The Daily Beast Podcast - Did Big Lie Booster Mark Meadows Commit Voter Fraud?

Episode Date: March 29, 2022

Charles Bethea of the New Yorker joins to break down his reporting on all that, and to break down his recent scoop about the very unlikely ballot cast in 2020 by former Trump Chief of Staff and still Big Lie enthusiast Mark Meadows: “He had recently sold in 2020 his and his wife’s house in the state, and as the election neared I think he wanted to vote in North Carolina, partly because he was thinking about and talking about running for Senate and you want to have a record of voting in the state where you run and he didn't own a property. So it looks like he did something that's still sort of inexplicable, but, and he hasn't given us a reason–” Plus New Lines Magazine editor and Daily Beast contributing editor rejoins the pod to explain what’s happening in Ukraine now, and why this refugee crisis has electrified the West in a way that the Syrian refugee crisis never quite did — including when Putin militarily intervened there. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Invo. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. 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 the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down, and on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. What a great show we have today. The New Yorker's Charles Bathia will update us on all the fun political stuff coming out of Georgia and North Carolina. Then we'll talk to New Lines magazine editor Michael Weiss about the current situation in Ukraine.

But first, let's have some fun. Andy Levy. Molly John Fest. A lot of exciting stuff going on. But first, we must talk about... The Academy Awards. We went into this Academy Awards primed for the celebrities to be at it again. They were, in fact, at it again.

They were literally at it. Yeah, that was something. And look, by now, anyone listening to this knows what happened? Will Smith slapped Chris Rock? Because he was mad that Chris Rock told a joke that was about his wife's alopecia. Right, which Chris Rock may or may not have known that she had a, Alopecia, but either way. And Chris Rock may or may not have written that joke. I think that was all him. But as we record this, it's been, what, like 14, 15 hours since this happened. And there have been approximately 14, 15 million takes on Twitter and elsewhere. But the best ones, as always, are the political people trying to make hay out of this. And so you have people like Steve Schmidt tweeting about how the fact that Will Smith was allowed back to his seat. And the audience just went on as if nothing happened, explains exactly how we got Trump.

Like, it was every time you saw a take last night or this morning, you thought, well, that's as bad as it's going to get. And that's what I thought when I saw the Steve Schmidt take. And then, like, by now, I don't even think that's in the top 50 worst takes. It's just, it's take after take. People writing about how this explains Russia and Ukraine. And it's just, oh, my God, you can, like, just sit it out. Just sit it out. you don't need to do this.

Plenty of people are giving their takes. You don't need to be one of them. And just be clown yourself. I actually think there are a lot of bad takes, but I would like to submit one of the worst takes. Michael Tracy, he's a pro-coctoon journalist who was once slapped by, or not slapped. He was once lightly pushed.

Yes, at most. At most. Lightly pushed by Maxine Waters and never got over it. his tweet was a pro-Putton tweet. Keep my wife's name out of yo fucking mouth, Vladimir Putin. Ironic because Putin seems to have more than one wife. That's a good point, right?

It's a very violent guy, so that's convenient for him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Michael Tracy can always be counted on. Yes. To provide entertainment. Most of you have no idea who Michael Tracy is. No.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Yeah. If you picture a person who is followed around 24-7 by the theme song from Curb Your Enthusiasm. And that is Michael Tracy. Must be very annoying for his mother who he lives with. All right. So we're going to stop talking about the Oscars because honestly, no one wants that from us. But the point is political people stay in your lane, including us. Well, not me.

But me, yes. So now we are on to real important stuff. the fall of democracy in the United States and the rise of authoritarianism in the Republican Party. A full weekend of Ginny Thomas News, Clarence gets out of the hospital, and the news cycle of his wife's text messages with then-President Donald Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, continue. I have to admit to something here before this story broke last week and can, like you said, continued to expand over the weekend. I had no idea she was full-on bat-shade Qaeda. Oh, no, I did. Yeah, I thought she was like sort of a Mike Pence on steroids, like just sort of like an arch conservative,

like someone, you know, with whom I agreed about absolutely nothing. Like, I didn't realize she was a full-on whack job. And the stuff in those texts is absolutely unbelievable. She has always maintained because he doesn't really, he doesn't talk much to the press or whatever. But she has always maintained that they do not discuss work at home. And that's sort of been, you know, I don't think anybody believes that. That just, that seems like a very, you know, very optimistic.

Yeah. I mean, it's clearly fiction. Lying. You know. Okay, yes, lie. Thank you. That's the word I was looking for. It seems like a very.

Full of shit. Yes. But there is absolutely no way that you live with a person who believes the kind of shit she does and says the kind of stuff she does talking about. how framing the election as good versus evil and evil always looks like the victor until the king of king triumphs do not grow weary in well-doing. I have staked my career on it. This is not the kind of stuff that you are not aware that your spouse believes. And I say this, I say this confidently as someone who has never been married, but there's

absolutely no way. If you are married to someone and you don't know they believe this, you are ending up on a lifetime movie. I think that's fair. I would even go a step further, which is if you're married to someone who believes this and you don't think that person is crazy, that says a lot about you. Absolutely. Take that a step further again and say that if you are married to a person who believes this sort of thing, you probably believe it too.

Well, that we can't prove. No, of course. I said probably. But it's just like it would be really hard to spend your entire life with someone who has these incredibly strong views if you held the opposite views. And this is not a James Carvel, Mary Madeline, let's, you know, let's have fun with the sport of politics. Oh, it's cute. We disagree on some things. This is not that. Again, this is full on QAnon stuff. And, you know, we've seen a lot in the last couple years about, you know, QAnon people talking about

how it's ruined their marriages. Of course, they blame their spouses and they, you know, my family hasn't talked to me and whatever. We've seen enough of that to know that that's not the kind of thing, you can just sort of sit there and say, oh, my crazy wife or, oh, that's just my husband. No, this is not. No, this gets to who you are as a person. And, you know, this is not a fight over, well, I think the Fourth Amendment goes a little further than my spouse does. This is unbelievable. So the bottom line here is, first of all, at a bare minimum, it seems that Justice Thomas needs to recuse himself from any further Supreme Court stuff. I'm sure that's going to happen. Which we know it's not right.

And the thing is, yeah. And again, that would be at the bare minimum. That would be the right thing. And I still, I agree with you, Molly. I don't think it's going to happen. Yeah. This is a fascinating conundrum because the Republicans don't really give a shit and just want it to go away.

I mean, if Democrats had half of the fight Republicans do, they'd be holding hearings. How is this not a hearing? How is this not? They did say today that they're going to call her to the January 6th committee. They did say that, which is good. There are a million committees that Democrats control until they hopefully don't, but possibly lose the midterms. So, like, get going, man. I mean, the other thing I want to point out is that there was a statistic today that 20% of all Americans believe in at least some tenants of QAnon.

So, well, that's not everyone. That's certainly a lot of people. Yeah, that's 20%. Too many. Too many. Yeah. I'm with you, Molly. Like, this is, again, we talk about this a lot with the Democratic.

not fighting the way they should. This is a, as, as our now president once famously said, this is, this is a big fucking deal. And I'm glad that the January 6th committee, which we've also talked about, has been, I feel like, the one place where the Democrats have actually, you know, done their job and fought, you know, hard against the Republicans. But yeah, it needs to go beyond that. And I worry that it's not going to the way, the same way you do. And there's more stuff, right? So we have, Ginny Thomas, Mark Meadows, text. And then we also have this morning, Coopin' Ted.

That's Lion Ted, but for coos. So wouldn't it be cooing Ted? Yeah, I think we have to say cooentad. Cooin. Coo and Ted. We have coonet. When I wrote it, I dropped the G like Lion Ted, how you drop the G. Right.

So Coon Ted turns out that even though he was not Josh Hawley with the fist, Ku and Ted was in fact doing a lot of cooing. Turns out he was one of Trump's biggest backers in terms of trying to help overturn this election and throw into doubt the state electoral counts. And there was an interesting part in, I was reading it in, I guess it was political or whatever. I can't remember where I read it. That basically said that one of the reasons he did it was to outflank Josh Olly in a potential presidential bid. in 2024, which just perfectly sums up Ted Cruz, I think. It's like no scruples whatsoever,

no principles. He just saw that there was a guy to his right before January 6th. People are actually talking about Josh Hawley as a potential strong presidential candidate. That's sort of fallen off since January 6th. But it's so, it's so amazing that that was Ted Cruz's reaction was, well, I got to help Trump overturn this election. I got to outflank Josh Holly. It's just how far this guy has sunk is absolutely, it's mesmerizing to watch. It's mesmerizing. It's amazing. And I would say also the other thing that is fascinating is that much of the Republican Party has gone the same way. Absolutely. Speaking of people doing crimes, the judge, so, you know, Trump is trying to keep his emails private and claim executive privilege

and do whatever he can do. And here's a judge today, federal judge in California, saying that the plan Eastman helped develop was obviously illegal and that Trump knew it at the time and pushed forward with an effort, he says, would have effectively ended American democracy,

and now he has to wait until 2024 to do it. Do you think there's a chance Merrick Garland has heard about this? Wait, who? Merrick Garland. He's the... I don't know who that is. Well, he's very much in the shadows, and he's very, very quiet and doesn't seem to be a huge fan of prosecuting cases.

It would be nice if maybe he did. Am I asking too much, Molly? Yes. One of the things I love about Merritt Garland is that he went from Merritt-Fucking Garland, put him on the Supreme Court to Merritt-Fucking Garland. Who the hell is this guy? And is he ever going to do anything? How quickly has a person gone from, I think it's the quickest turnover ever from,

like beloved but mistreated figure to Thorne in my side. Yeah, well, and a lot of that is because, you know, I don't know that he's a different person. Like, I don't know that he's changed. It's just, like, he was never like Mr. Super Progressive. He's not up for this job. Right. It was because he never got his hearing that he became sort of a hero by default because he never got his hearing, Mitch McConnell never let hidden.

Obama's attempt to appoint him to the Supreme Court come to any kind of fruition. So he became sort of a hero by default, not for anything he had done in his life or anything like that. And so then Joe Biden was like, well, I'm going to get you, Mitch McConnell. I'm going to appoint the guy that you wouldn't let have a hearing to be on the Supreme Court. I'm going to make him the head of the Justice Department. Just you see what happens then. And maybe that wasn't the best strategic move. Like it was more of a, it was more of an own-the-cons move.

Should it made him like the head of interior? Yeah. Give him a job. Make him head of personnel. But I mean, you've now got, you know, you've got a judge. It's just district court judge Carter, I believe it is, David Carter, saying, here's the quote, based on the evidence, the court finds it more likely than not that President Trump corruptly attempted to obstruct the joint session of Congress on January 6th, 2021. Now, that's a big deal. And he doesn't say anything with 100% certainty. He specifically, says, finds it more likely than not, but that's a big deal for a judge to say that a sitting president more likely than not corruptly attempted to obstruct Congress. And it can't just end there. Like, it just can't. We can't let this happen. And Merrick Garland needs to do something about it. You know, the French have an expression, which I won't say in French, because I'll butcher it, but it's basically you do something for the encouragement of others. Like, Fool me once. Shame on me. Fool me twice. No, sorry, go on. Right. No, but it's like if you don't go after Trump for this, you are just encouraging others to do what Trump did. And we can't have that. You can't have that in a quote unquote democracy or republic if you want to get technical, but you cannot have a president, a chief executive acting like this. He's not a king. We were very specific back in 1776 about not wanting a king.

And we can't let this go that this is a big deal because if you set a precedent, then future presidents will just say, well, they didn't go after Trump for doing this. So I can do it too. And I think Democrats are honestly, and I hate to say this, but if Democrats don't hold Republicans accountable, they are as culpable for this as Republicans are. Maybe not as culpable. But if you're going to let this one go, there's going to be really bad consequences. It goes back to something I always say. I say that the only thing necessary for evil to flourish is for good men to do nothing. Yes.

I hear you say that all the time. I think you made that up. I made that expression up when I was, I think, seven. I said it to my dad when he wouldn't let me have the last chips of hoy. Yes. But you're right, Molly. Obviously, they're not as culpable because they didn't do it, but they are culpable. I 100% agree with you.

When you know something's happened and you do nothing about it, in this realm, you bear some of blame. Yeah. And I think we know the writing on the wall. These people are not getting better. If anything, they're getting worse. And so the Democrats need to man up and be brave. Yeah. We've talked a lot. I think about how, you know, in 2020, like one of the things that sort of saved us was how stupid a lot of the Republican employees were. It's not going to be that way in 2024 or 2028 because they'll have learned from the stupidity. You know, and they'll be smarter about trying to steal elections. So you're right. They're not getting any better morally, but they're probably going to get better at crime. Right. So this needs to be nipped in the bud like ASAP. And Merrick Garland,

I know you listen to this podcast. I know you do. Yes. Charles Bathia is a writer at the New Yorker. Welcome to the new abnormal, Charles. Thank you. Good to be here. Very excited to have you. You are doing God's work down in Georgia. Well, there's a lot. Well, there's a lot of work to be done here. And I'm not always thrilled by where it takes me, but it's interesting. So there is the congressional candidate. She's a congresswoman, though she sits on no committees. Marjorie Taylor Green. What is happening with Marjorie Taylor Green? Well, she's up for re-election here. And the many people who don't like her for lots of reasons, many of them reasonable, we're trying to figure out what can be done about that. And there's a slate of candidates.

Democrats and Republicans who are lining up to take on this person. And there's also a lawsuit that's in play. Let's talk about the lawsuit first, because this is an interesting lawsuit that's being used other places. Yeah. So the lawsuit was filed last week on behalf of a handful of Georgia voters by this nonpartisan group called Free Speech for People, which had also filed a similar suit against Madison Cawthorne in North Carolina a few months ago. So both suits claim that these Congress people in question, Green and Cawthorne, fit the definition of an insurrectionist, which would disqualify them due to a clause in the 14th Amendment from seeking office again. The clause was created, I think, to deal with Confederates after the Civil War and definitely hasn't been used much. But this suit is claiming that these are insurrectionists and thus are disqualified. I've read about this.

I'm not a lawyer, so I don't know anything. There were other reasons why I know nothing, but on this one, I really know nothing. Do you think this has a shot? It seems like a long shot. It's like the dumb and dumber moment. Like, oh, you're saying it. You know, she's like, she's like, one in a million. And he's like, you're saying I have a chance.

Yeah. So it mostly points to tweets and Facebook videos that she made prior to January 6th. One of them or a number of them actually referred to the 1776 moment, as she calls it, which is a pretty clear pointing towards, you know, violence code word for violence, rebellion against authority, et cetera. And then a video which falsely claims that she does all the time that Trump won the election and that that creates a pretext for blocking the transfer of power. So right now, and that similar arguments were made, as I said, with Cawthorne. The suit against him is getting kicked back and forth by judges. A Trump appointed judge blocked the challenge.

Yeah, I'm shocked. Yeah, right? Which, you know, invoking this law that apparently forgave soldiers of the Confederacy. Like a week or two later, a Fourth Circuit panel sent it back to, that judge for reconsideration. So I don't know that I'm much more of an expert than you on this particular kind of esoteric, legally esoteric situation that we find ourselves in. Yeah. I think, though, that it seems like at the very least she could be compelled to testify under oath about her role in January 6th, which could be quite useful and revealing. Yeah, I'll say. It's fascinating. Now, tell me what else is happening in Georgia. So there's a couple other, a couple other, a couple of candidates in the running, a few Republicans, a few Democrats. It's worth pointing out to listeners

who aren't familiar with the district that it's one of the most conservative in the country. It's a district where it was redrawn in 2010 and in three of the six races since then. The Democrats haven't even run anyone because they basically just said, you know what, like, we have no shot here. When they have run a candidate, they've been fairly colorful candidates. There was a guy, this is a, I mean, this is a bit of a tangent, but there was a guy with a doctor with an expired medical license who was also a well-known nudist. Nice. Who among us?

He got a DUI during his campaign, and there was a recording that surfaced of him telling the arresting officer that he hated the county and had prayed for God to curse it. It's kind of an incredible footnote to a failed candidacy, yeah. And then, so anyway, this time, it was redistricting slights. Right. slightly changed things a few months ago. But really, it's gone from being like the most conservative district in the country to like slightly less than the most conservative district in the country. So it's still incredibly difficult challenge for for anybody on the left or,

you know, even a moderate. Like there's a moderate Republican running who everyone's already sort of written off. So the same is true more or less. Unfortunately, for these two pretty high profile Democrats who have huge social media followings and have raised a bunch of money. Holly McCormick and Marcus Flowers. And Flowers is probably the better known of the two. He's a former defense contractor and kind of has this sort of cowboy look. He's a black man. Where's a cowboy hat? Cowboy boots. And I spent some time with him. He certainly seems tough and willing to sort of assume the David Goliath role here with Green is Goliath. You know, I mean, just the reality not to like dash everyone's dreams, but the reality is like...

Yeah, it's an R-plus. I don't know that he really has a shot in hell. Yeah. So it's really going to come down to this conservative Republican named Jennifer Strahan, who is running against Green on the right, who I spoke to for my recent piece for The New Yorker. She's been called, and this is meant to be a compliment. It's always good when you have to specify it's a compliment.

She's been called Marjorie with a brain by Eric Erickson, who, is a conservative critic, you know, Georgia. I'm who. And who is himself is no fan of green. It's made that clear for a while now. He likes Strayhan. She's, she's all the conservative that these folks want, but she's, I have to say she sounds like a reasonable person in terms of just willing to talk to people and not scream things and make totally crazy, insane, hateful claims. She's a healthcare executive or healthcare small business owner. She's in her 30s, wife, mother, very Christian, all that stuff's useful for her. I think she's vulnerable in the way that she's going to have to respond to questions about her affinity for Trump. Because when we spoke about Trump, she made clear to me that she likes

Trump's, quote, legacy in terms of some of his policies, but she was much, she seemed much less inclined to talk about her feelings for him as a person. And I know that sounds like sort of a a trivial distinction for people on the left, but in the district where she's running, like, if you're not literally stroking a cardboard cut out of Donald Trump, you know, you're in trouble. So I, you know, she's also way, way, way, way, way behind fundraising. She's got like low six figure money at this point, whereas Green has like seven million. So yeah, that's just kind of kind of an overview of the person who might have, have a chance. if the lawsuit doesn't, you know, get in the way.

Talk to me about the Marjorie Taylor Green Country Club debacle. Yeah, that's funny. So that, in a way, I mean, it's a funny, colorful story, but also points to maybe a little bit of vulnerability for her. So Rome, Georgia, it's one of the two bigger towns in the district. But by big, it's not actually big. It's like 40,000 people, not even in the top 20 in Georgia for towns. But it's like, you know, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's the, it's, it's the, it's,

If you're going to visit the district, it's like the quaint town you might go to. And it has a country club there, the Kusa Country Club. And that's a place that's traditionally, like many country clubs, attracted conservative, but more establishment types, like the guy who lost a green in a runoff two years ago, a neurosurgeon named John Cowan. Putting aside politics, he's like a reasonable person. Like, he's not a shouter. He's more of a thinker.

So anyway, he's a member there. give you an idea of the kinds of folks who go to the club. And Marjorie Green was put up for membership, but in order to get her in, they actually circumvented the membership committee in a very unorthodox fashion, according to somebody I talked to on that committee, who basically said that that reflected a great deal of internal concern and consternation about her at the club and that there were many members who really just despised her, even if they liked some of the votes she might be taking. So, I mean, that doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know in terms of the fact that establishment Republicans to the degree they still exist up there, like non-Trump types, never really

liked her, but it may be that their numbers are growing a little bit, which is kind of interesting. There was also a party at the country club that I want to talk about. Oh, yeah, yeah, right. So, thank you. Anytime, man. That happened a month or two later, Strahan and her supporters through a fundraiser at the club, which made a lot of sense, but also was pretty clearly a little bit of a thumb in the eye of Green since Green had just been become a member there. And at this party, they had Gospacho, which was again, like, you know, funny, funny little reference to the Gospot, Nancy Pelosi's Gispacho police, as Green called them. So I thought that was, you know, to the degree, like, you can have a campaign event and have a little fun with it. I thought that was a pretty, it showed a sense of

humor that's nice to see. Like Marjorie Taylor Green has become more than a one-term or a freshman congresswoman. She's really become a cautionary tale, fundraising dynamo, terrifying fascist. What is it about Georgia? You got Trump versus your Republican establishment. You've got crazy MTG. You've got Stacey Abrams. You've got so much sort of, there's just a lot happen.

in Georgia right now. Why is that? I wish I could give you a really clear answer to that. I don't know. I mean, I guess maybe part of it has to do with the fact that the election was so close here. I will remind everyone, Biden did win Georgia. It was quite close. We can all admit that. And I think that that closeness has caused people on both sides to get maybe a little more heated and a little more vocal and a little more animated about their own views and opinions and candidates and are just sort of like, turning the volume up, if that makes any sense. Like, Green really, she's always been a loud, outspoken person. Actually, I don't want to say a political person, because she really wasn't political at all, according to my reporting, until, like, three years ago. She's always been a loud person, but I think that, like, the specter of Stacey Abrams becoming governor and Georgia continuing to vote for Democrats on the national stage just kind of amplifies everything on the right. and likewise, you know, the existence of Marjorie Green, especially without Trump, quite as front and center, makes everyone on the left like a little more sort of eager and animated. But beyond that, I don't, you know, it's just, it's, it's a state that just has everything.

Not to be like a PR person for the state, but like, it's got the coast, it's got the mountains, it's got the beach, it's got the fascists, it's got the, it's got the black female governor candidate. It's got like, yeah, it's a big state. I saw you wrote about Mark Meadow's irregular boating habits. Could you tell us a little about what's happening there? Yeah, that was a pretty wild one. A scoop of mine a few weeks ago, three weeks ago now. That's right. Oh, that was a big scoop.

Thank you, Jesse. Yeah. And I'll remind all of your listeners that Fox News still hasn't mentioned it on their program. They're going to be talking a lot about the slap tonight, I'm sure. So, yeah, Meadows, Mark Meadows, obviously Trump's last. chief of staff, the one who survived the longest. I've discovered, had his voter registration tied to a mobile home in rural North Carolina, not too far from an area where he was for many years a real estate agent. And side note in a very crazy connection to my own life. When I was a kid,

my dad bought a cabin up in that area and guess who his real estate agent was? It was Mark Meadows. Was he a good agent? I have to say, I think he was in terms of finding a a good property and he was quite nice throughout the problem. Like I have no, I really have no bad memories of the guy. Maybe he can go back to it. Yeah, very, I think he still has, he still has his his finger on the pulse there. But to try to boil the story down quickly, like he had recently sold in 2020, he'd sold him and his wife's house in the state. And as the election neared, I think he wanted to vote in North Carolina, partly because he was thinking about and talking about running for Senate and you want to have a record of voting in the state where you run and he didn't

own a property. So it looks like he did something that's still sort of inexplicable, but, and he hasn't given us a reason. Some call it voter fraud. Yeah, well, I was going to say, I'm getting to the vote. It does look very much. It looks like voter fraud, smells like voter fraud. I'm just not really sure why he didn't, you know, do something else. This was just such a blatant, like, if you wanted, there were other ways to like register to vote. Like, he could have, I won't go into all of them. There's lots of, of legal loopholes he could have used to legally register. And instead, he attached his name on his registration to a mobile home where he'd never slept, had never visited, and did known. And like, that's voter fraud. People without his resources have been charged with doing very similar things and

have either gone to jail or been put on probation. And it'll be interesting to see if he gets the same treatment. And I guess we all have our thoughts on whether that's likely to happen. but he is being investigated now by the State Bureau of Investigations, which are taking it seriously from everything I can gather. Fascinating. Keep at it. Thank you. Will. Yeah, don't get any gazpacho poisoning. The gazpacho with that party, I just saw the photos,

but the gazpacho looked like baby food. It looked pretty gross. Oh, I'm so disappointed that club doesn't have good food. Oh, well, thoughts, prayers. Yeah. Michael Weiss is the editor of New Lines Magazine, host of the Foreign Office podcast, an author of ISIS, The Inside the Army of Terror. Welcome to the new abnormal Michael Weiss. Thanks, Molly. Happy to be back.

Since you have been on, a lot has happened. Can you get our listeners up to speed on what you've seen happen over the last four plus weeks? Yeah. So I think when we last spoke, Ukraine was hold. the line in most areas against the Russians. I mean, they were losing more territory in the south, along the southeastern littoral, which the Russians would like to take in order to create a land bridge connecting their actual country with their annexed or occupied country or peninsula, I should say, Crimea. But since then, Ukraine has been putting up very good mobile defense. So, in other words, and this is the way you have to fight when you're facing a much greater adversary in terms of firepower and, I mean, not really manpower, but outside invader attempting a

conquest. So what they would do is they would allow the Russians to come in. They would draw them in, in fact, and then dispatch their special forces behind enemy lines to murder, sabotage, blow up fuel and supply lines, et cetera. And essentially, they got the Russians very bogged down, particularly outside of Kiev in the northwest and the northeast. And now, it seems the Ukrainians are pressing a counteroffensive, actually multiple counteroffensives, and having a great deal of success in Kiev-Blast, in fact, Irpin, which is an area that had been taken over by the Russians, has just been announced as liberated by the Ukrainians. They've taken, oh gosh, I mean, a dozen settlements and towns in that area, and there have been credible reports that they've gone even so far as

to push the Russians out of Ukraine into Belarus in the north. Remember, they used Belarus as a point of invasion a month ago. So, I mean, look, I wouldn't go so far as to say Ukraine is winning, but they're not losing, which is a very important thing. And I think I was talking to a defense analyst just yesterday who said, you know, the great fear was that this country would lose its sovereignty. You know, Kiev would be sacked. It would cease to exist an independent nation. And it would happen quickly. Yeah. And I mean, I'm not, again, I'm very cautious about making long-term predictions, but it does seem for the time being at least that that contingency is now remote. That's a good thing for you, Craig.

It seems like there has been a lot of hesitation about the reporting because it's just such a hard, you know, even though there's so much Internet and there's so many pictures and there's so much, there's still so much fake news. Yeah. You know, we can't trust information we get out of Kansas, let alone out of Ukraine. I feel like you've been able to provide some really good information about things. Can you explain to me a little bit about how you do that? Yeah, well, I mean, I was lucky in the sense that I had at one point five reporters in Kiev.

I've had correspondence go all over the country, Nipro, Adessa. I'm getting a dispatch from Harsan, which is the only population center that is controlled, quote unquote, controlled by the Russians, even though actually the Ukrainians are now liberating parts of that area. And that's a dispatch that I don't have a reporter inside the city, but he's getting stuff from civilians. So it's just old-fashioned shoe leather reporting combined with, from the very start, there's been a few open source intelligence analysts and even websites that I've relied heavily upon. The most famous now is a guy called Orix. It's a Dutch-led enterprise, but I think he's got other contributors, including a Czech guy and other people.

Anyway, Orix does visual verification of equipment losses on both sides. And he's been doing this since the very beginning. I think he cut his teeth. covering the Syrian Civil War for many years. This is another important thing. A lot of us who were in this space of conflict journalism and Syria is now more than 10 years ago. That was one of the most mediated wars of all time. I mean, you had YouTube videos, you had images, things that could be geolocated in real time to see what was real, what was fake, or what was old. I mean, a lot of times people say, oh, look, here's an image from yesterday when in fact it's from a 20-year-old conflict or something. So Orix has just been, you know, going through all of these videos, and these images and saying, you know, there goes a T-72 tank that the Russians either, you know,

had destroyed by the Ukrainians or simply abandoned by the side of the road. And I've seen nobody debunk him. I've seen nobody say this is false. Since I've been banging on about him, I've seen a lot of journalists kind of, you know, start to cite him. Many journalists are asking him, how do you do what you do? And he says, look, you know, just check my work. I'm not in the business of teaching other people how to do this verification. So I would say broadly, it's kind of a a hybrid of things, you know, having my own people on the ground telling me what's going on, what they see with their own eyes, and with their own ears. And then, yeah, I mean, analysts who can essentially call BS on things, but more to the point, show us the conflict

from a 30,000 altitude view, which is very difficult to do, but also it's very important to get a holistic sense, right? If I have a reporter in Kiev, he's not going to know or she's not going to know necessarily what's happening, the west of the country or the east of the country. But I think a lot about why this war, which is also in a small country, has become so central to America. I mean, remember, a month ago, a little more than a month ago, Americans were completely against foreign intervention. They were completely against foreign wars. They believed that if you polled people, they would say, like, we have to worry about our southern border and not about what's happening across the world. Russia is doing almost exactly the same stuff they did in.

Syria, right? I mean, ultimately, it's a little further away. But why do you think that this war has managed to capture American imaginations? I have a theory, but I'm curious as to yours. I think it's a few things. And my assessment would probably conform, at least in part to your theory. I mean, look, I'm just going to be very blunt about this. And keep in mind, I mean, I went to Aleppo in 2012. I embedded with the Free Syrian Army just as they had taken Bab al-Hadidqqq quarter of that city. You know, I went down one of these now, in hindsight, ridiculously dangerous highways of death where, you know, any mig or sequoic or helicopter could have just easily picked off the row of trucks that I was traveling with. But, you know, so I invested a lot of energy,

both emotional, intellectual, and time into covering Syria and trying to raise awareness in the West as to why this is also a central conflict and one that, unfortunately, as catastrophic as it was to the Syrians would not say confined to Syria. I mean, and you'd look at the migration crisis that we had the war since World War II that became, certainly was exacerbated by Syria. And then, of course, the rise of ISIS and another spate of international or transnational jihadism, wrote a book on ISIS, which is largely about Syria, but also Iraq. Right.

But I will say, I think, unfortunately, Westerners who are, well, A, suffering from Middle East fatigue, and we're doing so already by 2011, right? sort of didn't want to get involved or didn't have the wherewithal to even consider an intervention in another Arab country. And B, good old-fashioned racism, where if it's a brown person, much less a brown person with a gun defending his or her home and children from a campaign of total annihilation and slaughter, and I would use the word genocide in Syria very easily and readily, they're just inherently suspicious. These are bad guys. They must be terrorists. And, you know, the Assad regime backed by Russia, backed by the Islamic Republic,

of Iran, which of course has its own Shia jihadist ideology, but it's Shia, not Sunni. They did an admirable job from their point of view of convincing all of us that this was just a, this is just an ungodly mess. It was all crazies and radicals and terrorists and, you know, let them kind of clean it all up. And to a large extent, unfortunately, the West kind of bought into that propaganda point. With respect to Ukraine, look, you know, it's funny because, you know, if people say, oh, you know, blonde hair, blue-eyed Europeans. And so, of course, Americans are naturally going to sympathize with them. I actually see it from a different point of view, which is... They're Jews. Well, yeah, but also like a European form of Orientalism, because for too long, Americans have said the opposite,

right? Why do we care about Ukraine? Like, most of us can't even place this country on a map. We've never been there. We have no intention going there. And isn't just part of Russia anyway, you know, which is, of course, the Russian perspective on this. Right, which is what Russia is trying to sound. Right. I mean, these are, these are historically been known as the quote, little Russians. Their own unique or singular cultural patrimony and history has been robbed from them. And in the last eight years, they have actually not just rediscovered it, but revivified it. This has become a sort of central point of their peoplehood, of their nationhood.

But yeah, look, I think there are other factors here, President Zelensky's transformation into this heroic Western leader. I mean, I would say key right now is the center of the Western world. And we have now kind of morally and emotionally attached ourselves in a good way with this struggle and realize that, you know, again, this is something that won't stay confined to the borders of Ukraine. And this is a battle for democracy over, well, I mean, two months ago, I might have called it authoritarianism. But the way Russia's going now and where it's headed is, it's totalitarianism all over again. It's interesting because Russia continues to sort of just tread water. They've had a lot of losses.

I've read about all these generals. And then there's people that Putin has also taken out, right? Can you explain that to our listeners a little bit? Yeah, well, I mean, this is where we get a little murkier. It's speculative because nobody knows, right? It's speculative, but I think there has been enough confirmation from very credible, reliable figures that I think we can kind of paint a bit of a picture. Yes, please do.

Yes. He has been in a state of isolation, both physical and I think epistemological for lack of a better term for quite a while. Now, some have said this is a result of COVID. I actually think it's the results of other things. What like? Well, I can't really get into it. I'm actually working on something. But mental health and also just kind of his own understanding of the world and decision making. So he really did not believe. No doubt he was not told by his security and military apparatus that this is a country that is not seeking to be under Russia, Germany, that people will not celebrate Russian conquerors as emancipators. They will see them as occupiers. Right. And nobody told

him that. Yeah. A hatred for his regime, for him personally. And I mean, for a lot of Russians, too, at this point, is at historic eyes in Ukraine because of what has been done to this nation, how it's been so traumatized by him. And so, you know, there was the, the FSB has something called the Fifth Service, which is their foreign intelligence arm. And the guy who headed it, Baciera, was in charge of the Ukraine file for quite a while since 2014. In fact, in 2014, 2015, he was in Kiev under the guise of, quote, protecting the embassy, which you don't send a man of his statute to do anything remotely like that. So he was running the sort of political operation of finding fifth columnist in Ukraine, kind of prepping the terrain, if you like, for this war.

Well, apparently he's now under house arrest. I think his immediate deputy is also under house arrest. there does seem to have been a kind of purge taking place, a creeping purge throughout the ranks of the security and military establishment. You know, for a bit, everyone said where in the world is Sergei Shogu, the defense minister, and where is the chief of the general staff? Well, it seems now Shoygu is said to have had a heart attack and been recuperating. But you know, in Russia, look, it's true that people, especially of his age, have heart attacks because of poor health, drinking, bad diet.

But in Russia, heart attack is sort of like the prison equestrian. equivalent of he fell. You know, like it's used as a euphemism to mean something else. Now, Shrigue has given a kind of proof of life. He appeared on video and was talking about contemporaneous events. So who knows. But look, if you're Putin right now, you know that you've been sold to bill of goods. You're hopping mad. You're hemorrhaging, not just soldiers. I mean, it's something like a thousand Russian soldiers per day are getting taken off the battle. You're also losing generals. He's lost about seven or eight flag officers in this conflict, more than I think at any point since World War II. So his military, which was nothing to write home about to begin with, as we've now amply seen, is being hollowed out by a country that he thought he could walk all over, that they would simply submit, roll over and either, you know, accept Russian occupation or, or, you know, just kind of run off into the fields. And it's quite the other thing, as John Lech-Carray would put it, you know, I mean. Right. I know it's not fair to ask you where this goes. Where does this go? Your guess is as good as mine.

there's always a chance that Russia would do something really stupid, horrible. I mean, they're already doing stupid, horrible things. Look at Murielpo. Look at Kharkiv. I mean, these cities don't exist anymore. They've been plunged into some apocalyptic abyss. There is always the chance of possible WMD use. You know, I don't know where he would draw the resources in terms of manpower and firepower

to do what he initially set out to do. Already, the Kremlin has now said phase one of our operation is complete. We move on to phase two, which is securing the occupied territories of Donbos. Well, no, I mean, that's bullshit. Phase 1 was not complete phase one was stacking Kiev. It was regime change. Now they, I think, realized they can't do that. So yeah, they could very well try to consolidate their gains in the East. But even there, you know, if Ukraine feels that the pressure has been relieved in the North, they're going to obviously divert resources to pressing the fight in the South and in the Southeast, which is where the Russians have had a better

time. Again, I'm not, I think it's foolhardy to try and make predictions, because a lot of people made them at the very start, and I think they've got egg on their face. So I'm going to avoid doing that. But this is not, it's not over. And Ukraine isn't out of the woods yet. But they have managed with a great deal of resiliency and an impressive fighting capacity and morale. They have managed to get past the first stage of this thing intact.

And that is no small feat. Yeah, it seems like no small feat. Do we see a world in which this ends up being a kind of, larger proxy battle for, you know, wars. Like a lot of people on the right will say, oh, China's watching this, thinking about Taiwan, a lot of people. Do you see this as like a piece in a larger puzzle? And do you think that destabilizing Putin has larger implications for America?

I think it is part of a larger kind of geopolitical framework in the sense that it is absolutely true that Putin, Nikolai Patrushchev, is the Secretary of the Security Council, probably also Sergei Naryshkin, the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service, who he famously humiliated on camera before the invasion. I think all of these guys, the so-called strong men of Russia, believe that the West is in decline, perhaps terminal decline. They think that we are decadent, we are depraved, we have fought these ridiculous campaigns in faraway lands and we have lost. look at the fall of Kabul, look at what's happened in Iraq, look at what's happened in Syria, in Libya, famously, we were supposed to do a no-fly zone and then ended up doing regime change, and Walmart Gaddafi was lynched, and now Libya is plunged into civil war. They just, they think that the West is done, which is the reason I think they're also, you know,

there's an element of trying to manipulate and persuade certain political elements in the West by harping on the cultural grievances that you read about in... Cancel culture. Or your watch on Fox News. Cancel culture. And that's why Putin brings up J.K. rallying. But there's also an element where he actually believes this. He thinks that, you know, the fact that there's such a thing as gender fluidity in America

is just a sign that America is toast. And I think the response with respect to Ukraine has surprised him. I think, you know, and here I do give our president points for rallying the masses and certainly rallying NATO member states in. to providing weapons and giving their show of solidarity with Ukraine, I think it's surprised him. I think it's made him, you know, he has to kind of recalibrate a little bit. Now, that's not to say that two countries in particular, France and Germany, aren't already starting to go a bit wobbly. I see French diplomats basically offering unsolicited advice on Ukraine's

terms of surrender when they have no business doing this. Germany, of course, doesn't want energy sanctions on Russia because it's wholly, not holy, but largely reliant upon them for its own domestic political reasons. So yeah, I think it's good. And this is another reason why we cannot afford to go soft and back down. And also cannot afford to take our attention away from this crisis and this war, because the minute that Putin sees that Western sort of resolve is flagging, that's when he looks to do other things and get provocative. Right. There's a line, it always gets misquoted as, you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. It's by Leon Trotsky, of all people. And what he said is, you may not be interested in the dialectic, but the dialectic,

is interested in you. I have my problems with Leon Trotsky, but as a critic and political observer, he was actually quite acute. And the point there was, you know, we may be narcissistic and obsessed with our own, I mean, for Christ's sakes. Look at the people online talking about Will Smith slapping, you know, Chris Rock at the Oscars. This is going to be like a two or three week psychodrama played out in column inches and all this kind of thing, right? We might yearn to care about the petty or even just the kind of self-interested. And, and, and, and, and, say that the world just doesn't matter. Why can't we just close our borders and look away and just allow it. Yes, it's terrible what's happening in these places, but it's none of our business and none of our

concern. The problem is it does become our business. It does become our concern, right? 9-11 didn't happen in a vacuum. The rise of ISIS and the Bada Klan massacre and, you know, so-called lone wolf attacks that have taken place in the United States. That didn't happen overnight either. That these things accrued. They built. And they built in places that we were told America, out or America, not your quarrel, look away. And this is not a call, by the way, for military intervention. I mean, again, I'm exasperated when I hear people still talk about no-fly-zo. It's never going to happen. I understand everybody feels the need to do something, but there's a host of things we can do to help the Ukrainians fight their own war, which is what they know they're going to have to do,

without getting lost in these sort of non-starter debates about going to war with Russia. You know, I mean, there's still a chance they could get those mig 29 jets from Poland. They need more basic things down to just, you know, military tactical pants and flack jackets. And, yeah, I mean, it was a joke in the Germans. No, I know. Right. You know, I mean, like, there are things that Americans, if they feel concerned or they feel body armor. Right. Helping refugees, of course, is, you know, the gift that keeps on giving as far as I'm concerned. But yeah, they need weaponry, advanced weaponry. They need ammunition. They need supplies. And these things, it needs to be like a fire hose of the stuff. And, you know, people are worried about proliferation. I mean, look, you know,

I got news for you. The Ukrainians are not going to steal Stinger missiles to take out commercial airliners anywhere in the world. If they're too busy taking out Russian aircraft. They have tons of nuclear reactors. I mean, if they want to make dirty bombs, they could do it tomorrow. Well, I wouldn't even go that far. I don't think we'd take a lot more. I mean, it will take a while, but, you know, we don't, we don't want to see damage to one of these reactors with some kind of radiological incident, which also of itself could not stay, might not stay confined within the borders of Ukraine, but could spill out into Europe. And that would have to draw some kind of international direct response. And then there are kind of the metaphysical aspects of it. I mean,

like I say, you know, this is a fight, democracy versus totalitarianism. And I remember a twilight struggle being waged for the better part of 50, 60 years, not so long ago, certainly within my own lifetime. I mean, I have a memory of the Berlin Wall coming down. I would. was only nine years old, but it's kind of etched into my cerebral cortex as a kind of defining moment in American history. I'm not saying we're fighting communist empire again, but we are fighting a revanchist empire in the making and one that will be made if we allow it to at the expense of what was meant to have been a very resolute post-war European architecture, which was the spread of liberalism, democracy, market economy. And if those things go away, well, you know, what

What will the alternative be? And then how long before the United States finds itself mired in some different kind of struggle or different kind of conflict asking itself, well, how the hell did we get here? Right. Maybe we should have been paying more attention to faraway crisis in a place called Ukraine. Michael Weiss, thank you so much. I hope you'll come back. Yeah, anytime. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz?

The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one in the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from The Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer, checking in on the movement of the radical right. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts

or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's Fever Dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcast. Andy Levy. Molly John Fass. Who is your fuck that guy? Well, my fuck that guy this week, it's not so much a fuck that guy. It's a fuck. It's a guy talking about fucking those guys.

It's beloved North Carolina Congressman Madison Cawthorn. He was asked on a, I don't know if it was a podcast or a radio show, he was asked if the show House of Cards was more fact or fiction. And Jesse, I think we have this clip. So I heard a former president that we had in the 90s was asked the question about this. And he gave an answer that I thought was so true. And he said, the only thing that's not accurate in that show is that you could never get a piece of legislation about education passed that quickly. And everything else is good. Aside from that, I mean, the sexual perversion that goes on in Washington, I mean, being kind of a young guy in Washington,

but the average age is probably 60 or 70. and I look at all these people, a lot of them that I, you know, I've looked up to through my life, I always paid attention to politics, guys that, you know, then all of a sudden you get invited to like, well, hey, we're going to have kind of a sexual get-together at one of our homes. You should come. And I'm like, what did you just ask me to come to? And then you realize they're asking you to come to an orgy. Or the fact that, you know, there's some of the people that are leading on the movement

to try and remove, you know, addiction in our country. And then you watch them do, you know, a key bump of cocaine right in front of you. And it's like, wow, this is, this is wild. Okay, so first of all, it's fucked up that he outed Mitch McConnell like that. That just boggles my mind that he would do that. But he didn't name names, actually, and people are calling on him to name names. What's important to remember is whatever names these are, they're Republicans, because he said they're people he looked up to his whole life.

Right. And he definitely doesn't get invited to Democrat parties. Obviously, this has got people, everyone's like, who's he talking about? Who's he talking about? And other than the fact that it's obviously Mitch McConnell, and Lindsay Graham, I have no idea who he's talking about. I would just like to say that it's Newt Gingrich. Do you want to know who my fuck that guy is?

Who is your fuck that guy. I mean, you're like... That's a good point. That's a good point. You're not, you know, that takes a lot of effort. You've really got to want it. That takes a lot of Viagra. That's right.

So my fuck that guy is, guys. They started in Canada. They went to California. They drove across the country. They are now the people's convoy. They were in Washington, D.C. for three weeks. No one noticed. I mean, it's like the Trump rally when, you know, it's funny because it's like, I remember I was in Washington, D.C. and I saw, I saw in the news, or I think I saw on Twitter that the convoy was coming and it might disturb the traffic and the beltway would be even worse than usual. And I thought, oh. And then I never saw them once.

And then they, you know, I went back to New York and three weeks later, they have decided that protesting gas prices might not be best served by driving around. So they just left? So they're leaving. I'm sure they'll be back doing something else. But, you know, I think there's a good lesson here, which is this is, this is. really dumb and you protests work much, much better when you are protesting something. And you can get more attention when you are actually trying to talk about something. I love how the leader claims they're going to, he said, we're coming back. We're going to come back. Obviously, this is bad. And like, the last big MAGA protest in D.C. was them storming the Capitol, not great.

This is a group that is not against violence. But in the same sense, I do have. have to volunteer that this was pretty stupid, and I'm deeply impressed with how moronic it is. And honestly, congratulations for them for taking three weeks off work to do that. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share. share the show on social media.

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