The Daily Beast Podcast - Donald Trump Admits Supporting Electric Cars Because of Elon Musk’s Endorsement

Episode Date: August 11, 2024

Former President Donald Trump said the quiet part out loud at a rally in Atlanta last weekend—admitting he is supporting electric vehicles because of Tesla founder Elon Musk's endorsement. The New Abnormal co-hosts couldn’t believe that the same voters who elected Trump to the White House in 2016 on a pledge to “drain the swamp” enthusiastically applauded the former president kowtowing to Musk. Plus! Erin Matson, the co-founder and executive director of Reproaction, a national group increasing access to abortion services, joins the podcast to talk about the current landscape of reproductive healthcare in the U.S. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Kedden, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. Welcome back to another bonus episode of The New Abnormal, and we thank you so much for being here.

Today we're going to be joined by Aaron Mattson, the co-founder, president, and CEO of Reproaction. And she's here to tell us all about her organization and its efforts to advance reproductive justice. She's also going to give us the inside scoop on crisis pregnancy centers, a nefarious anti-abortion network of hospitals taking advantage of pregnant women. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Clips. Clips. Good clips this week.

We had a good week. A little less upsetting than normal, but, you know, I can't say good. So one of the fun things about Trump is he came into campaigning in 2015, and he's like, I can't be bought. I buy them off. I cut them checks. Boy, has he pivoted recently. Let's listen to him about a campaign recently.

And I'm for elector because I have to be, you know, because Elon endorsed me very strongly. Elon. So I have no choice. But he knows. I am for them. I'm for him for a small slice as a slice. But you want to have gas propelled cars. You want to have hybrids. You want to have every kind of a car imaginable.

They want to go all electric. And there's no way you can ever, there's no way you can ever load them up. They call them loading them. You can't load them. We're going to have to spend $9 trillion in the Middle West. You saw they were built chargers. Now, a charger is a game. gas pump with electricity come through. Is that good? So it's like a, for eight chargers, they spent

nine billion dollars. Is it nine trillion? Is it nine billion? Is it like just follow the bouncing ball because whoever throws me the most money is where I'm going to show up? And then they applaud that like the mindless seals that they are. I'm sorry to seals. They're smart. That is true. Yeah, I will shock everyone here that everything he said there was total just gobbly gook made up off the top of his head. Kind of like his hairpiece. So for the audience that is not aware, some people saw the headlines that Elon is not donating $45 million a month to Donald Trump, but he is donating to America PAC, which is doing a massive, massive voter registration fraud. and retargeting effort that is in favor of Trump trying to radicalize people into voting for him.

So now it seems Trump has some fealty to Elon. Mm-hmm. The only difference between a hooker and a hoe is the fee. Oh. No, it really is. I mean, it's Trump with Musk. It's J.D. Vance with Peter Thiel. It's Clarence Thomas with Harlan Crow.

It's just every one of these guys, there's a sugar daddy in the background. And for Trump, it's just sometimes also the oil executives. Oh, yeah. The thing I keep thinking about is like when you see like the David Sacks and the Bill Akvids all sucking up to him is it's like, buddies, do you know how many people are in line before you to get the favors? I know. It's so sad. Well, Trump's stupidity doesn't end as usual. Here we have Fox and Friends doing what Trump's handlers do off camera all day long, trying so hard to get him to stop saying dumb things.

And let's listen. We have lawyers at every poll booth. We have, that's what I, in fact, my instruction, we don't need the votes. I have so many votes. And every house has a Trump vance sign on it. Every single house. There's not a house that we passed that doesn't. We have the votes.

You're drawn by Charlie Chris House then. Just saying. I think Charlie probably has one up too if you want to know that. He's a Republican. Everybody. Everybody has, it's amazing the spirit. And I'll say this, we had two elections. The first election we did great.

The second election, we did much better than the first election. But this election has more spirit. And that's because they've seen how bad these people are at government. And next up, Saturday in Minnesota. And next up, Saturday in Minnesota. They're destroying our country, Brian. They are destroying our country. Mr. President, thank you so much for your time today.

Thank you so much. We'll be following that rally. I just was laughing at how they were trying to dump out of that so much earlier. Like they kept just trying to thank him to get him off and he just steamrolled right through them. It's like trying to hang up with your aunt that keeps talking and like, and you're just like, I got, I got to go. The doorbell. I got to. Oh, yeah.

More of that. Oh, okay. It got to go. Good job. Yeah. No, it really was. It was like when you're telling, oh, I got another call. I have to, it's a doctor's office.

I have to take this. Okay. Well, let's just. You don't understand. If I don't, I'm going to miss the call. That's what they sounded like. Remember the old David Letterman segments where you would do like top ten things you don't want to hear as a campaign manager? Yeah, sure.

We have the votes already. Right. Like just number one thing you don't want your candidate saying is like, people don't worry. We have the vote. We're all good. Everybody. There's so many signs around. I definitely got all the votes.

The thing is, though, on a more serious note that all of that is just, you know, obviously is setting the table for, if he loses, for the, you know, rigged and stolen charges. That's right. What a fun few months we have ahead of us. Okay, let's shift gears to the other big news of the week. Vice presidents, very big in this election. The right is, of course, trying to label Tim Walls as weird. And who better to roll out to try to accuse people of being weird than Stephen Miller? This man is a moron.

He is an incompetent. He is a radical. And he is going to turn the entire Midwest into a third world state. This is a disaster for America. We have to beat this guy. And we have to beat Harris in November. Now, which part is the disaster? Is it the free lunch program?

Is it the safe protections for LGBTQ plus people? Is it the free tampons? Which part of it is the disaster that the hell on earth that he's going to unleash? I mean, for Stephen Miller, it's all of the above. But yeah, it is absolutely wild. You know, Minnesota has a new flag, and they're trying to say it's based on the Somali flag, which gets like literally not even remotely close, but they are just trying all these things and all these ways to make this sort of very, this kindly man who, I know he's much younger, but he looks like Santa Claus without the beard. Like every time I see him, and when he smiles, he just has like this jolly smile and they're trying to turn him into.

Gangus Khan or fill in the blank with whatever horrible bad guy you can think of. But boy, it's just, it's just sad to watch. There is a video going around of him and his daughter Hope at a like a state fair. Yeah. Yes. And he's like, oh, you know, this is what we do every year. And they're going to go into the slingshot and all of these things. And they're joking around.

And the daughter's a vegetarian. And he's like, let's go get corn dogs. And she's like, I'm a vegetarian. He's like, turkey then. You know, like, and you see this like, joking and jovial, like loving dad and his daughter. And all I could think to myself was, guys, do you remember any time when you've seen Republicans with their kids, like in a loving joke?

I'm not talking about posing them next to AR-15s on Christmas cards or like, you know, or whatever prop that they are used for, but actually genuinely just loving and joking around with their kids. And again, this is well before major political spotlight. put on him. So again, you understand the character of this person. And I'm just like, I can't remember the last time I saw a Republican with their kids that wasn't like,

I don't know, used to promote guns or something vile. For sure. Or yelling at them for talking about Pikachu's. Right. Yeah. Truly remarkable, too, that Stephen Miller thinks that tone is helping. I know. Oh, my God. When people are calling you weird, wheeling him out.

Yeah. The man looks like the blood feast is never enough. Again, I say this a lot, but I have to say it again, he is considered quite handsome on his home planet. Well, if that wasn't enough bedwetting for you over on Fox News, here we have Jesse Waters doing this over the treatment of J.B. Dance. I'm sorry, J.D. Vance. J.V. Dance are the size of the rallies he's been holding without Trump. That's actually, that's Matt Gates' preferred event. Venue, yes. Damn.

All right, let's listen to Jesse. They're accusing J.D. Vance of having sex with a couch. Not on a couch, with a couch. It's a weird thing to do. And now they're calling him weird. I don't think Kamala Harris is going to pick anyone as weird and creepy as J.D. Vance. Frankly, J.D. Vance, just dumb Vance, is pretty weird. It's not just a weird style that he brings.

It's that this leads to weird policies. They're just weird. Donald Trump and his weirdo running mate. More extreme, more weird, more erratic. The agenda, the way they talk to people, the way they address people, it is bizarre. It's weird. It is weird. Well, it's just plain weird. Democrats made up a story about J.D. Vance having sex with a couch and called them weird 150 times this weekend.

Was that supposed to help J.D. Vance? Sewardess Hewaters did? Was that supposed to be helpful? Hmm. This is the guy who flattened the tire of one of his subordinates so he could get a date with her. And then married her. And then married her, although he was married at the time to someone else. So I would say you're not putting your best spokespeople forward to counter the weird charges,

but I don't know that they have anyone who would be a credible spokesperson to counter the weird charges at this point. I mean, between Gangus Khan, Steve Chunkin, or whatever his name is. the bloodthirsty Stephen Miller, Jady Van like couch vans, and like Cancun Cruz, faceless, like, who are there good people? Like if you honestly had to go through the list of, like, who would be the person to come out? I guess Nikki Haley, but she hates them and they hate her. So I don't know who would be. Herodage is Kevin Roberts, who literally gets mad about dog parks as you will talk about it in an interview this week.

There's always Charlie Kirk. He's normal. The thing that I keep coming back to is like, they are the network of propaganda. They should probably understand how hyperstitions work. And like saying the superstition more does not help your case here, Chief. And you would think they'd be more practiced in that propaganda. But apparently that's where it has a few too many syllables for Jesse. Well, and the other thing is that I just want to bring up is something he said.

He said Democrats started this. No, some guy on the internet started this. People just picked up on it because it was, A, it was funny, and B, it just caught the zeitgeist to get pretentious about it. But Republicans can't understand that something like this happened organically. No, because they plant everything they do. Yeah, and we're seeing it now. They're now trying to do this thing where they're trying to counter the couch thing by saying that Tim Walls had sex with a horse. And you're looking at them, it's like, what?

You're so bad at this. Because it's so clearly not organic and it's so clearly them, just, again, flailing and trying to, oh, yeah, you said J.D. Vance, fucked a couch. We're going to say Tim Walls had sex with a horse. It's like watching someone on the playground just get destroyed and have the worst comebacks ever. Fetch ain't happening. Mm-mm. Yeah. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal, the founder and CEO and president of Repro Action, Aaron Mattson. Aaron, I want to start off with saying that we

know that contrary to what Donald Trump has rambled in recent rallies, well, let me say press conference because he hasn't shown up to do any campaign rallies. But Republicans think that abortion is not going to be on the ballot in November, that people are happy that abortion has gone from being a nationwide right into a patchwork of protections with a little less than, I guess, half of the states in this country recognizing bodily autonomy for women and people with uteruses. I believe, as I'm sure that you do, that this is going to be one of the major issues that are getting people to the polls in November as it has when this issue has come up on state ballots. Can you talk to us? Give us an idea of where we are in this moment as we are less than 90 days

until election, what the Repro Health abortion landscape looks like in America right now. Yeah, thank you for that question, Danielle, and thank you for having me. So first off, I want to be very clear, it is a disaster for people seeking reproductive health care in this country. It is far too difficult to access abortion care and reproductive health care. And abortion opponents are not letting up on the gas pedal at all. There's a sense that they are, you know, trying to rebrand themselves and make it seem like, oh, we're taking up a smaller imprint. We're backing off, especially before the election. That is just flat out not true.

So that's one piece of the puzzle. But I want to uplift something critical that's happened since Dobbs. The Dobbs decision two years ago that overturned the constitutionally recognized right to abortion and kicked the matter back to the states, as they said. And I said that a little sarcastically, as they said, because abortion opponents are seeking to do a federal abortion ban right now as we speak, you know. And even in the Republican platform, there was a reference to the 14th Amendment, which is their desire to seek personhood throughout the land. So they're absolutely seeking that. But voters themselves are sick of it. Abortion rights have never been so popular with the American public as they are right now.

And we've seen every single time abortion has gone directly to the voters on the ballot, abortion rights have won in places like Kansas, in place like Montana. So I want to be here. It's not just about, you know, latte liberals and what they're doing. We've got rural voters. We've got deeply conservative people who are saying, enough, we're sick of this. So it will absolutely have a huge imprint on this upcoming election. What is really important is that Democratic,

continue to talk about this issue and lift up, you know, which I'm sure you already are very familiar with, Project 2025. And it isn't just abortion. It was never just going to be about abortion. It was going to be about IVF. It was going to be about birth control. It was going to be about controlling every aspect of a woman and a person with a uterus's future and their future opportunities because deciding when, where, and if to have a family is going to impact your future economic viability, your job prospects. Before we dig into the ways in which they are rolling back the clock to the 19th century, I do want to lift up an article that I was reading that really disturbed me in the deepest way because I've always heard about these quote unquote

crisis pregnancy centers, right? these kind of makeshift shops that are set up around states, around the country, that kind of lure pregnant people in under the guise that they're going to be able to get the health, care, and medical advice that they need to make decisions about their bodies and their futures. And what is happening is that according to this article in Jezebel, first states banned abortion, now they're pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into fake clinics. Can you talk about what is happening with these quote unquote crisis pregnancy centers or CPCs and how they're gaining tens and some in some cases hundreds of millions of dollars of state funding while actual health care providers and centers are basically getting defunded? Yeah. Thank you so much for shining the light on this because it does need to be talked about more frequently. So there are more than two,

thousand anti-abortion pregnancy centers in the United States. And they may market themselves as kind of mom and pop or volunteer run operations. And in some cases, you do have volunteers who are putting on lab coats that they bought from the costume shop to dispense, pretend medical advice. But I also want to you know, correct the conception that they're like these low budget operations taking donated diapers. That is not the case at all. And in fact, our colleagues at Equity Forward just put out a new report showing that more than a billion dollars of public funding has gone to these anti-abortion pregnancy centers. And when in some states, I know that they even have it so that legally, like that the anti-abortion lawmakers have set it up so that you can't audit their activities and demand to see that. But in places where we have seen audits, there are some consistent.

themes that emerge, that in fact, these places that get millions of dollars in some cases in public funds are seeing, you know, comparatively small numbers of people. They're spending enormous amounts on things like marketing and executive salaries. I want to be clear with you, Danielle, these anti-abortion pregnancy centers are the backbone of the anti-abortion movement in the United States. It is where their money is. It is where their power is. They are state by state, community by community. And I also want to just take a step back and, you know, again, in the context of the bigger picture as well, because it's important to focus on the fact that they're systematically deceiving people and giving them inaccurate information to try to pressure and shame people out of seeking abortion care.

That's a real problem. And it impacts people's lives in a negative way and it hurts people. But I also want to connect the fact that they're taking in all of these public funds. They're taking in a lot of private funds. That this is an industry that spends billions of dollars that is closely tied in. And really, I would argue, at the nucleus of this broader current in the United States to move away from democracy. And I don't say that casually that the anti-abortion movement in the U.S. is absolutely kind of the foot soldiers for what the authoritarian impulse in the U.S. looks like.

And so I think we should be very alarmed that these places are taking in so many dollars. They have very little to show for it in terms of quote unquote services provided or people coming in their door. They're spending an awful lot of it on marketing. And I think we can suspect that there's likely ties to political activity as well. And just to give an example of this and then I'll go quiet. but Heartbeat International is one of the largest anti-abortion pregnancy center chains. They're based here in the United States.

They also have a global impact and footprint. A number of these crisis pregnancy centers like to posit and present themselves as if they're above the fray and politics. But just this week, when Tim Walls was announced as Kamala Harris's pick for the vice presidential candidate that she'd like to run with, They come out with a long tweet thread about him. So this is just one example. We are constantly seeing these anti-abortion pregnancy centers that like to present themselves as part of the health care system, which they are not. And instead, they're engaging in this political activity.

And I can't resist. One more thing I have to say. They are not health care providers. And in fact, the former CEO of Obria, another extremely well-funded in the sense of public funding has gone into obria group as another kind of massive crisis pregnancy center behemoth. And their former CEO just went public in L and is speaking out against them for misrepresenting themselves as providing health care when they did not and being in service of, you know, peddling anti-abortion ideology. So it's a huge scandal. This is happening. It is absolutely wild. And I just

want to underscore the point in terms of the federal funding, the public money, our money that is going to this is that a separate report from health management, this is according to the article in Jezebel, earlier this year found 650 CPC's crisis pregnancy centers received $429 million in federal funding between 2017 and 2023, $429 million. And that when we go on and we look, they say that it is unsurprising that many of these same states, right, are the ones that instituted their trigger bands and they're the ones that are spending the most money on these non-health care providers. And my question, Erin, is how does something like this happen where we know that there are low-income folks, that there is maternal mortality rates that should never happen in a quote-unquote

industrialized nations such as the United States that are skyrocketed and particularly when we're talking about black women and women of color are more than likely to die. during childbirth that money is not being spent. Our public resources are not being spent to help bring those numbers down. How is it that this amount of funding that is uncertain, earmarked or allocated for health, goes to these non-health agencies? Right. And it's we should be outraged.

It's a complete misuse of public funds. And, you know, from a reproductive justice standpoint, reproductive justice, a framework that was created by black. women, right, the right to parent, the right not to parent, and the right to raise families in safe and healthy communities. We should and do want funding to go towards people to help support them in raising their families, to ensure access to adequate prenatal care, to bring down that horrific maternal mortality rate that is facing black women in the United States specifically. Instead, we're sending this money to anti-abortion ideologues who are buying their lab

coats at their costume shop, peddling out inaccurate information about abortion, about reproductive health care, about how our bodies work, and providing very little in terms of services. And I just want to like underscore how abusive the practices can be because some people will say like, oh, wait, like, isn't this a place where you can get free diapers? Not so fast. A lot of times you have to go through hours, hours of coercive what they call counseling. sometimes signing pledges, right, on future sexual behavior and what it may or may not be, sometimes being forced to accept and regurgitate back religious indoctrination in order to get

supplies. And so this isn't just a place that these are not just places that are providing material support to people who need it. They're really demanding something in an exchange that we shouldn't be doing in a society that says, at least that it separates church and state. Because again, I think about exactly that, the separation of church and state and these religious organizations

that are masquerading as health care providers that are taking public funds and that there are governors that are willingly doing that. It was in both, actually, in Pennsylvania and in Minnesota that had provided hundreds of millions of dollars to these CPCs and then they have since stopped in 2023.

And so I wonder, Is it a lack of education that we have about these nefarious organizations that needs to be brought to light like I'm trying to do here with you today? Is it the lack of information or is it something else that has these outfits being able to essentially siphon funds away from real health care providers? Like what is it going to take for something like this to end? Yeah. And I think it's both a lack of information and understanding in the public. And that's something that these anti-abortion pregnancy centers have cultivated on purpose. We keep a fake clinic database on our website that is an independently researched and regularly updated database of who they are.

I bring this up because we actually have received on multiple occasions from different fake clinic, both individual fake clinics as well as bigger chains, threatening letters, right, from folks like, general counsels, et cetera, where they're kind of doing this tap dance like, oh, you know, they're trying to make us feel like nervous that they're going to sue us or something. Oh, can we clear up the misunderstanding? We're not actually a crisis pregnancy center. We don't belong on your list. They try to position themselves as something else. And the public has been systematically deceived about who they are. They use, you know, titles. Some of them are named things like a woman's choice and then they'll put the name of the city right after. I mean, so it sounds like it's something else. So that's a

piece of the puzzle, but I think another piece of it is just flat out graft. You have anti-abortion politicians who are all too eager to funnel money into anti-abortion organizations. And so that's another piece. And what it's going to take is folks being educated and demanding that it stops. So as we look ahead to the next couple of months until election day, Erin, what is your organization doing and what do we all need to be doing in order to keep the, issue of bodily autonomy and reproductive justice at the forefront as we're making our decisions for election 2024. Thank you for that question. And first, I want to clarify that reproaction does not engage in partisan political activity and we do not engage on elections directly or

indirectly for that matter. But we do want everyone to vote. And it is critical for folks to vote and educate themselves about both candidates that they may be considering as well as ballot initiatives that may be happening in their states. We have seen in a number of states that anti-abortion actors are desperate to get ballot initiatives off the ballot because they know that every time they go to the voters, they lose. And so also to be very careful about knowing what they are voting for, you know, in Ohio with their recent ballot initiative, abortion opponents use confusing language on purpose to try to trick people who would want to be voting for abortion rights into voting against them. So that's a piece of it. In terms of the work that our organization

is doing, we will continue to educate and shine a light on anti-abortion pregnancy centers and encourage folks to use our fake clinic database to see what's going on in the locations near you and discern whether it's a fake clinic or not. We can let you know because we've verified it. And we are also working assiduously to get out information about what abortion opponents are up to. And finally, we continue to spread the word about self-managed abortion with pills, which is a increasingly popular option for abortion care, both for folks who may be facing bans in their states, but also folks who just may simply want the convenience of pursuing an abortion at home. And Aaron, just tell people where they can find you, where they can find this information. I just want to make sure that people

are as resourced as possible. Oh, thank you so much. Reproaction.org. Amazing. Erin, I cannot thank you enough, one, for making the time for the new abnormal, but for all of the work that you're doing to try and demystify what is happening on the ground as it pertains to abortion and access and the misinformation that these kinds of fake clinics spew. It's incredibly hard work, and I just really appreciate you. Thank you so much and thank you so much for having me on. Absolutely. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal.

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