The Daily Beast Podcast - Does Trump Really Want Republicans To Win in Georgia?

Episode Date: December 1, 2020

Trump is headed to Georgia this week, where there’s about to be a pair of special elections to decide the balance of the senate. But don’t expect the president to really talk up his Republican, MAGA AF buds, George Conway says. “It's better for him and better for his ego if they lose.” Trump has a problem, George explains to Molly-Jong Fast and Rick Wilson on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. Well, two. First, “Republicans did better than he did” in the general election. Not only does “that undercut his claim of fraud… it means that there were significant numbers of Republicans who couldn't stomach him. And that's the reason why he lost and all these other people won.” So now Trump is hate-tweeting Georgia’s Republican governor and Republican secretary of state. And he’s doing his damnedest to tell his followers that their votes don’t count, that they’re sure to be stolen. “It was amazing to see [RNC chair] Ronna McDaniel desperately to explain to Republicans why they need to vote in an election that will decide the balance of the Senate,” Molly remarks.  “It was like watching a walrus trying to fuck a beach ball. It's so awkward,” Rick replies.  Then Baratunde Thurston—host of the new podcast How to Citizen—joins Molly for a frank discussion about what led to Trumpism, and how we avoid falling for it again. He’s got a number of structural reforms in mind, to take money out of politics and put in back on the street. But there’s more.  “I want a lot of tribunals, Molly. I want COVID tribunals because I think there are political leaders who have blood on their hands that they need to be held to account for it. And I want some kind of like media tribunals because a lot of the media establishments created this fiction that is Donald Trump,” Baratunde says. Speaking of media monsters, Rick and Molly has had it with a certain interview formally known as the “Money Honey.” “Maria Bartiromo was once considered a legitimate and serious journalist,” Rick says. “And now she's being fitted for a pink hanbok, much like the North Korean propaganda lady who sits at the screen and stares and screams about the glory of the Kim Jong Un family. She allowed Donald Trump to go on television this weekend on the airwaves of Fox and bleed out the craziest horseshit you've ever heard.” 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 and 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. Well, hey, there, Molly John Fast. Hi, Rick Wilson.

How are you? I'm good. We're very excited to have our friend and frequent guest, but also legal. Expert. I think he's come the most of any guest. I think he has. George Conway. George Conway.

Is that your podcast voices? Yes. This is as good as it gets. Do I need one? Do I have to start talking like this? Yes, you do. The soothing... These are my sweaty balls.

We had Alec Baldwin. I know you did. I missed it. The soothing sounds of George Conway. Wow. So this is kind of like, it's like NPR-ish. Without the intellect. It's like the poor man's NPR.

Today I'm the new abnormal. We'll be discussing. What are you guys going to do? What are you guys going to do? do after things start becoming normal again. When is that, George? Yeah. I don't know.

I'm just wondering. I mean, it would be the new, new, new, would it be the new, new, new abnormal or the, the new normal? The new old normal. The old. I'm just throwing that out there. The artist formerly known as the new abnormal. Normal. A podcast formerly known as the new abnormal.

So I know you guys all read the piece of the Washington Post this weekend. That was like a delicious slide. Did I? I bet you did. A delicious tasty pie ever. 20 days of fantasy and failure. Inside Trump's quest to overturn the election. Can we do dramatic readings from this article?

I think we should do dramatic readings. Wait. Do you know anyone quoted in this article? I think most of the good quotes are blind quotes. Right. Although I think the Secretary of State of Georgia did get some nice quotes in. But some of the great quotes are just, this is a classic. It really is of the Trump TikTok genre. I think it's up there with, I mean, one of the best ones I'd seen was the post-comy firing TikTok where 30 officials connected to the, in the White House or

connected to the White House, senior Republican officials, they described it broadly, described how Trump had been raging, raging, raging, raging about the Russia investigation. And finally, after spending the weekend, I think, with Jared and Miller coming back and firing Comey. And then they said, oh, it was because of Hillary, because of what he did to Hillary, which is very believable. Right, because of Hillary. And then this article came out and it's just all he had been talking about for weeks on in was. That was when Jared convinced him that Democrats would praise him for firing Comey. But this one, this one, I mean, this is great.

The lead is something, okay, and this one, this one. was November 28, just a couple of days ago. And the lead is the first paragraph. The facts were indisputable. President Trump had lost in the next paragraph. But Trump refused to see it that way, sequestered in the White House and brooding out of public view after his election defeat, rageful and at times delirious in a torrent of private conversations. Trump was in the telling of one close advisor. Like mad King George muttering, I won, I won, I won. How's that? Here, I have to try one now. The 20 days between the election on November 3rd and the green lighting of Biden's transition exemplified some of the hallmarks of life in Trump's White House,

a government paralyzed by the president's fragile emotional state. Fragile emotional state. Let's just hold that thought for a second. Okay, go ahead. advisors nourishing his fables, expletively infused between factions of aides and advisors, and a pernicious blurring of truth and fantasy. Though Trump ultimately failed in his quest to steal the election, his weeks-long gerryman succeeded in undermining faith in elections and the legitimacy of Biden's victory. But how is that different than how he's been this entire time? It's not, Molly, it's not. But the point is, it's just a little more insane. Yes, it's a little more insane, but it's all laid out here.

and the people are talking about him. His people are describing him. However clear-eyed, Trump's aides may have been about his loss to President-elect Joe Biden. Many of them nonetheless indulged their boss and encouraged him to keep fighting with legal appeals. They were happy to scratch his itch. God, what an image. This advisor said, if he thinks he wanted like, we won't tell him. I mean, listen to this. These people are saying, okay, we're just going to let him think he won. We're not going to tell him he lost. I mean, they're literally telling the Washington Post this. It's insane.

No one scratches the middle of Donald Trump's back like Jason Miller's beard. We're here, sir. But the question, I think the question is how we got here. We got here because this is the way he's always been, and they have always been indulging their boss and encouraging him to do stupid things because they don't want to upset him. And if he thinks it's a good idea, we won't tell him, to quote this one. We are sinners in the hands of an angry God is how we got here.

And, you know, yes, the delusions have been coming for a long time. The delusions about, oh, it's a hoax. It's a, you know. So the entire country has been held hostage by the president's moods for the last four years. Well, yeah. I think people forget about what happened about two years ago now. The president realized that he had. hadn't asked for a lot of money for the border wall, right? But then he couldn't admit that.

And they had already worked out a deal for the new Congress starting in 2019 for the border wall. And they had X amount of dollars, which wasn't a lot for the border wall. And he started taking crap from the right about, hey, you didn't ask for enough money from the border wall. So he basically unagrees to the deal that his people agreed to. People, Republican members of Congress who would agree to this budget deal with the Democrats had to stop. at the airports and come back. And then Trump refuses to approve a budget and shuts down the government, okay, thinking that, oh, and pretending like, oh, they didn't get me enough money for the border wall when they

gave them absolutely everything he wanted, which wasn't very much. And then the government shuts down for 35 days. And at the end of it, he gets less money for the border wall than was in the budget agreement that he rejected, okay? Because everybody's telling him, yeah, boss fight, go, go for it. it's okay. Yeah, you're showing them. And they did it for 35 days we didn't have a functioning government. Maybe we'd, okay, for four years we haven't a functioning government. Yeah, I was going to say it. But for this 35 days, we didn't really have a functioning government.

And no federal workers got paid because he was asking for money. He didn't want, he didn't originally ask for and then end up getting less. And we forget about all these things. It's all every time. And this is just, you know, this denial of reality. You're right. It's been there all along. But this time, you know, this. This is the finale, and he's getting more and more insane. And, you know, his ass is going to be out on January 20th, no matter what. And he's going on the way out saying, I want, I won, I won. And he's going to be doing this for the next five years. Trump went on to falsely claim that he won, that the election was a total scam,

and that his legal challenges would continue full speed ahead. I mean, I think what's so corrosive about this, George, and tell me what you think about this. This is, and look, all the antics and all the bullshit and all the dangerous, put us through and all the, all the crap he's put us through in the last four years, five years now, really, let's get to it. This is in some ways the worst, the worst, because it is so corrosive about our system. Absolutely. And there are now millions of people out there who will go to their graves saying, where Trump won by 479 million votes. It's just a lie. They didn't chat that 700 electoral college votes in Japan. And that, you know, you know, he won California. Yeah. He won

You have these Republican officials talking, mocking it, but they won't put their names to it, and they won't say anything public. I mean, here's what a Republican official in this story had to say about Giuliani's and Sidney Powell's crazy notion that Hugo Chavez had put in motion this elaborate plan that was effectuated seven years after Chavez's death to steal the election from Donald Trump. Here's a Republican official telling the New York, the Washington Post, I, like everyone else, he's mocking it. I've yet to see any evidence of it, but it's a thriller. You've got Chavez, seven years after his death, orchestrating this international conspiracy that politicians in both parties are funding, a Republican official said facetiously. It's an insane story. They're saying the president is putting these people out here with insane stories. and yet they won't go on the record. They won't say anything publicly.

And the cowardice is the other side of this. They are too afraid of these people who Trump is convincing of this huge fraud. And they're as guilty as Trump is. This is the stuff that breaks down civil society and can lead to people deciding, oh, we don't need elections. Let's just be violent. As I said, and I think you're exactly right, George. The corrosive nature of it empowers people.

once you tell them, hey, all the rules are gone, everything's broken, it's chaos, the dark is coming, then they feel empowered to do whatever they want. And I mean, I got an email 10 minutes ago from some guy who's like, we'll take revenge upon you, cucklier, liberal, rhino, Lincoln partiers, because 100 million Americans voted for Donald Trump. Really? 100 million. Go on. And to me, right now, I was thinking about it this morning and I tweeted something about it.

Think about Mike Pence. Mike Pence used to be an honest politician. Ish. Yeah, as far as they go, he was fairly, you know, he was a fairly decent guy. I've known worse. I mean, he ignored AIDS. I've known worse, but not a lot. He wasn't like working on a fascist agenda, but yes.

Right. He says nothing. He's basically hiding under a rock right now, because, he knows it's all just a pile of lies. And he symbolizes basically, but most of the Republican Party right now, most of the Republican senators, most of the members of the House. And he just, he won't say anything. And he knows. And he's got to know how damaging it is because one of the things that's happening now that we should talk about that the Republicans have, you know, Trump is creating a problem in Georgia for the Republicans where people, oh, they're saying, hey, George. Oh, yeah. It's May on the Orja, Jay. Oh, yeah. We're not going to tell them that people might be thinking that, hey, this is really a fraudulent, so why should I go out and vote?

Those mail-in ballots in Georgia are all a big scam. Nobody should. But that was amazing to see Rhonda, McDaniels, Dermit, whatever her name is, Mitt Romney's niece, trying desperately to explain to Republicans why they need to vote in an election that will decide the balance of the. Senate. It was like watching a wall or try to fuck a beach ball. It's so awkward. Yeah, and they want to know about the Hugo, Hugo Chavez voting machines that are depriving them of their vote. And why should they, why should they go through that again? Right. Trump is going this weekend there, though. So it'll be interesting to see if he can stay on message long enough. I mean, you do have this interesting situation where Trump is saying he's

been cheated and yet he needs, and the system is corrupt, and yet he needs every one of his supporters to vote in this corrupt system. The thing about it is he's not going to say that. I mean, he may say it just sort of pro forma, but he doesn't actually care about these two senators in Georgia, other than they say nice things about him or they're afraid to say bad things about him. He doesn't care about them. He only cares about himself. So his whole speech before this crowd, whatever it's going to be, is going to be about. his grievances and very little about voting for these people. And it's better for him and better for his ego if they lose. Right. Because then it shows it's not about him. It's not about him. I mean,

one of the problems he has right now. He lost and Republicans won. The down ballot Republicans did better than he did. That presents two problems for him. One is, and he doesn't really care about this, is that it undercuts his claim of fraud. But he doesn't really care about that because he doesn't care about logic or facts. He doesn't care about truth. But the other problem is if there was no fraud, then it meant that there were significant numbers of Republicans who couldn't stomach him. And that's the reason why he lost and all these other people won.

And in fact, I think there's a quote in this article where Trump is bemoaning the fact, this article we've been talking about, we're bemoaning the fact that all these other people won. and I lost. If it wasn't in this article, it's in something else. And so he doesn't, why does he care what happens to Kelly Loughler at all? He doesn't. He really doesn't. And, you know, it's probably going to be he may, maybe he'll call her to the stage the way he did Martha McSally,

who, by the way, is leaving office momentarily. Savage. After her second loss. Her second Senate loss. Her second Senate loss. You're welcome, America. That's amazing. So this is just going to be a rant and Ray.

about the media, about the Democrats. He'll probably make fun of Joe Biden's hairline fracture in his foot. That's what this is going to be about. And it's going to be all the Trump show. And at the end of the day, he's going to, people are, he's going to say some outrageous things about voter fraud, even more outrageous than he's probably said before, because he's getting increasingly spun up. You can see it on his Twitter feed. You can see it in that insane interview that we ought to talk about that he did with Maria Bartaromo. The money, honey, honey, yeah. Who used to, I mean, she was a serious person at one point.

And he's going to get worse on this and having a live audience if that's what he's doing on over the weekend in Georgia is going to make that all worse. And it's not going to help these two Republican Senate candidates. It's not going to secretly reverse the results of the election. Well, it's not going to help me. We're not going to secretly reverse the results of the election, but it's also not going to help. these two Republican Senate candidates. Who may win or win anyway? I don't know, but this Trump isn't going to help. You hate to see it.

Yeah. But he'll go, and it'll be interesting to see. But that is the question. Do they show up? Do who show up? Loughler? Did the Woffler and Purdue show up? They have to. I think they have to. This is all they have is Trump's insane base.

They need to stir up the base. They need to embrace QAnon. They have to do a logically impossible thing. But, you know, the Trump mind and the Trump voter mind is probably capable of entertaining these two simultaneously contradictory thoughts without recognizing the contradiction. The contradiction is going to be one, we were jobbed. And two, we need to vote. And that's what they are trying to thread that needle. But Kelly has already gone very Q and on. I mean, she has no problem. Key on Kelly. It's Kelly with a Q. Right. Enjoying the lowest common denominator. It's Purdue that I want to see really. scrape the bottom of the barrel and debase himself, because that's the only way he gets the base. He's not the flavor of Maga cuckoo pants. Right. Right, but at the same time, he is also

running against the tougher candidate, I think. I don't mean this in any way to denigrate Reverend Warnock, but Asoff has his number. Warnock, you know, is susceptible to these charges that he is to the left, I think of Ossov, I think. Well, they used Warnock's preaching against him, which I have to say everyone told us in the media we weren't allowed to use the fact that Amy Comey Barrett is in an insane sect of Christianity against her. But yet, Reverend Warnock, who is the preacher at Martin Luther King's Church, can be, can have context of their, of his sermons used against him on the regular. Well, you know, welcome to politics. Warnock had the best, best ad. I don't know if he saw it. He's walking the dog. I love this ads. It's one of the best play. He, and he plays it.

brilliantly, Warnock does. He's walking his little beagle down the street and he's saying, I said they were going to, I said they were going to do it. They're going, you know, Kelly Loughler hasn't have anything good to say about herself. So they're just going in there lying about me. And then they have the, you know, the quotes from newspapers saying, you know, about, you know, how they're taking some of the preaching out of context. And they say, but I think Georgians, something like this, I think Georgians will see this for what it is. And he drops a poop bag into into a trash can, as he says. And it was a really great app. I think that both of these candidates could have problems because of

what Trump is doing. And she's the weaker candidate, as you say, her opponent has a perception about that he is probably left far left than he probably actually is. She also is willing to debase herself much more. So I think it'll be interesting to see. I mean, she is really like, you know, a Kelly Ward from Arizona or a Martha McSally, you know, the type that will absolutely go full maga. Yeah. And there's an amazing sort of contrast between Warnock and Luffler. Like Warnock is this guy who's just, you know, he's been there on the street. He's from Georgia. He's from Georgia. He's a real person, okay, you know, who meets and preaches to real people. And Kelly Loughler lives in some mansion that has a name. Kelly Loughler is the Christine O'Donnell

of Sarah Palin's. One of my favorite moments from the primary was when Doug Collins got enraged that Kelly Loughler had a Warhol Chairman Mao print. Like, that how can you trust her? I don't know if our Georgia listeners know this, but Kelly Loughler used to be pro-choice. Did she? Yeah,

strongly pro-choice. Used to be strongly pro-choice. You mean like Donald Trump? Yeah, like Donald Trump until 2015 in October. Before we get into things, we have a fun little treat. There are so many insane things happening in the world right now, and two episodes a week just aren't

enough to cover it all. So, the new abnormal is going to release a limited run series of bonus interviews over the next few weeks for Beast Inside members only. We'll release a new one each Sunday. But listen carefully. Only Beast Inside members will have access to these. So head over to the new abnormal.dhailybeast.com to become a Beast inside member now. That's new abnormal. dot the Daily Beast.com. So George, you think Trump is going to get this election brought up to the Supreme Court and have it overturned so he can be president forever? No.

Sorry, Donald. That's not how this works. How would that even work? Can you just explain how, like, that fantasy even becomes a thing? I mean, I can't because it doesn't make any sense. The only way you could litigate your way to victory, is if an election were close enough that some legal issue would determine the fate of a small number of votes and the margin was so close that those votes would turn the election. So Florida in 2000.

Florida in 2000 is the perfect example. There was no not counting of any votes. The only question was how and to what extent do you continue to recount the votes? into December, you know, as the deadline for the electoral college voting, which is mid-December, approaches. And for Trump to win, I mean, the problem that Trump has had from essentially election night was the margins weren't close enough, and they kept getting farther and farther out of reach, and there were too many states. It wasn't just one state. It wasn't even just two states. At least three, he'd have to overturn at least three. He'd have to overturn at least three states. Biden will have won by 74 electoral votes. It means you have to turn 37. So you've got to get 37 back. Pennsylvania is 20. Michigan is 16 and Georgia is 16. That's enough right there.

36, even 36, two of those states won't get you to 270. So that's been his problem all along. And he's had no basis. And Rick can attest to this. I mean, in terms of recounts and challenging the initial count of a vote. Historically, the average number of votes that are changed as the result of any recount in any statewide race is only about 300. I saw one figure of 294. I saw another one of something like 300. If you have a big state, like Florida, you might be able to get to 1,000, which is what happened in 2000, but that wasn't enough for Al Gore. And all of these margins, the closest I think is Georgia, and the margins of what? How many thousands is in Georgia? Yeah, that's right. It's not close. It's not close enough. So nothing, none of this is working. The recounts aren't working. The lawsuits,

the claims are just, you know, they're making these insane claims about voting machines and about ballots being dumped in the middle of the night, fake ballots. They don't dare make any of these assertions. I mean, the president tweeted about, or was, no, no, he was on the Barteromo show talking about dumps, big dumps. And as I tweeted at the time, I often think of massive dumps and Donald Trump in the same sentence. I knew that was going to set you going. You know they're never going to put that into court papers, right? I mean, every one of their filings has been fairly anemic, these fairly anemic sort of, well,

we have a possibility of a hearsay of a person who might have suddenly believed that they saw something, you know, nefarious. But nothing ever appears in the actual filings of any merit. In Pennsylvania, when Rudy Giuliani argued. their motion for, I guess, a temporary injunction and an opposition to a motion to dismiss before a Republican appointee, a Republican judge in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, a Republican appointee who is a member, was a member of the Federalist Society and was recommended for his position by Senator Pat Toomey.

No, no, Pat Toomey. He was appointed by Obama, but because of a deal that they, you know, local. on Pennsylvania deal, which happens in many states. The minority senator sometimes gets to pick one out of four federal judges. And do we pick this guy? And he just wrote an opinion

just absolutely blasting the Trump campaign. And in the second, you know, and he relied on Rudy Giuliani's, as did the Court of Appeals ultimately. And the Court of Appeals panel was an all Republican panel, three Republican

judges, two appointed by George W. Bush and one appointed by a guy named Beavis, appointed by Donald Trump in 2017, who wrote the majority opinion, they just basically hammered the Trump campaign, basically saying there are no evidence of anything that would justify overturning the votes of six or seven million Pennsylvanians. And in fact, they both point out that Rudy Giuliani told the district court, as I was mentioning, that they were not making any accusation or allegation of fraud in Pennsylvania. And they were simply saying that, oh, some people didn't get their ballots counted, these plaintiffs. And these plaintiffs were basically saying, oh, well,

my ballots may not have been counted. So therefore, everyone else's should not be counted. I mean, it's insane. And the court's treated it rightly as insane as insane. And they can try to take that up to the Supreme Court. That's the closest thing they have now to the Supreme Court, other than the case that's already up there. There won't make any difference. It has to do with some, a complete different issue of whether certain absentee ballots that came in after election day should be counted. But that, you know, that's not going to make any difference either because it only, it doesn't affect the vote. They're losing for multiple reasons. One is they got no claim that anything bad happened.

Two is they got no claim that anything bad happened that would amount to the number of votes that would be necessary to overcome the margin by which he lost, which is significant. And the third problem is the relief that they seek is basically to say that nobody's votes counts, which is just absolutely insane. And that's been the pattern throughout the country, and that's why the courts are just throwing these things out. I think the record now is like one and 39. Yeah.

I'm starting to think they're not very good at this. Yeah, they're not. They got like one order from the court in Pennsylvania that said that people only had six days instead of nine days to correct their absentee ballots if they kind of messed up the thing with the secrecy envelope or something like that. And it was just nothing. So are you saying Rudy Giuliani is not a very good lawyer? He isn't today. I don't know what happened to him.

He hasn't argued a case in decades until this one. He didn't do very well in front of this judge. And you have to wonder what screws have dropped out of his brain in the past 20 years. Well, the nanofluid was leaking out of his ears. I mean, that press conference that he held at the four seasons total landscaping and that appearance and the press conference he held at the R&C where the brown goo was dripping down his face and then this thing at the Ramada Inn in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. I mean, it was all absolutely insane these accusations that he's making, but they're nowhere found in any of

his papers that are filed before a court. Well, so apparently Bill Barr is promulgating Justice Department policy for federal executions, breaking back hangings and firing squads. My question, of course, was why he wasn't bringing back the Iron Maiden or drawing and quartering or a variety of other medieval tortures and punishments, of which I am something of an expert, don't ask. But it lit up the crazies over the weekend who were like, yes, now this means Gitmo is open for business. Finally, the Q&ON prophecy has come to pass. Bill Barr is on our side after all, and the election will be overturned and it will all be glorious and the blood will flow like a river. But this is, they have 50 days to bring back the, you know, it's not a bunch of, it's like three people, right?

These federal executions. Right. We don't really do a ton of federal executions in this country anymore. Right, because most murders, which is the typical capital offense, are prosecuted by states. as they should be because the states are the principal, you know, for basic law and order on the streets, you rely on the states. I saw some crazy thing that somebody had tweeted of a video of some crazy preacher in Vero Beach, who you may have heard of him because you're in Florida, Rick. But he was talking about there finally saying exactly what you were. Do we all look the same to you in Florida?

I don't know, Florida, all the weird things happen in Florida. And he basically was saying that. George is saying yes. Yes. So basically this guy is saying that, oh, yes, they're going to take, they're going to take, finally going to take all the liberals and the Democrats and the media, and they're going to go shoot them, which is what they deserve. And he said he wasn't kidding. He seems nice. Yeah, he seems nice. But I think what's really going on there is, I think they're just doing things that they're going to force the Biden administration to undo,

do, and then people can make political A out of it as they see fit. One of the first things they'll have to do in the Justice Department is they'll overrule this and say that, you know, I mean, they may even put a, they may even have a moratorium on federal capital punishment if that's, I think that may actually be their position. Either way, what they're what, what the Republicans will do is say, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, the Democrats are soft on crime. It's all designed not to effectuate justice, but to create political issues. But just to set up Biden for problems. Well, and if, you know, I mean, you know, maybe these people, these three on death row are particularly bad. I don't know the facts of them they probably are. If you get federal death penalty, you probably are a pretty bad person and you've been convicted of it by a federal court, which is, you know, the highest, generally the highest level of quality justice that you're going to get in the country. And so these people, maybe they deserve the maximum punishment. But it's not what's going on. And think of how atrocious it is for all of a sudden people, the justice department to be. speeding up executions because Donald Trump is leading office. I mean, you know, the sort of

inherent crassness and crudity of basically saying, you're, you're the one who gets executed, and by this, by a particularly objectionable method or a method that previously been considered objectionable, because, hey, you know, we're, we're out of here in 50 days. That's just crazy. But Bill Barr has sort of been largely absent. Yeah, that's also a fascinating aspect. And in fact, Trump just the other day, I think it might have been again in the famous Maria Barteromo interview that we talked about a couple of times. He basically said that the FBI and the DOJ, where are they? We've had this massive election fraud. They're part of the conspiracy. They may be part of the conspiracy. He said, with the FBI involved? Yes, Captain Quig, someone took the strawberries from your icebox, cuckoo pants. He was not very happy with Barr already because Barr had failed to issue a report on the 2016 Russia and 2017 Russia investigation and the origins.

He was unhappy with Barr. He's got to be really unhappy now because he thinks that the entire legal system is supposed to help him because he's president of the United States. In fact, he said that the other day. Can you imagine? I can't, they're telling me I can't sue even the one president of the United States. I can't sue for stuff. I mean, and the irony, of course, is that Barr has, I mean, Barr, who I did not have high, I mean, he has ruined himself for Trump. Like, he, his, his obituary will be. Someone should come up with a pithy phrase about this. Well, you know, Barr was asked about this early on in his tenure and he basically said, well, I'm going to be dead anyway. So what difference? Why do I need a reputation? And I, you know, that's sort of one attitude at an extreme. I don't understand.

and the attitude of many, many other people who, even if they were just acting in their own self-interest, as opposed to doing what's right by the country in accordance with their oaths of office, which would be nice, should be thinking, like, I need to divorce myself from this. And I was particularly inspired last night. I don't know if you watched this 60 Minutes episode with Kreb, the guy who was in charge of cybersecurity for the 2020 election. And he, you know, he quietly did his job for the country, earn the respect, a bipartisan respect on the Hill, and basically said this was a free and fair election and he gets canned for it. And he's a hero now. Why don't other people want to be heroes for doing the right thing? I mean, it shouldn't be, you shouldn't become a hero for

doing the right thing. But in this environment, you can be. And I just don't understand why other people haven't been doing it. And even like, just, let's just game this out for one second, like Marco Rubio, who I know you guys have your own feelings about Marco Rubio, but here's someone who has really not, you know, he could conceivably capture some of this goodwill if he came out. Yeah, but then he, you know, his problem is he's an elected official. And if he does that, then the MAGA people will try to unseat him the next time he's up, which I think is in 2022. But they're going to anyway, don't you think? And they will.

Not necessarily. 2022. Yeah. No, they're going to try to unseat him anyway. Listen, that race is going to end up being one of these guys, this guy Sabatini, who's this super Maga, Jr. or Ivanka, both are talking about moving to Florida. Matt Gates is considering it. There are a whole bunch of other Yahoo's that are considering it.

And so everything Marco built in terms of having a competitive position for another term will be thrown into chaos. One thing I've noticed in my polling in Florida and elsewhere never pops up on the characteristics people wanted a candidate is passive-aggressive Bible verses. Are you sure? I just missed where that was. It may be down in the cross-tap somewhere. I'm going to have to dig through a little more and get the big data guys on it.

Right. The Republican-based voter now, they don't want what they... Look, Marco was when he ran the first time, an inspirational candidate. He was a forward-looking modern Republican. And at the time, in Florida and elsewhere, Republican voters wanted guys like that, who were going to be able to attract a broader segment of the population, who were not going to be the revanchist old guard plump white dudes. Young, forward-looking, good-looking, and Hispanic.

Yeah. It's this thing of will the Republican Party embrace racism, or will it try to pick up this large amount of Hispanic voters who actually do support a lot of the same sort of quote-unquote Christian values that the Republican Party might have at one time stood for? And it seems like they're going to continue with the white supremacy. My friend Reid Gannon makes a great analogy. He says, if you've got a guy in, say, Florida, a 40-year-old white dude and a 40-year-old Hispanic guy

work inside by side-by-sod on a road cruise somewhere, they're pretty much going to vote the same way. And there were a lot of things that, you know, we're seeing in our post-election analysis, that their best message nationally from Trump world was, and the Democrats never had. had a good response to it. Okay, they never had a good response to it. Was defund the police. Scared the living shit out of suburban voters in this. Scared the living shit out of them.

And so because they never got a good read on how to handle that question, they exploited it. And yes, it was completely mendacious. It was a lie from top to bottom. It's messaging. It's politics, folks. It doesn't matter if it was a lie. It matters that it was believed by a lot of people.

And the difficulty there is that, you know, you don't get a second chance to undo, to unring that bell, which is why you're seeing in Georgia right now a ton of ads for Kelly Laughford against Warnock and Osloff and Purdue. And actually from, you know, Rove and Mitch McConnell at this moment, for Crossroads carrying a lot of the load there. Those ads, you know what they're saying? They're saying, John Osso takes money from Chinese communists. Communists from China who are Chinese and communists. And the ones you're seeing against Warnock. I mean, Kelly Loffer was actually a Crossroads ad from Roe. There's a Crossroads ad up right now that's got this portly white-bearded, white-haired Georgia sheriff saying,

that Warnock, boy, I don't know about him. He's going to let them buck wild critters run through the streets and kill us all. Defund the Police! Oh, my God! And it's like the most racist fucking ad you've ever seen. And it's just like, five years ago, no one would have done that ad. But, you know, that's one more thing that Trump normalized in the Republican Party. Baratunde Thurston is a writer, comedian, and commentator, as well as the host of How to Citizen with Baratunde.

What the fuck is going on? That is the opening, daily, sound, sane question of 2020. Yeah, exactly. Well, I also ask Congresspeople what broke Devin Nunes's brain. So what is going on? America is living in the somewhat predictable but still horrible aftermath of divestment from things that are good and common and investment in things that are false and selfish to such a strong degree. So we are in a 40-year experiment in stripping away our civic fabric and a 400-year experiment and still failing to meet the beautiful language we put down on those beautiful pieces of paper. paper so long ago. Great ideas poorly executed. That's what's going on.

We spend a lot of time with people talking about how do we not do Trumpism again. Do you have thoughts on this? Oh, boy. One, let's not do it again. We can acknowledge that is bad on a simple level. I think we need some structural reforms. I think we need to really try to suck a lot of this money out of our politics. I think we really need to restore some sense of common investment so we don't leave so many people hanging out to dry. We kind of cut our own safety net

and then through society out the window at the same time. Probably in that order, actually, which is a bad order to do it in. We need to do that infrastructure week, finally. I think it would be really good to have a bridge that didn't fall down. And that's a metaphor and an actual

recommendation. I think we need something like the fairness doctrine back to help and control our information commons. I think there's a lot of, you know, stopping individuals like Donald Trump shouldn't be the goal of our investment in the future. It should be stopping the conditions that give rise to people like Donald Trump. That's a tall task. That's reinvesting in our nation in different ways.

It's also having some sense of responsibility for what has led us here in terms of media culture. This dude, now I still, I want something, I want a lot of tribunal. Molly. I want like COVID tribunals because I think there are political leaders who have blood on their hands and they need to be held to account for it. And I want some kind of media tribunals because a lot of the media establishments created this fiction that is Donald Trump. Who's the most to blame? Mark Burnett, NBC, like the apprentice made this person happen.

Right. In a true and literal sense, Donald Trump is terrible at business. Right. He's terrible. He's the most successful, mediocre person this country has ever produced. Yeah, I think that's a very generous assessment. And the only business he's made money off of consistently is a business he didn't even run. He didn't run the business or the apprentice.

He just showed up and flapped his face hole. And so NBC created the character that millions of people can attack you and say, he's good at business. Even your dogs are upset by this, you know? You have to be. You have no idea how upset they are. This is a cross-species truth. It's true.

So I think that's part of it and the sensationalism that's been very profitable. When you make money by ripping a country apart, it's a bad business. Yeah. I mean, it's a good business until it's a bad business, right? Yeah, because then you don't have the protection of the military or the police

or like a stable economy with which to break in more profits. Like, it becomes self-defeating in the long run. When do you say, I think this is like my favorite question because I have like, I come from like serious communist stock. And I'm actually like writing this part now about my grandfather and Paul Robson doing this Peakskill riots thing. And so I'm curious to know when you think the Republican Party started to really fuck over America. That's a good question. There's a couple of moments.

the swap with the Democrats after Lyndon Johnson and the civil rights legislative activity was a key moment of a devil's bargain to say like, we'll take those racists and like it's like we got room. We'll switch. And that that was very understandable from a political payoff perspective. It's like the Democrat Southern, well, Nixon's Southern

Strategy adapted from Democrats. So that's one turning point. Another I think is the the alignment with the NRA and its switch. Nixon is a time for a lot of this because it became acceptable to want a certain race of Americans to have guns, but not the other. Like black panthers with guns bad. White panes with guns, good. Yeah. So that was a problem.

And then the embeddedness with the religious right and the weaponization of faith in a very calculated and cynical ploy to just liberate the spirits of corporate profits rather than actual humans. So those are key moments. And then Reagan does a real, real nice job with the stripping of the state. Yeah, Reagan is really a piece of shit. I mean, he created this real paradox where,

you know, you convince a nation of people and a government by of and for the people to hate government, which is, by definition, hating the people. So when republicanism becomes self-loathing for the Democratic,

project, that's very damaging. And W. continued in some ways, though he looks, you know, much better by comparison to this. It's the paintings. Yeah, I mean, he would have been, we would have all been better if he had found his artistic calling. Yeah.

And maybe not became president. Yeah, instead, because he would have been successful, like, artist or gallerist. You know, maybe he didn't, maybe it wasn't his role. Maybe like with baseball. He wasn't meant to play the game. I mean, the same, I'm not. comparing W to Hitler, but the same could be said of Hitler, right, if he had just painted

and not done the Holocaust. What we're coming across here, Molly, is a very strong argument for investment in arts education. Yes, exactly. And there you have it. Look at the road we traveled to you. Exactly. I like it. So tell me about your podcast. Oh, well, this is our one true hope. Come on my podcast and tell me about your podcast. That's how this works. That's how it's very The podcast is called How to Citizen with Baratunde. It was born this year of 2020, the year of our pandemic. That's right. The best.

And our popular uprisings. And it is about taking this word citizen, not as a legal status and wedge, but as a verb, as a set of actions that encourage us to participate and shape our society. And it's something that was born out of my frustration with news, which is showing us all the problems and none of the answers and none of the responses. and really limiting, I think, in our sense of our own power. The show was ultimately about reminding us that we have collective power, something that in our individualistic society, we are encouraged to forget.

But when we remember, we're very strong. And so I said about with my team of telling stories of people working on stuff that actually have benefit to all of us, not just to some of us. One of the things I think is the most interesting and why I think this is actually an incredibly great idea is that you see like when people decided, I mean, I think a lot about, I don't know if you know the sleeping giants guys, but like. Yeah, I don't know them personally, but I've witnessed them. Yeah, you should have them because we, we've had them and they're just great. And what I think is so interesting is like when they started doing this protest about Tucker Carlson, all these people on the right were like, you can't do that.

And it's like, yeah, it's capitalism, bitches. You don't like capitalism now? Live by the market, die by the market. Right? So I do think that's really a brilliant idea. And it is what's missing from news. I don't quote David Brooks a lot, but I will deviate from my normal healthy living pattern

and say that he wrote something very recently around Thanksgiving. I think it was him. Maybe it was a comment to him that if one party opts out of the social contract, like the contract is broken. And so I think that's the situation. of the Republican Party right now. That said, we have shows talking about COVID and how people have responded

in trying to tighten social bonds and helping out in their communities. We had the most inspiring conversation with these young people. We had a 17-year-old from this group, Civics Unplugged, Zoe, from Lexington, Kentucky. She should be the Senate Majority Leader. She is the most wickedly smart,

wonderful, optimistic, passionate person. I've come across in a long time. And her analysis is just better than most of the stuff you see on cable news. She's a threat to me and you, Molly. Let's hope. She can have it, man. Like in the best way. Yeah.

So we talked voting. We've talked food in the pandemic. It's been inspiring for me. I needed something to restore my faith in the whole idea of us and putting the show together, help do that. Yeah, you know, I have definitely noticed. that there are a lot of really amazing new activists, these young generation. I mean, that's why Arizona went blue, right? Yeah.

Can we just have a moment? Like, we flipped Arizona and Georgia. And Georgia, I know. It's amazing. It's amazing. And Georgia, I think, buy more votes than Arizona at the end of the day. Yeah. No, it's amazing.

Let's hope that it goes for the Senate, too. I was very distraught for a while. And part of me still is at the, like, the deep attacks on elections and the people who operate them and like this core pillar of our democracy by the outgoing loser president. But I will say it's been quite enjoyable to see him lose again and again and again. I didn't anticipate that I would have that kind of pleasure in 2020. Yeah. So it's really like my dreams are coming true every day.

So that's been really nice. So you have this Twitter thread that asked, what becomes the Republican Party in the USA? I want your desired outcome and your expected outcome. Would you find from that tweet from the answers you got? So, yeah, I posted this tweet. I got 173 responses. I don't know if you can count the quote tweets on top of that.

Oh, yeah. So basically 200, a couple hundred responses. All right, but we want your response. Well, my response. No, no, I pose the questions. I don't answer my own questions. Twitter is my show. But actually, I'm on your show now, so I guess that's the question.

What is my desired outcome? What is my expected outcome for the Republican Party? My desired outcome is that this party, which has greatness within it, truly. Wait, the Republican Party? The Republican Party has greatness within it. You know, they use the party of Lincoln thing very superficially and very sloppily, but they have a right to it, right?

And they've changed. You know, I've changed from who I was when I was young. They've changed to, but it's still a part of me. And so they have a right to that. They have not been living up to that. Wait, when was their greatness in the Republican Party? So again, I think to be able to take credit for Abraham Lincoln. Okay, all right.

We're Lincoln. All right. I'll go with Lincoln. We're going way back. We're going way back. Yes. Yeah. Lincoln, all right.

You got it. I'll let him have that. I'll let them have that. We'll let him have Lincoln. Yeah. So I want them to tap into that. I want them to be a legitimate participant in our democracy. I want them to, you know, where needed, challenge power.

Right. Democrats are not universally beautiful snowflakes. No, certainly not. Unicorns. And I think wherever I've lived in some very blue places, I've lived in New York City for 12 years. I've recently transported to Los Angeles, California. New York City and New York State were heavily run by Democrats. They were the worst voting systems in the country.

Oh, we're still not done. We're still not counting. Yeah, so that's an embarrassment. George has counted 4,000 times in New York has yet to count. You can't blame the Republican Party for the failure of the Democratic Party in places like New Jersey. So I want that. I do believe in the value of competition. I want the Republican Party to honorably serve as a political competitive marketplace. I want people, I want them to do what they say. I want them to compete in the marketplace of ideas. And that's not returning Nazi. That's by recognizing that your party's literally dying.

And you're also accelerating their death with your COVID denialism. And we get on the right side of the life you say you are pro. You compete for votes. Don't suppress them. Compete. All that stuff you claim to be for. Just do that. And then we can argue.

We could have a legit argument about taxes instead of should a president give up power. Stealing election. It's not a healthy place to be. How bad is crimeing? I want them to be healthy participants. I want them to shun. things that should be obviously shunnable, like violent white supremacy. That should be an easy one. That's a gimmy.

They're making easy things look real hard. So desire is for that. And I desire a fun debate with the political opposition as I see it. But what I expect is they have seen too much reward now for their way of operating, which is to invest in deception and undermining a democracy. And so when that path to. power is so proven, it's hard to not walk it. Right?

It's like, how do you tell a kid not to be a bully after Donald Trump? It works. It works really well. So you got a harder time as a parent, I think, saying like, do what I say, not what you see somebody else do. And I think the Republican Party is now seen. Oh, we can totally do a South Africa. Like, we can, we already are benefiting from minority rule.

Thank you, electoral college. Thank you, structured the Senate. Thank you, jerrymandering. And those structural advantages, they have more power than they have a right to already. And no one gives up power. It's just I don't think in most stages of history, we don't see that. Sometimes it happens. And when our democracy is functioning, it certainly happens.

People leave office. But I don't expect it, sadly. And one response, my friend Tariq Karula, he wrote, My desire is massive COVID denial rallies, plague and internecine fighting within the party, brings them to Jesus. I wish they were the party that freed the slaves and become the leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement.

God, wouldn't that be amazing? I expect they rebrand as Nazis. Yeah. Merry Christmas. It's also amazing looking at all, I've been talking to my partner, Elizabeth, about, and she just noted how close, This has been in terms of the literal handful of Republican officials who kept us on track.

And whether it's the Secretary of State of Georgia, there's officials in Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. I don't know them all by name, but they sadly deserve praise. Yeah, Brian Kemp, keeper of democracy, lulls. Well, on the segment of our show that America loves, the segment required by a local, state and federal law, and by international treaty, and soon. to be mandatory on the Elon Musk-Mars colony is the special segment we call Fuck That Guy. My Fuck That Guy today is Maria Martyroma. Maria Barteroma was once considered

a legitimate and serious journalist, and now she's being fitted for a pink Hanbok, much like the North Korean propaganda lady who sits at the screen and stares and screams about the glory of the Kim Jong-un family. She allowed Donald Trump to go on television this weekend on the airwaves of Fox and bleed out the craziest horseshit you've ever heard.

This is one more moment where the Fox Enterprise writ large is now, broadly speaking, an enemy of this country because they have decided that they're going to let Donald Trump go on the air and tear apart the fabric of our republic and go on the air and lie to people when they know better and he knows better. And those people are going to be out there in the world believing that the election was stolen and that Donald Trump's a legitimate president.

And so their behavior for the next X number of years is going to be a combination of aggrievement, violence, retribution, and lunacy that Fox is enabling. And that's you, Maria. Good job. Have fun. She's Lou Dobbs in a dress. She is like Lou Dobbs in a dress. George Conway, who is your fuck that guy?

Mike Pence, because he should be speaking out right now. Right. He is a nationally elected constitutional officer of the United States. There are only two, Donald Trump and Mike Pence, and he too lost this election. And he should be conceding. He took an oath like the president did to uphold the Constitution of the United States to uphold our democratic system. and he should be speaking out right now saying, stop this. Stop this nonsense attacking the results of the election

and attacking the integrity of the election. But he's scared of mean tweets. It's not just that he's scared of mean tweets. He's got no future other than as a future presidential candidate, I think, and that's his problem. Yeah, I don't think he's going to be president. I don't think he's going to be president either, but he's got nothing else to do

if he's not presenting himself as somebody who could run in the future. Do you guys think that Trump knows that Pence presides over the Senate when they're verifying the electoral college count? I don't think Trump's all that familiar. But on January 7th, Mr. President, your vice president will be sitting on the dais in the Senate, and they will present to him the House's electoral college vote tally. These slates of electors will have been verified. And Mike Pence will be presiding over that. Ceremony. Have fun.

So my fuck that guy is representative Thomas Massey. Returning favorite Thomas Massey. Go on. I really fucking hate that fucker. First of all, he went to MIT. He is a pretty smart guy. He has this background as an engineer. This weekend, he tweeted that, you know,

the immunity from COVID, is 100%, so, and the immunity from the vaccine is only 95%. So perhaps he's just asking questions. He's not an anti-vaxxer. He's just, like, go fuck yourself. Like, I don't know how the Republican Party became. I mean, I do know how it happened, but the Republican Party became the party of, like, no vaccines, no masks, no signs for us, thanks.

But Thomas Massey is really, should know better and doesn't. no better and he's my fuck that guy. Yeah, he leaves aside the differences in mortality rates between contracting the virus and getting the vaccine. Yeah, I mean, it just is so, I mean, it's going to be so hard to get people to take this vaccine already and to have me. Day one, hour one. 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?

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