The Daily Beast Podcast - Did Trump and Biden Swap Bodies???

Episode Date: January 22, 2021

If you don’t understand the title of this episode, which suggests some Freaky Friday voodoo between President Biden and ex-President Donald Trump, congratulations, you have logic. Unfortunately, there are many people who don’t, like the QAnon believers who are still clinging to their conspiracy theories the same way that Donald Trump attempted to cling to the presidency: with nonsensical BS. But seriously, one of the latest QAnon theories that hasn’t yet been proved false, is that Trump is still somehow president...in Biden’s body. In this episode of The New Abnormal, Rick Wilson, Molly Jong-Fast and guest George Conway unpack that and a whole lot more. “It's really the only answer that makes sense,” Molly jokes. “It’s just so simple and obvious.” What isn’t obvious, however, is how the non-QAnon Republicans will move forward with Biden as president, especially Mitch McConnell. (“They have the problem of the distortive, gravitational field that Donald Trump casts over some element of the Republican party and they need to stamp it out. And you know that in his heart of hearts Mitch McConnell wants to do that. He just doesn't want to leave any fingerprints,” says Conway.) Then, the three pivot Trump. It’s a new era, but it’s impossible to not talk about him. In fact, Molly says Biden has 99 problems, and, yes, Trump is still very much one of them. To start, he left no federal vaccine roll-out plan, and also, to quote Conway, “he's basically a criminal.” Not even a Nixon-style criminal, either. Worse. (“I mean, [Trump] was like a one man show there and people were trying to get out of the way or avoid doing what he asked them to do," says Conway.) Plus! Daily Beast Washington Bureau Chief Jackie Kucinich tells Molly what to expect from Chuck and Mitch in the next week or so, but also the next two years with a Senate that’s split down the middle: “It's still gonna be really hard to govern. This is razor-thin, as thin as it gets.” If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes its just Rick & Molly discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi folks. This is Rick Wilson, and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly Jong-Fast, a left-wing pundit, and an editor at large at The Daily Beast. I'm also an editor at Large at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, best-selling author, and full-time troublemaker. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. We take the issues seriously. Ourselves, not so much. Our world has been turned upside down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we get ourselves out of it. Well, folks, welcome to the very first day of the

new abnormal in a more abnormal era. We are happy to report to you that yesterday there was no last-minute Q&ON trusting of the plan enjoying the show. It all went as smoothly as possible, and with the only deviation from a fairly normal inaugural being, the fact that we're in the middle of a pandemic and required a lot of social distancing, and we couldn't have crowds of people there. And of course, that the former president, and I love, love saying former president, the former president, ex-president, disgraced ex-president, disgraced former ex-president, Donald John Trump. I like to call him President Nongrata. That I love. George Conway is joining us today, folks, our all-time favorite guest.

The only other thing that was a deviation from the COVID era of, inaugural ceremony was that stompy foot von Schittstein had to run away and couldn't like a man take the fact that he lost a free and fair election. So since his coup failed and his insurgency failed and his eight weeks of hokey horse shit fake law excuses failed, he tromped off and went to Joint Base Andrews, got on Air Force One for the very last time at his fucking life, flew to Palm Beach, and left our immediate purview, left our sight. To the tune of my way. Of course, the tune of his way.

I would have thought, like, rat in a cage or loser from Beck would have been more appropriate, but okay. But one of the things I truly loved was the minute they landed, and Melania was coming down the stairs with Donald from the plane, and he's holding her hand trying to do the last minute act. They hit the tarmac, and she practically sprinted away from him. Yeah, that piece of view. That's never going to get old. I had this old this dialogue. A friend of mine called me, and she was imitating.

I don't have to do this anymore, Donald. I don't. She was, my friend was in being in line, she says, just fuck this. I'm going to Wutterberg. I'm going to Wutterberg. I've been starving for five fucking years with this animal. I want to triple with extra meat and cheese.

I think he'd take her to Wadderberger. I have a feeling. Donald, if you don't behave yourself, I will impeach you again. Do you guys think he'll come back for the trial? That's an interesting question because it would be an abject humiliation for him to do that. That's what you have on the one hand.

On the other hand, he gets to be the center of attention. So that's actually kind of tracking. So it's a very, very, that's a tough call. I could see that going either way. Because now that he doesn't have Twitter, it's kind of like he's no longer exists. years ago, I had a client, a political client who had a dominatrix.

As one does. As one does, right? Hey, Rick, as a political consultant, is that a good thing or a bad thing for running for political office? Well, look, I mean, it's not that it's good or bad. I'm not judging. I'm not kink shaming. But I will say, in his case, it was part of the thrill of it, part of the terror of it,

was that she was always taking pictures of him with, like, the newspapers like a hostage. Like, on this day, you know, this is proof he was getting his ass beat on. June 14th or whatever. By the way, just as an aside, some candidates are irredeemable and cannot be saved. Right. So now we have, Biden has taken over the Oval Office. He is president, and he has discovered that Trump has, for the last four years, played golf and tweeted. This is shock. Yeah. And that there is no vaccine rollout plan. Yeah, there's no plan and no plan to make a plan. and there was never a plan and it was always, well, poor shit. And everybody checked out.

I mean, he checked out, I mean, well, he never checked in, frankly, because he said it was a hope. And then he talked about liberating all these states. And, you know, he downplayed it. And he did, you know, he said, it's going to go away. But he really checked out after he was humiliated by his talking about Clorox and lighting, you know, sticking lights up people's whatever. And then he really said, I don't want to have these news conferences anymore.

And then, you know, and they also didn't want to take responsibility for anything, which is why they basically fobbed everything off to the states from the very beginning. Like you, and that's what happened with the vaccine plan. You know, they signed the contracts with the big companies. They didn't apparently sign enough, right? They didn't get enough vaccine from Pfizer. And then they basically just, okay, dump it on the states and see what the states do with it. And, you know, I mean, this is not to let some of these states off the hook.

But, you know, everybody's navel-gazing. When the federal government doesn't take the lead on some, on a problem of national significance that requires national focus, you know, you're going to get a lot of people sitting around naval gazing. I mean, it takes leadership, and it just basically was none. And it was all just a big, lousy TV show with bad ratings. The idea that Operation Warp Speed. And it seems like they spent more time on Warp's. speed on the sort of giving companies money part of warp speed than the actual distributing the vaccine part of warp speed which is fine you have to give the people money and you you incentivize

them and they had an incentive to get it out as quickly as possible and you know the economics of that worked i mean it wasn't but there's no genius to that that's just throwing money at the problem and don't trump doesn't deserve any special credit for it which is even though he seeks it any idiot can say to the federal government, throw a billion dollars in a problem. It takes a plan and leadership and, you know, those things. And as, as we know that Donald Trump is, is famously skilled as a planner. His razor-sharp, laser-like focus on problems that never varies or deviates is one of his strongest assets. And it's really one of the reasons his presidency will go, I'm sorry, excuse me, I was doing crack. I feel like you got confused there.

It was Mike Liddell with you? Yeah, exactly. So now we have the problem of Biden has about 100 problems. He has 99 problems. And, you know, the president isn't one, but all of the other ones are. Oh, he's still, no, no, he's still a problem. Yeah, he's still a problem. This guy is, this guy, this guy ain't going on away.

He's going to find a way to haunt us till our dying fucking days. And just when we think we're safe from him, Jared's going to walk out in like a silver lab coat and say, in my spare time, my pursuit of cryonics, quantum physics, quantum computing has allowed me to upload Donald to the cloud. He will be with us forever and ever, and ever, replicating, growing. It's also true that we can't let him go. I mean, we need to let him go to some extent, and I'm trying to ignore him as much as possible and not say things about him, and I started tweeting more corgis instead. But we can't let him go because he's basically a criminal.

Right. And he's also a danger. Yeah. But, you know, I mean, there are issues. There are a whole slew of potential criminal offenses that need to be investigated and potentially prosecuted. And that is a problem for the Justice Department. And in fact, when is this going to air? Tomorrow? Tomorrow night, I may have something coming out. I wrote on that a few thousand words on how to deal with Trump now the left office. When does the impeachment start?

It could start by the end of this week. I don't know they have to be said. The first thing that has to happen is that the House managers have to walk the, literally walk the impeachment articles over to the Senate. You know, there's a whole set choreograph thing for doing that under the Senate rules. And the Senate has to convene for the purpose of receiving the managers, you know, is like within a certain amount of time after receiving notice that the managers are coming over with a bill of impeachment. And then they have to basically set the rules for the trial.

And that took a while for the last trial. And one of the issues is, and one that's actually confusing me, I wish we had somebody who knew something about it on the podcast here. But they have to figure out how to conduct legislative business and confirmation hearings at the same time they hold this trial. Now, I had thought during the first trial that they had conducted morning business and then they started the trial. Yeah, that's what I thought too.

the afternoon and I thought that's how they did it. They did legislative business in the morning, but I don't know. Apparently it's some kind of an issue now about how they do that. Frankly, I thought they had already done it. I'm looking forward to the kickoff of it because the discomfort level that I'm picking up inside Republican circles over the thought that they can't just go out. And they're going to try, by the way, they're going to try. There's already a sort of sense that all they have to do is go out and yell, Joe Biden putting us back in the WHO is like road to full communism. something. Or the fact that we're not, that we're going back in the Paris Accord, it means any minute now they're going to seize the means of production and put us all in the gulag. They're afraid that that might, that line of bullshit might not quite be as viable as they thought.

But the fundamental question is they're going to have to try to preserve their base while trying to win back their corporate donors. Yes. And the corporate donors right now are as nervous as long-tailed cats in a room full of rocket chairs. They are not happy. They are in the tallest of top. Hallgrass. And while Steve Scalise and Kevin McCarthy and, to a lesser degree, Rick Scott in the Senate and a couple of other people in the Senate have been making calls to attempt to get the donor class back on side, it's not working yet. And you're seeing more and more companies say, if you supported denying the results of the electoral college, which is, by the way, definitional to saying that you supported disenfranchising tens of millions

of African-American voters. They're saying if you supported that, you're done, we're gone, we can't help you. And they recognize that there is a huge corporate cost now to being seen as part of the Jim Crow Proceditionist side of the political equation. I don't know how that happened. It's a crazy thought, right?

You wouldn't want to associate your brand with crazy people who want to burn down the government. How do you happen? I don't know. But they also have a problem with a certain significant percentage of reasonably sane Republicans who may have voted for Trump holding their nose, but who now are completely appalled. And there's, you know, it may be 15 or only 20%, but that's, that's, you know, we were only, the Lincoln Project was only shooting at

picking off about 5% of the Republican vote. Yeah, that's true. It's very true. And 10 to 20% basically, you know, if you shed that as the Republican Party, the Republican Party fades away into oblivion. They are really at between a rock and a heart place here. So they've got that consideration. They have the big donor consideration. And also they have the problem of the distortive gravitational force field that Donald Trump, you know, casts over some element of the Republican party and they need to stamp it out and you know that in his heart of hearts Mitch McConnell wants to do that. He just doesn't want to leave any fingerprints. I think all they all would love to do that. I think they've all wanted to do that for a long time without leaving fingerprints. The problem

is no way to not to leave fingerprints. And this is their last chance. This is really their last chance to do it. And, you know, it's a gamble to the people, you know, they have to gamble that people are going to forget about Donald Trump and leave dissolution with him. And, you know, there is some, there may be some aspect of that that's happening already among the cuckoo, the cuckoo division of the republican party. I mean, the Q&on people are just apparently upset that all of the prophecies have not come true. And you have the proud boys, apparently. I saw some reports saying the proud boys.

You know, I think Donald Trump is a P-U-S-S, you know what, for having given up on trying to destroy the country. My favorite headline today was Q-N-on-in-disarray. which posits the situation that Qaeda was ever in any kind of an array. Yeah. You just didn't understand it because you didn't believe. I know. I didn't trust the plan. My favorite Q&N thing is that they've decided that Biden is actually Trump.

Right. The face-off theory? It's beautiful. Yes, that he's actually, or Trump is a shadow president. So just for our audience members who are all very youthful and vigorous. back in the dawn of time in the 90s I think it was the 90s. Tell me more. The truth was the 90s.

Molly, when you were in middle school. That's right. In the 90s, there was a John Wu movie starring Master Thespians, Nicholas Cage and John Travolta. The title of this film is Face Off. Face Off is a delicious

two plus hours of pure 90s movie cheese, but the nut of the face-off premise is that an advanced surgical technique would allow John Travolta's character to switch places with Nicholas Cage's character. Nicholas Cage is the criminal mastermind.

John Prervolta as the dedicated FBI agent. So the theory of Q right now in some sectors of Q is that the face-off surgery is real and not from a 1990s cheese movie. Right, exactly. And that somehow Joe Biden and Donald Trump have swapped bodies

and that the person on the stage yesterday was Donald Trump. It makes a lot of sense, doesn't it? When you think about it, You've got a wall, you know, and I've got yarn going between the pins. It's really the only answer that makes sense, truly. What else could it be? I mean, it's just so simple and so obvious. I saw it all along, man.

I saw it along. So clear. There needs to be like a new term that's like Q's Razor, which is just to find the most stupid explanation for everything and make let that explain the world. That's what it needs to be. I believe I shall call that Gorka's Razor. Gorka's Razor. Oh, my gosh.

Mr. Cannon, how dare you besperch my reputation as a gentleman, as a philosopher and a scholar, for I am Seb Gorka, the dragon of Budapest. Oh, Jesus. We're never going to be able to have an episode where he doesn't do a Sep Gorka impersonation, right? That's just like the rule. We can fuck the guy and Rick doing Seb Gorka impressions. Why don't you get, why don't you do ads for the supplement play thing that he did? I'm Seth Gorka, and while I'd rest in my coffin of a... from my native land every night, I also consume fish oil in addition to the blood of virgins.

Jesus Christ. I feel more vital than I have in 1400 years. Jesse, there must be something else we can talk about. Oh, no, George, don't join him. Yes, George has joined. Fish pills are best. Jesse, please take control of him. us now. Help us.

No, Jesse. No, let us play. No, stop. I would love for us to talk about what you guys think some of the logic might be behind these pardons aside from just the... How many are there? 140 was it

in the end? 149. I think it was like 142 overnight and then they threw in one for Piro's ex-pusband. Oh, that's right. Mr. Box of Wine. Yes, Judge Box of Wine's husband. So what's the thinking there?

A couple of things there. First of all, he loves, he loves pardons because pardons are basically an unchecked power of the president. He doesn't have to consult with anyone. He doesn't want to. It's not subject to review by the courts. It doesn't require legislative approval. It's just something that really is an, is an. exercise of pure presidential power that's unchecked. So he loves that. And then, you know, it's

something he can do to reward friends and, you know, and that's what he did with it, essentially. I mean, some of them a lot of, you know, there were these people who may have had, you know, unduly long sentences arguably, and that, you know, his son-in-law and daughter were pushing for. there were others that celebrities were pushing for and he loves doing things that put him into the same league as celebrities who people are on television so that's why kim kardashian had you know influence over one pardon i think a while back and um that's really what he and it's also a way of thumbing his nose at everyone so and then and then there's also the the the the pardons that really benefit him as well as reward loyalty to him even if it arguably constitutes obstruction of justice, which it arguably

should have in the case of Roger Stone and possibly Paul Manafort. So that's what he likes about. And I think it is exemplified actually by the Piero pardon. I forget his. Right. Cronism. It's basically apparently Judge Boxal Wine got in his ear saying, you didn't pardon my ex-husband. You didn't pardon my ex-husband, which is sort of interesting because, you know, he did commit tax fraud. They were joint returns, so she's lucky she didn't get in trouble to. But he's, you know, and it's a weird thing too because I think, you know, that case was like 20 years ago. Right. But I think it's fundamentally, I always feel like the underlying issue with Trump

and Partons is that he doesn't believe white collar crimes are criminal. Well, look, I think, I think that the, if you can't, if you build a typology of these, yes, Molly, for sure. He thinks white collar crimes are. are not crimes. They're just the sort of thing that you weren't, you mistakenly got caught. Right. Exactly. That's the one way he shows empathy. There, but for the grace of God, go I. Right. Okay. Jared pushing all these pardons for the rap guys, that is clearly a way to bootstrap his career in hip hop. I get that. I understand it. Clearly.

He's going to be dropping an album later this year. He's in studio already. The starfucker aspect of it is for sure a big part of it. And there are a few on there, just like when he pardoned Stone a few weeks ago and pardoning Bannon. Some of that is just like, I'm going to own the libs. Fuck you. Right. But it's also like they didn't testify against me, so I want to protect them. Well, sure. Oh, yeah, for sure.

That's definitely a factor. I mean, there's quid pro quo. That's the Stone case. He basically was saying to Stone essentially publicly, stay strong, stay strong. And the question was whether, you know, Stone was in a position, as it's made clear by the Senate select committee on intelligence report that came out in August that really got relatively little press. But Stone, I mean, the Senate committee, the Republican-controlled Senate committee concluded that Trump may have committed perjury in denying, recalling any conversations with anyone about

WikiLeaks. And there's evidence. You know, there was contrary evidence that the Senate committee found. And the one person who could have testified about that against Trump was Roger Stone. And lo and behold, he, you know, got a commutation and a pardon. So that's kind of functioning. I mean, I, but I do think fundamentally, Trump doesn't give a shit about these crimes. So it's easy to pardon 142 people if you don't think crimes are crimes. Right. And he's a psychopath.

It also explains why Julian Assange and Joe Exotic didn't get them. Right. Joe Exotic had a limousine waiting outside of his jail cell. Like, talk about over, you know, counting your chickens before they can't hatch. I just want to say to Joe Exotic, you believed a Trump? Are you kidding me with the shit? You thought there was something happening for you with the Trump? The check is in the male Trump family?

Get the fuck out of here. So speaking of believing a Trump, he also lifted the lobbying ban for his people. What do we make of that? which Biden promptly reinserted. Right. Does that even make any difference? It doesn't. You know what it is? He, that was, I heard that that was from Mark Meadows, that Mark Meadows wants to go out into the private sector right away,

and he thought that would destroy him financially, and Trump was amenable to that. That's something I picked up yesterday. But he didn't realize that Biden could reinstate it? Mark Meadows is not terribly bright, as we have noticed. Well, that's what Michael Cohen said. I mean, Mark Meadows poking a toaster with a fork would not be off-brand at all, a live toaster with a fork would not be off-branded at all.

I don't understand it. Look, I think there's a degree to which the last flurry of executive orders and pardons, they are all just a shitty coda to a shitty presidency. They're just a final, it's a final fuck you to normalcy and decency in law. And ironically, for the party of law and order, you know, this president will go down as the most corrupt and lawless president, including Nixon in the last century. I keep going back to this.

You know, George, maybe I have some thoughts on this. Nixon's crimes were all about political gain. They weren't about person. Nixon wasn't trying to get rich off of Watergate. He was never about the money at that point. I think that's fair. And what he did was basically he found out about the Watergate breaking. These people were doing all sorts of stuff that he didn't fully understand or know about.

And then they started trying to figure out how to cover it up. And he played along with it. And he wasn't the instigator in that sense. although he obviously bears responsibility for having overseen the culture under which all of this illegality, the plumbers and the, you know, the break-in to Ellsberg office, all these things that they were doing illicitly. Now, it was his mentality and his attitude toward things that allowed that to flourish, even if he didn't know about all of it. Right. Right. And then when they covered it all up and they said they had to get money for some of the burglars, you know, he, He said, well, I know where that can be gotten.

I know where you can get the money. And then, you know, he went along with the cover-up and... Have Holderman. How have Holderman call our friend? Right. And, oh, well, we'll just have the... We'll don't have the CIA. Oh, God. The DOJ. Well, we've hit the NICS in person.

You know, we shouldn't touch this because it might dig up things from the bear pigs. You know, you know, still going along with that, and that was his participation. in the obstruction of justice. He kind of, you know, he wasn't the driving force, whereas if you read, for example, the Mueller report, Volume 2, which go through the obstruction that Trump committed, he was the driving force.

He was the one telling his, trying to get his, for example, his White House counsel to issue a false, to say something to Rosenstein, to fire Mueller and obstruct the investigation, and then tried to get, after it came out that he had done that, he tried to get McGahn to write a false memo to the file saying the president never told me

to do that. And McGahn almost resigned at that point. He was the, I mean, he was like a one-man show there and people were trying to get out of the way or avoid doing what he asked them to do. And that's a, that's a big difference between Nixon and Trump. But the other big difference is just the breadth of the criminality. I mean, you have Mueller, you have Ukraine, where he's basically trying to use the power of the purse over foreign aid to destroy a presidential candidate, who he thinks is going to be the most, the strongest candidate against him in the general election, which he was correct about. And then, of course, there are the, you know, the calls, the self-serving calls to the election officials,

which were, you know, I think they were illegal at federal law, and then inciting the insurrection. And then you have a whole of this, you know, long-heaval. of what the DA in Manhattan is investigating, that potential bank insurance fraud, inflating the value of properties on business financials and then understating them to tax authorities. And, you know, it's just, with Trump, it just doesn't end. I mean, there's always a scam going on with Trump. There really is.

There really always is. There's always a grift. There's always a scam. There's always a play. And frankly, I think it's ironic. I think it's ironic. He raised about $200 million saying that he needed money to stop the steal. And, you know, you couldn't spend $200 million on lawyer.

Even IBM didn't spend that when it litigated against the U.S. government for 20 years. You couldn't spend that money in one lifetime. And he raised $200 million. And the irony is then he pardons Bannon for raising money on false, for his charge, for raising money on false pretenses. I just can't get over that irony. He didn't pardoned Ken Paxton. It's almost more interesting who he didn't pardon, right?

He didn't pardon all the people who were sucking up to him for pardons. So we'd be remiss to not discuss the big speech yesterday. What did you guys think? I thought it was the best speech I'd ever heard, actually. And I'm not just saying that. I thought it was, as a speechwriter, I thought it was so perfectly crafted for the moment and was so honest to Joe Biden's personal character and who he is as a man. that that is a rare thing.

Look, many performers can go out and read a great speech, and it's great, it's convincing. It's persuasive. But when the speech meets the moment and the man at the same time, you get something much bigger. And, you know, I am not driven to a ton of emotional excesses. I was boo-hooing during parts of that speech because I was like, thank God, somebody who can write and a guy who believes what he's saying and it's real, and this is, This is necessary for our country to do. I mean, it's so true.

I mean, if you go through political speeches generally and presidential speeches in particular and then inaugural speeches, the subset of inaugural speeches, you get a lot of high-fluent, soaring language about democracy and unity. And, you know, it just seems like, it almost seems like boilerplate. But this moment was a very, very special moment where it was much more point. just because of the moment. And he was exactly the right person at that moment to be delivering those words. And as you say, it was written in a manner that really was Joe Biden. It really spoke the way he speaks. And it was just pitch perfect. He's actually a pretty good speaker. And then the expectations are

quite low, too. Well, it's funny because the Trump people were so dumb in the way. they dealt with him. Right. You want to raise expectations, not lower them. And they were just saying he couldn't read either. He couldn't, you know, he couldn't read anything. He would screw it all up. I mean, there were basically only maybe maybe one or two small stumbles in his delivery yesterday. Right. They were almost imperceptible if you listen carefully. I mean, I think he's quite a good speaker. And for, you know, the last two years, we've been told that he's a terrible speaker. So when he gets up there and he's quite good. It's like he's really, I mean, it just helps him so much.

So I think they have Trump really set him up in that way. Yeah, the constant repetition of Joe Biden has dementia. He can barely move, much less speak, much less understand the world around him. And then when he comes out and he's not, you know, they should have had a preview of this during the debates. But they couldn't cognitively pull themselves out of the fact that Trump needs to be, you know, he needs to be constantly fellated. And so people are just going to say, yeah, whatever the boss says is what we're going to say. say about Biden. No, it's interesting. And I mean, he did the same thing with Hillary, too. Remember

Hillary's health? It worked for him with Hillary for whatever reason. But it doesn't, but it's so clearly, when it doesn't work, it's so doesn't work. Right. When it's broken, it's broken. But I did think he was good, and I thought when he got out of the beast

and started running to the White House, that was extremely cinematic and quite you know, a crowd moment. And I thought it was good. And the truth is people, the one thing that Trump did well, I think, was that he did these sort of moments that kind of looked good on television. And Democrats tend not to do that because they sort of think of themselves as like smarter than that. And they shouldn't be.

Yeah. I can't phrase it better, Molly. Yeah, correct. Yeah, but I think the people in the White House now are very smart about all that stuff. I mean, I heard things the other day. they're going to basically go back to, you know, the old Reagan technique of focusing on an issue a day. Just one thing a day and hammer on that theme all day. And they're not going to have some guy tweeting bullshit to undercut it all.

I mean, you could actually have an infrastructure week if you actually wanted to with these people. And I think they do a good job of it. Yeah, there's definitely a case for, you know, world leaders not being on Twitter, for planning and organization and doing the things that, government is supposed to do. There's a case for that. Hey folks, if you haven't heard every single week, we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker, or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media, like Jim Acosta or

Soledite O'Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner, and sometimes it's just Molly and I shooting the shit. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast inside member where you'll support the Beast fearless journalism, as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member, head to new abnormal.com. That's new abnormal. dot the daily beast.com. Jackie Kucinich is the Washington Bureau chief of the Daily Beast, and today she's going to come and talk to us about what the hell is going on in Congress, because we sure don't understand what is. What is it like? I mean, we've gone from like this weird

Trumpism to all of a sudden we have Democrats controlling the House, the Senate, the presidency. I mean, is it very different? Does it feel very different? It doesn't quite yet. I mean, in terms of the fact that, you know, you have President Biden even talking about the coronavirus and response, you know, at least twice in the last 24 hours, yeah, it's a really big deal. And that is different. However, in terms of on the Hill, not quite yet. reason for that. So right now, Mitch McConnell, who is now the minority leader, and Chuck Schumer, who is now the majority leader, are at an impasse about the rules that are organizing the Senate. The power sharing. Yes, power sharing. Exactly. And as a part of that, one of the things Mitch McConnell

is trying to get Chuck Schumer to do is to essentially put in this organizing resolution, which is the, term for it. They're trying to get a provision in there to say they're not going to, to go out for the filibuster and that will remain intact, which is, of course, like the 60-vote threshold that makes the Senate less like the House when you just boil it down. And people who like the filibuster say it encourages bipartisanship and people who don't like it say that it makes it impossible for things to get done. So again, there are lots of more nuance there, but just just boiling it down. And Schumer's not willing to do that. And I think it's for lots of reasons. First of all, he's in charge now.

And he doesn't want to give McConnell. McConnell's been in charge for a number of years, and Chuck Schumer wants it to make sure that, you know, this is his show, right? And they don't want to give them that. Now, he said that there really isn't any interest in getting rid of the filibuster despite pressure to do so. But McConnell wants that assurance in this package.

It doesn't sound like that's going to happen, or at least Schumer said he's put his foot down. I do wonder if there is some kind of verbal agreement or something like that that ends up shaking this loose because right now they can't even organize committees. Right now there are still more Republicans than Democrats on committees that Democrats control. It's very strange. So this is very strange limbo. Biden nominees are in committees right now being interviewed. Right. They're getting the right like Pete Buttigieg was today. And so his nominees are right now being vetted and sent to the Senate for a vote. So and they're trying to get

cabinet hold out. So that also is complicated by the fact that this organizing resolution is not yet agreed upon. Now, they're expected to continue meeting on this. We don't know when it's actually going to come out. But eventually, what it's going to look like, they're trying to use the rules that were used in 2001 to the last time you had this 50-50 split. Right. Right. And so what that meant was. as they were split in half an even number of senators. And if there's a stalemate, if you have, you know, eight Democrats and eight Republicans voting 50-50 on that committee,

whatever they were debating on will go to the floor anyway. So nothing will die in committee if there is no majority, and the majority is in favor of it. Does that make sense? So nothing's going to be, nothing to die. You won't have Mitch McConnell's legislative grade. graveyard anymore. I mean, it's still going to be really hard to govern.

Right. This is razor thin, as thin as it gets, which is one of the reasons that there is some hesitance to get rid of a filibuster among some Democrats, because this could easily twing back to Republicans. It is not beyond the realm of possibility, right? So there are sometimes with when parties go in the majority, there is sometimes an impulse to try to, you know, get all this stuff, change the rules. and get as much stuff done as possible, but there are consequences to that.

I mean, will Chuck Schumer have to cave, or can they work something out that they'll both like? Again, one of the things that I know has been floated, and I don't know how seriously at this point, because everything is massively fluid, is that, you know, perhaps, this isn't coming from Schumer's people or anything, but perhaps, you know, Schumer might seek to just say it on the Senate floor. There would be some kind of verbal agreement to not go after the filibuster. And, I mean, these are both institutionalists. I don't think Chuck Schumer really wants to get rid of the filibuster. And so that might suffice, but we'll have to see.

But they're going to have to do something to shake this loose. But it seemed Democrats were pretty dug in against not putting this in the rule. But didn't Biden say that he wasn't going to get rid of the filibuster? It's not his call, though, right? Right. So you think, though, they're going to sort of figure it out and they'll have the committees? Yes. I mean, they're going to have to do this.

And it just depends on how far McConnell is going to push it. It won't remain like this forever. But based on the, I guess, field and how things look right now, Democrats are pretty dug in that they were not going to give McConnell this, you know, right out of the gate. Do you think that McConnell is feeling the pressure of this corporate money issue with the, senators who vote, who, you know, the six Republican senators who supported this addition? You know, he's been very close to best with the whole, you're talking about impeachment? Yeah.

Well, I'm talking about, you know, that after those six senators voted to not accept the election results at the end, you know, the Ted Cruz types, that there was, you know, there's been some, like, blowback from corporate money. And I'm just curious to know what, if you're seeing any kind of evidence of McConnell feeling pressured in one way or the other. I mean, he has to walk this line between the MAGA base and the corporate dollars. So I'm curious to know if you see that. I don't know the answer to that yet, Molly, because, yeah, because, well, I mean, so, and I'll tell you why. There is concern among Republicans. I don't know if McConnell specifically.

I can't imagine he's not concerned. I mean, he has to defend these people. But there is concern among Republicans who, you know, want to see Republican senators get re-elected that this money isn't going to be there. Now, the big question is how much these companies hold out because some of them are just like reassessing or they're not going to give money the first quarter of a non-election year. And it does, I mean, yes, there are a lot of fundraiser scheduled, of course, and they start raising money like instantly. But the fact that it's the first quarter of not an election year, that can be made up. Right. So it could mean nothing. It could be, I mean, they could just be CYA at this point because they, the easiest thing for a company to do right now to avoid scrutiny from the public and the media is to say, oh, you know what, we're reassessing.

We're going to come back to you after the first quarter. So that takes the heat off of them until April. So I'd be curious, you know, come March, whether that pressure starts to manifest itself somehow. Right. That makes sense. What do you think is going to be the first thing that they're going to pass when they get things? going. Do you have a sense on that after the cabinet gets through? So I know, I can tell you the priorities for Democrats is COVID release.

Right. What form that takes, I think, you know, the House, Nancy Pelosi said today that they're going to be working on that bill. The Heroes Act? Yes, I believe so. All next week, getting that stimulus bill ready. But that's still going to take it, take time to work its way through the process. But that, that is, I know, the number one priority for members, which is another reason why this impeachment situation is such a conundrum for Democrats in the Senate because everything ceases, right?

Including Biden's nominees. I thought you could do impeachment in the afternoon or now. I don't think that's been hammered out yet. Okay. That's something they discussed. But, you know, this could be problematic. Right. It slows everything down.

Do you think that there are any of Biden's cabinet appointees that are really going to get stuck and not go through? Well, now that they have the House and the Senate, excuse me now that he has, the Senate is the Democratic Senate, I don't think you're going to have as many problems as you may have before. Well, we'll have to see. I haven't heard any noise about any particular nominees on the Democratic side since the Senate flipped. And you also forgive me because of everything that's happened since Georgia. Right. Right. Right. I honestly haven't asked around about every single month. nominee, but, you know, that the whole concept of a Democratic Senate is just relatively new.

Right. It's true. It seems like it's kind of amazing. Lee, it's just a big change. I think even in the Senate, it's the big change and people are still wrapping their brains around it because it just, it was, it was not expected. No one expected. I mean, people would say, oh, I knew, but no one expected to win both of those races. So, so, um, and, and, it was, it was not expected. And, And that also is sort of, you know, making things run a little slower and not firing at all cylinders as maybe it would have, you know, say Democrats took control right after the 2020 election. That did not happen, even though a lot of people thought it was. Do you think that when they have worked out this power-sharing arrangement, they'll have sort of slightly less power than the Republicans had before, right? Right.

And the power shift is going to be so interesting because all of a sudden, your Joe Mansions, your Kristen Cinema, Senator Kelly, Brandy's senator, you know, the senators from Georgia are going to, and, you know, still Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, these are going to be the most, these swing votes. And we don't know with Osama or not yet where they're going to fall in terms of like what their voting records going to look like. But particularly your mansions and your cinemas, they're going to be the most. important people and we're all going to be watching them and where their votes go on all of these measures. I mean, Manchin on the onset with the, with $2,000. Yeah.

And he kind of indicated he needed to see the details, right? So they're going to end, you know, that McCowski had already been reached out to by the Biden administration as they're working through it. So those are still going to end up, I mean, as much as things change, things stay the same, particularly in the U.S. Senate. And the moderates, again, are going to be the votes that really, really move things. Oh, that's so interesting. I hate to base questions off of the text I receive all through the night, but all of my friends seem to be saying, what the hell is holding Nancy Pelosi up? And my guess was like that they want to just have the Biden administration, have some wins. But do you have any explanation for why she can't walk this impeachment bill

over to the Senate? Remember, the last impeachment, she held on to do the articles for a couple of weeks while Democrats got their strategies together for the impeachment round one. So with this one, she said today that they were, that the House was ready and they were kind of waiting for the Senate to work things out. And until today, this is another wrinkle here, until today, Donald Trump didn't have a lawyer. Oh, did he get a lawyer? Wait, who is this lawyer? It's no one you've heard of before. His name is Butch Bowers.

He's a South Carolina. Oh, Jesus. And apparently he's good at his job. Yeah, that was one of the things holding it up, believe it or not, is that he didn't have representation. So now that the former president has representation. We could see this move forward. I think the idea that this was going to start the day of, Biden's inauguration just wasn't realistic.

Right. I saw that being pushed, like, right after they passed it. It just didn't seem right. But once, as you guys know, once she walked across, but let's say as soon as tomorrow, let's say they walk it across tomorrow, assuming the Senate is out this weekend, they would have to take it up on Monday.

So there is a lot of planning that goes into this. And that, that's, it seems like there are just a lot of moving pieces still going on. I'm going to be a take, but it doesn't. It seems like there's a lot of, on several sides, on things getting finalized and put into place. It's such an strange, wacky world. Thank you so much for coming on. This was so interesting and helpful.

I hope this is informative because there's so much that's like... You know, folks, today, as always, and as I tell you many, many times, as required by federal, state, local law, and international treaty, we have one mandatory segment on the show, and that segment is Fuck That Guy. George Conway, the brilliant attorney, suggested we skip that. I just don't want to face the wrath of not only our listeners, but law enforcement around the world. Interpol would be up my ass in about 35 seconds if we didn't do a fuck that guy. I'm just feeling so magnanimous.

I don't know I can do it today. I hear it in your voice, George, and I salute it. I do. I salute it. It makes my heart almost human-sized for a second to think about coming together. Is that my count as unity? Well, yes. You know what?

In the spirit of unity, I believe I'm going to leave. lead off. My fuck that guy for today is Fox News. You, Rupert, and you, Lachlan, it's Fox News. Fuck that guy. Tell us why. They spent last night, okay, during the inauguration yesterday and during the night last night, their coverage immediately went to full communism is coming. Joe Biden's socialist army is sweeping the country like rabid locusts. Can locusts be rabid? No. Like locusts, preparing to tear apart your communities, force you into a sharia gay marriage.

It's all over. Antifa has a cabinet office now. What will you do, America? Live in fear! Fuck that guy. It's so performative and it's so cheesy and it's so shallow. Tucker Crossing, lesson, glaring at the screen with his squint, with a Cairo that says, there's a lot we don't know about Joe Biden.

Oh, what? He's from Delaware. That he goes by the name, he goes by the name Abu Joe, and he runs around the country, blowing shit up? No. Sorry, Tucker. But the idea that we're going to have any kind of unity from Fox, remember 24 hours before that, all the Fox were saying,

we've got to have unity. If we impeach Trump there, there will be no unity. Oh, my God, there's no unity if we don't. Well, immediately, at 1147 a.m. to yesterday at morning, it was Joe Biden, full communism. He's worse than linen, Stalin, Pol Pot, Hitler, all put together. So anyway, fuck that guy, Fox. Just to add to your fuck that guy for a minute,

But what Fox has done now, which is fire basically whatever was left of the quote-unquote news side, which was very opinion-y anyway, means that now Fox has gone sort of full OAN. Right? They've become sort of big newsmax. And so they're going to be worse. They're going to ultimately be, you know, they're not even going to have this sort of supposition of news. There's not even going to be the pretense. And so I do think that they really deserve to have a large and elaborate fuck that guy this week. Because Rupert Murdoch and Lachlan Murdoch have made the choice that the truth is just of no interest to them.

And they're going to double down on this, even though they know that this leads to autocracy and fascism because we've seen it already. So fuck you both, Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch. All right. So in the interest of unity, I'm going to agree with you. And I do think that Fox News is a stain on American democracy and on the media. It's just, I mean, we have seen where disinformation leads us. We have seen it. It leads to basically a large segment of the population being believing what they want to believe

and then consuming more of what they want to consume that, you know, and allowing them to engage in self-delusion. And part of that vicious cycle is basically bad actors doing this for profit, you know, selling people what they want to buy, except that it's poison. And it's poison for our society, it's poison for our democracy. And that's the really difficult thing we have to deal with going forward because we do have, you know, freedom of speech. And that has to be preserved.

And you can't, you know, we preserve. freedom of speech requires, you know, laying off even speech that is you believe to be untrue because who's the final arbiter of truth? And the only way you can fight it is by fighting it with the truth, you know, out there and persuading and shaming those people who spread lies, persuading them and shaming them into not spreading lies. And that's the only way we can achieve, you know, a better place where we have a common set of facts, even if we have different opinions about those facts. And that's why I think, you know, calling out Fox News is the right thing to do. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new Abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future

episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks in the Daily Beast and beyond for media, culture, politics, and science who will 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 the show on social media. to follow us on Twitter. I'm at Molly Jongfast and he's at the Rick Wilson. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darker.

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