The Daily Beast Podcast - Elon Musk Is the Billionaire Grinch That Ruined Christmas

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

Billionaire Elon Musk’s meddling has given America’s elected officials a taste of what is to come from President-elect Donald Trump’s right hand man. “And it’s only the beginning,” said The New Abnormal co-hosts Danielle Moodie. Plus! Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Spencer Ackerman joins the podcast to discuss the next administration’s potential reshaping of Middle East policy, and The New Republic writer Edith Olmsted unpacks Musk’s unprecedented presidential influence. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

What a great show we have for you today. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Spencer Ackerman, writer of the Forever Wars newsletter and contributor to Zateo, is here to break down how Donald Trump's incoming administration is poised to reshape U.S. Middle East policy through a dangerous clash of civilizations lens. Then, Edith Olmsted, Associate Writer for the New Republic, joins us to unpack Elon Musk's drawing political influence the Republican Party's chaos and the latest twists in Donald Trump's legal troubles. But first, let's have some fun. So we are but a handful of days away from the Christmas holiday. And Elon Musk is the gift that just keeps on fucking

giving coal and shit to America. And it's just the beginning. So with a day to go to avoid a partial government shutdown. The president-elect, Elon Musk, has taken to his broke-down social media site to threaten Republican members of Congress that if they vote for this bipartisan continuing resolution that would fund the government through March, that he is going to spend his disgusting amount of wealth on primaring them. And he is using not only his own X account, but the made-up agency Doge's account to spread wild misinformation about the 1500 page bill. And what he said in one of his posts was, and I'm paraphrasing, let's close this place down it won't be that bad.

We can survive 33 days. No bill should pass until Trump takes office. And by the we can survive 33 days, who, the people who will not receive their paychecks, the agencies that won't receive funding, we know that Elon Musk is totally fine. And the entirety of Donald Trump's billionaire oligarch cabinet and leadership will be totally fine. What they continue to show before anyone puts their hand on that Bible on inauguration day is that they do not care about this country, how it functions, who they harm.

It's just one big joke to them. And I mean, oh, Andy, it's, this is just the beginning. Yeah, that's the scariest part of this, is that it is just the beginning. Yeah, I think he was actually quote tweeting another account that is one of what a lot of people feel are many accounts that are run either by him or by his toadies. But either way, it's his sentiment. And I'd like to say it's tone deaf, but I don't even know what the tone is anymore. I mean, the number of times in the past year, or I mean, we can go back a lot further, but I'll just keep it to this election cycle. Like, the number of times that Donald Trump or someone in his orbit has said something where

I just thought, man, that's not going to help him. Hasn't hurt him and may well have helped him. So forget about even the tone deaf part. It's just it absolutely, as you said, it reveals who these people are. Not that we didn't know it already, but it's just, you know, it's further proof. Of course, Elon Musk, the probably richest man in the world, you know, he will be fine. He'll be fine if the government shuts down for 33 days. It'd probably be good for him because his entire thing, he is basically doing.

all of this because he wants to pay even less tax than he does, and he wants to have even fewer regulations on his companies than we have. So shutting the government down to him is a win, and that is literally all he cares about. And, you know, what's wild is that this agreement that was reached to not shut down the government was a completely bipartisan thing. That, as Bernie Sanders posted also on X, he said, Democrats and Republicans spent months next to negotiating a bipartisan agreement to fund our government. The richest man on earth, President Elon Musk doesn't like it. Will Republicans kiss the ring?

Billionaires must not be allowed to run our government. All of which I agree with, except billionaires do run our government. I sort of feel like, you know, that ship has sailed at this point. But all of these guys, all of these tech bros, the Mark Andresen and Ben Horowitz is, the Jeff Bezos, who apparently just met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Elon Musk. all literally all they care about is lower taxes for them and fewer regulations on their businesses. And they do not care even the slightest bit about America. And the con job that Donald Trump has done on a lot of people, it's phenomenal.

Credit where credit is due. I mean, he pulled off, you know, one of the greatest cons in American history probably to convince millions and millions of people that he's fighting for them, that he cares about them. So it's just the whole thing is disgusting and disgraceful. And like you said, it's just the beginning. And I don't know. You want to talk about the fact that Sanders referred to Musk as President Elon Musk, which has become a thing now? But that's the thing is that I'm wondering, I'm sitting here wondering,

Elon Musk now is the one that takes to social media. This is what Donald Trump was doing, taking to social media and dictating his demands. but now Musk is doing it and Republicans seem to be lining up behind him. So I'm like, so who is the king of Maga? Is the king of Maga now Elon Musk? And Donald Trump is playing second fiddle to this billionaire, right? This is a, he's richer than him. He has more power than he does.

So when you're kind of looking at this play out, you're seeing them fall lockstep behind Elon Musk. It really, really makes me wonder how this is going to play out moving forward. forward. He's the one that's taking meetings with foreign leaders. He's the one that is threatening Republican House members. Like, it's really wild. But I don't think that Donald Trump is the one that's in control right now, nor do I think that he has control over Elon Musk. Yeah. And there definitely seems to be a concerted strategy over the last few days among Democrats. And I've also seen like never Trump or Republicans doing it too of referring to President Musk. And obviously, The idea behind this is that, you know, Donald Trump is one of the thinnest skinned people in the world,

one of the most insecure people in the world. And the thought is that anything that drives a wedge between the two of them is good. And I find myself in agreement with it. I don't usually, I'm not a big fan of the sort of, you know, hashtag resistance type things, which this smacks a little bit of. But I do think that this one is actually, you know, I think there's a lot. more strategy going into this than there is, you know, talking about, you know, the orange man or calling him drump, you know, and stuff like that, which I just always thought was really silly.

But this, I do think gets to something. And I think I brought this up when we talked about how, uh, when, when Trump was given the man of the year by Time magazine, you know, in sort of the other way around that I thought it would annoy, I was hopeful that it would annoy Musk and, and start driving that wedge. I think this does the exact same thing in reverse and hopefully annoys Trump. And like you said, Trump's sitting there and Elon Musk is way richer than he is. Mm-hmm. You know, he's out there being very, very visible.

He has over two times the followers that Trump does on X, which shouldn't mean anything, but to someone like Donald Trump probably does. And I am all for doing anything that, you know, has the possibility of setting these guys at each other throat. I think it's fantastic. It's fantastic, but it's also terrifying. Sure. Right? Because, I mean, here's the thing. We already know that Donald Trump isn't beholden to any rules. There are no guardrails. He owns the Supreme Court, the Congress, the White House, like, we get that. But I also think that people have not really thought about what happens when you have an unelected billionaire, the world's richest man, now creating the tone and the tenets.

for how this country is going to be moving forward. This is a man that was brought up, right? I believe, in apartheid South Africa. He has a very different ideology and policy and political makeup that is very on point with white nationalism. And he has been celebrated, sadly, by both Democrats and Republicans. He has security clearance of the utmost power under. a Democratic president, Joe Biden. He's received billions of dollars in government contracts from both

Republicans and Democrats. So the fact that this man is now not the shadow president, it's more as if Trump is in the shadows and Elon Musk is taking center stage. And I don't think that maybe Team Trump thought this far ahead. You know, they kind of like to take things as it comes. Yeah. I want to make it clear that I'm not advocating for anything here. But if I were Elon Musk, knowing how much Donald Trump loves Vladimir Putin and knowing what happens to people that Putin decides are not acting in his best interest, I might be a little worried. On the other hand, you've now got Republicans wanting to make Musk the Speaker of the House of Representatives. And, you know, we go through this a lot where, yes, there's absolutely nothing that, you know, says that the speaker has to be a

house member. I do think some, you know, people who actually look at this seriously have said, well, that's because the people who wrote the rules just never imagined that it wouldn't be someone from the house. But either way, you've got Rand Paul and Mike Lee out there putting forward the notion that the house should, should make Elon Musk speaker. And of course, both those guys are senators so they don't actually have a say. But still, it's just the idea that this is being floated. And again, I don't know if, like, Trump can't be happy about that either. I have to think that all of this stuff at some point is maybe going to backfire on Musk and there's going to be a huge risk. Or maybe it'll backfire on Trump and he'll just, you know, spend his entire presidency at

Marilago giving horrible wedding speeches and golfing. I don't know. But you know, maybe this is is what Donald Trump has wanted. You have none of the responsibility of being the leader of the not so free world anymore, but you receive all of the perks, which was the get out of jail free card that he needed and all of his cases to go away. And maybe the deal was this, that Elon Musk would come in, would take over everything. Donald Trump can stay down in Mar-a-Lago on his gold toilet, hand over the keys to America to Musk, so long as he stays out of jail and he's able to continue to enrich himself and he doesn't have to work. He's basically a trad wife. Maybe that, like maybe we all got it wrong.

Well, maybe J.D. Vance got it wrong when he put that Thanksgiving picture up where he was the trad wife to Donald Trump. Because I don't know, is he, is he the other woman in this situation? I mean, if he's the mistress in the situation, I think he's going to get. cut real quick. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, I think that J.D. Vance was kissing up to the wrong billionaire because I don't, I think that he's the one that's going to end up getting the shaft at the end of all of this. Speaking of getting the shaft, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ran to be the ranking Democrat on the oversight committee and she fell short. And she fell short to a 74-year-old Democrat named Jerry Connolly, who literally last month announced that he had throat cancer.

And obviously, we wish him well with that. And all of this happened basically because Nancy Pelosi wanted it to happen. And she ran a campaign to get Connolly elected to this spot. And the gerontocracy just keeps on winning. Mm-hmm. It's so troubling. And it just says so much about the Democratic Party that rather than taking one of the younger members of the House who is a very, very good public speaker and very good at getting messages out, and who has turned into a very, very good politician. But Nancy Pelosi decided she wanted someone who is more, I guess in her thinking, more age appropriate. Richard Neal is 75 years old. He's going to be the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee.

Frank Pallone is 73. It's going to be the party's top rep on energy and commerce. Maxine Waters, who's 86, Rose DeLoro, 81. All of these people are going to be the senior Democrats. I was told just last week that we needed a younger, better communicator on the judiciary committee. So Jerry Nadler had to go for 62-year-old Jamie Roska to take over. And I have no conflict of interest to disclose here. Yeah, yes, for sure. But it really is just across the board. I don't know. Daniel, what are they thinking? Tell me, please.

I don't think that they are thinking. I had to pull it up again. You just listed off all of their ages. And I say this all the time. We're not trying to be agist. No. Right? But there is clearly a changing of the tides in our country, in our politics, in our society, in how you connect with people, how you engage with. them and these folks are not it they are so far removed from what the average american person is dealing with because they have been wrapped up in this institution for decades meanwhile you have an aOC and i i was speaking with another friend of mind who said that she doesn't think that aOC is actually ready that she's not ready to take on this level of leadership i disagree i think that aOC is absolutely ready. I think that she was what? Like, it's just a few years removed from being a bartender, right? It's just a few years removed from having to figure out how she was going to pay her rent in

New York and rent in Washington, D.C. as this young member. Like, she is more connected. And just by virtue of post-election, asking her followers that went viral, asking them, how did you vote for me? I'm just curious. Tell me the decision-making process of voting for me and Donald Trump, of splitting your vote, which gave us so much insight by her just asking a question. When was the last time the Democratic establishment asked the people of the party a fucking question? Like, ask the voters a question to get to the core of what it is that this party needs and wants. I just think that, you know, it is beyond time. Nancy Pelosi, the first Trump regime, she,

was really on it. And I give that to her. And I think that she has been one of the most effective, when she was Speaker of the House, one of the most effective speakers that we'd ever seen. But there is a time and place for your mode of action. And what kills me about this Democratic class is that they refuse to relinquish power. They refuse to recognize that things have changed. It's the same shit that led Joe Biden to come into office and think that he could go back to being chummy chummy with Mitch McConnell, throwing back scotches, discussing policy, and moving the country forward. Your way of politicking was for a 20th century America, pre-maga. That's not where we are. And most of these battles are fought on social media and in traditional media, not in back

rooms on Capitol Hill. So I really, I don't understand, but their moves show such a lack of self-reflection, which is why people are tuning out of this party. Yeah, you know, it struck me that there's a guy named Pat Ryan, who's a congressman here in New York. He's in a district in the Hudson Valley that is, you know, also fairly moderate. He brought AOC to campaign with him when he was up for re-election. I think he, I think this was back in October. And that raised some eyebrows. And he was like, I love her. I think she's so great. She's so great at communicating with people. Yeah. we may not agree on everything, but that's okay. I think, you know, and he just could not have been more effusive about her.

And he won his reelection, and it was a tough fight. And, you know, so I think about things like that when people say, well, she's not ready or she's this or she's that. And again, I go back to, she has developed into such a good politician. And I don't mean that disparagingly. A lot of times I would. But I don't in this case because she hasn't really, you know, you can't say that she's given up on her convictions.

But she has learned over time how best to sell them and how best to portray them to the point where a moderate Democrat who was facing a tough re-election campaign wanted her by his side. And it just seems to me that that's the future. If the Democratic Party is going to have a future, that's the kind of thing it needs. Instead, we get all the ranking Dems at the youngest being in their 60s, most in their 70s or 80s. We get Rahm Emanuel being floated to be the head of the DNC. And I am so, I'm trying to moderate my tone here. Why? I don't know.

You're right. No, you're right. You're right. I'm not going to. I am so fucking pissed at the Democratic Party right now. Oh, are you surprised? No, it's not that I'm surprised. You know what?

It needs to stop. And if they can't figure out that they're losing elections, not because of the minute percentage of the country that is trans, but because they have stopped figuring out how to appeal to people, I don't know what to do with them, Danielle. I'm going to say the one thing that I think does need to be said in both Ryan Grimm and Ben Terrace's books. You can see a hostility by the leadership of the Democratic Party towards really what they see as the left that pisses off the donor class. And the thing that AOC and Jerry Nadler, who were both pushed down in this have in common, is that they are seen as that before.

The squad got to Congress. Jerry Nadler was seen as one of the most progressive members of Congress. And that's a lot of this. And yes, I will disclose this time that my wife works for Jerry Nadler. Yeah, they hate progressivism. Yeah. That is the truth. And I continue to say they are not centrist Democrats. They have become moderate Republicans in their view of the world and their desire to continue with incremental change. They think that is enough. And the voters have said, no, the fuck it's not. My next guest says that major decisions about the Middle East and the U.S. role in it are about to be shaped by a coterie within Donald Trump's incoming administration that views the region and its peoples in terms of a grand historical clash with Islam. Joining me now is writer of the Great Forever Wars newsletter at Forever-Dashwors.com, contributor to Medi Hassan's journalistic endeavor Ziteo and the writer of an amazing new Ironman series, The Stark Rocks on War. He's the Pulitzer Prize and National Magazine Award-winning journalist Spencer Akerman. Spencer, welcome back.

Hey, thanks for having me, Andy. So before we get into the specific players here in the Trump administration, let me ask how this is different in your mind from what we saw under, say, George W. Bush. Was that administration more of the classic neocon persuasion rather than the more maybe theocon thing that we're seeing now? Yeah, you know, this is always going to be an argument about which faction has, you know, which. larger portion of the pie. We're not talking about a kind of zero-sum circumstance. But in the Bush administration, the faction that was, you know, really there for Christianity versus Islam in the Middle East played far more of a subordinate role. They certainly had a whole lot that suited their agenda, but the agenda was being made by neo-conservatives who didn't, while they certainly had a very

Dower view of Islam often didn't share a kind of formal clash of civilization belief set. Here we have it where people in major positions in the Trump cabinet and sub-cabinet over foreign policy do have those views. So who are the folks we talking about here in the Trump administration? Should we start with Tulsi Gabbard, who Trump has tapped to be his director of national intelligence? Because I am Spencer reliably informed that she is kind of a peacnic. Yeah, well, certain aspects of her peaceness kind of very quickly dwindle away when it comes to Islam.

And she said this herself. She's talked about how when it comes to American wars of regime change, she's not for that. She means basically against Bashar Assad, Syria, probably about MoMA, Gaddafi, and so forth. But when it comes to the war on terrorism, she has said that she is, in fact, a hawk. And you might ask yourself, is that really a distinction with a difference? considering how many of those regime change wars occurred in a war on terror context, Saddam Hussein, probably the most important of those examples. The thing about Gabbard is she views, and this is something that she'll share with Pete Heggseth, who will talk about in a moment,

her experience waging the Iraq war as teaching a lesson about the incompatibility of Islam and the United States or the incompatibility of Islam with Western civilization or the incompatibility of Islam to Christianity. Different players in the Trump orbit would use different phrasings for that. Nevertheless, there's really quite a constant of Gabbard viewing Islam in a threatening civilizational way, the way she talks about radical Islam coming to America's shores. In her most recent book, I was surprised when I read it that she views almost really exactly like you would hear from Trump, circa 2015 to 2018, talk about the danger of an open border coming from its porousness for jihadist operatives to come filtering in,

which has always been a paranoid fantasy, but one that works well in the context of 9-11 residue. Yeah, and as you said, I mean, 9-11 was 23 years ago. Her book came out this year, 24, right? This year. And she really sounds like this was kind of yesterday in her mind. Now, how much of that is because this book is a, you know, campaign season polemic, the reader's going to have to determine. But nevertheless, it's significant that this is the terrain she wants to fight on. All right. So before we get to Pete Hagsath, who you mentioned, I want to ask you about Trump's picked ahead the CIA, John Ratcliffe. I had forgotten that he was Trump's director of national intelligence for a period in the first term. And now he'll be working under, Tolstor.

Gabbard? Okay, so the relationship between the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is a weird one. It's not really a settled one. It's going to be basically the way that Trump wants to array who's top dog in this circumstance. But Ratcliffe got on Trump's radar because he was Trump's strongest soldier during his first impeachment. And the one who was really, along with Jim Jordan, quick off the block to talk about Ukraine, being a cauldron of anti-Trump sentiment that Ukraine tried to interfere in the 2016 election and it wasn't really Russian and so on and so forth. Basically, he became Director of National Intelligence at the very end of the first Trump

administration, basically with a mandate to create counter-narratives around Russia and around COVID and did that job well enough that he was now rewarded with what, in some senses, going back to what I said before, is a much more powerful job. Certainly, it's influence on intelligence operations and intelligence analysis. It is more institutionally powerful than the Office of National Intelligence. But if Gabbard is in this role because Trump views the Office of the Director of National Intelligence as the head of the intelligence agencies, which is kind of sort of what the position is, then she will have more power inside the administration than he will. And is he a clash of civilizations guy?

Not as far as I can tell really much more of a kind of orthodox magist. I don't expect that he has the sunniest disposition about Islam. But unlike Gabbard, unlike Hegsef, unlike Sebastian Gorka, who I'm sure we're going to get to, he doesn't seem to have this as kind of the thing that powers his engine. All right. So let's go to Pete Hexsend, you mentioned earlier. He of the Deus Volt tattoo. I really can't think of a bigger poster boy for the Clash of Civilizations mindset. Yeah, me neither. This is someone who's lesson like with Gabbard that he

took from his combat experience in Iraq. He has training experience in Afghanistan. I'm not sure off the top of my head if that also included a combat tour, but also his for all of that guard duty, exterior guard duty, not on the blocks, at Guantanamo Bay, that Islam is marauding, whether you want to call it, civilization, whether you want to call it, as some people in the Islamophobic right, like to put it, a political ideology. Either way, it's coming to get us. And that was the lesson of 9-11. That was the lesson of Iraq. That was the lesson of Afghanistan. And so on and so forth. And now we see Hegseth got himself cashiered from the Army National Guard because he's he has Crusader crosses and Deus Vault tattoos. Those are things that often are associated with

far-right violence on behalf of kind of, you can fill in the blanks of what that often means. It doesn't mean always the same thing for the same people. And for a lot of people, it's just a cool tattoo. But nevertheless, that's an identity that Hegsitt, this Fox News host as well as a fairly prolific author, leans into heavily, that he is a warrior on the front lines of civilization. and that his ability to serve in such a role is being undermined by all sorts of liberal-coded menaces at home. And that's the danger of those liberal-coded menaces at home. In the piece you wrote about this over at Zateo, you contrasted Hegset's sort of what he took from the Iraq War with a guy named Daniel Vicente. Can you just quickly tell that story?

Because I thought it was really instructive. About a year ago for the nation, I interviewed this guy. who's a regional director with the United Auto Workers and is responsible for something like 36,000 union members and retirees and protecting their interests. And he was also in Iraq War veteran. He was a Marine also did some stuff in support of the Libya war in 2011 and like Iraq and illegal American action, to say nothing of a folly. And one of the things when we were talking that this guy, Daniel mentioned about his service, is taking away and, understanding that the people he fought against in Iraq were people he had more in common with

than the people who sent either of them to fight in the first place. You know, he said something to me that was on the order of, you know, I found that here's this poor schmuck in Iraq fighting a poor schmuck from, you know, Philadelphia. And that was something that he cited is really important for like his growth of class consciousness and solidarity. And the reason why I bring it up in the piece is because I've met lots of people who fought the wars of the past generation, who took that ultimately as the lesson of their experience, that they were made to fight a rich man's war, that they were made to fight something that never had any real hope of victory, looks uglier with each passing year in retrospect, and ultimately enriched oil companies and

defense contractors. That is a way of understanding the military experience of the post-9-11 era. Another way of understanding the military experience of a post-9-11 era won't ever get to a historical and material critique like the one Daniel has, because it says that this is simply Islam versus Christianity, or sometimes Islam versus Judeo-Christianity. And in that respect, there's no reason for anyone who adopts that critique or reads more into that critique to ever ask why it is that it's a poor schmuck from Philadelphia fighting a poor schmuck from Najif. I'm not getting the exact quote right, but people who read the nation and who find that

column can see it for themselves. And that's a really important thing. That's something that the more purchase it gets in American society, not just on the right, stands in the way an emerging class consciousness that I think we're seeing right now. Yeah, that's why when I read that part in your piece, I was. really, really struck by it because Vicente seems to really get it, for lack of a better term. Now, because you mentioned Iron Man, I based a character in Iron Man on him. This interview was special to me, enough for me to do that. Oh, wow. All right. Shouted to Daniel Vicente, who we turned into

Ramon Vicente in Iron Man. Oh, excellent. I'm going to have to look out for that. All right, you mentioned Sebastian Gorka, so let's talk about him. He is going to be the senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council, which is one of those things. where you think if you're not in the know, you think, I don't know, is that a big job or is that just sort of a, here you go, Seb, leave us alone. It really is a powerful job, isn't it? It's a very powerful job. So is Secretary of Defense. So is the Director of National Intelligence. But the senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council, it can depend from administration to administration, but is usually the person who is the president's day-to-day point

person deputy coordinating what we would call the remnant of the war on terror. Operations against ISIS in Syria, operations against ISIS in Iraq, what I think they like to call over the horizon operations from the Biden administration against terrorist targets, blah, blah, blah, not the person with the ability to execute operations, but someone coordinating and overseeing it all, having unique and tremendous visibility and influence over. what the scope of the war on terror is circa 2025. And again, he is, I'm assuming, a clash of civilizations guy. To the fullest.

And also, like, a blowhard clown. Yeah. Yeah. Someone, you know, made famous on the internet by James Adomian's brilliant impression of him. Right. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Oudvo's led, Mr. Chapo. Greetings.

It is I, Dr. Gorka. Ha ha ha ha. But also, like, a guy who since over the past 15 years, a little longer than that, has built up a surprising, perhaps, amount of influence considering how ignorant he is within military and special operations centric higher military education, what's called professional military education or PME, a long-time lecturer at the Marine Corps University at the Joint Special Operations College, at a joint special operations university, and very often. lecturing to security audiences to include the FBI, which is how he first got on my radar. He was a long time ago, I want to say about 15 years ago, I did a piece for Wired Magazine about Islamophobic counterterrorism training within the FBI. And Gorka was one of the people, to a lesser extent, than the person I focused on the most, but also very much in the mix alarming people who set in on some of those lectures inside the FBI

about the things that he was talking about and instructing FBI officers about, which had to do with the fundamental incompatibility of Islam with the United States. In various different fora, he's talked about they're not really being a difference between militant action and trying to secure Sharia-compliant mortgages for Muslim homebuyers in the United States. Basically, the first thing that goes away when people tend to subscribe to clash of civilization theories is an ability to draw relevant distinctions between what is a practice of someone's religion and seeking to live by the tenets of a religion and what is a violent action to

overthrow both law and custom and even the Constitution in the United States. And this is just sort of the last thing I'd like to say on it. Studying religion, any religion, is the work of a lifetime. It is a never-ending quest to understand often esoteric textual meaning and as well, a struggle to apply the moral and ethical lessons of religion to everyday lives. What happened after 9-11 is a whole bunch of, I would say, grifters, but certainly influential policy analysts who also became entrepreneurs talking this viewpoint to very powerful clients that include not just the FBI, but police departments around the country, and military audiences decided that we don't actually need to do any of that. We need to simply point to aspects of religious

instruction that seem to have a militant bent or instructional message to it. And only those of Islam. not those in Christianity and not those in Judaism, and talk about that as being a blueprint for something like 9-11. And that's what's being brought into this White House, as well as the media savvy aspects of it, which is something in new media, Gorka does well, and is something in televised media that's been Hegssets stock and trade for a long time. Yeah, for sure, all of that is just, it's so true and it's just so much. There is one person that, if memory served you didn't mention in your piece, and that's the incoming vice president, J.D. Vance. Obviously, he's not in any direct role, although it's always to be seen how much power

of vice president will have. But is it fairly safe to put him in with the clash of Siv, folks? I want to take a pass on that because I was thinking in terms for this piece of like, who's going to be in foreign policy and national security decisions. That's not often the vice president. Yeah. So I didn't really look at Vance there. It's a good question. And I can go back and look through Vance's stuff, but I don't have an answer for you on that. Okay. Well, I'm sorry I had you on then. Yeah, big mistake, man. You've got to do some due diligence. I do want to talk before we go about a couple of people who maybe don't fit the Class of Civilizations profile. And that is maybe Marco Rubio at State and Michael Waltz, the National Security Advisor. Rubio is an interesting

case because of the way that, I guess Waltz is too, but the way that kind of standard Republican catechism since 9-11 has just remained with this kind of overbroad and, you know, frankly, slanderous view of Muslims and of Islam. So it can be kind of hard to say, but both of them are people who certainly take a pretty overbroad viewpoint about what constitutes radical Islam that could probably do with viewing particular adversaries who have Islamic backgrounds and motivations for what they do. through the prism of the actual circumstances they confront. For instance, the Taliban are not a movement to spread Islam around the world.

There are a movement to control Afghanistan along certain Islamic principles. That's not really how Waltz, who's played important roles in opposing and investigating the way that Biden withdrew from Afghanistan of describing extant and continuing threats from the Taliban, of which I think it's fair to say there aren't actually in any appreciable measure, certainly not compared to other threats. the United States faces. Gabbert, by contrast, says that radical Islam, I think she called it the global jihadist threat, is the greatest threat facing the United States right now. And that's just not a credible state. Rubio also takes a pretty broad view of the malignancy of Islam, but tends to focus more on specific cases, Iran, for instance. Now, the way that, the reason why I did all of this was to cash out the fact that we are in for some really serious U.S. decision-making about the Middle East coming up as soon as Trump takes office in terms of the

way that forces that may wish to overthrow or certainly destabilize the Iranian government feel that with Israel's regional campaign against Iranian power has gone, that they have a bit of a wind at their back. Israel is also making noises about annexing the West Bank and by possibly staying in Gaza beyond the next year when you look at what's been reported about military. construction. And all of that is a flashing red light, both for the survival of Palestine and as well for the prospects of war in the Middle East, stretching from Gaza to Iran. And these are the people who are now going to be making decisions that whether they intended or not will push the region quite possibly in that direction. I didn't get a chance to get to Mike Huckabee, who's going to be

Trump's ambassador to Israel and of whom you wrote, he is the envoy you send to present. reside over annexation, which I thought was an excellent turn of phrase. Spencer, thank you so much for being here, as always. It's always educational to talk to you. And I know Ironman issue three comes out Christmas Day. So while you are spending the morning with your family, probably you're going to want to watch at least the 12 o'clock NBA game because that's the Knicks. After that, that's all you. That's Iron Man time. You've got to get out to that comic shop and get Iron Man number three. going to be, you're not going to regret. No spratu erasure. When I yell out the window, you boy, what day is it? I'm going to hear it's Ironman three day. That's right, sir. Excellent.

Folks, I am very happy to welcome back to the new abnormal. Edith Olmsted, who is an associate writer for the new republic, who is written like at breakneck pace with multiple breaking news stories that I want to get to with first being, I thought, Edith, that the election on the ballot was Donald J. Trump versus Vice President Kamala Harris. But it turns out that whoever in MAGA thought that they were voting for Trump have voted for President Musk. In your recent piece, entitled Trump dragged for letting, quote, President Musk run the government, Elon Musk is single-handedly driving the government into a shutdown. What's happening here? Well, I'm so happy you asked because I'm, first of all, so happy to see Musk rising to the occasion from a humble doge czar to becoming,

you know, functionally president of the United States or president-elect of the United States. He has begun a sort of torrent of cyber bullying against Mike Johnson and any Republican who dares to support the spending bill that's on the floor right now. He tweeted probably, like 150 times yesterday, not to say that he doesn't normally tweet that many times, but it was a lot of tweets. And they were all about how bloated the spending bill was, about how long it was. Every time one of these guys complains about how long a bill is, I'm like, well, I know that it's hard for you to read so long, but some of us can. But basically, he took issue with how long it was, all of the sort of placating to the Democratic priorities that it did. But ultimately, it's one of these things

where it's like they hate that it's bloated. Like if Elon's thing is getting rid of government bloat, anything that is big, he will hate. So he hates it. But what's wild to me here? This was a bipartisan continuing resolution that would continue to fund the government through March. We understand, unlike Elon Musk, how government actually works, which is that the majority that the Republicans have very slim, very, very, very slim. And we know that we've watched Speaker Mike Johnson try and corral a bunch of like, I don't know, rabid cats into a barrel. And so like the point being that Elon Musk, I don't like, do you think that he understands how government works? When he's tweeting, yeah, shut it down, we don't need the government funded for the next 33 days. Let's not do anything until

Donald Trump takes office, of course he can say that. He's sitting on $400 billion. He doesn't have to worry about waiting on a paycheck. Totally. It's amazing to me that who he really appeals to in the House right now are the Republicans who just don't want to do their jobs. They're so sick of governing, which is what they were elected to do. And so for those of the Republicans in the House who hate their jobs, everything he says makes perfect sense because they don't want to do the actual work of getting people their paychecks and running the government. And they never have. And so finally, they've had this night and shining armor come in, Elon Musk, who gives them the opportunity to say, hey, yeah, let's just hold up this whole thing because we weren't doing anything anyway.

The accuracy. Which is like, and so you have these people like Thomas Massey and Victoria Sparts who are just jumping at the opportunity to totally abandon their responsibilities and say that they want to help out Doge and focus on cutting spending. They could have done that in their official capacities, but decided not to try. It's very brave what they're doing. It's super brave. As he said, when asked, what would it take for you to vote for Speaker Mike Johnson?

He said, quote, a Christmas miracle. It does feel like this is a Christmastime story. It's sort of like the pragmatic billionaire comes in to get rid of everyone's presence. But instead of it being like the happy ending of Scrooge, it ends with just like a giant fuck you in your stocking. One of the things that you wrote here, and I want to get to this point, too, is that the actual president-elect, you write, quote, the president-elect didn't deliver his opinion on the proposed continuing resolution until the end of the day, Wednesday, when he demanded,

via his vassal J.D. Vance, that Republicans raised the debt ceiling. So what did you make, and what should we make of the fact that here's Elon Musk firing off 150 tweets, but the actual president-elect weighed in after Elon Musk set the tone? I think that Elon is playing a really interesting role right now in sort of drumming up the kind of chaos that Trump seems to thrive in. I mean, he was also really staying silent today, which I found so strange because obviously so much has been going on today as well. But yesterday, I feel like everyone was kind of waiting with bated breath to see what he would say and what he ended up saying was something totally unrelated to what Elon had been saying all day because Elon's been complaining about all of these

parts of the bill that he thinks are unnecessary, whereas Trump is like focusing on a completely different issue. So I think it's almost like they're doing some kind of like bait and switch misdirect, but that actually is giving them way too much credit. I think Trump is totally clocked out, if I have to be honest, because he's exactly the kind of thing that he loves to do. He loves to yell at people. And today, silence all day, all day. All he tweets is like everybody wants to be my friend. And then at the end of the day, he goes after Chip Roy. It's like some of us have deadlines, dude. why are you not tweeting more during the day? I love it.

Let's stay on Mike Johnson for a moment as well, because in your other piece entitled Mike Johnson's spending bill may have cost him his most powerful ally. We alluded to what Massey and others have started to say and the threats that Elon Musk has started to put out. And, you know, frankly, I don't know who would want to be speaker of the House with this rabid group of Republicans because it sure as hell is not me.

and like who wants that job. But it has seemed now that Mike Johnson may in fact be out of a job and out of Donald Trump's favor as you write. And then you had Rand Paul coming in up the rear saying, let's elect Elon Musk. So what do you think the fate of Mike Johnson is going to be and how soon will we know? It has been amazing to see Rand Paul, I think Mike Lee and Marjorie Taylor Green have all been posting about this day, Marjorie Taylor Green sent out an email to her constituents asking them if they would support a push for Musk to become the speaker. I can't imagine who would be a better speaker than Johnson

necessarily, but I do think that he is in big, big trouble. I don't really understand how this disconnect happened between him and Trump because he said that he had a direct line to Musk and Vivekramaswami the day before the bill dropped that he had been chatting with them via text. But it doesn't seem like he was able to enact or act on any of the things that they obviously think, which is that the bill is terrible. And notice reports basically reported that Johnson didn't tell Trump what the 1,500 page document said, which I don't know how I would tell someone what a 1,500 page document says, because especially if you're talking to Trump, I don't know how you would understand. Pictures? Yeah, pictures could be really helpful. If you could create a graph, that would be perfect.

He loves graphs, but that's beside the point. I feel like basically Johnson has, really made a misstep here, which surprises me. And I think that he needs Trump's support if he wants to be reelected in January. He needs to be reelected if Congress wants to certify the results of the election that is supposed to put Trump in the White House. Like, we are on the verge, basically, if this goes as badly as I feel like it's going, we could be seeing a constitutional crisis perhaps next month, sort of early next month very soon. So that's certainly cause for concern. And Hakeem Jeffries has basically indicated the Democrats have no intention of saving Johnson if he's trouble. He was asked and they and his response was no. And I thought, oh, look,

for once the Democrats actually showing that they may have the formation of a spine, which is that instead of trying to play the adults in the room, they're going to let Republicans do what they're very good at, which is combust. They are combusting. And you know what's funny, though, is that Rand Paul's statements that he made about championing Elon Musk, as Speaker of the House, Edith, it was all about quote unquote owning the libs. It was like literally everything that he said was just like their heads will explode and wouldn't it you know like it'll be so great and like it has nothing. Nothing, absolutely nothing to do with governing. It has nothing to do with what they think that he could bring to the table because we know that in the constitution it does not specify that the Speaker of the

House has to be an acting or current member of Congress. So other names have been floated over the years of people that could come in. But how likely do you think that what seems to be a gag that they're trying to play on Democrats could end up actually choking them? I feel like they have pulled this kind of crap before. I remember when they were trying to get Trump or they were saying that Trump should be the next Speaker of the House. Like this is a group of lawmakers who are obsessed with disruption and obsessed with not doing their jobs because they think it's hard, which is I totally respect. But I do think owning the libs has become the main purpose of the Republican Party. Like, there is nothing like deeper going on there, especially among these like fringe voices like Paul.

I really don't see it happening. And like, of course, I'm sure in two weeks I'll be like, why did I say that? And like all hail the speaker, Mr. Musk. But I feel like now I'm seeing that they have this like pattern. Johnson tries to pass a spending bill. Trump gets angry at him. All of them get mad at Johnson, but then something happens at the last minute and Johnson's actually okay and the spending bill gets passed. I think we are much closer to a government shut down now than we have been before just because of like the way that timing is working. Yeah. But I don't see them doing an actual sort of prank on the American people by trying to get Musk to be Speaker of the House. And even if they did, I think that people are obsessed with disruption and are

obsessed with owning the libs. I think the only thing that can outweigh that is Republicans realizing that they can do their jobs. Not that they want to do their jobs, but like how exciting and how much, like, how honorable it would be if they could manage to do it, you know? This is how I've been feeling about the Senate leadership also,

which is just like, these guys are also like kind of obsessed with disruption in their own way, but like what they care about slightly more than disrupting is being the guy in charge. And I don't think they would give that up. You know, and I want to ask you this,

speaking of being the guy in charge, we know that Donald Trump loves the spotlight, loves the attention. Like you said, he's tweeting, everybody wants to be my friend. Look at me. I'm so popular now. Everybody's treading down to Mar-a-Lago to go have the attention of the king. But Elon Musk is making, right now, more headlines than Donald Trump is. And I'm just curious, how do you see that playing out? This kind of, I don't know, attention grabbing that Elon Musk is doing with the public versus Donald Trump. Well, it's interesting because I feel like Trump has a history of getting rid of people who kind of dull his sparkle.

He wants to be the center of the attention because he's like, he's a showman. He's an entertainer. That's who he is. And so I feel like the bigger Musk becomes, the more likely it is that he'll be kicked out of orbit, which would be interesting. But something that does worry me is like when Trump spends two days not tweeting, I think this is like an older guy who maybe doesn't want to have the reins the same way that he did four years ago. Maybe this is somebody who is like, I am a pragmatic businessman. and I brought another pragmatic businessmen to ruin the government. It's not just my responsibility anymore.

We might be seeing a new side of Trump who is more willing to let someone come into the fold, but he does historically hate that. I said this earlier. I said that Donald Trump got everything that he wanted. By becoming president again, his and we'll talk about the Georgia case, but all of his cases have disappeared. His sentencing in New York, not going to happen. Everything, all of his problems have now gone away with Election Day.

and him becoming president. All he can do now is sit back and, you know, grift off of the government, make as much money as he possibly can, and know that he has absolute immunity moving forward. So he's gotten everything. Christmas came early for Donald Trump. And so it makes sense to me that then you let Elon do what he wants to do because you've already won. But I think that to your point, I think that his ego, regardless of how he's, how old and tired he is, I think his ego is going to rare its ugly head.

I think so too. And I also think what you're saying factors into his request to raise the debt ceiling. Like, I feel like a guy who wants to get rich off the government, that's what he's going to ask for. Like, this is all part of like a gorgeous plan to make Musk rich and himself rich by extension. And I think that we're just kind of watching that play out. Christmas is here. It's at our doorstep. So speaking of the Trump cases, the last case that had any life to it was the job.

was the Georgia RICO case brought by district attorney Fannie Willis. Now a court has decided that she is unqualified because of the improper relationship to lead this case. Tell us what happens now in Georgia. Willis's office has already indicated that it plans to appeal the decision from the Georgia Appeals Court, which would, if taken up, send it to the Georgia State Supreme Court. So that is one possibility. It could get appealed. and the case could move forward with Willis at the head.

But what actually is maybe more likely to happen now is that Willis and her entire office are no longer allowed anywhere near the case. Very sad. They've been working on it for like over three years, not good. I think it was Anna Bowers, who's the senior editor at Lawfare, was posting about how now it will get kicked over to someone named Pete Scandalakis, who's the executive director at the Prosecuting Attorneys Council of Georgia, which is a nonpartisan organization.

And he will be assigning a new prosecutor. cuter. But as Anna Bowers from Laffert suggested, it seems like that is going to be very difficult. Finding someone to Phil Willis's spot is going to be so difficult, in fact, that it will probably lead to the case blowing up. Oh, how wonderful, you know. When Donald Trump said back in 2016, you're going to get so sick of winning. And then he proceeded to have a clown car of an administration. It was just deferred because he honestly has been winning. Case after case, moment after moment over this last year. And I am just, you know, if Fannie Willis is removed and they're not able to find somebody to fill her shoes, this incredible RICO case that needed to

move forward will in fact just be dead on arrival. You know, Edith, I thank you so very much for all of your breaking news coverage. I don't know how you do it. But I am certain that something probably broke while we were on while we were recording, but I really appreciate you making time for the new abnormal. Yes, thanks for having me on on government shutdown Eve. I'm so excited to see what will happen next. Government shutdown Eve again. Thank you. Andy Levy. Daniel Moody. Andy, how are you closing out this pre-holiday week with your fuck that guy? Well, my fuck that guy involves Luigi Mangione. But in this case, it is not him.

He has now been charged by New York prosecutors under a 9-11-era anti-terrorism law. So they indicted him on charges of murder, which, yes, absolutely, he murdered someone. And whether, again, whatever you think of what he did, he very clearly murdered someone. one. But the charges they went with are murder as an act of terrorism, which is a New York state law that calls for stronger sentencing. And from a legal perspective, I don't understand this at all. The statute says that you can add this crime of terrorism thing. If the crime is done, quote, with intent to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policy of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion or affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder,

assassination, or kidnapping. I honestly don't see how any of those apply. He is not intimidating or coercing the civilian population, many of whom have turned him into a bit of a folk hero. I don't know how you say that what he did has any bearing on trying to influence any unit of government. It is very clearly, when I said I don't understand this legally, I very much understand why they did it, just not from a legal perspective. They did it, Alvin Bragg, et cetera, because they want to send a message. And I guess the message they want to send is it's not okay to kill rich white guys. Mm-hmm. And that's terrorism. But as many, many people have pointed out, there have been horrific murders of people of color that absolutely do not get their perpetrators charged with terrorism.

I mean, let's be honest, in a lot of cases, it's hard enough to even get the NYPD to investigate them fully. It is so clearly, as Manjone's lawyer said, he is being overcharged, which, as the Associated Press points out, is courthouse lingo for saying the prosecutors went too far. I mean, I think we probably understood that. We can figure that out on our own. But it's just unreal to me. And again, he absolutely should have been charged with murder. I'm not for a second saying he shouldn't have been. But the idea that what he did was an act of terrorism is just to me, the only reason they're doing this is to send a message and I guess to make other healthcare CEOs sleep a little better at night.

I don't know. I guess my fuck that guy here is, it's New York prosecutors. I'll just leave it at that. Fuck those guys. Yeah. I don't think that they're sending the message that they want to be sending with this charge. I think that they are in some ways, making. the point that he made in his alleged manifesto, which is that the powers that be, these very

wealthy, greedy CEOs who make profit off of people's pain, now they're the ones that are the real victims. Like, they're the ones that need to be taking care of, like to, you know, that they're the ones that are that are terrorized in this, in this country. Give me a fucking break. He should be charged with murder and he was charged with murder, but this is not terrorism. And I think that once again, you are seeing that power and wealth will always protect power and wealth. And that was the point that he was making a gruesome and violent point, but apparently it's the only one that America ever listens to. And so I think that he just gave Mangione's lawyers a really good narrative to spin on their defendant's behalf because I do think that the that charge here was egregious so fuck those guys

all right Danielle close out I was going to say the week but I guess this is the last fuck that guy of the year we do have episodes over the next two weeks new new episodes but there won't be any fuck that guy so I guess you get the last fuck that guy of the year oh my god how excited well travel with me will you out of the country to France where I like to live in my mind most of the time. But so there's been a case that has just taken the country by storm, which is that of Giselle Pelicott and her disgusting, absolutely abhorrent ex-husband, Dominique. And this case is just, let me give you a little bit of the background of this, which is that

the former husband of Giselle Pelicott, this is according to CBS News, has. had admitted to drugging and raping her repeatedly over the course of almost a decade and inviting dozens of other men to assault her as well, which he videotaped. And 51 men were being charged with the sexual assault of Giselle Pelicott. And what she did is that she said that she wanted her full name to, peer to be published and that she wanted the court proceedings to be made public because she wanted the shame, the shame that was supposed to be put on her as a victim of rape to be turned on these disgusting men. And in a case that has rocked the country and in many ways the world, they were all,

every single one of them was found guilty, all 51, including. her ex-husband who will receive the longest sentence of 20 years in prison, the remaining 49 will receive sentences ranging from 3 to 15 years. And I just, I can't applaud this woman's courage enough, her bravery enough, to change the face and the image attached to sexual assault and violence against women. But it dawned on me that if this case, had happened in the United States, these men would probably end up in the upcoming cabinet

of the United States. Yeah. Because think about the women that have come forward whose names we all know from Anita Hill to Dr. Christine Blazy Ford to E. Jean Carroll.

Think about the women that have come forward to accuse powerful men of sexual assaults, sexual harassment and think about where those men are today. In this country, we do not take violence towards women, sexual assault, harassment seriously at all. And so I was grateful for Giselle's bravery to do this and thankful that this case was happening somewhere other than the United States so that she could receive the respect and the outcome that this kind of egregious, disgusting, inhumane acts of violence that took place over nearly a decade should

result in. But here in America, oh, those men would have been turned into celebrities. And so for this reason, to all of those men, to all of those men, fuck those guys all the way till infinity. But this is also a time for America to take a real hard look at itself and what is about to unfold because the thread that goes through this upcoming cabinet and regime is one of violence against women. And the difference couldn't be starker. Yeah, for sure. A couple of things. Pelicott, the husband, the ex-husband, was also found guilty of raping the wife of one of the men who was convicted of raping his wife and also of taking and distributing illicit photos of Giselle, their daughter Caroline, and two daughters-in-law.

This according to the New York Times. 20 years don't sound like enough, but he's 72, so make of that what you've made. The last thing I want to say is that under French law, Claudine Pelicott, could have remained anonymous, and the trial would have been private, and she chose to waive that. Mm-hmm. And that is just so extraordinarily brave, and I cannot salute her enough. It is obviously awful that she had to do this, but to have the courage to do that, you know, particularly knowing that oftentimes in our society here in America, in French society,

other societies, rape victims are not portrayed as victims or survivors. Everything gets twisted around to make it their fault. Just an extraordinarily brave move on her part. So a huge salute to her. 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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