The Daily Beast Podcast - Elon Musk Wants to Run Twitter So He Can Have Friends

Episode Date: May 10, 2022

Media Matters president and CEO Angelo Carusone came on The New Abnormal to talk Elon Musk’s questionable desire to buy and become CEO of Twitter, Tucker Carlson’s reaction to the New York Times�� pieces on him and what’s next for Fox News (it doesn’t look good.) Plus! Co-host Andy Levy has his own theory for why Tucker is horrible. And Robin Marty, Communications Director for the West Alabama Women’s Center, makes predictions on what’s next when it comes to abortion bans in the U.S. (Hint: lots of felony charges). 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. Man, this is one of my favorite shows we've done in a while. Media Matters President's CEO, Angelo Carosone, and he's going to talk to us about the implications of Twitter being bought by Elon Musk and the latest at Fox News. Then we'll talk to Robin Marty, who's the author of the new handbook for a post-row America, as well as the operations director at the West Alabama Women's Center.

and she's going to talk to us about what to do in a post-row world. But first, let's have some fun. Andy Levy. Molly Jongfest. As we descend into the technocratic dystopia, I always like to talk about the candidates of the man who shall not be named. It starts with Peter. It ends with, I cannot say.

He had a candidate last week, Hillbilly Elegy, sold a lot of copies, was a movie, Now he's a terrible candidate. He won his primary. I'm sure this will not be the last time we talk about him. The other piece in the set is Mr. Blake Masters. Another protege of Peter who shall not be named. Masters has said maybe now that Roe looks like it's going to be overturned by the very conservative Supreme Court. Perhaps it's time to look at that contraception.

Andy? Yes. Did you die? Are you there? I want to die, Molly, but I'm still here. I mean, what? Griswold v. Connecticut to protect a married couple's right to privacy. This all goes back to Peter Thiel. I have no problem saying his name.

I have led a clean life. But yeah, so we got this not-at-all porn star-sounding name guy, Blake Masters, out in Arizona, who says he will only vote to confirm federal judges, quote, who understand that Roe and Griswold and Casey were wrongly decided. Now, of course, Roe and Casey are abortion cases, and Griswold is the contraception case. It sounds like it's possible this guy just was making a mistake. I don't think so at all. Really?

Yeah, I don't think so. I mean, he's not the first one to do it. Your favorite Senator, Marsha Blackburn, talked about how she thought that Griswold was wrongly decided. We've known from the start that abortion is not the end of it for most conservatives. They want contraception banned. They probably want sodomy and gay sex banned. They want gay marriage banned. Half of them probably want interracial marriage ban, though most of them won't say so.

Probably not, Thomas. Yeah, I don't think he misspoke at all. I think this is exactly what we're going to be looking at. And it's not just going to be Arizona. It's going to be the governor of Mississippi hasn't ruled out banning contraception once this road decision officially comes down. This is where we're headed. And I just think you're going to end up with more than one state where it's possible that this becomes a reality. And some of this, I think it's important to mention, is because these people want a domestic supply of infants.

Yes, that's right. Judge Alito in his 98. page decision to overturn row, which of course is a draft, used the phrase domestic supply of infants as the idea. And again, this is like a real white supremacy, white nationalist trope, right? There is a very tight labor market. Immigration is down. The birth rate is down. this is sort of what they're trying to do here is rebuild the kind of group of sort of workers and white Christians to keep the country white and Christian, right? Yeah, and just as important to them keep women in the house. And I don't mean of representatives.

I've seen people sort of defending this domestic supply of infants phrase and saying, well, he used it, it was in a foot, it was in a, well, no, defending it in the sense of saying, well, it was in a, well, though, defending it in the sense of saying, well, it was in. a footnote and he's citing something else, but he chose to use the phrase. So that defense seems really silly to me. But I do think there's something telling about that phrase. And I agree with you. I think it's partially, it goes to the whole great replacement theory thing on the right that Tucker Carlson has now made very, very popular, I guess, among certain segments, where the, you know, the brown and black-skinned people are coming to replace us and the Jews are coming to replace us. And I guess in the past it was the Italians and the Irish are coming to replace us. But it's whatever they are wetting their pants about at the current time.

So I do think it's part of that. But I also do think it's also, you know, women are baby factories to them. Right. And that's what they want. I won't paint with a broad brush. I don't think that's what all conservatives want. I don't even think that's what all anti-choice conservatives want. But I do think it's a large segment of it that does want that.

And it's, again, not a leap to go from banning abortion and saying that, you know, Roe and Casey need to be overturned to saying that Griswold needs to be overturned. And, you know, from there it goes to why shouldn't states be able to tell you what you can, you know, what kind of sex acts you can get up to in the privacy of your own home? Right. Once you're arguing the state has a compelling interest in forcing you to carry a pregnancy to term, then, well, wait a minute. If we need to increase the domestic supply of babies, then you can't be doing sex acts that don't lead to the possibility of pregnancy. I know it's a slippery slope argument, but sometimes someone does put ice on the slope, and that's what they're doing right now.

Yeah, I mean, that definitely seems like that's exactly what they're doing. I don't know. It's just a grim, grim, weird place we're in in the year 2020-2, where we're saying that Republicans are going to go after birth control. And it's funny because it's like my mom, I mean, I sat through so many fucking panel discussions where women were screaming at each other about birth control and, you know, Roe and I mean, fucking Mori Povich, excuse my French. Every daytime show, feminists yelling at each other. And this is my whole childhood. And all of a sudden, we're back. And I'm 43. I thought, like, by 43, we would be fighting about something else. It's very depressing to me.

It really reminds me of the 80s. You know, where is Sally Jesse Raphael and her tiny red glasses? Right. Exactly. A lot of shit that's going on now is starting to remind us of the 80s and times like that. Where, you know, with the, you know, sort of the anti-examination. gay stuff that's out there now is straight out of the GOP 80s playbook. If you take as your guide the fact that they want to go back to the 1950s, the 80s is sort of halfway between there and here.

So, you know, as a first stop, I guess it makes sense. And then they just keep going back and back until they hit the 1950s. And then I guess, I don't even, I mean, they probably won't even be happy then. There was this polling that said that Republicans, the delisional, you, that Republicans, the large percentage of Republicans no longer believe in science. Did you see this? Yes. I want to talk to you about this polling. And I saw a friend of mine who's a Republican wrote, well, because the science never agrees

with us as a kind of way to dunk on it. And I thought, yeah, that's, I know. Wait, he meant that as a defense of not believing in science? I think he meant that as a defense of not believing in science. He said, well, the science always seems to take the liberal side. Oh, well. Yeah. So, I mean, I feel like we're in good shape here.

Like the thing, right, extreme polarization on trust in science is recent and very troubling, right? Democrats, 65% of Democrats trust in science and 30% of Republicans trust in science. It just makes me think, like, the problem ultimately, really, is going to be you're going to have this climate catastrophe coming and half these people are not going to believe it's real. Well, that's already the case. I mean, and I think it's more than half, honestly. Right. But yeah, I mean, look, the one saving grace of all of this is we will probably all be living underwater in, you know, like 30 years. So none of this will seem important, I guess. A pineapple under the sea. Exactly. Like you said about all these battles that, you know, we just people of a certain age thought were won already. It turns out you got to, you can't stop fighting them. I mean, you know, I'm old enough to remember if there were fights over teaching evolution in public schools. you can't tell me we're not going back to those fights. I mean, you've already got Republican school boards,

you know, banning books and doing all those sorts of things. So all these supposedly anti-critical race theory laws are like, well, we don't want our children. You can't teach our children to feel bad about anything. Well, that was the same argument for evolution that it was like, oh, you want to just tell people they're descended from monkeys and not created by God in his image. That's what you want to tell people. And so a lot of that was based on, you know, you can't teach people things that won't make them feel like they're created in God's image. So it's just everything right. Everything is so regressive right now. And I have to say, I have to put myself in the cap of people who thought it would never get this bad. I could not have been more wrong. And I remember saying this.

I sort of thought that the whole Trump movement was sort of the last gasp of this particular mindset and ideology. And it turns out I was really, really wrong about that. So I need to own up to that. The popular wisdom was once Trump is gone, Republicans will get seen again. And what happened instead was that happened for about a week. And then Republicans were like, well, the base still really likes Trump. Oh, well.

And that was it. Yeah. I'll poke around like on Twitter. Like when someone sends me some kind of nasty. reply. I take a second to look at their tweets. You know, I'll go to their page and look at their tweets. And the number of people who fully believe the Q stuff, who fully believe like Dinesh DeSuzza's insane theories, it's wild. It absolutely boggles my mind, the, like the percentage of this country that believes, at least to some extent, in the QAnon stuff. It is terrifying to see

people so divorced from reality and to have it be that many people. I explain it to me, Molly. I don't get it. Oh, yeah, I'm going to explain it to you because I have my finger on the pulse of what's happening outside of New York City. No, I don't fucking know. I do think what is interesting is that, like, people like Dinesh D'Souza who went to Dartmouth. And, I mean, he knows better, right? He doesn't really think that, I mean, just like Tucker, these people, this is, like, really just a sort of very involved grift. And I actually was thinking about this because someone who is not political was talking to me about all of these like Candace Owens type celebrities who sow dissent. And they were saying like in a sort of almost kind of like incredulous way is the word I'm looking for. Like some of these people don't even really believe what they're saying. And I was like, no, none of these people believe what they're saying. Like if you believe this, you're not smart enough to make the content.

that would appeal to these people. Right, although I do think there's another faction of the people, and I'll put Tucker Carlson, for example, in this category. I've just come to the conclusion that he really does believe in stuff like the Great Replacement Theory. His anti-immigrant views are truly held. And what I think is that when you're convinced you're fighting a war, then anything is fair. So I think Tucker Carlson thinks, well, I believe this is true.

and I am willing to say 10 other things that I know aren't true because it will help my cause because my cause is that important. Do you really think that? I do. I do. And I might be completely wrong. As you said, Tucker Carlson is too smart. And there are other people like him who are too smart to not know that some of the things

they say are just, they're completely false. They have no basis in reality whatsoever. But I think they do it. To them, it's all, it's all battles in a war. And if you can convince people, if you have to use, you know, whatever method you need to use to win the war are okay. And I really do think that that's what a lot of these, you know, people on the right who are grifters for the most part. But I think some of them do have, do actually believe the big stuff. And then they just don't sweat the small stuff.

Then they'll say anything that will help get more people to their side on the big stuff. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, it's certainly possible. really depressed now. Sorry. I get very distracted by my own depression. But yes, I think you're probably right. I mean, again, it's like one of these things.

Do these people, are they ideologically? Do they truly believe the bullshit or are they just pretending it doesn't even matter, right? Right. And I think a lot of it goes back to, you know, Andrew Breitbart, a guy I was friends with. Don't ever tell anyone that. No, I was friendly with him. And then I emailed him telling him he needed to apologize to Shirley Sherrod. and we were not great friends after that.

But he used to always say this. He used to say this is war. I mean, we used to see those. There were T-shirts with his picture and the word war on it. And I think that's where we're at. I think they believe this is war. And all's fair and love and war, right? And that's sort of the attitude they're taking.

And so anything they have to say to win the war is okay. Angelo Carasone is the president and CEO of Media Matters for America. Welcome back to the new abnormal, Angelou. Thank you for having me. You are the head of Media Matters. A Antifa. No, I'm just kidding. I think we both have made some enemies recently.

Yeah. One of them is Elon Mush. Yeah. Can you explain to me? I mean, I have some theories about what's going on, but I'm more curious to hear yours. There's a lot of say with you. There's a lot here.

the one thing that I think is a little bit, I don't know if it's missed necessarily, but I think is critical piece of information that helps explain a lot, is that I think of Elon Musk in two ways. One is kind of snarky, but also true. The other is, like, I think, more significant. The snarky one is that he is basically like a sophomore that just read and ran for the first time. And so, and like, like, that is, that is like a, right. Right. I mean, like, it's like, it is kind of like a little bit of a jab. He really does sound like that. On the other hand, the thing that I think is more relevant to trying to unpackage some of this is that I think if Elon Musk is a convert, you know, like, converts end up being like the most passionate or tend to be. They can be really

a, he is a, he's a convert. So like, and what I mean by convert, I mean that he himself has been redpilled. In fact, he's pretty vocal about the fact that he was redpilled, which, you know, it's hard to that's like the process by which you sort of become sort of one of these new online sort of far right figures. It's kind of like, you know, white genocide people use it. The men's rights people really use it, like the proud boys. It's the moment where you come to terms with the fact that the world, as you understood it was wrong and that it's really the bad liberals that have been driving it and sometimes even worse, right? They'll inject it ethnicities or others. But he's a right. He's been red-pilled. And there's a really, like there's a process. Like you can go back and look at all of his

tweets, his engagement, his content. He himself became red-pilled. And then worse, about a year or so ago, he started evangelizing the idea that it was important for more liberals and to become red-pilled. And when I think about him as a convert, a lot of stuff makes sense. Yeah. I mean, he grew up in South Africa. There's been some writing about this. Was he sort of a liberal and then he became this? I don't know if I would characterize him as a liberal ever.

I think that he, let's just say, like, was not, maybe he would have been sympathetic, but I'm not sure he would have been like the kind of person that was like, we need to attack trans people. We just need to go pick a marginal group and just like just like just for the hell of it. For existing, they bother me. And that I think is relevant because now he is like that. Now he's like by simply existing, that creates a stifling effect. Like your presence is making it hard for me to feel mean things and say mean things. And so I don't I don't like this anymore.

Or you've asked too much. You've asked for you've asked for protections, basic civility. And that's just that's just a bridge too far. That's censorship. Like he's, you know, he really has, and I focus on the trans thing, not just because I think I just picked a, you know, any marginalized group. It's actually one that he tends to be the most vigorously aggressive toward. And I think he sees a lot of the discussion around, and in particular not just the discussion, but a lot of the policy protections that social media platforms begin to implement specifically around trans identity, trans, people is just going too far.

And I do think that was one of the additional, like, things that seems to be fueling him is a real intense animosity, specifically targeted towards trans people for this idea that somehow they're hurting free speech. O'Ve. But it's interesting to me, like, here's a guy who made his money on electric cars. Yeah. I don't think he was doing it necessarily for ideological reasons. It's like somebody buying up all the water, you know, rights, and then, you know, being like,

well, they didn't want to poison the water. It's like, yeah, because they're basically betting on the fact that everybody else is worse than they are and is going to destroy everything and they're going to cash in on it. He was right about that. I will say to his credit, and I also think, you know, I'm a little nasty toward him, but I also think this is important understanding him too, and it ties in with the electric car thing. And it also explains some of the fervency.

I mean, I do think a lot of the fervency is centered on the fact that bad people, really just the worst people on the internet are like, oh, this is going to be awesome for us. But there's also another group of people that are kind of irritating, but they're not like the worst people. And I think Elon Musk does think about things in terms of civilization. Like there is a little speckle of hope that he does offer people, right? And some of it is fantastic, but there is something bigger. And I don't think that like the car thing was purely a function of him being like I can cash in on the demise of everything.

I also just think he was seeing the field and recognizing that it just this was an opportunity and it wasn't sustainable. I mean, it's not like he invented it either. He took the company over. You know, I mean. But I do think that is important to consider is that he does tend to. to think of things in a little bit of a bigger way. And that does give him some appeal to audiences increasingly young men, right, that young people don't feel a lot of hope.

And I don't blame them. I'm not sure Elon Musk is the answer. But I understand why some of the things he says feel like they speak to something bigger than the day-to-day fights. Do you think, though, that some of why he's become so red-pilled is just because those people are so nice to him? Yes. It really is that simple and awful.

Yeah. Yeah, because he's like, what it seems like to me from just like observing what's happening here is that Sernovich and Psobiak and a lot of these guys are quite good at being nice and sucking up. Yep. And they've been doing that. And I think Elon's like very, very rich, but pretty insecure. And so he's pretty happy with that. Yeah. And it just feels good, right?

I mean, he's, because the thing is they're not, they're more than just nice to him. They worship is a strong word, but there's a little bit of like a fetishize, and they hype. They hype him. They hype him. I mean, they have been appealing to him to buy a social media platform for about a year and a half now, maybe a little longer. And he's constantly dabbled with it, but the idea that they run to him to sort of as like a little bit of a savior is a part of it.

And that's the important thing to keep in mind because when he says free speech, what the audience that gives him the most engagement and positive feedback hears is. not free speech. They hear free for all. But here's a question I have, which I want you to explain to me if you can. I've read about this deal and everyone says a lot of people, a lot of really smart people say it's going to go through and it's going to happen. But I don't understand. I don't, he doesn't have the money. Like every way you slice this, he doesn't have the money. So every time I read this, like, and it's not like he needs $45 million. He needs $45 billion. Yeah. I look at these numbers and even if he gets $100 million from 100 people,

you know, or not 100 people, but even if he gets $100 million from a couple people, it's not enough. Look, I think the deal will go through unless there's a little bit of friction, but on the other hand, you're right. There's a huge amount of vulnerability here. So just keep in mind that in order to secure the financing, at least initially, the initial financing deal, he had to put up about 40% of his entire Tesla stock as collaboration. And he doesn't have much left, at least in terms of Tesla stock, that has not been put up as collateral. It's less than 10%. The other 50% have already been committed to things. So 90% of his now, his Tesla stock is now being committed to either this deal or other deals,

like it's locked. And to your point, one thing to consider is that, you know, as the price of Tesla's stock goes down, what ends up happening is because of Tesla's own rules, you're only allowed to borrow 25% up to 25% of the value of a share. Right. So he's putting up a huge amount more shares of Tesla stock than he's actually getting, which means as Tesla's stock starts to decline, the bankers or the financiers will demand more shares as collateral.

And at some point, they're required to do so because of Tesla's bylaws. So, you know, there's a risk here that his behavior and his volatility over the last couple days and it seems like it's only getting worse, can spill over to Tesla more broadly. I just don't understand why a Tesla user doesn't go to like another. I'm done. I don't need to be a part of this. Even just saying, this makes me annoyed.

I may not even buy a Tesla again. It's just like his market is actually the very people that he is essentially building an army to abuse. So I don't understand why, you know, like, so I'm with you. I think there's a vulnerability. But the other thing is like the way the stock is structured, it's not structured the way that Zuckerberg's stock is structured. I understand, and look, I'm not saying there are so many people in tech who believe this man

is an absolute genius. And maybe he is. You know, I don't know enough about this kind of technology to know what is his geniusness and what it, you know, I don't know is the truth. I don't know what he, you know, I don't know enough about that kind of thing. But I just don't understand And if you're a person who owns a lot of stock and you have this live wire, like, why do you want this? Like, don't you just want a CEO who, like, comes to work? Yes. I mean, you don't want volatility.

And right. Look, I mean, let's be honest. The stock has already gone down more than 15%. I mean, there's volatility. And I think even more than that over the last three months. And the announcement, you know, that he's going to take over a CEO of Twitter now. It's not that he's going to just own the company. He's already said that.

he's going to actually be the interim CEO for an undetermined period of time, which means he's going to be actively engaged on that. I'm just not sure. So he's going to be CEO of Twitter and also of Tesla? Yeah. I just don't understand where, like even if you put aside the volatile, and that's another thing. Every time there's going to be a controversy, oh, and there's going to be a lot of controversies. If he takes over the platform, you know, eventually people are not going to keep banging their heads against this private Twitter company that's, you know, they're going to end up going to the next place where there's some leverage, and that is Tesla. So to your point, I don't know why big investors stay with the volatility, and I think that's his big risk. And

maybe it's hubris at this point. Maybe it's this promise that he's going to return so much value that they're willing to hold their nose because they think they're going to make some money on the back end, even with Tesla. I'm just not convinced that he can, you know, that he can do that in this environment. And it's not, I'm not, look, I'm not blithe to it. I get the fact that this is a lot of money and this is a lot of power. But on the other hand, I'm also looking at the math. And the math really does seem to line up against somebody whose basic plan is, let's hand it over to, like, the dregs of the internet while simultaneously hoping that we can get money in form of subscriptions from maybe advertisers and some companies, while also basically making all of our advertisers mad. I mean,

I think the biggest alarm bell happened last week. Twitter did their event with advertisers, where they sell their ads for the next year, they didn't sell any ads. In fact, most of the major brands that had come out after the event said, yeah, we're just not doing this yet. We expressed some concerns about brand safety. We didn't get a response. And in fact, they're taking a wait and see approach. That's the same argument as an investment, because buying ads at the up front, when you buy them a year in advance, typically it's big media buyers, and you buy those ads assuming that the ads are going to be worth more money in a year from now so that you can sell them at an elevated fee to advertisers.

You know, there's an intermediary. And what's happening is if you look at that industry, they're looking at Twitter and saying, I don't think this is going to be a more valuable advertising space in a year from now because of what Musk is promising to do. So I guess I just, I see a lot of vulnerability. And I think at some point we have to stop indulging this stuff. We've already gone through this before when the Murdox and Roger Ailes built Fox News.

And I think that like this, You know, his vision about Twitter is bigger than Twitter. It is actually about how he reshapes the larger online information ecosystem, and he sees Twitter as the vehicle to do that. And I just don't know, we don't have to tolerate it right now. And at minimum, it is not a done deal. If he wrote a $45 billion check, I think we'd be having a different conversation. But there's a lot of dependencies here.

Well, and also, I mean, his plans that he's going to just make more users and charge them more. It didn't seem like he had completely thought it out, but it is amazing, and it certainly says a lot about what people can do with a lot of suspension of disbelief. Let's talk about Fox News. Tucker had that big New York Times spread. He said he was happy. I get the sense that he wasn't very happy. What's your thought on that? There's no way he was happy about it.

One, it did reinforce with pretty intense precision, his relationship and the feedback, loop between him and actual white supremacists. You know, people throw that word around. Right. And a lot. And I think that for many, it's not lost its meaning, but it's become a little diluted. But there's no denying it. Like it was anescapable. Like the article really did show his descent into white supremacy with incredible precision. And the other thing that it showed, and I think a little foreboding, was his own, like, he's just kind of an obnoxious colleague. Right. I mean, like, the guy, like, doesn't report to anybody in the company only reports to the supports of the boss's boss abuses his like fellow people there. Everyone he interacted with

ended up quitting at some point because he, if they said anything critical of him, including people that filed HR complaints against him, would get like attacked. I mean, none of it was terribly surprising, but I think what it does do is demonstrate one, that it's not just Tucker Carlson, that it's, that it's actually the Murdox themselves that have bought in on this, that there's an intense dynamism there. And then the other reason I think it's not flattering is it kind of makes him look pitiable, although he's not a person that's worthy of any pity. So he's like both simultaneously a pitiable person who also kind of has it coming. He's a monster.

And yet his life is kind of sad and just mean. I don't know. I don't think it portrays him in the way that I think he would want to be portrayed. Certainly not how he projects himself on, you know, to his viewers. It's somebody who's very content. And it didn't read like someone who seemed very satisfied in life. What do you think happens now with Fox News? They burn hot, really hot.

I think they continue to get worse in every way, substance. content wise, content wise, they lose staff at every level who have even the tiniest shred of integrity, which allows them to get worse. And that's not just because they want to. It's that, you know, the thing to keep in mind in this, and I think this is just important context, this is the first election in like 30 years where Rush Limbaugh is not the single largest get out the vote operation in the country. I mean, just 30, 30 years. He was the single largest get out the vote operation for three decades. And this is the first time. that we are in a electoral cycle where that operation no longer exists.

And what that's created is not just a void. So that could be good. I mean, that's like actually this first time anyone has come on this podcast and said something that didn't make me depressed. It's true. So congratulations. Right? I know.

I mean, it's reminding you that Rush Limbaugh's dead is the first time somebody came on. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Merry Christmas. But look, that matters because it means like there's a space right now for Tucker to step into that role, which is very clearly what he's trying to do. He's going to Iowa. Something Limba used to do occasionally when he wanted a flex would be to give one speech at one major event as sort of a way to serve as a central sort of to initiate through the whirlwind and to lay out the case for the argument that they were going to make that cycle. Tucker's doing that this year.

There's a void. So I think that what that means, though, is that in this void, no one's actually fully captured that mantle yet, but there's a lot of scramble happening. What does it mean for Fox? It means Fox will burn brighter, partly because there's an opportunity, partly because Tucker is hungry and he's scary. He's a full-on ethno-nationalist. And then the third thing is they need this. This is their last run. This is the last time they're going to redo the cable negotiations. Wait, why is it the last time? Because everyone's cutting their courts. And so from a market perspective, it's going to go screaming. Yeah. That's it. I mean, by the, by the Once they finish this round of deals at the end of this year, they will last between four and six years. Within that time period, the bulk of revenue from cable subscriptions will have dried up. And so this is really, so that's why they're trying to get so much this last run at the bank, you know,

just trying to grab as much as they can. But Tucker is the only person on the network that has demonstrated any capacity to convert Fox News viewers to Fox subscribers. Right. So what does it mean for Fox? It means they're going to get a lot more racist. and a lot nastier, and they're going to be more present on the ground in places where

at political events, at major speeches, Tucker will be one of the vanguard's there, but even Lackland flew all the way to D.C. for a one-hour book party with Bill Barr and then flew all the way back home. I mean, just to be present, physically present in a Republican event like that because they wanted to command that presence. So they're going to try to figure out how they leverage and capture as much of the space that Limbaugh left vacant and burn hot so they can get more subscribers. And it's that simple. So it is a moment. Burning hot means you can burn out faster and that's what I hope happens. And I think the article demonstrates that there's a lot of potential there. It also means that it could burn all of us. And I think we just have to be careful not to just pretend

that this is the same fox as always because it is really fundamentally different. And unlike Rupert Murdoch, who at least had a long-term horizon on the world, even though he was, bad. Lackland Murdoch is worse, not because he's necessarily, like, morally worse. It's that Rupert Murdoch believe there would be a future. And Lacklon Murdoch either doesn't or doesn't care. Right. And that's bad. Like, when nihilist, you know, at the helm with an ethno-nationalist, as their guiding light is, is basically a recipe for the cruise ship to crash right into the dock. Uh, all right. Well, now you've made me depressed again. Thank you so much, Angelo. I hope you'll come back. Thank you.

good to come on. Robin Marty is the author of the new handbook for a post row America, as well as the director for the West Alabama Women's Center. Welcome to the new abnormal, Robin. Hello, and thank you so much for having me on. I have wanted to have you on for a long time, but you wrote a book in 2019. How did you see this coming? By the way, the book is called The New Handbook for a Post Row America. How did you see this coming? So, My background is as reproductive rights reporter, and I have been tracking or had been tracking state-based legislation since about 2010, which was right when the Tea Party had their major election, and we saw that all of these state-based abortion restrictions were being brought about

fed to different legislatures. And in 2010, we saw about two-thirds, three-fourths of the state legislatures either become run by a red governor or their legislature was red. So all of these bills were introduced and they were all created by either National Right to Life Committee or Americans United for Life as these boilerplate laws that they had come up with as a means of trying to convince then the swing vote of the Supreme Court, Anthony Kennedy, to reconsider his position on abortion and say, okay, maybe we can get rid of the line of viability or maybe Rovi Way was wrongly decided. These bills were about 500 of them that came through and were signed into law roughly between 2010 and 2015. And so that was something that Rewire News

legal analyst Jessica Mason Peaclo and I had been tracking and trying to tell people. Can you just explain a little bit what Rewire News is for the people who are not as plugged in? Yeah, Rewire News is the place to go for reproductive health and justice news. It's been around, it started out as a project of the United Nations Foundation, and now it's completely independent. It was my first place of writing, and it's at rewire.com news. And yeah, it's mostly abortion. It's about birth control. It's about access, and it's about reproductive justice and the idea of every person being able to have the decision to decide when if and how to have a family and how to raise that family in a healthy environment. And so Jessica and I had been tracking this, but once Anthony Kennedy announced that he was

retiring, and so we knew that there would be a Republican that replaced him, we knew that that meant that everything that had been happening slowly and incrementally and very judiciously was going to hit the fan. And so as soon as that happened, I did a Twitter link. of all of these things that you can do to make sure that you are doing everything you can to protect abortion access now, but also make sure that abortion could be accessible once Roe v. Wade was overturned. It's so interesting because I didn't really start thinking it was going to be overturned until August when the Supreme Court saw SB 8 and decided to do nothing about it. Yeah. That was the moment I thought like it's over.

If they're not going to deal with this law, they're not going to deal with anything. But I do think you're right. And I want to talk to you about these state legislatures. Do you think the Democrats just were too unfocused? Because this sort of slipped through the cracks, except we all knew about it. Nobody could have suspected that anything could have been done to stop this because nobody wanted to bother to try to stop this. Yeah.

I think that Democrats relied on this idea that, surely the GOP, especially the GOP Supreme Court, would not be crazy enough to overturn precedent. Like, we are such a stupidly polite party. We believe in decorum. We believe in following the rules. We believe in justice. And it's held against us in many ways. But also, I think it can't be made more clear how much the GOP has.

especially in the last two years and three years, been embraced by Trumpism. The people who are doing these total abortion bans who are saying now maybe we should ban contraception, these people, for the most part, yes, some of them are true believers, but most of them were politicians who never entirely expected Roe v. Wade to be overturned. They've been introducing these things with the idea that they would never have to see the repercussions of them going into effect because Roe v. Wade would always be there to protect them. And one really clear example of this is the fact that I'm out here in Alabama and in Alabama, we had the first total complete abortion ban. It was passed in 2019 and it said that there were no

exceptions for anything except for the life of a pregnant person. When that ban was introduced and voted on, the people in our legislature tried to put in an exception for someone who was sexually assaulted, and the author of that bill said that she would kill the entire bill if that was added, because this was meant to go and try and probe Roe v. Wade and get it overturned. Now, she has been doing media all over the state saying that the purpose of the bill has been fulfilled, and because of that, her intention going into the next legislative session is to replace that total ban with a weaker abortion ban. She wants to have a heartbeat ban that would allow very, very, very, very early abortions.

She wants to have exceptions for rape and incest and for fetal anomalies. Because now that they can see what's going to happen and they're getting the blowback, they don't want this anymore. It's so interesting because that that is clearly what's happening and it's just to see it happen in real time. I mean, I also think it's almost like what they did with Trump, right? Trump said all these very base things because it got people excited and it raised money. But then all of a sudden, he had radicalized the base. He was very clear about the fact that he was just doing it for the votes, for the manipulation.

I mean, the fact that they literally had to talk him back from, oh, yeah, I think all people who do their own abortion should end up in jail. The pro-life movement basically said, no, we don't say that. And he pulled it back. But now that we're here, Louisiana is introducing bills to put any person who does their an abortion in jail, they're going to proliferate. Roberts was really dangerous, but because he would, because things would still look normal under Roberts. Like he'd do extreme stuff, but make things look normal. Now we have five, we have five radical justices.

Yeah. And so everything they're due, I mean, we saw them, you know, they did this clean water. Act overturned on the shadow docket. I mean, they're pretty emboldened. What do you think, I mean, you're clearly a psychic. Where does this go? I'm very disturbed, honestly. I mean, everything the Supreme Court does disturbs me.

But one of the things that has me the most frightened right now is watching the Supreme Court shadow docket different parts of the voting access. The Alabama state made a even more gerrymandered voting map and it was challenged by the ACLU and the Supreme Court has decided to just let it go. There will be essentially, despite the fact that I believe 35% of Alabama is black, there will be one congressional district that is that is majority black. That's voter suppression in its most basic form. And it's also racism, right?

It is. Also, it's because it is imperative in order for the right to stay in power to make sure that only their people are allowed to vote. And that's, in my opinion, one of the reasons why we're seeing that these new abortion bans are all about felonies. You can be in a felony. Yes. So if you help me get an abortion, if you, if you, this is somebody, if you have an abortion, these are all felony charges. And so as such, if you are a person who is pregnant and you are caught trying to do your own abortion, for them, you can be put in jail, you can be monitored to make sure that you have a healthy pregnancy,

and also you can have that pregnancy taken away by the state because now you are a felon. For anybody who's assisting them, you've lost your right to vote. There is no better way to target all the people that you are most terrified of having access to vote than saying, okay, let's make abortion and abortion access a felon. And they're doing it because they know that if we do have a point in which there is no legal abortion, especially across the entire United States, they've lost a huge chunk of their voting base because they have so many people who are only voting on the issue of abortion. There are a lot of people who listen to this podcast. What should they do? So obviously vote.

Please vote. Number two, make sure that you have some sort of plan if you are a person who can become pregnant. Plan out in advance what your plan would be if you think that you are going to have an abortion. If you are someone who is afraid that you won't be able to access a clinic, do feel like you can get medication online early. That is something that especially going through groups like aid access.org, you can get pills ahead of time. Make sure that you are only speaking to people that you are completely comfortable

with knowing that you are pregnant if you are thinking that you might not continue it's going to be imperative that people don't share information if they're planning on having an abortion because that is going to become a dangerous thing. Make sure that you, if you do decide to give out money, give out money to organizations in red states. And this is really important because one of the trends that I'm watching is this idea that because abortion is only going to be legal in blue states, if it stays legal, because now we're seeing federal bans being being discussed, that giving to a blue state, which is a receiving state, is somehow a better use of resources because it's all in one place. Whereas we need resources here in red states as well,

both because we need them in order to protect our own communities. But there is no amount of money that we will be able to give to people in order to move them into another state for an abortion. There are always going to be people, and these are the most marginalized people who can't do it because they can't leave their state for a week because they have children or a job or they have a disability and can't get on an airplane. They are too young. They don't have documentation. And these are the people who are going to need to stay home and do it themselves. And they deserve just as much protection and care as anyone who's going into a legal clinic in a blue state. Our abortion clinic here in Alabama, we run the West Alabama Women's Center in Tuscaloosa. And our goal is to stay open as long as

humanly can as long as we have money to be a safe place for people who are experiencing troubled pregnancies to be able to go and get assistance. And this is so important because when we are talking about a postro America, we're talking about essentially no legal abortion from Texas all the way over to the ocean. We're talking about a region that has not expanded Medicaid at all. And it is a region with the worst health outcomes, the worst maternal mortality rates and the worst access to health to begin with. And because of that, those people who are getting pregnant, even with wanted pregnancies, are also experiencing pregnancy complications. We know already that at best, one out of every five pregnancies is going to end in a miscarriage.

And when you have illegal abortion, that means that every person with pregnancy bleeding can be investigated as a possible abortion. We need to have safe places. for them to go and get care where they don't have to worry about potentially being turned into the cops. Jesus, this got so dystopian so quickly. It did. People often ask me, like, what could Democrats do? What could Democrats do? That is such a great question.

And I really wish that I had a more hopeful answer. Right. Codifying row, you're never going to find 10 sane Republicans who would vote against this. crazy, zealous religious group. And that's the thing that's so frustrating because when we look at where things went wrong, because I'm always looking at where things went wrong, if you go back to 2008 and 2009, there was a period in 2009 where the Democrats had the White House, they had the House of Representatives, and they had a veto-proof Senate majority.

and the ACA was passed, but the ACA was only passed because the STUPAC-Pitz Amendment and the Nelson Amendment got into it that said that abortion would not be something that had to be mandatory covered in insurance plans. So even when we allegedly have all of the powers under our control, we still use abortion, especially as a bargaining chip in order to get to whatever it is that we think. is the next biggest progressive value. And we have to tell our Democrats now, abortion is not a bargaining chip. They cannot get elected.

They cannot be in power. They cannot represent us if that's the one thing that they are willing to always give up in order to try to get their bills passed. We're losing a right that we've had for 49 years. And there's no way to put it back in the bottle, right? I mean, this is a draft. I mean, I think it's what's going to happen. but conceivably you could get one justice of the kind of crazy five zealots.

I mean, a gorsuch could theoretically change his mind, right? Even if a gorsuch changes his mind, the best that that is going to mean is that Roe v. Wade is still overturned because Roe v. Wade isn't about abortion being sent back to the states. It's about the states not being allowed to ban abortion completely prior to viability. Right, which that happened in text. So the moment the Texas, Texas happened, that was it. No, was gone. So that's gone.

We need to stop thinking about Roby Wade in that sort of way and think about what is bodily autonomy, what are willing to do for bodily autonomy, and how do we make our lawmakers protect bodily autonomy? I don't know that answer. What I do know is that whatever progress we do make, because I fully believe that we are going to make progress, this is going to be the bottom. From your mouth to God's ear. But I don't think they're going to be.

able to get that national ban to go through. I just, I can't see that happening. I firmly believe that one of the reasons that this leak was let go was because they thought that we would burn through our anger. I think a conservative did it. And that they thought that all of this was better to have now than closer to the election time when we might use our rage in order to get votes. What we have to remember is that when we do start to recover some of these rights, we have to make sure that we're still fighting on every single level. Because when we took over the federal government in 2008, that's how they came back with the Tea Party and took over all of the state governments in 2010.

And when we started to move some of that on a state level, they narrowed down back into city councils. And now, like, we're telling people focus on city councils, do things locally because they're really important. and we see that the right is focusing on school boards. So there's always a new place that they're attacking from whenever we think that we are finding one place of control. So we just need to remember that it's not about federal elections, it's not about local elections, it's about every election. And so if we are going to say that campaigns and voting is the answer, we need to make sure that it is the answer to every single question on every single level and not just,

just say, okay, I've done it here, so I've done my work. I'm so stressed. But I really appreciate you coming on, Robin. I really do, and I hope you will come back. I will be back anytime you want me, Molly. Thank you so much. Andy, Levy. Molly, John Fess.

Who is your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy for today is, and it was tough competition today. There's Eric Adams, the mayor of New York. You really wanted to do him. him, didn't you? I did, and I know we have to, we can't, but I still wanted to drop his name in there for arresting someone for selling mangoes in the subway. I'll be a good boy now and move on, though. So my, my, my, my, fuck that guy for today. It's a guy named Paul Joseph Watson. He's a insanely popular YouTube streamer and he's one of those alt-right guys that sort of laid the

foundation for the hellscape that we find ourselves in now. And, As reported originally by an outlet in the United Kingdom, Byline Times, they found audio of him saying a whole bunch of racist and anti-gay stuff and eventually ending by saying that he would really like it if someone would, quote, press the button to wipe Jews off the face of the earth. Look, this is a guy who has, I believe, over 2 million YouTube subscribers to his page. He's not a nobody, unfortunately. And, you know, again, he's one of the people that has set the agenda for the way the Republican Party has been moving.

Nobody is sitting there going, I can't believe he said that. Because, you know, if you've ever had the misfortune of running across any of his stuff, it's not surprising. It's only surprising that he actually, he said the quiet part out loud, as we say these days. So he gets my fuck that guy for today, even in a day of strong competition, the guy who uses the phrase sand N-word and says he wants to wipe Jews off the face of the earth, he wins. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a good call as these things go. Do you want to know who my fuck-that guy is? I am barely sitting on my couch. That's how close to the edge I am.

You know, it's hard to pick because is my fuck-that-guy Trump? is my fuck that guy, Esper, is my fuck that guy, Don Jr. For saying that there's nothing wrong with Daddy wanting to bomb Mexico because, look, he wants to get rid of the drugs. I don't know. It's a virtual cornucopia of fuckery. The three of them, Trump wanted to bomb Mexico. Esper told him he couldn't. Now Esper has a book to sell.

So Esper wants us to know that Trump was really dangerous, but he was only going to tell us that once he has a book to sell. And then Don Jr. was like, Dad just wanted to stop the drugs. Like, he just wanted to stop the drugs. I don't know. I mean, they're all so bad. It's hard to pick one. I mean, they get the three, the father. Yeah, no, I'm not going to make that reference.

The three of them get, they get it today. So for that, I would say, if you were so concerned, Mark At Spur, I don't know if you know this, but there are things you could have done, which didn't involve saving it for your book. And for that, they all get a hearty fuck you. Look, I've come around on this thing. I think what Trump was doing here when he wanted to bomb the drug factories in Mexico, that was his version of an intervention for Don Jr. 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 will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world.

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