The Daily Beast Podcast - Did Trump Blow Off Some Sketchy Intel? Or Commit Treason?

Episode Date: June 30, 2020

Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast have some thoughts on the matter in the latest episode of The New Abnormal. “It's not just treason. It's historic treason,” Rick says about the revelation that the Russians offered bounties on U.S. soldiers—and Trump kissed up to the Kremlin anyway. “This is a guy who was already going down into the dustbin of history. And now there's going to be a line at his grave where they're going to have to throw cat litter down. Because people are gonna piss on it for all time.” Plus! Democratic Rep. Connor Lamb talks up his favorite Republican. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison gets real about police unions. (“I'm reluctant to even call it a police union because a union is an honorable, wonderful institution,” he says. “These institutions are not like that at all. The teacher's union does not deliberately harm the kids. Nurses don't hurt the patients. UAW doesn't break the cars.”) And Molly dishes on White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany: “At least with Sean Spicer, you did feel he possessed a human soul. Whereas with Kaylee, it's just this sort of terrifying, blonde sea of obfuscation.”  Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi folks, it's Rick Wilson, and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, a left-wing pundit, an editor-at-large at the Daily Beast. I'm also an editor 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, business, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. I'll try to keep Rick to the minimum number of F-bombs and try to keep our kids, pets, and other wildlife sounds from invading our respective bunkers.

So, Rick, Wild Weekend, this weekend. Was it, I spent the majority of my weekend staring into computer screens making ads, but that's just me and my humble Garrett. You came out a little bit to focus on the blockbuster Russia story, which was reported first by the New York Times. You mean the story where the most pro-true president ever didn't do a goddamn thing when he found out that Vladimir Putin was offering the Taliban. cash to murder American soldiers?

Yeah, that was what I was thinking about. You mean that president who wraps himself, quite literally wraps himself in the flag and sits quietly by, while Vladimir fucking Putin pays the fucking Taliban to kill American soldiers? That president? He's also the president who signed off on

the largest concentration camps in the world. You know, look, he's got to have a diverse sort of set of egregious fucking behaviors that he wants every day. Man, I'm like a B-52 during Operation Alliance, backer dropping the F-bombs today. It's just going to be a rough-eyed kid. Just curse it out, man. Yeah, you know what? He deserves it. And look, the word traitor and the word treason in this country gets abused like crazy. It's true. But sometimes by you. But in this case, it's not an abuse of the word.

He met the literal definition of treason. He gave aid and comfort to the enemy and abetted the enemy. He did not take action. Let me tell you something. I imagine that George Bush and Barack Obama had either one of them been briefed on this operation and heard this, the first thing wouldn't have been, oh, let's let Vladimir Putin back into the G8. It would have been, how do we retaliate? It would have been, how do we go after these people? How do we stop them? How do we send Putin a signal that he's not allowed to fuck with us like this? How do we make him bleed? How do we extract a cost from him? And either one of those guys would have done that. I truly believe it. The dual hypocrisy here of Donald Trump, I love my troops. I love my generals. I'm so much smarter.

than they are. And simultaneously, knowing about a program where Vladimir Putin paid cash to the Taliban to murder American soldiers. It's not just treason. It's high treason. It's not just treason. It's historic treason. This is a guy who was already going down to the dustbin of history. And now there's going to be a line at his grave where they're going to have to throw cat litter down because people are going to piss on it for all time. Wait, things got very dark. Right? The cat, is that a thing, cat litter? You know what cat litter is, right? No, I've heard of it, yes. He's selling in stores.

Do you have a maid servant for the cat litter? I don't have a cat. You monster. I'm going to get you a cat. I'm going to get you a hairless cat. Nice. I just want to get back to this for a second. That was not actually the worst thing that happened to Donald Trump this weekend, though.

Well, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the villages. Florida's friendliest hometown. I am not familiar with the... Where is it, Rick Wilson? Tell us about the villages, because all I know about Florida is there's, like, beach and then you're there and Disney World and the largest COVID spike and the worst governor. I don't want to seem hostile, but congratulations because Florida has a larger COVID spike than all of Europe. Well done, DeSantis. Well done, Florida. There's a rule. Florida is always trying

to kill you. It's true. Whether it's face eating meth zombies or alligators or venomous reptiles or the fucking humidity. It's right now, by the way, if I may quote another one of my grandmother's favorite phrases. A total non sequitur in some ways, it's hot as a Borneo horouse. So I don't even think they have horhouses in Borneo. Are my even supposed to say horouse? She was a woman born in 1917, so she's allowed to have certain colorful phrases. Tell us about the villages, Rick Wilson. So the villages is where Maga goes to die. Where is it? It's north of Orlando. It's in Sumter County. It is a gigantic population of Republican voters. I haven't run the numbers in the villages recently, but it's about an 80-20 split, maybe 75, 25 on a good day.

And their particular flavor of maga is the flavor of maga that thinks that most of Maga are a bunch of Hillary Clinton, George Soros sympathizers. Their flavor of maga is the pure, esoteric maga. I mean, if there were sectarian religious wars between divisions of Maga, these guys would be like the opus day of the Catholic Church, okay? They are hard-ass maga to the hilt. I mean, when Donald Trump loses, they'll probably be throwing themselves in a funeral pyre. It's that maga-ish.

Now, of course, the village has managed to find its way to the national news this weekend because of a golf cart parade. Are you familiar with golf cart parades, Molly? I have been in a golf cart. I have driven a golf cart. I enjoy it very much. I'm not a great driver, as you can imagine. I would trust you with any wheeled vehicle. You shouldn't.

Tell me what a golf cart parade is. This is well out of my wheelhouse here. If you're doing a golf cart parade in the village, as you go down to the, Hobby Lobby and grab yourself some craft supplies. Jesus. This is a deep cut here. And you decorate your golf cart with various pro-Trump signs, banners, ribbons, insignia, gygaws, if you will. And you drive up and down the main drag in the villages, honking your golf cart horn and yelling things like Maga and also yelling things like white power.

Yes, I saw eight seconds into the video. He yells white power. Eight seconds into a video of some people confronting a Moga. golf cart parade in the villages. A gentleman yells out, white power! White power! Twice. This would ordinarily be dismissed as the kind of like villages,

MAGA excess that you would expect in a lily white retirement suburb for people who moved down here from a variety of colder places to die in peace and warmth. It would have made the rounds on YouTube and would have made the rounds on social. But it was tweeted by someone with a fairly prominent Twitter following, Molly. Do you know who that was? I do know who that was. She tells us who that fuck that guy is. It was one Donald Trump, and what was fascinating was not so much that he tweeted it because he tweeted a lot of crazy stuff this weekend, a lot. And he tweets a lot of racist stuff. But what was fascinating was I thought the response because Trump world at first were like, it's ironic racism. The guy is being, he's saying white power in an ironic way. Now, I'm sorry, I'm at a loss here.

Irony is a slippery thing. It's a complex thing and it should be handled by trained professionals. Or people who can write their own name. irony of their irony defense is that nothing about this was ironic. Nothing about this was subtle. Nothing about this is funny. They're not making fun of the social justice warriors. This is a feature, not a bug. This is from the birther-in-chief. This is from the guy who thought the Central Park 5 needed the death penalty without a trial. This is from the guy who didn't want black dealers on the floor of his casino because he and his wife didn't like seeing them. This is the guy who talked about he doesn't want black guys counting his money. He wants guys wearing yarmacca's

his money. So it's double racism, really. So the racism is a feature of Trump, not a bug. It has long been present. It has long been central to this group of people who very much hate the idea that the America that they dreamed about from the 1950s is disappearing. And he played to that in Steve Bannon's crafting of the campaign and Stephen Miller's crafting of it, who you refer to as Santa Monica Goebbels, which I just adore. And this entire group around them that started out saying, you know, the alt-right, those are the natural foot soldiers of our movement. You know that Bannon's trying to get back in. Oh, I know Bannon's trying to get back in.

He'd suck a golf ball through a garden hose to get back in. He wants in so bad. He wants in so bad. Of course Bannon wants back in. And this is the kind of thing. I guarantee you he was flapping his little flippers together. Yeah, he showed those cucks. Well, even Trump pulled the tweet down.

You know it's some bad racism when even Donald Trump's people go, ooh, damn, boss, that was some racism. God, that was amazing. I mean, for him to take down a tweet, it has to be so bad. Right. I mean, I was sort of shocked by that. Well, Tim Scott, the only African-American GOP senator. I have to tell you, I feel so bad for him.

I know we're not supposed to, but, I mean, I just feel like that is the worst job in America. He came straight out and said, no, it's unexcusable. Take it down. I had a friend send me recently a recording from one of these Trump training calls that they were doing with their grassroots people. And whoever the briefer was said, we expect to win 35% of the African-American vote. Did people laugh? No one laughed. No one made a sound.

It's just like, okay. I think they may have been mistaken because it should be three to five percent of the African-American vote. I think three to five would be pretty amazing. Well, I mean, I will say this. My model that I'm looking at right now is, I know this is just going to nerd out for a second. It's about 7.1, which is historically low. And, I mean, that's practically like inside the margin of error where people like, I don't know what line I'm voting on. But yeah, so he tweets that out and has to withdraw it.

But they've all these Trumpy sycophants have already defended it. Of course. they already were all out there before he pulled the tweet down. They're like, shut up, Cuck. You just libtards. You just, you know, you're all with the rioters. You're just jealous. The president is strong.

And of course, when he pulls it down, they're all left holding their dicks as they always are. Yeah, I don't mind that. And the Russia lie was the same thing. He's out there saying, it's not true. And they're saying, no, this is a lie. It's Russia hoax part two. And yet slowly all day long today, intelligence agencies confirming. The president was brief.

The president knew. The president was told. The Times covered it, the Washington Post. AP. Everyone has confirmed this story. This is not some like outlier story. Right. This isn't Donald Trump with Russian hookers in a P party.

This is a bolted down sourced story. And of course, they're not going to say their names on the record because it's the intelligence community. This has obviously generated an enormous explosion inside that world. They are furious. They are livid. And by the way, there was a great tell. I don't know if you saw Richard Grinnell out there.

I never heard about this. Can you explain to me? Is he still in the story? national security or did he go back into the campaign? He's out in the world now. He's on the campaign or something with all the information he got from being on the inside. But he said, I wasn't briefed on this and all I could think of was, and you think that's a mistake that you weren't briefed on it? I liked when they were like, it wasn't in the PDB and then they came out, I think, oops, it was in the PDB. Right. It was in the PDB, but you can't expect Trump to read the PDB

because he can't read. Yeah, the PDB has to either be in a set of simple pictograms that a child could use, or, as I like to always say, acted out in a tableau vivant. He doesn't have the attention span. Though remember when COVID was sort of spreading like wildfire, and I was at horrible CPAC, and Trump missed some briefing so he could watch the Lisa Page and Peter Struck play? Right. This weekend was like a slurry of all the worst aspects of Donald Trump.

treason, racism, incompetence, short attention span. Banned on Reddit. And then today's tragedy. Ladies and gentlemen, pour one out. I was just kidding. For the former subreddit of champions, the former home of QAnon, the former home. Is it the home of QAnon or slash the Donald? Well, I'll tell you that in a second.

The Donald, at first, the Donald people actually started to throw out the QAnon people. I love sectarian warfare between the idiots. But the Donald was banned from Reddit today. for the constant hate speech and the doxing and the craziness and the threats and the harassment and the bullshit. And social media right now is melting down over this entire thing. And it just blows me away because for all these free market capitalists who keep saying, well, this private company needs to do what I tell it and post the bull stuff that I like ideologically. I'm not sure that's how capitalism works.

Yeah, they're not so big on capitalism. It's a weird thing. I mean, we're going to definitely have Josh Hawley. screaming about this and saying the tech companies need to be regulated. They hate regulation except for when it comes to things they don't like. Well, can I just say this? I suspect Facebook is going to have some experience with regulation if Donald Trump loses, and they're not going to like it.

So here's a question for you just to talk about the interview we did today. Sure. Since the Republican Party is basically smoldering corpse, right? I was thinking about that we interviewed Connor Lamb just before this, which will come out later. Is he like your, if you had to sort of hitch your wagon to a political, is that sort of your world now? Would you say that's a... Look, my world in the medium term is the destruction of Donald Trump in all his works, then salting the earth, then hunting down and killing all the barge that would tell his tail, tearing their tongues up by the roots. Will cat litter be involved in this?

No, there's no cat litter involved in this part. And then ordering an industrial amount of salt to go into the ground where every Trump property once stood. But that's just me. I'm made of sterner stuff than many. You're a generous fellow. Yes, but not merciful. No, clearly not. But I will say this.

The country, and I've written about this, we've talked about this before, Conor Lamb types can get elected almost anywhere. Louis Gohmert types can get elected almost nowhere. AOC types can get elected almost nowhere except major metros. Do we have to fight about AOC today? We don't have to, it's because I'm right. Give me 50 Connor Lambs, and I'll go out and I'll win 30 Republican seats away from them. You give me 50 AOCs in the same seats, and I will win one or two.

But she doesn't need to win. I'm saying people of that particular ideological stripe. See, I disagree. I think that, I mean, and we talked about this in the interview, Democrats need to have big dreams. Even if they're not necessarily right, Republicans have these larger things they want to get to. I'm not sure I agree with you, that's what I'm saying. Well, look, there's a difference between policy and elections. I exist completely in the world of elections.

If I want policy, I hire somebody to do it. If I want policy, I release the nerds. They're like craaking with bad social lives. But Connor Lamb won in part because of his bio, because of his persona, because he came out, he said, look, I'm a Catholic guy from this part of the world. This is who I am. I'm not punched out of a factory in Washington, D.C. I'm not Prague bot number 72. I am Connor Lamb. I'm one of you. I'm one of your people. I get it. I'm from this part of the world that's had a tough time. You used to have some Republicans that were like that, that you don't need more, really. The Trump sort of virus has purged than they've all lost or they've been booted out or they've run away. But I think he's a fascinating character because of that. And look, Pelosi did something really smart in 2018.

She said to the committee, stop all the vetting bullshit about whether they're exactly right on every ideological thing. Go find winners. Right. Go find winners. The guy's been a winner so far. He's a vital part of a Democratic Party that if it's going to expand and capitalize on the collapse of the GOP, you need a lot of Connor Lambs in the mix. Right.

That is definitely true. Hey, so, Molly, have you been tested for COVID? I've been tested for the antibodies. Well, a lot of people were tested for COVID with tests that were faulty. Did you hear about that one? Yes, I did. Because the antibody test a total disaster. My take on this is it's like, in any other time, we would think this is a gigantic story.

We're going to get to the bottom of it. There's going to be congressional hearings. And now it's gone off of social media. It's already done. The level of fuck-upery that never stops made this story. It's horrifying. And yet you're just like, okay, moving on. What's next?

It's really like a just tiny speed bump in the larger cluster. that is the WHO fucked up, the CDC fucked up, everybody has fucked up at every turn, which is why we're all never going to be able to leave our houses. The whole pray for a vaccine idea, I'm really starting to adopt it. What else could go right? Nothing. I'm surprised Trump hasn't said that if people drink my bathwater, like the Omshin Riccio cult. Do you remember that?

There was a cult in Japan back in the 90s called Omshin Riccio. And the leader sold his bath water. to his followers under the name Miracle Pond. Oh, good for him. And his followers eventually mounted a sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway. Oh, I remember that. So the story wasn't quite as funny in the end. Yeah.

But they had Miracle Pond as their sort of like holy water of the Omshan Riccio cult. I'm surprised there's not Trump water. I mean, it seems inevitable that we're going to get there, right? And Trump steaks and Trump vitamins. Folks, Conner Lamb is a Democrat in a red area and reddish part of a reddish state. and he has got the unique experience of being one of the few guys in Congress who was able to pull that off during the era of Donald Trump. I won't say he's a moderate, but he certainly is a guy who represents, I think, a viable strain of the Democratic Party and in a lot of places where Republicans hold seats right now. And so we're really interested in having a conversation with him today.

And welcome to the show. What's it like being a Democrat in a fairly conservative part of Pennsylvania? You know, I think it keeps you honest. It means that I really have to work hard to try to earn the support and trust. of a lot of people, of a lot of different viewpoints in my district, I guess. But it probably doesn't feel as strange to me as it might seem from the outsider from a big city because I grew up here. This is just how Western Pennsylvania is. And there's a long tradition of what a Western Pennsylvania Democrat is, which is somebody who is very democratic on economic issues, on union rights, on that

kind of thing, but maybe has some more personally conservative tendencies, often Catholic or Christian, and kind of from that background. And so it feels pretty natural to me. We're up to 9-9 in our congressional delegation, 9-9Ds and 9-Rs, which is a big change. And when I ran, the split was 513, 5 Democrats and 13R in the course of a single election. We switched that to 9-9. So, you know, what I thought was interesting when I ran was that all over the area when I first campaigned, even though President Trump had won that district by 19 percentage points, 19, the majority of elected officials I would meet at the local level were still Democrats.

They were gun owners and church members and very, very connected to their communities and maybe weren't Orthodox, according to the 2018 or 2020 Democratic Orthodoxy. But they were Democrats for sure. They taught me something, which is that you really can go out and connect with people on these core economic issues, regardless of what's happening at the national level. You feel like you have a message that works across sort of the partisan divide that otherwise separates us in this country so extraordinarily. I don't know if I can speak to that on a level other than to say it was striking that. a lot of us who took Republican seats in 2018 did so on a less partisan and more pragmatic basis, meaning we talked about just the fact that people were paying too much for health care, the fact that decency and integrity and bipartisanship and politics should still mean something.

Sometimes people make fun of that, or they, you know, I certainly got made fun of a lot in my first campaign by a lot of national journalists and party regulars and all that kind of thing. But to me, that speak in the language of the people that I represent who are very hardworking and responsible and good to each other. And they want to see us apply some of the same common sense that they live their lives with. Do you find it's sort of a balancing act being a moderate? Are you more careful? Like, what does that look like in day-to-day life? Thank you for asking it that way, because I do think this gets misunderstood sometimes by people in the media or commentators. Like the idea that we're being careful, that we're always walking

this tightrope or whatever on every issue and our fingers in the air to see kind of which way the wind is blowing is really not accurate for me and for most of the people I'm friends with down here in D.C. who think in a similar way, I would describe it more like I was trained as an officer in the Marines, my first job out of law school, and there's just a very brutal and stark pragmatism that comes with that kind of training, you know, right? They're throwing you in a stressful situations and saying, no matter how bleak and hopeless and overwhelming, it seems, you have to find a way to advance and you have to find a way to lead other people behind you. And it might not be pretty, but forward progress is what really matters. And I,

I would say that is how many of us who happen to be veterans approach this whole thing. I feel just as deeply the injustices in our society and all the wrongness and all the lack of economic progress and things that people are going through as someone on the far left of our party. I think it's just more that I see the path forward as being about some level of compromise in our actual Congress, which tends to be divided between Democrats and Republicans all the time. And so to me, being a pragmatist or a moderator, whatever you want to call it, is about kind of just trying to build this huge team of people from all backgrounds to try to get some agreement on something and actually do something at the end of the day instead of just kind of talk about it.

See, I am a Democrat. So I feel like Democrats are always fucking compromising. We're the party that is always like, we're going to make this work. And that Republicans, especially after the last four years of insane, have like really been pretty committed to not compromising. The good example is Gorsuch, right? They put in Gorsuch and then they wouldn't. And Obama's Supreme Court justice didn't even get a hearing. So how do you thread that needle? Yeah, well, so this is just Connor Lamb speaking about, you know, sort of how I understand that. I think that our goal as Democrats is completely different from the goals that many of today's Republicans have. And so our whole strategy, our whole system of thought and the way we behave

should be different. So when I hear people tell me the Republicans don't compromise, why do you? My answer is I do because I actually want this whole thing to work and I want to get something done. I think many people, at least in today's Republican Party, are okay just putting sand in the gears and stopping things. So to use an example like the Supreme Court, like, I think they were fine with the idea that you could just leave the Supreme Court without a key justice for a while. And if they happen to get what they want of putting a ninth person in, that's great. But they're totally satisfied with the idea that the government would be less than it should be during that period. We don't really tolerate that as well, because we believe that we should be using the government

to do good things in people's lives. And so I think compromise is essential for us and our goals in the way that it may not be for the other side. And I think we should be proud of that. Like, I think that's a good thing. We should approach this like we are builders and architects and people who are taking on great challenges and want to bring everyone along with us. You know, Connor, you mentioned your Marine Corps training and that entire get to the X, overcome the problem, fix the problem, overcome the obstacle. That philosophy is one, I think, that has been very difficult to execute on in Congress. But have you found that it's change that all during the time of COVID? Is there more of a sense of cooperation? Because some of the

problems we face right now are bigger than our politics. Yeah, right. I think in the beginning, definitely. Like, I think if you look at the first few pieces of legislation we did during COVID, particularly where we gave the $600 a week extra and unemployment, the stimulus checks and the paid leave. Those were bipartisan compromises that both Bernie Sanders and Mitch McConnell voted for, which almost never happens. And it's really the first time, In my two years, where I have seen so directly the impact in a real person's life of something we did in D.C., I mean, I know single mothers in my district who are living a totally different life today because they got the paid leave or the $600 a week or the stimulus checks or both,

and they can take better care of their kids and they're healthier and better off. And we all supported that. And so I thought that was a great sign that, at least in the worst moment, like the system isn't so broken that we can't produce something good like that. But it did seem to fall away pretty quickly. You know, I'll also say there's a big difference between the relationship, the tone, the attitude of newer members in their first few terms that are Republicans and Democrats in between the leadership. And so I have a lot of relationships with rank and file Republicans that are frustrated at how things are going. And they would treat me and talk to me way differently than the leaders on top talk to each other.

That's interesting, Connor, because that perception is World War I trench warfare, never the twain shall meet. nobody's talking, nobody wants to do any work together. As skeptical as people are these days, the idea that there's anything bipartisan that can be accomplished, I think, is kind of meaningful. It is. And it's real. The things that the freshmen and sophomores in Congress work on aren't always, don't always get the biggest headlines and people don't always know about them. But it does happen. And it means something going forward. Now, I don't know what happens when people climb the leadership rungs in Congress. And if that changes a person or not, but there's definitely some reason to be hopeful about some of the people who have come in. If for no other reason,

And then many of us ran for Congress knowing how messed up it was along partisan lines and that people seemed like they were divided into these two tribes. And, you know, I was as frustrated about that as any of my constituents when I first ran. And I think a lot of new Democrats and Republicans come from that same motivation where we don't want that to be our legacy, you know, no matter how long it takes. Who's your favorite Republican? My favorite Republican is Brian Fitzpatrick from the eastern part of Pennsylvania. Another guy who's not in the hard district. Yeah. He has probably the most competitive congressional district in the country. He votes with the Democrats a lot, gets the support of union labor. He's former FBI agent. I'm a former prosecutor. We're both from Irish Catholic families.

I mean, we have a lot more in common than we do different, really. And apart from all that, he's just a really, really decent, open-minded human being with a good heart. And, you know, I think if people knew more about people like him in politics, they'd feel better about it. Who's this surprising friendship that you have? Surprising friendship. Yeah, there's some good ones. One guy who is really just, I just love him. He has made such a big impact on me is a congressman from San Diego named Juan Vargas. The way that I met him actually is really funny. There was a local reporter from Pittsburgh following me around Congress. I came in in this special election. So I was kind of on my own. And I didn't have like a class of people to walk around with or whatever. And I kept getting

lost in the bowels of the Capitol, including when this local reporter came to follow me around, which is pretty embarrassing. Like I felt bad about it. And we ran into Juan in the hallway. And I just kind of like signaled to him what was going on and he grabbed us. And he had never even really talked to me before. And he starts telling the reporter how great I am and how much of an impact I've made on Congress already. Just to be a nice guy. And then it turns out he was a Jesuit seminarian for a long time, kind of a Catholic in the real social justice sense. And just a great, great, funny, warm person who I've got to know a lot. And I don't think a lot of people around Pittsburgh probably would even know who he was, but he's been good to me. So how badly has your area been hit by COVID?

You know, the case numbers overall are not like what you've seen in New York or some of these other places. We've had some, it's a very elderly area, so we've had some really bad outbreaks in nursing homes, including one in my district that was the deadliest in our state of Pennsylvania and probably going to be up there on the national list as well. That's just been really heartbreaking. I mean, this is the greatest generation, a lot of these people. And their families are not able to go inside and be with them, obviously, in the last moment. So it really is an emotional hit for an entire family when that happens. I also think we're pretty vulnerable to the extended first wave or start of the second wave because of how early region is.

You know, our air quality has never been that great. And there's a number of factors. So we're really trying to be on guard against what's coming. I'm a big fan of Lauren Underwood. And she has a similar. Are you sort of buddies with all the kind of conservative districty Democrats? With a lot of them, yeah. And Lauren is a great example.

I'm a really big admirer of her. And we travel to Afghanistan together and are on the same Veterans Committee. that we see and talk to each other a lot. She actually opened me up to a whole set of issues I didn't really know about, but she's a nurse by training. And she started a caucus that she calls the Black Maternal Health Caucus. And it's about the fact that, yeah, we still have this horrible rate of bad outcomes in pregnancies by black women that are way off the charts compared to white women. I think I could have guessed that there was a disparity, but I had no idea how big it was. You know, my mom's a neonatal nurse by training. And when Lauren started telling me about this group,

I just had that feeling like, man, if my mom found out, I had the opportunity to, do something about this, she really wanted to do it. So Lauren's been a, she's been great on that issue really has. And some of her ideas, by the way, made it into the health care bill that we're voting on today. So she's had some wins, yeah. Support troublemakers like us who speak truth to power. Believe it or not, your actions speak louder than our words. And our super-egos can get very loud. Visit new abnormal.com to sign up and become a beast inside member. Keith Allison is a former congressman and now serves as the Attorney General of Minnesota. Rick had a faulty connection due to the fact that he is in Florida, which is a post-apocalyptic hellscape.

And so our producer, Jesse, and I asked Keith some questions. Can you tell us a little bit about where you are in the George Ford case? Well, there was an omnibus hearing today, and attorneys for a party showed up. I think some trial dates and pretrial dates were set, and essentially it looks like we're going to be trying this case sometime in March. We'll have another pretrial hearing in September 11th, and I think from here on out, we're going to be setting a certain motions on for hearing. What those will be are not yet decided, but they will be coming up. Are you so glad you went from Congress? I mean, you're in the middle

of crafting policy here that can really change everything. It must be exciting. Well, you know, I come from a long line of public servants, right? So to me, I am where I want to be. Congress, very important place. I was honored to be there. Honored that my neighbors trusted me to be there. But when the door opened to run for AG, I knew that we'd be able to do some. some things that I consider to be really important. Criminal justice, humane policing. Even last week, we filed a lawsuit against Exxon Mobil, the American Petroleum Institute and Coke Industries. So, I mean, we're doing things that I want to do. That's exciting. You know, I think that we're at an inflection point. I think people, various walks of life, really understand that this has got to be

different. And it's got to be different in a dramatic way. It can't just be a new training policy here or a new policy there. There's got to be some real serious review as to how we do human. main law enforcement. And I think what we're looking at is the difference between policing and public safety. And people are saying, we're going to do public safety now. Now it's about keeping the public safe. And that means perhaps some non-police responses to mental health crises. That means different ways to approach sexual assault cases, which involve actually testing the kits that we collect. It might mean more neighborhood safety groups. And of course, there'll probably be a role for armed people to respond to an active shooter situation. I'm sure that that will be part of what the

public safety menu is in the future. But I think going forward, people are looking at this thing much more broadly. Do you want to explain what this misnomer of defund the police really means? Yeah. And I want to be clear, I'm not one of the ones calling for it. Those are a group of young folks who I think are important and we must listen to. But, you know, I'm not about to steal their thunder. I mean, they put it on the map. It's their thing. But I can tell you what they mean. What they mean is we need to refund community. What they mean is that we have dramatically spent in the area of policing and that you never get to a budget year where the municipal government is not being told you need to hire more police. It's just sort of like, it's like the military, you know.

Right. More, more, more always. And what folks are saying is that if we dealt with some of the more upstream problems, we wouldn't need so many people on the street of being police officers. For example, how often do police just deal with, say, people who are homeless, right? What if we put more money in housing? You know, we probably wouldn't need as many people policing the homeless or a whole range of other problems. If we had more money in mental health, you know, we would not need so much in the area of policing. You know, me and the Commission of Public Safety did a working group last year 2019 called

Reducing Deadly Force Encounters with the Police. And we found that about half of the deadly force encounters with police were people who were in a mental health crisis. What if we had people trained in that area so that just because somebody, is in a situation where they're acting oddly or differently or they seem like they're in crisis. We don't send the police officer who's going to force compliance on them with a gun, but somebody who's a mental health professional who knows how to respond. I mean, it's a really good point. So Keith, why aren't Brianna Taylor's killers in jail?

I wish I knew. I mean, I think I'm only looking at the case from afar, and I know better than to assess what the case from a great distance, but it does appear to me that some action should have been taken by now. I mean, that case seems. like not even a no-brainer, right? I mean, if you're asleep in your bed and you're murdered, right, shouldn't there be accountability there? I think so, yeah, absolutely. It's shocking. It really makes one feel vulnerable. It's not like if you mind your peas and cues, you'll be okay. No way. Do you have a theory as to why no action has been taken? Well, all I have is a guess, and it's because so often these cases are under-prosecuted.

We have a situation of impunity in this area. How is this case different from? from what happened to so many of being Eric Garner, at least in Philando Castile's case, there was a prosecution. They were ultimately acquitted, but at least somebody was brought to justice for it. But how many other cases, nothing ever happened? Nothing at all.

I would just say that the idea that if you are wearing a law enforcement badge that you can do what you want without consequences, just sort of probably the most operative thing going on there. But for so many people, the average interaction is that no matter what an officer does, nothing's gonna happen to them. I mean, like, here's a question.

In all the protests, we see officers pushing an old man down. We see them spraying chemical agents on protesters. We see a lot of unprovoked aggression against people. And how many of those people are going to actually have to address their behavior? In Buffalo, when officers were told, well, first of all, they said they didn't do anything to a guy, but that he stumbled. Then they found no you was pushed. And then you have 50-some officers say, well, we're going to quit the unit if you hold our friend accountable. meaning that, you know, their loyalty is absolutely to each other and has nothing to do with protecting the public.

Yeah, that was a sort of amazing moment. We had on, actually, the mayor from D.C., and she was saying that some of the problem here is that the police union is impossible. Absolutely. In Minneapolis, that's certainly the case. So we have a police union president who called me a terrorist, and actually there was a public apology issue because he did that. You can look it up. It's the fact. You have the same guy as at the Trump rally saying all this really antagonistic stuff. Same guy, the chief of police said, we will not have warrior training for our department.

This happens over a year ago. No more worry training. We're done with warrior training. And he says, well, whoever wants warrior training, the union will pay for it offsite. Can you explain what warrior training is? Well, warrior training is a philosophy of policing that says that you are as an officer a warrior, and thereby implication everyone else is an enemy combatant to you, and that your main job is to go about your work as if you are a soldier in a battle, which is quite a bit different from guardian training. The presumption is that people are out to get you rather than you are there to protect people.

Very different kind of thing. And as a matter of fact, it does show us that training is an element of this. I've had some people tell me quite understandably, you know, we're sick about talking with training. Training doesn't work. But like, it could work if we were to reconfigure these police federations. And because the problem is if you can train them on whatever you want, and then the prevailing culture within the office is like, skip all that.

We don't believe in any of that de-escalation mess. And so they just sort of erase. If you can couple training with reordering the power dynamic with the federation, I think you could really do a lot. If I may, I just want to say I'm reluctant to even call it a police union. Because a union is an honorable, wonderful institution, which help workers have a voice on the job. These institutions are not like that at all.

I mean, think about the police. Think about the teachers' union. The teachers union does not deliberately harm the kids and then push back accountability. Nurses don't hurt the patients. The UAW doesn't break the cars. It's a bizarre kind of relationship that we have with our so-called police federation. I don't even call them unions. I call them federations because that really is much more like what they are.

So before becoming the Attorney General, Minnesota, you ran to be the head of the DNC. If you had won that race, you'd be in charge of getting out the vote for the current election. Do you have any thoughts on how to do that during a pandemic? Because it's got a lot of us really scared. Online organizing 100%. Every person who I was going to hire to go knock doors, I'd hire them to get online and to get in touch with everybody they could and to mobilize to do as much vote by mail as they possibly could. The goal is to reach out.

We would have Zoom meetings going like 10 times what they are now. We need to Zoom it. I don't know, web exit, Skype it. I don't care what you got. You know, just get everybody. wiped up and have, and then you want to do relational organizing. One of the problems that we have as Democrats is that we do transactional organizing. We want you to vote for us, so come here and you get something.

Well, you know, the bottom line is we need to build trusting relationships where voting is just one expression of citizenship. A healthy functioning Democratic Party would be one where we say, yeah, we want you to vote. We also want you to write a letter to your congressperson about this important piece of legislation. Or we also want you to come to this community meeting. or we want you to write a letter to the editor. We want you to show up at the naturalization ceremony

to hand out voting registration cards. We want you to be an active, alive, engaged citizen as opposed to just vote for me and I'll set you free. That's just, it doesn't work, but another way you could really, really turn it up. I don't think we should look at this moment in a way that is a discouraging moment. I think we say, look, where organizers,

we find a way to organize. You organize in the urban area? Well, what are you going to do if you're in a rural area? I don't know, find a way to organize. Go to the co-op. Go where you got to go. to do what you got to do. But reaching out and connecting with people really does need to be what we're about all the time. Yeah. And this is my question, too, is like how do you bring along the Bernie people?

You got to do issue-based campaigning. I mean, I tell you, in all the time I've ever run for office, I've never made it about me. I make it about the issue, right? So, like, if you want health care, you know, vote for me. If you want a green economy, vote for me. I'm going to carry a set of ideas with me. And that's what we're going to do. And then after you get me in there, we're going to push them together. That's how we're going to do this thing. If it's about look at how cool my white teeth are and don't I have a great smile and aren't I graded a glib one liner and it's all this BS in my opinion. Then it's about personality, which works for some because they don't really want to do anything for the people anyway. So, like, of course we want to make it about personality.

We don't want to make any promises whatsoever. But I think the moment they were in now is like, look, you want to attract people, attract young people by saying, you know, that student loan debt, it doesn't have to be that way. You know that you pay and half your income and rent doesn't have to be that way. You can't go to the doctor. We're going to make it so you can. And you do those things. You're not going to have any problem getting people out. But the problem is, are we willing to really stand for those things?

And people know when we're trying to sell them soap and when we're trying to engage them in a partnership. And they know the difference. And so that's where we got to go. But I think we really need to look at politics as a way to build community. You know, we live in a country that is bigger than ever. And yet you have more loneliness than ever. People feel isolated. Politics allows you to walk up to a perfect stranger who you've never made.

and say, hey, we're going to do a door knock. We're going to do a phone bank. We're going to do a Zoom chat about issues that you care about, like your Social Security check. Would you like to be a part of it? Next thing you know, you're forming friendship groups. You're forming connection. You have people who now really are bonding with each other.

But if all we do is go through television, which is a one-way medium, which is a TV, spews a message out at you, you can't ask it a question, you can't tell it the story, you can't tell it how you're doing, you can't tell it how you remember working for McGuble,

Right. Do you think the Bernie supporters will come along with Biden? Yeah. Bernie's already doing it. I'm doing it. There's a lot of people who are already pitching in. But you know, it's not so much even the Bernie people because the Bernie people, if you assume these are people who care a lot about politics that are already involved. They're going to do it. But, you know, the real question is, what about the people who are only tangentially involved and are very, very cynical, who are not really kind of, they heard Bernie was for something there for. So now they're Bernie people. But if it's not Bernie, they're just going to drop out. I mean, that's what you need to worry about because these folks who are like showing up at Bernie rallies all the time, they know that if it's not Biden, it's going to be Trump, so they're going to vote for Biden. But what about those people who are just marginally connected at all?

That's what we need to worry about. And that's why we need to depersonalize this. It cannot be about Biden's personality versus Trump's personality. It's got to be, if you vote for Democrats, you're going to get health care. If you vote for Democrats, these student loans, that's going to change. If you vote for Democrats, your small business is going to get a little health. Because as a small business person, you're sick and tired of every time the damn sports team says they're going to move to another city. The politicians throw money at them.

But if your little coffee shop was going to close, they'd be like, so what? Bottom line is people are tired of it and they want responsive government. If people want responsive government, then politicians who want a win need to be what? Responsive. That's where it's got to be. But yet, I mean, it can be candid for just a moment. How often have us Democrats been like, oh, yeah, we're for a crappy trade deal that's going to send your job overseas. Oh, yeah, you know, no, we're not really going to go for you getting health care.

You know, oh, no, we're not going to really come after that Wall Street Bank that made you lose your mortgage. We're going to let them slide. People are like done with that. They're like very, very, very frustrated with that. So that's one reason why Trump's going to, I think he's going to lose because he promised a lot and delivered very little. The people who he said he was going to actually help? What is he done for them? Jack, right?

So, I mean, that's the problem. But what happens next? You know, we've got to have a responsive, close to the ground politics, which engages people around the issues that they find most appealing. You know, we've been in 40 years' slide when it comes to minimum wage, to stagnating wages. And we've had the longest period of time of not increasing the minimum wage in American history right now. What do you want from people? I mean, there you go.

So one of the political advents I never would have suspected is seeing how many of the DAs like Larry Krasner in Philadelphia are really changing things in their city. in a social justicey way. And now we also see AG's doing this. I was curious how you see your job as AG being able to shape things in a social justice way. Well, you know, that's the great question because I'm super proud of some of the my fellow AGs. I mean, you take somebody like Tish James.

I mean, she's just the best, right? She's using the power of her office to make people's lives better. You know, add to that, Mara Healy up there in Massachusetts, true fighter for justice. I filed a case against ExxonMobil. She filed one before I ever did. You know, I'm following her example. But then, you know, you got Carl Racine in D.C. working on issues of wage theft and not to mention Aaron Ford.

By the way, you know, you got five black state attorney generals. People don't know that. But you got them in Minnesota. You got them in Nevada, Aaron Ford, Kwame Brawl in Illinois, and Tish James, New York in Carl Racine. And then, of course, you have the Virgin Islands, which you would expect based on population, but still. Then you got two really great Latino Attorney General's,

Javier Vassera, a very dear friend of mine. He's killing it. He's leading the fight to save the Affordable Care Act. And Hector Baldurus right there in New Mexico, battling against immigration injustice. Then you got William Tong there in Connecticut, who is leading the fight against the generic drug manufacturers who are engaged in illegal price fixing. And then you got a lot of really awesome white AGs like Phil Wisner in Colorado, who is really pushing the envelope when it comes to democracy and other range of things. And, of course, Bob Ferguson and Washington State, one of the first to file a lawsuit against Trump's DACA stuff. And we really have an awesome group. And, you know, Kathy Jennings in Delaware is doing a lot of great things on criminal justice.

So, I mean, I think that the move for a more just society is on. It is on. Just like DAs are moving in that direction, AGs are as well. Of course, we fight with our colleagues a lot. I mean, the Republican ACHs are the ones who filed lawsuit to tear down the Affordable Care Act. We have our battle lines drawn, you know, but we're out there. America is an arm wrestling match right now, and some people are trying to say justice for more people, and other people are saying more privileges for the feud.

We're not going to quit. I have this theory that Trumpism has actually ultimately galvanized the movement against Trumpism. For example, this thing in Mississippi where they're taking the Confederate symbol off the flag. I couldn't believe they had it still. But it does feel like that step backward. for certainly on the left for people like me, it's been very galvanizing. Yes, I agree. I think it has had that galvanizing effect. But I also want to say to you that don't remember in the last years of Bush and we were

galvanized then too. That's how we ended up with Barack Obama. We've got to get out of this thing where we'll really work hard and come together if we have a clear opponent in the White House. And then after everything's cool, we won't. Got to get out of that. We've got to understand that even after we get Biden in the office, We're still going to have 40 years of attacks on unions, of resegregating our schools and neighborhoods, of people dying because they can't afford their medication, of crappy trade deals, in my opinion. We still have this legacy. There's still so much work to do, even if we get a friendly face in the White House, so much more to do. Because what is taken over is the philosophy that the rich do not have enough money and everybody else has way too much.

And they're trying to redistribute it to the people who they think need it more, which is those who already have a lot. And so that fight is not going to stop after November. And so let's just keep it going. And if I may, if y'all will allow me, I'll say part of our fight has got to be human solidarity. We've got to really address this issue of issues of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation. We've got to begin to see each other as fellow human beings, all of whom deserve dignity and respect. We cannot allow people to crack us apart, split us apart. This issue of racial justice, Rachel's searching, and has got to continue.

after Biden or we just slide back into thinking, well, you know, we had a black president so we're all good. We beat Trump so we're good. You know, we're not good. I mean, that young lady Amy Cooper, I think her name was, I don't know her, but I can tell you that this country has a lot of people like her and we need to get her in conversations about saying, hey, you know, what you did could have got that man killed. That was not cool, man. We don't need to condemn her. But what we do need to do is get her into a meaning of conversation and some real self-examination. We've got to have that. We need that very much. that guy this week is Vladimir Putin.

Oh, really? You know why it's Vladimir Putin? Yeah, why? Because look, it's tempting for my fuck that guy to be Donald Trump, as always, but particularly after learning that Donald Trump has been aware since March that the Russians are paying a bounty to the Taliban to kill American soldiers. Donald Trump would be my fuck that guy if he was the actual boss in this relationship, but he's not. He's Vladimir Putin's gimp. He's Vladimir Putin's bitch. He does whatever the guy wants for obvious reasons, and he does it in ways not only that embarrassed the country or that hurt the country, but in ways that go well

beyond anything, any president, no American president in history would say, yeah, I guess the other guys are killing American troops, whatever. But it's Putin who did this. It's Putin who has leveraged his fucking third world kleptocracy that has a great intelligence service and everything else is in the shit. It's Putin who's doing this in a way to destabilize the world disproportionate to his power as a global enterprise, disproportionate to the power of Russia. as a force in the world economically or diplomatically. And there will come a time when someone in the White House remembers that Russia isn't our ally.

They're not our friend. They're not our buddy. That Russia is a ferocious international competitor with us. And Vladimir Putin, there will come a day when the person who sits behind the resolute desk in the Oval Office isn't your bitch. There will come a day when the person sitting in the Oval Office doesn't say, oh, oh, well, okay, so they're killing Americans. Oh, I can't get Vlad mad.

No, they will say to some Delta guys or some seal guys or some other operators, go kill those motherfuckers who ordered this. Go kill those guys who are paying the bounties. And there will be costs internationally again. And I'm just happy to think of that day coming sooner, hopefully, than later. Because Donald Trump is, he is Vladimir Putin's employee and the home office in Moscow calls the shots. Right. No question. I mean, Vladimir Putin has gotten the best reward on his investment ever with Trump.

Oh, God. The ROI on Trump is. magnificent. And all it took was flattery and I... And troll farms. Flattery and troll farms. And, you know... That's right. It's a love story. Yes. Do you want to know who my fuck that guy is? Talk to me about your fuck that guy. It's Kaylee. Macanini. Mackinini.

I just call her Kaylee mendacity. She is literally the worst human in the world. And I've written about her before is that she seems to have no conscience. So she never falters. She just continues on defending whatever the president does. That is a trait he values more than anything else. And the minute she shows some flicker of awareness or consciousness of the fact that she works for a shitty golem of a human being, that's when the clock starts. That's when she'll be out. But she won't because this is the best gig she's ever had, never going to have. And I just find it ironic that the very first day, practically the first thing out of her mouth on the first day when she was press secretary,

was I will never lie to you. Which of course is the most recursive and meta thing in the world. because, of course, she lied to you right off the back. Right. That first lie was actually a lie. That is the turd in the punch bowl of her credibility. That's right. Yeah, I agree with that. She's a horrible trash fart of a human being.

Yeah. And I also just think the way she obfuscates for him is, at least with Sean Spicer, you did feel that he had possessed a human soul. Whereas with Kaylee, it's just this sort of terrifying Tommy, Lauren, kind of blonde sea of obfuscation in the worst possible way. Well, I mean, she's like Tommy Lawrence's older sister in the sorority house. From hell. And look, I used to go up against her on CNN all the time in 2016.

And off air, it was always like, oh, my God, this guy, you know, the whole eye roll thing. She determined, very cleverly on her part, that the way to Trump's heart and to stay in power and to get in power and stay there is to be a willing, aggressive liar for him. Yeah. That's the pathway. And what kind of leadership that represents for most people is horrifying. But for her, it's just the cost of doing business. I just want to know what's going to happen to these people when it's all over. Will there be Nuremberg?

I mean, obviously people aren't going to go to jail, right? But will these people work again? Look, Washington, D.C. in 2015 and 16, was full of lobbyists who said, absolutely not. No fucking way. I will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. Oh, that red hat looks great on me. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal for The Daily Beast.

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