The Daily Beast Podcast - DeSantis’ Retreat Shows Moms for Liberty’s Influence Is Waning

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

Political strategist Michael Podhorzer stops by the podcast to “redirect some anxiety” about recent polls showing Donald Trump in a strong position for next year’s election. Plus! A conversation with writer Jonathan Katz about his most recent piece for “The Atlantic” titled: “Substack has a Nazi problem.” 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 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 Kedden, 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 for you today.

American political strategist Mike Potthoser is here to redirect some anxiety when it comes to reading polls this far out from an election. Then journalist Jonathan Katz, the publisher of the Substack newsletter The Racket, joins us to tell us all about his recent article for the Atlantic. Substack has a Nazi problem. But first, let's have some fun. Folks, I guess we start out, Andy. There's a lot of passing that is happening at the end of this year of very, I guess, complicated, iconic political figures. Next, I guess, is Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman to preside on the Supreme Court, who had a very interesting path on the Supreme Court. You know, one would look at the 2000 election, maybe, kind of in hindsight as to where we are right now and find ourselves.

What would that world have looked like if, you know, the people decided who the president was going to be in 2000 instead of, you know, around the hanging chads? It would have been great if the people of the United States got to decide that election instead of the Supreme Court. And I believe, you know, Sandra Day O'Connor played a very important role in that decision. Nonetheless, at 93 years old, she has passed. And I think that she opened up as an extraordinary amount of pathways for women in so many ways. But yeah, everyone who's passing. I guess like, honestly, yeah, complicated. That's what I'll say.

Complicated. Andy? Yeah, the only one I won't give that to is Kissinger. Yeah, because that wasn't complicated. Right, exactly. He was just a monster. But yeah, no, I think O'Connor, any headlines you're seeing or whatever that refer to her legacy as complicated, I think are accurate in this case. She's one of those people. She was, I think, I believe personally, she was anti-abortion. But she, I think, co-wrote the opinion, the Planned Parenthood v. Casey in 93 that basically said, look, Roe is settled law. And that could have gone the other way back in 93. And I mean, ironically, it was her retirement that led to Alito being appointed to replace her, who then went on to write the horrid Dobbs decision overturning Roe. I guess we can't blame that.

on her. She definitely had a complicated life on the Supreme Court. I mean, she also, she co-wrote the Bush v. Gore decision in 2000 that basically handed the election to George W. Bush, unfairly in the minds of a lot of people. And that was one of those cases where it has come out since then that she was very unhappy. When at a certain point on election night in 2000, it appeared that Gore had won. And look, this is the way we do things in this country. But you have a person. who is not happy with an election result, then writing a decision that I don't want to say overturns that result, but that makes it easier for that result to go the other way. And I was reading some stuff over the weekend that she seemed to maybe buy into some very 2020-sounding

conspiracy theories, or call them what you will, false theories about the election in 2000, you know, in terms of there being shenanigans and stuff like that. Twenty-five years on the court, I guess, There are people who are going to be on the court for 25 years and everything they do is get, or 95% of what they do is going to be good. There are others who 95% is going to be bad. She might be more, I don't know if it's 50, 50, but closer to 50, 50 in terms of her legacy. I guess the best way of putting it is, in this day and age, she would be preferable to pretty much any conservative on the court currently. Correct. I think that that is right.

I think that the decisions that she made at the time that she was making them, didn't seem as egregious and off-putting and dangerous as the decisions that we've seen as of late. So she will be remembered fondly, but with a layer of complication. So, you know, speaking about people who won't be remembered fondly, that is absolutely a poor choice of words, but, you know. I don't think so. The Ziegler's, Bridget Ziegler, who is one of, you know, her and her husband, founders of Moms for Liberty, who we know we've talked about ad nauseum here because, you know, up until recently,

they were hailed as the next rising stars of the Republican Party. What's always so fascinating to me is that almost all of the Republican rising stars fucking crash and burn. Bridget Ziegler is no different. So Christian Ziegler, her husband, they are under investigation in Sarasota, Florida, following a rape allegation. This is according to salon.com. And this comes on the heels, by the way, because I don't, you know, there's just so many accusations of rape coming around

with the Republican Party. I don't want you all to be confused. That this is distinctly different than the allegations that came out from a Philadelphia organizer for Moms for Liberty for his 2012 conviction of sexual abuse of a 14-year-old boy.

These are two different things. things. Just to remind folks that the whole premise around moms for liberty is to uphold some type of sexual fucking morality and wipe our shelves of any books that could potentially have our children think critically or thoughtfully, you know, about their bodies, the world, other people, anything like that because they've decided that they alone are the moral compass, apparently for America. So predictably, if you are protesting, so fucking much about morality and the LGBT community and they're a bunch of pedophiles

and they're grooming our kids. Lo and fucking behold, who the actual convicted groomer is and who is being investigated for rape. These very same people. So apparently, according to Salon, local reporters in Florida dug up information and details from the alleged victim

that said, quote, that she and both Zieglers had been involved in a three-year consensual three-way sexual relationship. The report alleged she had been alone with Christian Ziegler, who is also the chair of the Florida GOP, the night of the alleged rape. Time and again, they write, we have seen this story play out. The self-appointed guardians of everyone else's sexual morality often have rather exotic sex lives of their own. Just ask Jerry Falwell Jr. There's two things here. One of the rape allegations, which that's what's serious here. Obviously, there's nothing funny about that.

The three-year consensual three-way relationship, on the other hand, would be absolutely nobody's business, and I would not give a shit at all, except for everything that you mentioned off the top, Danielle, that this is the group that has set themselves up as the arbiters of morality and the arbiters of family values. I am fairly certain that throuples are not part of when conservatives talk about family values, that's not what they're talking about. No.

Well, the other part here is that all of this is alleged. We don't know anything for sure. On the other hand, these are a bunch of people who like to call every LGBTQ person a groomer and throw around other insane accusations like that. So I don't feel in the least bit bad about sinking to their level. Because as I like to say, when they go low, I go low, Daniel. I mean, when they go low, I'll go to the fucking sewer. But, like, the fact is we're not playing by their games because we actually have facts on our side. Yeah.

The important point here is, and we've talked about this on a show before, like, calling these people hypocrites is useless in one sense because they don't care because they have no moral center and they have absolutely no problem with advocating for things that they themselves go completely against. their own lives. I still do think it's useful to point out that this does happen time and time again. And as we say, every accusation that they make when they call people groomers and when they accuse people doing whatever, it's ridiculous how often it turns out to describe something in their own lives that they are doing. I think there's value in continuing to point that out. And that's what we're doing here. And look, Rachel Ziegler is the head of, you know, a co-founder of Monster Liberty. As you pointed out, Christian Ziegler is the chair of the Florida GOP. These are people in power.

So I do think it's important to point this stuff out and to talk about it. And like at a certain point, it doesn't matter. It's not going to make the hypocrisy stop. But so what? You still have to point it out. I mean, but also let's point out another thing, too. Who was all in the bag for Moms for Liberty? Who keynoted their summertime conference that they held in July?

Ron DeSantis. Yep. Right? Ron DeSantis has linked. his entire campaign and his desire to whitewash, rewrite history and the curriculums and all of the changes that he has made at the behest of Moms for Liberty. He has been pun intended in bed with these people since the beginning of his fucking campaign. So I ask, what does that say about Ron DeSantis? And again, when people decide to make themselves the moral arbiters for everyone else,

The question is, like, what glass house are you standing in? Because that's when any type of investigative journalism should begin. What are these people got going on that they feel like they are in a position to dictate to the rest of us? When I look at Ron DeSantis and I look at the things that he has done, it's just like, I don't want more puff pieces on these people. I want like deep dives into their backgrounds, into who they know, who they've been hanging out with, what they've been doing, because, They are powerful. Head of Florida GOP?

Head of Moms for Liberty? This is not light volunteer work. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And, you know, DeSantis has completely thrown Christian Ziegler overboard at this point calling for him to resign as chair of the Florida GOP. And Amanda Marcott makes a really good point at Salon. She says that it's a sign that the fact that the Zieglers are being, as she puts it,

tossed overboard. So quickly is a good sign that Moms for Liberty is kind of waning. in their power. They've made a big splash and they've made a lot of headlines. And look, we've talked about them a lot. They're a dangerous group. But the last couple of elections have pretty much shown that a lot of the stuff that Monster Liberty has been throwing out there and a lot of the sort of the fear that they've been ginning up is not resonating with a wide swath of America. Amanda Marcotte's point is that she doesn't think the Zieglers are losing friends because of the actual allegations because, for example, you've got Donald Trump, who has lost no support despite

not just allegations, but stuff that judges have said, i.e., he raped E. Jean Carroll. Marcotte makes the very good point that the real reason that Christian Ziegler and, you know, and the Zieglers in general are being sort of pushed aside and being told to step aside so rapidly is a sign that Republicans, at least at some level, are realizing that this mom's for liberty type shit is not paying off for them. There's just this mental image I can never get out of my head, especially when I hear Republicans who are, you know, always harping on like, you know, family values and things like this. And then this story inevitably comes up that they're bad. And it's this, like, I don't know if you've ever seen, like, photos of like frat bros in

Vegas. And they're with a girl who's really attractive. And there's this like point, like, look at that. I'm fucking that. And that's how I feel like anytime I see Ron DeSantis, like, talking about Florida or American values. It's him just going, nah, fuck that. Oh, my God, the accuracy. Let me just ruin everything. Nothing sacred. But I do want to say that you started off by, you know, we were talking about how Sandra Day O'Connor will be remembered fondly by a lot of people.

And I do think that Moms of Liberty may be remembered fondling by a lot of people. Oh, very good. I like what you did there. Speaking of people who will never be forgotten. And apparently who are not fucking going quietly into the cold good, good night is George Santos. Santos was just readily removed from Congress. I mean, it was, I don't know about you. And it was about fucking time.

This took way too long to get this man removed from Congress. When I think about the fact that I believe that there is no bottom for the Republican party. There is no embarrassment that they won't brush off or look away from or try and spin. Santos was like that barnacle that they needed to scrape off. Apparently the only one because everyone else they're willing to like deal with and say it's jewelry. But Santos now over, I believe over 100 Republicans joined in on the full vote to remove him from Congress following the bipartisan ethics report that came out and said this MFer was used to. campaign funds to go to Sephora, to get Botox, essentially just using it all on himself.

Only fans. And, you know, it's just, I hate it here. There are multiple stories about this, but what I will say is that he now is threatening those that voted against him because he refuses, like he had said originally, that he would leave graciously if he were expelled. And now it seems that he's just going to burn down everything on his way out. he took to broke-ass Twitter X to say on his page, quote, let's talk about hypocrisy. Quote, can somebody ask Nicole Malio Stock Tips?

He is referring to Maliotakis, a fellow Republican from New York. He says, when did she become a savant in stock trading? Question mark. The signature bank trades, she did reeks of insider trading. He goes on about Paul Pelosi. I will not say that piece. And then he says, Nicole is in it for herself. Just look at her record and it speaks for itself.

He's on one, Andy. He is on one. He is absolutely on one. And I mean, he's trash. But this is going to be fun to watch. And I don't watch the Real Housewives shows, but I feel like it's similar energy. It's definitely giving.

Yeah. He's gone after Nicole Malia Tockley- He's going after Mike Lawler as well, who's a Republican congressman from upstate New York. I could not be more in favor of him doing this. I mean, you know, this is a guy who it really does feel like has done no good in his life. And if he wants to out a bunch of Republicans as unethical people, go for it. The problem is, of course, how do you believe anything George Santos says? So there's that.

I was genuinely shocked that they voted him out. I was too. Yeah. I think they needed like 90-something Republican votes. I did not think that they would have those votes to do it. And it's interesting now. Matt Gates is upset and he's worried that the slim majority that the Republicans hold in the House is getting slimmer.

He was opposed to Santos being kicked out without being convicted of anything, which of course is not a surprise given that Matt Gates himself is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee. and might have been looking into the future when he was looking at what was done to George Santos. So I think there's a lot of that involved in Gates being outraged that the Republicans voted out. Santos. If Santos wants to burn down the House GOP on his way out the door, I will hand him a match. And I will bring some gasoline.

Go off. You know, I just, I mean, like you said, I don't know what he could actually do unless he had received. and maybe they're under the receipts that he has from Sephora and his Botox about Republican misdoing but mishandling and trading and all of these things. But it would be brilliant. And I think that to Gates' point, which he goes after, I mean, he's such a dick. He basically said that like, you know, we're only, we have the slim majority and what if some people cross the rainbow bridge, which he means by dying?

because the house is filled with octanagerians. It was like, you're just gross. He's just a gross person. And I wonder why the ethics investigation on him is taking so long. And the one for Santos was like, you know, all green lights ahead. Well, think about it like this. Santos was the biggest name that was a fraudster kind of in a way. And so he's in the house and he's making all these waves.

And he's also not doing himself any favors by being vocal and loud and shitty like that. So everyone who has their own things coming up or things that they're trying to avoid coming to light, Santos is a shield. He was a shield. Yeah, you're right. That's why somebody like Gates is going to be freaking out now because he doesn't have that many friends in the party either. Right. I think Santos, I think the evidence was so overwhelming and he was just so bad at it.

Like, I think that's what it comes down to is he was just so bad at it. And there were so many records of what he had done that it was, you know, as close to a slam dunk as you can get for the ethics committee. I don't know. The Mattgate stuff may be more complicated. It may be harder to prove. I have no idea. What I do know is that George Santos is apparently on the platform cameo now. And for the people who don't know what cameo is, it's a website or an app you can go to. And celebrities are on there, ranging from A-list to F-list, really. And you can pay them whatever amount of money they have set to leave you a video message. Or you can pay them to leave someone else a video message like you can do. do it for a birthday present for someone or something like that. And there is now a profile on Cameo. I don't think it's been, Santos has not confirmed it's him. But there's a profile on cameo for George Santos that is set up. The bio describes him as a former congressional icon, which I love.

Not icon. And apparently, the price was originally said at $75 for a cameo, which is relatively cheap. I mean, I've seen on there, you know, they can go upwards of thousands of dollars and they can be as low is like 10 or 20 bucks. 75 is fairly low. And then some reports started coming out that he was on there and suddenly the price, he doubled the price to 150. Oh, that seems right. You know, that makes me more confident that it is actually him.

I am not encouraging anyone to give their money to George Santos, so I'm not telling you to go get a cameo from him. But it could be kind of funny. I mean, a grift is gone grift all the way to prison, you know? And if Trump can sell his mugshot, a fake mugshot, a fake mugshot at that, Santos is going to try and sell whatever he can to keep his ass out of jail. And when he's in there, we'll see what else he sells.

I'll leave it out that. Yeah. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal American political strategist. He was the former political director of the AFL CIO. Is someone who has written and discussed American politics in such a deep way that I am hoping Mike Podhorser can assuage the fears that I have growing in the pit of my stomach that tells me that not only Mike are we on the verge of losing our democracy again. Not only does our democracy hinge on the next presidential election again, but that we have multiple wars that are being fought.

We're seeing a realignment in our world that we have not seen. I don't think on this level for many, many decades. And the poll numbers are suggesting that the president that we have in place that actually believes in the Constitution is not a perfect man, but he sure as hell is not a man facing 91 counts and four indictments across multiple jurisdictions. But the polls tell us otherwise. Mike, what is happening? Why is there such a gap in the realities that I am taking in right now? Right. And he has 91 fewer indictments than Trump does. I think that the panic that was set off now more than a month ago with a horse race polling that showed Trump to be either tied or ahead, especially in some battleground states, and is really unwarranted. Before I to explain that, I want to be clear that I am not arguing, don't think. worry Biden's got this, right? Because that's not the case. What I want to do is redirect your

anxiety. Okay. My therapist says the same thing, but please, go ahead. I will say if I'm more or less successful. The polls right now literally tell us nothing we don't already know about next November. We already know that this isn't going to be a landslide one way or another. Instead, it's going to come down to really small margins in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. That's because since 2016, we've been having the same election every two years. And that's what it keeps coming down to, right? Because there is a majority in this country that absolutely would not want Donald Trump to be president, right? And each time we go through this cycle of being panicked because polls tell us that we're going to lose.

And then we don't. And then we start the same cycle. The point here is that, and this is sort of redirecting the anxiety, is that no matter what, it's just going to be really close and it's going to come down to what happens in October of next year. but most importantly, it's going to come down to what we all do about it. The deepest problem with paying attention to these horse-race polls and then taking them seriously is that they should put you in a frame of mind where what happens in the election isn't about what you or I do, but by what a pollster tells us, right?

And if each of these elections is going to come down to 10 or 20,000 votes in a state like Wisconsin. Polling can't tell us anything beyond that, right? But instead, we already know from one election after another that we just have to do everything we can to keep the fascists out of office. The way we've succeeded each time is by making sure that voters know exactly what they're, that this is MAGA, that this is Trump. And if they don't go out and vote, they're going to lose their freedom, whether you're a sort of Democratic Party advocate or not. These women come down to what we as citizens do, whatever party we are, right? We can't agree on much about what we want America to be.

But if the question is what we don't want it to be, there's a pretty big majority behind. We do want women to be able to have reproductive freedom. We do want the freedom. that we've counted on and taken for granted for the last couple decades or more. No one wants to give that up. And so our job is to make sure that everyone we know is fully aware that may become tedious, but it's the same thing. If we don't all go out and vote against it, then the fascist win.

Let me ask you this, because I think that where we are witnessing, and this is what alarms me, It isn't just the polls because I'm a person that believes that like, you know, reading the polls, particularly this early out, is all about who you ask, how you ask it, when you ask it, what medium you are asking it on, and how the person is feeling that time of day. It's like reading the tea leaves and it's not very helpful. However, what I am concerned about is this voter fatigue of voting against something, voting against fascism, which is a negative proposition rather than I'm excited. decided to vote for and that you are right. I like the fact that you just said that we are

kind of repeating the same election over and over again where the stakes, even, and I would argue in 2024, seem even higher than they were in 2020, not the same. And so what do we do with this emotional fatigue that voters have where it's just like, I can't tell you every cycle. It's the most consequential election of your lifetime when you were not excited, energized, or even feel hopeful about what the future of this country can look like? So I think I'm going to probably disappoint you here. Okay. Go ahead.

It's nice. I think that the fact that it is even a possibility that someone like Trump could become president again and the polls are where they are is a reflection. of what life in America has been like for the last couple of decades for 80 or 90% of Americans, right? And I think over that period of time, if you came of age during the Great Recession, and right now your hopes before that haven't come close to being realized, but you have a lot of debt if you'd hope to do at least as well as your parents and you're not even close. If you're in your 30s and you still haven't had a full-time job for a couple of years

in a row. One of the things you've learned over this period of time is that politicians telling you that they're going to make your life better, like, really doesn't happen. But you have a lot of evidence that politicians can make your life even worse. It's really depressing that that's where America is. But the problems are so grounded in the fact that we have such an archaic constitution that empowers this. I mean, step back for like out of the moment, right? If we were a normal country starting from scratch, right, the president would be elected because they got the most votes. But turns out that's not how we do things here. And as a result, you get, you know, two presidents in this century who were elected and even though they didn't get enough votes. Like in that system, it's

almost impossible to win. And that's depressing. Yeah. But it's reality. And as Dobb showed, no matter how fatigued we are, these are, this like happening in the real world, right? They're real world consequences when they win. That's what we have to keep fighting against. You're right. It's the reality. And the reality is that the younger generations, whether you're looking at millennials who have reached or reaching middle of, age, whether you're looking at, you know, Gen Z behind them and so forth and so on, you're not going to be doing as well as your parents or grandparents did. That's not the reality anymore. And I think that we are stuck in this space, Mike, where we just cannot wrap our minds around

that pattern that many of us, many who are privileged, have been able to kind of just, you know, move along this path where that was just assured. And we're having a really difficult time realizing that our reality has changed. And I think that's why people are stuck. Absolutely. And there's a way in which our politician, Democratic politicians, most of this are non-magam media, still maintains that all those hopes are really plausible for people, right? And I think one of the things that to me is really encouraging, though, that's really started happening over the last year is what we've seen with strikes and labor activity, right? Because what that reflects is finally, people are seeing that they are the answer to doing better, right? That it isn't,

it can't all be, let's just elect people and they'll make our lives better. We have to go out and make our lives better for ourselves. And that's what those writers, those auto workers, those actors, those UPS drivers, right? They took things into their own hands and they acted collectively. You know, we've gone through these couple decades where people are told, oh, you just can make it on your own. Well, that, Mike, is not how America worked when America worked. When America worked, people were acting collectively. There was rich local democracy. People were engaged. A third of working people were in unions and were able to push back against all the kind of working conditions and pay and all of that. And so to me, the way to think about it is in terms

of politics, we have to make sure that they lose. But if we want more, we have to organize and do it for ourselves. There is hopefulness in that, right? Which goes back to your earlier point about why we don't just need to rely on polls and pollsters that are telling us where the wind is going to blow, because it takes away our own power, right, as citizens, as voters, to decide, what do I want my future to look like? What do I want my community to look at if I'm just acquiescing to what I'm being told? Exactly. And in your metaphor about which way the wind is blowing, it makes us forget that we have the capacity to be the wind if we're willing to go out and make gusts. And there's a place when people talk to me about polling.

I want to should be clear because often people who say that are trying to rationalize away, bad news, right? The thing that's real important to understand about polling is that with respect to the question of who's going to win close elections, it's really. not capable of doing it, right? It's like using a magnifying glass to look for electrons. And then, you know, people saying, well, I know it can't do it, but we don't have anything else. So let's let the magnifying glass scientists talk to us, right? In 2022, in the midterms, all of the polling was saying that Democrats were going to get wiped out. And that had a

a hugely bad effect, right? Because I'm old enough to have been on a planet where people were able to do journalism about the world and not polls. Then after the insurrection and all of that, the way the midterms would have been conceived of would have been, are voters going to reject the party that was all down with overthrowing the democracy? But because of polling, and political science, you know, conventional wisdom, no one wrote that story from the beginning. It was about, oh, you know, midterms are thermostatic and they're always difficult for the president. Everybody just wanted to be savvy. But in those states that the ones I mentioned before that have been ground zero for the battle with MAGA, like they didn't get that memo, right?

And so voters in those places rejected MAGA. And we wouldn't even have, a Republican House of Representatives if the media in New York and New Jersey and California made it as clear to those voters that their vote for representative for George Santos, for God's sake, was a vote for Kevin McCarthy in the way that voters in Georgia and Pennsylvania understood that a vote for Walker or Oz was a vote for McConnell. So, right, you can't pay attention. It just distracts you like spending your time. looking at your weather app instead of going outside. Yeah, that analogy, that is it.

Where would people's time, as we're getting ready to turn the calendar year, which we know for media is like full on horse race every day, all day from January until election day. What should people, the people that listen to this show, the people that are tapped in, but they are feeling very tapped out, what should they spend their time doing rather than banging their head against the wall for the next several months? Yeah, I don't recommend that. Certainly, if you're one of those six states, like you have lots you can do. Those campaigns are already started. But I think more broadly, it's that it is being as clear in your life and with all the people around you,

the reality that we're talking about today. right, and not like let your like legitimate anxiety about where this country go, go into just like wringing your hands about his Biden too old. Or he may be, it doesn't, but it doesn't matter if we are organized against Trump, right? And if I'm a second, I mean, one kind of maybe way of sort of thinking about answering that question, but also about like how the polls are wrong and how. we have kept winning in those states. So I'm sure if I say white non-college voter, everybody who's listening to this podcast will see this burly guy in a northern Midwest diner,

right? I mean, and the problem is that everybody who's worried about Democrats thinks that guy who voted for Trump, we have to convince we have to be a white, more conservative or whatever. right, but that's the guy who's going to decide whether Trump comes back. But if you pull the camera back, you see that in that diner, there's Charlene, pouring his coffee. And she now understands Dobbs, all the other things. She had sometimes voted, sometimes not. She skipped 16, but now she's a regular voter against all of those kinds of decisions. And then you pan back a little bit further.

and you see three 20-somethings in a booth by the window who really aren't paying attention to politics at all, right? And none of them have had a regular job, not sure what they're going to do, some of them working a couple of jobs. And in the last several elections, they voted and they defeated Trump and MAGA. Are they taking the polls that, the horse race polls that you're fretting about? Probably not. But it comes down to. whether their friends and their social media and everybody around them, again, gets their mind concentrated that if they don't go out and vote, things are going to get a lot worse. And really, and that's also true what we have to do.

We have to be sort of ambassadors of reality to everybody we know who's worrying, right? And to direct those efforts into beating Trump. And if you want to go further and make a better life, I don't do it by trying to elect by national Democrats. Go out and organize your communities. Go out and organize what matters to you. Mike, I appreciate you so much for taking the time to join the new abnormal to assuage my fears in a very serious way.

And folks, if you are interested in more from Mike, check out his newsletter called Weekend Reading. And you can get more information there. Mike Podhoiser, thank you so much for making time. Oh, thank you. Thank you. It's great to be here. For those who don't know,

Substack is a newsletter hosting platform that in the past several years has become a favorite of independent journalists and writers of all stripes. But recently, the Atlantic published a piece with a blunt headline, Substack has a Nazi problem. And joining me now is the writer of that piece,

the author of Gangsters of Capitalism, journalist, and someone with skin in the game as publisher of the Substack Newsletter or the racket, Jonathan Katz. Jonathan, thanks so much for being here. Hey, thanks for having me. So let's clarify what we mean when we talk about substacks Nazi problem. We're not saying that of the tens of thousands of writers on the platform, a majority are Nazis or more broadly white nationalists or racist or anti-gay or anti-trans, etc. Right. We're saying it doesn't need to be anywhere near a majority for it to be a problem. Right. There are far more of all of those things,

first of all, then you would want to see on a platform, then I want to see on a platform on which I spend a lot of time. And importantly, and we'll get into this, the role of substack corporate of substack leaders in promoting not necessarily the hardest core of these things, but newsletters that consciously blur the line between sort of standard reactionism and the harder stuff. Absolutely. And yeah, I absolutely want to get into that later. But before we get there, I want to get into what you did.

You did what you call in your piece an informal search of the site. What kind of writing did you turn up? A really awful stuff. Things that really, like, the kind of stuff that just sort of sits in your gut and just sort of ruins your day for at least a couple hours after you read it. It's everything from more polite kind of, this term is out of currency, but sort of the style that Richard Spencer and his crew pioneered of alt-right, like things that are just like totally Nazi ideas, but sort of dressed up in early 20th century, like academic

argot and like, you know, kind of respectability writing, all the way to just straight up. I am a Nazi. I like Adolf Hitler. Here's a speech from Goebbels that I really think is important that you should read and sort of everything in between. Yeah, I was looking at some of the things that you turned up, a substack called white papers, more than one that talks about the quote unquote Jewish question. It's quite a group that you turned up.

So how extensive was your search? Like, what I'm trying to get at is, did you have to dig really hard to find these? Or how did you come across all of them? Let me take a step back for a second. The reason why I wrote this piece was that I started doing reporting over the summer as Substack Corporate was promoting the work of one particular guy, Richard Henania, who your listeners may be familiar or may not. He's a public intellectual.

I use the term loosely. He has a PhD from UCLA in political science, and I believe a JD from University of Chicago, which gives him sort of street cred in some academic circles. But he's just an open racist. He's somebody who, on Twitter, for years, has just been spouting, especially anti-black racism. He's also a, you can debate the exact term. I would call him a eugenicist. He's essentially somebody who believes very strongly in genetic theories of intelligence and superiority that certain races are smarter than others inherently. And he has a substack. And Substack was promoting him. Hamish McKenzie, who is Substack's co-founder, and the guy who actually invited me onto the platform years ago, had Richard on and gave him just this extremely softball interview,

letting him just go on about how he wants to overthrow the Civil Rights Act. that this is the key to stopping wokeness, and McKenzie calls it gutsy. And then at the end of the interview, the thing that really got my attention, or another thing that got my attention, was that Hamish asked Richard to recommend any substacks that he thought were interesting or notable, that listeners should read. And Hanania recommended one that was just, it's just a very Nazi blog. It again is sort of on the like respectability politics edge that Hanania is on. Also, Steve Saylor, who your listeners also may know, another kind of white supremacist who also straddles this line, like he writes for V-Dair, which is like a big white supremacist blog, but also

has written for the New York Times. He sort of has a foot in both camps. And then after that interview, and I wrote about it, and then I had some follow-up pieces about it, because I was sort of doing more digging. Christopher Matthias at the Huffington Post did investigating, and he did an expose, which showed that not only was Hennania an open racist, now, but 10 years ago, he was more explicitly a genocidal racist, you know, who wrote for Richard Spencer's publication among others that not only are some races intellectually superior to others, but those who have, quote, low IQ should be sterilized and basically prohibited from reproducing. This all got a lot of attention, and I was associated with it because I'd written about it in my

newsletter. So people started reaching out to me and saying, hey, you seem to be interested in this stuff. Do you know that there's this actual, like, Nazi blog? and this like national socialist newsletter and stuff like that. And I started and I and, you know, some friends of mine and people who were sort of interested in these things, you know, I started reaching out to them for tips. And I got turned on to some telegram channels that Nazis, that extremists use. I was seeing the substacks that they were sharing in those telegram channels. And then the other thing, this was the biggest thing, was that once I sort of had like these kind

of like points of entry, then I was able to. use. So substack has a recommendations feature where you can recommend other substacks on your substack who you think people who like your substack should read. And by doing that, I was able to sort of open, like, not the entire thing, but a significant portion of the web of these extremist, Nazi, white nationalist, neo-confederate blogs. And that was the way that I found a lot of them. So substack has sort of, for people who don't know, two different, I don't know if you want to call them tears or whatever. It allows authors to post for free. In other words, the author makes no money. Anyone can read it and Substack makes no money. Or authors can offer paid subscriptions to their substacks, which the company, Substack, then takes a cut of.

So I'm curious, were the sites that you found, were there paid sites involved here? In other words, sites where Substack was making money? Yep. Several of them were. substack has content guidelines. They say that there are certain things that are not allowed on substack. Among those, by the ways, hate is one of the categories, but it's also, you know, you're not allowed to, like, post-pornography. They actually enforce that one. So in terms of them, you know, claiming to be free speech absolutist, there are definitely

things that they don't allow. But the other thing that I was wondering was one of the pieces of wording in the guidelines are, like, what you can't, like, make money for whatever, hate groups or extremist groups, I forget the way that they word it. So I was like, well, maybe this is how people are getting around it. Maybe they just don't have paid subscriptions turned on. But they do. A lot of them do.

One of them, and I talk about this in the piece, is Richard Spencer's substack, which he co-edits with a couple of other people, although he's obviously the biggest name on it. They have paid subscriptions turned on. You can subscribe for $9 a month or $90 a year. And he's not alone in this. He has a little bestseller badge. So if you have enough subscribers on substack, basically if you have over 100 subscribers on substack, you get the badge that he has, which shows that he has hundreds of subscribers.

And that could be anywhere from 100 subscribers to 99 subscribers paid subscribers. And what that means is, if you do the math, back of the envelope, with people paying somewhere between $9 a month and $90 a year, that means that Richard Spencer and company are taking in as little as $9,000, but as much as over $100,000. And of that, Substack gets 10%. Wow. I'm a little surprised. Is there not an option for $14 a month or $88 a year?

But that's neither year. Yes, yes. So Substack is making money from hosting these kinds of people. And unlike, say, YouTube, which at least does have a policy of demonetizing, at least some of what I'll call hate content, Substack doesn't seem to have any interest in actually following through on such a policy, whether or not it's in their terms of service or not. No, they seem not to.

That's unreal. So I know you contacted Substack for comment before you published your Atlantic piece. What did they say? I'm sorry, I'm just laughing because it's been such an ordeal. I want to preface this. And I'm not like, I'm not trying to whatever. I'm not trying to like name drop or say that like I'm more important than I am. But, like, Hamish McKenzie, who's, is the co-founder of substack, and Chris Best.

We used to talk fairly often, like, just, like, casually. I started my substack in 2019. As my substack bio says, I was substacking since before it was uncool. And Hamish was the one. I basically, like, I made an account on the site. And Hamish saw that I made an account. I didn't know him. And he just reached out to me.

I don't know how he knew who I was or he just saw that I had a lot of Twitter followers, which is actually probably what it was. But he reached out to me and he was like, hey, I see, you know, it would be great for you to be on substack. Let's work together. Here's some suggestions. He gave me like suggested names, none to which I used for the newsletter, stuff like that. As recently as I think March or April of this year, I was just sort of, you know, trading emails back and forth with him that were just sort of like, hey, this thing's going on. What do you think about this? You know, just sort of like, you know, just shooting the shit. I'm saying this because it sort of indicates how crazy it is that I have

not been able to dig direct comment from him or Chris Best or any of Substack's leadership, basically since I started reporting on the episode of the podcast, the active voice that Hamish did with Richard Hanania. They have aggressively refused. That's how I read it. They've aggressively refused to engage with me, to comment, to say anything. I have like, I've been like, dude, Hamish, I have a newsletter on Substack. Let's make content. Like, come on. the racket. I do interviews. Like, I do like kind of podcast episodes. Like, come on. Let's just talk about this. People will subscribe. And then you will get 10% of that. Like, what is the deal? And he, and they have refused entirely. It was only, and this is actually part of the reason, honestly, why I, you know,

I considered sort of just doing the piece that I ran in the Atlantic just as a post on my substack. But first of all, I thought more people should know about it. Second of all, I wanted like an editorial hand to maybe like rain, rain me in a little bit. And then also, I was like, this is the only way that I'm going to get any kind of comment from them if they're getting calls from like Atlantic fact checkers and not and not just me. And even then, they didn't engage directly. It was a spokeswoman sent an email saying, you know, here's our statement. You can cite it to them. And all they say is basically what I assume that they would say, and I already basically had in my draft that they were going to say, which is that we are free speech absolutists. And we think that

the point of this platform is to have open and free expression and that having open and free expression thus requires having Nazis, essentially. I think none of those things are true. I don't think they are free speech absolutist, and I don't think that being committed to freedom of expression and freedom of speech requires, A, hosting and making money off of Nazi blogs, and B, more importantly, promoting them and promoting people like Richard Hennania, and there are other people who they have promoted,

who I think fall in sort of that edge of the Overton window category. Yeah, I do think the promotion thing, it sticks in the course, of even, you know, there are people who will say, hey, substack and publish whatever it wants, you don't have to read it, blah, blah, blah. But the promotion part, I think even, you know, even for people like that, is, is pretty icky. Before I let you go, I want to ask you about a writer named Marissa Cabas, who has the excellent newsletter, The Handbasket, is taking some action that I know you support. Can you tell us about that? Yeah, she is trying to organize substack writers to, I'm not entirely sure what the ask is going to be. I'm going to try to

participate as much as I can, but basically to try to get sub-sac leadership to at least answer for what they're doing and just make some kind of explanation. The thing that really got my attention and also when I pitched the Atlantic immediately got their attention was their sub-subsac newsletters out there that have like just swastikas and black sons and just like explicit Nazi imagery on them. Like these are not edge cases. You know, one of the ones that I cited in the piece. And by the way, I went back and forth a lot on the degree to which we would include specific examples and the degree to which including specific examples might drive traffic to those sites. It's a very hard balance. I'm not entirely sure we hit it, but I was trying. And this is hard

because some people are responding to my piece by being like, well, there's not a lot of specific examples in here and you're not giving a lot of hard numbers. And I'm like, well, that was intentional because I don't want to drive traffic to. It's a hard line to straddle to be like, you know, substack is wrong for promoting these blogs. And here I am in the Atlantic like giving you the names of these blocks. So we tried to find some kind of middle ground there. But as far as I can tell what Marissa and her group are trying to do are to do what I've been trying to do all year, which is just like at least like start by having a conversation with Hamish and Chris and the leadership and Substack and be like, what are you doing here? I don't think that it is a satisfactory answer

to say that because we believe in freedom of expression, that that means that like we have to have Richard Henania on the substack podcast. There was a substack post that came from like official on substack leadership, which recommended, you know, in September, they were like, you know, read these great writers who millions of readers trust, like Ann Coulter and Mike Cernovich and Chris Rufo, speaking of like people who, like, how can you say that you're like fully committed to freedom of expression when like one of the writers that you are going out of your way to promote is somebody who like is the embodiment of censorship. America. So all that's to say is I think the first step is going to be to try to get some answers

and then try to, you know, consider what kind of actions are appropriate. Because as I say in the piece, these things can backfire. Like censorship has a cost and saying, you know, well, we're going to take these blogs offline can also be corrosive. It can give them cred. And, you know, censorship is not a simple issue. I've been very disturbed by the amount of censorship against Palestinian and pro-Palestinian voices this year, for instance. I'm not pro-censorship. I couldn't agree more. Jonathan Katz, thank you so much for coming on and talking about this, and we'll keep an eye and see where things go. Thanks, Jonathan. Yes, appreciate you guys.

Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. How are you starting out this good, good week with your fuck-that-guy? My fuck-that-guy is going to be, it's going to be the Republican Party in general. And the reason I'm saying that is because it's going to cover a bunch of things that they're doing all across the country. various state GOPs. There's a really good piece in Rolling Stone that sort of puts a bunch of them together by Tessa Stewart. But it's basically about the dirty tricks, as the headline says, that the GOP is using to keep abortion off the ballot in 2024. The thrust of the piece and the

thrust of what's going on is basically abortion is a loser issue for Republicans. And we've seen that in both elections that we've had since post-Dobbs. And we've seen it pretty much over and over again, that it is driving women to the polls. It is an overall net negative for the Republican Party. So rather than look in the mirror and say, hey, you know what, the majority of Americans don't want what we're selling, they have decided that the better move is to hide what they're selling, is to use various political maneuvers and tricks to prevent the other side from selling what it's selling. And just in general, to sort of obfuscate what they're doing. And you want to say it's a small thing like language, but you won't see the phrase 15-week ban anymore from Republicans. They won't use the word ban.

And so they're changing the language and they're trying to just basically, they're trying to soft pedal what they want. And they're doing it in a bunch of different places in Florida, as Tessa Stewart reports. The Republican Attorney General has asked the state Supreme Court, which is filled with DeSantis appointees. to stop something called the Florida Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative, which is a ballot to protect abortion rights. They are trying to stop that from being put on the ballot. They're doing this in a bunch of other states. Look, in Ohio, the Republican members of the legislature are talking about basically just ignoring the proposition that was passed last month. This is what they're doing nationwide.

And it's something to be, I bring it up because, A, it's awful. But B, it's also, it's something to be on guard for. and keep an eye on what's going on in your state and keep an eye on language that is being used and keep an eye on any initiatives, whether they're ballot initiatives or anything like that. Keep an eye on the machinations behind them and see what's going on. Because I think we're in a time where the Republicans, like I said, they've learned at least a little bit from the 2020 and 2022 elections. They haven't learned to stop trying to take away reproductive rights. They've learned to try to be more sneaky about it. So I would encourage everyone listening to this.

Keep an eye on stuff like this. See what's going on and do whatever you can to prevent it from happening. But because of all of this, the entire grand old party gets my fuck that guy for today. Here's my tip. There is a person with an R after their name that is running for any type of office. Vote the other way. I think that's right. It doesn't matter what fucking.

language that they're using, how they want to try and re-event themselves. This is a party with no morals, no direction, no platform, and no desire to continue the American project as it pertains to democracy. So just healthy information here, folks. That has an R. We'll look the other way. R is for wrong. Danielle, who's your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy, I guess it's a county in Georgia, not the whole story. state, Columbia County, a heavily Republican county outside of Augusta, Georgia, has decided that they are going to endorse a new voter information database that is called Eagle AI that has been wildly criticized. And voting rights groups have warned against this, election security experts

have warned against this. But they're like, fuck it. It was created by an election denier. It's being supported by an election denier. So why not go all the way in? The reasoning for this is because apparently they believe this Columbia County says that there is going to be an influx of new voters in this system is going to help them. Yeah. And I just want to like, yeah, it's going to help them put those names in the trash. It's going to help them hit like control, alt delete. Like, that's how it's going to help.

It's just so clear. Do you know what I'm saying? That Republicans cannot have people vote. This is, by the way, a heavily Republican area. And like, here is an alarm bell to Republicans. They don't even want you to vote. So it's like, at what point do you say this party is not for democracy, that they are fascist regime, we should just call them that and stop pretending that we live inside of a two-party

system. Because in an actual two-party system or a multi-party system, you want the people to be able to have their voices heard and be represented by people whose values they share. That's not what has happened in the United States and it's not what's been happening over the last 10 plus years. So it's just like you look at reports like this, you think to yourself, like, what the fuck? And I know some people who live outside of the South will roll their eyes and say, oh, it's Georgia. But folks, Georgia turned blue because of the infrastructure that has been created despite the desires by Republicans to just put people's voter registration in the trash. Right. So these things matter. And of course it's been adopted by one jurisdiction. It's a lot of a domino effect. And if everyone is saying that this Eagle AI cannot be trusted with reliable

information, this is coming out of the New York Times regarding who on the voter rolls is not eligible to remain there. Like, if it cannot be trusted and experts are saying so, then here's an idea, maybe we don't trust it. And maybe that's a problem. So for that reason, the folks who created Eagle AI, the folks in Columbus County, you get my fuck that guy to start out. this week. It really is amazing that the history of the Republican Party, at least from like the 1960s on, has been to get as few people as possible to be able to vote. You know, obviously in the 60s. And continuing through to today, this is mostly, or it's a lot about people of color and making it harder, if not impossible, for people of color to vote. There is nothing they won't do

to try to minimize the amount of Americans who can vote. And I really do think that if you wanted to sum up the Republican Party in like one talking point, they are the party that wants fewer people to vote. They don't want more votes counted ever. That, to me, just sums up. They know that set aside the stupid quirk of the electoral college, they know their ideas are unpopular. And the only way you win with unpopular ideas is to limit who can vote.

And that's what they've been doing for, you know, at least 70 years now. I can't say that I know anything about this Eagle AI beyond what I've read in this Times article. But given, you know, as you described, that it's supported by election denialist groups and that Georgia state officials are the ones who have said that, hey, this Eagle AI is just filled with errors and all this stuff. I mean, you can only conclude that the whole point of this is to limit whose votes are counted. Yep, that's all they want. Fuck those guys. Fuck those guys. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal.

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