The Daily Beast Podcast - Did Anyone Other Than Trump Say He Was Going to be Indicted?

Episode Date: March 24, 2023

On this week’s episode of The New Abnormal, hosts Andy Levy and Danielle Moddie discuss the latest in Donald Trump’s possible indictment. Plus! The Daily Beast’s Senior Media Reporter, Justin Baragona, joins the show along with Jade Magnus Ogunnaike, the Vice President of Corporate Power at Color of Change. 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.

The Daily Beast senior media reporter Justin Barragona joins us to talk about the Fox News producer and their lawsuit that could threaten to embarrass the network even more. Then we'll talk to Jade Magnus Ogunake, vice president of campaigns at Color of Change, about Ron DeSantis' latest aggressions against the black community. But first, let's have some fun. So, Danielle, it's Friday, and we've had a bit of a week, and that partially involved some escalated tension between Donald J. Trump and Ron DeSantis. Or is it Rob DeSantis? I'm not really sure. Among other things, Trump put out a press release referring to DeSantis by the name Rob. At first, people were like maybe it was a typo, but they said no. According to a spokesperson for Trump, they were just quoting a daily mail headline, which I guess mistakenly called him Rob. But that's weird too.

But it's also fantastic. Like there's nothing more belittling than calling someone by the wrong name. I think, you know, we all know this. It can be a running joke. Loathe Trump. He sucks. But every once in a while he does something and you kind of do just have to laugh. Yeah, because his petty is that, you know, is, is, is, is, is.

Olympic. It's off the charts. It's off the fucking charts. Kind of like Ron DeSantis's high heels that he wears. But I find it really funny because if you were to take advice from any political advisor, what he's doing right now with Ron DeSantis is just helping to elevate his, Ron DeSantis's profile. You know, Nikki Haley, God bless her, is also in the run for the presidential race. And she actually announced. And Ron DeSantis has yet to announce, and still Donald Trump is going after him, which kind of to me just shows his frailty and fear that DeSantis is going to be able to suck up his donor base before Donald Trump can get out of, oh, I don't know, all of the 5011 criminal investigations that are going into him right now. 5011. Wow.

That's the Beyonce count, and that means a lot. Yes. I don't know if I agree with you. Look, I agree that that's what he's doing. But I think, look, as of this date, everybody sort of assumes it's a two-person race and those two people are Trump and DeSantis. And, you know, I don't think anyone gives Nikki Haley much chance of winning the nomination. Other than Mike Pence and mother, I don't think anyone thinks, you know, he's going to win. I think Trump has in this case, at least correctly identified that his biggest threat is from Meatball Rob. He's doing the preemptive strike thing. And that's what he does. This is just Trump being Trump. And DeSantis is sort of trying to stay above the fray. And then every once in a while, he'll say something that sort of gets at Trump. He did it with the lawsuit that's going on in New York, the Alvin Bragg case that we'll get to in a bit.

DeSantis made a little comment like, you know, it was anti-Alvin Bragg. But then he was like, you know, but I wouldn't know anything about paying hush money to porn stars. So it was a little dig at Trump. And then Trump's response was to post, there's a picture. out there of like, I guess, when DeSantis was a young teacher, maybe or something, of him out what looks like partying with underage students, women. And so, you know, so Trump posts that picture and says something snarky in response. And you look at that and you're like, man, Desantis has no idea what he's in for here. Probably part of Trump doing all this is he wants

to put the, I would say the fear of God, but it's not the fear of God. It's the fear of Trump into him. Right. And maybe make him not run, you know, maybe make him think twice about running against him. you know, Trump, he thinks the nomination is his by the divine right of Trump's. You know, he looks at anyone who would dare challenge him as the enemy. I mean, he put out a statement yesterday, which we can get to. It is this long-ass statement about DeSantis talking about how Florida was the third worst in the nation for COVID deaths, third worst for total number of cases, talking about how Florida ranks third worst in murder, third worst in rape and third worst in aggravated assault.

I mean, he is attacking DeSantis as... I mean, all of those things are true. Yes, absolutely. Heck, all of those things are actually true. But they're basically, I mean, this might as well be a general election. This is not how it's supposed to work in primaries. And look, I don't have a problem with it because as you said, all that shit is true. But he is going scorched earth.

And like you said, Desantis isn't even an announced candidate yet. So God knows what it'll be like if he does announce. One, all of the things that he just aired out about Florida are absolutely true. And then on top of that, you can paint the picture that Ron DeSantis isn't actually doing dick for Florida. All he's doing is an all-out assault on the LGBTQ community, on the black community, on everyone who is somehow put some type of sadness into the heart of white people. That is what Ron DeSantis is going after. And so on that end, lifting up the stats of where Florida is, I think also in a lot of ways, not only does it, paint the picture of what Ron DeSantis isn't doing in Florida, I think that it helps Joe Biden.

Because if Ron DeSantis actually becomes the nominee of the Republican Party, then Donald Trump is doing Biden's work for him. Because all Biden then has to turn around and say is, do you want Florida to become the symbol of the nation? Because that's exactly what the fuck will happen if Ron DeSantis becomes president. And I think that on the other side, Republicans should be scared of shit. because if Donald Trump isn't there a nominee, do you really think that this motherfucker's going to turn around stand on a stage for anyone other than himself? No.

Do you think that he's going to use his broke-ass truth social as a way to elevate the Republican Party so that it wins? No, I think that he goes scorched earth on everybody. And maybe that will ultimately save democracy. Who knows? Yes to all of that. That's basically what I was saying when I said, this sounds like a more like a general election is that all of this is like, you know,

this is what you would expect Joe Biden to be saying. And also, yes, 100% if Trump is not the nominee, he will burn the fucker down. And that's what he does. And anyone who thinks he's not going to do that is completely kidding himself. I mean, the man is 79 years old. He's not going to suddenly change and become a party guy. That ain't happening. No. What also isn't happening is Alvin Bragg bending to the will of the Republican Party, who is way out of fucking line in calling for Bragg to disclose his communications with the Department of Justice to provide details into his investigation into Donald Trump and the money to Stormy Daniels. And in a letter that he used to respond to essentially to their threats, he said, quote,

quote, that this is an unlawful incursion into New York's sovereignty. And the letter was addressed to Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Brian Steele, Republican from Wisconsin, who leads the committee on House administration, and Representative James Comer, Jr., Republican from Kentucky, who heads up the House Oversight Committee. And I love the fact that Bragg's office used the word sovereignty, because these are the same people, the same party. that is all about state's rights.

Yep. Don't interfere in my state. Don't mess with Texas. Don't come to Alabama. We have a fiefdom over here. But when it comes to quote unquote, blue states, oh, they want a big foot all over it. So for Alvin Bragg to essentially turn around and say,

yeah, no, miss me with it. Love that for him. Yeah, I would like to say, first of all, that you stole my talking point. And we're going to have words after the show about that because now I don't know what I'm going to say. Yeah, there's a couple of things here. One is exactly what you said. I love the sovereignty thing and I love anytime someone is exposed as a sham, it sort of warms my heart. And that's what's happened

here with state's rights, as you've said. States rights is okay when it's, I guess, when it's for slavery or punishing women and stuff like that. But if you go after Donald Trump, that all goes out the window. The other thing that Bragg said in the letter is important, I think. The other part in the letter notes that Congress, they made this request, quote, only after Donald Trump created a false expectation that he would be arrested the next day and his lawyers reportedly urge you to intervene. Neither fact is a legitimate basis for congressional inquiry. Thank you so fucking much for saying that because we've been sitting here for the last week. Today is Thursday and everybody was a couple days ago and was like, today's the day is today the day? And I swear to God, I was sitting there on Monday, Monday night, and I'm sitting there thinking,

did anyone say Trump was going to be indicted and arrested on Tuesday other than Trump? Not one fucking person. No. And the answer was no. And yet you had tons of people, whether they were Congress people and don't even get me started on the media, although we are going to get started on the media, basically carrying water for this idea that Trump, as we know, this is a guy. he pulls shit out of his ass and there's a lot of space in there to pull shit out of and he just does it constantly and how how do people keep falling for this and I'm sitting there and there are

like all these smart people all these political journalists and other people who are not political journalists but who are you know they're not dumb people and they're all sitting there saying oh tomorrow could be the day I hope tomorrow's the day and if tomorrow's the day this is how we should all behave. I'm like, tomorrow ain't the day. Like, there was no more reason to think Tuesday was the day than it was to think Wednesday was the day or Thursday or Friday or any other day or the week or fucking month. It was, this was all a little fantasy that Trump had in his head. And look, with him, you never know if, I don't know if he believed it or if it was just something he put out to fundraise, which also worked. I think he raised, what was it, like $1.5, $2 million

off of this, Daniel? That was a couple of days ago, the tally, maybe two days. ago was at 1.5 million. My assumption that today, you know, by the week's end, that it would be well over $2 million. All of this is a fucking grift. Donald Trump is is, is Barnum and Bailey circus. And everyone, everyone just continues to fucking follow the shit and the peanuts that he throws down. And it's just, it is whiplash to 2016. Donald Trump used to what did he say? I got a big announcement. Was the only thing that he had to say. I have a big announcement.

And then reporters, a gaggle of reporters are following him around the hotel on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, following him around the Trump Hotel. Oh, look at this amazing room. And look at the, and I'm just like, so he doesn't have to put any money into advertising. He doesn't have to put any ads on television. Y'all do it for him for free. All he has to do is take a clip from CNN, a clip from MSNBC. slap that up on one of his bullshit sites and the money just pours in.

Because his fans, as he calls them, are so fucking dumb that they give this man that says that he's a billionaire, they give him their hard on her and money. How does that even make sense? I don't know. I don't know. But yes, we've come to expect that his fans are going to be marks. There is absolutely no excuse for the media being a bunch of marks. None. It's been seven years minimum of this shit in the political sphere and, you know, decades more than that, just in terms of Trump being a grifter.

But let's charitably say it's only been seven years. That's six years, 11 months and 29 days longer than you should fall for his shit. And yet they still do. It is like, this is like if the boy who cried wolf, if at the end of that, the moral was that the boy became king. Mm-mm-mm-mm. That's what we're doing here. Like, he does this every. time and every time people fall for it. That's not the moral of that story. The moral of that story is supposed to be, if you keep saying things that aren't true, no one's going to believe you ever, even when you say something that is true. But here the moral is if you keep saying things that aren't true, people are just going to keep believing you. It's insane to me. And again, his fans, most of them, I think at this point, are just a lost cause. But the media is supposed

to be skeptical. That's the, one of the basic tenets of journalism is to be skeptical. And and somehow that goes out the window anytime Trump makes one of his little pronouncements. And it's not, you know, and this shit has filtered down to people like Elon Musk and others like him who will say things that are just blatantly wrong and that, you know, this is the guy who said that COVID would be over in by the end of, I think it was April 2020. He said he'd be on Mars years ago. And, you know, obviously none of these things happen, but every time Elon Musk makes a pronouncement. People are like, well, Musk says this, so it must be happening. Yeah. And it's like, how do you not learn this? It's the same lesson from Donald Trump.

But apparently, we are incapable of learning. And the media just, God, do they have to do a better job? But they're, I mean, the fact is, is that they're never going to do a better job. I will never forget being in a green room at MSNBC pre-COVID, listening to a producer say, Trump may be bad for the country, but he is good for ratings. Yep. That is the mantra that mainstream media has carried for the last seven years, and they will carry it until the end of time. Donald Trump for them is good for ratings.

It doesn't matter that if a Donald Trump or a Ron DeSantis becomes president of the United States, that the first thing that they're going to fucking do is got the fourth estate, that unless you are showcasing good coverage of them, because that's what Ron DeSantis is doing down in Florida. Unless the coverage is good, you don't get access. So how, as a media entity, do you not then take your job doubly seriously at this point

and say, you know what? We shouldn't make the same mistake because this isn't just about how much money we can put in our fucking shareholders' pockets, but it's about whether or not our democracy survives and we all have jobs in the next two years. Yeah, and look, along those lines and what you said about Ron DeSantis, I mean, Axios, which is supposed to be a very respectable political

website reporting entity fired a reporter because he referred to a news release from the Florida Department of Education as propaganda, which is, which it was. It was like a seven page piece of propaganda. It wasn't a press release. And DeSantis's press people complained and Axios fired him. Jesus. And that's how shit works now, apparently. That's not good for journalism. That's not good for Florida. That's not good for America. And that's not good for the world. I mean, I don't like to over-credit journalism.

I think journalists do a good enough job on their own of tooting their own horn. But you can't have a democracy and you can't have the semblance of a free society if journalistic entities are firing reporters because government officials are mad at them. That's the opposite of how it's supposed to be. Nope. That is Russia. That is Hungary. That is Iran. that is Afghanistan, that is Turkey, that is China.

That is not supposed to happen in the United States. And that's the thing that I want people to really remember, that the actions that these Republicans are taking to target the media, which began with Donald Trump targeting the media, which, you know, ended up with bomb threats at CNN. Like, this is not supposed to happen. And it's happening on a regular basis. I think a lot of people have forgotten that this is not how it's supposed to be.

Like, because it's been seven years of this, the four years of the Trump administration. And look, which is not to say that previous presidents and previous politicians didn't pull the same shit. There's no way to argue it hasn't ramped up in a big way. And I do start to worry that people just, that there are a lot of people who just think that this is normal and that this is the way things are supposed to work. When instead, what it is, Danielle, is it's the new abnormal. Good one. And we can't let this stand because that's a trademark violation. Abby Grossberg, a senior producer and head of booking for Tucker Carlson,

dropped a bit of a bombshell on Fox News by filing two lawsuits against it on Monday. Grossberg alleges that she and Fox anchor Maria Bardo, whom she used to work for, are being set up to be the Patsies in the Dominion defamation suit Fox currently faces. And the network's response to these suits was confusing, at least to me. Joining us now to help me understand is Daily Beast senior media reporter, Justin Barragona. Justin, thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me. So before we get to Fox's response to the suit in the part that confuses me, walk us through

some of the stuff that Grossberg alleges about the behavior. She says she witnessed and was subject to at her job. Yeah, it's sort of a two-prong lawsuit. Part of it relates directly to the ongoing dominion lawsuit that Fox is the on-wit. The other part is how she frames that within the overall culture of Fox over the years of misogyny, sexism, harassment, discreet, discreet. discrimination, all that. What she's alleging is that when she was the senior booking producer for Maria Bartarillo's Sunday morning show, which airs on Fox News, sorry to say just real quick, but they never gave her any help, never gave Bartramo any help, let him twisted the win, that she was regularly passed over for promotion while she was at Bartramo's show. They never made her

actually the executive producer, but she was the only full-time employee. for the show and that whenever she asked maybe to get the promotion there, they were always looking for, you know, make what Bartaroma really needs is a man to look over her. God. During that period of time, she stated that, you know, they would constantly demean Barteromo, call her menopausal, a crazy bitch, things of that nature, dismiss her. And then in the end, with the dominion stuff hanging over them, that they look to kind of make them the patsy, the fall guys in this because they kind of wouldn't mind getting rid of

Bartaroma. But she also, she moved from Barteroma show to Tucker Carlson show. Correct. And then she also alleges some not great behavior going on backstage there. Correct. It actually, in what she says is it got worse when she went over to Tucker Carlson show. So if you look at the lawsuit, the way it kind of shows he going down is that, you know, she kind of gave up on hoping to get to a.

advance while at the Barteramo show and saw the opening for the head of booking for Tucker Carlson show, which, you know, is basically the highest rated primetime show and cable news. And it would also be a senior producer role. She goes there and she says like immediately it was just like the worst type of boys club that he could imagine. That it was a combination of misogyny harassment, but also anti-Semitism and just straight up bigotry. And that this was something that she was subjected to on like a daily basis. And that when she finally complained about it, she was the one that actually got reprimanded by HR and that she looks at it as them trying to fight a way to push her out once she became too problematic for, you know, trying to bring up the toxic work

environment on Tucker Carlson's show. Right. Okay. So let's get to Grossberg alleging that she and Bartramo being set up to be the fall people. What does she allege that Fox told her to do? Well, if you go through her lawsuit, what you see is that she was going to be one of the people that Dominion wanted to depose based off of the collection of, you know, all the messages, text, right, conversations, emails. And because, you know, Barterellmo's show really kind of trafficked in some of the worst stuff. She was bringing on Sidney Powell. Right. Crack and lawyer, all that. So when she was preparing for it, they basically, you know, she's saying that they were telling her that she has to go with Fox's lawyers and that they really kind of steered her to only say certain things. Don't bring up anything about executives above her. You know, don't point any fingers that way, especially to like some of the male executives and maybe downplay some of the emails, text messages that were sent to you during this period of time.

which she felt were, you know, directives on their coverage in the immediate after map of the 2020 election. How Dominion's explaining it is that Fox went, you know, full bore on election denialism to pull back those angry Trump viewers. But she says that a lot of the stuff that she ended up saying in the deposition, she was kind of forced to say, in her opinion, the Fox lawyers had browbeat that into her in the preparation sessions that they had. And she said that they had several of these preparation sessions ahead of her actual deposition. She also says that she never got the chance to correct that deposition like other people have throughout this lawsuit where you get to look over it and say, oh, no, I would like to maybe amend that. Right. And she never got the chance.

So what you see in the Dominion lawsuit is that you see Abby Grosberg saying that, you know, they didn't feel it was their duty to have to fact check anything for air factual material. real whenever having like somebody like Sidney Powell on that it wasn't their job or they didn't feel like it was necessary to have to make sure that what was being aired was truthful or that they pushed back on it. Yeah, one of the things I noticed in the article you wrote about this for The Daily Beast is that she is claiming that the network told her to downplay a text exchange with David Clark, who at that point was the senior VP for Weekend News. And he had told her, quote, there will be no fact checking today. and that was right before Bartaromo interviewed Rudy Giuliani. Correct.

Now, Fox is saying that that's out of context or that what Clark was saying was, you know, he wasn't saying that you shouldn't make sure that he's not saying anything that's untruthful. It's just like, don't get into it, you know, a back and forth with him on this, I guess, is what, you know, I don't know what that's better. Right. For a news channel. Yeah. If you look back through the filings from Dominion, it seems like this was.

was within the context of where you had news reporters that were doing fact checks of some of this stuff, right, after the fact or even in real time. And they felt like debt was repelling their viewers. And so this was sort of an edict to say, let's not do that. Just let that go. Correct me if I'm wrong. This gets to, you know, Dominion's suit is not against the individual anchors. And it's against Fox. And it seems like Fox is basically trying to say, basically, look, our anchors have free reign to say, you know, whatever they want or whatever. We don't control them. We can't be held responsible for them. And here's a text from, again, a senior vice president, someone high up in the corporation telling them not to fact check Rudy Giuliani. And that, to me, she can downplay that. All she will be forced to downplay that all they want. But that really does stuff like that gets to the heart of Dominion's case, it seems to me.

Yeah, and that's correct. And the other thing is that I would say whether she's told to downplay that within her own deposition. I mean, there you could see that where she would feel like she's being set up as a patsy. I could definitely see that. But, I mean, the minions still going to be able to point to that because they have the text exchange within their suit. So however you do that in the deposition, that's a whole other thing. But, you know, it could be still, there definitely could be saying that these are all individual decisions that are. being made by our individual programs and their producers and not having anything coming from above. But in the end, I still would say Dominion has that text exchange. We still point to it. Yeah. Yeah, but that's a whole other thing. That's beyond what we're talking about with like Roseberg, I think. Oh, of course, of course.

Okay, so let's get to the part that confuses me a bit. Start by telling me, what was Fox's initial response to these suits? Well, the thing is, they actually tried to circumvent this suits before they got filed. That's what actually happened here. Okay. They knew it was coming. This was kind of weeks in play here, you know, that they kind of saw what was going to be happening with Grossberg because, you know, she was on like an FMLA leave during her, you know, like the end part of her run with Tucker Carlson show. And that they could see that she was probably getting close to filing.

So she had already gotten a lawyer. they'd already sent a letter to Fox saying that they intended to file these legal actions. And on early Monday afternoon, all of a sudden we see these filings pop up in the New York State Superior Court. And it's like, no, you know, we need you to be quiet, basically. It was a, it's hard, I'd say as an injunction. You can't really say as a gag order. It was to try to stop her from using cert material testimony. in communications from Fox's lawyers because they were named in the,

they were going to be named in the suit. Fox filed this to try to stop her from doing this. Correct. To take that part out of the suit. Gotcha. So they filed these things and then all of a sudden they do what? They kind of, the next, I mean, the thing is the suits were filed and they had the lawyers, you know, they had the communications in there because, you know, this wasn't acted on,

from what I could tell by the New York State Superior Court and the next morning they just decided you know what we're just going to pull back it was already a bad look for Fox to be trying to silence her and especially after the suit came out so if they're going to continue to try to go down that road the information was already out there or at least you could see what was filed

by Grossberg's lawyers in the two courts Grossberg filed it in New York and then also in Delaware. I'm figuring the Delaware one is because that's where the Dominion cases file. Sure. So that's the reason why there isn't two different. And then New York, because it's going to go into like the New York human rights labor law. Gotcha. Because there's also a whole other thing, especially regarding like her time with Tucker and

and with Bart Romo that she feels like she was, you know, not being paid or worth to that nature. So again, to be clear, on Monday, Fox files this. complaint and says that basically there is stuff in her suit that will disclose attorney-client privileged information and stuff like that. And then the very next day, they say, ah, forget it. So why? Why the sudden about face? I don't know. All I can think of is because, like I said, it's a bad look. It's already out there. She's already filed the lawsuits. They already talk about the situation between her discussions with the lawyers. They're just going to fight it in court, but to try to say that these were a turning client confidential conversations,

I don't know. I don't know why they decided to take it away. I mean, I wish I had a better response to that, but it was like they did it. And within 24 hours, they pulled it. Yeah, it just, it just seems so bizarre. And look, I suppose you're probably right. I'm looking at the statement they put out, and they say that Fox News Media engaged in independent outside counsel to immediately investigate the concerns raised by Ms. Grossberg and that her allegations in connection with the Dominion case are baseless. We are confident her legal claims have no merit and Fox News will prevail in these cases. Part of me thought, and I think this is wrong, but I'll run it by you anyway, that maybe when the lawsuits were first filed, they sort of automatically moved for them

to be dismissed because that's what you do. And then they, you know, read through them closely and realized either A, the stuff in there isn't true or B decided that even if some or all of the allegations are true, they can easily beat them. You know, that's a pretty good hypothesis. Really? Because as I'm saying it, it sounds really dumb. The way that they're going to go is the way they go with every single one of these is it's disgruntled employee.

Right. That's what I sort of meant, yeah. Making up stuff or misrepresenting what happened, especially when they do the following a critical performance review, which to be honest, the way that they kind of always go with this is how they start pushing that person out is give them a bad review. And they say that they're not doing their job. And then that way, once they're on their way out or they are out, then they could point to disgruntled employee tactic here. And it should be pointing out that right after they filed the attempt to silence her, you know, then they placed her on forced administratively from work,

essentially firing her. Like, she's not going to come back. Right. She was already on FMLA, which is, you know, medically based off of the amount of stress that she was dealing with on Earlson's show. Gotcha. And so they just decided, nope, they're going to go this and we're going to go full bore. Basically, we're going to paint you in the worst possible light that we can't. For them to file that silence order and then pull it back from the outside, it ends up making, helps to make her case a little. It's hard to see the legal strategy here. Okay. Yeah. So my confusion is warranted, is what you're saying. Yeah. Okay. I mean, we're trying to like workshop at here and it is in sense, but yeah.

I know. I know. I want to talk about one thing because just from a little bit of personal experience here, it's the part about how she says that when she filed a complaint about being harassed by a couple of male producers at Tucker's show, that after she filed that complaint, human resources met with her and told her she was underperforming. at her job. So I was there. I worked at Fox during the fall of Roger Ailes. One of the things that came out of that was, I believe it was every employee of Fox had to meet. It was like these group meetings with HR and with outside

council there and stuff like that. And it was to assure everyone that they should not feel that HR worked for the company, but that HR worked for them and was, you know, was looking out for their interest, not the corporate interest, which I can tell you, there's not a soul in that building that believed that while Ells was there, and I don't think too many of us were convinced in this meeting that it was suddenly going to change. But I think this was something they sort of, they sort of had to do or that, you know, outside counsel said, hey, you got to do this. You got to, you know, you have a huge HR mess here. When I read that, I was like, oh, well, that sounds familiar. That sounds like exactly what we all thought of HR back then. Yeah. I mean, the interesting thing is when

you read through Grossberg's violent is, you know, how she describes that moment is that she was upset about the way that things were going with these two producers, which are like basically Tucker's right hand men. Or the way you read through it

is that she's making these complaints, it is like, all right, we're going to walk you over to HR. The two producers, walk her over to HR, and then they're in HR with her. There's not like, you know, a representative for her, right? It does seem like there's almost like a gang beating there almost. She's getting it. And the HR person, at least again, this is from only the filing that we have from Grossberg. So we have to at least point that out. Of course. It is that she's got the HR person just taken their side the whole time while they're standing there. And then even after they leave and she gets just talk with the HR person on her own, she's not.

getting much sympathy there. Any employee there would feel like, well, what's to point now? It's only going to get worse from this point out. Right, which again is what it was like when I was there. And not that I had a lot of faith that things would change, but it does kind of suck to see that, again, these are just allegations right now. But it does kind of suck to hear that the same kind of thing is at least being alleged to go on. Justin, thanks so much for being here and trying to help me understand this bizarre little story covering Foxx. Lawsuits is now a full-time job, and you do it well. Justin, thanks so much. Thank you. Nothing is more abnormal than the rise of the radical right. Fever Dreams is a daily

beast podcast, taking you inside the rights push to retake power from the MAGA acolytes to the straight-up grifters. They recently released their 100th episode, so there's no better time to listen. Head to beast.pub slash fever dreams to check it out. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal today, Jade Mangus Agonake, who is the vice president of campaigns at Color of Change, the largest online civil rights organization in the country. And Jade, I want to start off with one, Color of Change has been a part of some major takedowns, right? Some major wins. Yes. You know, I think that.

that your president, Rashad Robinson, would say, you know, companies can't come and take our money by day and then feed money into the opposition at night. And when he says that, I would be like, yeah, we give so much money. Black people give so much money into companies that we have no idea that they're going to fund Republicans who are voting to ensure that we don't have voting rights, you know, funding Republicans that are voting to ensure that we don't have clean water and access to it. And so I just wanted to give you an opportunity in the climate that we are currently living in where it feels like your organization is probably working overtime. There is not a month that goes by that we're not learning about another unarmed black person that is killed by

law enforcement. There's not a month that goes by where we're not discovering that yet another largely black city doesn't have proper water infrastructure. There's not a month that goes by that we're not literally living in the orchestrated Jim Crow 2.0. And so I just wanted to give you an opportunity before we dive into specifics to talk about some of the things that color of change has been doing over these really egregious last few years. Yes, thank you so much. So hello everyone. My name is Jade Madness Ogunaki, Vice President at Color of Change. And Color of Change is the nation's largest digital racial justice organization. We have over 7 million members fighting to make a more human and less hostile world for black people.

And the way we do that is through policy change, whether that's on the federal side or whether that's on the corporate side. I'm over our corporate power work. And so, you know, in my time at Color of Change, I've been a part of and seen my colleagues lead some of the most incredible changes from getting credit card companies like American Express and Visa and Discover to no longer process donations to white nationalist organizations, which has effectively dismantled them because they have no way to take in donations. So we've done everything to that, to our culture change work, which is, you know, when we got all of the wedding websites and wedding magazines to no longer feature plantation wedding content, we were founded after Hurricane Katrina when we realized

that nobody was worried about disappointing black people. And our job, is to make sure that somebody is following up when black people were disappointing and making sure we get what we're owed. I love that because the reality is nobody gives a damn about disappointing black people. We are seven years removed from Donald Trump becoming president of the United States. And if I see another headline and peace about white grievance and really wanting to get to understand why white people are so upset about the demographic changes in this country when all we have to do is point to racism, no one cares about seemingly. upsetting or harming black people. And so I want to move to one of what I refer to on this show and others as the petri dish of white supremacy and Christo-fascism, which is Florida, which is currently governed by one Ron DeSantis, who has made it his single mission to erase black people,

black culture, to target queer people, particularly trans people, to do everything to ban books. to thwart curriculum, to take over Disney, to ensure that we only see apparently white princesses. I want to get a sense of when you see somebody like a Ronda Santis, a lot of people think to themselves, well, thank God I don't live in Florida. Right. As if it doesn't have anything to do with them. And so how do you make the case, one, that what is happening in Florida is seeping into other states around the country, one, and that it is a petri dish for the Republican Party and how they plan

to move should they assume the White House and the Senate again. And so what do you make of what is happening in Florida? What we're seeing happening in this fight to erase black history, this fight to censor education for students, is a direct backlash to 2020. So, you know, in 2020, we see the largest protest movement of all time. We see millions and millions of people protests in every country on the face of the earth, people united for a majoritarian issue, which is racial justice. September 2020, Donald Trump introduces what we see as like the first anti-CRT action, as they call it. Through executive order, he bans diversity training for federal agencies. By May 2021, Bill's limiting what can be taught in schools around race and gender are passed in Oklahoma,

Tennessee, and Texas. As of today, 44 states have introduced bills or taken other steps that will restrict teaching Black history in schools. And so we see that, of course, Ron DeSantis has the highest profile on this. He's totally made a name in trying to use Black people as political pawns to further his career to other Black people and make us the boogeyman from the Stop Woke Act to the Don't say gay bill. He was trying to propose legislation last month to ban historically black Greek organizations, the divine nine. And so obviously Desantis may be the highest profile, you know,

leader of this. But what we see particularly in the fight to erase black history is that other leaders in other states are virtually copying and pasting that legislation in trying to get it past. One of the, you know, most important fights color of change led was last, like last year, the pandemic has made time crazy. But in 2021, Todd Houston was a vice president at college board, a senior vice president at college board. At the same time, he was a politician elected in the Indiana State House. And he was fighting to erase black history. He was leading the same fight. Rhonda Santis is fighting while being vice president at an educational materials company. Color of Change stepped in, made contact with college board and negotiated with them to make sure

that Todd Houston was fired. And so we're seeing that whatever happens in Florida, is being mimicked in states all across the country. And while we can all look at Florida and say, that is so crazy, that would never happen to me, it will and can happen to us if we don't stand up and force these corporations and force these politicians to choose another side because what we see is that when Ron DeSantis passed,

that Stop Woke Act, it was backed by the Florida State Board of Education. Who is on the Florida State Board of Education? Executives from AT&T, executives from Walmart, these corporations are enabling the erasure of black history and black people while sending out Black History Month tweets. Come on.

While, you know, making their statements, their diversity, the inclusion and equity statements in 2020, you know, that they've all but walked back. And so we see that this is a fight that requires all hands on deck. It's not just the federal pieces, too. We see that the corporations have a major hand in erasing black history and censoring the education that our children receive. when children can't even read the kite runner or Catcher in the Ride or Solie Lupita Nyango's book about dark skinning colorism, it's a picture book. What are children allowed to learn in schools?

This is something that, to say the least, has gone way too far. And it's going to require all hands on decks to fix this and protect our education and really take back our schools. Jane, one of the issues that I have, right? I mean, and there are many, is that when the Democrats, when people on the, left, which is the right side of history. But when people on the left make the comparison to what Ron DeSantis and others, and I had no idea, when you just said 44 states before that passed legislation to restrict black history and curriculum, I had no idea. My jaw dropped. When people make the comparison to fascism, to Nazism, to this is the slippery slope that happens in

authoritarian regimes, that first they go after academic. First, they go after criminalizing librarians and taking books off shelves. And this is how democracy dies. Do you think that that is the right tone and tenor and messaging? Color of Change, again, has been really adept and nimble at being able to get to the core of the issue without going over people's heads. And I wonder, you know, when I look at Democrats as the party, one, they haven't wanted to wage into the quote unquote culture war that the Republicans have been waging. But when I look at

the messaging, I'm like, are we just completely missing the boat on this? Because the conversation that we're having, you would need to have some type of degree to understand what fascism is. You'd need to have some historical context and be taught about the Holocaust to understand what we're talking about when we're talking about Nazism. So you all talk about erasure. And I'm wondering, what is the language that you see winning? And by winning, I mean cutting through the Republican BS disrupting this false notion that they're putting out. What you're saying is so spot on. When I hear the, you know, the language, this is the end of democracy. We're seeing fascism. It's not that people are too stupid or uneducated to understand. It's that when you

say that we're at the edge of fascism, but don't provide people with actionable steps to fight back, It can be so all-consuming and overwhelming that you don't know what to do. That's a big reason why right now color of change is preparing parents and preparing, looking to train community members to go into these school board meetings. You know what goes viral? These white nationalists and conservatives trying to ban students from learning about Rosa Parks. What doesn't go viral are the parents and community members and teachers who are fighting back against that. And I actually think the right is much better at that than us.

When the Don't Say Gay Bill was being passed in Florida, one of the things that Color of Change saw when we actually talked to people in Florida is that through misinformation and disinformation, the right had transformed the don't say gay bill, which would make it illegal for even a queer teacher to talk about their partner. They had messaged it so that people and families on the ground in Florida thought it was about teachers teaching children about sex education in kindergarten. That is not what the bill was about. but because the Republicans in the far right had consolidated it into such a low message that was so simple to understand, people were mobilized around it, not even realizing what the legislation really is. And so, you know, I think Democrats, too, are nervous about stepping into the fight to protect black history education because they feel like it's a fight that maybe they don't have a pardon. But we're moving to a space when women's history, queer history and black history is being banned from schools.

My father is 70 years old today. Happy birthday dad. In his own schools, you know, 60 years ago, he was learning about black history. How are we allowing our schools and our students to be censored so much? And for me, and for color of change, this feels like such a pervasive issue that is going to change everything about the way that we communicate. Because we know that if students don't learn about black history, if they don't learn about women's history, if they don't learn about queer history, what happens is that shame takes over. And when you're ashamed, you can't fight back, right? That's why we teach our children these things.

We also know that when students don't learn about black history, their perceptions about black people are totally different. You know, I went to Howard University, and when I learned that black people had been resisting and fighting, since we came to this country, I had never learned that before. It totally changed my orientation to myself. It changed my orientation to my relationship with blackness. It changed my orientation to my relationship with my ancestors.

and my fellow black people. And so this is an issue. I keep saying that, but it really is all hands on deck. And the great thing is that color of change, we have so many different ways that you can participate, from taking a training to learn how to speak up at school board meetings, to receiving a toolkit that helps you talk about it with your family and friends,

to signing a petition or calling a corporation, to ask them to stand up and protect black history. We have so many different ways that we're engaging on this. And we want color of change as a black-led organization, and we're looking to train all people and talk to all people about how we fight back against this, because it can't just be black people who are speaking out about this. It takes all of us. And that's 100% right.

And I love the fact that you all have so many different avenues, so many different on ramps for people to take action. Because what I find, particularly around the issue that has to do with schools, is that for folks who don't have kids in the schools, they're like, oh, this doesn't affect me. And I'm saying to myself, you will be working with, These people will be employed someday. They will be in the workforce.

What do you think that will look like? How do you think that you will manage in that space? And the point that I made, because I'm a former educator myself, I taught first and second grade many, many moons ago. And, you know, one of the things that I understood is that our public education system has always been the battleground for white supremacy. Right? Like this is something that you know if you have been educated in a certain type of way.

And I can harken back to looking at the history books when I was in school and there being but a chapter on the civil rights movement, but a chapter right on slavery. And so you don't even want those chapters that were paltry at best in there. So the idea here is that this is that this is. not just about what I want people to understand. This is not just about erasing black history for black people as another way to be a disempowering tool, but it is to make sure that white people are so unaware and remain purposefully ignorant of their own history, making you easier to control. That's the thing that I really believe that folks miss when we analyze and look at the area that we find ourselves in.

You talk about your dad being 70 and I'm like, you know, Ruby Bridges, I just saw a post the other day, Ruby Bridges, the famous, the young black girl who integrated school in Alabama who was escorted folks by the National Guard is only 60 years old. This history ain't that long ago. No, and she looks like she's 40. You know, Ruby didn't get to ask. Come on. Well, that's too.

I'm like, she's only 60. So that is a very real, like, memory. That wasn't 100 years ago. So I think that it's important also to knit, you know, these purposeful gaps that have been created in our mind and in our memory and in America's timeline that allows people to believe that, oh, we don't need to still worry about these things. We don't need to teach these things because everything is honky, dory, everything is all good and fine. And you know what politicians like Rhonda Tantis do is there just use. using black people as a way to get people enrage, right? Because black people are always a political pawn. Republicans have used us to scare and frighten white people, to scare and frighten

other people of color for centuries. They've used us as political pawns. And what Rashad, our president at COC, always says, is that, you know, racism is like oil, it's like water. It finds the cracks no matter what. Come on. And so while this started with black people, and it started with black history, And it started with saying, we don't want our children to learn about Black Lives Matter. That's where it started. Then it creeped to, we don't want our children to learn about the civil rights movement. We don't want our children to learn about slavery. Then what we saw is that, you know, color of change has been fighting to get educational materials companies,

the people who create our textbooks like McGraw Hill, like Pearson, to take a stand on this. Because they are responsible for what our children learn. None of them wanted to take a stand when we asked them to make a statement saying that they would always teach accurate. history. And so in March 2021, they refused to take a stand. They submitted textbooks to Ron DeSantis, and 90% of those textbooks were rejected. Why? Even math textbooks were rejected. Because Ron DeSantis found that they were teaching children about emotional intelligence and socio-emotional learning. Is this the education that we want for our children? Is this like, no matter where you work, whether you're a teller at Bank of America or you're the president of an environmental justice organization,

You want to work with people who think slavery was like an internship? We can't allow the education of our children to be censored to such a degree because some people are afraid to talk about protests, because people are afraid to talk about racial justice. This impacts all of us, and it's only starting here. They're starting with black people. Now they're raising women's history. They're embracing queer history.

They don't want our children to learn about emotional learning and emotional intelligence. What could possibly be next? It should scare everybody. It should scare everybody. And we will have to leave it there today. But the reality is, folks, if you want to get involved, if you want to get connected, Color of Change has many on ramps of action so that you do not have to feel hopeless and despondent and like you don't know what to do because so much is happening.

Jay, just tell folks again how they can find color of change and how they can connect. Yes, you can go to colorofchange.org. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook. When you go on Instagram and Facebook, you can see our petitions. You can see different ways to take action. And once you're on our text or email list, you'll get all our alerts. We are looking to have you join us in this fight to save our schools and protect education. Please join us.

Thank you, Jade, Magnus Ogunaki. We appreciate you. Thank you so much. Danielle Moody. Andy Levy. Who is your fuck that guy on this beautiful Friday afternoon? Thank you so much for asking, Andy, because I have a lot to get off my chest with this one. I'm sure.

It is the House Energy and Commerce Committee that is currently overseeing a hearing on TikTok where they have the president of TikTok there and they're grilling him. And it's a bipartisan assault on whether or not to ban TikTok because of what they believe could possibly be Chinese interference in American data and how this could affect Americans, how it could affect our national security. blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, 150 million people in this country, damn near half, use TikTok.

The thing that I want to also say, as folks are talking about the dangers to children and this, then the other thing, there are a lot of people who make their fucking living using TikTok. Whether you're a chef, you're selling a product, you're a small business owner or what have you, like TikTok has long since not been just for dances. Also, let me just state this.

We're going after TikTok, because of potential interference and potential data collection that is happening. What about what Facebook did in the 2016 election and continues to still do with their disinformation campaign? Still giving platform and voice to white supremacists that have organized groups, that this is how they fucking organize. They organize in plain sight for the insurrection and for other things? How about Twitter that was allowed to be bought by a known misogynist, white supremacist and transphobe, who has done everything to untether the world from our

shared town square where we all receive information and has put out hits on people that he doesn't like. Who does that sound like? I'm just so tired of foreign countries always being created as our enemy, our foreign enemy. It's always those people over there. What about the fucking people in Silicon Valley? What about the fucking people that have been taking our data and selling it? We can't have a conversation whenever we record our show, say something random that doesn't show up in my fucking Instagram feed. I've turned off the mics. I cover the fucking video.

It doesn't matter. So if you're going to go all hard nose on TikTok and China and say it needs to be sold and all this, that, and the other thing, I'm just saying, can you widen the fucking net then? and let us have a real conversation about data and tech and who's allowed to do what, where, and how? So for that reason, this entire committee and both Republicans and Democrats right now, which, by the way, just want you to know that the 18 to 36-year-olds who are the target market for TikTok,

that's how they got out the vote as well in 2020. So let us not cut off our nose to spite our fucking face again. Yeah, I'm not sure either party wants to be known. as the party that took TikTok away from Gen Z. That seems to be not a good place to be if you want votes. But look, I co-signed everything he said. I don't like the idea that if this company, bite dance is, you know, look, it's China. And I don't know how deep they're entwined with the government. But yeah, it's not good for the Chinese government to have all this data on Americans. But as you pointed out, it's not good for Mark Zuckerberg to have that shit either.

If you want to say that one is a national security threat and one is not, okay, fine, then make that argument. But that's not what they're doing. They're going after TikTok as if it's the only company harvesting data. And that's just wrong. And look, I've said this before. I'll probably say it again. I ditched Instagram like three years. I think it was during lockdown.

Like you said, I got tired of seeing targeted ads that were like, why am I getting this when I was looking at something not on Instagram? and then suddenly it's perfectly targeted to me. And it was like, okay, I'm done with this. And I just ditched it. But no one is calling for investigations, you know, or for banning Instagram. So I'm with you on this. Fuck those guys. Andy, who is you?

I mean, there's just so many. There's just so many. Who's your fuck that guy? It's always hard to pick. We know that. Today seem to be even harder than a normal day. I mean, trans people continue to be under assault in multiple states. abortion. There's just, there's so many things to choose from. So I'm going to go a little off the board,

although it is in, as Jesse likes to call it, the free state of Florida, in Tallahassee, which I believe is the state capital of Florida. A principal was forced to resign because parents complained that Michelangelo's statue of David was shown in sixth grade art history class. This is a statue that is widely considered, you know, one of the classic pieces in art history. For those who don't know, David is, the statue of David is naked. And so you can, you can see that he has a penis. Oh, wow. And apparently 12-year-olds have never seen a penis before, which I think if you spend any time on the internet, I think there's a good chance that's not true. Not to mention that approximately 50% of them have penises. But anyway, so they fired this principle because some of these parents complained,

one of the parents complained it was pornographic. Some said the image upset. their children. So the school just went and they up and fired the principal. This is where we're headed. I don't know how to emphasize enough that what we're seeing in this country in the educational system, and I'll say particularly in Florida, but it's not confined solely to Florida. It's absolutely frightening. And there was this effort being made for kids not to learn. Yeah. And for kids to be kept ignorant. And we see this all the time. And look, we see it with, you know, with the don't say gay bill down there and with other stuff. And it's just, it's never going to stop until we protest it loudly and strongly enough. And the idea that you would fire a principal because someone

in a Renaissance art class showed the statue of David, which is, like, I don't know how you get more iconic than that statue. And I think people who have never taken an art history class in their life, if you showed them that statue, a good many people would know, that's the statue of David. It's just, it's unreal to me that we are firing principals because teachers imparted knowledge to their students. I mean, that is just, that is insane to me. So for all those reasons, my fuck that guy goes to the, oh, it's a charter school. I apologize. It is the Tallahassee class. It is the Tallahassee classical school. And even has classical in the fucking name. I know. I know. I know. And the school board president is named Barney Bishop. So he's going to get at least part of my fuck that guy. And also

fuck that guy to the parents who, you know, my children are upset. Well, that's, then you fucking failed as a parent. If your 12 year old is upset at seeing a statue that was made thousands of years ago, is that right? No or hundreds of years ago. I don't know. It was a long fucking time ago. It was a long time ago. It was when people still chiseled shit like that. Okay. It was before I was born. So it was a long time ago.

Definitely that. 1501 to 504. Yeah, that makes more sense. So, you know, 800 years ago, that's what I said originally. I never said any of the other things. Not 800 years. I said 800 years, give or take. Do a better job as parents so your kids aren't upset.

If they really are, a large part of me doesn't even believe that. But if they were, then, yeah, you failed as a parent. So fuck all y'all. Hope you enjoy 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?

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