The Daily Beast Podcast - Election Officials Have the Same Worst Fear for The Midterms

Episode Date: September 25, 2022

Jan. 6 may not be the last time people get violent over an election. Election experts CBS Chief Washington Correspondent Major Garrett and David Becker, co-authors of the new book The Big Truth: Upholding Democracy and the Age of the Big Lie, came on this bonus episode of The New Abnormal to share their biggest fear when it comes to the upcoming midterm elections: political violence. They also share what poll workers have been dealing with since 2020—spoiler alert: a whole lot—and what, if anything, we can do about it. Plus! Hosts Andy Levy and Molly Jong-Fast mark Molly’s last ever TNA episode as host with a round of Tucker Carlson and Trump clips. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Invo. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. 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 the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down, and on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. Hello, and welcome to another Sunday bonus episode of the new abnormal. We thank you so much for being here. Today we have two extra special guests with CBS's chief Washington correspondent, Major Garrett, and David Becker.

And they're, of course, the authors of the new book, The Big Truth, upholding democracy and the age of the big lie. And they're going to talk to us all about how we have free and safe elections. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? No. Yes. I'm glad Molly's in her true form for the final. Yes.

Wait, let me get something to eat. All right. I feel like I'm going to bust out some classics here, but then I'm going to throw in some surprises. Tucker Carlson, it's not so fond of teachers. Let's hear why. These are sex crimes, and the people committing them should be punished. Now, try and say that out loud anywhere but on Fox News.

You can't. Why can't you? Because it's true. That's why. You can't say the true things. You can claim the earth is flat and no one gets exercise. But when you start saying things like all lives matter or sexualizing my children is a crime. And if you keep it up, I'm going to hurt you because I'm the dad. Say that. Ooh, you're done. Lips of TikTok is being banned from the internet. Why? Because it showed documentation. evidence of what was happening. Some people describe what was happening as grooming.

We're not exactly sure what that means, but if it's sexually abusing children, yeah, that is what's happening. But the term groomer is now hate speech, says NBC News. A couple of months ago, these people, one is lives of TikTok, another is Matt Walsh. You have Chris Rufel, who you just mentioned. They've been villainizing and literally demonizing these doctors who treat these people for months now.

And so in that time, you can just see it in their mentions. This sicko language, I've seen it a million times over because every time they tweet about these doctors, using these doctors' faces sometimes. And all of the comments are like sickos, demonic, satanic, pedophile, groomer. Yeah, they're being mean to doctors who castrate children, who cut the breasts off girls. Yeah.

This is not only happening, it is being celebrated and aggressively defended by virtually everyone with power. It takes three steps back. We used to say, oh, our society doesn't care about children. That's not what this is. What you're seeing is a society, that hates children. You would have to hate children in order to sexualize them because sexualizing children screws them up for life.

Ask anyone to whom it's happened. Period. No one should put up with this. No parent should put up with this for one second, no matter what the law says. Your duty, your moral duty, is to defend your children. attack on your children and you should fight back. I mean, poor Brande.

Yeah. This is Tucker's playbook. He gets his people. This is so vile. Everything about this is so vile. Like, I can't even make jokes about it because what he's doing and he knows he's doing this and it's the same thing that Lib Zip's TikTok, Lib Zip TikTok is doing and knows she's doing it. And then they pretend to act all surprised is they are trying to gin up violence, whether it's against hospitals, whether it's against school teachers, whatever it is, this is what they're doing. And of course, they will never themselves perpetrate this violence because they don't want to go to prison. But they will, sure as fuck, try to get their viewers and followers and whatever,

they will try to goad them into committing acts of violence because that's, apparently, that's how they get off. I don't know. It's just, it's so vile and it's so evil. and I just, I have nothing but the most absolute hatred for these people. And what you see with this clip is that he then goes to a clip of Brandy, so Brandy Zerdrosny has worked really hard and she's not going to get flooded with hate mail and hate speech. And some of the, as someone who I can attest from experience, some of the scariest people are going to write her some of the meanest things.

and it is just a way of these people trying to get writers to quit writing. And it's really quite grim. Yeah. And in Tucker's case, it's also a way to go after women because it's always women. Right. And that is not a coincidence. Oh, that's interesting. Is it always women?

Sure. I mean, look, I may be being hyperbolic when I say always. I wonder. It feels like it's always women. No, it's definitely 24 out of 20. 25 times a woman. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And for him to sit there and put, oh, I don't know what groomer means. Fuck you. First of all, yes, you do. Second of all, if you were really doing a monologue and you wanted to be informed, you would learn what that was. So you're just like, it's just lying. And he knows that groomer has become this slur that's been tossed around at people, which is just an absolutely vile slur that's being used against, you know, basically every gay person and every trans.

person and a lot of cis and straight people. And he knows that. He knows all of this. And he sits there and puts on his, I'm just one of you plain folks act. Fuck off. Right. Well, it's one of these things where he pretends to ask a question.

Right. Of course. And that really weird cadence he speaks in. But he doesn't really want to know. So we usually have a segment every week called, What the Hell is Herschel Walker talking about? He didn't talk much this week. So I have to skip that in favor of replacing it with,

What the hell is Matt Kate's saying and why doesn't he get why you shouldn't say it? You know, you can go knock on 200 doors on a Saturday. You can edit video. You can open and unlock an iPhone. That can be very difficult for others. Especially in Congress. I'm just glad to be in a room where I'm one of the oldest people. Yeah.

Whoops. That was an amazing bit of Freudian slippery. Still under FBI investigation, my man. actually not my man Matt Gates yeah he was at it was like a Texas Youth Summit forum or something like that

and it's just like come on man like what are you doing Gates Gate and then also like the picture that he tweeted out like the people in the audience were much older than him so it's like the whole thing was just so bizarre all these people are so weird they're just so

weird as you said Molly you're under FBI investigation for possibly having sex with underage girls and trafficking them and you're going to go speak at a Texas Youth Summit? Like have some, I don't know, just, you know, what's interesting about this is like in the before times, when we were in like a normal world, you would have, if a Republican were in trouble like this, they would never go anywhere near anyone young ever again, right? they just be so completely, you know, worried and they wouldn't talk about it and they'd

lawyer up and they wouldn't make jokes about it. But something that MagoWorld has done, which I think is kind of, I mean, it's clearly very fucked up and I don't think it's going to work for them, but it's fascinating, is they just do the stuff you're really not supposed to do. And, I mean, I think we're going to see how this plays out for them. Well, I feel like he was telling them himself there, but there's, this is a The last of telling on yourself we have for this week, because Rusheron Johnson, Ronanon, wants to tell on himself. We would have an annual threat hearing, and my ranking member would always be bringing up white supremacy, which, you know, I condone.

I mean, I condemn, but... Amazing. Potato, potato, potato, tomato, tomato, tomato, white supremacist, white supremacist. Oh, my God. That's amazing. He only condoned it for a few seconds, right? That's his big thing. That's right.

That's right. Yeah, he only cooed for a few seconds, if I remember. That's right. That's right. Yeah. It's always just a short time for him. Yes, short-crimeing. Poor Mrs. Johnson.

Okay, okay. So, the Orange Man stopped by Sean Hannity to chat. Amazing stuff. No notes. He had to get his feelings out about Tish James. the FBI raid with his buddy headed you. He texted through the whole coup. And, well, let's just say his brain didn't bring its best work today. It's allowed their faces to protect their identity. Yeah, I guess they could do that.

I listened. I said, look, I don't want, I really believe that most of the people within the FBI out of the top groups, most of the people in the FBI, they probably voted for Trump. I don't want to have anybody heard. But they came onto the site. They wouldn't allow any legal representation or representation. So they go into the rooms, like my bedroom, my office. They go into the room. Your wife's closet? Your son's bedroom.

My son's bedroom, yeah. There's a picture of Hunter Biden and Baron Trump. Baron looks so innocent. And Hunter doesn't look so innocent. They said his room was raided, but his wasn't. It was a terrible thing. Okay. So they went to a magistrate.

Merrick Garland has said he came out and he said, What? Any ideas on where this picture of Hunter Biden's is? Is it in Barron's room? Is it in his room? I think he was trying to say that the FBI has these two pictures and that they chose to go into Barron's room and leave Hunter alone. I don't know what he's trying to. Like, that's my guess.

But it's so weird. I know that Trump doesn't think of his own children as being accountable because we heard Huckleberry hound Bill Barr say that you children can't be held responsible for their own actions, even though they're 38, 42, and 44. Good news for me because I'm 44. I just want to point out something, which is Hunter Biden is like my age or maybe a little bit older. And Baron Trump is 16.

I mean, I don't get what the comparison here is. I mean, they weren't searching Baron Trump stuff for Baron Trump stuff. They were searching for Donald Trump. stuff. Of course. Of course. But I mean, look, I think later in that same interview, he talked about how the FBI might have been looking for Hillary Clinton's emails at Moralago. Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. And Sean was like, do you have them? And it's just like, it's, I don't, I mean, dumb and dumber was supposed to be just a movie. Can I just say one thing, since this is my last episode of the new abnormal, find me at fast politics.

I do think it's funny that talk about Tucker Carlson, he's really, you know, the stuff he does is beyond the pale. But you see he's really, really smart. I mean, that's why he's so dangerous. And then you have Sean Hannity and the guy is like two steps away from eating glue at all times. Like he's just so stupid. And even when he's trying to be smart, he's so stupid, it's amazing. That's all. No notes.

Like this assessment? Follow this and more. Sorry. Jesus. Well, my bad assessment will be that Barron has a nice big poster of all the pictures of Hunter Biden says, what would Hunter Biden do? And that's what he's living his life by to torture daddy and rebel against him like somebody else's teenage children.

Yes. Hey, shut up. Wait, that was a dig in me. I just put it together. Fuckers. All right. I am done working with Molly. That's it.

Nope. Sorry. Wait, I have one more. I have one more. No, I'm done. Are you quitting or am I being fired? I'm done.

You're out of here. Go. God damn it. I'm being fired. But where else could you find this podcasting genius? Is there another place? I wonder. Perhaps on the eye heart.

No, I'm just kidding. I'm sorry. No, but I do know that the new abnormal will be continuing. and I will be hosting with a variety of guest hosts over the coming week, so please continue to listen. That's right. That's right. Okay, I wanted to send the three of us doing this together off on a note of

for once listening to a clip where I think somebody actually gets it. One Jamie Raskin, I think, really brought the truth for once, and I think it's worth listening to that. Conspiracy theories afoot in the far reaches of the Internet, which somehow crawl into Congress, if at least our colleagues would accept the reality of what the rest of the country has embraced, Donald Trump's big lie is nothing but propaganda and disinformation.

In the moment, one of them says, you know what, we were wrong about this guy. He's an enemy of our constitutional order. He's a compulsive liar, and he's in it for himself. And he tried to convert the presidency into a... instrument of money making and profiteering on the backs of the American people, then I could listen to you. But instead, I heard on January 6th, members of this committee, members on the other side the aisle try to blame the whole thing on Antifa. And when that didn't work, well, then let's

crawl down some other rabbit holes and throw out some more propaganda. They spread the big lie further. It wasn't enough to lie about the election, a lie that was rejected by more than 60 federal and state court judges, including eight named to the bench by Donald Trump himself, every allegation of election fraud, every allegation of electoral corruption thrown out by the courts, including by his judges, and they won't say a word about it. But instead, they will come up with some utterly frivolous rabbit hole conspiracy theory to try to pull a smokescreen over the eyes of the public. And they think that that's going to work. Well, we'll see if it's going to work. what that kind of attack on democracy gets you, it gets you an attack on freedom.

Because Abraham Lincoln, the founder of the real Republican Party, a Republican party that was an enemy of slavery, an enemy of racism, an enemy of no-nothingism, an immigrant bashing. That's how Abraham Lincoln caught it. But it was Abraham Lincoln who said that democracy is like the beautiful silver platter upon which rests the golden apple of freedom. And today, obviously, democracy is under attack, a violent attack by these forces, and freedom is too. By the Supreme Court, which they packed.

And that's what we're fighting to defend our democracy and our freedom against the autocrats, the kleptocrats, and the bullies and the tyrants and the despots. All of them might yield back, and thank you for the time. Thank you. I yield. Wait, this was a good one. Usually we're giving these to make fun of. That's what I said, is that for once I want to end us on a nice note. No.

Yeah, that was good. Yeah, it was fine. No, that was very, that was very, very well done. Yes. All right, is that all we're going to say? It has been the great joy of my life to get a podcast with one Andy Levy. Oh, that's so nice. It's really true.

And you were just an incredibly lovely person, and I do feel really lucky to have gotten to work with everyone at the Beast. Well, thank you. I feel the same way about the people at the Beast and about Jesse. I think I'm owed a check. Who do I talk to about being out of check? Jesus Christ. Just keep that in there. Yeah, okay.

I'm hitting stop. Major Garrett and David Becker are the authors of The Big Truth, upholding democracy and the age of the big lie. Welcome to the new abnormal Major Garrett. Hello. And David Becker. Hi, Molly. So we're here and we're talking about this book

that you guys wrote together about the big truth, upholding democracy in the age of the big lie. So explain to us a little bit about how you got here. So how we got here is this. So the 2020 election for me was completely different. I've been covering presidential campaigns, either as a reporter or an editor since 1992. And 2020 was the first campaign that I thought about having to cover from my couch

because nobody was moving. There was nothing happening. And that didn't seem like a very productive way to cover the campaign. And I intuited in July of 2020 that one of the biggest, if not the biggest stories of campaign 2020, would be the adaptations required to vote during a global pandemic. And so I started to do a lot of research about how we were actually going to prepare for this election. The primaries had a lot of ups and downs. Some of the primaries occurred right as the teeth of the pandemic was first biting America and the rest of the world.

And those primaries were, of course, disrupted by that. So I studied the primaries. I studied the process. I got to know a lot of secretaries of state and election officials. And I saw how hard they were working to prepare for this clearly, massively important political moment in American history. And I really came to respect the precision, the devotion, and the dedication of their work. And this is Republicans and Democrats and nonpartisan election officials. And it recalled for me a memory of my childhood that I sort of forgotten about.

Molly, my mother was an executive with AT&T in the 60s and 70s, a very uncommon thing for a suburban mother in San Diego, California, where I grew up. But she carried a briefcase to work every day. And she also was a poll worker. Every election, she would walk two blocks up from my house in my neighborhood in San Diego, go to a garage and sit there for eight to 12 hours as a poll worker. She told me it was part of her civic participation in America. And I recalled that memory and I thought I'm actually talking to election workers now. who remind me of the service of my mother gave all the time. And I thought this is a really wonderful thing. And then the election happened. There was all sorts of rage and misplaced anger and disappointment. And then outright lies. And I saw all this hard work that people were doing being slandered, debased, criminalized.

And then I saw these good people being doxed, harassed, texted the most vulgar and violent things. And I thought, I simply can't abide this. So our project originally started, Molly, as a... love letter to election workers and election administrators. And then it grew into something much more ambitious, which is a meditation on what we regard as the fragile, though not lost, fragile state of American democracy. What about you, David? Did you have a similar kind of connection to election workers? Yeah, even more so, I would say. I mean, Major and I got to the same place through different paths. I've been in elections for a quarter of a century. I'm a voting rights lawyer. I worked for many years

with the Justice Department and the Civil Rights Division of the Voting Section. I mean, I was monitoring elections in Selma, Alabama when they elected their first black mayor in the city's history in 2000. And over time, you know, as my job at the DOJ, you often go into jurisdictions and you're suing election officials. But what I learned over time is that these election officials, almost all, regardless of party, are incredibly dedicated individuals who are just trying to do the right thing, trying to be as transparent as possible and often didn't need to be sued. They often just needed to be guided in many ways. And I've been working closely with election officials ever since. I run a nonprofit now,

the Center for Election Innovation and Research in Washington, D.C. It's nonpartisan. We work with election officials all over the country. I constantly speak to election officials all over the country. And what I was seeing in 2020 was that they were stressed like never before. There was already incredible scrutiny on the election. We knew we were anticipating record turnout, which in fact we did see. And then the pandemic kit. And they were trying to figure this out. There was no rule book, no guidebook for how to deal with this kind of thing. And we saw some problems in the primaries. And the truly outstanding thing that we saw in the fall of 2020 was that they learned those lessons. They did what they needed to do to manage 20 million more American

voters than any American election had ever seen in the middle of a global pandemic. And Major and I got together as I was hired to be CBS News election law expert. And we found we We were both in awe of this triumph of American ingenuity and dedication to democratic principles. And then to see it delegitimized by lies coming from the losing presidential candidate really compelled us to write a book like this. So where are we now? Like we're coming up on this midterm election and it feels like there's starting to be some anxiety about how these results are going to be sort of brought in and how what it's going to look like. Are you guys hopeful or are you worried? I'm not worried at all about the processing and counting of ballots.

And actually, even though there's a lot of rhetoric around this, for most voters, the vast majority, 99%, maybe more. The voting process is going to be pretty easy. It might even seem easier than 2020 because there's not the risk of the pandemic, at least as it was, in 2020. And most people were going to release to report on this next week. Voters who could vote by mail in 2020 are going to be able to vote by mail in 2020. Voters who could vote early in person in 2020 are going to be able to vote early in person in 2022. The election officials have this. They're going to do this transparently, securely.

They're going to deliver results. The problem that I'm really worried about is that losing candidates might follow the playbook from former President Trump and seek to delegitimize elections when they've lost. And that could leave an opening for political violence. Yeah. Major, your thoughts? I've gotten to know election officials and lots of jurisdictions across the country. They're ready. They work on this. I mentioned before, Molly, I grew up in San Diego, California, all Californians, but particularly Southern Californians, love the Rose Bowl parade. I remember as a kid, after every Rose Bowl parade, they would say the next day, we start planning for the next Rose Bowl parade, meaning January 2nd. The beginning of the next parade is the next day, because it takes that long to prepare. I know that's exactly how election officials work on this project. They work. on it continuously. They don't show up the day before Tuesday in November on election day and say,

we're going to have an election today. They constantly work on this. They're preparing. They're recruiting polling workers. They're going through everything. They're getting a lot of noise about the last election, which they're having to deal with, but they're prepared. I have no anxiety about that at all. What I do have anxiety about Molly, this country is clearly amped up about what elections mean and are they credible and believable in ways that they shouldn't be because the 2020 election was credible, verified, and believable. I'm asking people to accept the results. I'm not asking them to be necessarily pleased with the results.

If you're displeased, fine. That's one of the entitlements of democracy. And you know what your obligation is? Win the next election, not slander and besmirch, the one you just lost. What I'm worried about is the anxiety people feel about the process of voting or what they see or what they're told by someone running sort of out of control and spiraling in precincts where someone who is now newly empowered by a law, for example, in Texas, where poll observers have much more latitude to question and maneuver and work around,

they can raise controversies that under normal circumstances, lengths, less anxious circumstances could be easily mediated. But now because of this psychic environment that's much more anxious, much more willing to be suspicious, things could spiral out of control and things that would in another time, not be violent, not be confrontational, could be. And that, I fear, could, let's say, early Tuesday morning of Election Day be seen in one jurisdiction and move to another, kind of spontaneously. And I guarantee you election officials are having these conversations. What if something happens in Florida or North Carolina or New Hampshire or any place on the East Coast early on Election Day?

And that begins to create a sort of viral social media sensation or curiosity or just tumult. And those things can feed on themselves. I'm worried about that. What do you think would be the thing that elected officials could do that would help us? Reinforce that election officials do this work and do this work on a, and I want to really drill down on this, Molly. Elections in this country are localized and decentralized. They are at the neighborhood level for a reason. So they're close to the people who vote.

When you go to your precinct, who do you see? Some stranger from another state? No, you're likely to see someone you either see a church or the grocery store or the veterinarian or the Little League field or where your daughter or son goes to a dance recital. You're likely to see somebody from your neighborhood because that's how we run elections. And those people work hard. Their processes are secure. The verification measures are greater than they've ever been before. And we fight things out politically before election day. We do not fight over. the way votes are tallied or the ultimate result. Unless there is something that's deeply suspicious, and if you have deep suspicions, you can take them to a court of law and have them adjudicated, as other candidates have in the past. Yeah, Molly, I'd probably add two very specific things to what Major just said. First, I think it's really important to recognize that all of the scrutiny, all of the attacks and harassment on election officials, all of the new laws that have been put into place in states where, based on the lie about the 2020 election, add additional burdens to election officials.

And to accommodate those additional burdens, whether those burdens are worthwhile or not, takes resources. And we have always underfunded elections in this country. Election officials do not have adequate resources to do their job to hire skilled staff and keep those staff to account for the aggressive transparency that they embrace, that they want to do. So first and foremost, we need to adequately resource election officials, which we are not doing, and that's going to require action by Congress and the state legislatures. And then secondly, something I feel somewhat optimistic about, we're going to need to hold those who have led to this environment, who created this environment, who have incited violence against election officials and members of Congress and others,

hold them accountable under the law. And we're starting to see that from the Department of Justice, from, of course, the January 6th Select Committee, and even in places like Fulton County, Georgia, with the district attorney's investigation there. I think we'll have to see how those develop. But I'm encouraged that it appears that finally those who have engaged in potentially criminal acts are being investigated fully, potentially prosecuted and potentially convicted. What are you seeing in the states where they have sort of gone and made rules based on these election lies? First of all, not all of these laws are the same. And we often put them all in the same bucket, you know, Georgia and Texas both passed laws. Georgia was a state in which it was very easy

to vote. And to be perfectly honest, it's still very easy to vote in Georgia, even though that law was largely unnecessary. In Texas, it was one of the most difficult states in which to vote. And the new Texas law made it significantly more difficult to vote. But those laws primarily focus, all of them have one thing in common. We've characterized them, or some have characterized them as vote suppression laws. And I don't think that's quite accurate. What they're mainly focused on is in the post-election period, reducing and eliminating the guardrails around democracy to allow for more chaos, more potential for the losing candidate or for corrupt legislators or officials to subvert the election and create chaos and confusion. It's very hard for a corrupt

official to install the loser of an election as the winner. There's a lot of guardrails in place. There's the courts. There's the adversarial system. The candidate who actually won is not just going to roll over and let it happen. They're going to file lawsuits. But what can happen is during that time of confusion, when the losing candidate supporters are being told that he or she didn't actually lose. That is a time that is ripe for political violence. And so I think we do have to keep a close eye, especially in those states where legislators and other elected officials have been complicit, either through cowardice or because they're true believers in promulgating the lie of stolen elections. It's so interesting. I mean, I just think what I'm hearing from both of you

is that the thing you're the most worried about is political violence. For me, yes. Major, is that true for you? Yes. And that's because I spend a lot of time, as David does, meeting with and talking to election officials. And David can go into greater detail about this than I can because he meets with them more frequently. But I make it a part of my job now. I sort of carved out, Molly, a beat that I never had before, which is this place of how does our system function and why does it function as well as it does and how to understand it as deeply as I can. So in moments on television, when it is required to be precise and completely confident and 100% accurate, I'm trying to do that because when the moment comes, I want to cut through everything with absolute clarity.

And I can tell you in these conversations, they're prepared, they're ready, they're getting ready, but they're also kind of worn down. And there are times when it is hard for them to keep their composure. They lapse into moments of true anxiety that is tearful and almost feels therapeutic that they're just happy. Someone is curious about what they're doing and how, and they feel kind of besieged by their fellow countrymen. And that's such an unusual and dark,

and for them, deeply depressing place to find themselves. And they're, for the most part, seeing it through. and Marvel Studios has a whole franchise, Guardians of the Galaxy. Molly, if I may, these are guardians of democracy. They are good, hardworking, decent people thrust into something they never anticipated. And their fears, I hear. And I don't believe they would tell me of their fears and anxiety sometimes with tears in their eyes if they weren't real. Major's being a little bit humble.

He's kind of an unofficial member of the elections community now, which is very tight-knit community of people who really do feel a calling to protect American democracy, whatever, the outcome. And I go around my job as I speak with election officials and I assist them a variety of ways. And I've talked to election officials, local election officials all across the country, from Florida to Alaska, California, Georgia, Michigan, wherever. And what I'm finding for the first time is often I'll be speaking with them. And one of the things I often talk about are the facts around the 2020 election and what was actually accomplished, the most secure, transparent, and verified election in American history with the

highest turnout ever in the middle of a global pandemic. And it is very common. It happens almost every time where people are trying. And they will come up to me afterwards and hug me. And you can see what they've been through. It looks a lot like PTSD. I am not a therapist. I can't diagnose that. But they're weary. They're exhausted. They're constantly attacked. And to be perfectly honest, the Republicans are getting it perhaps even worse than their Democrats. Oh, interesting. There's not a professional election official in the country who thinks that the election was stolen. They know all of the checks and balances they have in place. They know there were more paper ballots than ever.

They know they audited the technology to make sure it worked properly. They know the courts reviewed all of this. They know how many redundancies and transparencies go into every election process. And they see how the losing candidate has leveraged the lack of knowledge on the part of the general public. They can't be expected to know all of this stuff. This is what I do every day. This is what these election officials do every day. And then to be attacked constantly. I mean, in some cases, literally threatened.

Their physical well-being threatened. And while they're preparing for the next major election with over 100 million voters and unprecedented scrutiny, it's wearying on them. That combined with kind of more generalized political violence, things like we saw on January 6th or threats at some state capitals like in Lansing, Michigan, Those are things we need to keep a close eye on. It appears there is a group of candidates and supporters of those candidates for whom there is no line that they will not cross. That ultimately all that matters is temporary political power and principles of democracy no longer matter. It's very much against what we've seen in the past. We talk about it in the book, Vice President Gore presiding over his electoral college defeat in 2001. Vice President Nixon presiding over his electoral college defeat in 1961. Even those election were much closer than 2020. It was one state that defined the election in both those cases. In 2020, it was multiple states, minimum of three. So to see this potential where margins no longer matter,

where process no longer matters, where people will just leverage fear and a lack of understanding to propel political violence is really scary for many of us. I mean, who do you think would be the person and what do you think they could say that could perhaps make life a little easier for these election workers. Molly, it really does belong on the shoulders of the former president. He began to cast out in 2016 at the next to the last or the last debate with Hillary Clinton. I can't remember. I don't know.

We'll have to wait and see. So that was being sewn by him even before 2016. And then lo and behold, he wins. He's like, oh, totally legit. Yes, of course I accept these. And then memorably in 2020 and to his forever historical shame, he said, the only way I will lose is the of election is rigged. He said that before people started voting, casting doubt as president of the United States, uniquely among every single previous occupant of that office, said the only way I can

lose is if it's rigged. And he has perpetuated that because he can't, he can't get off of it. Because if he gets off of it, he will have told the country, told the watching world, and most importantly, told the supporters whom have donated considerable sums of money that they don't have to donate. They're giving it over for the stop the steel movement. He would have to tell all of them that he has perpetuated a ghastly and unforgivable fraud. He can't do that. So he won't do that. So I have no confidence whatsoever that former President Trump will ever say anything other than he was the victim of a stolen election. But what others who are in political power in the Republican Party who do know better, and Molly trust me, they know better. They could say, I support

the Trump agenda on this, this, this, this and this, but I will not, cannot stand with this. And I will subdivide myself from the Trump movement at my own political peril on behalf of something bigger, which is America and the American experiment. I keep waiting for that moment to happen. David, a final thought? Yeah, I agree with Major, of course. I do want to say, we shouldn't forget the many Republicans who have stood up. for democracy, despite the fact that they likely voted for Trump. It's not just Liz Cheney and

Kinsinger, of course, they deserve credit as do people like Mitt Romney, but people in the state, Secretary of State, Brad Raffinsberger of Georgia, Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt, the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, people like Bill Gates and Jack Sellers there, Stephen Richard, the elected recorder in Maricopa County. We mentioned a lot of these people in the book. I mean, there are examples of political courage out there who put country over party, and that gives me some hope, but I'm also a pragmatist. I don't expect people for whom, life, the former president and the people who surround them, who have largely created this very profitable grift. I mean, there's a recent report that suggested Trump has raised half a

billion dollars in the last two years. The incentive structure is out of whack. And so I think we need to change that incentive structure. And the way to do that, I believe, most effectively is what I mentioned before is through accountability, criminal, civil accountability, bar licenses, et cetera, where people have violated their oaths of office, where people have committed crimes, where people have engaged in something that should incur civil liability. They should be held accountable. We just saw Mike Lindell the other day tried to get his defamation lawsuit dismissed and he failed and that case is going to go forward.

So there's a variety of ways in which the lawlessness and the contempt for the rule of law and democracy can be held accountable and hopefully change the incentive structure. Thank you both so much. This was great. Thank you, Molly. It's great. Thank you. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media.

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