The Daily Beast Podcast - Dems Need More Viral ‘D*** Pic’ Moments If They Want to Stop Musk

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

On this episode of The New Abnormal, California Rep. Robert Garcia’s Elon Musk “d--- pic” during a DOGE hearing proved that some Democrats know how to counter Republican rhetoric, so why are the party’s longtime stalwarts having such a difficult time stepping aside? Plus! How NYU School of Law’s Christopher Sprigman is leading a fight to stop Elon Musk’s DOGE from accessing personal data. Then, Buddhist scholar Lama Rod Owens discusses how to keep a level head in trying times. 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 an excellent show we have today.

NYU Laws Christopher Sprigman joins us to talk about the suit they filed against Elon Musk's doge to prevent them from getting access to your data. That will be joined by Buddhist scholar Lama Rod Owens, who's the author of Love and Rage, The Path of Liberation, and he'll talk about keeping your head in the right place during these trying times. But first, let's have some fun. week ago, I remember reading a story, although I forget where, I think it was semaphore, actually, in which Chuck Schumer, you may know him, Danielle, he's the Senate minority leader, I believe. So the highest ranking Democrat in the Senate, he was talking about how he didn't want to go scorched earth on the Republicans, and he wanted to save it for the big stuff. Oh, my God.

In particular, he was talking about cabinet nominations and confirmations. And he said, you know, in response to sort of people saying, hey, why are Democrats voting for any of Trump's nominees? He was saying, you know, well, we want to save our fights for the big ones like Pete Hegseth and RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard. I don't know who is going to be the one to break it to Chuck Schumer. Maybe he'll find out from listening to this. All three of those people have now been confirmed. to their positions. R.F.K. Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard were both confirmed on Thursday, I believe, and Pete Hedgesdath obviously was confirmed last week. So once again, the brilliant strategic

maneuvering of the Democrats has led us to victory. And I think we all owe Chuck Schumer a huge apology for doubting his leadership skills. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So here's the thing. thing. Does anybody listen to Chuck Schumer? I'm confused as to why he's still in his post. And I know that I say this time and time again. But honestly, when he's calling a press conference, right, who is listening to him? Who says, yes, that's my man. I'm following whatever Chuck says. No, he is like, I need another word for milk toast. I need another word for feckless. There's a big sack waiting for him, but I'm pretty sure it's filled with shit. When are Democrats going to realize that this is not the 20th century, that they're not fighting against George W. Bush or George H. Bush, like, that this is a different animal,

that by the time that Chuck Schumer realizes that his little, we will overcome chance and, like, his bullshit half-ass grandstanding isn't working. We won't have a Department of Education. we already don't have the Consumer Protection Bureau. We already don't have an FAA chief. What is it going to take? Is it the thousands of phone calls that are coming in every minute now? Like, is the ringing going to help him wake up? I don't know.

He makes me sick. All of them do at this moment. All of these, like, old guard, I'm fucking over it. Yeah, I'm with you. And we'll get into that more a little bit later. And that's actually my fault for, starting us off down that path. But let's talk a little bit about what it means that we now have RFK Jr. as the Secretary of Health and Human Services and Tulsi Gabbard as the Director of National

Intelligence. Starting with RFK, I think, look, as you mentioned, a lot of protections, a lot of bulwarks are going by-bye in the opening month of the Musk administration. And some of those are probably going to lead to deaths, particularly, like you said, with consumer protections being taken away and, you know, just whatever various other things they're doing. RFK Jr. as the head of Health and Human Services, hardcore anti-vaxxer, the hardcore anti-science guy. I don't know how else to put it. And I don't think it's hyperbolic to say that people are going to die because of this. Because we saw what happened during COVID. We saw how people died because they refused to get the vaccine.

We saw how people died because they tried to use, quote, unquote, medications against COVID that were not, in fact, medications against COVID. And now we have got an entire administration up to and including the head of Health and Human Services firmly in that camp. If, God forbid, there is some kind of... You mean like the bird flu that we have right now? Well, exactly. If the bird flu spreads, and look, I don't want to be alarmist right now.

We're not in any kind of bird flu pandemic, obviously. But what I'm talking about is the future threat of something like that. We are screwed. We are absolutely screwed. I mean, it was amazing to me how many people died needlessly of COVID because they refused to accept science and medicine. It's going to be exponentially worse if there's a second time. And even if there's not a second time, the whole idea now. that, I mean, we're seeing measles outbreaks.

We're seeing outbreaks of diseases that were mostly eradicated in this country. And they're making comebacks. And that's only going to get stronger with someone like RFK Jr. in charge of HHS. And every single Republican, except for Mitch McConnell, who had his childhood polio that sort of led to his strong support for vaccines, voted to confirm RFK Jr. There are going to be deaths on people's hands. is what I'm saying.

Here's the thing. Just to talk about the bird flu for a moment, we don't even know where we are in terms of the spread of this. Why? Because we no longer have the CDC. Right now, we have the American Medical Association that is putting up information on their YouTube page in order for people to be able to find some type of medical information. We don't need to have a COVID-level pandemic for millions of people to do.

die. We just need to have, oh, I don't know, more contaminated food be pulled off of the shelves or not be pulled off of the shelves because RFK Jr. thinks that it will build resilience. I mean, the man sat in his confirmation hearing and said that black people and white people don't need the same types of vaccines. Yeah. None of this is funny and it hasn't been funny in the longest time. but the fact is that every single Republican, except for Mitch McConnell, voted to ensure that babies being born won't get vaccinated and will die, voted to ensure that 19th century diseases that we eradicated because of innovation in science are making a comeback, right? Like the fact that America has been stabilized for so long is because of government.

agencies like the Food and Drug Administration, right? Like the CDC. Like Americans just believe that these things just kind of like operate like your heartbeat. I don't have to think about it beating. It just does. And the fact is no, because you've had regardless, until Donald Trump, regardless of party, you've had politicians that actually believed in the public good that government is supposed to do. And with all of that gone and all of those agencies gutted and all of those resources funneled now into the hands of Elon Musk and Donald Trump and the oligarch billionaires, like, we are shattered and it's not even going to take the full 53 days that it took Hitler to take over Germany. We are three weeks in. And by the way, Telsie Gabbard, yeah, let's just

send direct emails to Putin. How about we do that? Just cut out the middleman and just have him be able to access the Pentagon server. It is extraordinary to me that people still don't get it. And I just wonder how much more pain people are going to have to take in over the next few months to recognize, oh, not only can I not afford eggs, I have nowhere to send my kids to school, and I think that the milk that we buy now is killing us. Like, bravo. America. Good job. Yeah, it's a weird coincidence that on the same day that RFK Jr. is confirmed, there's a story in the Washington Post with the headline, at least 22 children and two adults infected in Texas measles outbreak. Vaccination rates for measles are falling. None of the 24 people

who are infected have been immunized with the MMR vaccine, the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine. Again, 22 of these are children. This is just going to grow. This is going to continue to grow. And we're going to end up with schools that have a bunch of children who are not vaccinated, who are not given these most basic of vaccines that have saved, I would say, easily millions of lives, you know, probably tens of millions of lives. Over the course of decades, a century, however long it's been, we're just, as we are,

With so many other things, we're just, we are headed backwards and I shudder to think where this is going to end up. So let's get back to those lovely Democrats, Danielle, that we were talking about earlier. A lot of people are making phone calls. A lot of people are completely overrunning Democratic office fallen lines with calls from people who are angry that the Democrats are not fighting back harder against the Trump administration. Axios reports, Representative Jim McGovern says, I can't recall ever receiving this many calls. People are disgusted with what's going on. They want us to fight back. Wisconsin rep Mark Pocan says we had the most calls we've ever had in one day on Monday in 12 years. And this is going on and on and on.

And the people are right. And my mom is about as mainstream a Democrat as I can think of. That's who she is. That's who she's been her whole life. And she is sitting here saying to me on the phone, begging me to explain to her why the Democrats aren't fighting back. And I don't have an answer for her other than they suck. And I'm talking here of the Democratic leadership.

I know we want to get into also. There are some Democrats who are out there fighting the fight. But they increasingly don't seem to be the ones in leadership positions. Chuck Schumer, as we said, Hakeem Jeffries. The list goes on of just people who absolutely are not rising to the occasion. My point in bringing up my mom is just when someone like my mom notices this stuff, we know this is not a bunch of lefties online being mad. My mom is very much not online. I don't want to just single out my mom.

I've talked to other Democrats too who are not, you know, they're not steeped in politics. They're just normal Democratic voters who just don't want to live in a fascist society. And every single one of them is like, what is going on? Where are the Democrats, Danielle? Where are they? Honestly, I really, I hate. you for the answers, Daniel. You have to know. You have to know. I know. And it's awful. And it's because, like, I don't like losing. And I don't like being on losing fucking teams. If you're going to lose, right?

Like, I prefer people that fight all the way. And Democrats are not that bunch. They never have been. I don't remember a time in my adult life where I can honestly say, oh, yeah, the Democrats, they've been fighting for us. They've been going toe to toe to toe with Republicans over our health care and our public education and our access to clean water and food and all of these things. No. All I've ever known about Democrats is capitulation. All I've ever known about Democrats is what Hakeem Jeffries offered this week in a presser where he said, we don't have any leverage. What do you want us to do? I want you to step the fuck aside is what I want you to do.

Because if you have a failure of imagination right now, if you can't figure shit out, but every time that Republicans are in power or not in power, they manage to figure out how to hold up procedure, right? You had Tommy Tuberville was the sole person in the Senate holding up like tens of confirmation under Biden, one man. And you got Democrats right now, those that are in power because the ones who are are making the sense, who are doing the storytelling, who are speaking with passion and purpose, those are the ones that Nancy Pelosi and the rest of them told to go sit down. Let us handle it,

right? Let us sit up there on the fucking dais with Donald Trump and shake hands and say, oh, we'll figure out a way to work together. Where? Before or after you're investigated, before or after your family is doxed. They don't get the sense of urgency and they don't care. And that's what I realize. And so for the people that are making the thousands upon thousands of calls every day, keep it up, right? Because I want the calls to escalate to people like sitting in offices, staging sit-ins until some type of action is actually taken.

And if that action is for Chuck Schumer to be like, I realize I've lost the faith of the people and I'm going to step aside as minority leader, then bravo, because I'm sick of them. I just want to say one thing. You said that Tuberville held up tens of nominations. Was it hundreds? 425. Jesus Christ. 425, one guy held up.

And yes, it's not the exact same thing. But the point is there are ways to do this. Also, one of the reasons that Tulsi Gabbard and RFK Jr. were confirmed on Thursday was because the Senate wanted to get out of town on Friday for a trip to Munich, for something called the Munich Security Conference, because it's apparently a very fun conference to go to. And so rather than give up a chance to go on this little junket and have a three-day weekend, the Democrats allowed these nominations to go through to a vote on Thursday, rather than holding them up even through the weekend and forcing people to work on the weekend or, God forbid,

on a Friday. Look, ultimately, yes, you may not be able to stop an RFK Jr. from getting confirmed if you can't find more than one Republican willing to work with you. But you can slow roll so many things. And that's what Tommy Tuberville did. He slow roll things for over a year until he finally agreed to drop his holds. And then the Senate confirmed, like literally confirmed 425 people in a heartbeat. So there are things you can do. There are procedural things you can do. They are doing precisely none of them. And look, we have pointed out some Democrats who do seem to be in this fight. We've pointed out AOC repeatedly. Elizabeth Warren seems to be out there every day, at least saying the right things and talking about how bad all this stuff is. Danielle, I know you've got

other people you want to shout out. We have Greg Sazar in Texas, who is the one who just this week was talking about Republicans' desire to gut Medicaid, to raid Medicaid, and say, do you have any idea how much money Elon Musk makes a day off of the government? Off of the government, right? This fucking welfare queen. How much money he makes? $8 million a day. And he said to the person that was at the hearing, he said, do you know how much the average

American receives a day from Medicaid? $65. $65 a day. Who the fuck can live on $65 a day? I would love to challenge any of them, right, that are gutting these agencies that are literally going to ensure that your grandparents and parents end up destitute because the work and the money that they have put into the system, their entire lives, is now going directly into the pockets of the brologarcs. Like they call these entitlements. It's actually. our fucking money. You work, you don't get 100% of that profit. You get a percentage of it because

another percent goes to the government to fund things that are supposed to help people, not fund like fucking Elon Musk's trip to Mars. Like it is just, we have allowed this party, this cult to capture the media, to lead the narrative on all of these conversations. so much so that people continue to vote against their best interests. You look at these people, and I'm proud of Representative Sazar, bringing the attention to how much money Elon Musk has been able to make off of our tax dollars. I was beyond over Representative Robert Garcia, who literally in a hearing at oversight, talking about Doge and their illegal,

unauthorized moves inside of our agencies, collecting our data, held up a picture of Elon Musk and said, I too have a dick pick that I can share. A throwback to Marjorie Taylor Green thinking that it was absolutely the role of a congresswoman to be circulating picks of Hunter Biden, this son of the former president of the United States

and thinking that like that's her role in space and not, oh, I don't know, fucking TMZ. I'll just point out a couple of other names of people who have been out there. I feel like fighting the good fight. Jasmine Crockett, Maxwell Frost. And I'm sort of noticing that, what most of these folks have in common, maybe Elizabeth Warren aside, is that they are young

and they are people of color. And as an old white guy, this pains me, Danielle. Where are my people? At doche. Where are my people? I hate to break into you. You're young compared to these people. Well, I know. I know. I know. You're still in your prime, Andy. Don't sell yourself out. Well, I don't know if I ever had a prime. But that seems to be the truth, though, that it is the younger members of Congress who are almost overwhelmingly people of color who are out there leading this fight. On Tuesday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other privacy defenders filed a federal suit aimed at blocking Elon Musk's ridiculously named Department of Government Efficiency from accessing the private information of millions of Americans that's stored by the U.S.

Office of Personnel Management and blocking OPM from sharing further data with the aforementioned ridiculously named department. A co-council to this suit is the law firm Lex Luma, and joining me now is a partner and founder of that firm, Christopher Sprigman. Chris is the Murray and Kathleen Bing Professor of Law and co-director of the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy at the NYU School of Law, and he also had the tremendous honor of going to high school with me. Chris, thanks so much for being here. Thanks, Andy, for inviting me. And also for the honor of sharing high school with you, I assume. Yeah, no, it was great. I enjoyed every moment of it. Okay, so I guess my first question is, what is a lawsuit? I'm kidding. Look, I'm just trying to lighten the mood around here.

Fair enough. This is not a light topic. I know, exactly. Okay, but seriously, what was the genesis of this lawsuit and of your involvement with it? My partner, Mark Lemley, who's a professor at Stanford, I think he was the first to see reports that Elon Musk and Doge had basically gotten access to systems at the Office of Personnel Management. And I think if I remember correct, his head exploded. You know, I had the same reaction when I heard it, as did all my other partners. And the reason is because the Office of Personnel Management keeps data on millions of people who've worked for the federal government, who've applied for jobs at the federal government. And it seemed to me quite obvious why Elon Musk wanted and Donald Trump wanted this data. They want to start firing civil servants. They want to change the federal civil service from a merit-based non-partisan institution to a group of their henchmen. And that, of all the things that I've seen

them so far, that really worries me maybe even the most because the civil service, the apolitical, professional civil service really is sand in the gears of authoritarianism. And they want to remove the sand from the gears and put in some oil. The data that OPM has is so huge and so sensitive. And I was just trying to think, what are the kinds of things Musk and his fellow political commissars could do with all this data? Yeah. So the data includes, of course, all the identifying information, including social security numbers, healthcare information, disciplinary records, promotions, awards. I mean, everything that someone's worked on. So all these records are kept by the Office of Personnel Management, which is an agency of the executive branch. And

And Musk and Doge got access to those records. Contrary, we're alleging this lawsuit to the provisions of the Privacy Act, which don't give them permission to access these records. I think for the purpose of, you know, finding people that they want to fire, finding people that they want to intimidate, finding people that they think are insufficiently loyal for one reason or another, and getting them out of the federal service. Yeah, and it also has information on things like, correct me if I'm wrong, I think this is true, things like union activities, things like death benefit, designations, things that were, where I could see them, because obviously I don't trust them at all, trying to use stuff as leverage, like saying, oh, I see here you've got a daughter and just

trying to use information somehow as sort of like to ensure loyalty. Yeah, your imagination is the only limit. And the problem that I see is, look, this information has been kept by the federal government for a long time since the federal government computerized, its information keeping. In 1974, in the wake of Watergate, Congress passed into law and the president signed the Privacy Act of 1974, which was a reaction to Richard Nixon's misuse of information about federal employees to construct, in part, an enemy's list. What Nixon did with federal employee information and what probably pales in comparison to what Musk and Doge and Trump want to do. And we're in the middle, I think, of a real information crisis. We've suffered in this country now, I think the largest

data breach in the country's history. But the purpose of reusing the gears of authoritarianism, that's what this is about. And so, you know, our hope is by filing this lawsuit and by filing a request for a temporary restraining order, we can stop them for the moment and have them destroy whatever records they've unlawfully gained access to. And we can prevent this information from being misused. But again, it's like, you know, it's just one step, it's just one little thing to really protect the integrity of the federal workforce against Donald Trump is going to take a lot of work, a lot of lawsuits, a lot of action by Congress. It's going to be the work of many, many people. And it's absolutely wild that you just said that this may be even worse than what we

saw in the Nixon era. And that, I assume, would include even things like the FBI Cointel program. Oh, yeah. So the Privacy Act was a direct. reaction to Cointel Pro, where a lot of data about federal employees was misused. But in terms of this being worse, so let's just think about what we know already. So yesterday there was a report that the federal government basically accessed bank accounts of New York City and basically just disappeared 80 million dollars in grants that had been sent to New York City by the prior administration. So, you know, it's a little bit weird to have the federal government in your checking account, but New York City right now has the federal government in its checking account. And that, I think,

is linked to improper use and access to treasury payment systems that we've also heard about. So, you know, they are going to make unlawful uses. And what they're trying to do with the federal workforce is change the federal workforce so that it becomes an instrument of the authoritarianism instead of a barrier to it. It all feels very Soviet to me. Well, Soviet, I mean, Hungarian, I think maybe that's more recent example that they're emulating, but it's whatever your historical analogy is, none of it's good news. No, that's for sure. I thought it was interesting that among the plaintiffs named in the lawsuit is Elon Musk,

specifically in his capacity as director of what's referred to as the U.S. Doge temporary service. Is that your standard you name the person embodying the agency, or was that done for a specific reason? Well, nothing's standard about this. Okay, fair. We named Musk as a defendant, and we also named Doge as a defendant, and the U.S. Doge service, which used to be called the U.S. Data Service, but has now been renamed the U.S. Doge service because apparently Elon Musk has a sense of humor of a 14-year-old, which I don't generally deplore, but this is a little bit of a weird context for that.

So why are we naming Mosque? I mean, a bunch of reasons, but one reason is none of what's been done here is regular. It's unclear what Doge's status is. It's unclear what Musk's status is. And so in part, out of an excess of caution, we have to try to, you know, name him because he's part of the thing. And we don't know how else to frame it. Yeah, no, fair enough.

So I said at the top that the suit is trying to block Doge from getting this data and block OPM from giving Doge the data. Is it just as basic as, hey, we need a judge to order that this violates the Privacy Act? Yeah, so the Privacy Act says to kind of condense it to its essence, that agencies can't share data unless either the data subject consents or it's sharing it with respect to a routine use. Okay. So routine use. It's sharing it basically to allow, with a law enforcement agency to allow like a background check for the employee to get a higher security. clearance, okay, that would be a routine use. Nothing like that's happening here. Like, none of these

uses are routine. These uses are extraordinarily broad and don't fit in any to the any of the channels, you know, the typical uses that either OPM or any of the agencies with which it shares data make of this data. So it's ultra-virus. It's outside the law. We want a judge to rule that and we want a judge to put a stop to it and we'll, you know, we'll litigate it further once it's been stopped. That's the hope. So what's the timetable for a lawsuit like? this. And I want to make clear, obviously, as an expert, I know the answer to this question, but I want you to explain it to the listeners. I'm going to let you explain it. Okay. We have filed a complaint, and we're also filing something called a motion for a temporary restraining order.

The intent of that is to get in front of a judge very soon within the next couple of weeks and to make arguments for the judge to rule on the temporary restraining order very quickly, maybe the same day or within a couple of days. If we prevail on that temporary restraining order, you know, then the question, of course, is, will the administration actually comply with the judge's order? That's like a whole other set of complications that we'll deal with when we get to it. But the hope is to put a stop to this quickly so that, you know, we can have litigation in the regular force over months where we demonstrate we get discovery from the government and we demonstrate the systems they've actually unlawfully hooked up to. So we have, you know, 19, 20-year-old kids from Doge basically

hooking up computers to secure federal systems and downloading data to unsecured hard drives and making all this stuff very vulnerable to foreign actors who hacked OPM in 2015 and who want to get their hands on this data again after our systems have been hardened. These guys have undone a decade of security work. So, you know, we want to show all that to the court and then we want some permanent relief, but, you know, one step at a time. Gotcha. So earlier this week, a U.S. district judge declined to block the Trump administration's, I guess what they're calling the deferred resignation program, which also came out of OPM. This lawsuit is what you're doing now. This is wholly different. This is different. So our clients, one of the differences is in the case involving the fork in the road email, the deferred payment system, the plaintiffs there were unions who didn't really plead damages to their members.

So our clients are unions. One client is the big AFL-CIO union that represents federal employees, about 800,000 or so federal employees. Another client is the union that represents the administrative law judges. So judges in the Social Security Administration who do benefits determinations. We're pleading damages to the union's members. So these are damages that should get the union standing and their representative capacity. Obviously, we'll see, but that's how the cases are different. Gotcha, because the judge in the case where he declined to block it after, I believe, a TRO had been issued, basically said that the defendants lack standing, right? Yeah, the plaintiffs lack standing. The plaintiffs rather, sorry, yeah. We'll hopefully get caught in that mess. And knowing some of the lawyers on that case, I think they'll fix that sooner rather than later. Gotcha. I'm curious because you mentioned the whole thing about the national security implications of all this data.

Is that part of the, I don't know how to put this, is that part of the lawsuit itself or is the lawsuit itself, does that have to be narrowly tailored to how it will harm the plaintiffs? So the lawsuit is really about, so to get standing, we have to show that the plaintiffs are harmed. And so the lawsuit, it spends a lot of time talking about that. You know, so this data, if it gets disclosed, and of course, these unlawful data access and data sharing increases the chance that it will be. Like the OPM breach in 2015, it can cause enormous damage to folks who have their data in those databases, identity theft, the need to pay for credit monitoring and web monitoring. Potential threats to safety because some of these federal employees work in agencies where the agency's mission is opposed by a group of people who get very bad data shape. So there are a lot of reasons to think that harm is likely, and we're trying to forestall that. But the national security implications are really important, too, because the truth is OPM data,

That very data that's now being kind of recklessly bandied about in the federal government, that data is data that China and Russia and other adversaries seek. It's very valuable data to them. So again, this does have national security implications that we'd like to bring to the judge's attention. Just a quick correction. My understanding is that Russia is our friend. Well, I don't know who the hour is here, but I think at least some of us think that, man. Yeah, for sure. I want to pivot. There were some Some resignations today, we're recording this on Thursday, in the Southern District of New York, which, by the way, is where your lawsuit has been filed. But there were some resignations there over the Justice Department's order to drop the felony case against our illustrious mayor, Eric Adams.

What can you tell me about that? Yeah. So there's a woman named Danielle Sassoon, who was recently appointed by Trump as the interim U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. She is a conservative. She's a member of the federal society. She's no member of the resistance exactly. But she resigned today in protest at Trump ordering her his corrupt order, directing her to drop the case against Adams. Adams is a felon. I think that the evidence that he's committed felonies is pretty damning. And I think she sees Trump's order as corrupt, right? Trump engineered some kind of quid pro quo with Eric Adams. So she's refusing to carry it out. She's resigned.

The interesting thing is the public integrity section at Justice, the Adams case, supervision out of case was going to be transferred from the U.S. Attorney's Office to the public integrity section. The top two people at the public integrity section also resigned. Wow. So these are signals, right? These are signals to the American people that something is very, very wrong. Career prosecutors don't just resign because their boss tells them to drop a case unless they

think something really stinks. And I hope these signals will generate the attention that they deserve. Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting that the main claim that Eric Adams has made is that the charges were being brought against him. They were politically motivated by the Biden administration. And here you have this woman, Danielle Sassoon, who, as you said, is no liberal, is a member of the Justice Society.

And I believe she even, she clerked for Antonin Scalia. That's right. Yeah. Anyone with, I think, at least half a brain knows that Eric Adams was full of crap when he claimed that these charges were political. But I don't know what more proof you could need of that than a conservative prosecutor resigning in outrage, basically, over this case being dropped by the Justice Department. Yeah. You know, Andy, I know we're both old enough to remember when Eric Adams got elected, all the Democrats, including a lot in the Biden administration, thought he was like the second cunning. I thought he was the Democratic Party.

So, I mean, they were idiots for thinking that, but it's equally idiotic for Eric Adams to be saying that, you know, the reason he was prosecuted was political. The reason he was prosecuted is because he took benefits from the Turkish government that he shouldn't have taken. So that's why he was prosecuted. Anyway, the reason that Trump is letting him off the hook is because Trump very badly wants to do showcase immigration raids in New York City,

and Eric Adams is handing him the keys. That's basically what that boils down to. Yeah, and this really is just to sum up. It's all of a piece, isn't it? Like, we've got this, dropping these corruption charges against Eric Adams. We've got Musk and Trump getting rid of inspectors general and people like that who may have been looking into Musk's companies. And again, what's going on at OPM with trying to get all this data on people, it's all for the purposes of corruption and furthering corruption, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, I don't know what people think when they're watching this or if people are watching this. But every day, things are happening

in the government that would have been unthinkable just a few months ago in terms of, you know, career civil servants being threatened and fired for no reason. You know, data that we work very far to keep secure being essentially breached and spread around the federal government without any safeguards. Political decisions being made about what prosecutions to drop based on, on, you know, what the person indicted can do for the administration. It all is just rotten, absolutely rotten. And, you know, the question of my mind is, is this what people voted for? If it is, we're lost. There's nothing we can do. If it's not, I hope they will catch on, right, that the price of eggs is not going down yet, but, you know, the federal civil service is

being cleaned out of professional, reliable, neutral people. That seems like a good place to end this. Chris, thanks so much for being here. It was great talking to you, even though I find it interesting that you did not use this time to offer an apology to me for all the bullying and mockering I suffered at your hands in high school. But that's neither here nor there. Thank you so much for coming on and thanks for being part of this lawsuit. Best of luck to you, man. Thank you. Talk to soon, Eddie. I am extraordinarily excited to welcome to the new abnormal Lama Rod Owen. who is a Buddhist scholar, a Buddhist practitioner, teacher, a author, an activist, the person that

gives me hope and light on Instagram, as I've been following you and reading your books for the longest time. It is an honor to have you on the show today. Lama Rod Owens is the author of The New Saints, From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors and Love and Rage, the Powerage. of liberation through anger and co-author of radical Dharma, Talking Race, Love, and Liberation. Thank you so much for making the time for the new abnormal today. I want to start off with where we find ourselves right now in this country, in a place of disbelief, in a place of deep grief,

as we watch our government and a country that has been extraordinarily imperfect, be gutted before our eyes. It has become really difficult to navigate this sense of hopelessness that people are feeling, this weight that people are feeling. How are you seeing this moment that's happening, this kind of cracking open that's happening? Yeah, thank you so much for this question. You know, for me, I see this moment as being necessary, right? I mean, and when I say necessary, I'm saying that, like, it's time for us to start telling the truth about who we are as individuals and most importantly who we are as a collective of individuals. For us so long in this country, we've, America has been one thing on paper, but a whole other thing in practice, right? And so I think the hopelessness that people are experiencing is really the disruption of experiencing how we are transitioning from the ideal of what America is on paper to the lived experience of what America has been for so many people.

And that experience, the truth of this experience has been a lot of discomfort, a lot of inequality, right? a lot of even like corruption, abuse, but there are so many people essentially struggling to have the resources that they need to be well and safe and happy, right? And now in order to get to the solutions, the real medicine, like we have to start telling the truth about what's happening. And it feels very hopeless. It's a lot of despair in telling the truth. But you have to tell the truth in order to get to the solutions. What do you think right now it means to tell the truth, particularly at a time when misinformation and disinformation has been weaponized against the people, right? Even for those that have tried diligently to keep themselves

abreast of all of the things that have been going on in our politics, find themselves, struggling to get to the truth. So when you say we need at this time, regardless of how painful, to tell the truth, what does that mean for you? Yeah, you know, it begins with telling the truth about how I feel in this moment. What is first and foremost my experience of being in this body, being in this country, being on these lands, being within these identities. We're overreferral. reliant on the government, our media, our other kind of entities telling us who we are. And now we have to kind of reclaim this agency, you know, where we're actually saying, you know what, I'm going to figure out how I feel. More precisely, I'm going to name the ways in which I am deeply

uncomfortable, the ways in which I am struggling. And I'm going to ask myself, why am I struggling? Why am I feeling the way that I feel right now? And you begin by telling that truth. Yeah. But that's something that like many of us have been, we haven't really been told that's our right to do is to name our experiences. Right. We've been told, oh, it's other people can name your experience for you,

but you don't have a right to do this, nor are you really good at it. But a lot of us are feeling deep discomfort and we have to actually start having, practicing this agency to name that, right? Because until we name it, we'll never figure out how to make different choices to address that discomfort. What's really interesting is I have these conversations often with friends and families about America seemingly having existed inside of this lie of comfort, this idea that everything in our lives should provide us with this sense of comfort. And because there is this deep assumption that comfort is something that just is, not that you have to work for, not that you have to be vigilant over, but that just is,

it has lulled people into a place of complacency. And so when you have this moment that is going to be, that is already deeply painful, is already getting harder and harder by the day, we have not never really been taught to navigate discomfort, right? We have been taught to numb it, to rid ourselves of it, right? Whether it is sitting down and binge watching an entire series or the escalation in alcohol or drugs or what have you, we have never been taught to sit in discomfort and use discomfort as a tool. Can you speak to that? Yeah. It's part of like all these systems, particularly capitalism. Capitalism keeps us dependent. It keeps us overconsuming and that overconsumption has been used for centuries now to bypass the real truth of our experiences of our lives, to bypass the

the real truth of how this country was started and what communities were deeply exploited and used to maintain material comfort of the ruling classes in this country, right? And so we haven't even been able to acknowledge that because we've been distracted by this kind of romantic idealist origin story, you know, and that origin story is really, you know, rooted within the genocide of indigenous Americans and the slavery and the enslavement of Africans. That's our origin story. And then capitalism comes in and says, you know what, like, let's bypass this. This is too hard. But what we're being asked to do in this moment is to actually come back and to start actually naming this and saying, yeah, this is how we started. This is how we've been impacted by this,

right? And we have to start understanding that this discomfort, right, that takes many forms, you know, trauma, despair, what have you. Like, this discomfort is actually teaching us how to first tell the truth. And then secondly, how to make different choices to bring about a new future. Like if I can't deal with this reality, then I need to make a choice for myself and then get together with others to make a different choice to bring about a future that is actually freer, more fluid, more open, a kind of living and a kind of future that's actually not dependent on overconsumption to deal with suffering and discomfort, right? but to actually bring about a future where all of us are equipped with the education, the practices, the support to metabolize and to hold our own discomfort and to work with others and to be in communities with others who are also doing this work together. You know, and I often say that like this period that we're entering to is a period where we're

going to have to choose collective grieving. Grieving is how I started telling the truth about how I'm feeling, how my communities are feeling, how many others around me are feeling, right? To acknowledge that sadness, that discomfort, right? And then say, how do I want to be now? Now that I've told the truth, now that I've touched into the sadness, can I make a different choice that's more truthful, that's more aligned with the natural world, with the land, with, you know, with really censoring care for all of us, instead of divesting in systems or rather investing in systems. that keep us separate and disembodied from our lived experiences of discomfort.

You've said so much there, and I want to pick up on the disembodied piece and this idea of separateness, because one of the major tools and weapons of autocracy and dictatorship is to weaponize hopelessness against the people, is to create and poke at the wound of apathy that makes you believe that where you are is where you're always. going to be, that there is no light of possibility. And what happens is that people then are thrown crumbs and fight amongst each other for the crumbs because they have been able to manufacture desperation in this land of abundance. So I want you to talk about what it means to actually come together to recognize that at a time when we are being told to fear each other, to hate each other,

that this is the time that we actually need to lean into each other and build real life community. Because without, right, with the gutting of the government, we're actually going to need community more than ever. Yeah, you know, it's coming back into a real ethic of mutual aid, which says that like, yeah, I need to actually start relying on others around me for the things that I have traditionally rely. on the government for. And that means that, like, I have to see my needs, real needs, being reflected in others as well, right? You know, I think there are some core values around community, around belonging, you know, that we have to return back to and say, you know what, let's rely on each other, right? You know, let's actually cut through these assumptions, these narratives about who we think people are and really start developing a real ethic of care,

you know, for folks around us, right? You know, and part of what this moment in our government, you know, is doing is actually also keeping us super distracted from all of this. Like, yeah, like, you're just reacting, overreacting to everything. All these policies that are coming out. We're just super overreacting. And that's depleting. And once you get depleted and overreaction, what energy do you have to actually start

building and strengthening mutual aid communities? around you. What energy and time do you have after a whole day of being enraged and overwhelmed or even just shutting down and being numb? What energy do you have at the end of the day to say, you know what, I'm going to go out and just spend time with people and get to know people and figure out how we can start helping each other get needs met that we traditionally relied on the government for, right? And we have to start just reclaiming that space and time. Like, we have to become really cautious about the media that we're consuming. We have to be really cautious about the ways in which the government and other groups weaponize fear against us to keep us separate

and to keep us mistrustful of one another. Right. And this is why I'm always talking about coming back to a real sense of self-care, to a real sense of self-love, right? I have to come back to this really deep belief that I deserve to be free, but also coupling that. with a deeper belief that I have to choose something different. I can't wait until someone else chooses this for me or the government chooses this for me. Like, I have to want to choose to be free and well and safe and then partner with those around me to start bringing about this more collective vision of what it means to be really cared for. What do you say to those people who believe that investing, in self-care, right, connecting to what brings you joy, going where, essentially, where love is

as opposed to where it is not, is burying your head in the sand and not paying attention to what is happening because that is a consistent refrain that I hear. When I tell people to engage in practices of self-care and figure out what that looks like for you because it looks different for everyone, then I'm told, well, I need to pay attention. I have to pay attention because if I don't, right? If I don't stay in this state of rage, if I'm not, you know, screaming for the rooftops all of the time, then they've won. What is your response to that? Well, they've already won. These systems are constructed to keep us reactive. And that reactivity, because we actually don't know how to hold reactivity with a lot of spaciousness, that reactivity just becomes super distracting and depleting, right? And so

So what I do, right, is like, yeah, I can practice self-care and at the same time pay attention. But I think when people say, oh, like, you have to pay attention. What they're saying is that you have to be overreactive. I can pay attention and not be hyper-reactive because I want to be in a space of responsiveness, right? That's going to be liberating for so many of us, right? Instead of just habitually reacting to every piece of news, every policy that comes out, or every, like, statement from one of these leaders that comes across our screen, instead, I actually want to hold space for that statement. And when I say hold space, I just, I want to feel, I want to feel my anger. I want to feel my disappointment.

Like, and when I feel it, then I can actually enter into the space of responding. So how do I respond to this? What do I need to do, right, in order to. confront this policy in order to plan to organize, you know, whatever, but like, how do I respond to something instead of habitually reacting? And that's how you start taking power away from the system, right? Because again, these are how the systems maintain themselves. They keep us reactive. We think that that reactivity is valuable. We think that like that's what it means to be to care, right? And it's not that, right? So we reclaim that.

that reactivity and stationed it more within a responsiveness. And that responsiveness takes into account care. It takes into account the needs and the lives of other beings and other people around us, right? And that's going to make you, well, I think it's going to create this sense of, like, passivity. But what you're doing is slowing down and get it clear and, like, actually choosing. the most effective way to respond to something, right, in a way that's more effective, the more direct than just reactivity. Yeah, I love that.

I love the clarification that you just offered around reaction, being reactionary versus being responsive. And I think that we have confused those two things for quite some time. And that is why people are finding themselves in a place of exhaustion, because they have been consistently reacting for, like, the last 10 years, right? and spinning. What advice do you have for people, and I know that you provided on a daily basis, in restoring themselves and having some restoration from the exhaustion and from the reactionary way to be? Yeah. What comes to mind initially is how Audrey Lloyd spoke about how self-care is political warfare, right?

And because systems are trying to deplete us and to annihilate us. So when we actually take space to actually experienced restoration, then we're actually directly confronting the violence of the system, right? And so I think for folks now, it's like, again, it's like community is essential. Like, you need to gather people around you and you need to be with people where you're centering real care for one another. Because I think people feel really alone right now and feel super isolated. And at least with my friends and with my communities, like we're making efforts, even stronger efforts to be with one another, to build stronger communities, to create stronger ethics and values that really help us to feel grounded together. As all these policies and all

these things are being enacted, which feels like a whole different reality that's forming, you have to take that power back and say, you know what, I'm going to create a reality of care of belonging, a mutual aid amongst the people around me in this moment. And that can be one of the strongest forms of care. I cannot thank you enough, Lama Rod Owens, for making the time for the new abnormal, for all of your teachings, your writings, and your lectures that help keep a lot of people grounded and rooted and in a place of possibility. So thank you so very much. Thank you. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody.

So it's another week in hell. How are you closing out with your fuck that guy? We touched on this. I think you touched on this in the last episode, Danielle, Eric Adams, our lovely mayor, who was under federal indictment, and I guess no longer is because Trump's Justice Department has decided to drop all the charges. He is sitting here and allowing the Trump administration to steal. I don't know what other word there is for it, $80 million in FEMA funds that were sent last week to New York City.

In other words, Trump and his, and Musk and whoever have taken that money back. And they literally took it out of one of New York City's municipal bank accounts. They literally went into one of New York's bank accounts and took out the money. And according to Hellgate, the indispensable New York publication, this is a little bit of New York publication, This was done reportedly on the order of Elon Musk and his idiotic department. Adams administration officials were not even the ones who called this out, who said, hey, we're missing $80 million in a bank account that was there yesterday. Brad Lander, the city controller, uncovered this, and he held a press conference announcing

it. In other words, the city's mayor did not hold a press conference announcing this and saying how illegal this is, how unethical this is, how wrong this is, and we are going to get that money back, et cetera, et cetera. He did none of the above. The city controller, Brad Lander, had to do that. And he told reporters that basically on February 4th, $80 million was put into a city bank account that the city of New York has. And then on February 11th, that money went missing from the account. $80 million, just gone from an account. The mayor has said absolutely nothing about this.

He eventually did. He said they're conducting an internal investigation into how it happened. But everything Mayor Adams is doing now, he is enthrall to Donald Trump. And he might as well be part of the Trump administration while serving as the mayor of New York City. And I could add Kathy Hockel to my list of fuck that guy here because she should have removed Adams from office after he was indicted, which was well within her power. she chose not to. New York is a joke. The New York Democratic Party is an absolute joke. And the New York State Democrats are probably the best state party the Republicans have. They just could not be any better for the Republicans if they were the Republican Party. So my fuck that guy goes mainly

to Mayor Adams here. But I'll throw in Kathy Hokel and I will throw in the entire New York State Democratic apparatus. Daniel, please feel free to add to the list. But for now, I'll stick with those and say, fuck those guys. We have elections coming up and all these motherfuckers have to go, every single one of them. Like, if we are to be able to figure out how to survive in this oligarch climate, then we actually need fighters in New York. None of these people are it. They are all in for themselves and to cover their own asses.

So everybody inside in New York needs to wake the fuck up. Because they got to go. So fuck those guys. All right, Danielle. So close out this week and be calmer than I was. You're right. Samuel L. Jackson said, don't be too loud. Exactly.

Don't be too bold. Don't be too ghetto. Exactly. I got to rein it in. You know, people don't like my loud cursing. Yes. And to that, I just say, I don't give a fuck. Yeah.

So here we are. The richest man in the world, Elon Musk, has decided to stop resources, medicine, and food from going to the poorest people in the world. If that is not vile enough, right, because that just should be it. You have an ungodly amount of wealth and you want to ensure that people that are the most vulnerable on this planet suffer even more than they already have because you don't give a fuck. And so we know that there has been a battle and the shuddering of USAID has been the result of that battle led by Elon Musk because, as we have learned, they were investigating him. And this is the theme that we're seeing around all of these agencies that Elon Musk is shuddering one by one by one is that he's either been under investigation or is in the midst of a lawsuit with multiple agencies.

But specifically, this week, the inspector general, Paul Martin, who was appointed by Joe Biden in 23, to lead up this agency, to oversee, right, waste and fraud inside of this agency, was fired. Why was he fired this week? Oh, because he issued a critical report warning, this is according to the independent, that nearly $500 million, $500 million, $5.5.5. $500 million in food was about to go bad due to Donald Trump's freeze on the agency. And because he released this scathing report telling the truth about what would happen to half a billion dollars worth of food and aid set for these most vulnerable places and communities is now on hold. he was fired for telling the truth. I know that it's taken an incredibly long time

for Americans to wake out of their slumber and believe that, oh, well, politics really isn't for me. If you are not and have not become radicalized over the last three weeks, then you are not paying attention. You really are not. And all of the chickens are coming home to roost here. And the amount of pain that is being inflicted

on the most vulnerable is, in fact, getting ready to be turned on all of us. So for that reason and so many more reasons, Elon Musk, this entire fucking grifting, idiocracy, broligarch, all of them receive a very hearty, full chest. Fuck those guys. Yeah, I got nothing to add to that.

Fuck those guys. Hope you enjoyed checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back 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? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber.

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