The Daily Beast Podcast - Donald Trump’s Greasy Grifters Will Do Anything for a Photo Op

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

The New Abnormal co-host Danielle Moodie was appalled at reports this week alleging a “physical altercation” between a Trump employee and Arlington National Cemetery official. Then, David Sirota, the founder and editor-in-chief of The Lever, joins the pod to talk about their new 10-part investigative podcast series Master Plan, which chronicles exactly how corporate forces and politicians worked to legalize corruption in the United States, putting in place a plan to turn our democracy into a kleptocracy. Plus! A conversation with journalist Tiffany Cross, who kicks it off with a discussion on what it means that Harris and running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz are finally, finally sitting down for a major interview with a mainstream media outlet. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

Leber News, editor-in-chief David Serota is here to tell us all about their new podcast series called Master Plan, about how those in charge put their finger on the scale to try and replace democracy with a kleptocracy. Then Tiffany Cross, former MSNBC host, political analyst, and author of Say It Loudor, joins us to talk about the way mainstream media talks about Kamala Harris versus someone like, oh, I don't know, Donald Trump. But first, let's have some fun. Danielle, we have to start today with a huge scoop. It blows my mind that the media had not picked up on the story until the good folks at the Washington Free Beacon dug up this story. Let me read you the headline. The headline is Kamala Harris claims she worked at McDonald's,

but she never mentioned it until she ran for president. Did she really toil beneath the golden arches? Now, I want to say that they had three reports. reporters. Three reporters are bylined on this story. And their beef, no pun intended, seems to be that Kamala Harris never on a resume put that she worked at a McDonald's as a teenager. I mean, if this is true, I don't know, look, I don't know if she needs to simply drop out or maybe she also needs to resign as vice president. I'm not really sure what the appropriate penalties here, Danielle. I mean, it's just, it's so comforting to know that journalism is alive and well when we have, you know, this kind of Woodward and Bernstein fucking deep, deep backstory investigation on this. You know, I too waited tables and worked in retail, but oddly enough, it is not on my. Did you? Yeah, it's not on my present resume, but the Daily Beast, I thought it didn't require it.

Well, when we brought you on board, if I had known that you had done that, it would have been, it would have gone a whole, you know, different way. So I don't know why. Boy, this is just, I don't know. I didn't mean to blindside you. I'm sorry. There's a lot of underhanded stuff going on here. But look, in all seriousness, I mean, it is absolutely pathetic that they are trying so hard to dig up dirt and cause controversy.

and this is the best they can do? I mean, if this is the best that they can do, you know, keep hitting it out of the park, free beacon. Like, you know, I don't think you have job security, though. No, and this is right up there with, I guess, a bunch of years ago, Tim Walz was at a dog park, and he posted a picture on Twitter of, I think it was Twitter, might have been Instagram, of him with a dog, and he mentioned in the caption, he mentioned his dog's name as being at the dog park,

And then conservatives discovered that the picture was not of Tim Walls' dog. And they wanted to make a big deal out of this. Is he lying about his dog? And then, of course, the idea was he was at a dog park. And his dog is in the background. And he's sitting there, you know, he's petting some random dog. But boy, they are just trying so hard. And again, I said this about Trump.

Last episode, the flop sweat is just, it's unreal. Yeah. It's almost as if they're trying to distract us with bullshit from, Oh, I don't know. A twice impeach, 34-count felon, adjudicated rapist and a compulsive liar that deserves his own classification in the psychology handbook. But, you know, go at it. Free Beacon. I think you're doing a stellar job. So let's talk about that guy. I assume you were talking about Donald Trump there. Yes, yes. Thank you for being explicit. I was going to put it in the footnotes of the show, but thank you for calling it out. Sure. It got me thinking. I was like, that probably applies to some other Republican politicians. So earlier this week, Donald Trump, who, as we know, really, really, really loves veterans and doesn't mock them as losers and suckers and things like that, he paid a visit to Arlington National Cemetery, obviously, strictly for a photo op.

Rumbling started coming out of there being some kind of incident. And it quickly was getting reported that he took a photo in. section 60 of the cemetery, which is filled with the graves of service members who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. And section 60 is supposed to be off limits to photography. So Trump, as he has wanted to do, disregarded that policy and went ahead and took a picture. Part of the story is the picture he took is fairly grotesque because he's smiling and giving a thumbs up. Which is apparently what normal sane people of moral character do at gravesites. Yeah. Nothing. weird about that at all. They're really beating down the charge of being weird. But then the story started

to come out that there was this incident and that there was some kind of altercation where a member of the cemetery staff told them they couldn't, you know, shoot video or take pictures in this section. And reports came out that a member of Trump's team actually shoved an employee. And the employee was a woman. An army spokesperson said that the woman tried to ensure. sure that Trump and his staff adhered to the rules. And she was, quote, abruptly pushed aside. Mm-hmm. So she filed an incident report, but she declined to press charges, as was reported by the New York Times, because she feared retaliation from Trump's followers. Danielle, take over from here. Explain where we are with this story now. I want to expressly read this

piece that the U.S. Army posted that you're reading from. And they say, this incident, was unfortunate. And it is also unfortunate that the ANC, Arlington National Cemetery, employee, and her professionalism has been unfairly attacked. ANC is a national shrine to the honored dead of the armed forces. And its dedicated staff will continue to ensure public ceremonies are conducted with the dignity and the respect the nation's fallen deserve. Like, when we hear that, And you understand that these greasy grifters, because that's what these people are, they do anything for a photo op. Donald Trump right now is like selling digital baseball cards of himself on social media. Nothing stands in the way of them getting a photo up.

And it's so disgusting to think that you would desecrate the memory and the resting place of outarmed forces for your own political gain. when you were expressly told him, by the way, Donald Trump was president of the United States. So he knows these rules. It's the fact that the rules don't apply to him. And they don't apply to the people that exist in Donald Trump's fear. They get to do whatever they want. But the point that I want to make here is the fact that this employee would have been well within her right to file charges against Trump's staff. but out of fear of what she has seen and witnessed, I would assume, over the last several years of those people who have been targeted by Donald Trump, by his staff, by his followers, that she'd rather not have to move.

You know, she'd rather not probably have to hire private security. So what does that tell you about who Donald Trump is, the people that follow him and the staff that he employs? They are mobsters. they are crooks, they are criminals, they are bullies, and they have no business being at Arlington cemetery or any place for that matter other than a jail. Yeah, and we should also point out that when this story first started coming out, Stephen Chung, who is Trump's absolutely loathsome, a spokesperson, of course he said none of it was true, but then he also accused the woman, the employee of the cemetery, of having mental illness. We say it over and over again, there's no bottom here.

Look, you can feel however you feel about veterans, about the Iraq war, about the war in Afghanistan, the war on terror, whatever. It's just sort of gross. Gross. To go to a cemetery filled with, you know, people who died serving their country. And first of all, to take a photo giving a thumbs up and smiling. And if you want, you know, it really is the perfect image of Donald Trump. If you wanted one image to show. what he is all about, what he is at heart.

I think it's that one. And then to get in a shoving match with an employee of the Arlington National Cemetery, like, who does that? Who goes to visit a national cemetery filled with war dead and gets in a shoving match with an employee there? It's just so disgusting. And, you know, again, like, I know that we opened up the show with a joke in terms of, like, the lack there of journalism at the free beacon and the stories that they're trying to conjure up

about Vice President Kamala Harris. And I'm like, but you see things like this staring you in the face? In any other world on Earth one prior to 2016, this is something that would get you kicked out of the race. It's just the fact that Donald Trump has continued over nearly a decade to desecrate the memories of those that have fallen, to like to refer to those that have fought and lost limbs, lost mental, you know, mental acuity and capacity because of what they've given to defend this country and the things that he has called these people. And then to do this, but you're right,

if you need a better picture of who Donald Trump is, what MAGA stands for, this is it. It is wild to me that anyone, anyone, but you know that they are all lining up in the Republican Party to defend Donald Trump, this is just indefensible. Like what is the excuse that they make here? other than to disparage this woman who, again, not only could probably sue for physical assault, but also sue for liable because you're lying about her. I'm sick. There are moments when I'm just like, I just have had it and this is one of them. Yeah, and I want to give a special shout out here in terms of this isn't the fuck that guy's segment,

but really, really fuck that guy. And it's J.D. Vance, who himself is a veteran. and he at a campaign rally was talking about the Arlington thing, and he said, Kamala Harris is so asleep at the wheel that she won't even do an investigation into what happened, meaning about the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. And she wants to yell at Donald Trump because he showed up. She can go to hell. So there's a bunch of things here. First of all, Kamala Harris never said a word about Trump's trip to Arlington, not one. So if you haven't said a word about it, you clearly haven't yelled at someone.

about it. And point two, obviously, is that nobody is yelling at Donald Trump because he went to Arlington. They're yelling at him for the way he acted at Arlington. And for J.D. Vance, a veteran, to sugarcoat this and to blatantly lie about what was going on, that's as dishonorable as it gets in terms of, you know, the military sense of the word. And so I think he just, he deserves a special mention for just, for just being utterly, utterly reprehensible. I mean, but this is, you know, you're talking about J.D. Vance as if he didn't try and discredit Governor Tim Walls' service to this country. Like, I don't know how long J.D. Vance served and I actually don't care. It's the fact that you served. And as Governor Wals said, thank you for your service.

Because no one, I don't care if it's a week. I don't care if it is two or three decades. If you serve, you serve and you should be respected for that because so many people do not. So the very fact that this man stands next to Mr. Bonespurs, Mr. Draft Dodger, Mr. Suckers and Losers, and has the goal to defend him and then tell our sitting vice president of the United States to go to hell. Let me tell you something, you cabbage patch having like, you know, that's when I actually just want to go low. That's when I want to scuba dive to the bottom of the ocean. Uh-huh. But I'm going to refrain, Andy.

One last thing just before we move on, I want to point out it's very, very rare for the U.S. Army to issue a statement like it did, sort of rebuking Donald Trump. That is not something the military generally wants to get involved with. And it shows you that this is, you know, maybe you're thinking this is a small thing. It's not a small thing. And again, it really does get to the heart of who he is. And, you know, also getting to the heart of who he is is the absolute levels of. of grossness that he is descending to on his dumbass, broke-ass, truth social. Far too many posts to go through one by one. But I want to highlight one that he re-truthed, as they say, meaning he didn't author the post, but he reposted it. It was a picture of Kamel Harris and Hillary Clinton, and the text read, funny how blowjobs impacted both their careers differently. Now, for those who don't know, I guess the Hillary part of that reference, we all know it has to do with Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

For those who don't know, the right has been trying pretty much ever since she, you know, Joe Biden dropped out to smear Kamala Harris by saying that she sort of slept her way to the top. And in particular, the fact that she dated San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown back in the mid-1990s. I guess he was Speaker of the State Assembly at the time. And so they're by saying that they are implying that she was dating Willie Brown simply to get ahead professionally. And look, I don't need to explain that this is a ridiculous charge and gross and obviously completely sexist and misogynist. The fact that Donald Trump is out there, you know, reposting this shit, there's, there are no words. I have some words. You probably have words.

I have some words. And here is what I will say. If this is how the Maga Republican Party thinks that they are going to win over women in battleground states, they have another thing coming. Because here is the thing that these misogynistic, racist, in-cell types don't get is that there isn't a woman that has ascended to a place and position of power that has not had some of these very same statements thrown at them. It is not on the level that Hillary Clinton and Vice President Kamala Harris have experienced, but there is not a woman in power that does not have a story about being denigrated for getting to where she is, either being a quote unquote affirmative action hire, a DEI hire, oh, you must be sleeping with the boss, any of these things.

Women have experienced this since the beginning of time. they've had the opportunity to work. And so when you see as a woman, which are more than 50% of the population, the most reliable voting bloc in this country, and you are continuing to disparage this very well-educated, talented, black and Indian woman, and they are saying, you know what, I've heard this before. I have seen this before. Let me tell you something. It doesn't sit right. It doesn't sit well and they are going to carry this with them to the voting booth. Because not only have you taken away women's right to bodily autonomy. Now you're telling us that we have no place in positions of power and we're only there because of our what? Our sex? It's so disgusting,

but it is just playbook material for misogynists and for toxic men, which is what the Republican Party is a home to. And I just want folks to know that this is like women see what is happening and they will vote accordingly. Honestly, they can go to hell. Like like like honestly, I'm so outdone because the fact is is that you still have the Senator Katie Brits of the world that like stand beside these misogynistic disgusting men who think very little of them. You have like of all people. What is that woman's name on Fox who had her own story of being sexually harassed and then has the audacity to go after the vice president? Megan Kelly. Didn't Donald Trump say that she was bleeding out of from wherever, but she had the audacity in the past couple of weeks to go after Kamala Harris in the most sexist and grotesque way?

Yep. Let me tell you something about that poison orchard. I hope it is put out to pasture come November. I really do. I want these people to be done with, to be over with, because they're gross, all of them. Amen. But the men in particular. How did our democracy get replaced with a kleptocracy? This is the question that the good folks at the lever at levernews.com seek to answer in a new 10-part podcast series called Master Plan. Joining me now to tell us about it is the founder and editor-in-chief of Lever News award-winning journalist David Serota. David, thank you so much for coming back on the show. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So how long has Master Plan the podcast been in the making? Well, it started out as a six to eight month project, and then it became a year to year and a half long project, and it ended up being about a two-year project of digging around. I mean, we really went down the rabbit hole to try to find the roots of how corruption was legalized in our country. And so there was a lot to explore.

I listened to the first two episodes, which I very much enjoyed and I'm completely hooked. You know, there's Nixon tape recordings on there and stuff. I was not expecting all of that. So two years for master plan, the podcast, how long has the master plan to replace democracy with a kleptocracy been in the making? Well, I should start by saying, look, there's always been corruption and greed as long as America has existed as long as humans have walked the earth. But the master plan we're talking about really started back about 50 years ago in the early 1970s. There was a convergence of a lot of different things that were happening. We start the series in that period in which there was a scandal that's really been forgotten, a dairy scandal in which Nixon was caught on tape, quite literally talking about shaking down dairy industry donors in exchange for a policy that would keep the price of milk high. And he's on tape talking very frankly about how politics was working back then. And the scandal ended up prompting some reform to the nation's campaign finance and anti-corruption laws, the first reforms in a half century.

And then, of course, came the Watergate scandal. And the Watergate scandal actually was a scandal about how Nixon, who signed those anti-corruption laws in the wake of the dairy scandal, how Nixon promptly started trying to go around the anti-corruption laws that he himself signed. And what I think a lot of people don't know about Watergate, they know the, they know the, the break-in and the like, Watergate was the first major campaign finance scandal of the 20th century in the sense that quite literally corporate money from huge brand-name companies in part funded the break-in. And they were prosecuted. Those corporations were prosecuted.

Their executives were prosecuted. And out of that came much stronger campaign finance laws. But this was also the time where a guy named Lewis Powell, who was on his way to be becoming a Supreme Court justice, Lewis Powell authored something called the Powell memo, which basically said, listen, big business, corporations, billionaires, oligarchs need to take a much more aggressive posture in controlling and taking over the political system. They were freaked out by people like Ralph Nader. They were freaked out by campaign finance reformers like common cause. And through the Chamber of Commerce, Lewis Powell wrote this memo and the Chamber of Commerce then began to implement it. We found documents of secret meetings that detail how task forces were set up among executives of the most powerful corporations in America to implement and execute Lewis Powell's plan.

And one piece of that plan, one of the pieces that we focus on, is how to deregulate the campaign finance. system and gut the anti-corruption laws. Now, you may wonder, well, why would that be part of the plan? The answer is because corporations and oligarchs understood at that early stage, as they do now, that they can't get the policies that they want, the self-enriching, unpopular policies that they want unless they are able to short-circuit the one-person, one-vote paradigm that's supposed to define our democracy. They understand that they need to be able to use money to rig the process to get what they want. And that's where that plan started in the early 1970s. Yeah, one of the things you say in episode one is the oligarchs, operatives, and opportunists

who are executing the master plan don't like democracy. They want minority rule for themselves, and they understand that in a properly functioning one person, one vote democracy, they would never be able to gain control of the political system. Are you some kind of conspiracy nut, David? Well, I understand that it can sound like that, right? Like, the stuff that people, people are going to hear on this series where we find, you know, like a secret records of Gerald Ford being flown into Disney World to talk to the Chamber of Commerce at its meeting discussing the implementation of the Powell memo and how they can rig campaign finance laws to allow for the explosion of corporate political action committees. I mean, all this stuff,

I sound like, you know, the guy from Sunny in Philadelphia where he's at the whiteboard looking like a crazy person. Yeah. Right. Like you sound like a conspiracy theory when you talk about this stuff, but the truth is there really was a conspiracy. And we start, we start having fun on the podcast talking about how not only is there a conspiracy theory, there's like a master plan cinematic universe. Like the same people keep popping up. Like, let me give you an example. Like here's one example that kind of blew my mind. After Powell's memo is written and the Chamber of Commerce is implementing the Powell memo's recommendations and focused on campaign finance, They focus on trying to create the legal doctrine that money is not corruption.

Money is constitutionally protected free speech. Where does this legal doctrine come from? Who orchestrates and masterminds the Supreme Court case to try to get that on the books? None other than John Bolton. Yes, the same John Bolton, who we all know. Right. And John Bolton gets a boost from Robert Bork, who keeps popping up throughout the master plan. I bring these up because what you end up seeing is it's a very small group of people who had a very clear objective.

Get rid of the campaign finance laws. Get rid of the anti-corruption laws. Get judges in there and get legislators in there who will do those things and then we can buy it all. Yeah, one of the senses that I got when I was listening to it is that it's like, we've passed a lot of campaign finance reform laws. And yet it was kind of wild because, you know, you'll talk about how, well, this reform was passed. And then immediately the next, you know, paragraph, the next thing you're saying is here's how Richard Nixon circumvented them. Right. And then a little later, there'll be more campaign finance reform laws passed, which are even stricter.

And then instantly it's like, and here's how these were circumvented. It's like the finger in the dam, right? The boy with the finger in the dam, he puts his finger in the water, stops that then it comes out another hole. That is bound to happen. Money is, in a sense, like water. It's going to try to flow in anywhere that there's a vulnerability. One of the takeaways from this series is if you're not constantly vigilant about strengthening campaign finance laws, preserving them, enforcing them, same thing for anti-corruption, anti-bribery laws, then you're going to get a system in which money by,

everything. And I think there are solutions to this, right? I mean, I think that this is not just a sad story. There are moments in this story in which there were real reforms. I mean, after Watergate, common cause created the laws that forced at least some political spending disclosure. That happened. Now, yes, Nixon evaded them, but then he got prosecuted. I'll give you a more recent example. John McCain in the mid-1990s, late 1990s into the 2000s, decided to make campaign finance reform and corruption, his defining crusade. And he did this, by the way, coming out of a massive scandal in which he was embarrassed and could have lost his job in the Senate, the Keating Five scandal. And McCain reacted to that in actually a pretty unique way.

You don't see politicians do this very often. But he, instead of sort of retiring or pretending nothing happened, he came to the campaign finance cause with the zeal of a convert. and he pushed those campaign finance reforms to try to stop the unlimited flow of corporate money, soft money, as it was called back then, into politics. And he ultimately ran for president. Funny side note, his staff talks to us, his former chief of staff says, you know, we told him it wasn't a popular idea like it wouldn't work for the campaign. And then he said, you know, I'm going to go do it anyway. And it ended up being the most popular thing that fueled his campaign.

He almost won the Republican nomination. He was running against the personification, like the huge. human personification of like of money politics, George W. Bush. And he ultimately was so successful in pushing the issue that even George Bush, like Mr. Moneybags, felt compelled to sign it and the Supreme Court actually upheld it. Now, I will go back to your point. What happened soon after, of course, was that the Supreme Court, William Renquist and Sandra A. O'Connor were replaced by John Roberts and Sam Alito because the master planners had always been focused on the judiciary and they got their people in. And soon after, yes, soon after came Citizens United. But I guess

my point is, is that you're right. It's always going to be a push and pull. But I think what I fear is is that we're now in such an era of corruption that the pendulum won't swing back because it reminds me kind of of that famous David Foster Wallace speech, the speech where David Foster Wallace talks about the fish. One fish swims by another fish and says, hey, how's the water today? And the other fish says, what's water? Right? The idea being that things were so immersed now in corruption that it almost doesn't feel like corruption. It feels like, well, this is just what politics is. Yeah. But I don't think it has to be that way. Yeah, you say that early on in the first episode, something to that effect. You say that, you know, you're talking about here not the really, you know,

yes, obviously there are going to be corrupt individuals in politics as there are in every walk of life. But what you're talking about is this sort of pervasive corruption within the system where people just start to go, oh, that's, well, I don't think of that as corruption. That's just the way things work. Right. Exactly. I think people when they hear the term corruption now, they maybe think Bob Menendez, the senator from New Jersey and Gold bars or, you know, George Santos, things that are just like obviously ridiculous and almost out of like a, you know, like the movie Goodfellas or something. But I don't think we necessarily think of corruption as, let's say, oh, yeah, that my congressman took a bunch of money from, let's say, you know, predatory lenders and then started sending letters to the government regulators of predatory lenders, pressuring them to back off. I mean, that used to be called something like the Keating Five scandal.

What we call that now today is that's just politics. That's just what politics is. And it doesn't have to be that way. Or put another way, the way it became that way. is through a series of deliberate choices that a small handful of people made and got the government to make. And I think the silver lining on that is, well, if this system was created by people, created by specific decisions, we can, if we recognize that, we can make different decisions to make a better system. Is it going to be perfect? No. Is there going to be no corruption at all?

No, there's always going to be some corruption. Does it have to be, you know, the 2024 election where billionaires are flagrantly spending hundreds of millions of dollars on super PACs, where Donald Trump is running out there, you know, to the oil donors saying, give me a billion dollars, I'll give you policies you want, where Kamala Harris backs off policies anytime a corporate lobby screams or speaks up, right? I mean, does it have to be this way? I would say no, it doesn't. Yeah, I mean, to the point of people just shrugging, you know, it was what, like three weeks ago that we heard that $10 million in cash was possibly given by the Egyptian government to Trump's campaign. Right.

But that's been like a one-day story. Exactly. And I think that part of the problem is we're now so overwhelmed with it that the country's politics are sort of numbed to it. My question is, where is the John McCain? Bernie Sanders tried to do that, I think, in 2016 and 2020, it raised the issue. But the question is, when are we going to hit that tipping point? I mean, how bad does it have to get?

I mean, and when I think about it this way, it's like just that scandal that you mentioned or Trump telling the oil donors, give me a billion dollars. Yeah. Right. Those those scandals are way worse than what John McCain was reacting to in the late 1990s. And he was able to elevate it back then. So it does speak to, are we so numb that we've just accepted this? And if we have, I mean, that's a pretty dark future we have ahead of us. Yeah, it really is.

I mean, just, you know, this past term, we had the Supreme Court basically saying, well, if someone gives a politician money after the politician does something for them, it's not a bribe. That ruling, which got like 10 seconds, if that, of attention is so radical and so unbelievable. I mean, your podcast is called The New Abnormal. That ruling is exactly the new abnormal. You literally, I mean, people won't believe this. When people hear us say this, I need people to go look it up because we're not exaggerating here. Literally, the Supreme Court said that the federal bribery statutes cannot prohibit or criminalize the act of a politician doing a favor for an industry and then the industry giving them a gratuity, a monetary or financial gift after they do the favor.

That that is not bribery. I mean, that's where we are and that's not where we should be and it's not where we have to be, but we first have to say, hey, this is, this is not normal. This is not acceptable. Yeah, it basically just sounds like, you know, Clarence Thomas wanted to keep his retirement account flush. Well, exactly. By the way, I'm glad you bring that up because here's the thing. Obviously, a set of Supreme Court justices have an interest in issuing that ruling, right?

The same Supreme Court justices who are facing questions about, hey, wait a minute, you took lavish trips. with billionaires who had business before your court and you ruled in a way that helped those businesses, right? They then have an interest in enshrining that behavior as legal in our country. Yeah, absolutely. And I want to point out that, although obviously I haven't, it's not out yet, so I haven't listened to it. I think it's episode seven of master plan is called the machine. Yes. It lays out the rise of the federalist society and how all of the sort of the goings on with the Supreme Court kind of fed into this master plan. I'll give you a little teaser on it. I mean,

when we started looking into the final conquest of the Supreme Court, which really happened, it's kind of incredible. It happened in something like eight months. Yeah, very quickly. It was very quickly when Rehnquist and O'Connor, Renquist died, O'Connor resigns. And in like a flash, John Roberts and Samuel Alito replaced them. And it's worth mentioning, Alito wasn't supposed to replace a Sandra Day O'Connor. It was supposed to be Harriet Myers, who was not a Federalist Society person. Now, I don't think she was some liberal or anything, but George Bush put her up. And this is when the Federalist Society and the right-wing legal movement that we discuss in Master Plan, when they made a decision, we're going to actually fight our own Republican president and defeat his nominee to put

our person in there, Sam Alito. And it was this moment where the Federalist Society and the right-wing legal movement really made clear, we're the ones who call the shots. We make the decisions, not even the president, right? We're the ones who decide. And this flipped over very quickly into the Citizens United decision. And as we say in the episode, here's the teaser. You know, I think a lot of liberals at that time is right, 2006, 2007, Barack Obama's on the scene. They see this happen. And they sort of comfort themselves and saying, oh, well, at least Anthony Kennedy's there, right? Just like reasonable swing voter guys. He'll maintain the center.

Well, the thing that I think a lot of people didn't realize was that Anthony Kennedy on issues of campaign finance and corruption was one of the most radical justices that's ever been on the bench. Anthony Kennedy is a guy who came to his job in the judiciary from being a corporate lobbyist, famous in Sacramento for handing out campaign cash to legislators on behalf of his clients. He also got into the political system as the engineer of Ronald Reagan's first most radical state ballot campaign, the anti-tax ballot measure that was seen as sort of a model for this nascent Powell memo movement of what far-right politicians should do. Point being is that liberals who consoled themselves, hey, Anthony Kennedy is going to be kind of reasonable on this stuff. Anthony Kennedy ends up writing the Citizens United decision, which essentially puts into law that corruption basically doesn't exist and certainly can't be regulated. David, thank you so much for coming on. Everyone should absolutely listen to Masterplan.

I assume it can be found wherever podcasts are sold. Yes, just search Masterplan on your podcast app or you can go to Masterplanpodcast.com. Excellent. David, thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks for doing this. Folks, I am super excited. I believe to welcome back to the new abnormal. Tiffany Cross, who is a journalist. She is an author. She is a talk show host, a podcast host of a cross-gen podcast

and a co-host of Native Land podcast. She is the person that knows all good things and some bad things about politics. Tiffany, let's jump right in. We are speaking ahead of Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz's interview that they are doing on CNN. And I want to get your thoughts on how mainstream corporate media has been reacting to this change at the top of the ticket, but has been reacting and dare I say, whining and complaining about this campaign's lack of desire to want to sit down with the middleman when they can go directly to the people. What do you make of these kind of outcries from mainstream corporate media right now about this campaign? First, before I answer, let me just say, thank you, Danielle,

for inviting me on with you today. And congratulations to you on the success of the new abnormal. I have been rocking with you since you were woke AF. We've shared the screen together quite a few times. So I'm honored to be on with you. You of all people know I have quite a testimony when it comes to corporate media. And so, look, I'll say as a journalist, I'm never going to advocate not talking to the press because, look, there is a difference between stump speeches and sitting across from someone answering challenging questions and presenting your vision for the country before the American people. And I think that's something that we deserve. I do, however, question this choice. Look, I've been in journalism for a long time. It was 25 years ago, I think. Dana Bash was a producer.

She wasn't always on air. And on 9-11, I was a young. I was a young. young person in the newsroom and I had to run her a tape at the Monaco, this bar in D.C., which is where all the journalists were posted up, and she was there. And I just felt so honored because she was like this super producer that everybody, uh, just saying her praises. So this is nothing personal against her. I just think she has quite a narrow view of what matters to the American people. I looked at the interview that she did with, um, Trump's vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance. And it was, it left me wanting. It was not giving journalism. I thought, the mere fact that she asked this man

if he thought Kamala Harris was black or not was the silliest most wasted use of time of all the questions to ask him. Who gives a shit what this man thinks about her racial identity? He doesn't even have a place in that conversation. Even posing the question is out of pocket. Now, I'm not saying she did that intentionally. I'm saying her ignorance precludes her from knowing such things.

I am disappointed because I think as a journalist, I have the ability, you know, something that I'm really curious to hear from Vice President Harris is her thoughts on this potentially burgeoning a war with Iran. Iran is a problem for the United States. And though there's a lot of domestic policy that impacts us, foreign policy, most certainly does. And she's got to, you know, thread a careful needle with everything happening in the Middle East. I think it would be interesting to get her thoughts and her running mate's thoughts on what would happen should Netanyahu pull the United States in a war for a few reasons,

Danielle, one, to normalize what black woman leadership looks like. And that includes normalizing a potentially wartime president during the first time where we'd have a black woman as commander in chief. That's something that I think matters to a lot of people. Also, it addresses military service and military record. I'll take you back again to when Dana Bash was interviewing J.D. Vance and asked him about Tim Walves' military record, completely inappropriate. The Trump side can really make up anything assonine, and then you have members of the press who will treat it with legitimacy, and then it's left up to Vice President Harris to legitimize it by responding. And while she was asking J.D. Vance's question, she did not ask him about Trump's lack of military service. Right.

...veraging things that he said about service, it was so incredibly lacking. Now, I have the ability to ask about, yes, the Iran war, yes, foreign policy, yes, domestic policy. I also have the ability to center issues that are not specific to conservative white America. I can ask about how these policies impact black people. I can ask about what policy plan she has for the AAPI community, the Asian American Pacific Islander community, the fastest growing demographic in this country. I could ask about Latino Americans in this country,

the fact that they have eclipsed black people and being the largest voting block of eligible voters, not registered voters, but eligible voters. I can ask about indigenous policies, you know, water safety and things that impacts us, especially when it comes to communities where sometimes these races are run on the margins. And I just think when you have concern, well, I won't say conservative because I don't know her political leanings, but when you have white run newsrooms propping up, you know, Lily White interviewers who are not connected to the community, who have to

learn everything from people who are black faces and not always black voices, there's so much that's left out of the conversation. And that's why you see CNN's ratings continue to tank because they have centered a mostly conservative audience. And so I don't understand really the selection process from the Harris campaign, selecting them as an interviewer. I know even on campaigns, we have the same issues that we have in media where you have a lot of white campaigners who do not realize that any playbook that existed before 2016 is now gone. So I look forward to really her second interview, Danielle,

and that's when it's going to be what's an independent person, probably in niche media. So our pal, you know, Joy and Reed maybe, Roland Martin maybe. Right, right. Always had to be ambidextrous

and what we know about, care about, and can speak about. So it's not as interesting to watch folks like Dana. Again, it's no diss to her. You know, but this is the reality because you make a lot of good points, which is the fact that while,

you know, while we may say, we may see rather a splattering of black and brown faces as commentators and as hosts in mainstream corporate media, the control in the newsroom and those that sit in the C-suite still don't look like who the country is and who the country is becoming. And I feel like more and more you are seeing audiences dip out and disconnecting from mainstream corporate media because they're recognizing that they're not telling them the truth,

that they are not getting to the core of the issue, that they are not acting as the fourth estate, as they used to be, which is to educate and inform the citizenry of this country. Rather, they are looking for clickbait and they go where their shareholders and their CEOs can be fed, and that is by propping up Donald Trump that has been the whale of the media for damn near a decade.

And I feel that what is troubling to me, particularly coming off of the energy of the DNC, what I find what is troubling to, to me are the kind of bullshit headlines that we have seen at the New York Times where joy is not a strategy, where Donald Trump can still win on character. I know these are opinion pieces, but they still matter in the psyche of this country when you are offering things where people are starting to feel a sense of hopefulness, and then you're telling us that that hopefulness doesn't matter, or that vibes are not votes. And so I want to get your thoughts on the true

breakdown between the difference that these two campaigns are offering. One, that is offering a dystopian vision of America, where women no longer have rights, where black people are invisible, where trans people and queer people are criminalized, versus the opportunity to try and make this country not only possible, but accessible for all people. So as this is playing out in the media, it has become very clear to me whose side they're on. Yeah, I mean, look, I think they're looking for that cable news ratings boom that they enjoyed in 2016. And it shows that they haven't really learned their lessons yet. You know, for example, after the 2016 election, the takeaway from mostly white cable news executives was, oh, we didn't pay enough attention to the racist. Wrong take,

guys, wrong take. And the ratings are bearing that out. And I have to say, this problem is systemic, Danielle, because even when you have a person of color in the C-Suite, if they are carrying the water for the conservative white folks who have been there before and the conservative white folks that they report to, then they are not helpful either. And I, as you know, have quite a testimony about that as well. Or at the same time, if you have a lot of diversity, but most of your quote unquote diversity is at the entry level, they don't have a lot of say they're not managing director,

they're not shaping the rundown. That's also a challenge. So we have to continue to press the media, but here's the sad truth. And as a journalist, this really does make me sad. One, the New York Times is not shaping the political opinions of the rising majority of this country who are showing up and over-indexing at the ballot.

This incestuous landscape is full of political journalists who talk to each other, about each other, and for each other. They want to do the interview on the broadcast so their friend at the Times can write the headlines, so their buddy at political playbook can, you know, make it trend in different newsletters, so it can be talked about at Beltway bars in downtown D.C. The truth is most voters have bypassed this traditional media landscape. This is why social media holds such credo. and communities. The sad part about that is these are not journalists.

They are not getting fact checks. Anybody, you know, when you watch cable news now, everybody's a journalist. So much so that people have no idea what true journalism really looks like. Everyone's a strategist. Sometimes you Google these people and it's like, what campaign did this person strategize on? Tell me what this 25-year-old that y'all have plucked out of oblivion has ever done politically why I should be listening to this person. It's these blanket monocers that they make ubiquitous.

for everyone on the cable news platforms. And again, increasingly you see people tuning them out. Now, when it comes to policy, I think it is certainly fair to say, yes, we want to see a policy platform from Vice President Harris. But when you say that in journalism, broadcast journalism, it would be helpful to add some context. You can say, hey, we want to see policy from her, but she was just popped up to this position a month ago.

It normally takes presidential candidates two to three months to pull together a policy plan. Her policy plan will look different from President Biden. She was there to support his plan. Now she gets to institute her own. She rolled out economic policy in North Carolina. Instead of trumpeting Republican talking points, you might think journalists might say, well, let's take a look at her plan that she soft rode out in North Carolina. Let's talk about how this would impact people. Donald Trump, where the FUCK is this man's policy plan. Oh, I know Project 2025 that he's been trying to distance himself from. But even when you look at Project 2025 and what Donald Trump himself

has put out, there's very little daylight. And you don't have as much conversation around that. It breaks my heart, Danielle, because I have wanted to be the Brown-Murphy Brown since I was 15 years old and to see what is happening in journalism

and the impact that it has on the American body politic has been the greatest disappointment of my professional career. And I hope that changes. I don't have high hopes. But as media becomes disaggregated, at least I know that there are fringe pockets where I know truth tellers like you, like Joy, like Roland, and like so many other people can still exist. Look, I read the Times every morning.

Their political coverage is very frustrating, but I have to say they're world covers, their technology session, their education section. From the Times, I read the post every morning. When I get past what's happening in America and the narrow view of mostly white folks regurgitating to me what's happening in America, I can't stomach it. When I get past that, there are actually some really great think pieces, really informative articles about what's happening on the continent of Africa that we don't talk about. What's happening across the pond in the UK. They have their own political mayhem that they're navigating.

So I do encourage people to read papers, but I do want to echo back to your frustration and how myopic they can be in their coverage. As we make Tiffany, this, I mean, it has gone from a marathon to we are sprinting, sprinting to November. 5th. We are less than 70 days right now as we are headed to November 5th. And what we are seeing right now, right, are similar, kind of in an eerie way. Kamala is up in the polls as Hillary was up in the polls. But there is a new sense of energy that is on the ground. You and I were both at the DNC. We felt what we felt in those rooms. And I think it emanated outside of those rooms to people who are watching at home. But when you're looking at the poll numbers right now, you're also seeing, Donald Trump being re-indicted ahead of the first debate. What are you paying attention to?

What do you think that people, the voters, need to be paying attention to as most Americans are just beginning to tune in now? I wish that the media would stop their obsession with polls. Polls do not matter to the voter. Polls matter to campaigns, not to people casting ballots. And so when you put this information out there, very often, you're just reading the top lines. And for me, as a journalist, I'm going to have questions. If somebody says, oh, you know, Donald Trump is trending one way in this swing state, I want to know, well, when was that poll taken? What was the question asked?

Did you ask, do you support Donald Trump? Or did you ask, if you asked who would do a better job on the economy, what was happening in the news that day? Was it a slow news day? Does this person read the paper? Did this person, were they a registered voter in 2020? Are they planning on voting now? So those kind of questions are often left out of the analysis.

And so I think it's dangerous to constantly berate us with polls. We saw the polls in Florida in the gubernatorial race with Andrew Gillum and Ron DeSantis. And every poll had, you know, in the Democratic primary, they had Andrew in last place. But when it came to voting, black folks over indexed and Andrew was the Democratic opponent to square off against Ron DeSantis. So I just think we have to like put that to arrest because it's not helpful to the people out there. I also think we have to consider new voters, who's being engaged here. And so you see a lot of young people, a lot of Gen Ziers, Gen Xers, millennials, they have each election cycle over indexed as well at the polls. We've seen their numbers continue to rise.

So I think that's something that matters that a lot of people, you see the Republicans on their side of divide and we have to stop treating the Republican Party like it's separate from Donald Trump. They're now the MAGA party. And you see on the MAGARPARTY that they have not really expanded. their base. That's another thing that the media got wrong. They kept trying to say, oh, black men are trending for Trump and could black people be the one to hand Trump this election? Again, the devil is a lie. That is not the case at all. Every cycle, 10 to 11, maybe 12% of black men vote Republican. That has not grown. That has not become smaller. It is still your average news cycle. And you would see sometimes just for clickbait. Like you said, Danielle,

if people asking these folks and they wouldn't ask, are you a registered voter, did you vote last election cycle. What policy specifically do you like? We don't know if these are people paid to participate in some of these interviews or not. I was like, we just saw what happened with CNN with these quote unquote undecided voters. And just for folks that are listening, they said that this room was filled with undecided voters. But a person had said, no, I'm going to be supporting Trump. And they were very clear about that. And they said, oh, no, that's okay. And like shuffled these people through. So we don't even know if who is being spoken to and labeled as undecided or independent or what have you are actually or are they just there to fit a narrative that the media outlet is trying to create and manipulate

the viewers that are watching. Exactly. And that's so frustrating and so dishonest that people will continue to tune out. I don't understand the intention behind it because at the end of the day, it's a business. It's a bottom line. And so it's almost like they don't care about ratings and it's very frustrating. I hope that people pay attention to policy. I do not think that there are any real voters out there who are undecided between Trump and Kamala Harris. I think if there are, these are people who are just looking for and accused not to vote for Trump. There is not a lot of overlap between these two candidates. I think there are still some people who are frustrated and disappointed in her stance when it comes to Gaza. And I think they would like to see her be more forceful

with not funding Israel's weapon of war and watching what's happening to the Palestinian people, which is so incredibly heartbreaking and dehumanizing as we see this. We don't want our government funding things like this, although it's something that has happened across multiple administrations, both Republican and Democrat, but people want to see a change. They want to disrupt these norms. We also saw 175% increase of black women voter registration since Commonwealth.

Harris was named the nominee. That is more than triple what our registration rates were in 2020 when there was two white men on the ballot. And this is what I'd like to punctuate about that, Danielle. Black women have routinely saved this democracy. We have routinely upheld this democracy. When you see the Maga Party on the other side of Vice President Harris, they are like a wounded animal in a corner. They literally don't know how to attack us. And I think for anybody out there, and this is bipartisan, this is a bipartisan PSA, you do not want to be on the other side of black women. It is always a losing battle. We face so much in this country.

We face COVID. We face a disproportionate, unforgiving criminal justice system. We face literally our communities poisoning us. For some people, that is a travesty and a tragedy. For us, more often than not, it is a random ass Tuesday. We are built for this. We are made for this. And I think you see a coalition of black women lining up to carry one of our own across the line.

And I would like people to be vigilant about the ways they're going to cheat when it comes to voter suppression. Ken Paxton in Texas is having his regime drag out 80-something-year-old women in their nightdown surrounding by law enforcement for registering voters. You see what's happening in Georgia. They're going to try to cheat on the front end with voter suppression. And then they're going to try to cheat on the back end with the courts. This has to be a decisive victory. So there cannot be any question about its legitimacy.

Well, my friend, we will have to leave it there today. Always, always appreciate your insights, your passion, and your journalistic integrity. Tiffany Cross, thank you so much for making the time for the new abnormal and hope to have you back again before this election cycle is up. I'd be happy to. And I hope to see you in person very soon, Danielle. Very soon. Thank you for having me. Danielle Moody.

Andy Levy. All right, Danielle, we're closing out the week. Give us a good fuck that guy. Well, he's already gotten a special mention in the main. And I believe that he too is going to have a marble statue in our fuck that guy, Hall of Fame by the time all is said and done. Mine is going out to J.D. Vance. Jady Vance is absolutely weirdly obsessed with child.

women. The way that this man has attacked childless women has said that we should pay more taxes. That is said that now most recently, and this is why he is my fuck that guy, should not be teaching children. I think that there is something absolutely wrong with J.D. Vance. And I mean that in all seriousness. He went on, and I'm like, I don't know if. this audio that was leaked this week. I don't know if this was while he was senator, before he was senator, but my God, did this man spend a lot of time on right wing podcasts, like, as if it was his full-time job, because every week another piece of audio is leaked. And this time, J.D. Van said that childless women, who are teachers, are indoctrinating

our children, and that there is absolutely something wrong with. And he, was going after on the sly, Randy Weingarten, who is the president of the American Federation of Teachers, and saying that there is something like wrong with us. And I say us because I am a former educator. I do not have children. And I took great offense to this commentary. There are many of people who actually in the teaching profession who decide not to have kids. You know why? Because they're giving all of their energy, love, and passion, and money to educating the future of this country. And so in some ways, it's actually a noble and selfless act, full stop, in being a teacher in the first place in this country, a profession that is wildly underappreciated and underpaid.

But for him to have the audacity to talk about indoctrination coming from a party that is banning books and curriculum and trying to erase and rewrite history is widely. to me. And also, another thing that is weird about J.D. Vance, because the list is so long, why when he speaks about his wife and their kids, does he talk about his wife and her children? Honestly, I don't get it. I find it so utterly disturbing. But I will say this to end, that when given the opportunity on Meet the Press with Kirsten Welker, to backtrack, to apologize for the comments that he has made, J.D. Vance has not only doubled, but tripled down on his childless cat lady commentary. And I'm telling you, women are paying attention because there are a number of

reasons why women are quote unquote childless, some by choice and some by not. And it's no one's fucking business. And so for that reason, this man is going to be forever my fuck that guy. And, you know, the asterisk on this is that I really do. hope that Donald Trump and J.D. Vance are beaten like beyond measure in this election and that I never, ever have to say J.D. Vance's name ever again. That's my goal here, people. God, that would be nice. A couple of things. One is J.D. Vance may not be aware of this because he doesn't seem like a very intellectually curious guy. It used to be that if a teacher got pregnant, she got fired. That was up and through the 19th.

1970s, I will say that my mom just told me the story a couple weeks ago. She hid her pregnancy with me while she was teaching. And it wasn't for any moral reason. She was married to my dad, who also taught at the school. It was because if the principal and the administration knew that she was pregnant, they would have sent her home. If you want to go back even further, back in like the World War II era, women who got married got fired from teaching positions. So for him to now suddenly be like this as if there's not a long history, of women, if they got pregnant, being forced out of a teacher position, is just wild. And the second thing, the last thing, is he's a relatively new Catholic. He wasn't Catholic his whole life. But for a practicing Catholic to get weirded out by childless women teaching, seems very, very weird to me. Last time I checked, if you looked at Catholic schools, the teachers are nuns. Ah, yes.

So I don't know. That's very, very suss, as the kids say. Mm-mm-mm. Yeah, fuck that guy. So, Andy, how are you closing out our good, good week? I hope it's with your resume updated with your fast food jobs. How are you closing out this week with your fuck that guy? A couple say, I never had a fast food job.

I had other, you know, I had like retail jobs and I worked at a country club locker room, shining shoes and stuff like that, but I never, never had a fast food job. My fuck that guy is, it's not going to sound like much when I read the headline, and this is from the University of Virginia's newspaper, the Cavalier Daly. UVA suspends admissions tours led by the university guide service. Okay, so whatever. A school is no longer partnering with this guide service to give tours. Well, let me tell you why it's doing this.

There is an alumni group at UVA called the Jefferson Council. Thomas Jefferson, rather famously, is the founder of the University of Virginia. And they have not liked this guide service, the University Guide Service, because they claim that the guides insert what they call radical views into their tours. And the co-founder of this Jefferson Council is a guy named Bert Ellis. and a couple years ago, he was appointed to the University's Board of Visitors. And he has consistently, according to the Cavalier Daily, been a vocal critic of the guide service. So let me read a thing he said in 2021. He said, the university guides now seem intent on contextualizing Mr. Jefferson as a slaveholder and rapist.

So in other words, they insist on telling people the facts. And so he is now, like I said, he is now, on the board of visitors of the school, and lo and behold, the university has suspended this group from giving the tours. And, you know, it got me thinking that the side that wants to acknowledge and talk about stuff like this, you know, the fact that, yes, Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner, yes, he raped Sally Hemings, that side is always derided for feeling guilt by the other side. But it's the other side that wants to bury stuff like this so that people can't learn about it. And which one seems more like an admission of guilt to you?

The people who are like, yes, this happened and we have to reckon with it and we can't pretend it didn't. Or the people who are like, no, no, no, no, no, this is horrible. We don't want anyone to know about this. So, you know, it just got me thinking like, you know, people want to talk, like people on the right want to talk about liberal guilt or white guilt and how terrible it is. But meanwhile, all they want to do is hide evidence of stuff like Thomas Jefferson did and many of the other founding fathers. And they want to hide it and they want to bury it. They want it out of sight. They want it untaught.

They don't want kids learning about it. They don't want adults learning about it. That to me is as big an admission of guilt as I can possibly imagine. So I, you know, again, so this seems like a small story, but it started to get some. play on blue sky and I thought it was kind of interesting. And so I just, I wanted to share it and I wanted to give a big hearty fuck that guy to Bert Ellis and to the University of Virginia administration in general for caving to this garbage. I remember growing up and, you know, being in class and being taught about slavery and, you know, the presidents of the United States and asking very real questions as a young person. Like, you know, how do we say that they're great. men if in fact they were slaveholders. And I remember my, you know, white elementary school teacher saying to me, well, you know, everyone owns slaves at that time. So it was considered normal.

And that was the answer. That was that was it. And so it is wild to me that we still, still, some friggin decades later, like don't hold these two truths to be like, Like, yes, you can have done the Declaration of Independence. You can have, like, done some extraordinary things and still be a bastard and still be a rapist and still be a brutalizer. Those are complicated things to hold, but it's the truth. So the fact that, like, this is just going to be denied so that, again, white people feel comfortable to me is so indicative of, like, how we will never truly heal.

as a nation because we don't want to really reckon with what this nation is founded on. Ugh, fuck those guys. Yeah, just like Lieutenant Caffey, they can't handle the truth. Exactly. 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.

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