The Daily Beast Podcast - Donald Trump Is the One Man Who Created All This Chaos

Episode Date: October 15, 2024

This week on The New Abnormal, David Noll, a professor of law at Rutgers Law School, is here to talk about the new book he co-authored, “Vigilante Nation: How State-Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy.” Then we'll talk to journalist Gareth Gore about his new book, “Opus: The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking, and Right-Wing Conspiracy inside the Catholic Church.” 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 pretty 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 Cannon, 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. goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have for you today. David Dull,

Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School, is here to talk about the new book he co-authored, Vigilante Nation, how state-sponsored terror threatens our democracy. Then we'll talk to journalist Gareth Gore about his new book, Opus, the cult of dark money, human trafficking, and right-wing conspiracy inside the Catholic Church. But first, let's have some fun. So, you know, over the past couple of weeks with the hurricanes, both Hurricane Helene and Milton, that have hit Florida and Asheville, North Carolina, and other regions, we have watched as Trump, Vance, and their band of MAGA have spread unrelenting lies about how the government, how FEMA in particular, has been aiding those that have been.

harmed. They have weaponized people's fear. They have weaponized this moment of trauma when folks have lost everything to now turn them against government that is there to try and help. And all of this, Andy, all of this has bubbled over into what we knew was going to happen, which is violence against FEMA workers. So folks from FEMA had to be. to suspend their operations. They're in very important and necessary operations in North Carolina over the weekend because of threats and reports of violence against FEMA operations, that there were actually people organizing themselves and organized militia to go and quote, hunt for FEMA workers. That is what Donald Trump and J.D. Van,

and the Republicans have set up in this time when this country should be brought together to help those most in need. It is absolutely disgusting, but not unsurprising. Yeah, it's absolutely sickening. In The Washington Post, I guess, first reported this on Saturday. And since then, at least I think one person was arrested in connections with threats made toward FEMA officials in Rutherford County. North Carolina. But I mean, look, you're absolutely right to lay this at the feet of Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, Marjorie Taylor, Green, and so many other people on the right who have been who have been maliciously spreading false information, spreading stuff they know not to be true, whether it's that FEMA money is going to undocumented immigrants. It is not. Or whether the government caused this hurricane or whether FEMA was trapping people in their neighborhoods and not letting them

live and taking their stuff. All of this just obviously complete and utter bullshit. And Marjor Telegreen probably doesn't know better because I believe she is a certified lunatic. J.D. Vance knows better. He knows this stuff isn't true. Donald Trump, I don't even know if he knows how to tie his shoes anymore at this point. But I mean, the man has made a life out of line. so I can't even give him the benefit of the doubt that he doesn't know he's spreading lies. And yeah, all of this was, and look, you and I talked about this a couple times last week. And we, you know, we said exactly, as you pointed out, we said this is going to lead to violence. It's going to lead to someone getting killed.

And thankfully, it hasn't led to someone getting killed yet. And hopefully it won't. But it's led to FEMA workers having to stop working in places like Rutherford, County, North Carolina. Imagine that you have a government agency actually there to help, which in the history of this country is not always the case. But in this case, absolutely is. And they have to stop helping people who, many of whom have lost everything because National Guard troops are reporting that they saw, quote unquote, armed militia threatening these workers. It's unbelievable that this is where we are as a nation right now.

I just wonder when we're all going to start connecting the dots between all of the acts and rise in violence in this country over the last nine years and Donald Trump's presence in our politics. Like when we're going to stop giving Donald Trump and J.D. Vance and the Maga Republicans the benefit of the doubt. Oh, you know, it just so happened that violence started to rain down on Springfield, Ohio, after they're lying about the Haitian immigrant population. that is there. Oh, it just so happens that violence against the Asian community skyrocketed during COVID when Donald Trump and members of his administration were blaming COVID and calling it the China virus. Like, oh, it just so happens that like people who have been caught with manifestos that have attacked religious establishments are using MAGA talking points. Like, when is it going to be just very fucking clear that Donald Trump is the cause?

of increased violence in this country. That political violence has been at an all-time high since Donald Trump came down that escalator. This is not a coincidence. This is not an accident. This is a strategy of this Republican Party. Because in order for them to have Donald Trump as their dictator and authoritarian leader, then everything needs to devolve. The cities need to be a mess in the way that they creatively imagine them to be.

People need to be in complete disarray. Immigrants need to be taking over. All of these things have to happen. And then it's like, who can stop it? The man that's been creating it? Like, the man that's created, the chaos is the one that is all of a sudden going to come in and stop it. Like, I just wish that we would stop with the, oh, well, we don't know if these things are connected. Like, a fucking child could put this together.

It's not an elaborate, really thought out scheme. It's like lie, increase violence, infuse racism, lie to match, and just see what happens to the Tinderbox. Well, and then also talk about how horrible it is that there's all this violence in America and blame it on the Democrats. Correct. J.D. Vance went on ABC News's Sunday show this week, this week being the name of the show, but he also did go on it this week. And Martha Raditz asked him if he would back up, if he agreed with what Donald Trump was saying, saying that Kamala Harris, quote, spent all her FEMA money, billions of dollars on housing for illegal migrants, and that also the Biden-Harris administration was going out of their way not to

help people in Republican areas. And J.D. Vance did what J.D. Vance always does. Instead of answering the question directly, he said, well, what the former president, well, he didn't use the word former. He said what Trump said is that fundamentally FEMA aid is distracted by going to illegal migrants. We've got Republican congressmen who are on the ground who represent that area saying they have to call the White House to get food and water to FEMA. None of this is true. Again, FEMA aid doesn't go to quote unquote illegal migrants. FEMA aid goes for disaster relief. Republican, I guess to their credit, there have been a bunch of Republican congresspeople who have actually come out and tried to, you know, beat down all these conspiracy stories because they do know,

what's going on in the ground in their districts. And Raditz kind of went back a little bit at Vance and said, I want to go back to what former President Trump said. He said, they're going out of their way not to help people in Republican areas. And then she said, there is no truth to that. And again, Vance did what he does. He said, I think all Trump said is what some of Kamala Harris's surrogates have said, which is that if these areas were a little bit more democratic, maybe Kamala Harris would have focused on them more. None of Kamala Harris's surrogates have said that. Yep. Because I hate to make this, well, I don't hate to make this black and white. It is black and white. Democrats don't do that. Yeah. It's Donald Trump who threatened to do that with California wildfires. It's Donald Trump

who repeatedly talks about not helping out states where he didn't win the electoral vote. Democratic administrations have never done that. I can guarantee it never even entered their mind to do that. Democrats are not perfect. Joe Biden is far from perfect. Kamala Harris is far from perfect. They are not that shitty. Donald Trump is. Everything that we know that Republicans say and do is about projection. But the fact is, is that they have known for how long that Donald Trump is a liar, for how long that Donald Trump stirs up violence. But these Republican politicians are only speaking up now because it's threatening what's happening in their districts and helping their people and their constituents. So let us be clear that it's, not as if all of a sudden with a with a flashlight and a fucking search party that they found their morals after nine years of kissing Donald Trump's ass. That is not where we are. It is the fact that now his lies and rhetoric are threatening their constituents. And so now it is not politically expedient for them to support him as a means to access power. So I like, I don't ever want folks to get into the place of saying like, oh,

but not all Republicans, no, fucking all of them until they are threatened. All of them will be in lockstep with Donald Trump until their own power is threatened by harming their constituents that then could turn against them come election time. That's what that is about. And so I'm just like, frankly, I'm sick of the bullshit and I'm sick of the tap dancing that is done around the fact that Donald Trump is a fascist, that Donald Trump is, that Donald Trump is a person who thrives off of chaos and wants nothing more than violence. He, and I said this, and I've said this so many times, that the more that it seems as if this race is close or that he could lose like he did in 2020, the more dangerous and violent he is going to become.

And that is exactly what we're seeing, is that he thought that he had. had this election in the bag because his opponent was going to be Joe Biden and all he had to do was keep pounding the age and keep pounding Joe Biden and he was going to look tough and strong. And now that he has somebody that is damn near half his age that is running and looks good in the race right now, you're seeing all of this sprinkling of lies and violence happening. and people taking Donald Trump at his word, which is what they did back in 2020 when he told them to stand back and stand by.

We're seeing this a lot. We're seeing it from the media, our favorite punching bag here on the new abnormal. I mean, if they would do their fucking job, then we wouldn't have to. Yeah, and we've talked about Parker Malloy coined the phrase sanewashing for what the media does to Trump's outlandish statements.

I want to add another word to this, and I want to call it sandheading. Oh, what is this? They are just sticking their heads, in the sand and refusing to see what's right in front of them that Donald Trump, and you're absolutely right because the closer we get to the election, the more and more he's been doing this. Donald Trump is a full on authoritarian. I am comfortable using the F word for him, but even if you don't want to call him a fascist, even though he's given us more than enough

reason to, at best, a milk toast thing you could call him is an authoritarian. And the media just doesn't seem to either grasp that or to want to report it because I guess they feel like it would be being unfair somehow, which is absolute nonsense. But we're also seeing this, to move it beyond the media, we see this from a lot of people who say they're going to vote for Trump. And they'll sort of hide it and they'll say, well, he'll be better on taxes or he'll be better for business. and you ask about the other stuff, and by the other stuff, I mean the racism, the homophobia, the transphobia, wanting to deport his number, 20 million people out of the country. They wave their hands and they say, oh, he doesn't really mean that.

Or they don't talk about it at all. And where I have come down on this now is all these people who claim that they are voting for Trump because he'll be good for business or good on taxes. They are lying. To them, all these other features of Trump are pluses, not minuses. They don't want to come out and say, yes, I agree with him about gay people, or I agree with him about trans people, or I agree with him about undocumented immigrants. So they'll couch it in, well, he doesn't.

He's just bringing attention to the issue. That's what they like to say a lot, you know, that, oh, he's not really going to deport 20 million people. He just, but, but it's good because he's bringing attention to the issue. No, to put it bluntly, fuck you. He is absolutely, A, wants to do these things, whether or not he can or will is, I guess, another issue, but he absolutely wants to. And B, I cannot deal with the excuse making. I cannot deal with the sandheading, with just pretending that none of this is happening. And it's just, you know, we've got him now, and I'm going to mention this and then throw it back to you, Danielle. He's already saying now that he wants to use the military to, quote, deal with

the people from within, the enemy from within on election day. And by that he means, his words again, radical left lunatics. He wants to use the U.S. military on U.S. soil to deal with people who don't like him. Correct. And this is what Donald Trump tried to do during the summer of uprisings following the killing of George Floyd. This is what his generals have spoken out about, who most recently, Millie, saying that Trump is, quote, fascist to the core. I mean, how is that not headlines everywhere?

How is that not just the conversation? Because we have been lulled into a place where we've been told that what Donald Trump says isn't what he means. going back to the sanewashing. So whether it is the mainstream corporate media or it's his sycophants in Congress, they're always telling us like, oh, Donald Trump, what's coming out of his mouth isn't actually what he means. So let me unpack it for you.

When he said that he wanted to have a ban on Muslims in this country, was he mincing words or did he do that when he became president? When he said that he wanted to set up camps and bar people from entering this country, Was he mincing his words or did he actually do that? So they have just had us believe that, oh, Donald Trump is just talking about fascism and, oh, he just really likes Hitler's haircut. But he's not, you know, he's not like trying to be like him. It's like, stop with the bullshit. Because the things that he says, he instituted when he was president.

And now with no guardrails and a 935 or whatever Project 2025's totality of its manifesto is, will institute. and have tens of thousands of people that are at the ready to do his bidding, to finish the job that they started on January 6th. Yeah, I mean, look, the Mark Millie comments were reported again in the Washington Post, and they are apparently in the new Bob Woodward book that's going to come out. And Millie went on to call Trump the most dangerous person to this country. This is the guy who was under Trump. He was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, i.e. the, highest ranking military officer in the country. And what he told Woodward was, speaking of Trump being a

fascist, he said, quote, I glimpsed it when I talked to you for your previous book. He said, but I now know it. I now know it. No one has ever been as dangerous to this country as Donald Trump. Now I realize he's a total fascist. He is the most dangerous person to this country. These are not the kinds of things that chairmen's of the Joint Chief of Staff, retired or otherwise, say about a former president of the United States. These are not things in general that you hear from high-ranking military officers unless they're generally right-wing wackos talking about Democrats like Mike Flynn. It's hard to overstate what a big deal is this. And you're absolutely right, Danielle, the fact that this wasn't. a screaming headline on pretty much every newspaper in the country and et cetera, et cetera,

is, again, it's a failure. And it is a failure to recognize the danger that this man poses and the danger that a second term with him as president poses to this country. And we're, you know, what, three weeks out from the election now? It's too late. Even if a Solzberger and all the heads of all the giant newspapers and TV news operations woke up today or tomorrow and said, hey, you know what, we've really dropped the ball. We've got to get in on this now. It's too late.

Yeah. I'd still like them to start doing it, but it's too late. And they have soft peddled all this stuff basically for the last, what, 10, 11 years? Yeah. Yeah. Whatever. And I'm not saying it'll be their fault if Trump wins. That would be going too far.

But they are part of the problem. In criminal trials, you have these things called accomplices, the people that aided and abetted the crime. And by knowing how dangerous Donald Trump is, by knowing by virtue of tips, interviews, all of these things that Donald Trump wants to do to this country, to democracy, to immigrants, two women, two black people, two people with disabilities, by knowing all of this, and choosing to sanewash, choosing to use euphemisms, choosing not to expressly state to the American people how dangerous this person is, what else could you say about them except that they are accomplices

to the downfall? Because when you know better, like as the saying goes, you're supposed to actually do better. I gave them a pass in 26. Oh, he's an anomaly. We're so fucking far past that now, that now what they're doing is an actual choice. The biggest election of our lifetimes is less than a month away, and the news is only going to get crazier and more important as the countdown continues. As each day brings new headlines and critical campaign updates,

the future of the country may be decided by the stories that cut through the noise and capture our attention during the next few weeks. If you want to stay informed through all of the twists and turns, the Daily Beast's new daily newsletter, October Surprise, is the reliable resource you're looking for. It will keep you in the know on everything that's happening as we race toward Election Day. Sign up now at beast.pub slash October Surprise. Beast. Pub slash October Surprise. Folks, I am really excited to be joined by David Null, who is a professor at Rutgers University

and the co-author of a new book entitled Vigilante Nation, how state-sponsored terror threatens our democracy. And you are co-author of this book with John Michaels. David, first off, thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for writing this book. Thank you for referring to what is unfolding across red states and the operationalizing of Project 2025 as state-sponsored terror, because it has been what my co-host and I, on The New Abnormal, have been calling it for quite some time. Talk to us about what you all mean by

Vigilante Nation. Yeah, of course. So we got interested in this back in 2021 when Texas and other states started enacting laws that encouraged private actors to go after abortion providers and schools that welcomed LGBTQ kids and things of that nature. And we saw these laws as an extension of the kind of vigilantism that we saw on January 6th. And we were curious what state legislatures were doing. So, you know, we started digging, looking at what states were enacting. And we found this whole bevy of laws that were encouraging vigilantes to enforce the MAGA agenda. And when we talk about vigilante nation or vigilante democracy, we are speaking about a world where there's just vigilantes everywhere, right, where you can't go to the doctor,

right, where you know, where you can't go to your kid's school without the omnipresent threat that vigilantes are going to be observing you, surveilling you. And then as we talked about in the book, exercising all these tools to pull. punish deviations from mega orthodoxy. I often refer to the Handmaid's Tale and their tagline under his eye. That's what vigilanteism is. It is about being under the eye of your government, of your neighbors. And it is also about building a society of distrust and fear. Can you talk about that? Yeah, sure. It's interesting that you mentioned the Hansmaid's Tale, because just today, there's news that this lawsuit in Texas that was filed by Jonathan Mitchell, who is a lawyer,

who's one of the central characters in our book, has been dismissed. And the case is called Silva. And I mention it because that is a lawsuit brought by an allegedly abusive ex-husband against some friends of his ex for helping her obtain abortion pills. And I really encourage people to go out and read the complaint that was filed in this case. because it will give you a picture of just what we're talking about. It smears the defendants as murderers. It makes use of text messages that seem to have been improperly obtained from their group chat.

And then the detail that comes to mind is that some of the defendants had dressed up in Hadsmaid's Tale costumes for Halloween. And this had clearly outraged the attorney and the plaintiff who brought this action. And so right there on page seven of the complaint is, is a picture and who knows, you know, how it was obtained of the defendants celebrating Halloween and Hans Made Tales costumes. And you just read this thing. And, you know, the case has been dismissed now. You know, the message of this is we are watching, right? And like this abusive ex-husband, right, is saying, I claim the right to sue you if you exercise bodily autonomy. And that's being

backed by the power of the state and these lawyers who are just champing at the bit to file these actions. You know, one of the things, and you, along with your co-author, wrote a piece in Slate entitled The Local Version of Project 2025 is Already Causing Devastation. And what I really appreciated, and I just want to lift up this piece, and then we can dig into it, is this. You all write this. The system red states are constructing works by empowering extreme ideologues and partisans to impose their will on their communities. whatever level of popular support they happen to enjoy.

Dissenters get the right to set public health and educational policy, overriding the judgment of elected school boards and expert regulators. Anti-abortion vigilantes and anti-LGBQ plus extremists are empowered to surveil their neighbors and rewarded for bringing legal proceedings against them. Lacks open carry laws, immunity from criminal prosecution promises of kid-glove treatment from police and prosecutors and pardons when, quote, leftist prosecutors try to crack down on right-wing thuggery signal to militias and other reactionary radicals that they can engage in political violence with near impunity. That was terrifying.

Yeah, and let me just underscore. That's, you know, a nice summary of what the book says. And if people want the 350-page version we go into a lot of details with a lot of footnotes about what's going on here. But one thing I wanted to underscore is that this stuff is happening with the backing of mega-Republicans and with the backing of state legislatures. So sometimes people hear about this project and they say, you know, there's sort of these ridiculous comments you get on social media. What about Antifa? I don't know. Like, you know, haven't we seen as, you know, things that are equally bad on the left? And our response to that is, oh, is, yeah, you're going to find extremists sort of across the political spectrum.

We're not denying that. But we know from U.S. history and we know from studying vigilantes throughout the world that they become truly dangerous when they think that they have the backing of the state, when they think that they have the backing of a political party. So, you know, an absolutely tragic example of this is the pardon of Daniel Perry in Texas, right? Yep. Who was convicted. And, you know, this is Texas where, you know, cultural.

cultural attitudes towards firearms and self-defense are not, you know, full of bleeding heart liberals. And, you know, after he was convicted, right, he was pardoned, you know, as his family said, right, this sends a message that this kind of violence is going to be tolerated and that we want folks out there aggressively enforcing mega values. What this reminds me of, I am a black queer woman living in America. And what this reminds me of are what I read throughout schooling in history, with regard to Jim Crow segregation and the white supremacist movement

that reigned terror on black Americans for over 100 years post the Civil War. And it was state sanctioned. The members of the White Citizens Council, the Ku Klux Klan, they were judges and police officers and doctors and attorneys. And they could lynch, rape, murder,

beat, torment, American citizens without any, any accountability whatsoever. What these people, what Maga Republicans, what they want, is a return to that space where you no longer can even look to government, law enforcement, or any place in order to receive protection. That we are all going to be living, not just black Americans, but all of us who do not fit their script under state sanctioned terror. Precisely. Yeah. In the book, we spend a lot of time going through the history of vigilantism in the U.S. And, you know, sometimes people think of

vigilantes as these characters like Batman, who are, you know, sort of have no connection to the state and are just off on their own. That's not our history. And as you say, right, when we think about Jim Crow, right, there's a formal piece of Jim Crow, which is, right, laws that require segregation, and require cities to have, you know, segregated drinking fountains and segregated buses and so forth. But an equally important part is the knowledge that private citizens who enforced white supremacy were not going to be held accountable. And there's a just incredibly fascinating and incredibly disturbing book that I recommend to folks that's called By Hands Now Known by a law professor named Margaret Burnham, which does deep archival work looking at what, happened when private actors took the enforcement of white supremacy into their own hands. And it's disturbing and terrifying because it's simply case after case where people engaged in murder,

right, violence, all kinds of intimidation. And even though this formally violated the law, the district attorney would decide not to prosecute. Or if a case, you know, made it to trial, say, because DOJ came down and brought a prosecution, the jury would nullify, right? The jury would refused to convict when the case went to trial. And John and I, right, we thought about whether it's fair to make this comparison to Jim Crow, because that's a serious accusation to level. And what really disturbed us, and, you know, what led us to draw that link is that we're seeing a lot of the same legal tricks. And we're seeing a lot of the same moves that we thought had died out and are coming back. And so, you know, it's not, you know, a clear cut arrow, but we definitely see echoes of Jim Crow

in what these red state legislatures are putting in place these days. I think it's terrifying, but I also think that people think that there's a way around this. The piece that you all wrote in Slate is like Project 2025 isn't being instituted in the year 2025 if Donald Trump becomes president. It's already happening. You look at the state of Florida and what began as the don't say gay. then was like we're getting rid of African-American studies. Then we're getting rid of gender studies. Then we're firing teachers.

Like you look at Texas, right? And the case that you brought up of the vigilanteism around abortion, the criminalization of doctors and of patients and all of these things. These are things that are already happening. These places are already petri dishes to test out what will work and what doesn't work. And so I wonder, David, then, like, how, I mean, obviously you all are doing the work with your book and your writing, but how do you think that we need to create, I guess, an alarm, a siren that tells people that Project 2025 isn't coming. Project 2025 is here. Yeah, for sure. Well, you know, the first piece, which, you know, I think we're still getting there, is for people to appreciate what is happening in these red states.

we spend so much time thinking about national politics, as many problems as we have at the national level, you know, for folks on the left, there's an assumption, oh, there's a Democrat in the White House, you know, federal agencies are under control or, you know, being led by Democratic appointees. Things can't be that bad. That fundamentally misunderstands the importance of states and how much power states have to stir up violence and to stir up vigilantism. So in the slate piece, right, the point we're making is that you look at things like, you know, sort of this proposal to read the Comstock Act as prohibiting the mailing of abortion pills. Or, you know, you, you know, another move that comes out of the state is everything gets redefined as pornography, right? So, you know, it's not simply, you know,

like the porn you would see on a website, right? You know, sort of the new move is if you have a problem with kids reading books about gay parents, that becomes pornography, right? And under the guise of banning pornography, it becomes regulated. That's something that comes out of the states that's happening in states like Florida. And what's concerning is that these policies are in place now and they are telling vigilantes now that they have authority to enforce them. And as important as November is, they're going to stay in place in the states. So the Washington posted this great series on who's filing book ban challenges. They went through and they actually ran the numbers. I think it was for 2021.

But there were, you know, hundreds of thousands of these challenges filed. And they were mass produced by, you know, groups of, in one case, 11 people who are working off of a website that, you know, that Moms for Liberty had put together. And imagine sort of a blue wave in November, right? I don't know. Suppose something happens, you know, Democrats take the House and the Senate and the White House. That doesn't undo what's happening in the States. And so part of what we're trying to do in this project is get people to find.

focus on the state level and realize that as much energy and as much resources as we push into the race for the president, they also need to be paying attention to what's happening in their state house. You know, and I wonder, you as a lawyer, what is the Department of Justice's role? Because we can't just say, oh, well, you know, states is rights. We'll just leave it up to the states, which is what we, you know, wanted to do in the civil war. Oh, let them decide whether or not they're going to, you know, continue the trade of human needs. chattel. Let them decide if black people are actual human beings. We'll just leave it up to the states. It can't just be that shrugged response from the Department of Justice. So what is their role here?

You know, ideally, you would see aggressive action by DOJ to enforce federal civil rights protections, right? There's three laws that were passed in the 1870s. The people sometimes called the Enforcement Acts or the KKK acts, because they were enacted in response to KKK violence. during Reconstruction. And the promise of those acts is that the federal government is going to protect you from your states. Because, of course, right, it was the states following the Civil War that were not protecting people from the Klan and other militias and violent groups that were operating in the South. And so, you know, sort of the ideal vision is that, you know, when states empower vigilantes, when they, you know, subtly or not subtly, say, run over protesters with your car or start banning me. books or whatever have you, you'd see a federal response. Well, we've all seen what's happened during the Biden administration, right? We had people literally storming the Capitol. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. Killing, right, causing mayhem. And, you know, getting cases against the organizers of that plot has been an extremely plotting methodical, you know, oh my God, you know, what if, you know, what if we say that, you know, the president broke up criminal law and then the Supreme Court swings into

action and recognizes this crazy theory of presidential immunity. And so, you know, as much as I love the vision of the federal government as protector of civil rights, right, come on, right, this is reality, right? We know we're not going to see it. What we do in the book is we say, okay, we have to start looking for other sites of power, right? We have to start looking for other, right, other institutions that can push back against this. And one of the most obvious ones that we're not seen utilized is blue states, right? So far, this is, you know, this is sort of like a, a game where only one side is playing. And Blue State legislatures have been extremely modest in their response to the spread of authoritarianism in other states. And so the back part of the book,

we spend a lot of time thinking creatively about what Blue States can do to protect their residents and to push back against vigilantes. Yeah, there is so much, like I think that what your book illuminates for us is that these things are not happening, like they're not going to happen. They are happening. And while we think that if you live inside of a blue state or a blue dot inside of a red state that you may be safe, the fact is, is that we're not. We're one election away from this kind of vigilanteism being nationalized and being state sanctioned once again like it was during Jim Crow. And so I really just want to thank you for your work, for your research, for getting this out to the people because I think that folks need to be aware that nowhere is safe until we take action

from the local state and federal level against this type of deep oppression. Well, thanks so much, Danielle. And let me just end on a positive note because this is, you know, we're sounding the alarm and I think it's important to sound the alarm. But let me just say that turning to vigilantes is not a strategy that you engage in when you have the votes. And so as people think about this and as people understand what states are doing, they need to understand that vigilantism is a strategy for losers. It's an attempt to hold on to power and to impose your will when you don't have the votes.

One thing that comes out of history is that a real pro-democracy political coalition has the power to push back on this. And I hope we'll see that in November and beyond. Amazing. Folks, the book is Vigilante Nation, How State Sponsored Terror Threatens Our Democracy. David Knoll, thank you so much for making the time to join the new abnormal and for this conversation. Really appreciate you. Great to be with you. Thanks so much. If they've heard of it at all, most people know Opus Day from Dan Brown's The Divinci Code,

which featured a murderous and self-flagellating monk affiliated with that organization as its cartoonishly evil villain. But while Brown's portrayal of Ophiourn's. Opus Day might not be fully accurate. Journalist Gareth Gore in his gripping new book, Opus, the cult of dark money, human trafficking, and right-wing conspiracy inside the Catholic Church gives us the real history of this secretive, ultra-conservative Catholic group, and it's more than disturbing enough without a homicidal albino monk. So one of the things you say in the book is that Opus Day is a danger to itself, its membership, the church, and the world. So what exactly is Opus Day and why is it so dangerous? So Opus Day was set up in 1928 by this Spanish Catholic priest called

Hose Maria Escriba who basically told everybody that he'd received a vision from God. Outlining a new movement, Opus Day means the work of God in Latin. So a new movement for basically serious Catholics who wanted to take things a step further without having to become priests or nuns. So basically the philosophy of the organisation was that ordinary Catholics could serve God in a much more deeper way by striving for perfection, by offering up everything they did in their daily lives to God. So it started off with this really quite benign and quite laudable philosophy. The early years of Obstay was Spain in the early 1930s, a society that was deeply divided on the brink of civil war. So, you know, it was a time when the workers were rising up.

They basically had overthrown the monarchy. They were demanding new rights for themselves. And critically, they were turning their backs from the church. So Escanibar, the founder of Opos Day, saw what was happening around him. And he was horrified. And so he began to change this organization. He kept this kind of friendly, benign facade. And that's what he presented to the world.

But secretly, he was writing all of these documents, which details how, Opus Day would henceforth become a more militaristic, a more political, a more reactionary organisation. And that's what we have today. He basically decided that his followers would be tasked with infiltrating every element of society from governments to education, to business, to journalism. And they would be essentially tasked with collecting information on what he called the enemies of Christ. And then using that information, to follow through on what he called the orders of Christ, which of course would come from Escrio himself.

So you got drawn into reporting about Opus Day after the collapse of Baco Popular in June of 2017. Talk about the connection there. Yes, I mean, so I was sent to report on this Spanish bank that had collapsed, and initially it seemed like the same old story of like, you know, a bunch of bank executives had allowed things to get out of control. the bank had spiraled into trouble and then basically collapsed.

And that's the story I wrote. And that's the story everybody else wrote as well and just moved on. But then out of sheer chance, two years later, I found myself in Madrid again. And I decided to start looking into the story again because there were a bunch of investors who were trying to get their money back. So I started talking to them and trying to find out, you know, whether or not there was an interesting story to write there. I'm a financial journalist.

And so I was interested in the financial element of it. But the more I dug, the more crazy the whole story got. And eventually I found all of these links back to Opus Day. And to cut a long story short, I found, and the book is the story of basically how Opus Day hijacked this bank in the 1950s and transformed it into a cash machine and subsequently siphoned hundreds of millions of dollars, if not billions of dollars, from the bank to finance its expansion to every corner of the world. You know, when you talk about the fact that Opus Day has become the,

this sort of powerful institution or an incredibly influential. Was it this that really spurred that on because they were able to get such a financial windfall because of it? So I think Opus Day, even when it had very little access to money and had very few followers, its intentions were always to target the elite to basically infiltrate the corridors of power, you know, whether that be government or the judiciary or universities or whatever. They, they, they, always targeted and recruited members who are powerful and who are in positions of power. But what the bank did was finance and infrastructure to basically expand all around the world. So Opus Day today operates in 66 countries on six continents.

And in the US alone, you know, it has 3,000 members. Globally, it's more, it's about 90,000 members. But in the US, it's 3,000 members. And of those 3,000 members, 800 are in the D.C. area, which tells you a lot about the kind of geographical focus of Opus Day and the types of people that it's gone after. Most people, if you're talking about a Catholic organization, you know, were the hubs of that Catholic organization might be in the US. You'd think cities like Chicago or Boston or New York even, places with sizable Catholic communities. But interesting, in the case of Opus Day, its biggest single community

is in the D.C. area, and that's because the organization has very much targeted those in political or judicial power. Yeah, I want to get into that more. So tell us about the Catholic Information Center, which is an Opus Day institution in Washington, D.C. And there were two heads of that organization in particular, Father Charles John McCloskey, back in, I believe it was the late 80s, and then Father Arn Panula, starting in 2007. Both of them, seem to play extraordinary roles in the escalation of Opus Day's political power in Washington, D.C., in other words, in America. The Catholic Information Center is basically a chapel and bookshop on K Street, in the heart of

the lobbying district of D.C. There's a blue plaque outside of the CIC, which boasts about how the CIC is the closest tabernacle to the White House. And that tells you all you need to know about the way that Opus Day sees itself and the way it sees the CIC. It's, this is a chance. chapel and it's a political hub at the heart of the most, you know, powerful city on earth. So yes, I mean, so under Father C. John McCloskey, and this was a former Wall Street stockbroker who was a member of Opus Day and who later became a priest. He initially was posted to Princeton, but he kind of really, the university authorities did not like what he was doing in there at all. He was extremely aggressive in his recruitment. He was.

saying all kinds of crazy shit that, you know, basically was really winding up the student population. And he was booted out of Princeton. But then he was transferred to Washington and to the CIC. He was made chaplain of the CIC in 98. And very quickly, he established himself as he widely became known as the convert maker in Washington. You know, he converted some big political figures like, you know, Newt's Gingrich and Sam Brambeck. You know, these big figures on the Republican side of the aisle. He, you know, the CIC became this hub were Congress people, senators, lobbyists, influential lawyers would all congregate and, you know, they'd take confession

at the CIC. They disclosed their deep-pies darkets secrets to see John McCloskey. And they get spiritual guidance sessions from Opus Day. And, you know, it really transformed Opus Day's, I guess, influence in the city. I mean, before Father Sejohn took over, Opus Day had a handful, I guess, of powerful allies in the city. So, for example, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was a regular at Opus Day retreats. And he helped to fundraise for a number of Opus Day initiatives in the city. Opus Day also operated a couple of schools in D.C., the heights for boys and Oak Crest for girls,

where a lot of the city's kind of Catholic elite sent their kids. But until Father C. John's success at the CIC, I think its influence in Washington was kind of restricted. But yeah, things really, really started to take off, especially in the early 2000s. And then Father Arne comes in, and he seems to escalate things even further. And one of the things you point out is he was a friend to the Federalist Society's Leonard Leo,

who, of course, was instrumental. and getting Clarence Thomas, Samuel O'Leedle, John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett onto the Supreme Court. So is it a stretch to say that Opus Day money and organizational skill has a lot to do with the current makeup of our Supreme Court? What Opus Day does, and this is not just true of Washington, but it's true of every city where it operates around the world, I think what Opus Day does is build a network of like-minded conservatives who are in positions of power. And it kind of shapes that network and pushes people in the right directions, introduces people to other people who might help things happen.

So I don't believe for a minute that there's some guy in Rome, the head of Opus Day, who's handing down orders, and they're been passed to Leonard Leo and Kevin Roberts and J.D. Vance or whoever. But what Oppos Day is kind of working behind the scenes to engineer the right connections between people and then give them encouragement, including spiritual encouragement, to say, you know, what you're doing is the right thing. And yes, you are absolutely working towards the re-Christianization of the world, which is basically the hidden mission of old past age, to infiltrate society and to use its influence and the influence of its members to work towards what the founder called the re-Christianization of the world. And you mentioned J.D. Vance, which is interesting

because something as I was reading it, I was thinking to myself, well, Father Arne was also a good friend to Peter Thiel, who of course was a mentor to J.D. Vance, who then converted to Catholicism. But I started to ask myself, am I being conspiratorial in thinking there's a connection there? I had to ask myself that same question over and over and over again. It's incredible that almost every stone, every rock you kind of kick or every stone you pick up, you find this whole Opus Day ecosystem, And so you're quite right, though, that, you know, Peter Thiel, he was, I don't believe he's a member of Opus Day, but he was certainly very close to Father Arnie Penula when he was stationed out in Stanford. And, you know, there are other connections too. So, J.D. Vance is very close to Kevin Roberts, who is the president of the Heritage Foundation and the architect of Project 2025. Now, Kevin Roberts, we know for a fact, is a regular at the Alpersday CIC in central Washington. He goes there and he gets spiritual guidance from the Alpersday priests. He gave a speech just last year where he was basically extolling the virtues and the teachings of Hosse Maria Escribar, the founder of Alpestay. And a lot of the language that Kevin Roberts uses is kind of militaristic in tone.

He talks about, you know, these battles and low. in the muskets and all of this kind of stuff that really echoes the way that Escriba himself was talking back in the 1930s. So, you know, whether J.D. Vance or Peter Thiel or whoever, whether these guys are involved in El Pasaday in any way or not, what we do know is that Opus Day and Opus Day sympathizers are very much part of that kind of, that world that's kind of circled around Donald Trump at the moment. And these people have... helped to put together this plan for a second Trump administration, which is the whole project 2025 agenda. You know, there are other connections to Trump, that is. There's Mick Mulvaney,

there's Ginny Thomas. Talk about the influence that Opus Day wielded under the Trump presidency. So yeah, I mean, there were various members of the Trump cabinet and kind of wider Trump entourage, who were either directly members of Opus Day or who were Opus Day kind of affiliates. So, Mulvaney is a known Opus Day member. If memory serves me right, he was kind of head of the, he was like the budget czar or something under under, under, under Trump. And maybe later the chief of staff, I think, actually, Pat Ciboloni, who was the White's house chief counsel under Trump. He was a board member at Elpers Day's CIC center. And also, I mean, you mentioned earlier, Leonard Leo, he's also on the board at the CIC. And, you know, he's very much also involved

in Kevin Roberts' project 2025. Leo and the very, he, the very, dark money funds linked to him have been a major funder of Project 2025, but also, you know, Bill Barr. Bill Barr was a board member at the Opus Day's CIC for many years. And in fact, when he stepped down from being Attorney General in 2020, I think it was, he basically took up a role at the Opus Day Centre where, you know, they gave him this big prize and he made, you know, a bunch of speeches that basically were fueling the culture. wars and fermenting these divisions that we still have today in our society. Yeah, as I was reading the book, it was kind of unreal how many tentacles Opus Day had into Trump world. Beyond politics,

there's a lot of disturbing stuff in the book, Opus Day grooming kids, it's apparent treatment of women. And you talk about numerous horrific examples of all of this, and you assert that all of this meets the United Nations definition of human trafficking, which is the recruitment, transportation, or receipt of people by means of threats, force, or coercion for the purpose of exploitation. So what's the story here? And this became a big deal in Argentina, correct? Yeah. So this all goes back to a group of women from Argentina and surrounding countries who were recruited into Alpers Day when they were still young girls. Some of them were just 12, 13 years old. So these girls grew up in kind of poor villages with very few prospects in places like Paraguay.

Bolivia or northern Argentina. And they were targeted by Opus Day. So Opus Day members came and visited their villages. And these girls were told that, look, your prospects are not great here in the countryside. Why don't you come back to the big city with us and we'll train you, we'll give you these qualifications. You can come to our school where we'll train you how to cook and clean and you can get jobs in hospitality industry.

You know, this is a chance to better life. So the families and the young girls were like, like, wow, this is an amazing opportunity. But once the girls were taken away from their families, they were bit by bit, pressured, manipulated, and coerced into joining Opus Day, as effectively as domestic servants for the elite members of the organisation. Once it signed up to this life, they were then basically trafficked around the world to wherever they were needed. And so many of them, you know, decades later, finally were able to get out of the organisation.

and they've found other people who have been in similar situations. And they've come together and they have formally denounced Dopper's Day for having enlisted them into a life of servitude, for not having paid them a penny, and also for basically having traffic them around the world. And, you know, I met many of these women in Argentina. I've spoken to so many of them in other parts of the world who've had similar experiences as well.

And, well, I kind of was struggling with, with this idea for a while. And then I kind of realized one day that this is basically human trafficking. And I looked up the United Nations definition of what human trafficking was. And it seemed to fit almost precisely the experience of these young girls and young women. And so I basically called out Opus Day in the book, you know, for human trafficking. In the weeks and months before the book came out, Opus Day were hitting us with all kinds of aggressive legal correspondence saying, how dare you accuse of us of human trafficking? But then a few days, before the book came out, we saw in the news that basically federal prosecutors in Argentina

were filing formal accusations against Opus Day for having trafficked these teenage girls. So, you know, completely vindicating what we had been planning on saying in the book all along. But I should say it as well, I mean, sorry to go on at this, but like, I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. I mean, in my investigations, following the money from the bank to these various Opus Day initiatives around the world, I found dozens of other similar schools that were set up in across the Americas, in Africa, in parts of Asia, even in parts of Europe. These hospitality schools were also being set up and were young girls were being targeted. And I've spoken to women survivors of these places.

And it sounds like they had almost the exact same experience as these women in Argentina. And so I would not be surprised if similar things begin to surface in other countries. countries before long, this certainly smells very much like a human trafficking ring that was, you know, using money siphoned from this bank in Spain to recruit members into Opus Day and then traffic them around the world. Yeah, it really was absolutely frightening to read about in the book. Gareth, God, I wish I had double the time because there's so much stuff in the book I wasn't able to get to, including, I mean, just the history of the organization alone is so fascinating and its role within the Catholic Church and how it's perceived by the church leadership.

But unfortunately, I am out of time. The book is Opus, The Cult of Dark Money, Human Trafficking and Right Wing Conspiracy Inside the Catholic Church. It's out now. Gareth Gore, thank you so much for being here. Danielle Moody. Andy Levy. Danielle, who's your fuck that guy to start off this week?

I would love to meet this one in person. I'm going to be honest with you. I might smack him, but I would... still love to meet him in person and just see, you know, get the energy vibe. But my person is none other than the man with the worst job in these United States. And that would be Speaker of the House. Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. And why is he my fuck that guy and why would I love to see him in person?

Because here's the thing. I don't know why Mike Johnson wanted this job. I really don't. He's terrible at it as was, you know, his predecessor. But the fact is that we have experienced two historical hurricanes that have devastated parts of this country, where aid is needed, where Republicans have voted against providing more resources to FEMA, the very agency that they are battling now with their lives,

and saying, oh, FEMA needs to do more. Well, you voted against FEMA being able to do more, didn't you? But he refuses to call Congress back into session to vote on relief, to vote on hurricane relief. And he said, oh, he'll do it after the election, which is when, one, hurricane season will hopefully have passed. Because, you know, hurricane season has extended beyond what it used to be, being as how the waters are warmer. And so are the seasons. And I'm just like, you really don't give a damn. Like you really were put into this job to just be a yes man, to just be a bootlicker,

to do nothing to advance the needs of the American people. And I'm just so sick of him and his stupid fucking face. I want him gone. And I really hope that Democrats are able to win the House just so I never have to talk about him ever again. and he can go back into obscurity where he should have stayed. But for his inability to recognize that we are in a climate crisis and Americans need help and aid and our agencies need the resources to do so, I say that and for so many other reasons, fuck that guy. This is such classic 2024 Republican Party nonsense.

They sit there and their members complain about FEMA money. And meanwhile, they don't vote to fund FEMA. And Mike Johnson is warned that the Small Business Administration, which runs a disaster loan program, he's warned that that program will run out of funding well before Congress is planning to reconvene. And yet he chooses not to have Congress come back for a special session. If I didn't know better, I would think that he actually wants not great disaster response. so that it can be pinned on Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. But I know that can't be true because Mike Johnson is a devout Christian.

And as a devout Christian, he obviously cares about helping people in need. So I know that can't be true. But yeah, fuck that guy. So Andy. Yeah. How are you starting out this week? Who's your fuck that guy. My fuck that guy, Danielle, he's a Republican member of Congress from Louisiana.

And his name is Mike Johnson. Oh, wow. Wow. Okay. Okay. But it's not for the hurricane-related stuff, because you already covered that in your usual, brilliant, and incisive manner. So I can't add to it. So I'm going to use something that Liz Cheney talked about on Meet the Press this past Sunday, and something that I agree with her on, which is, you know, not the most common thing in the world. No.

She said, quote, I do not have faith that Mike Johnson will fulfill his constitutional obligations. What is she talking about here? She's talking about Congress's role in certifying the presidential election on a date we all know very well now, January 6th. And I am absolutely of a mind with her here. I am nowhere near 100% certain that he will certify the election or allow Congress to certify the election. As Liz Cheney points out, Mike Johnson was one of the architects of Stop the Steel. He led an amicus brief back in 2020 to a Texas lawsuit that challenged the election. He is an election denier from day one from 2020.

And, you know, Liz Cheney worked with Mike Johnson. And she knows Mike Johnson. And I guess Mike Johnson was Liz Cheney's conference vice chair of the Republican Study Committee. She was the chair. And she knows what she's talking about here. You said a little earlier, you said, you didn't even know why Mike Johnson wanted to be Speaker. I'm worried this is why he wanted to be Speaker. Yep. I'm worried that all of this was so that he could be in the seat on January 6th. He could be in the Speaker's Chair and have a lot of sway over what happens in Congress. Look, I would love to be wrong. Nothing would make me happier on this in particular to be wrong. And why

Watching Mike Johnson be part of certifying Harris Wall's win would make me very happy. So fingers crossed, Liz Cheney is wrong, and fingers crossed, I am wrong. But I am absolutely concerned about this. And given how close I have a feeling the electoral count is going to be in this election, I will be absolutely shocked if everything goes smoothly on January 6th. And because he will be a large part of that, I say to Mike Johnson, fuck that guy. The fact is is that we

have to make sure that this election is not slim, that it is too big to steal. That was the message of the DNC that has been the message for quite some time. They are doing everything that they can to make the margins so small

that they have the ability to steal this election, because that is the only way that they win. And I don't want to live on hopes and prayers. I want strategy and tactics. And that's what I think that the Harris Wals team has in place with their teams of lawyers. But, you know, for that reason, Mike Johnson, like literally, two times. That's how big of a fuck that guy you are. Two times. One show. Might be our first. It may be our first. Yeah.

But it problems won't be our last. Nope. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh and our star-studded the Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become. the darkest timeline. Head to the dailybeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.