The Daily Beast Podcast - Clarence Thomas Is a ‘Grifting Faucet You Can’t Turn Off’

Episode Date: April 18, 2023

Clarence Thomas’s “grifting” faucet just won’t turn off, says an exasperated Danielle Moodie on this episode of The New Abnormal politics podcast. It was recently revealed that the Supreme Court Justice reported income from a firm that doesn’t exist, and hasn’t for a while, and Moodie, and her co-host of the show Andy Levy, are over this man’s antics. They discuss a lot of them on this show in particular given the recent news. Later, Spencer Ackerman, columnist for The Nation and writer of the Forever Wars newsletter, breaks down the case ofJack Teixeira, the 21-year-old Air National Guardsman accused of leaking classified documents and why it’s different than the whistleblowing cases of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden. Then, George M. Johnson, author of All Boys Aren’t Blue, one of the now-many banned books in America, shares with co-host Danielle what it’s like to be the author of a banned book and the most “fascinating” and mind-boggling thing about Republican behavior. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

The columnist for the nation and writer of the Forever Wars newsletter Spencer Ackerman joins us to break down the case of Jack Tashara and the classified intelligence he leaked on Discord. Then George M. Johnson, the author of All Boys Aren't Blue, is here to tell us what it's like to be the author of one of the most banned books in America. But first, let's have some fun. So, Andy. Hi, Daniel. Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi, hi. I love to start the week on a high note, but unfortunately we live in America. So we just have to start in reality, which is the reality that the news about Clarence Thomas

and his grifting, money-grubbing, criminal activity just won't stop. It's like a faucet you can't turn off. So the latest is that he's been receiving. paychecks from a firm that no longer exists, hasn't existed. This real estate firm, which was launched in the 1980s by his wife and her relatives, hasn't existed since 2006. I don't know how you continue to receive paychecks from a place that doesn't exist, but evidently you can. He continued to report income that was between $50,000 and $100,000 annually in recent years. And if I'm confused, I know we've been living inside of a time vortex, but I'm pretty sure the 2006 and 2023 and recent years

don't coincide. They don't jive, if you will, right? The math ain't mathin, as the kids say. Right? What do you, what do you make of this? And then I'll allow you to talk about the fact that, you know, his mother is living in a free house that's owned by this multi-billionaire. Because we're all allowed to have corrupt-ass billionaire friends, but only if you're a Republican. I mean, look, so for 15 years or whatever it is, 17 years, you know, he's made a little mistake on his tax forms. Are we really going to start going after a guy for making an honest mistake 17 years in a row? Is that not a common thing for people to do to make the same mistake 17 times in a row on a federal form and then sign it attesting to the truthfulness of that form. It seems like a fairly common thing.

I just have a little issue with the fact that I feel like if somebody's trial hinged on something like what Thomas did and the guy was found guilty, Thomas would not be interested in that guy's appeals. No. Obviously, I'm joking about making a mistake. I mean, you can't do that, obviously. But what that is what really gets me here is that he is Mr. Stern face of. the law when it comes to other people. But when it comes to himself, oh, I'm just going to amend a bunch of documents that I filed. No harm, no foul, right guys? Right guys? And it's just, you know, it's the two-tiered system that just is so grating to me. It drives me nuts. And then there's the mom thing, like you said, I mean, so Harlan Crow, aka Jim. Yeah, what did we decide?

Is he a Marvel like villain? Is he like, who is this man? I went with Stephen King villain just because that name is very, good, good. It sounds like someone from the stand or something like that, just a really good evil name, Harlan Crow. So he bought Clarence Thomas' childhood house, which his mother was still living in, back in 2014. Crow bought it.

She has been living there rent free. He has not been charging her rent. Now, to be fair, Harlan Crow is also known. not charging me rent. So I guess that's okay. Do you live in one of his properties? I'm just curious. I don't. He did not buy my childhood home. Okay. Got it. Got it. And my mom pays her own rent and he is not paying my mother's rent either. Interesting. Okay. You got to call a plumber at some point because you're going to have a flood because you can't turn off this faucet. Every day there's a new thing and none of it is going to matter, probably because neither of us have faith that the Democrats are going

to do any kind of hearings or anything on this. Obviously, the House is out of the question because it's run by the Republicans, the Senate. You know, you would think somewhere in the Senate, there must be a committee that could deal with this. Is it called the Judiciary Committee? It might be. We don't know, Danielle. It's all very arcane. Technically, you would think the Judiciary Committee would keep and I on the, what's it called, judiciary. Judiciary, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you might be wrong. You know, they have their own rules and they do things their own way.

It's so maddening to know that more than likely none of this is going to matter. There will be the people, there'll be the AOCs and there'll be the people like that that will say, this guy needs to be impeached. And they're not wrong. They're absolutely right. But they're an extreme minority. I just don't see the democratic leadership rising to this occasion. and this is going to be one of those millions of times where I always say I would like to be wrong.

This is one of them again. I don't think I'm going to be wrong here, though, do you? I'm at a point where the idea that you would not open up a serious investigation, and I'm also looking at Merrick Garland. I know that motherfucker's plate seems to be really full at this point, but let's just say that the Republican Party has provided a Thanksgiving feast of fuckery at this point. So you need to add more stuff to your plate. Why would a Supreme Court justice who carries the fate of all of our rights, literally,

all of them in his hands, have the ability to overturn Roe v. Wade, to decimate marriage equality, to end affirmative action, to do all of these things. And this is a man that doesn't follow the law. He gets to change the laws. he gets to rewrite precedent, but he doesn't have to follow the law. He gets to claim ignorance for almost 20 years. You don't know what you're doing. For almost 20 years, you don't understand what the rules of the Supreme Court are,

what the rules of disclosure are, and you're a fucking justice. And, you know, when we have a Senate that even though the margin is slim, is still held, the power is held by Democrats. And Democrats decide, oh, well, we're not going to, you know, do an investigation because we don't want to seem political. What the fuck? Body, do you think you're in? It is political.

It's called Congress. Like, I don't, I don't understand. And I feel every day, every day, I feel like we just descend deeper into Dante's, Inferno, and I don't have a fire suit on. Yeah, look, Merrick Garland's plate is full, but a lot of that is because he is the slowest damn eater in the world. And they keep bringing out new courses, and he's like, well, I haven't finished my salad yet. I'm still debating whether to eat the soup or not.

I haven't decided yet. So, yeah, your plate is full, but let's start getting some calories in you, shall we? Yeah, the idea that, you know, I see people say, well, you know, people on the right are like, oh, well, what if they go after Justice Kagan or what a yes, please. If she's done stuff like this, I would like to know about it and I would like her to be punished for it. There's been no evidence of that. So you can put up those straw men all you want. But I'm certainly not sitting here and you're certainly not sitting here saying this, you know, that the same standard shouldn't be applied to the other eight justices. No. But so far. far it's clarence thomas who has a repeated pattern of this as the washington post pointed out in 2011 thomas had to update years of financial disclosure reports to put in uh details about his wife about jinny thomas and his excuse at the time was oh he hadn't understood the filing instructions again these are not the kinds of excuses he would let anyone get away with if he were ruling in their case In 2020, he had to revise other disclosure forms because he didn't report reimbursements for trips to law schools.

He has a pattern of this. This is not the first time this has happened. This may be the most serious bunch of them, but it's not the first time. He has a pattern of doing this. And when someone has a pattern of doing this, like, you got to keep an eye on them. And that's, I would think someone in the Senate, you know, on the Democratic side would be like, hey, maybe we need to put a stop to this. I would like to see Chief Justice John Roberts get off his ass and do something. He's supposedly very concerned with what people think of the court and the place of the court in history and all of that stuff.

Well, look at what's going on in your court and do something about it. Stop not doing something. If you're so concerned, then don't let this stuff go on. But this stuff has been going on for, I mean, over a decade if we're going back to 2010, 2011. And it's just, it's absolutely unbelievable that he just continues. to sort of shrug his shoulders and refile reports and there's no repercussions whatsoever. Let me tell you something. The concern that Chief Justice John Roberts has can fill a thimble. Like, give me a fucking break. If you have a title of chief and your job description and you do dick,

like I don't really have a lot of, you know, a lot of empathy. Like, oh, he's concerned about what people think of the court. Like, most Americans can't even name the nine justices. Right? but they can tell you that Roe B. Wade was fucking overturned. Right. Right. You know what I'm saying? Like, I am sick to death of Republicans being able to skate on the fact that Democrats are timid as hell, that they just don't have the courage of conviction. You have the law and the people on your side and still you refuse to act because you're afraid that the other side is going to call you a bad name and say that you're being, quote, political. That's your fucking job. That's the last time I heard, you know, you are political when your job requires an election. That's the key there. But what do we know about civil studies and civics and all of these things? Because most of it's banned anyway. Can we also just point out,

as we do frequently, they're going to call you those things anyway. Right. Like, why are you still worried about that? We see what they are. They turn everything that the Democrats do is they They turn it into communism. They turn it into whatever word they're woke, whatever word they've decided on for that day is the word that they're going to apply to you. So you have to not care. You have to not care about this stuff. You're not going to get along with them. The reaching across the aisles days, that shit is gone.

How do you not know that? When the other side of the aisle is Marjorie Taylor Green and Kevin McCarthy and Jim Jordan and Matt Gates and people. like that. What are you looking for? You have no common ground with those people. They don't live in reality. They're not interested in reality. So stop pretending that, you know, you can reach some kind of deal with them or placate them. All they do is see that as a sign of weakness. And in this case, they're not wrong about that. No. Speaking of people who you can not reach across the aisle to who seems to be on a, I don't know, I guess his donors would say it's a losing. streak, but I think that Ron DeSantis right now believes that he is owning the fucking

libs in the state of Florida. So according to NBC News, a number of Ron DeSantis' donors and allies are worried. His recent stumble suggests he may not be ready for a brutal fight against Donald Trump. And they're starting to pull back with their donations to him because he just signed in six-week abortion ban when most people who are pregnant don't know that they are pregnant. He has just done some hot shit with the death penalty,

which the death penalty in Florida no longer has to be a unanimous vote. He has turned this state into the death state. It is where freedom goes to die. It is where books go to die. And so much so that LGBTQ groups are warning people of being able to actually travel there. I don't know, Andy.

There's a part of me that just wants a storm to take this state. You know, not the people. I'm not wishing for their ill will. I just want them to take DeSantis. Kind of like in the Wizard of Oz. Like I was going to say, yes, a very targeted tornado like the Wizard of Oz. A very targeted tornado. Oh, my God.

Meanwhile, I mean, he hasn't even been in the state. You know, he's out on a book tour or whatever while Fort Lauderdale is in, like, like, you know, feet of water. I'm pretty sure I saw a plane floating on the tarmac the other day. I mean, the pictures are incredible. And he wasn't even around. But, you know, whatever. Yeah, I saw the thing about the donors and the allies and they're questioning whether

he's ready for 2024. Okay, yes, it's starting to look like maybe he's not. No one has figured out in the Republican Party how to fight Trump yet. That includes DeSantis. I mean, Trump put out this ad that they ran on, I guess, on Fox News. and I don't know if it was like Newsmax and other places, based on, I believe it was Daily Beast reporting that DeSantis on a plane flight was eating pudding with just his fingers.

And they put out a whole ad based around that, but also, you know, went at him for things about Social Security and Medicare, for wanting to cut them and stuff like that. And it was a pretty strong ad for a, you know, Republican on Republican, particularly since DeSantis isn't even a declared candidate yet. And then DeSantis, I guess they came up with an ad of their own. And the theme of that ad was, what happened to Donald Trump? Why is he attacking Republicans?

It's like, nothing happened to Donald Trump. Do you not remember 2016? Do you not know what happened for all the years after that when he was president? And since he's been president, when he goes after any and every Republican that he thinks isn't supporting him enough? That's what he does. And you're putting an ad out saying, what happened to Donald Trump? And it's basically, it's almost like a whiny little ad in.

response. And it's just, it's very, to use their language, it's very beta, you know, it's very beta male. And that ain't going to cut it in this Republican Party, which prides themselves on being full of all these alpha males. They're insanely wrong about that, but that's their schick. And they don't want someone that looks weak, and he's starting to look weak. And in addition to that, you know, as you pointed out, he's doing a six-week abortion ban and doing things like changing the death penalty so that the jury only has to vote eight to four. to recommend it. I actually don't know where the public stands on that death penalty thing. It's a horrific idea. But the Republican Party, the national party is kind of learning, and we've talked about

this and you've talked about it a lot, that their abortion stuff is hurting them. And this is obviously going in the same direction as the stuff that has hurt them. So I think you've got donors who are kind of skittish about that. And I get all of that and we'll see what happens. The thing of is, we got to remember, every single one of those donors, if DeSantis is the nominee, will support him 100%. Of course. And all these possible issues they had with him that he's, oh, he's doing too much with the culture war and he's going too far. They won't care at all once he's the nominee. So there is that. But look, he may be in trouble. It's really early. But, man, it's not looking good for him. I mean, nothing looks good at him or for him. Ron DeSantis is

honestly trash, but he has so many people that are willing to follow in his footsteps, right? Florida is leading the way in fascism. And every state governor, red state governor, is playing copycat with Florida and saying, hold my beer. Let me see how worse I can be. The reality is that Republicans, as well as their donors, know that these issues do not play nationwide, but they don't care because they're winning state legislatures. They're winning state houses. So, They don't really care, honestly, about the White House in the way that Democrats do. We think that the White House, the executive branch, is going to be what holds us. And I continue to tell people all the time, that is not the fucking case.

And so while we know this doesn't play, they don't care because their big play is stealing votes and stealing elections and suppressing people's votes so that they can cherry pick who the voters are and making sure that they are white, that they are conservative, that they are. are, you know, mostly men and doing everything that they can to thwart a democracy. You know, whenever I see those articles like, oh, people are backing away from DeSantis, it's the same shit that they said seven years ago. People are going to back away from Trump. Lindsey Graham said himself, Donald Trump becomes our nominee. The Republican Party is going to be done. I mean, it is.

The Republican Party we all grew up with is done and has been. But what they have morphed into, that we don't talk about nearly enough. Yeah. Oh, I totally agree with you. on the state legislature and even more local than that. At the county level, we've seen it at the school board level. I mean, you know, we've talked about all of this. I do, though, think that even at those levels,

they may be starting to run into some problems. I mean, we saw what happened in Wisconsin with the Supreme Court vote. And, you know, pretty much everyone agrees. That had a lot to do with Roe v. Wade being overturned and all the abortion bans. We saw just the other day, there was a county in Texas. Yano County, I think it was. They had banned some books from their libraries, and a federal judge ordered the books put back in circulation, and the county said, fine, then we're going to shut down

all the libraries. They have now gone back on that because they got so much public outcry about it. So they are not closing down the libraries. And fingers crossed, you're starting to see pushback at the state and local levels, but you're right. As always, the Democrats are playing from behind. And, you know, not just Democrats, people who are not part of this, you know, sensory. mob in general, regardless of their political affiliation, are playing from behind because they have spent a bunch of years getting people onto these school boards, getting them onto the county commissions and the town councils and, you know, whatever else. So yeah, we're playing catch-up, but again, fingers crossed, because you're right, the voting stuff is the key. And if they can make

it harder and harder and harder for people to vote in states and localities, and by people, we know we're talking about here. We're talking people of color. I mean, that's mainly what we're talking about, you know. But look, we know these issues are hurting them, not just at the presidential level nationally, but also it costs them a potential red wave and stuff like that. So I would like to leave our listeners with maybe a rare sense of hope from me, that maybe we are starting to see that they have pushed things too far and that a bunch of people are waking up or as, as I like to say, becoming woke to the idea that they need to be stopped. Here's hoping, Andy.

Here's hoping that the woke wave really does come. Last Thursday, the FBI arrested 21-year-old Jack Tashara in connection to the classified intelligence leak that started on the social media app Discord and spread to the world at large. Tachara is a member of the Massachusetts Air National Guard where he had a top of the top of secret clearance and has been charged under the generally horrible espionage act with unauthorized retention and transmission of national defense material and unauthorized removal of classified information and defense materials. Here to guide us through this story is a columnist for the nation and writer

of the Great Forever Wars newsletter Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Spencer Ackerman. Spencer, it's a pleasure to have you back on and I have to think it's the same for you. Yes, absolutely, Andy. I've been waiting for this. So I think as usual with these stories, there are two components here. The first is always the nature of the leak, how it was leaked, and the leaker themselves. And the second is the content of the leak. Let's start with the first one. That's why I listed it first. This is not your grandfather's leak, is it Spencer? And Jack Tashara is not your grandfather, as far as I know. No, certainly not. This is an interesting case simply because it's so easy to distinguish from whistleblowing. So, for instance, Chelsea Manning,

when she disclosed horrific war crimes and other abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan, she took that to WikiLeaks, which had a mass audience would disseminate it widely and so forth. I worked at The Guardian when Edward Snowden provided his trove of NSA activities to the journalists, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitris. The entire point for Snowden was for journalists to pick through. this trove and decide what was and was not in the public interest to disclose. Daniel Hale, the drone whistleblower, to the intercept for the same reason to ensure that journalism alerted the public to the realities of what the Obama administration euphemistically

called targeted killing. Terry Albury and a former FBI agent, similarly to journalists, this is different. This is, I think, an E3 and Airman first class in the Air National Guard who had an IT responsibility, which because of post-9-11 currents and expanding information sharing, had access to surprisingly high levels of classified information, if you're an outsider surprising, and using them not to alert the public, but from the reporting we have thus far, to kind of win his group chats in Discord to impress the people he had formed an online community with and not to alert the public to waste, fraud, abuse, propaganda, criminal activity, dangerous policy, et cetera. There were, I suppose, in each individual case, perhaps,

elements of that, but what it seemed like from the broader reporting picture that we have thus far, that Tichara wanted to kind of give the sense that he saw what the world is really like, and use that to make his internet clout in this particular community grow. So, you know, we don't really have motives of patriotism, dissent slash radical transparency or money, or even at the most nefarious given that if this guy is charged, you will probably be charged under the Espionage Act. So this is an interesting phenomenon that I read in Max Reed's newsletter for Substact today has antecedents with other people with access to classified information hosting, you know, on smaller scales than this, on game reforms, seemingly not for a broader public disclosure

or political purposes like, you know, the Snowden's, Mannings. We should add reality winner in that as well, Daniel Hale, Terry Albury, etc. So it seems like you've got the maturation of a phenomenon happening here where increasingly the military recruitment pool is of digital natives of people who are used to living tremendous parts of their lives online and also having generally broken brain internet sensibilities that I certainly am in no position to judge anyone else from having. I'm simply saying that, you know, this looks more likely to recur despite the criminal penalties that will happen for structural reasons rather than the reason specific to this guy who's accused

of doing it. Yeah, as I said the other day, in my opinion anyway, trying to impress the teens always goes badly and you just shouldn't do it. But you referred to this in your Forever Wars piece about it. You called it the Chud era of national security leagues. Explain what you mean. Chud in the sense of, you know, this guy appears to be not your normal far right figure, perhaps, but he's reported in the Washington Post as someone who likes to record and upload to his Discord chat,

videos of himself shooting off firearms while yelling what the post delicately called racial and anti-Semitic slurs. Right. The reporting around him seems generally to fit. that one of the fora on Discord where he posted this has like a wildly racist internet native name. So it's the kind of person that I think from this picture I generally mean when I refer to, you know, someone with the appellation chud. Yeah. Just quickly, let's just talk about Discord for a second because a lot of people may not know

what it is. It's been described as a forum for gamers. And I think that was the intent of it when it was formed. It's really not, yeah. It's not. I mean, I'm in five Discord servers, groups, whatever you want to call them. I think only one of them is even tangentially video game related. It's a series of chat rooms that anyone can start.

Yeah, based around communities of interest. Right. Different servers have different access rules for, you know, letting on people they know rather, you know, versus, you know, opening them up, you know, more widely. Many of them are connected to content creators. and the communities around them, some of which they're involved in, some of which they're not. It's, you know, certainly there's a gaming component that's there. I say this is someone who doesn't play video games, but it's by no means something that defines

Discord. The Discord servers that I'm on have nothing to do with video games. Yeah. So, yeah, it's matured beyond that. Exactly. Way beyond that, yeah. So let's talk about the leaks themselves. What do they show and are they important?

So there's a difference between important and harmful that I want to just hold for. a second, then we'll come back to. Okay. In a lot of cases, you've got kind of divergent pictures being shown by the leaks. Some of them have had to do with the Ukraine resistance to Russian invasion being in, you know, more dire straits than the administration has tended to present. Some of them have been misleading, or rather others have used them to misleading. We say things like they prove that Americans are fighting in Ukraine currently.

if that is happening, and the history of the post-9-11 era of special operations would not have me ruling it out. But the documents that we've seen thus far have not shown that. They've shown the presence of military personnel at the embassy in Kiev, and that has been an element of it that, like, Marjorie Taylor-Rourine, I think, has kind of seized on. But there are also documents that indicate real, you know, substantial penetration by U.S. intelligence of the Russian military apparatus. There have been other leaks that have been either tangentially or unrelated, like the South Koreans worrying to themselves about how they navigate the possibility of supplying arms to Ukraine. Some have been unrelated. There's one about the Israeli Foreign Intelligence Service,

the Mossad, stoking opposition to Benjamin Yahoo's plans to eviscerate the Israeli judiciary that has brought millions of Israelis into the streets. So a lot of different, things, not one obvious political agenda being served by them. Are they important? I think many of them are clearly newsworthy, certainly in the sense that they provide an internal picture of how U.S. intelligence sees these various aspects of geopolitical development and, you know, U.S. policy in Ukraine taking shape that will very often be at variance with what the official spins are. Are they harmful? It doesn't look to me that they are. There's a lot of, as there always are in these cases, whether there are leaks, whether it's whistleblowing, or whether it's now this kind of new, I shouldn't say new, but this, you know, identifiably different phenomenon, there's usually an enormous amount of hand wringing from the security state and those who identify with its interests that say like all of these disclosures will, you know, lead to some disaster, you know, the leaks will kill. your grandma or some variation.

Right. And typically those don't happen. President Biden himself has said he hasn't found these to be, you know, particularly damaging and accordingly is not focused on them. I don't honestly know and we might not know until we see, you know, an actual indictment and possibly not even then. But the scale of the penetration, the access that this person is accused of having, typically it's described right now from what's been seen posted as between dozens and about 100 plus,

you know, documents slash sometimes pages. It's not clear to me, but like those are like orders of magnitude off from, you know, Manning and Snowden. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, look, you know in your newsletter that when you were at The Guardian and Greenwald at all were getting set to publish the Snowden stuff, that you were told by senior officials at places like the NSA, the FBI, the National Security Council, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, that if you published all of this, you would be putting American lives at risk. And as you say, that sort of never happened.

I mean, they would say this about subsequent stories, but the anecdote I was relating was that they said this about a story revealing that NSA for a decade had collected the phone metadata of every American. Right. And that literally was a discreet. in the public interest. That was a disclosure of mass illegality, structurally, systematically

by the intelligence apparatus, a bright line constitutional violation. And they were telling us in order to get us not to publish it or publish it, you know, with their spin, that we would be responsible that blood was on our hands if we were to publish this. And I remember being, you know, really stunned to hear that, especially because it was three months after the Boston Marathon bombing. So this was real fearmongering. And we published anyway because that was a pretty implausible thing. And the public interest outweighed it. And they also would not tell us specifically in the document we published and as with subsequent ones what specifically in the document was likely to lead to what dire consequence, because we would be willing to entertain a conversation about not publishing that

specific thing. And there were other cases with that trove that I have been involved in where we didn't publish things because we thought there was a plausible case to be made of our own judgment that someone could realistically come into harm from publishing something. So there's a whole editorial set of considerations here that go into it additionally. The point I'm trying to make is just that this kind of recitation that leaks will cause violent disaster of a variety of sorts, not just to U.S. interests, but to actual people, is very frequently invoked in these cases, regardless of the motivation of the leaker and regardless of the scale of the leak.

Yeah. That's sort of a bitual thing. Right. It's boiler played at this point. Along those lines, what do you make? Because I've been watching this, and I see that people who, for years, starting from when it first happened and continuing on, called Snowden a traitor, basically wanted him hanged, wanted you know, Glenn Greenwald in the Barabas role right next to him. And yet now they are people,

for example, that I used to work with at the lovely place we know as Fox News. They are lionizing this guy already. Yeah, because of the Chud aspect. He shares their politics and everything else follows from that. It's not more complicated than that. No, yes, absolutely. I just thought it was kind of interesting given their pasts. Something else you wrote in the piece was that you think the actual story of this of Tashara, who IDed himself as OG in his Discord server, is that the U.S. military remains a welcome employment opportunity to people who like to yell a series of racial and anti-Semitic slurs into the camera before busting off a bunch of shots. And you say, but the Pentagon simply does not want to deal with that. That was really fun to read.

Well, thank you. After the much publicized post-January 6th, quote-unquote, standout, that Defense Secretary Roy Austin put in place to talk about ostensibly what they were trying to euphemistically get away from saying, like, violent white supremacy within the military. As with so often, when this has periodically become an emergent issue, the Pentagon stalls, that it convenes task forces, it reinforces safety and operational standards and so forth. It gives you basically a series of like sensitive. trainings and so forth. And then it just goes about its business. And it is, for instance, still permissible to be an oathkeeper and be a service member in the United States military.

And the fact that this guy felt pretty comfortable, hosting himself, you know, yelling these kinds of slurs while going along with the kind of iconography of violence, that's just something the military is very afraid of moving on because of fears. that it will cut substantially or even, you know, just partially into its recruiting base. And, you know, I've been a reporter around the military for my entire adult life. Most people I encounter are not like this guy, but some of them probably are. This has been such a demonstrated phenomenon, not just in this current generation of service members, but going back certainly to Vietnam.

You can read from Kathleen Ballew's book, Bring the War Home about in many cases that, military origins of many of the people who go on to found the post-1970s white supremacy militia movement in the United States. So if the military wants to deal with this, it has to confront basically a bunch of structural things. First, how its recruiting base considers access to information and what its digital hygiene operations are like, you know, what it considers is acceptable to share, to own the group chat and whatnot. Secondly, the post-9-11 move toward massive expansion of information sharing, not just throughout the active duty military, but in the reserve component like the National Guard as well.

That's enormous and tied with trends that just don't seem to be going away. They seem, according to the last available Office of National Intelligence Report on security clearance access, continuing to expand post-9-11. And it will also have to deal with the, I think radicalization is kind of a cop-out, the continued presence of, you know, seemingly condoned if, you know, asked to be subtle about it, racism and other violent, you know, ideational tendencies within the recruiting base. And the military can either deal with that or not. but it seems to me likely that these are issues that will likely recur in the future absent this particular person's particular prosecution, if that makes sense.

Absolutely. Yeah, I'm going to go out on a limb here and take a strong stand and say that I believe they should deal with it. Yeah, imagine that, right? Yeah. Just my personal take. Hot take. We're getting spicy here. Yes, don't send me letters or anything like that. So, look, we've been talking about some really heavy stuff, but before I let you go, I want to switch gears and talk about something else that you've been up to. You have got a new comic book out under the DC Black label, I believe it's called Ospices, called Waller v. Wildstorm that you've co-written with Evan Narciss and with art by Haseus Marino. Tell us about it. Thank you so much. It's basically a comic book version of this stuff I report on. This is an origin story, so to speak, what

comics people call a year one for a beloved character in the DC Comics universe called Amanda Waller. Viola Davis plays her in the movies and TV shows. She's basically one of the chiefs of intelligence for the DC Comics universe. This is a story about how she got there that combines a kind of paranoid espionage, anti-corporate vibe that an offshoot of the DC universe called the Wildstorm universe is known for and pioneered image. many cases to great effect in the 90s and 2000s. And this is a story of kind of how Amanda Waller came to become so powerful, so experienced, and so ruthless an operator in the DC universe. And very often what I've reported for the past 20 years on national security, because I'm a

lifelong comic nerd, I've thought to myself, you know, well, how would this work in a superhero universe? So here's kind of an answer to that. Issue one is out now. And I have read it. can say that it is fantastic and it handles sort of politics and sort of a cold war feel in a really smart but simultaneously really entertaining way. And I highly recommend it to our listeners. Thank you so much. Absolutely. Spencer, thank you so much for being here. Definitely check out Forever Wars. It's a great newsletter and his work at the nation and Waller v. Wildstorm. Spencer, thanks a lot. Thank you so much, Andy. Nothing is more abnormal than the rise of the radical right. Fever Dream,

is a Daily Beast podcast, taking you inside the rights push to retake power, from the MAGA Acolytes to the straight-up grifters. They recently released their 100th episode, so there's no better time to listen. Head to beast.pub slash fever dreams to check it out. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal for the first time. George M. Johnson, who is an LGBTQIA non-binary activist and the author of award-winning books, the first of which is all boys aren't blue and a new memoir, we are not broken. George, one, thank you so much for making the time to join the show. I want to start off with

the fact that it has felt really, at least for me, as a black queer woman, somebody who tries to use their platform to deepen people's consciousness and wake people up to their power, really daunting to be black and queer in America right now. And I just wanted to start off with the fact that, you know, you have been able to create such beautiful stories and essays and, like, create through your books this kind of community, a weaving of community at a time for people who feel incredibly isolated. So I wanted to talk to you about first, you know, how you were feeling over this time since, you know, your initial debut book came out and now with it being one of the most banned books in the country. Yeah, it's interesting. I'm almost at the three-year

anniversary of the book coming out. It came out at the height of the pandemic when everybody was stuck in the house. It was doing well. And then it wasn't until 17 months late was when, it first started to get attention for being banned. And mind you, it had already been at school systems that I've already been doing well. And so it has been really, really like eye-opening, overwhelming at times. I see some people who will say like, oh, you know, being banned shouldn't be worn like a badge of honor or like a prideful thing. But I mean, they can have that thought, but I'm on a list with Tony Morrison. I take it with pride. I take it with pride. I I take it with honor because they don't ban information that they don't want.

I mean, they're banning it because the information in this book is vital to so many people. And so although the bands are a bad thing, it is also something to be a banned author. The greats were banned. And so I kind of take it all in. I think some days are better than others. Some days are a little bit heavier than others. Just seeing like where this is all going. It's like it just doesn't seem to be a bottom.

Like there's no floor. And it's like, I just thought at some point we would start to feel like, okay, this has got to be like the furthest extent this can go, right? And it just seems like it just keeps ongoing. But you know, it's unprecedented. Sometimes we have to, as the authors just kind of sit and be like, wait a minute, nobody's ever really been through this type of shit before. Okay. Like this is like a blueprint thing. Okay. Process it a little differently, right? Because we don't have a roadmap. But I think for the most part, I'm doing pretty well with it. At least the majority of the country is not for the banning of books. So it does feel good to have, you know, at least from polling and things to know that people are on our side. But we also know, like, they overturn will be weighed. And the majority of the country didn't want that either. So this country is fucked. Mm-hmm. We seem to lean into only abiding by what this very minority population of people want for the country.

So, yeah. You know, in your book, all boys aren't blue. Like, first off, congratulations on it almost being three years. Like, I, it's so funny. because in my head it feels like it just came out, but that's because we're living inside of a time vortex. Right. But even in its title, like these quote unquote conservatives,

these far right anti-patriotic, anti-democratic radicals, see such a problem with just that statement. Can you talk about what that statement, what that title means to you and other queer, non-binary, people, like why it was so important to put that out front? Yeah, for me, it was like, I didn't want to, like, even from like the imagery of the book, like, I didn't want to hide that this was a queer book. I know that sometimes in publishing, there is like a fear that, well, if you make the cover

too queer or too black, certain people won't pick up the book to read it. Certain people won't buy it. And I was like, I don't care. Like, I really don't care. Like, I need the people who pick up this book to know that this book was written with love for them, not written to hide their story, right? I wanted the story to be told before you even open the book, the book is already telling you a story. It's very clear. It's very apparent. You already know what you're about to walk into. Even though some people do get confused with the title, some people think it's about sadness. And I'm like, think about pink and blue from, you know, gender reveals. And they're like, oh, Oh, and they're like, oh, wow.

Okay, that makes a lot more sense. I'm like, yeah. But, yeah, I wanted people to, from the, like, from jump to just understand that, like, this is the world you are about to enter into. I always say it's not coming out. It's like inviting in. And I felt that was the best way to invite people in was to not hide what this was going to be about.

And from the very beginning, before you open the book, you know what type of world you're about to be invited into. too. A friend of mine asked me a question the other day that I want to pose to you, which is, did I think, and do you believe, that homophobia and transphobia are systemic in a way that we are under, I mean, we have known, but a majority of white America is starting to understand that racism is systemic. Right. I would say, yes, primarily because homophobia and transphobia are byproducts of misogyny. And misogyny is systemic.

It's very systemic. Sexism is systemic. So if the byproduct, these are the byproducts of the larger issue, which is this country has a hatred for women. And it just trickles down into other pockets. Then I would say that, yeah, it's very systemic because it's deep, deep seated and deep rooted. It's not like it just started overnight, right? And I always tell people, yeah. That's how a lot of people feel.

They're seeing these 400 egregious trans-targeted bills. They're seeing, you know, book bans by queer authors. And so for a lot of folks, they're like, oh, this is something that's new. Right. I want, you know, people to understand that no, no, no, this has been ingrained in our culture, literally from birth. There are sodomy laws still. Like, you know what I mean? Like, there was the sodomy case in Texas, right?

Like, that is deep rooted. Like, you know, the sodomy laws from. the 1800 is over in England. Like those literally, like this did not just start today. Like the thing that have been done, you know, the fact that like conversion therapy camps, the fact that was the DSM-5 up until 1973 classified being gay as a mental ill. But it's so funny because people just, it's almost like how they make pictures black and white to make you think that the past was really, really far back.

Yeah. And realistically, it's like, well, no, like the past really wasn't as far back. Like Stonewall, that was 69, right? Like, there are people who are still alive. We'll remember Stonewall, right? There are people from Stonewall still alive. So it's not as far removed. And so I think, yeah, it is systemic.

It's built into everything. You know, and I feel one of the things at this time of great heaviness is that there is this desire for a mass regression, a mass regression to the times of unquestioned oppression, where straight, cis, white men got to rule in any way that they wanted, whether that's to sexually harass people in the workplace, whether that is to use racial slurs and, you know, denigrate other ethnic groups. Like, they want that back. That's their idea of being able to make America great again. It's to make America repressive again and only the quote unquote good place, the great place

for those that they believe should be at the top of the pyramid. What do you make of the last three years, George, in this kind of time vortex that we've been in where so much has happened? There's both been this, what we're seeing as this great regression, but there's also been a great awakening. What do you make of that dichotomy? Yeah, it's so interesting to me to watch it play out publicly because it's, like, for instance, like the shit they're doing today in Manhattan with like people from the House of Representatives, it's just like, do they not think that we don't see what this is? Right. Like, do they really think that like people really, really like, because a few people believe.

them that the majority of us are all sitting here like this isn't just like some very weird way to try and stop the prosecution of a rich white man like that's really what this is all about like we all know that right okay and so it's like living in like a dual reality at times because it's just like you know you're watching people literally they're losing elections they're losing races they're losing seats in the house seats in the senate and still banning abortions. Like the whole like you have whole state where 80% of the state is like we don't want these super restrictive abortion. They're like, okay, well, we're still going to sign a six week abortion bill. Like that's Florida. Like Florida is so interesting in the sense that like you

now have Republican donors who have finally literally today we're like because of the book bans and because of the stances of the stance on abortions, we're not donating to his campaign. Right. Like the top donors. And I'm like, what kind of reality are we living in? Because it's just like, do they not see that they're losing or that this doesn't play well to the general public? And then, you know, you have like this weird thing where they're like, yeah, because Antifa did this.

And you're like, yes, people who are anti-fascist. Why would that ever be a problem? Like, why would anyone be anti-fascism ever be a problem? And they think that that's an issue that people don't want fascism. In the midst of creating fascism with book banned and restrictive-ass-laws. Like, it's very wild to me to live in it and watch it play out and that people actually believe it. Because it's like we are living in Black Mirror. We're living in multiple realities existing at the same time.

Yeah. Part that is fueled with actual truth. and the other one that is deliberately fueled with lies and hate and fear. And we see we're like watching in real time as this storm manifests. And we're like, don't you all see this? Like don't you all see how you're being manipulated and what's at play here? Because I look at what Ron DeSantis is doing and I look at what the Tennessee legislature tried to do to Justin Pearson and Justin Jones and Gloria Johnson in the Tennessee legislature.

And I think to myself, you all really thought that you could get away with. this under the cloak of darkness and that nobody was going to give a damn. Right. The assumption is that we will become so overwhelmed that the overwhelm, as Steve Bannon told them, flood the zone, right? Flood the zone with shit because then they'll be so overwhelmed and they'll feel powerless. But on the other hand, George, we're watching a generation, Generation Z who led these marches in Tennessee, who are leading the way and saying, no, you're going to.

giving us shit to inherit. What do you make of the differences that you see with Generation Z versus the millennials and others that have dealt with different crises in their time? Yeah, Generation Z really does not. I give a fuck and I love it. Like, it is inspiring sometimes when I go to high schools and talk to them. They are so aware. They just know so much. Like they understand homophobia, transphobia, racism, just identity. politics like they're so well ingrained and so well versed in a world that they want like the world that they want to see right like they are so anti-gun they are so anti like they're pro-black they're anti-guns they're anti war and like they mobilize so quickly in a way that like we just never see

and like now that they understand how to vote because that used to be you know the country's biggest issues why aren't young people voting why aren't young people voting why aren't young people voting's like because they're look at this shit you gave them like that's that's tired. And for so long, it was always like, well, if you don't vote for us, you know, it was like the boogeyman effect, right? You don't want to get a buggy man. So keep voting for us, even though we're not going to shit for y'all, but you got to keep voting for us, right? And then, you know, Gen Z kind of woke up and was like, no, you have to earn our vote. And you're now watching people have to earn a boat, right? People who would have never taken a stance on something.

And I'm talking about politicians are actually having to take stances on them. They can't just sit and be quiet. They can't just like not say anything about the issues that are going on with transgender people or LGBTQ people. They can't just like kind of ignore what's going on. I mean, anytime you got the governor of Tennessee issuing a damn executive order on guns, like they're listening, right? Like it's like if you don't listen, there's going to be some change because I mean Tennessee doing that, I think was kind of like the most eye-opening thing in many ways, especially because it's like, They have a super majority, but it's going to be very, very interesting to watch what Tennessee becomes in the next five to 10 years with those young people in Tennessee. So now, like, seeing it

and saw how that played out. And they're going to turn it. And I think we're going to start to see more states in the South start to become purple. Because a lot of it, too, is like, just like, the ideology is so far removed from just practicality. Yes. It's like, you're not even voting for people. I mean, you're just voting, like, for ideas at this point because it's just like, A six week of, like, most people don't even know they're pregnant yet. Like, what the hell are we, like, that just doesn't even practically that doesn't make sense, right? It's like forcing women to be pregnant. That's just not practical. Like, it's just not practical when half of this country is women. Right. And they deserve bodily autonomy. And I mean, people also forget too, like reproductive justice also affects trans people. Like heavily, right? It affects trans men. It affects all of us. And so, Gen Z is very practical. They're not big on like, you know, pie in the sky ideas and shit. They are very practical. They just wants the stuff fixed.

We don't want to get shot in school. Yeah. So fix it. Like it's just like very simple. It's not, well, you know, the NRA, we don't care about. We don't want to get shot in school. Y'all need to do universal background checks to fix it. And if y'all not going to fix it, then we'll get you out of here.

And I think watching them mobilize, especially in the midterm elections, the way they mobilize, I think 2024 is going to be very, very interesting for a lot of reason. Yeah, I think it is as well. You know, you did a video a couple of weeks ago where you explained a physical kind of altercation that happened with you at an airport. So I just wanted to give you the opportunity to just like to talk about that because what people think as trolls on social media attacking people, using racial slurs, you know, trying to intimidate using, you know, rape threats, all of these things, people think like, oh, it's happening behind a screen. And what you explained in your video after being followed around an airport and threatened is that that is not the case. It is growing and transitioning into physical threat. Yeah. I mean, it's real life. And I think that was the thing that I wanted people to understand is like, I don't just walk around thinking like that these book bans only exist in the counties where they

are happening. These people who are banning books are just like, every other citizen in this country. They fly planes, they travel. They could be Uber drivers. They could be lift drivers. So you just never know when you're going to come into contact with a person may recognize your face or recognize that you're the author of a book that they don't want in their school systems or anything. I think the other thing is for me, like I always in the back of my mind knew at some point I was going to have an altercation with somebody because it's like you can't just keep the way that I'm fighting this. At some point, the altercation was going to come. but it's also like, you know, they shooting up birthday parties.

Like what stops them from shooting up a book signing? What stops them from shooting up when I'm speaking at a college? Nothing does. And so it's like I had already knew that, you know, there's a real present danger being an author who's banned because they shooting up people for a lot less. So to have it happen to be like that in my face where it's like, we're in a public setting. So it's like, people are literally watching and you're still antagonizing me. It just brought it all kind of full circle and home.

Just, you know, have a reminder about, you know, safety. And, like, there really is no safety for black Americans in this country. There really is no safety for black queer people in this country. You know, I was grateful that the other guy stepped in. But it was like a bystander effect was happening. And I was watching the bystander effect happening. Like, people wanted to move or wanted to say something, but then didn't know. Or it was almost like, you're waiting for somebody else to do it first.

And then I'm just there. And I'm just like, is everybody else not witnessing this man? is antagonizing me. Follow me the way here for it. Okay. So yeah, it just made it really, really present. And I think I made the video because I wanted more people to understand. Like, we aren't just fighting these people online, y'all. Like, this is real life. And so you just got to be thinking much of safety at all times. George M. Johnson. Thank you so much for making the time to join the new abnormal folks. The books are all boys aren't blue. And we are not broken. If you have not cop them, you should get them today. I appreciate you

much, friend, and please do stay safe. Thank you. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. How are we starting out this good, good week in America with your fuck that guy? Look, we say this every time, you know, it's an honor just to be nominated. And, you know, all of the candidates did great, awful work. But we have, and this is a latecomer, this just hit a little before we started recording.

He's not new to fuck that guy. It's Paul Gosar, a Republican Congress person, in quotes, from Arizona. He decided to use his official house.gov newsletter to point people to a story on a Holocaust denier website that praised him, as Media Matters reports. They praised Gosar for attacking Jewish warmongers who support Ukraine. It's a website called Veterans Today. The website has referred to the Holocaust. as both a lie and a hoax and praised Hitler as a great man and a man of valor, Daniel,

a man of valor. Mm-hmm. So Gossar decided he was going to post a link to that site because that site praised him. There's a bunch of things here. A, it's sort of a with friends like that situation. Like, do you really want to be praised by a website like that? And then B, do you really want to publicize that? And then C, do you really want to do it under your official house.gov newsletter?

And if your poll ghost, are the answer to all those questions is, hell yeah. It is amazing to me. I mean, we've talked about this, you know, the whole mask off everything. Look, if he does not get some kind of censure from Kevin McCarthy in the house for doing this, like, I don't even know what the point of being able to censure people is. You are telling people, go check out this website that thinks I'm great. And this website thinks Hitler was also great. And all he wants to do is be great.

So there you go. It's just unbelievable. So Paul Gosar is my last minute. Fuck that guy. And it's just, I mean, look, he's one of the dumbest people in Congress. This is just beyond dumb. I mean, this is just flat out anti-Semitism, historical revisionism, a whole bunch of things. So fuck that guy.

Oh, God. To say that Paul Gosar is one of the stupidest people in Congress is like, it's a hard. toss up. I mean, it is a hard fucking toss up. But, you know, these people are so wildly insecure. They just want to be celebrated. It doesn't matter who is doing the celebrating. And like we continue to say, there's no quiet part. There is no quiet part. They are on bullhorn soapbox. I'm an anti-Semite piece of trash. Yay me. So who's your fuck that guy on this delightful Tuesday? My fuck that guy to start out this week is on some fucking bullshit, which is not surprising when that person is Jim Jordan. So we all know that Jim Jordan has decided to weaponize the House Judiciary Committee because every single Republican holds water for Donald Trump.

That's what they do. And since Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan District Attorney indicted Donald Trump on 34 felony counts, Jim Jordan, has decided that he is going to use federal overreach, I guess, would be the word, because he has no power whatsoever to intervene in the Manhattan DA's investigation. So he decided that to one up Manhattan DA's lawsuit against him for his interference in the current Trump case that is unfolding, that he was going to hold a quote unquote field hearing in New York. city to talk about crime, which is funny because if you actually gave a fuck about crime, facts, statistics, you would know that New York's crime is and has been on the decline for

a couple of years now. And when you actually look at crime in the country, it ain't happening here. So this was all a stunt, as Democrats have called out, to say that this, was some type of pressure or threat to place on the Manhattan DA like, we're watching you. And just to be clear, in this hearing, they didn't mention Donald Trump's name because of the lawsuit that the Manhattan District Attorney filed against Jim Jordan. So Jim Jordan is a punk. He really is a fucking punk. You know, put on a tie, wear a jacket, like do something with yourself. I'm so disgusted because nothing that they're doing is subtle anymore, like nothing. And so again, for Democrats not to go hard on their bullshit is just a continued missed opportunity

because Republicans, sure as fuck, are not stepping lightly and are using their committees and their power and their gavels that they're holding right now to attack the rule of law, to attack law and order, because I don't know of anybody. that would insinuate that, oh, Alvin Bragg must be politicizing his position when, in fact, several, a year ago, he decided not to prosecute Donald Trump on a particular case in charge because it wasn't ready yet. So, you know, I don't know what happened to let's see where the facts lead us, but that's not what Jim Jordan is doing. So for that and your fucking stunt today in New York City, I hope you get as good of a treatment as Marjorie Taylor Green found. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

Fuck you. Yeah. I wonder if Jim Jordan came across any of those zombie marijuana users that Marjorie Taylor Green said she did. Anytime Jim Jordan is not turning a blind eye to crimes being committed is, I guess, a new day for Jim Jordan. Because, you know, his history says otherwise. But look, yes to everything you said. They love to use New York City as a prop and as a punching. bag and talk about the crime. And then like almost every time when you go look at the per capita

crime rates in their own cities, New York is way lower. It's just a sham. And everyone knows it's a sham. They know it's a sham. But that's what their lives are. Their lives are shams, Daniel. Yeah. And not like Euro shams, just shams. Yep. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back at every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens?

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