they will say anything to get reelected?

And it doesn't matter at all, even if it's like Trump is saying things like Biden wants to kill your puppies. I mean, they're just completely untethered now. They are utterly unhinged. They are unhinged and they are flailing, dear listeners. By the time you hear this, you'll be closing in on the launching of their last October. surprises where they're going to make up more crazy shit and the right-wing adjut-prop machine is going to go bonkers trying to promote it and it will be just as valid as the rest of the crazy bullshit Steve Bannon's been vomiting from his from his liehole the rest of the year.

Don't be surprised where you're going to have a Thursday night, Friday morning, Friday afternoon news drop from the campaign of Donald Trump and his allies making up some horrendous crap. I don't know what horrendous crap it's going to be. There is a secret little planning cell of Jason Miller and Jared Kushner discussing it inside the Trump campaign. How do I know that? My gosh, it's a mystery. But they're keeping it very close to their respective vests. Chelsea Clinton?

Just expect it. I'm sure that it's because Chelsea Clinton is actually the secret keeper of the Keys of Solomon and she's going to have the philosophic mercury and live, and that gives Hillary eternal life. and therefore she'll run for president 80 times. Do we see this coming into Hillary has a heart attack gun, and that's what happened to Vince Foster? It is probably going to be in that range. The insanity level is building faster and faster,

and a lot of Trump allies have decided that they are in political hell and they can't escape. They know they waited too long to try to get away. Yeah, really. And the ones that are now squirming and twitching and feeling this sense of nausea rising in their throat. are there because they really started believing Trump's bullshit. They really started thinking, oh, well, he's immune to polling.

Nothing matters. Nothing touches him. Well, this election is shifting away from him. And I don't know yet if we are in a 1964 election, which was a blowout because Goldwater at the time was so kooky, or if it's a 1980 election. And what happened in 1980 with Jimmy Carter was the race was competitive. it was close, but in the last week to 10 days of the campaign, and specifically the last five days of the campaign,

there's something in polling and electioneers call the preference cascade. And states started to break away from Carter faster and faster. So one or two points spreads became five or six points spreads. And then over the weekend, in the last polling of the campaign, those spreads became like eight and nine and ten point spreads. I don't know if we're seeing 1980 quite, but Mike Madrid and a lot of other smart pollsters that I'm talking to and smart data guys that I'm talking to feel like the pathways for the electoral victory of Donald Trump are slipping fast. That's no excuse for you motherfuckers to not get out there and vote, by the way.

You've got to vote. And we never know how this is going to come down. And there will be shenanigans and cheating and bullshit. So we've got to stay on board. Stay on target. It's really important. Yeah. And I think it's really, I think that the most important thing here is that Trump needs to.

lose by a lot because the more Trump loses by, the more Americans are saying we are not racist assholes. And that's good for America and the world. That's good for our standing as a country. There's a degree to which the scope of the defeat of Donald Trump decides what kind of country we have in two years, four years, ten years. If it is a sweeping repudiation of Donald Trump, which is why you motherfuckers have to get out there and vote, I'm in a mood. If it is a sweeping repudiation of Trump, this country will have the opportunity to reset on a million different big things we have to do. Like, I don't know, dealing with COVID, turning the economy around, unfucking a whole bunch of things that Donald Trump has done to turn our country into a laughing

stock at home and abroad. The degree to which we've got to beat him in a serious way is vital. It's got to be big. I agree. I mean, I think that's right. Rick Wilson? Yes, Molly drunk fast. Why are you mentioned in so many lawsuits lately? If it's Thursday, it must be Falwell. Apparently, you know, Jerry Falwell has decided to blame the Lincoln Project in part for his long-going thruple with his Cuban pool boy. You just wanted to use the word thruple. I did want to use the word thruple. And I mean, I believe it was actually more technically a cuck-full.

Let me just say this. The Lincoln Project did not make Jerry Falwell sit in the corner while this guy did his wife. Are you sure? Listen, Molly, if I had the mind control ray that I've really wanted to get the scientist to work on for years now. As opposed to the heart attack gun. Right. Heart attack gun, mind control ray. The mind control ray would be much more useful, in my opinion.

But we did not make him drop his pants on a super yacht with some post a picture on social media. Yeah, I remember it well. I did not make him, you know, become a Trump cheerleader and therefore fall victim to the everything Trump touches dies rule. Even though I think they're, you know, this sort of demonstrates their kindred. spirits when it comes to their relationships. And remember, Falwell was an early, early Trump supporter. Oh, yes. Yeah, like Jefferson Beauregard's Sessions, who's now out of the race in Alabama,

he was an early, early Trump supporter. Right. And, you know, we had nothing to do with revealing the character of this guy. Wait. Unless the Lincoln Project Time Machine went back like seven years when these guys all entered their dalliance. And I'm not saying the Lincoln Project has a time machine. because honestly, the physics have just been really hard to be.

We are, however, beginning our nascent nuclear weapons program. We believe in deterrence. All right, all right, right, right. Let's get the hook. Someone went to Republican. Oh, no. Look, if I had a nuclear weapons program, it would be both fun and funny. Oh, good.

That's what we were hoping. Rick Wilson. Yes, Molly Jung Fass. Who is your favorite senator? I don't know. I have a lot of favorite senators. Is it Martha McSally? Oh, Martha.

You know the great thing? thing about Martha McSally. One minute McSally? The other day when Trump said to her, you can have one minute. One minute McSally? That's not the first time he said that to a woman. And after that joke, we're not even going to give her another minute of this segment. So as we were talking about your favorite senator, the gentleman from South Carolina.

The gentleman from South Carolina, that swooning heartthrob, Lindsey Graham. That's right. My favorite part about Lindsay Graham right now is he's really, really desperate to remove Bill Bledsoe from consideration into South Carolina. Tell us about this, Bill Bledsoe. Bill Bledso is a true conservative, Molly. He'll put Christ back in Christmas. That ad.

If you're afraid of Bill, of Antifa, you think Lindsey Graham will stop Antifa? Hell no. But Bill Bledso, he'll put him in their place. By the way, Bill Bledso is like the scariest candidate. He's like the, he's from the Constitution Party? He is from the Constitution Party, and it's a delightful party. Truly a party of... Yeah, they seem like a party of ideas, right?

Yes, they're definitely a party of ideas. They're not good ideas. They're ideas. Ideas like women shouldn't work outside the home. Yeah, you know, y'all voting is a bad plan, apparently. Exactly. Sherrod Brown is the senior United States Senator from the great state of Ohio. And today he's here to talk to us about the election and his hopes for the future.

Can we talk about Ohio? All I can think about is the election. All anyone can think about is the election. You are the man when it comes to Ohio and many other things too. But you think that Biden can win Ohio? Biden's going to win Ohio because he really is. He's the most pro-worker candidate that either party's nominated for president in a generation. You contrast his dignity of work with Trump's betrayal of workers and a number of Trump voters from 2000. 2016, like they moved to me in 2018 for the Senate, well, we'll vote for Biden. And I think he is, you know, he's the guy from Scranton. And I think that matters. Scranton could be Toledo or Dayton or Lorraine or Mansfield, Ohio. One of the things I think you've done an incredible job of, I say this is someone who is in their 40s. And you have made the idea of workers' rights palatable to a group of more conservative Democrats.

How do you do that? Think of who has died. Who has been unprotected at the workplace during this pandemic? It's the bus drivers and the grocery store workers, the people that prepare food, clean offices, the people that change the Lennon in hospitals. They're exposed to this virus in work. They come all always anxious about perhaps infecting their families. And President Trump has pretty much said to them, sorry, you're on your own.

No workplace protections, no help, no financial help for people making barely adequate wages or not even adequate wages. Most of these essential workers are women, they're disproportionately people of color. They're all around us. They keep the society going. Biden will fight for them. Trump has said you're on your own to them. And I think that's fundamentally why Biden wins the state. It's fundamentally why workers around the country are turning on President Trump. of you as a senator, probably more than any other senator, who has made workers' rights kind of the centerpiece of your political ethos.

And yet, people do not feel like you're a far leftist. I feel like you've managed to sort of thread the needle of like real progressive ideas about the importance of what Democrats need to do for workers. and yet people don't sort of write you off as being very left wing. Can you explain to me how you've managed to do this? Well, there's no needle to thread. When I talk about the dignity of work, I use that term that Dr. King really popularized that term in the 60s. And remembering back when Dr. King was assassinated, he was on the front lines leading marches and organizing efforts for unions in Tennessee.

he was fighting for some of the most exploited workers in America, African American sanitation workers, and he was killed doing it. He understood that worker rights, civil rights, and human rights are so intertwined. So I will always have an F from the NRA. I will always support marriage equality as I have for three decades. I will always be pro-choice as I have my whole career. And I will always fight for workers. And it's all workers.

It's not just white male union workers. It's essential workers. I mean, Dr. King said that no work, no job is menial if it pays adequate wages. And my mission in the Senate is that people get decent, people that work hard should be able to get ahead. They get decent wages. They should have health care in a retirement when their body wears out or they just are ready to retire. they should have some reward. And this society led by this president has too often said to these workers, you're on your own.

So it's not a liberal conservative thing. It really is. You fight for people. You fight for justice. You fight for workers. And it's all workers. So one of the things that is the thing that is the most amazing about you is that your proof that a liberal can win in a red state. Can you explain to me how you do that?

Because we're curious. The same reason Joe Biden's going to. when you talk about workers, even though, you know, there are, I'll tell you real quick story back, and the 2000 presidential election, there you might have been old enough to vote, but barely than, Molly. 20. 20. You were old enough to vote. Yeah.

All right. That's old enough to vote. I voted in that election. It broke my heart. Okay. I was at a Ford plant and Avon Lake Ohio, and it was during a break, and I was sitting around with several auto workers. We were just talking about the presidential race, and there are seven or eight people there,

and everybody said, who you voting for? and one person was voting for Bush and everybody else was voting for Gore. And the one guy said, why are you voting for Bush? And the guy said, well, Gore wants to take my gun. And the other guy said, well, Brown has the same views on gun issues. And you vote for him and he said, yeah, but Brown fights for me in the workplace.

He fights for my kid to be able to go to community college. He fights for wages and benefits. He supports unions and workers in the workplace. And I think that's the issue. If you're fighting for workers, regardless of, you know, they may not like my position on guns. They may not be pro-choice, but they think, you know, Brown fights for my family. And I'm going to vote for him even though I don't like his position on guns or even though he's pro-choice.

So I think that's, that makes a big difference. So, Sherat, let's say best case scenario happens. You get the set-it-back. You guys get the presidency. You're a man of many issues. What would you like to see Biden really go after initially? The first thing we do is a major coronavirus. package, and that means restoring the $600 a week for unemployed workers, 600,000 people,

in essence, a snap of the fingers in August lost their unemployment benefits and with no job prospects because Trump and McConnell didn't care back in August. We invest in school so that kids can go to school in person, but school districts now can't afford to reconfigure classrooms and cafeterias and buses. Just cost too much money. So, their kids have to learn remote in too many cases. We invest in local governance. We help small businesses. That's the first thing we do.

But then we expand democracy. We passed the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. We addressed redistricting and all the abuses of redistricting and campaign finance and all the dark money. We get serious about housing and the big moral issues of our time, climate change, wealth inequality, and structural racism. So all three of those we need to address in a big way, starting in 2021, with a Democratic president and a Democratic House and Senate. I've interviewed a lot of people about police reform and fixing police.

And it seems like the police union is killing us here. So I'm curious to know what can we do here and where are you on all of this? Yeah, police unions are a small, small, small, relatively small number of people in the trade union movement. Well, the first thing we do is pass the protect the right to organize legislation. We've seen it's so hard to organize unions in the private sector because we've seen a decline in unionism. As you see a decline in unionism, you see a wage stagnation and a shrinking middle class. If fewer people belong to unions, the middle class shrinks. That is absolutely proven and obvious, too.

So we want to help people have the right to organize. and more than half the people in its country, polls show would like to join a union if they have a chance, but it's so hard to win an organizing election because the deck is stacked against unions in support of large corporate interests. That's what Congress has done. That's one of my fears on this new Supreme Court,

this increasingly conservative Supreme Court. These people, the Trump pushed, they're all anti-choice, they're all anti-gay, that they're especially anti-worker. And Trump McConnell wanted all these people in the court that would weaken unions and help employers at the expense of workers. It's just so upsetting and terrifying. With that, what are your feelings on what the Democrats should do

if they do win and they have control for what they can do with the Supreme Court? Yeah, I think that everything's on the table. Start with this, though. We have watched Mitch McConnell pack the courts for four years. 200 judges, 50 appellate circuit judges, three on the Supreme Court,

and everything's on the table next year. What do we do? One of the things we do is we show the corruption, through hearings early in the year, we show the corruption in this Supreme Court where for instance, when Judge Scalia died, the only

reason we knew where he was, was unfortunately because he died, and he was at some wealthy guy's ranch who had been in front of who had had interest in the Supreme Court. And nobody knew that because unlike senators and House members and most local officials, Supreme Court doesn't have to disclose all the gifts it gets. And there are very few restrictions on how people can entertain, shall we say,

Supreme Court justices. That kind of corruption in the court has affected the court decisions over the year. There have been more than 80 recent decisions in the courts that were five, the five Republicans and the four Democratic knob judges, five, four. And those, those decisions took away worker rights, women's rights, gay rights. I mean, they've been an attack five to four, five to four, five to four. And the basis of that is a, is a corrupt Supreme Court that has just been abused by far too many interest groups. Yeah, no, I think that's totally right. In a Democratic Senate, what do you see as the things that need to happen and what committees do you see yourself

on. I'll be, if we win the Senate, I'll be the chairman of what's called the banking, housing and urban affairs committee. It means no more favors for Wall Street. It means standing up to the payday lenders. It means getting a consumer protection bureau that's actually going to represent people and workers, not the big banks and not the payday lenders and those who abuse their customers. It means a real focus on housing. One quarter of renters in this country pay more than have their rent or more than half their income on rent and utilities. That means one thing that happens in their life. They get sick.

Their child gets sick. They get injured in the job. Their car breaks down. They face foreclosure because they can't make it with rent prices too high and income stagnation. So that's on the one end. It's more unionization so those workers make more money. On the other end, it's a second.

It's a tax system that rewards. them with the earned income tax credit and the child tax credit. And third, it's the government partnering with private companies to make sure we build more housing in this country. Can you get all of the money back that the Trump family has squandered nefariously? Well, I don't know the answer to that. I think there are going to be potentially, I know you partly said that in jest, but I also understand it bothers you because it bothers all of us. You've got to love how he accused Joe Biden as the calling the, calling those. Biden family of criminal enterprise. I mean, the amount of...

My brother had the best line at all. I'm going to... While we talk, I'm going to see if I can find it on my iPad. But he said that, except he called him a name, he said Trump's run the government the same way he ran his businesses. Fortunately, Trump has run his campaign the way he runs his businesses. He's blown through all his money in his campaign and he doesn't have enough money to buy television now. So my brother said it way better than that. But it's clear this is a family of grifters. They've made all kinds of money off taxpayers.

They've made all kinds of money from their own campaign. I mean, my campaign, I am very careful. When people give me money, I consider it the same. I mean, I look at tax dollars in my job, that I'm a steward of tax dollars. Well, I'm also a steward of my campaign dollars not to waste them. A lot of people, give me $25 and $50. And Trump, Trump is just, he's used. This campaign is a, you know, as a slush fund.

He's used taxpayer dollars as a slush fund. I'm hopeful that the courts in New York State will look at all this. I think it's the courts. I'm not a lawyer. I think it's the courts in New York State that would do it. Yeah. We had a Preet on the other day. I was talking about that.

Thank you so much. I'm getting an email. We have to let you go. Hi there. We have a special surprise from Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. On Election Day, the new Abnormal will do what we always do and talk about what's happening in this election, and you can listen in if you join Beast Inside Today. There, you'll gain access to an exclusive Zoom version of our podcast that day where you can ask your own questions. We'll get through this election together.

We'll help you stomach the last moments, or so we hope, of the longest, weirdest, crappiest presidential campaign in modern history. Join Beast Inside Today, and then join us on Election Day when we pull back the last. the curtain, new abnormal style. Again, this is only for Beast Inside members. To hear this, along with the rest of our upcoming bonus episodes, head to newabnormal.com. That's new abnormal.thedailybeast.com. Amy Walter is the national editor of the Cook Political Report and the host of The Takeaway, and she's here to talk to us today about the state of the race with just a few days left till the election. Amy, the number one question I get from the text messages and the emails and the phone calls from my mother four times a day, why is 2020 not 2016? Or at least why do we think 2020 is not 2016?

It's a great question because I think we spend so much time obsessing about the past that we sometimes forget to look at the future. And that's normal. I mean, I think especially when it comes to politics, many of us still fight the last campaign instead of looking at the one right in front of us. And 2016 was an example of that, right? We were still sort of in our 2012 mindset rather than appreciating that 2016, the political environment was different. And also the candidate that Republicans put forward was so different that we had to sort of adjust our expectations. But we didn't have to change the fundamentals. And that's the thing. Like, I always go back to whether you do politics or whether you do finance or you're a dentist, whatever it is.

Like, there are fundamentals in your business that are always going to be important no matter what else around you changes. And for politics, and especially for a president seeking reelection, to me, the most important number is that president's job approval rating, right? I mean, because this is somebody who's looking to be reelected, and it's a pretty simple proposition that we're asking voters. Do you think this person who's been here for four years is doing a good job? Do you think this person is not doing a good job? What we know is historically, and this makes a lot of sense, that if you think the president's doing a good job, you're probably going to vote for him. If you think the president's doing a bad job, you're probably not going to vote for him. And this president right now has a job approval rating of 43%.

and 54% or so disapprove. Those are pretty bad numbers, especially as we're going into the last week of a campaign. Donald Trump was a candidate in 2016. He's now the president. So that obviously number one difference and a president who a majority of Americans think is not doing a good job. Number two, he's not running against Hillary Clinton and he's running against Joe Biden, who has much lower disqualer. approval ratings. So he's seen more favorably than Hillary Clinton. I think the other really

important thing is about the political environment. And think back to where we were, Molly, in 2016, at this moment. James Comey had just come out and said, we're reopening the email investigation. And not only that, it was emails found on Anthony Wiener's computer, right? And you're just like, really, this is where, this is it. And so the last week of the campaign, it was all about Hillary Clinton and the worst possible spotlight was focused on her, right? The spotlight was focused on her biggest liabilities, I guess is a better way to say that. So the spotlight focused on her biggest liabilities. Here we are in the last week of the campaign and the issue is COVID. And even the economy is now potentially suffering because of that or at least the stock market

this week suffering because of a worry about this third wave taking a toll. So all of those things to me make it a very different from 2016. One final thing I will say is, you know, as we went into the last, I don't know, two weeks or so of that campaign, maybe two and a half weeks, you could see the race tightening. Hillary went from, she was up 11, and then it started getting closer and closer. And then in the very last NBC Wall Street Journal poll, she was up four points with 16 percent undecided. Now Biden's up, I don't know, nine, ten points with very few people undecided and very few people thinking they're going to vote third party. So it's just, it's a different environment. Biden's a different kind of candidate. And Donald Trump is the president at a time

when we're in the middle of a crisis that majority of Americans don't think he's handled well. Another thing I've heard, which I want to know what you think, state polling was much, much tighter for her in a way that it's not for Biden. Can you talk about that and explain to me what the state polling is telling you? Yeah. I mean, I think what we saw in the state polling, and this was the challenge, too, was I don't know that we paid attention absolutely to the state polling. but I think that we didn't have as much of it, and we had more national polling,

especially at the end than we did state polling. And so it was harder to sort of track as the polls were closing nationally to see if they were closing at the state level. Do you think that state polling has gotten better in the last four years? Yeah, I do. I mean, I think that they've been able to capture voters

that they missed in 2016, mostly because they re-waited for education. I think we have to accept the reality of polling, which is it is never going to be perfect, right? There's always going to be a margin for error. And my colleague, Dave Wasserman, looking over the polls for the last couple of cycles, and what he found was the polls

tend to overestimate democratic support in some of these Midwestern battleground states. And you could say, well, that's because polls still haven't quite figured out how to capture these white non-college voters who are leaning more and more Republican. But at the same time, polls have also underestimated Democratic support in the Southwest in places like Arizona or Texas. And that could also be because they're just not able to capture Latino vote particularly well, right? And both of those groups of voters are voters who are

not traditionally active in terms of politics. They may not be voting as consistently. They may be younger. They're harder to track. They move. So they're just getting a good hold on lower propensity voters is a challenge for any pollster. I think this year we also have the added challenge of turnout that's going to like blow the roof off of any year we've ever had. And, you know, you look at Texas and the fact that we're 80% of the way to the total 2016 turnout a week before an election is crazy. It's crazy. So that state alone, and now you think about all of these other states where Georgia or other fast-growing states, Georgia, North Carolina, I just think we have to be prepared for the unexpected, given that a whole bunch of people who've not been previously engaged in. and politics are starting to get involved. Amy, so I subscribe to everything you're saying. I do want to play the devil's advocate, though, of giving the pushback that every of my least

favorite news outlets says, which is that the culture war, that Dems have pushed back of wokeism and all these things, is really going to push the turnout. Is there any indicators that you've seen of which side's enthusiasm is winning in the enthusiasm gap for voting right now? I think both sides are winning it, and that's the thing. And 2018 gave us a little bit of a preview there. You know, part of the challenge usually for a party in the White House in a midterm year and the reason they lose seats all the time is that their side just is not as motivated to go vote

because, you know, angry people vote. And it's usually the party that's not in the White House that is angry at what's been happening in Washington for the first two years. And so they show up and vote and the other side doesn't. In 2018, you had both sides voting at incredible levels. And what that gave you then was a map that, on the one hand, Democrats looked really strong, right? Picking up suburban areas all across the country in places Republicans used to hold. But Republican turnout also meant that states like Indiana and Missouri and North Dakota,

even Florida, Texas, didn't go blue. So it gave us, I think that is something to appreciate that what record turnout means is that everybody's super excited to go to the polls, Democrats and Republicans. To your question, though, about like the woke culture and it's going to hurt Democrats, I think that the challenge for the president has been that yes, there is a concern among many, especially of these suburban voters. I've been talking to somebody who's been doing a lot of work in these suburban areas, doing focus groups with these swing suburban voters. And they are not Democrats, okay? They are not liberal. They don't like Donald Trump.

And he is a terrible messenger for any issue, even an issue that they agree with. they can't hear it because it's coming from him. But when he is no longer the messenger, then the Democrats really could be in trouble with these voters, right? They're willing to listen to this message because they believe it. But they just think that he makes everything worse. So this group of voters is going to be, they're going to be fascinating to watch for the next few years

because I think Democrats, at least the ones I talk to who are really smart about this stuff, They appreciate that. This is a very transactional election for them. They are not bought in ideologically to democratic messages and ideology. But they also are so turned off not just by Trump, but even by the people who surrounded him, right? And the Republicans who voted with him or didn't challenge him or criticize him. So that's going to be really, really interesting to watch.

It's funny because I just wrote a piece for The Beast. today, actually, about how the Trump surrogates now are almost all entirely his children, which strikes me as the worst possible surrogates. Right. Right. I mean, if you don't like Trump, how are you going to like someone who's even more Trump than Trump? Right. I mean, Ivanka's the one person who tries to change that, right?

Right. I'm going to go talk to women and I'm not going to talk about all this other really, you know, I'm not going to be the controversial one. I'm not going to be the in your face one. I'm not going to tweet in all caps. But you're right. I guess I go back to this, which is at the end of the day, no matter how good or believable the surrogate is, what you hear from voters is, yeah, yeah, I know, I know that's true, but he's still there, right? And it is, it's him as opposed to, well, it's the policy or if he just didn't want to do this one thing.

It's just like this sense that the overarching feeling of exhaustion, just pure exhaustion. What do you see as a state that could surprise us? Well, look, I think that part of the reason that, you know, Texas, we've moved Texas into TOSAB is, as I said, you've got turnout now that's blowing the roof off of anything we've seen before. We know, based on what we're seeing at the congressional level, Democrats are making deep inroads into suburbs all across the state. And Jonathan Martin at the New York Times had a good piece today just about Texas. And, you know, we forget when we talk, we talk so much about Latino vote. But in cities like Houston, there's a significant Asian American population. And those voters are turning out in incredible numbers.

So we have just so much uncertainty, and especially in a state like Texas that hasn't been a battleground. We just don't have a lot of experience knowing what to look for, right? And pollsters haven't spent a whole lot of time there. I mean, pollsters have been polling in Pennsylvania for like 175 years, right? We've been doing that forever in Iowa. Everybody knows like, well, you've got to go into the, if you haven't talked to Bill and Dubu. you haven't gotten the right numbers. And now it's like, well, Texas, it's huge.

But I think what we're really going to look for in Texas is it's the suburbs but also the Rio Grande Valley. And is that part of the state turning out? And if so, is Biden doing well enough there? I also think Georgia is one of those places where you're hearing a lot of Republican pessimism, which is quite remarkable. I love to see it. Yep. Can we go back to Texas for one second? Not to get so in the weeds here.

but in that Jonathan Martin article, which I read this morning, he says that neither of the presidential candidates have gone to Texas. Can you explain why not? Because he did not explain why not. Oh, yeah. I think you've got to go to two issues. One is it's kind of where we started with the 2016 PTSD, which is you should never spend time in a swing state if you haven't locked. down all of your states that will get you to 270. The only time you leave Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona, Florida is if you literally have every one of those done. So that is

issue number one. Issue number two, it is so expensive. I mean, you could spend a hundred million dollars in Texas and barely scratch the surface. And, you know, $100 million in Wisconsin, that's going to get you there. And then to the other point, you know, of it not being a battleground before, I think that it's still so new to people. They don't really know where to go. And I'm going to give a shout out to a great piece. And I'm sorry that I can't remember the authors of it, but Texas Monthly did a great look at Latino voters in the state. And it was really wonderful because it was, you know, hearing from voters from their perspective as opposed to the,

usually the lens is, why don't Latinos vote? Yeah. And why aren't they turning out? Don't they realize how bad Donald Trump is? And this was a really nuanced, very smart look at a group of voters that really have not gotten the amount of tension that white working class men in Wisconsin have gotten or suburban women in Philadelphia have gotten. And this is a bigger challenge, I think, to understand and appreciate than the parties or, you know, the folks who are engaged in

politics really appreciate. So it's just, and its size is just, I just, I just, I can't even put enough exclamation points behind how challenging that is. And then what does happen if Texas, I think it's pretty clear is going to be a battleground state now in the future. And think about the resources now for campaigns that they've got to figure how to allocate. I mean, usually it's Florida that is the resource suck. Now, if you have to do Florida and Texas, how do you do that? Back to Georgia for a minute because I have everything you know I want to hear about. We have two races in Georgia. We had Reverend Warnock on here.

He's in this runoff. For me, what's exciting is we have had very, very few African-American senators. And then we have this election where we Democrats could send three to the Senate. So I'm curious to know what, and if Warnock wins more than 50 percent, he goes to the Senate, right? Yeah. That's impossible. Well, okay, fine. I won't say it's impossible because I'm not.

not allowed to say impossible anymore, but it's 21 candidates, you guys. 50% is slight. But that he's consolidated that support so strongly and relatively quickly is impressive. The other thing is the assumption, and look, there are many Democrats, especially early on who were wringing their hands at, oh, my God, look, if we're a seat short of the majority and it comes down to a special election in Georgia, in January. We're not going to be able to win this. Look what happened in 1992.

You know, Clinton wins big, but Democrats lose the runoff there. I think it was 2008 that there was also a runoff in Georgia, maybe, or 12. And Democrats lost that. There's just no way. Our voters are going to drop off. But let's think about it this way, which is, let's assume two things. one, that Biden wins Georgia. So now there's this, oh my gosh, Democrats can win Georgia, right? So there's an enthusiasm from Democrats that is pretty depressing to a Republican base. Two, having an African-American

on the ticket in January with a fired up Democratic base and a energized African-American vote. We've never seen that before in a runoff. And the other challenge is that the Republicans keep running further and further to the right and embracing Trump more and more. And Kelly Loughler, who was the appointed senator there, was picked precisely to not be that person, right? She was going to be the don't worry suburban Atlanta women. It's all cool.

I'm one of you. I'm conservative, but I'm not like Trumpian. And now she's like wearing the maga hat, the whole thing. And so if she wins this, how does she go? and convince voters in a runoff that even though Trump won the state, she's not a Trump surrogate. And Doug Collins, who's always been a Trump person, can't do that either and won't do that. So that's where I think Warnock has a really good opportunity. The other question is, can Democrats win the other Senate race outright?

Now, most folks think that both of those states, both of those races are going to go to runoff? Oh, wow. Wait, how does Asoff go to runoff? Because there are third-party candidates. I can't remember how many are on the ballot. But, you know, if you look at the polls, then they are. It's like 49, 48, 47, 46, 48, 48, 45. You know what I mean? Like, you just don't see, I know the Monmouth poll yesterday did have A-Sop. I'm pretty sure had A-Sop at 50, but you just haven't seen either candidate get to 50. And so even if you're at, you could see 49.36%, right? And you're like, okay, well, that's not 50.

So off to the runoff, you guys go. And two special elections in Georgia in January, dear God. I mean, it just makes my stomach. When people say to me like, oh, my gosh, so after November, like, what do you guys do? Oh, yeah. Here's what we do. We go to Atlanta, which is not a bad place to have to be. Senate candidates that you think look good for Democrats right now.

So I just think it's the same four or five we've been talking about for a while now, right? It's Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Iowa, North Carolina. And those are still Democrats' best opportunities. And the candidates are a piece of it. But it's also just those states and the move. And so it's that combination. And you mentioned South Carolina. I still think that's an incredibly competitive race.

It's still going to be a red state. Now, the margin is going to be smaller that Trump gets this time around. But I think South Carolina is going to be fascinating, too, because we've never had a really competitive race there in a general election. And what does African-American turnout look like when you supercharge it? We don't know. Right. And he's a great – I mean, he's such a good candidate. Like, what about Kansas?

I know, right? That's a Democratic governor. And I feel like that's the case against the Koch brothers, if you've ever seen it, right? It's a Democratic governor now. I mean, the polling I saw for it Boyer was, like, amazing. Yeah. I mean, it's one of those places where I think that the state is, like so many in this country, divided between Kansas City and its suburbs, which are becoming incredibly blue.

Johnson County is the Kansas. the city's suburban county. And it's always been sort of a swing county, but now it is like super dark blue. I mean, the congressional candidate there is winning by a really big margin, the Democratic incumbent there. But is that enough to offset the rural parts of that state where, again, the margin may not be as big for Trump as it was in 2016, but it's big enough? I do think it does show that Kansas has something of a, it's not that even as much as an independent streak as a pragmatic one. Like they just didn't like the Brownback tax stuff.

And they certainly didn't like Chris Cobach, right? Like they're not, they're conservative, but they didn't buy into the Cobok MAGA thing. Yeah. So I do think that both of those things are helping her a lot. What's not helping her is, you know, the rest of the state is still going to, it's still going to come in,

a Republican. Tell us about North Carolina. Yeah, I don't think he can lose North Carolina because where is he going to make up those electoral votes, right? That's when you start going. And North Carolina could also tell us a lot about the Senate. I think that we're going to have to be prepared, though, to not know, potentially not know the Senate. If, indeed, Maine is as close as it looks,

that goes, it's not a runoff, but, you know, they have to retabulate all the ballots there because of ranked choice voting. You've got the Georgia situation. As we know Alaska, you know, the polls don't close there to like one in the morning Eastern time. And I do remember one year,

I think it was 2008 with Mark Begge and it was really, really close. And they literally, we were waiting. I'm not kidding. I think it was dog sleds that had to go and get like ballot boxes from somewhere. And Montana is really close and that usually takes a couple of days.

Arizona. last time took five days. Yeah, but McSally is it. She's her own worst. Yeah, I mean, she's been significantly behind. So I do, and the other thing that I'll just leave you with this, we've been talking a lot about, you know, what to expect on election night.

Early votes in places in the Midwest where they can't count the absentee ballots until election day. So those votes that are going to be released on election night are mostly coming from in-person voting, which will look pretty red. Right. Right. But in Texas or Florida or North Carolina, where a lot of the early vote is blue, it could look really blue early.

Right. And then become more competitive. So you have to be careful. I think the networks are going to be much better this year about that and giving, they know it, they understand it, to give some context to, here's what we're seeing, but don't think it means that X is happening. Right? We only have 25% of the total vote in. So let's wait a while. And so I think there's going to be a lot of waiting and a lot of questions about, you know, how much vote is still outstanding, especially in states where they're allowing, if it indeed is within a point or two, these decisions about whether to let ballots be counted that are postmarked on Election Day but haven't reached the election office yet could be an issue. So just, I know. I know. We all have to take, you know what, I'm starting to do that now. It's just like...

It's so scary. It's sort of like the tide, right? You got to like swim with it. Just go with it. Be one with the moment. Just like zen into it. Like, we're going to know it's going to happen. Elections are going to happen. Voters are going to vote. Votes are going to be counted. Rick Wilson. What is this segment we are required to do by state, federal, and international law and treaty every time we do a episode of the new Abnormal Podcast? Things that make us happy. Yes, things that make us happy. Yes, people love it. New cut grass, puppies. A cloud-filled sky.

Right. So tell me, who has earned your ire? My ire goes to my former boss Rudy Giuliani and his new running buddy. human grissel sack and walking tumescent sore Stephen K. Bannon. Ah, yes. Tell us more. These two guys are peddling the last of their Hunter Biden revelations right now, trying to come out with a final October surprise. Here's the October surprise, you two chodes.

What's going to happen is you're not going to get what you want. It's not going to break into the national news media over the weekend because they're all ready for your bullshit and they know it's a pack of law. and you're both going to be going down in an ignominious hail of ridicule in the next couple of days. And you, Bannon, looking forward to you spending some time in a facility where you can, instead of punching out lies, can punch out license plates. Oh, that's nice. It is very melodious. Do you want to know who my fuck that guy is? I do. I was just about to inquire us to the identity of your target. The president has for the last couple of days, his closing message is Eric and Jr. and Devonka,

criss-crossing the country to support their father's campaign and to make the case against nepotism. Have you noticed that they're being sent to the back ass of bum fuck? But who better to make the case against nepotism than the president's children? The president's adult children? Yeah. I mean, it just makes sense, right? Well, you can also tell them which ones are in favor and which ones aren't, because they're sending Eric to places like Frog Dick, Alabama. I think he's hoping Eric won't come back from Frog Dick. Right.

I think that's the... By the way, you also know, in the first two weeks of October, the campaign spent over $800,000 on private jets. Who do you think's riding in those? You can't expect those kids to fly commercial to Frog Dick. Frog Dick is a bucolic rural community full of the kind of voters that Donald Trump is trying to sway to his side. Because no one in Frog Dick before this was a virulent Maga Nat Populist with a heaping help and a racism. Yeah. No, those kids, I mean, fuck all of them. Fuck them all. While making this case against Hunter Biden showing the case against them. And so I say to you, fuck them.

Yeah. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science who will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm Molly JongFest and he's the Rick Wilson. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens?

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