The Daily Beast Podcast - Donald Trump’s Actions to Young Staff Was’'Open Secret:’ Ex-Adviser

Episode Date: May 12, 2023

On this week’s episode of The New Abnormal, Alyssa Farah Griffin, co-host of “The View” and former Trump White House director of Strategic Communication, talks about her experience firsthand in the orb of Trump sexual harassment. Plus! The Daily Beast reporter Kelly Weill joins the podcast to talk about the Texas Allen Mall shooter and how the right wing is trying to whitewash his reputation.  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. 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. What an excellent show we have today.

First, we'll be joined by Alyssa Farah Griffin, who's, of course, a co-host of The View and a CNN political commentator and a former Trump administration official. And she'll tell us about her experience with sexual harassment in the Trump White House. Then we'll talk to Daily Beast reporter Kelly Weil, all about the Allen Mall shooter and how the right wing is trying to whitewash his reputation. But first, let's have some fun. Well, Andy, we have survived yet another week in America. And my God, this new cycle had me just, you know, I wanted to not drink this month is what I will say to people. Like, I was trying to do like a cleanse. And then I realized, why the fuck doesn't matter?

Democracy's going down. So my cocktail should go down as well. I like you, did not watch. I like you too. I love this for us. I did not watch the CNN Town Hall. Why? Because I, as I said on Twitter, and I'll say it again, I was not giving CNN an eyelash, let

alone an eyeball in their viewership for their fuckery. And it, you know, it doesn't matter. I watched the clips. I saw people's Twitter feeds. I've read now at least 3,000 think pieces that came out. And they got the views, not as much as Tucker Carlson was getting on Fox News, but they got 3.1 million views for Donald Trump. lies. And Chris Licked, the CEO of CNN, had the audacity to say that he thought that he did a great

job for America. Yeah. That this is what Americans needed to see and that Caitlin Collins did a, according to him and Poppy Harlow, a quote, masterful job. Have we changed the definition of masterful? Because if we did, then she fits it. Because she did not push back. Donald Trump said that Democrats won abortions after children are born? I don't know what that's called. I think it's called infanticide, and I'm pretty sure there's no legislation that has been put up about that.

That is bullshit. Donald Trump continued to say that the 2020 election was stolen, and my favorite part, and by favorite, I mean I wanted to vomit when I saw the clip of an entire room of people laughing about sexual assault. Never in my life, Andy. And that's just the tip of the ice.

You? As you said, I also refused to watch. I also shut down Twitter during it, because I didn't want to see the live tweeting either. I watched my Knicks game in peace. But also, like you, I have seen a million clips now and read, I think you said you read 3,000 pieces. I read 3,001 pieces. Not to be outdone.

Okay, fine. Yeah, I just, I care more about research. Clearly. It was disgusting. and as, you know, you and I and I think any other sort of sentient being new, it was going to be disgusting. And there was no way it was not going to be disgusting. I really do think everyone except Chris Lick knew this. And I'll cut Caitlin Collins a bit of slack. I don't think anyone could have done that job. I really don't. If you want to have someone like Donald Trump on,

you either have to spend the entire time correcting him or he's just going to steamroll. you. And the fact of the matter is, we talk in you in particular have talked about how the word news should not be in the Fox News Channel name. I'm not sure it should be in the CNN name either because this was entertainment. And my point being that nobody wanted to see an hour of Caitlin Collins correcting Donald Trump. That was not the mandate for the show. And you would think on a news channel it would be the mandate, but you would also think on a news channel you wouldn't host a town hall, basically a campaign. performance from a serial liar and an interactionist, if I dare say. Again, this was not news. I think I agree that the worst part was the audience reaction to the E. Jean Carroll and the sexual assault stuff. They loaded this audience with Republicans and they claim independence. Boy, it didn't sound like an independent audience to me, but who the hell knows. And they said they did this because those are the people that this was aimed at, were the people who were not Democrats, who we're not going to be voting in a Republican primary, which again, okay, fine, but what did you expect

was going to happen? I have to think that Chris Licked is not happy about the ratings. I know 3.1 million is probably orders of magnitude better than CNN does normally at that time. But as you pointed out, it's not even what Tucker Carlson would get on a good night. And I think the thing with Chris Licked is, look, the cable news audience is it's finite and it's shrinking. Young people could not care less about cable news. They probably don't even have cable. And the old people who do watch it are, quite frankly, dying off. So Lick seems to be, he has this sort of gambit that he can peel off enough of Fox viewers to make

a ratings difference. And I just don't think he can. But that does seem to be what he is trying to do. He is determined that it really is, it's a zero-sum game. There's only a certain number of people who watch cable news. And, you know, he has decided, look, we're not going to lure any new viewers in who ordinarily don't watch cable news. So we have to poach them. And Fox has the biggest audience. So that's what we're going to try to poach. And I don't think it's going to work. So even on a

tactical level, I think it's stupid. But, you know, then there's the whole good for the country level. And if you're going to become more like Fox News and host hour long conversations, I shouldn't even say conversations. If you're going to host hour long screeds from Donald Trump, I failed to see how that's helping the country. This was a terrible idea. We all do it before. it even happened. We all said so before it even happened. And we were, what do you know, we were right? I want to lift up a couple of quotes from Chris Lict that he said to staffers who many of whom, according to Brian Stelter's Twitter feed, that many staffers at CNN were angry. And so this is what Lickt said. Quote, you don't have to like the former president's answers, but you can't say

that we didn't get them. Caitlin pressed him again and again and made news, made a lot. lot of news. I'm confused because I thought, and call me fucking crazy, but I thought that the point of the news was to inform the people not to make the news, not to have clickbait, which is what they did. They didn't offer any counterbalance or any counter narrative to what Donald Trump did. Like you said, it was a full on 90-minute free, once again, campaign speech for Donald Trump, to air out his grievances, to spread lies, to have no pushback in a prime time viewing slot. Lick went on to say this, while we may have been uncomfortable hearing people clapping, that was also, and by the clapping, he's referring to what we mentioned with regard to

the E. Jean Carroll piece, while we may have been uncomfortable hearing people clapping, that was also an important part of the story, because he says, those folks represent a large swath of America. I do not believe, Andy, that a large swath of America are represented by hand-picked 400 Republicans. I do not believe that a large swath of the country believe that sexual assault and violence against women is something that is funny. And that is something that we should be elevating, giving a platform to, and applauding. He did exactly what he set out to do. which was to beat Fox and MSNBC and his other competitors in this time slot. But this is not going to be consistent.

They ain't being consistent in these numbers that they drew for this town hall. That isn't going to be the CNN story moving forward because I think that a lot of people who looked at CNN as one of the stalwarts for news and journalism, now look at it and say, oh, you're just the same. entertainment clown car as Fox. So why am I going to watch you? Yeah, totally agree. And, you know, there was something at the end of Lict, you read that quote from him about, you can't say we didn't get answers and that they made news, made a lot of news. He also, after that, he said, that is our job. No, it's not. As you said, your job is supposed to be to inform the American people, to report the

news, to analyze the news, call it what you want. Your job in no way, shape, or form is supposed to be to make news. And look, this is why, I mean, I think I say it right in the intro, I am a cable news conscientious objector because that has become the thing with cable news. And I promise not to go off on a rant here, but this is why I don't like sites like Mediaite, which constantly report on who said what on this cable news show. And I've seen it firsthand. I have seen on-air people at news networks talking about, you know, something will happen. They'll say something and be like, well, that'll get on mediaite. And like, that becomes a goal.

And that's not supposed to be your goal. You're supposed to be informing people. And again, the fact that Chris Lick thinks it's his job to make news, that it's CNN's job to make news. You know, as I sort of tweeted, are you going to go out with an RPG and repeatedly shoot at a schoolhouse? Is that your job? Because that's news.

You know, then you can report on how somebody shot up a school with an RPG. That is not your job. It is really. the opposite of your job. You're not supposed to be making news. That's how they view this now. It's gross. I don't know any other word for it. The other thing is, yeah, I agree with you. That was not an audience that's representative of America. And I guess that's sort of not what he's saying. What he's saying is that's a voice that, you know, nobody listens to. I am so tired of hearing that voice. Oh, my God. For a voice that nobody listens to or nobody airs, I sure as fuck hear it a lot.

And they never shut the fuck up. Yeah. I mean, again, you know, we have talked about this a lot. This is why this goes beyond cable news, though. The New York Times has this problem. Mainstream media has this problem. The both sides, the equal time, whatever. You don't have to keep doing this. The New York Times doesn't have to keep going to a diner in Missouri and talking to people who think sexual harassment is funny or whatever. You don't have to keep doing that. But they do. And, you know, again, they are misreading what their job is, I think. They have learned nothing since 2015. 2016 is the bottom line here. And you would think that four years of Trump as president and what we saw in his post presidential, God, I hope it's not his in-between presidential period, you think you would learn from that. But they don't. And then they cover Elon Musk the same way. And they cover all these guys the same way. And it's like, well, some people say this, but others, you know, hold up Musk as an example of, you know, excellence in what, shut up. Like you don't have to keep making excuses for these guys or pointing out that, yes, there are some terrible people out there

that think Trump is a good guy. We know. The guy fucking won a presidential election. We know those people are out there. And you've covered them ad nauseum and you don't have to keep giving them a platform over and over and over again and pretending that their voices are underheard. They ain't. No. And frankly, my question for Chris Lick is, so is Biden getting a handpicked audience of, you know, of all Democrats, you know, and 90 minutes to talk about all of the things that he has done since becoming president and the swamp that he inherited and a rapid vaccination program and trying to build this country back from what Donald Trump destroyed. Is he offering? Because his excuse was, well, Donald Trump is the Republican frontrunner, you know, by a mile.

Well, Joe Biden has announced his reelection campaign. So is he getting the same distinction or not? because otherwise then you're full of shit, which is what we all know, and that this was a money grab, which we also know. Yeah, I assume the argument there would be well, but Donald Trump is going to be in a primary and Joe Biden is not, so we don't need to do that for Joe. But again, it's an excuse is what it is. Yeah. I wish that, you know, see, and this is the thing that pisses me off about this as well is that we actually had good news this week, but still had to lead. Yeah. Still had to lead with this motherfucker, right?

Like we have good news in the fact that E. Jean Carroll, her persistence, her courage, her bravery paid off. And we finally, for the first time after I don't know how many decades of Donald Trump being labeled as Teflon Don, we finally saw some disintegration in the Teflon with her making a major, major ding with Donald Trump. being found liable by a jury of his peers, six of which were men for sexual abuse, for defamation, and for other charges. And the only thing that he wasn't found liable for was rape. And that's just because of E. Jean Carroll's description of what happened, she didn't know if there was actual quote unquote intercourse. But if you have ever listened to Stormy Daniels, you could understand why that would be. Oh, shit.

So I just like, I want to applaud her. God, I hope that she doesn't watch the news and did not watch the CNN Town Hall. But what she showed and thank God for the new legislation out of New York that allowed for this case to even happen because the criminal side of this, the statute of limitation had run its course because it was three decades ago. But the civil aspect of this was able to proceed. because of new legislation in New York, I'm excited for her that she got to reclaim her name. Yeah, absolutely. And again, you can't overstate her courage in going through with this process, which, you know, I won't pretend to imagine what it's like, but it seems fairly awful for a victim to have to put themselves through the process. But yeah, you know, as you pointed out, at the town hall, he was asked about this.

By the way, they held this town hall the day after he was found liable and ordered to pay her $5 million. And if that's not a good enough reason to say, you know what, we're not going to do this. We're not going to give this guy air. I really don't know what is. But they went ahead and did it. And Caitlin Collins asked him about it. And he said, this is a fake story, made up story. I have no idea who the hell she is.

She's a whack job. And then he said, what kind of woman meets somebody and brings them up? And within minutes you're playing hanky-panky in a dressing room. And that's what made the crowd laugh because that's funny apparently. But as you said, that opens, I would assume, since she successfully won her case, her civil case the first time, I would assume she could now easily sue him again for defamation. Who knows if she wants to put herself through that again? I mean, part of her might be like, you know, hey, that's another easy $5 million for me,

which God bless her if that's what she decides. But I think it would be equally valid for her to say, I don't want to go through that again. And I guess the point is she shouldn't have to be making this decision. And CNN, in a huge way, is forcing her to make this decision because they hosted Donald Trump. And it's not a surprise that he, like they can't say, well, we never thought he'd say something like that. They, you know, of course he was going to say something like that. Right. Like, yeah, that's who he is.

So, you know, she has to sit there having just gone through this civil lawsuit and having all these details, you know, made public yet again. She now has to hear this on a cable news network. And it's like, I don't know. At a certain point, it's like, have you no shame? You know, and I don't mean Donald Trump. We know he has no shame. CNN, have some shame. Mm-hmm.

Mm-mm-mm. You know who doesn't have shame. You know who does not have any fucking shame. And I know, you know, the soup is deep when talking about the Republican Party, but someone else made news, Katara, aka George Santos, has now, what is it, 13 felony charges against him, 13 felony charges including wire fraud, including lies, at least two lies. and I'm like only two.

And just a whole host of things that this man has done with his campaign financing and just lying. And he turned himself in to authorities in Suffolk County and a Suffolk County federal court on Long Island.

And I got to tell you, the press gaggle when he was coming out because three people whose names have not been released, at least I have not seen them released, put up $500,000 bond for him to be able to walk out of the court.

I don't know who's throwing good money after bad, but, you know, whatever. Go off with your money. But the press gaggle was crazy. And you could see Andy the glee on his face with the attention. Yeah. He is so addicted to the lights and the clicks and the clamor. Like he is, you know, Paris Hilton in the early 2000s. And it's a paparazzi rink.

rush in L.A. Like, it was wild to me. But he had to surrender his passport because they think he's a flight risk because, oh, he is. And he had the audacity to say he's not allowed without permission to leave, to travel outside of New York City and Washington, D.C. And he's like concerned about it hindering his ability to campaign for re-election. He's checking account. What reelection can campaign. Yeah, I mean, look, anyone who's ever dated someone who turns out to be a narcissist knows that they don't really care about the truth. They just care about the attention. And that's really all that matters to them. And he is just, like you said, he is as classic an example of that as you can find. The amazing thing to me about this is this. And I'm not claiming

it's an original thought. A bunch of people have written about this. These are the kinds of crimes that you don't often see charges brought for because a lot of times they're like, you know, well, was this legal? It might not be ethical, but it's a gray area. Not with him. He is so dumb that the things that he did were so obviously illegal that prosecutors were like, oh, yeah, we got to do this one. Because look, we all know politicians do shady shit the way they breathe.

Mm-hmm. sometimes better, depending on how old the politician is. Oh, shit. But again, this shit was so flagrantly illegal that the prosecutors were like, oh, yeah, we don't even have to show up to work for this one. We get a baker's dozen worth of counts in the indictment, which is fantastic. And then we have him out there calling this a witch hunt and everything and trying to be the son that Donald Trump actually loves.

but he ain't and like the whole thing is it's this combination of sad and funny because he wants so badly to be this maga guy and look you know you asked to put up the money i you know i don't know was it kevin mccarthy was it marjorie taylor green mccarthy has already said they're not going to try to remove him although god bless you kevin he did uh kevin i guess did say that he will not support santos for re-election again i just keep going back to how stupid all this stuff is, I mean, he used some of the money that was supposed to, I guess, be part of his campaign to buy designer clothing. That, which by the way, girl, it's not working for you. Neither is that Botox. Not that 17-layered shirt ship. I don't know.

No, no. I was looking at the charges. He set up companies and then told people that they were campaign companies, but that was a complete and utter lie. And these companies, the money was going straight to him. And he used them for his personal benefit. This motherfucker applied for unemployment under the COVID unemployment regulations, you know, that were put in while he was working. Yeah.

While he was working. And he's now the sponsor of a bill to go after COVID unemployment fraud. You have to laugh. I mean, this is not even like the Trump stuff I can't laugh at anymore really because it's so serious. I can still laugh at this stuff, thank God. Like, I can still laugh at the fact that this guy is accused of, at least, defrauding the government to receive unemployment benefits while working and then sponsored a bill to go after the people who did what he did. It's the audacity for me. Come on.

Come on. The audacity of dope. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal for, I believe, the first time. Alyssa Farah Griffin, who is co-host of The View and a CNN commentator, and former Trump White House Director of Strategic Communications. Alyssa, you recently on your network, which I won't even go into the town hall as of yet, because what a shit show. But you recently discussed following the E. Jean Carroll verdict that you, along with one of your former colleagues,

Stephanie Grisham, experienced firsthand or in the orb of Trump. Trump sexual harassment. And I wanted to give you an opportunity, one, to just be able to talk about that and why following the verdict you decided to share that experience. Yeah, well, thank you for having me. I had actually shared it before publicly a number of times, as well as I've cooperated voluntarily with the Department of Justice in the January 6th probe. And I mean, listen, the man's the former commander in chief. He's currently far and away the Republican frontrunner for president. And I think the American public needs to know who Donald Trump is. If it hasn't been clear enough over the last seven years or whenever since he came down,

the escalator in Trump Tower, but my experience, and I want to be careful in what I say, because being sensitive to potential victims, I believe it's their story to tell, not others, but as someone who is senior to one specific person, though I did see a number of problematic behavior and comments, I was a superior. I was an assistant to the president, meaning I was among the, the dozen most senior staff in the West Wing. And I saw behavior and engagement with very young junior female staffers from the former president that made me uncomfortable. It was an open secret, open discussion in the West Wing. And the way I was brought up, the way that I behaved

professionally is it is my duty to report that. So I took it to my direct report, which was the then chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Another individual was present for it and raised it. And he said, seemed very aware of the issue and said he was going to handle it. Now, to my knowledge, nothing was ever done. I can't say that definitively. And then I learned after the fact that Stephanie Grisham, who's now a dear friend of mine, but we actually were not at all on the same team. I'll put it that way when we were in the West Wing. During her tenure had had exactly the same concerns and had raised it as well. So it's a pattern. It was visible. It didn't take a genius to see it. It was reported. I don't know if it was handled. But this.

This is a man who does not respect women. It's a man who objectifies women. We've heard it in his own words countless times. And I thought it was important to state it yet again after the E. Jean Carroll decision because he's now been found liable by a jury of his peers for predatory behavior. And if I could help protect any woman who might think about working around him, might think about being around him.

I just wanted to share that. You know, one of the questions that I have, and I know that you've been asked this a number of times because, you know, you served. as Mike Pence's press secretary prior to working directly with the former president. And that was after we heard the Access Hollywood tapes. And what was told by Republicans was, oh, this is locker room talk. This is totally fine. During that time as well, we knew that over a dozen, you know, two dozen women had come out with their own claims of either sexual assault or sexual harassment.

So my question for you is, what made you go and work for a man? or inside of an administration where even the hint of that, and it wasn't even a hint, I mean, it was a stench of that was apparent. No, it's a great question. And one I'm happy to answer anytime someone asks, listen, I didn't vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Among the reasons that gave me pause was the behavior towards women and allegations. Others, frankly, one that just for whatever reason was so stark in my mind was when he essentially

went after a Gold Star family. whose son had been lost in combat. Yeah, the Khan family. Yep. I didn't vote for him. And I feel very strongly about public service. Once he was elected, he was going to be the commander-in-chief of the United States for four years, short of an impeachment, which we knew who's not going to get convicted in the makeup of a Senate that we saw. This is a man who was overseeing the most powerful military in the history of the world.

This is a man who oversaw the entire executive branch of government. I fundamentally believe that people. people of good faith have to go into those environments and try their best to do what they can to serve, to do it ethically and to try to be there for all Americans, not just his base, not just those who voted for him. Now, listen, would I ever work from again? Absolutely not. But God forbid this man is elected president, which he very well could be. I hope people of good faith and good conscience who are going to tell the truth and try to do the right thing go in. And listen, this is, it's my, it's my battle that I could wrestle with the rest of my life.

Like, could I have had more of an impact on the outside? could I've had more on the inside. I don't know the answer, but I stand by my actions in the administration. I want to ask you your thoughts about the Republican Party as a whole right now and what you came in to understand, you know, in your own partisan ideological makeup of what it meant to be a Republican and how you understand it now. There are folks that were never Trumpers. There are folks that left the party completely and either say that they're independence or, you know,

really have no affiliation. whatsoever because they become disillusioned. When you look at what Donald Trump did during his administration and what he continues to do, the violence that continues to rise in this country because of rhetoric that he uses, when you see him give a campaign speech in Waco, Texas, the founding site of white militias, what do you think about your party? So a lot to impact there, but listen, the GOP, as of right now, is not a conservative party. What drew me to being a lifelong Republican, I've always voted Republican, I have worked for dozens of elected Republicans, was I am a traditional conservative.

I have libertarian leaning instincts. I think that government has a function, but people should have as much freedom as they can, but I believe in a really strong national defense. Now, I know this isn't what you're getting at, but the party has become a nationalist populist party. It is one that in many ways I have as little, common with the MAGA wings of the party as I do with the Bernie Sanders. And there are tens of millions of us who feel politically homeless in this current moment, but we want to see change from within. I'm not ready to leave the party. I'm not ready to become an independent. I have been a

lifelong Republican. I believe in the values that we once held. And by the way, there are people who may get into this race that I would be thrilled to support. Governor Kristenunu, Nunu, Will Hurd of Texas, people who share my values. Donald Trump is not one of the those people. He has allowed it to become a party of grievance, a party that frankly stokes bigotry, racism, and all the worst instincts in American politics. And when I was coming up in, you know, Republican politics, your dear friend Matt Fuller has known me for a very long time. And he could, he could tell you this. I wanted to see, you know, budgets that balance. I wanted to see getting spending under control. I wanted to see taking on China. But when people said insane, crazy,

bigoted things when people promoted conspiracies like Alex Jones, even as recently as 10 years ago, you would have gotten chased out of the party. We wouldn't have tolerated that. There were some, I remember, there were guardrails. Yeah, it used to be normal. And it's become something that I don't even recognize, but I'm not giving up. Nancy Pelosi said it, well, this country deserves two thriving parties, political parties. And we don't have that right now, but it's going to be people within the GOP, trying to get us back to core values that represent tens of millions of Americans and turning this page on this madness. I want to switch gears and talk about CNN and the town hall. And obviously, you know, there was a lot of initial outrage at CNN deciding to platform Donald Trump. Then the day

after the E. Jean Carroll verdict comes in and now Donald Trump is found liable, like you said, by a jury of his peers for sexual abuse for defamation among other things and is paying, you know, will appeal obviously, but is, you know, said to be paying out $5 million for his acts of aggression towards Eging Carroll and then lies about it. CNN has him on the next night. Many, as folks are watching on Twitter or watching on air, saw little to no pushback whatsoever, watched an audience of people laugh about sexual assault. And I'm I wanted to get your reactions to what has been said, and there's tons that is being, you know, that's being published today on it.

But what you thought about how the makeup of the audience wasn't even representational of the electorate. I'm going to disagree on some of that. Listen, I hated watching it because I don't like seeing the power that that man commands. That said 74 million people voted for him. He is the GOP frontrunner for the nomination for one of the two major political parties. He is out polling those behind him by near double digits. Last time I checked, this is a democracy.

And I believe the role of the media and of journalists is to hold those in power to account and ask them tough questions. I actually thought seeing a 30-year-old female journalist go toe to toe with him, she fact-checked him on the very first question. And she didn't let up after. And I know that there's a lot of people who have a lot of thoughts about how much better they would have done than Caitlin. Collins. He bulldozed Hillary Clinton the exact same way. I thought that she was masterful. I don't think he moved a single vote. He played to his base. But that performance last night was radioactive to moderate Republicans, to independence, to swing voters, to women writ large, to communities of color. I actually think it was incredibly important for the public to see this is your front

runner. And I would point out, so there's these kind of this wild ABC Washington Post poll that had him pulling seven points ahead of Joe Biden. I think a major, despite having been indicted, arraigned all of that, I think a major factor in that is he hadn't been on mainstream media in a hot minute. We hadn't seen the Donald Trump grievance clown show where he can barely formulate a sentence. So the public is like, you know, my 401k was better under him. I'm not happy with Biden. Biden seems a little out of it. Whatever. Maybe I could get on board. I think that reminded the same people who turned out in 2020 that we cannot do that again. I didn't love the format, though, for what it's worth. I don't like town hall formats, but I want to ask you a follow-up because I disagree. I think that

the power of the fourth estate has been diminished over the last seven-plus years. I think that the ability to and the responsibility to actually present analysis, clean analysis of the dire situation that this country is in hasn't been done and hasn't not been done well. And by platforming Donald Trump, a year plus ahead of the election, following this case that was about sexual abuse. Like, this wasn't just a documents case, which is also important, but sexual abuse, you know, at least I thought until I heard people laughing, carry some considerable weight and disgust, frankly. That's something that I think we all should agree on. No, and I mean, I just had such a pit in my stomach.

It was just disgusting to hear laughing and applause as he made light of sexual abuse. And I frankly hope Eugene Carroll's lawyers were listening because there may be another five million they could get for him continuing to defame her. But what I will say is I would agree with your point if this was the media environment of 10 years ago or 15 years ago. But it's not like if major networks, major cables don't talk to Donald Trump, he will go away. and he will not be platforms. He will use alternative media

to reach tens of millions of people, spread conspiracy theories that get no fact check, whether you thought there were enough or not enough fact checks. He will still reach those voters. He will go to QAnon type sites. It's the campaign, frankly, that I think he intended to run, but he's realizing that why he may have won in 2016 was getting some mainstream press.

But you can't, there's not an option to see. You can't silence something, nor do I think it's a job, by the way, of the media to, or silence someone. But the point is he doesn't go away if he's not given a platform. So I would rather see credible people challenge him than him be reaching tens of millions of eyeballs in dangerous, risky ways. The other question that I have for you, and this is again about the Republican Party at large. And I understand the desire to want to stay inside and fight for, you know, this party that

you believe in. And, you know, I am a person that worked on Capitol Hill that has worked for, nonprofit organizations that has, you know, really steeped in public service and the desire to better this country. And when I hear folks like Tommy Tuberville, for instance, who recently was asked a question about the military being purged of white nationalists, and he said, you may call them white nationalists, I call them Americans. And we are seeing this rise, like you said, this nationalism that is coming. this violence that is coming and these supposed representatives of their states of their districts are on the bandwagon for that do you see an opportunity for recovery for this republican party or is this

just it it's jumped the shark it's over the cliff and whatever we see moving forward is going to be a machination of crazy essentially it's the million dollar question but I just don't think our republic can afford for us to give up on it. The views are there, the beliefs are there, people are radicalized, and we have to fight from within because the country deserves it and depends on it. Your listeners may not know, but I was also the press secretary for the United States Department of Defense. And countering radicalism within the force was a major priority of ours because we have

the best fighting force in the world. Men and women who serve in uniform are patriots who love this country. but there are many, many instances where those individuals are getting radicalized. It's dangerous. It puts so much at risk. It's been a priority that's been being addressed. And I think Americans need to wake up to it. And I will just briefly, because this is a bit of a tangent, but the radicalization you're seeing not just within the force, but watch more broadly within the country and on the far right, I believe fundamentally is a direct result of decades of adversary information warfare. against the United States. We know for a fact that the Chinese and we know that the Russians have weaponized the information space, social media, with disinformation and misinformation campaigns targeted

at one thing and one thing only, pitting Americans against each other on ideological grounds, dividing us from within. And you know what? They're effing winning. That's just the fact. And when I see things that peek up all of a sudden and, you know, this is the outrage of the day, you know, the anti-trans sentiment, the anti-drag queen sentiment, that was very likely weaponized by an adversary to fearmonger to create to otherize people

and to make people feel like they have to fear their neighbor. I hope to see, and I've called for this within the defense and intel community, if there were a way to safely declassify some of what we know about how our adversaries are turning us against each other, I think it could be a wake up call for this country that we need to calm down and realize that we are playing into our enemy's hands. Yeah. On that, Alyssa, I really do agree. My last question for you is, you know, given now that both you and Stephanie, a former colleague, have aired out the climate and the harassment at the hands of Donald Trump during his administration, is there a lawsuit in your future or in her future?

Do you mean, is the former president going to sue us? No, are you thinking about suing the former president? It's not something I've considered. I voluntarily cooperate with the January 6th committee and the Department of Justice. I believe in the work that the DOJ is doing around, specifically around January 6th. I believe my role in obligation to the public is to tell the truth and let the public decide what they may. I was on CNN for post coverage last night and I was seated near a rising star within the Republican Party, Byron Donald's.

And this is an incredibly educated, smart guy who has a huge following, Florida representative, and he looked me straight in the eye and would not admit that Trump lost the 2020 election. Wow. Wow. Off air, you know, brought up harassment I've received for telling the truth about Donald Trump, things that I witnessed. And his followers have an ability to simply just turn a blind eye or dismiss it, even when someone like me who once supported Trump, who wants Republicans to win is saying, no, this is my lived experience. This is the truth that I saw. So, you know what? I'm going to keep telling the truth. I can't promise you what's going to change.

hearts or minds. I really applaud women who've spoken out, whether it's Stephanie Grisham, Cassie Hutchinson, Sarah Matthews, Olivia Troy. I don't know why it's only the women who seem to have the balls to do it. But I also am glad to see more Republican, you know, former and current elected saying he shouldn't be the leader, but we've got to do more. Finally, I'll say this. Most everyone who's elected or works in Washington, D.C. or works around politics, they know how bad Trump is, but they're in on the grift. They're going to ride the gravy train as long as they can. I think that congressman who sat by me knows how risky he is, but you know what? He's got a bright future if Donald Trump is the nominee and certainly if he's the president of the United States.

The incentive structure is to sit back, pretend you're okay with it, ignore reality and just keep riding. It's disappointing. I wish there were more people who had more courage and would put political courage ahead of political ambition, but it's just not the reality of this day and age in Republican politics. Well, I will say, Alyssa, that I'm glad that you have spoken out, that you continue to speak out, because coming from somebody that was inside as opposed to, you know, someone like myself who is just completely opposed altogether may in fact shift hearts and minds. So, and that's, that's the goal here to move us out of a place of extreme danger that I think the country and our democracy is in. Thank you, Alyssa, for making the time for the new

abnormal. Really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. Appreciate it. Last weekend, we sat in horror as details of a mass killing at the Allen outlet mall in Texas started coming out. And in the days since, we've learned more about the shooter, Maricio Garcia. Here to bring us up to date is Daily Beast reporter Kelly Weil. Kelly, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me. It seems like much, if not all of what we know about Garcia, comes from an account He apparently had on a Russian social media site, OK.ru. So let's start with this. What exactly is that?

It's probably something very few Americans had heard about before this. Yeah, that's right. It's a Russian social media site. It's not someplace you go to get, you know, 20,000 followers because you're just certainly not going to get that kind of audience there among English speakers. But the upside to people who dabble in extremism is because there are so few English speakers there, there are so few mods, you're much less likely to get. a ban for posting pro-Hitler stuff than you would on, say, Facebook or something like that.

So that's how we ended up getting, you know, frankly, years of this guy's neo-Nazi diary pretty much intact. So that's basically what it was. I've seen it described is that, you know, it's called a social media site. And it's not that you don't have followers, I guess. But it was more for him like a diary than like him looking, you know, for responses and dialogue and stuff like that. Yeah, absolutely.

It's like the worst, you know, blog spot you've ever. read. Right. Oh, God. I've seen the usual idiots on the right asking, well, why would this guy have an account on a Russian social media site? And I assume the answer to that is what you said. He knew it wouldn't be moderated and he wasn't really interested in any back and forth. He just wanted to post his Nazi thoughts. Yeah, I think it's pretty much that. I mean, he was not really plugged into many communities that I've been able to find so far. He was very certainly inspired by a lot of far-right influencers, but doesn't seem to be in dialogue with them, is really just kind of steeping in his own horrible ideology for a couple years, not looking to exchange that with other people.

So I guess as we've learned, and as you said, you know, we've got years of his pro-Hitler stuff. Much of his posting was racist, was enthusiastically pro-Nazi, it was anti-Semitic, it was misogynistic. And I guess there was some in-cell stuff. Tell us about some of the things he wrote. Absolutely. Yeah. And I'm really glad you point out the in-cell stuff because, you know, as reporters, I think it's very easy and certainly I do this to point out like, this guy was a literal neo-Nazi. Right. I mean, if you're trying to indicate somebody's ideology, there's the, you know, almost made in Hollywood evil demarcator there. Right. But the in-cell stuff is, I think, especially insidious and often seeps under our radar because almost everybody hopefully can recognize that neo-Nazis are bad.

But I think a lot of in-cell ideology is a bit more pernicious. It jives with more mainstream sexism that some people overlook. And this guy was very open about, you know, hating women, about feeling entitled to women, about feeling like he wasn't getting his due with women, all kinds of things like that. And I think that kind of sexism is a real throughline among big. bigots among, you know, killers and racist and all kinds of people who show up later in horrible events. We see histories of them either mistreating female relatives, domestic partners, or having writings of this sort. And I think it really does speak to, you know, this kind of person's

desire to have power over people, right, to be able to hurt and feel superior. And, you know, we live in a society that does suggest, you know, male supremacy. what have you. And for somebody who I don't think has too much else going for him, well, that's a very compelling claim to feel better than somebody. And so I think when you have that ideology coupled with the inability to, yeah, to feel better than a certain woman, to have a girlfriend, to have someone to lord it over, I think that's where the in-cell violence comes out. And we certainly saw it in his writings. Yeah, that's really interesting. I guess I should say because we may have listeners who aren't up on the latest terminology,

in cell is a sort of smush word, as they say, that stands for involuntarily celibate. Yeah, that's right. It's so funny. You know, that terminology came out of like a, you know, a minor medical writing that somebody did actually, you know, describing people who had medical abilities

and, you know, couldn't form romantic partnerships. But instead of, you know, maybe talking about why some people aren't in partnerships, this whole misogynistic movement sprung up around the term Incel and saying that, you know, it's a hard-boiled characteristic of them that they can't get laid and it's women's fault and women are, you know, by one token, you know, awful sluts or whatever and they're also two withholding and they're not getting these men what they're owed. I do think there's a tendency to, you know, make fun of insals and be like, ha-ha, you can't get a girlfriend. And yeah, that's absolutely true. They can't. But it's more than just, you know, a frustration with the inability to have sex.

It's a misogynistic movement. It's a male supremacist movement. And a lot of these men, frankly, don't want anything to do with women in any kind of normal, respectful sense. Yeah, a couple of days ago, a professor at Queens University in, I think it's Kingston, Canada, posted what I thought was an interesting thread on Twitter. I'll read a bit of it because I'm curious for your take. He wrote of Garcia, all of his posts going back several years are littered with not only misogynistic content, but explicit in-cell term. terminology. His loneliness literally jumps off the page. As the years go by, you can see the attraction to Nazis arrive to kind of soothe his insoldom. The Nazis are strong men who don't need women.

Nazis, according to him, were the best warriors, and incels are the best warriors. We're all used to seeing the convergence of far-right views and misogyny, but he seems to be bringing them together in a unique way. They serve each other in new ways. Does this strike you as true? Oh, that's so interesting. I do think so. I think so. I think the Nazi is acting as kind of a self for this guy. And as his biographical details emerged, a lot of people were saying, well, a guy named Maricio Garcia is a white supremacist. That doesn't make any sense. He doesn't sound white to me. And I mean, I can say a few things here. One is that, you know, whiteness is kind of a construction and it doesn't always work in binary ways, especially in the

Latino community. You know, there's just a million gradations and people view themselves differently. But the other thing I will say about that is that, you know, this idea of being this this big powerful masculine figure or this idea of, you know, Nazis as this crusading dominant force, I think is really appealing to people who don't have power. If you read this guy's writing because the professor is totally right to characterize him as very alone, does not seem happy at all. You know, I think fitting yourself into this idea of being a soldier or a warrior or a Nazi does sort of reconfigure. hear a person's bruised ego into something that's, well, you know, I'm just this lone warrior. I'm so strong. I'm independent. I don't need other people. I don't need community. And because I do think a lot of these killers, I think a lot of disaffected young men do emerge out of persistent loneliness.

They don't have community. They don't have people setting them right. They don't have, you know, normalizing ties. And so this is a way to take those personal failings and make them into something that it lets them, you know, have the delusion of strength for a minute. Yeah, I think it's an excellent point. And that's, you know, I sort of, I guess I stumbled across this thread. Someone must have retweeted it into my timeline. And I read the whole thread. And I was like, well, that's really, really interesting.

And it kind of struck me that it sort of used to be that a person like Garcia who had trouble with women or whatever, can't you become a monk instead, you know, can't you find the aromatic lifestyle and go cloister yourself a lot? And I'm like joking, but I'm also kind of not. It was also like, you know, please find religion and channel your issues into a, you know, slightly less destructive way than Nazism. Andy, this is like something I think about a lot. And this is a place where I'm a real internet domer because I do think in many respects.

The internet has, you know, dissuaded us from finding certain IRL communities, right? Certain in-person interactions and partnerships that I think are really necessary. and normalizing for people. And instead, people go online and they find a small circle of people with their same, you know, minor grievance. And they all just express the most extreme version of their feelings for years on end. And it just doesn't promote, I think, a normal or healthy outlook to the world. So, yeah, I mean, I think in the past, of course, are always weird people, always bad people.

But you would think that some kind of, I don't know, in person commiseration or community, something like that would have provided more of a check against this kind of extreme, extreme thinking. Whereas these days, if a young man is feeling bad about himself, about his, you know, his relationships, his prowess with women, he can just go online and, you know, find a whole cohort of other equally positioned young men who will tell him, it's nothing wrong with you. It's just that women are evil. And, you know, that doesn't help anyone with growth. Yeah, I mean, Tim Poole didn't exist 20 years ago. And, you know, now we have a guy who listens to people like Tim Poole watches their YouTube videos and just gets further and further socialized into this sort of,

like you said, like this sort of cohort of like-minded people who don't have maybe the world's best interests at heart. No, not at all. And what I think is especially interesting about the in-cell movement. I'll even pull an example from like two weeks ago. There was this guy who was a long time, years-long moderator on one of the biggest in-cell forums. And at what, like, age 33 or something recently, he got a girlfriend. And rather than all the other in-cells be like, hey, you know, congratulations, man, you made it out of this condition that we all, you know, claim to hate. They were mad at him. They called him a traitor. You know, you gave yourself over to women, and that's evil. And this is what's just so fascinating to me in a perverse way about in-cells.

if they want to call themselves that, is that they're not actually looking to improve. A lot of them aren't actually looking to, you know, have a normal relationship with women. They've made this complaint that they have into a whole identity for themselves. And if you spend several years like that, it becomes something that's very hard to relinquish. You view yourself in the context of other in cells. It becomes almost a weird badge of pride. Some of them call themselves wizards. Like they think that they're in some weird way enlightened over other, you know, all those silly men who are shacked up with women, whatever. So, yeah, it's, I really think that it's possible for people to form an identity around these really hateful kernels and ultimately never try to improve. Yeah, I remember that.

I know that thread you're talking about. I remember reading that. And it struck me, it's like, did these guys not know what the in part of in cell stands for? It's involuntary. Like, there is another whole thing called vile cells. which is voluntarily celibate. And it sounds like that's what a lot of these in cells are actually vall cells. Like they, as you said, they have made it part of their personality.

And then they get mad when someone who supposedly is this way involuntarily finds a way out of it. Yeah, absolutely. Morth credence to your become a monk theory. I think that's extreme. Yeah. If you don't have too much going on, you're not proud of anything. Well, at least this one weird trait is something that you can cling to. It's almost like, you know, the kid middle.

school who knew that they were annoying. So they just became really loud and it's like, oh, that's crazy Ronnie, except, you know, this is outright bigotry toward half the world's population. Right. Look, I could talk about in-sell vall sell stuff all day because I find it fascinating. But obviously, there was more to this guy. So let's touch on that. And you brought up that much has been made by the usual idiots on the right of the fact that Garcia was Hispanic and therefore couldn't be a white supremacist. But he actually talked about that in his post, didn't he? He did. Yeah. I mean, so again, one thing to break down is that, you know, race is wonky and weird. Of course. Something that we make up all the time. And that a lot of leading

kind of white supremacist figures or at least a couple are of Hispanic descent. I'm thinking about Nick Fuentes. He's a vlogger personality. He was at Unite the Right. You know, he's just, he was someone that Garcia named checked a couple times in his writing. So even, you know, that relation to a marginalized class doesn't necessarily prevent people from being hateful. And one thing that Garcia says a couple times, he kind of references that adjacency between Hispanicness and whiteness, right? He's saying that, well, maybe if white people are, you know, Hispanic people will be kind of welcomed into this. And he seems to sort of think that, you know, in a sad way that compliance with these hateful ideologies will make those people accept him. I think that's something that we,

run into from a number of marginalized people, you know, people in the queer community who say that, well, it's okay that Republicans target trans people, because I'm not trans. I'm just gay and I'm not taking it too far. Dave Rubin, is that you? Here I am. Ambushed ambush the pod. No, but, you know, it's a real lack of solidarity. I think it's a real self-debasement, you know, just hoping that, you know, if we if we grovel enough, they'll welcome us in. Yeah, it's the I'm one of the good ones thing, except it's I'm one of the bad ones. I think people don't understand. And I really hate getting into subjects like this.

But if you want to get technical about it, Hispanic or Latino is an ethnicity, not a race. And Latinos can be any race. Right. Absolutely. And that's just another, you know, that's another way that race is so much more complicated and socially constructed than these reductivists want to think. I mean, I'm in a lot of Nazi forums for my work. I won't hide that. I'm not a poster, just an observer.

But I see these people post their DNA testing all the time. They love doing 23 and me to prove just how white they are. And you see again and again, they get some surprises, right? You know, because everybody's race is just so complex. Right. It's, we jam people into these very, very binary categories where these binaries don't exist at all. Yeah. And so, you know, a hundred years ago, if you were, I don't know, Polish or Jewish, you might not

be considered white in the U.S. whereas now you are. These categories are always shifting. A lot of Latino folks are considered white. It's just so fake, Andy. And so that's why. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why to hear people argue that he couldn't have done this, he wasn't white, it's

like, well, look where his priorities are. I'd say there was whiteness. Yeah. And of course, the police have now confirmed that, you know, we saw pictures in his posts of what we assumed was him with Nazi tattoos with a swastick on his chest, with Schuttstaffel or SS lightning bolts on his arm. And the police have confirmed that those were very much on his body. Yeah, absolutely. I think I think that was one of the grimly funniest things when early on when police indicated that he might have some Nazi affinities. You know, everyone on the right was trying to cover their tracks and be like, hey, that's just the police saying that you trust the police.

Right. Eight hours later, it's like, well, there's his swastika tattoo, so I don't know what else you want. And now, of course, the rights were toward us, the swastika tattoo is too fresh for him to have been a long time committed Nazi. Yeah, it was all part of the deep state plan. Absolutely. Yeah.

All the other mass shootings didn't work. to take her guns, but this one might. Right, right. And I saw someone point out that like, if this was a deep state plan, why would you use someone who is Latino that would raise all of these questions? But of course, you know,

we're not talking about logic here. There's so much more to talk about with this, but I'm getting short on time and I wanna ask you about something else that you've been covering. I'm in Bundy, who people may remember from 2014 armed standoff with the Bureau of Land Management and law enforcement,

Or if you've forgotten about that, perhaps the 2016 armed occupation of the headquarters at a National Wildlife Refuge. He is currently being sued for defamation and harassment by an Idaho hospital. What's the latest there? Oh, man. So basically, the back story with this hospital lawsuit is Amundi was running for governor, trying to gin up support and donations. He also runs something called the People's Rights Network, which is a right-wing activist network. they specialize in doing on the ground protests.

One of the People's Rights Network's members' grandson was, he was a baby. Doctor said he was malnourished, said the parents weren't cooperating. So the state version of Child Protective Services put him in the hospital for treatment for a couple of days. And then the baby was released to his parents. During that time, the baby was in the hospital. Amambundi and his followers said that the baby had been kidnapped, that it was part of potentially some child trafficking ring, that he was vaccinated. vaccinated against the parents' will because, of course, all these people are anti-vaxxers. So Amman Bundy got sued for defamation. He allegedly started this huge harassment campaign against individual doctors. Also blocked to the hospital's ambulance wing for a while, hospital had to shut down. He is getting his ass kicked in court. He's not even frying, right? He really doesn't have much of a case. He hasn't showed up in court. The judge in that case recently issued a default ruling in the hospital's favor because Amman won't show up. Well, now Amman is basically saying, you You can't serve me with legal papers. That's harassment. You're trespassing on my land. And so he has

rallied his supporters to his side. And it's not quite a standoff. You know, it's not any of the scenes that you set on 2014, 2016. But I think it's kind of an indication that he has that clout. I think he's sort of showing off that I can bring people to my side if I need to. And so it's going to be a really interesting case. There's just this week. It was alleged that he's hiding assets from the court to prevent all his belongings and finances being seized. So it's a really weird one. It's pretty tense. Haven't seen any indications that it's going to go full mail your ranch standoff level, but it's tense. Yeah. I mean, look, I wouldn't bet against it given old Ammon's history. So obviously, we got to keep a close eye on that. And look, before I let you go, Kelly,

I just want to say, I know fever dreams, the Daily Beast podcast that you co-house, that you co-house, hosted with Will Summer has ended. And I just wanted to say that I really enjoyed listening to it. And I'm sorry, it's gone. And I hope you'll come on here and talk about, you know, a lot of the things that you guys used to talk to on there. Oh, thanks, Andy. Yeah, absolutely. I've got like an hour's worth of extra talk built up in me every week. So invite me on and let me wrap. Absolutely. Kelly, thanks so much. Really appreciate you coming on. I'll be enjoying reading your stuff at The Daily Beast, hopefully for a long time. Right on. Thanks, Andy.

Andy Levy. Daniel Moody. I love that you sounded so exasperated saying my name. Daniel Moody, it's exhausting. Who is your fuck-that-guy to end out this fucking week? Okay, so I want to talk a bit about Diane Feinstein. She is not my fuck-that-guy for reasons, but I want to talk about her staff.

Diane Feinstein returned to Washington this week after being gone for three months, I guess for shingles. I guess shingles and only shingles is what we were told. I choose not to believe that. I believe the shingles part. I don't believe the only shingles part. Anyway, she clearly is not up to this anymore. She needs to resign. I am tired of the people who are yelling at the people who say she needs to resign.

and acting like we're saying she needs to be euthanized. We are not saying that. Let her go enjoy her life. She just shouldn't be in the Senate anymore making decisions that affect how people in this country live and how people in this country will live going way into the future when we're talking about judicial nominations. We saw a story in Politico on Thursday about a former staffer. who left Feinstein's office for various reasons, some of which were, I don't know if I should say,

bizarrely racist. This was a young black man who talked about coworkers who were touching his hair. Now, I've heard of this happening with school kids who, maybe the first time they meet a black person, adults working in Washington, D.C. in a Democratic senator's office? Really? Oh, Andy, I have stories to tell you. No, I believe you. believe you. I just, I still was like, oh my God. One of the things that he said was that her chief of staff seemed to be operating as a shadow senator since the actual one, Feinstein, was no longer mentally there. This is not what you want in the Senate. And I'm also tired of people saying, well,

nobody said this about Strom Thurmond. Well, first of all, I don't think nobody said this. Second of all, everyone should have been saying this about Strom Thurmond for a hell of a lot of reasons. I don't really get the whole, well, this guy got away with it. So therefore, we should do the same thing here. No, be better. I really don't get it. So anyway, my fuck that guy is Diane Feinstein's staff because I really do believe I don't think she's mentally all there.

That's not a slam against her. She's incredibly old. and this happens to old people. And I think she should be allowed to, you know, live the rest of her life, free of having to go to boring-ass committee meetings. Let her enjoy herself. But I really do firmly believe that it is this puppet staff who are, as people have described it, weekend at burning her.

And basically propping her up so that they can continue to earn salaries and, you know, maybe do some insider stock trading and stuff like that. So my fuck that guy for this week again is not Diane Feinstein. I think she needs to resign. I think she needs to go. We can discuss her legacy at another time. That's not what I'm getting into right now. My fuck that guy is her staff.

And also the people, like I said earlier, who are acting like saying this person who is clearly not even close to 100% mentally competent needs to resign either is sexist or in some way a horrible thing to say. Uh, fuck all y'all. She's 89. She is unwell. The pitcher did not do her any favors. It is not like she is 65 and we're saying, you know what? It'd be a good time to resign. No, you are unwell.

You are not capable to do the job. You are not representing the people of California in the way that they need to be represented. And we got bigger fish to fucking fry. So it's not about ageism. It is not about sexism. It is about the, it's time to go. You ain't well. She turns 90 in one month.

Jesus Christ. Yeah. I mean, look, there are 89-year-olds who could still be in the Senate. Yeah, she ain't one of them. Who is your fuck that guy, Daniel? Well, somebody who is just a piece of trash, Andy. And I know you're like, but who? But who?

Because the pickings are not slim. What talking about the Republican Party? Senator Tommy Tuberville was asked about the military being, you know, examined for the number of white supremacists that are found to be in our U.S. military. And the, you know, the extracting of these people with a dangerous, violent ideology out of the U.S. military. This motherfucker says, oh, well, you may call them white supremacist. I call them Americans. Oh, my fucking God. Like hoods off, burning crosses out, like Tommy Tuberville.

I mean, I am not shocked. The man has said a whole host of hot shit things in his career. But just to refer to people who have been at the head of mass shootings, just like the one that happened recently at the mall, covered in swat stickers, a Nazi quote-unquote sympathizer. This is who Tommy Tuberville says, oh, but he's an American. And that's the American way. What the fuck? I miss the good old days where some. something like this would get you out of the Senate, where something like this would be expel

worthy. But it isn't because this is who the entirety of the Republican Party is. This is how they believe. This is why when asked to denounce white supremacy, Donald Trump said, no, stand back and stand by, said, no, they are good people because they actually truly believe this. Those people that stormed the Capitol, no, in their minds, in Tuberville's mind, those were patriots. It's the black and brown folks that, you know, were asking not to be shot in the street or suffocated to death on a subway or what have you. Where are the problem?

It's just, it's so fucking sick. And I wish that this would make news. I wish that this would be a headline that we go, but no, it gets lost in all the other sewer shit that we swim in an average week. But for this week to end the week, Tommy Tuberville, my God, you are my fuck that guy, bedazzled. I'm giving you a bedazzled fuck that guy. Yeah, I love that after he said this, I think it was Politico, had a headline that was like, Tuberville's office clarifies his white nationalist comments. Like, boy, that's not a good day when that's the headline you're getting.

It's like you mentioned that you, you know, you missed the days when someone would have been thrown out for something like this. And yeah, it's like, you know, we had 200 plus years of pretty much everybody in Washington felt this way. And then we had like maybe 20 or 30 years where we agreed that if you felt this way, you shouldn't be in Congress. And now we've just gone right back to the old 1800s. Yeah. What a time to be alive. Yeah.

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