The Daily Beast Podcast - Does Henry Winkler Have an Antifa Membership?

Episode Date: June 23, 2020

The Henry Winkler Antifa rumors can finally be put to rest. In episode 19 of The New Abnormal, the Barry actor—who went viral this weekend for proving that he, too, can drink a glass of water with one hand—addresses whether or not he is a card-carrying Antifa member. He also tells hosts Rick Wilson and Molly Jong-Fast his thoughts on the president’s rally (“We are so not in control of the country we think we live free in.”) and what aliens and government have in common. The duo also chat with Andy Slavitt, President Obama’s former head of healthcare, who explains why other countries are running circles around the U.S.’s COVID numbers and what will happen with the virus this fall. Plus, Molly has a younger guest explain the K-pop fandom and Rick shares a special message for Brad Parscale, the website guy. 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. You know who didn't have a good weekend this weekend, Rick Wilson? I think there's actually a list of people who didn't have a good weekend this weekend

Molly John Fast. But you know who really didn't have a good weekend this weekend? Would his name be Donald John Trump? King of the Ramp? Lord of the Ramp, I believe it is. Lord of the Ramp. That's right. Lord of the Ramp.

Yeah, I have to say that this weekend was a concatenating series of Shibokles for him. and nothing went right. It was truly a awful, terrible, bad, no good, horrible weekend for Donald Trump. You hate to see it. And the pinnacle of his bad weekend was the fact that Donald Trump's campaign team after hyping a million requests for invitations

to this thing. A million. They filled 6,200 seats of a 19,000-seat arena. So they couldn't sell out a 19,000-seat arena that even Nickelback has sold out twice the last couple of years. And the Wiggles. The Wiggles.

Wiggles. If you can't outsell the Wiggles. Are they going to get canceled now if we talk about them? No, we love the Wiggles. The Wiggles are good. I don't know. My kids are too old for the Wiggles. Speak for yourself. I always took my kids to Norwegian Speed Metal band concerts instead. Yeah, they had that in Florida. Northern Florida. That's where Norwegian Speed Metal came from. It's just like Northern Europe, only more humid. That's right. And I think maybe it was because they chose a really super liberal Blue State hotbed college town like Tulsa, Oklahoma.

That's right. Because there's just no Republicans there at all. I mean, not a one. That's right. Turn a rock over and you're not going to find a single Republican. Tulsa, home of the liberal media. I think of Portland, San Francisco, Tulsa. All the same thing, man.

Yeah, pretty much. I was just curious, though, that Brad Parscal was out just swinging his junk around all week. It's 600,000. It's 800,000. It's a million. And suddenly, 6,200 people, according to the Tulsa Fire Marshal. And I'll tell you why I think the thing was more embarrassing than that. They had planned. to do a big outdoor rally on the street for another X tens of thousands of people, 20,000, 30,000, who knows.

And they were saying they were going to try to do like a victory parade after the event. And I don't know, I don't know if Brad believed his own bullshit or if he's just dumb. But 6,200 people led to a very unhappy president. And there were stories even before the event, how angry Trump was about it. You can always tell when something's going off the rails for someone inside the White House. Because can you guess who was leaking that they were very unhappy and concerned from inside the White House? Javanka? It was Javanka.

They suddenly, they're not clear that Brad is capable of doing this job. Poor Brad, man, those Ferrari payments. That shit is going to get savage. Being the website guy is not necessarily going to keep up a $2.5 million house in the water in Fort Lauderdale. How many Porsches does Brad Pardes gal have? I don't know how many porches he has, but he does have a Ferrari and a $120,000 land rover, from what I'm told. Quite remarkable. Oh, that's right.

Somebody's getting rich on Trump world besides Trump, his children, his friends. Well, for now, I think the Guardian of the weekend, I said, listen, I think the only controlling factor on when Brad gets fired is when somebody else in the Trump pool goes to Jared Navanka and says, here, we'll keep the skim coming to you. Yeah. Except I was asking Sam Nunberg this weekend about this. You'll remember Sam Nunberg. As one does. As one does. About whether or not they could fire.

Parscal, and he was saying that it would be hard. Yeah, I mean, Brad is widely considered to be the conduit. You know, first off, he's the conduit for what I call the screwing the help fund. Yeah, that pays for various hangers-on from the Trump orbit. Wives and girlfriend. The wags, yes. And I think that Brad, for better or for worse, sold this idea. And I want to get into this a little bit. Brad sold Trump and the rest of the Trump world, this idea that he had some secret sauce Facebook Mojo that allowed the Trump campaign to maneuver and manipulate and get their voters that turned out no matter what was happening. That they had this esoteric knowledge and that he could easily fill an arena and they would

use their online death star, as he called it. It was about six weeks ago that Grand Moth Parscal tweeted about their death star. Yes. Everyone kind of thought, oh, man, here it comes. There's a giant tidal wave of money coming and all these tectaw. Well, they had to know from their analytics that this thing was going to flop, right? They had to. They've got an insight into the Trump-based voter like no one else.

They can get them out in a driving rainstorm in a fiery desert summer. And they're like the fucking postal service for the Trump world, rain or shine. Well, it turns out they couldn't. You heard the K-pop story, of course. For those of us unfamiliar with K-pop, ergo anyone over the age of 30, we got a teen to explain K-pop to us. because no one else would understand it. Speak for yourself, Molly. I'm an enormous K-pop fan.

Oh, stop it. Tallahassee, home to Korean pop. I do a lot of YouTube videos on my private channel of lip-syncing BTS songs. And you're like, that's so fucking disturbing stop Wilson right now.

All my haters out there like Googling Secret Rick Wilson K-pop channel. I thought you had a TikTok account. Oh, well, that is mostly for my interpretive dancing. It's so wrong. So today, as a special treat, we have my woke teenage son,

Woke Jong-Fast Greenfield, is here to explain to us what K-pop is. Okay, so the musical genre K-pop is short for Korean pop. Unlike most genres of music, instead of being defined by a very specific type of music, it's more defined by aesthetics. It's mainly relevant because of its niche, but incredibly different. voted, to put it somewhat mildly, foreign fan community. The most popular groups in the genre in the U.S. include BTS, Girls Generation, 17, and Luna. The community exists largely in, like, Twitter, Facebook, various other social media groups. It is within those social media groups that

a plot was carried out to massively over-register attendance for one of Trump's more recent rallies in order to make the amount of people who were actually in this stadium barely fill it. This is the first time that K-pop fans have been involved in politics. While pop is generally considered apolitical for better or for worse, K-pop, more specifically, K-pop fans seem incredibly excited to participate in the political sphere. They've taken such actions before, such as spamming white nationalist hashtags with white screens or, as they call them, fan cams, which are basically just short videos of various K-pop stars that they like performing music. The K-pop community is especially interesting because they show that, like, a community that doesn't really

know each other in real life can unite around something that isn't necessarily related to what the community itself is based on, and they can mobilize in spite of basically no personal connections to pretty massive effect. The only thing we can say for sure is that we haven't heard the last of the K-pop community. So why was the venue empty, Rick? Well, there are a couple of factors here. Now, the fun factor, the funny pranking the Trump campaign story comes from the fact that a woman who was a Pete Buttigieg organizer or campaign volunteer or something like that. You tweeted about her this weekend. She's a grandma and she's from Illinois. And she went out and somehow managed to activate hundreds of thousands of these teenagers and it went viral. All these K-pop fans started signing up

for tickets to Brad Parskell's Monster Trump rally. Now, Brad and Tim Murta on the rest of the campaign, they got their panties swiftly into a tight little bunch. They never fooled us. They didn't trick us at all. There's no way. And their cover was that there were radical leftist protesters blocking the... That was their second story, which after it wasn't those Korean children, dangerous, Antifa radicals were in the streets.

Antifa super soldiers were blocking the thousands of Trump voters. Bullshit. In Oklahoma. I've seen some pictures now, by the way, some overhead shots. This was not a group of protesters that was the size of, I don't know, more than a few school buses. And the Trump people were not encumbered or inhibited in any way from going into the arena. It was just that there just weren't that many of them. I analogized it this morning to somebody.

This is like a 1980s hair metal band. And in the 80s, they were filling 90,000-seat arenas with screaming fans and people throwing their panties on the stage. Now they're still doing the hair metal act, but they're all in their 60s. and now it's the Highlands County, Florida State Fair and Ag Fest. And they're playing on the back of a trailer. The same band name, same song set list, different feel. And that's what it is. I mean, Trump got out there.

And I think on some level, these people knew it. I think on some level, they were kind of checked out and kind of like, well, I'm going to go to the Trump Fest and my way I'm going to spend my Friday night. But it wasn't something new or transgressive anymore. Once you see Ozzie bite the head off the bat the first time, after that it's just messy and dull. The world has shifted. I wrote a piece about that this weekend. Seventy percent of white Americans believe that the country is racist.

The things that Trump ran on are sort of no longer okay. Well, a lot of them are no longer okay. A lot of this is that the novelty of Trump, the transgressive novelty of this bad boy act, if he was going to go in the arena and say, knock him down, you know, kick his ass, all that stuff. It's just dull now. I mean, even Trump, didn't you think he, like, even when he was going to, through as usual, like, the media, they're liars. It felt a little just, like, dialed in.

I was like, okay, here I go. I'm going to out, and I'm going to read the cue cards again. Well, I think also the problem is Trump is about fighting against something, right? So Trump was fighting against the deep state. He is the deep state now, right? You can't fight against yourself. It's also part of the sort of unhinged nature of Trumpism. They want that cruel, nasty stuff directed at their enemies.

And it was better for them when it felt like he was going to be the same. rebuke to the establishment. And now the people that are not in power, that are out there running and gunning against him, they don't feel like the establishment. He seems to have every conceivable advantage on paper. And so it doesn't feel as much like he's defending them. It's also because they're all getting the picture that COVID is for real

and this sudden spike. And I think that had a meaningful fraction of an impact on it. Which is good because it means people are actually listening to the health department. Although the ones that did attend, I don't know if you notice, the scarcity of mass. masks. Yeah, I did. And you saw the White House is no longer taking temperatures or health history of journalists. Yeah, right, of course. They seem set on getting this. I will say this. I think he

wants to get it and survive it so he can basically got and say, everyone should take my blood and seed because I'm immune to all disease. I am the sovereign remedy. Do you really think that? No. Let me say this. Actually, I think in his head, because he looks at everything as a reality TV show. Right. It would be a moment of drama and he could mount his comeback narrative, which, by the way, just be ready for this. He's had a shit week and a shit month and a shit year.

But one thing I can tell you about the American news media that is they love the narrative of the comeback. They love the narrative of the turnaround. And I've seen it in campaign, after campaign, after campaign at the national level, particularly of suddenly the guy who was down is back up off the mat. It's the Bill Clinton comeback kid moment. So Trump is looking for a breakthrough like that. I think he thought Tulsa would be that breakthrough.

Now he's got to find another. Because I got to tell you, when he got off the helicopter, and everyone in America, myself and my team included, have memed the fuck out of that. Yeah, did Lincoln Project do an ad on that? We did two ads on that. The morning ad that was released this on Monday morning was called Jurassic, and it was a play off the melodica memes

and had Trump coming off the helicopter basically to a womp-womp because he just looked. He looked defeated. With that tie. He looked like a guy who woke up in a strange hotel room without his wallet or his shoes. Or his kidney. He looked like he had just been through the ringer. The makeup on the collar, the sort of slouch, the centaur walk, the whole thing was awful.

And then Kaylee McAneer, McAleck. Macaugh. Macaughes. Was on TV this morning saying that Trump was not upset by the rally and that he thought it was fun. Well, as we can generally judge any White House press secretary by their mendacity, The more egregiously mendacious there being, the more completely in your face denying the facts that are evident to every human eye, the longer their survival rate. So she's probably going to make it to at least the end of the month. Well, I thought it was interesting.

I mean, remember when she said she would never lie? That was like her first thing in the press conference, where she was like, I will never lie to you. If there were a just and true God, lightning would have split the ceiling of the White House at that moment. Well, there was lightning that weekend. Remember it hit the Washington Monument. You know, I don't believe in God, but if I did. Well, he believes in you, and his name is Jared Kushner. I don't think he does.

Jared Kushner, by the way, is in the Bolton book. He says that Jared Kushner is the most powerful person in the white ass. Of course he is. He's a Machiavellian little snake, and he's disproportionately influential to his skill. Right. I mean, the list of things Jared has been in charge of fixing, including immigration, trade, opioids, technology, the reformation of government, foot and mouth disease, scurvy. Peace in the Middle East.

Peace in the Middle East. The list goes on and on and on and on and on. It's pretty amazing. Adgerendium. It doesn't end. And Trump believes this lightweight little McKinsey knockoff grad school bullshitting that Jared does, for whatever reason and Ivanka keeps whatever bizarre faith Trump has in this guy set up. And he has failed this guy over and over again.

Think about it. Jared advised him to fire Jim Comey. How'd that work out? Jared has been around every shit decision in this White House has his fingerprints on it, and he doesn't quit. I have to say, I heard the joke somewhere that we're all in trouble because Ivanka didn't marry a Jewish lawyer. Oh. See, I'm going to make that joke because I'm Jewish and a lawyer. So now I'd like to tell you a joke about the Southern Farmer's daughter. Now, do you remember when Jefferson Beauregard Sessions was primaried by a certain child molester, and his wife went on to say that they had many Jewish friends,

including their lawyer. Yes. That was pretty great. Yes. Alabama is the place where knowing a Jewish attorney is still kind of an exotic experience. She felt very cosmopolitan saying. Should we talk about Jefferson Beauregard sessions? Can we loop back on one thing for a second? I think the most disturbing and telling point for the Trump campaign about this rally,

setting aside his god-awful performance, and it's not every time that I get to watch the president. president reenact 15 minutes of walking up and down a ramp because of an ad that I ran against him, but I'll take it, right? But I think the most disturbing thing for the Trump world is that with weeks and weeks of advance preparation for this, and they had advanced teams out there from the campaign and from the White House for weeks in advance prepping this event, they couldn't draw enough people to fill that arena.

They couldn't do it. They absolutely flopped. And the tools that they think work, the tools that Brad sold them, the secret sauce, We're going to turn out millions of voters for you. Well, if you were going to do this, the first big rally, the first one back in the fight, the first big event in the post-COVID Trump comeback tour, you throw everything at it. If you can't get enough people there from Tulsa, you charter a thousand buses and you bring them in. You do everything you can to move your people into that space so that it looks like it is filled with the rafters,

that the people are excited and loving it. There are people playing hacky sack or dancing or something in the middle of the arena floor. Oh, you mean river dance? Yes, the river dance, whatever it was they were doing. The deplorable choir retweeted a picture of people dancing in Trump T-shirts and said the mainstream media doesn't want you to see this. God love the deplorable choir. By wanting to see those guys doing whatever the traditional native dance of Oklahoma Stan was, will never end. I know one thing about myself.

Not really a dancer. No, not really a dancer. I know enough to know when I'm over my head. and dancing in front of television cameras like that is over everybody's head, pretty much. It's kind of aque. But the thing that I really want to get to is that the Trump campaign now has to doubt the most effective tool they thought they had in the toolbox. Because Trump's performance is no longer what it was to draw an audience. And the mechanism and the digital and social media machine they thought could move their voters,

they're having a lot of doubts right now if that's real. They're doubting Parscal. They're doubting themselves. They're doubting the model. They're wondering if they've underestimated the power that the fear of COVID had on people. They're wondering if they're just a dead brand now. And they have invested so much money. They've invested a half a billion dollars in essentially what is a data operation and a list operation.

Now they're fearful that the entire thing has been blown. They're also fearful. And there's a great threat on this today on Twitter. We'll put in the show notes later that the data that they received for the last 10 or 11 days that includes all this K-pop data, we'll call it, has polluted the pool of 10 days of data acquisition. There were repercussions that are going to fall from this failure, from this flop in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that have yet to be fully seen throughout the Trump campaign. I'm pretty excited, though, about the K-pop data problem.

That's pretty great. Yeah, and, you know, the problem with the K-pop data problem is that there's not an easy fix for the Trump campaign. They want to make these sign-ups essentially frictionless. They want to keep the form as simple as they can. So that's why they say, send us. a phone number on this form and we'll send you a reservation RSVP link for the ticket. They have to keep that friction low because people don't want to fill out a long web form with 17 fields. They want to do one or two. And that inevitably is now gameable and now millions of people

know that it can be gamed and it can pollute their data. And as much as they want to bluster and say, well, we know how to screen and detect those people. This is absurd. We are the geniuses of digital campaigning. Clearly they are not. They are in a, they're in a panic today. about this entire situation. So moving on. Pretty great. And I think Brad's going to get fired or demoted or something. There's a part of me that wants Brad to remain as campaign manager for the Trump organization for a thousand years because the website guy, as Trump calls him. Brad, I know you listen. I know you listen. I hear your researchers listen. So Brad, the website guy, Pascal. Trump has lost faith in him. Jared Navanka have lost faith in him. The clock is running on this guy.

Well, he has been smacked upside the head in the last week by a grotesque set of failures on his part. I just want to take a little moment just to say one more thing. Hey, Brad, you should have spent less time fucking with me last week and more time trying to save your fucking job. Boom! Henry Winkler is with us today, who is known for countless roles, including the Fonz on Happy Days, my personal favorite Barry Zuckerhorn on Arrested Development,

and of course his recent amazing role on Barry, among others. But he particularly made waves by showing us. us today how a normal human can drink water with only one hand. I have just been taken down a peg by just realizing in the last week or two that this is not ending so fast. You know, a friend of mine said to me, it was such an amazing thing. One of the worst things besides not being able to hug my grandchildren, my children, is that we have no sense of anticipation. Yeah. There's so doesn't feel like there's a moment where we think this will be over yet. Yes, right.

So did you watch that Trump rally this weekend? Do you know what? I did. I lied because I really anticipated watching it. I couldn't wait to see him in action. It was all summed up by that walk off the helicopter with his tie hanging at the end. Wasn't that just the look of total defeat? Just.

Oh, wow. He's a human being. And my God, there was a thing. thing. Do you watch John Oliver? Yeah. Did you see Happy Father's Day last night? Oh, no, I didn't see it. Is it good? I'm leaving you with a treat.

Henry, what made you decide to do the water drinking? Okay, that was a shock. It came to me in a flash. I was prepared to watch our nightly Netflix. And all of a sudden, I put the telephone up. I did it. And then I posted it. And holy moly. The world has never been the same. Well, I did not expect the reaction that it got. One woman said that she now loathes me.

This world today, people make quick decisions. They love you and then they hate you. They do. And I was so nice to her for 40 years. So you were on one of my favorite shows. I mean, you're on a bunch of my favorite shows, but you were on arrested development. Yes. Now, there, I was hired for one or two episodes.

as the family lawyer, and I stayed for five years. And you were brilliant. I have worked with extraordinary writers, to whom run Barry. But Mitch Hurwitz, I was just about to say a line, and he goes, wait, wait, wait, wait, no, no, no, no. Say, say, say this. And it was funnier than the already funny line I was about to say. I have to say, I think Barry is one of the best pieces of television I've seen in a long time. I love you in that.

It's so meta about the Hollywood thing. Yes. just captured that hustle thing that's always there seemingly in the mind of every working actor. Me included. So Scott Bayel. Yes. Can we talk about Scott Bayo? We can, but let me just tell you that God came into my life when he was 12.

And Ron Howard had called me on the set right by the donuts was the pay phone where you would get a call from the outside on stage 19. So I'm standing in this phone booth and Ron said, hey, I just wanted you to know. because in 10 minutes it's going to be in the press, I'm not coming back. And it was like my brain turned into cream cheese. I couldn't hear exactly what he was saying, because here is one of the great acting partners that I've ever had, was telling me that my life was over. And then young Scott Beow came, and he stepped in and hit a home run.

His timing was great. Our chemistry was great. And then he has become this rabbit other political person. And so I love him. I just totally disagree with him. You're known as the nicest person in Hollywood. Yeah, that's silly. I'm not known as the nicest person anywhere, so you're lucky.

But you might be known as one of the smartest commentators. Thank you, Henry. But how do you do that? Do you know what? I have to tell you something. I am dyslexic, right? I thought this out for other reasons. I don't know that I am the nicest person.

And what I am is a very grateful person. And I truly understand what it is like being on the outside looking in. As a matter of fact, all of the characters that I write with Lynn Oliver, my writing partner, they are all outsiders looking in. Hank Zipser, the alien, whoever it is, they're always trying to get into the inner circle. Right. My very first job was the Mary Tyler Moore show. Sure.

I had four lines. I had been in Hollywood for a week. And when we were rehearsing and it was wonderful and all these people, I have watched all the years they have been on. And when they called lunch, everyone went about their business and disappeared. And I, even though I looked like an adult,

my emotional four-year-old self said, oh my God, I have no idea where to go. I don't know what to do. I'm left you're all alone. And I swore that would never happen in my presence. again, if I moved on. Right. You have that reputation of having carried that graciousness from that lesson with you. Yeah, but there are people who are disappointing.

And then you kind of just watch them go down the river in their boat. And then you're here fishing in your spot. So you're a liberal. I think I am, yeah. What I am is a humanist. You're humanist and you're a little bit older. I am 74. So you are a member of Antifa.

You know what? I don't have my car. yet. They have not sent me a card yet. No dyslexic, I can't even spell the organization that I'm a member of. As a dyslexic myself, I also cannot. Can you talk about this weird conservative journal that wrote this story that you had died and left your money to Trump? Oh, you know what? Years and years ago, I lived in Manhattan, 78th and Broadway. The very street that Hank Zipser lives on. I don't know how that. But anyway, my very short German Jewish parents lived in that apartment until they died. And they would get calls because, of course, our number before I went on television was listed. We were a citizen.

And people would call them at that time and say, I'm so sorry to hear that your son died. So that rumor has shapeshifted for 40-some years. Wow. So can I just say I love being alive? I love being on this earth. And I am so happy to chat with you. So I just let them write what they write and what is the truth is the truth. That is the way to live, my friend.

So what do you have coming up next? Oh, I just heard, oh, my God, break my heart. We ended Barry. Right. Not this past Christmas, but the Christmas before. And we have not shot since because one of the executive producers, Alec Berg, had to finish a Silicon Valley. Oh, I love that.

Oh, right. So March 17th or 16th, we are sitting at the table. at Sony Studios. I have my wipes because the coronavirus is now being talked about. I have wiped down my highlighter, my script, my bottle, my chair, and the part of the table that I am existing at. And we go home and I never leave my house. And then last week I get a call that we're starting to shoot again in February. Wait. This is May? This is May. So this is June. So I got it. At the beginning of June, I found out that we are shooting the third season in February. I love that. We made some news. That makes me happy.

Yeah, well, you know, it could change in a minute because first it was July and then it was September. But if you ever have seen a heart crack open, that would have been me that day. Because I love to work and I miss those people. Once in a while, we zoom together. But what is coming out is the Wes Anderson movie. Ooh, which one is that? That was called the French Dispatch, which was a pick for Cannes Film Festival, but of course there is no can film. Right. It's not the Can Zoom Festival.

So I don't know what is going to happen with that. Oh, I worked with this extraordinary young stand-up comedian, Girard or Gerard Carmichael. He directed his first movie, which is a serial comedy, and I'm in that. And then our newest novel, Lynn and I have written 35 children's novels. Oh, that's right. People wanted me to ask you about the children's books. The newest one, Alien Superstar is coming out in October, October 6th.

Wonderful. The second installment, a 13-year-old alien whose sensory enhancer is disengaged because the repressive government doesn't want anybody to feel too much or think too much. And so at 13, his grandmother builds him a ship and he takes off for the only address he knows on Earth. Universal Studios. Who is going to question a rocket ship on the back lot? Barry Zuckercorn is like one of my favorite characters. Thank you.

What would Barry Zuckerhorn think of Bill Barr? Well, do you know Barry Zuckercorn not only does not know the law, he cannot practice the law, but he impersonates the law. And I think he would think even Bill Barr was pushing the ball. Here's the scary thing. The very scary thing is that there are forces, I guess, at work that we are so not in control of the country we think we live free in. And that man is so frightening. There are others like him. There have been others in the past.

But that he is so willing to just, I don't know what, laugh in the face of everything we thought. we grew up with. Yep, and that's very on point. He's such a frightening character because of that. We have no historical way to bracket a guy like that. We can't look back and go, oh, X or Y was just like that in the last 50 years. Yeah. I was never really political.

I always concentrated because I always thought I was never going to work even while I was working. And, I mean, truly, truly a major fear. And so I was never really political. And I am outraged and I am shell-shocks. by the way that the enablers, the people actually in the offices, are willing to just throw the baby out with the bathwater. I mean, we're all sitting here and people are cheering thinking, ha, I'm being taken care of, and I would love to know how.

Right. So you guys created shark jumping. Well, you know, that's a funny thing because there was a man, John Hime, who was sitting in his apartment. at Michigan State, I think, right? Or Michigan University or Michigan. He and his friend came up with the idea that a show or something has jumped the shark when they've overstayed their welcome. And it never bothered me because we were number one for the next four or five years after that anyway. So it's America. He has a talk show on Sirius Radio. He is part of Howard Stern's team with a Ford game. I think he got a book

out of it. He was like a gazunt. He should live in him. God bless, right? Yeah. I really. I even went on his show. And not only that, but he was the truth, when there were still newspapers, I think my wife is the last person who must read a newspaper holding on to the print. When there were newspapers, and they would talk about jumping the shark, they had a picture of me on the water. Jumping the shark. I had great legs at that time. So it never bothered me. I love that. That's fantastic. Do you want to plug any of your social justice? see stuff or your daughters. My daughter, the mother of three sons, very funny, very quick. All my children are dyslexic. I was just sitting at home, watch the news and saw the story that kind of

fell out of the news of the families and the children being caged at the border. And something went off in her head and said, oh my God, those could be my children. That could happen to me. and she with two other friends started, this is about humanity. There is no overhead, and all they do is raise money, a load buses with concerned citizens here in the L.A. area and go down to the border

and take care of the needs of the families and the children. Out of nowhere, and in the last year and a half, they've raised over a million dollars that goes completely to taking care of those children's, physical needs, satorial needs, living needs, sheets. They've built bathrooms. It's unbelievable.

Zoe Winkler, Rinesis. And the charities called Why? This is about humanity, and I am a proud dad. Yesterday at Father's Day, the only thing I asked for was a piece of art that all five grandchildren had made, and I got the most wonderful pieces of art probably ever created. Picasso is now wishing he was back so that he could study under India, my granddaughter. I'm so jealous. I mean, I love my dad. Don't get me wrong, but you're pretty great. Thanks.

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. Andy Slavitt is a former acting administrator of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and famously helped fix the debacle of a rollout that the Obamacare exchanges experienced. Andy, what is going on? Tell us what's going on. I'm so worried about this federal government's complete inability to respond to coronavirus. You mean what's going on besides God testing us?

What is going on? Yeah, specifically as it relates to coronavirus, in January and February, we were in a situation where the president was denying and hoping to wish away a coming crisis that was becoming increasingly more obvious. And in June, we're in the same exact place. He now believes we've declared victory and he's going to continue to tell and sell that narrative, probably unless the stock market drops. I think the thing that got him in March to start to see things differently was when he got visited by big Wall Street traders who told him that if he didn't act on the virus, the market was going to continue to tank. And so he did. I think the market's back up. And I think

as far as he's concerned, that that's the measure of success. You know, Andy, I think that one of the things that is embedded in Trumpism is this skepticism about experts. How much are you seeing that play out here? You know, I think there's a perfect analogy, Rick, to how he thinks about the EPA and climate scientists is how he now thinks about the CDC public health scientists. And let's just posit that if you want to look for evidence to show an expert is wrong, that's about as low-hanging fruit as you're ever going to find. Because scientists are just basically accumulating data, making hypotheses. And most scientists work their salts, never claim that they're correct, they're making that their observations they're making are what they are. And as a president,

you want the best advice possible from all's forces. And I don't think there's anybody in public health, including Anthony Fauci, who would say that you shouldn't pay attention to other experts, like economists, et cetera. But I think the place is probably largely devoid of experts. And if you compare that to Angela Merkel or Aderne or you go around the world, and the places that let science guide them are now opening up their economies much more successfully, ironically, than the ones that were like us and possibly like Brazil, where we just believe that expertise is something to be ignored

because it gets in the way of economic growth or whatever your theory is. So Trump said this weekend, and he said it was a joke, but it's obviously not a joke, that we need to slow down on testing. Do you think that's what's really going on? Well, you know, they often try to have it both ways, don't they? Where he says something that speaks to the base and speaks to, at a minimum, what he was saying to the people in the crowd is don't go get tested after this. Right. Right. He's saying, we don't want that track record.

And, by the way, you know, you're kind of against me if you're doing that. And so what he's basically telling him is go be a silent spreader. To be blunt, that's not a joke that you make. I mean, going to tell people that and then having someone, look, there's a cleanup crew in the White House who sort of speaks to everybody else. They're not Trump people who say, oh, no, no, he was joking. There's literally seriously all that, all that stuff. But he's very focused on his reelection, which he believes is dependent on economic growth in the stock market. Everything else is inconvenient.

You mentioned a moment ago on the countries that have did the smart on the front end are starting to be able to reopen and get functioning again. Because we sort of felt this rush to open up in a bunch of states, particularly my home state of Florida, this spike we're seeing right now. It's like the second bounce already. We didn't expect the second bounce until the fall. How does that play out? Greece, for a short period of time, it basically enforced if you were violating the short-term tough measures, you would get big fine. Guess what? It worked. And we're talking about really established countries like the Czech Republic, who said everybody wears a mask. 80% of people wear a mask, they quite literally crush the virus. And now guess what? They have an economy and no masks because the virus just doesn't know where to go.

If I get asked a question, which I often do, whose fault is it that we're seeing case growth in Florida or Arizona? And people want to say, well, is it the Memorial Day barbecuers? Is it the protesters? Is it Trump? Is it the governors? And my answer, basic level is it's the virus. So at some level, I would say to every governor, it's not your fault, guys and girls, men and women. It's not your fault that the virus is there. Please don't take this personally and don't respond that every time there's a new case or even a death, that you did something wrong. And because if you do, you won't be acknowledging the reality that exists. Now, what you are responsible for, obviously, is how you respond. And so if you respond in a way that is cautious and careful and thoughtful and keeps the spread reduced while being stepwise and opening up, and by the way, there's a playbook on this. It's not a mystery at this point. We know how to do it.

Some states are doing it. Many countries are doing it. Then great. And guess what? Your constituents will reward you for that. I firmly believe. And I think a big political mistake Trump is making is I think the public can handle much more bad news. If it's delivered transparently and if it's delivered in a clear way, that he gives him credit for. And I don't think people would hold him responsible for the virus being on the shores of the U.S., even though he can argue that he deserves some responsibility for that. But the fact is, he can't bring himself to just deliver it straight. And I think as Cuomo proved and other people proved, you can make mistakes. But if you know how to communicate with a little bit of empathy and demonstrate competence, the public will be right behind you. I think that's very

true. And that's a sort of ruling crisis management overall in politics and in corporate stuff. I've done a lot of corporate crisis management work over the years. And being transparent, getting the data out there, telling the truth from the get-go, gets you out of the trouble. Are you seeing anything positive? Is there anything hopeful we can hang our hats on? Yeah. Actually, I mean, the most encouraging thing is science, the most discouraging thing. I'd call it our cultural behavior and a cultural reaction. Specific to the U.S., by the way. I mean, not that these phenomena don't occur to some extent other places. One of the things that I try to get people to understand is like, look, if you live in New York and you know people who've died or certainly

been infected with COVID-19, and you've seen the scenes, like, you get it. And you wonder why the country is not reacting greater. If you live in a part of the country where you know nobody who's been infected, and you know five people who've lost their jobs or maybe people whose businesses have had to close, that's your reality. I mean, and that's observational. All of the smart epidemiologists who I talked to at the onset of this predicted that's exactly what's going to happen and that you don't have an unlimited amount of buy-in from the public. And so the way you communicate becomes really, really important because until we have better science, and I count that as both a vaccine and therapies, then our what they call non-pharmaceutical interventions,

which is basically social distancing and masks and so forth, that's the only thing we have. And so if it's the only thing you have, you've got to take it much more seriously. If you notice that when Angela Merkel, who is kind of a model for this, gives a piece of good news to the German public. She surrounds it by two-thirds of warnings. We're taking this step forward. However, and you take every gain, as Rick is saying, it's not like they're inventing the long. There's actually a playbook for this.

And in this particular case, there was a very literal playbook that Ron Clayne left behind. As it relates to vaccines, I'm happy to talk a little bit more there. So, first of all, with vaccines, there's so much confirmation bias that whatever you want to believe, you can believe. If you want to believe that we have a vaccine coming in three months, I can find you 10 articles that'll tell you it's coming in three months.

If you want to believe we'll never have a vaccine, I can find you those articles too. Like everything else with this, whatever people's narrative is, this sort of fits in. My sense is that I try not to get too high or low by the things that are happening, but I will say things are happening really quickly and really impressively. In July, we're going to have three candidate vaccines that are going to be in phase three trials, meaning we're literally going to be looking for thousands of people in hot spot to get them a vaccine and see how they react. Now, one of the things I point out, maybe a couple things to point out, one is when people hear vaccine in their minds, they think like measles vaccine, like 98% effectiveness.

Instead of influenza vaccine, which is like 30 to 40% effective. I think we need to adjust our thinking. If we're thinking the former, I think it's, I think it's going to be much more like the latter. You do, even though the virus doesn't mutate much? I do because I think some people will, you know, their immune systems just won't react as well to it. I think some people won't take it. Some people, I think this is not going to be a perfect, vaccine. We certainly shouldn't have in our minds like there's a pre-vaccine world and a post-vaccine world. I think the vaccine is a tool that will help us get another, call it, you know, 20 to 30 to 40 percent more people who have antibodies and who have immunity for a period of time. Yeah, we may need multiple vaccine, given how they work. The thing that I think to watch for politically is what I think many people are kind of talking about as the October surprise, which is you're all followed Trump with a Hydro-Gloxia.

I can't even say the word. Dr. Trump's miracle elixir, I call it. Right. So imagine that same thing in October, only this time with a vaccine. And you think that's what's coming. Right. So imagine that we don't have data back from clinical trials yet because we won't. And we'll know some things about these vaccines.

And Trump puts his thumb on the FDA like you did before or like it appears you did before and says, you need to approve these vaccines for emergency use authorization in October. And then really, most importantly, undermining people. faith in vaccines because it will obviously look like a political move. There will be no data yet. Of course, Trump and Han will have had this track record together from this other drug. And you can imagine there's already people who are inclined not to take vaccines. It's like Jonas Salk and polio a little bit, would you say? Well, there's some valid reasons, right? If we had a huge onslaught of cases and we had nurses

and doctors that were going into the line of fire and couldn't protect themselves, you can imagine how there would be reason for an emergency use authorization to protect the those people from getting infected. And so it's entirely possible that there's valid reasons. If you know the drug is as safe as you could possibly know, this reduces the risk for people that are essential workers. The problem is that I don't think it will be clear. I think it'll be very hard to trust what's coming out of the government. And one thing we've learned is kind of what's the cost of not being able to trust the government and tell you the truth is you get to a crisis like this and no one knows what to do. Even the people who follow him, you don't really believe in.

Right. Now, what's your best case outcome for the next 12 to 18? months for the country regarding COVID. So we're already adjusting our lives, whether we even consciously know it or not. And if you're sneezing, Rick, and you're feeling a little bit under the weather, you're probably not going out. If you had diabetes, you're probably being careful. And so what I expect is the cases are going to continue to climb, as we've said, because people don't really have natural immunity until it grows. But I expect the case fatality rate to continue to drop. I don't think it'll be like it was initially in New York or in Lombardy, where 80% of people that went on a ventilator ultimately died. I think we will get closer and closer to fewer and fewer

people needing to be hospitalized and we'll take better care of them when they get in. There'll be drugs that work. And then over time, I think we'll see things like either vaccines and possibly just prophylactics, which give people some temporary immunity. And what I've been suggesting is that the virus just becomes easier and easier to live with. It's not an on-off switch. There becomes certain activities, though, that are more challenging than others. So how do you fill a stadium with people? How do you go to a church? You know, how do you get on an airplane?

How do you go to a casino? And some of those things, even in the best case, could be a while before we figure out how to do it right. And look, smart people are trying to figure it out. And that's great. So do you think that there's any truth to the idea that the virus will mutate and be less fatal? Well, look, I don't know. And I probably could have started by saying the best answer to every question should be,

I don't know, but, or I don't know, here's what I think. because nobody knows this stuff. I think that there's some observational reason to believe that there are people that for whatever reason are not as susceptible as other people. So take that woman in the White House, Miller. Stephen Miller's wife. You guys have been the West Wing.

I mean, that's like a tiny airless. You think about the situation room. It's even more airless by design. She shares an office with somebody, I think short maybe. He didn't get it. They were for long periods of time without wearing masks before they were doing tests. And no one else got it.

Look at family. some people in a family, if someone comes home with the virus, get it, and some people don't. And so there may be some, there's big gaps in our knowledge. And when we figure them out and look back on this period of time, it'll be easier to understand. But there may be cross immunity. There may be weakening strain. There may be a lot of things going on, which over time make these next runs less fatal, in addition to the things we talked about, which is people being a little more careful and there being some better therapies. So there's something going on here. Now, your epidemiologist say that if a second wave comes, the second wave could be more lethal strain. I don't know how we know any of these things, but we need to be prepared for, I suppose, a lot of possibilities. Andy, tell us about the podcast you've started. So when I realized that was the last human on Earth,

not to have a podcast. Actually, it was more like if Molly and Rick could do it, I probably should give a shot. No, no, seriously, this is what happened. My 18-year-old son, Zach, who I loved death, but honestly, he's fine hanging out with this summer, but only because we're his only choices. Yes. I have some experience with this.

So he comes to me and he says, hey, dad, you're on the phone talking to, like, governors and all these people and senators all day long. Like, why don't you do a podcast? And why don't we do a podcast? And literally, he could have said, why don't we mow the law? He could have said anything. But, like, if my son wanted to do something with me, I was like, yes.

And then we talked about it a bit. And if you listen to the podcast, it's called In the Bubble. He's kind of shy and quiet. And I forced him to ask questions of people like Chelsea Clinton and Pete Buttigieg and all the kind of. kind of guests we have on and stuff, and it's just really adorable. But the thing we came up with is like, can you do something that a whole family could listen to together that's kind of like, I call it like 40% Churchill, 40% Fred Rogers and 20% dad jokes. Exactly. I love it. Tina Fay is on,

and I'm like telling her jokes. That sounds like, I'm funny. But the rest of it is like, can I be helpful? Can we say things in a tone that people know the world's not coming to an end? A lot of people have a lot of anxiety that it's very easy to get angry, frustrated, scared, pitted ourselves against one another. And can we be a little bit of a voice for this sort of like Churchill in the bunker just kind of say, hey, we're all in this together. And it's been a lot of fun. And I love just doing this with Zach. It's just cool to see. So last week we had a little fuck that guy snafoo.

We had a little fuck that guy fuck up. Yes, we had a little fuck that guy fuck up. And this week, but we know people missed it. And so we promise to have it back, and we will never not have an episode without Fuck That Guy. And if we do, you can write to me and complain. You can call and say, fuck you that guy. Yeah, exactly. You can complain to me.

So who is our Fuck That Guy for today? My Fuck That Guy for Today is 2024 presidential candidate and current Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. DeSantis, even though testing in Florida has basically plateaued, the accelerating rate of positive cases in Florida is spiking right now in a way that has serious people looking at the chart and going, using a super technical scientific term, which is, oh, Jesus fucking Christ. Yes, I've heard that term. The curve is not flattening in Florida. It is, in fact, spiking again.

They've been trying to play hide the football with a bunch of the statistics, including nursing home fatalities and things like that. And it is not good. And he continues to stay the course. He is continuing to pretend nothing is wrong and nothing is happening. I have some inside information from my Florida Republican former friends. Even those guys are starting to get a little nervous, like maybe DeSantis is not that good for us right now. This could be dragging us down in the fall if we're going to be stacking grannies outside of nursing homes like cordwood.

There's some growing concern. So, Rick, are you saying that killing your constituents is bad? Well, we're about to find out in about two weeks if that happens in Tulsa. Look, we are in Terra Incognita with this COVID epidemic. But in my 30 years of politics, I have gone through, reviewed my records and found that killing your constituents has never been tried before. So it may be a novel political theory, but my instincts tell me it's not so good. You are, of course, in Florida.

I am, of course, in the great state of Florida. I do have to say, and I mean, since it was Father's Day, it's important to talk about this. I've had four friends whose fathers have died from this. I know we can be a little flippant sometimes because Gallo's humor is still humor, and you kind of need it sometimes when things are this crazy. You know, Molly, I know you and I both heard what the president said this weekend at the rally about testing, but I think it's important we play the clip. Just so people hear what I call the confession of Donald Trump. They call me, they say the job you're doing.

Here's the bad part. When you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people. You're going to find more cases. So I said to my people, slow the testing down, please. They test, and they test. We got tests. People don't know what's going on. We got tests.

We got another one over here. The young man's 10 years old. He's got the sniffles. He'll recover in about 15 minutes. That's a case. Add up to him there. I mean, Molly, what do you think about that? That's just like, can you imagine another leader basically saying, hey, I took steps that killed people.

But he always does that. He always confesses. And then he uses that as a way to show that he wasn't actually doing something illegal. That's like his favorite thing to do. Yeah. Remember Russia? Are you listening? Right.

I think that that has worked in the past. when it was political, but we're at one degree of separation for people. Everyone knows someone who has died. Hey, Molly. Yeah. Who's your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy is a person who I have actually had interactions with and who I think is really one of the most.

I'm sure he'll deny ever liking Trump in six months, but Matt Schlapp. Here's a funny story. So Matt, back in 2016, he's had a conversation out. I think it was outside the spin room. But it was essentially this guy's a fucking disaster. He's going to destroy the role. Republican Party. I can't believe this. It's over. We're doomed. God, I hate Trump. He's so awful. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And I wonder if I have receipts on that. I have to take a look on that. The thing I was actually thinking about was on May 21st,

2020. Matt Schlapp went on Brian Kilmead show, radio show, Fox Radio, God knows what is even going on there. That's terrifying. You do not want to know. We're being way too careful was reopening the country. Oh. Noted epidemiologist Matt Schlapp of the scientific practice of Schlapp, Diamond, and Silk, Epidemiological Research, Inc. Few people have studied viruses more than Matchlap. Few people, indeed. I mean, other than Dr. Bornstein. That's right, Dr. Bornstein.

But that's a whole separate category of viruses, from what I understand. That's right. So, Molly, since we skipped, well, since we blew off my fuck that guy last week, my fault, folks. I blame Rick. Yeah, blame me. Most people do. I just want to ask you a question, and this is an ancillary fuck that guy. Yeah, let's hear it.

Do you know what guy's going to get fucked next week? No. Who? Seven days from now. Roger Stone goes to prison. Do we think Roger Stone will end up in prison? I think Roger Stone will end up in prison one of two ways. Either he goes and Trump feels like he can't do it right now,

or Barr says if you pardon Stone, you end up with him having his Fifth Amendment rights wave. Then Congress calls him and says, okay, Roger, here we go. We're going to now drag you through a million different details on all these things that you knew about, including the WikiLeaks stuff that we now know. Roger warned Trump in advance and lied about it. And then... Right. That was in Bolton's book, right?

Yeah, and then either gets contempt or perjures himself in front of Congress. So back in the barrel, as Roger likes to say, once again. So couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Is he still selling those autographed stone or no? You know, I don't know, but he was without sin may cast them. And I think he's mostly hawking like Stone did nothing wrong T-shirts on Insta now. Oh, yeah. I'm getting you one of those. It's very sad.

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 from The Daily Beast and beyond from 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. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm Molly JongFest and he's 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

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