The Daily Beast Podcast - Eric Swalwell: 'We Aren't Being Told the Truth About Russia'

Episode Date: May 22, 2020

Rep. Eric Swalwell brought the real talk on the latest episode of THE NEW ABNORMAL. He told Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson that he’s “afraid” America’s intelligence agencies aren’t telling “the truth about what Russia is doing” to sabotage election 2020. Swalwell offered BS-free assessments of the Mueller probe — “Trump got his way and we lost" — and impeachment, telling Rick and Molly, “I don't think we would have moved forward with impeachment if we were in a pandemic.” Swalwell also came clean about his quarantine beard, his blink-and-you’d-miss-it presidential run, and the “ankle monitor [Donald Trump needs.” Plus! Rick and Molly dish on the Florida’s dumbest election, the Trump campaign’s cannibal clan, and the “competition of the dumbfuck supervillians.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi folks, this is Rick Wilson, and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly John Fass, novelist, an editor-at-large at The Daily Beast, and the person who tells Rick not to tweet the things he wants to tweet. I'm an editor-at-large at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, best-selling author, and full-time troublemaker. The new Abnormal is about one nation under a pandemic and how it's changing all of us. We'll talk about what's happening in the country and the culture and look at good and bad people, leadership, and ideas. I come from very different political worlds. But what brings us together is that we both love America, and we realize that putting our country over party and ideas over ideology might be the only thing that gets us through this. We'll be joined by smart guests from media, politics, culture, medicine,

and science. I'll try to keep Rick to the minimum number of curse words and try to keep our pets and other wildlife sands from invading our respective bunkers. So, Molly, it looks like the week after we interview Gretchen Whitmer, all of a sudden Michigan turns into the center of the political universe. I blame us. Oh, yeah. It's definitely us. I actually blame you. Oh, probably. I'm generally to blame for most things. But this weekend of Michigan, we had what? We had a dam collapse. Right. The dam was owned by a Trump supporter. Oh, yeah. The full hat and gear kind of Trump supporter. So I'm not saying that he'd caused it deliberately. I'm just saying that everything Trump touches dies and therefore the associative property of him owning the dam led to the catastrophe. It's simple science.

It's the only answer that makes sense. Right. But I would say owner of the dam that, flooded Midlands ignored federal regulations for years. So just saying. He seems nice. Yeah, good dude. But the big story out of Michigan this week is their secretary of state did what secretaries of state do, especially now in the era of COVID, and sent out absentee ballot request forms to all the registered voters in the state, Republicans and Democrats. The White House and the president and the Trump campaign and the RNC and the Michigan Republican Party and everybody on Fox News proceeded to complete. completely shit the bed. They lost their minds, declaring this to be the worst and most egregious example of voter fraud in the history of mankind. So, Molly, let me give you 30 seconds. Give us the dark Republican strategist take on why they're attacking voting by mail, please. Every single Republican state party and every single federal committee, the RNC, the Trump

campaign, all the super PACs, every single one of these groups is going to drive mail balloting. They're going to drive early balloting, either through. absentee ballots or early voting. Every one of them that can do it legally in their states and it can be done legally almost everywhere. Every one of these Republican parties is going to do this. And if the Democrats are so fucking stupid as to take the bait on this unbelievably hypocritical and idiotic attack, they deserve to lose. Because this is how the game is played now. You start the election six weeks in advance. You start the fight six weeks out. And Trump saying that mail balloting is invalid is in part because he's trying to pre-invalidate the election. He wants people to think that it was invalid if he loses.

And secondly, he hopes that Democrats will say, oh, well, God, we don't want him to tweet about us. So we imba-uh. Fuck that noise. Every Republican Party is going to be doing this. All the state victory committee is, is it allows the state parties, the state Republican parties, to co-mingle money with the federal party, with the national party, and do voter turnout operations, supposedly for every Republican or Democrat on the ballot. All those Victory committees are going to be doing early voting stuff. All the state parties are going to be doing voting stuff. Anybody who's out there saying, this is going to cause fraud and it's terrible and all those

people are going to cheat. Yes, they're going to do it because it works. You want to put votes in the bank early. It's legal everywhere. Everyone ought to be doing it. And I've had this fear the last few days. Some Democrats are like, well, maybe we shouldn't be so, no. Get in this fight.

The Republicans will absolutely be there and they will roll the shit out of them. if they don't play. My home state of Florida is one of the places where part of our secret sauce in winning so much territory in the last 25 years was that we ran aggressive early and absentee ballot programs that Democrats never did. Democratic voters, a lot of them want to turn up on election day. They want to walk in that door and vote on election day. That's great. It's wonderful. It's also in the modern era of COVID. Maybe not the smartest thing. And I'm fearful that the Trump folks are trying to do a two-string message. The first string is, Mail balloting is invalid and it's criminal and it's fraud and it's illegal.

Which it's not. It's not. They're trying to dissuade people from using it. The second tier, they're going to say, oh, my God, you can't go out on election day. Minorities, you might get COVID. Right. Over time, the Democrats model their electorate and African Americans tend to want to turn out on election day. They go to the polls.

Right. And so with COVID and with the changing electoral climate we're in now, you've got to do it earlier. You can't wait for it. What about, like, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona. Yeah, all swing states need the focus. Michigan should do it, especially because right now, Michigan is slipping from Trump. And I think that's one of the reasons he attacked them this week is I'm hearing that his polling there is into the double digits negative now. And I think he may look at it like every other thing when he's done with something and it's, and it's quote unquote betrayed him or not treating him right.

He abandons it and attacks it. So none of Trump's girlfriends were ever sufficient. They were all flawed in some way. only he is perfect. And so now Michigan, even though it voted for him in 16, is now the jilted X. And so I think that's why he's attacking early voting and attacking Governor Whitmer and going after Michigan. I will say as a political strategist, maybe don't shit on one of the most important swing states in the northern tier. I don't, maybe. But what do I know? I'm no Brad Parskell. Speaking of which, did you get Brad Parskell fired yet? Yes or no?

Not yet. However, last night, well, we're recording this on Thursday, so Wednesday night, there was an hour and a half long call with a bunch of Trump principals freaking out, wondering when the big guy was going to see the ad. This is like crabs in a bucket, okay? They're all snapping at each other and they're all fighting each other. And the lovely, lovely cannibalism is setting in. And there was this little movement among the Brad fans, which who knew? There were Brad fans on Twitter. Yeah, who's the Brad fan? It was led by, you know, the usual sort of C-minus tier Trump media figures like Jack Posobiac and Will Chamberl and they're like, this just shows what a good businessman Brad is. And of course, all the three stars and the weirdos were like, yeah, yeah, that's it. It's capitalism. Trust the plan.

Of course, I've walked them into the second limb of the trap, which is simple. Brad Pascal is not only making a technical term we use in politics, the term of art. we use in politics as a fuck ton. He's making not only a fuck ton of money from the campaign and whatever other goddamn income streams. He's also taking PPP recovery money for his companies. Wait, what? Yeah, Brad Parskow's companies are taking federal emergency recovery money, the PPP funds. Wait, what? How? He has applied for and received PPP funds for some of his companies. Because, I don't know, maybe fear of the vid, the deadly peril of the Rona. This is pure. Pure Trumpism. There is never anything they can't grift off of. I mean, if this guy was in the

middle of the ocean, he would find a piece of driftwood to rip off. To try and rip off. Ask me how much. How much is Brad Parskow getting in PPP funds? What I've seen so far is $800,000, but Brad has a ton of of little LLCs and entities. So the answer to use the other technical term of art we use in politics is who the fuck knows. That seems like a lot. So the other thing, Molly, that happened this week with Michigan was suddenly Gretchen Whitmer took a little bump up in the old Democratic Party veep stakes, didn't she? So what happened? She said she had an opening conversation with him. Yeah, I mean, I think there are a lot of people who used to play the old I'm going to be discreet and politely deny everything game.

I think we've just reached a point in our society politically where we're just like, fuck it, I'm in. Well, look, Whitmer's numbers are great in Michigan. If you end up having her as sort of the alchemical element. you add to knock Michigan out of the box for Trump. I can make an argument that helps in Wisconsin and Minnesota and Ohio and Pennsylvania a little bit as well. So it's an interesting rumor at the least. And from our conversation, I don't know, I was impressed by her.

Camilla, I think also would be amazing. I think Camilla is one of these people that with a little more tuning up on the debate stage, look, she put in a couple of A plus performances, but couldn't consistently hit. Look, in baseball, you hit 325. You're in the Hall of Fame. You're great, you know? I don't know what that means, but I trust you. But in presidential debates and in presidential campaigning, you need to hit a little better

than that. But I think there's a lot to recommend her, including the fact that she brings what I call that prosecutor shit into an argument and it's methodical and it's organized. It's well organized. It's strategic. I think she's great. I think as long as he doesn't pick someone that's like Tim Kane, we're fine. Like we don't want an anonymous white guy.

To this day, I would love to ask Robbie or. Philipp or somebody. Explain Tim Cain to me. We should get Philippe back on here and just like ask him that one question. Be like, Tim Cain, what the fuck happened there? What the fuck happened? I mean, it's like, let me find the least charismatic white guy right now. Oh, Tim Cate. Boom.

He's a lovely person and a very good and competent senator. I've talked to Tim before. And he just wasn't possessed of what we call political felicity. I mean, Molly, luck is real in politics. And I hate saying that. I'm an empiricist. Right. I'm a science guy, but I have seen it too many times not to believe in it now.

There is something about political luck. And like Hillary Clinton was the most snake bit person to ever walk on a political stage. She had no luck. Whatever it was, she should have given the old gypsy lady a dollar on the train. Yeah, it's true. Because she had no luck ever. And Tim Kaine was the same thing. Folks, today we're delighted to have Congressman Eric Swalwell.

Join us on the new abnormal. Molly and I are glad to welcome Congressman Swalwell because he has had a front of row seat on the House Intelligence Committee and on the House Judiciary Committee to a lot of the most consequential things that have gone on in the last couple of years, including the President's impeachment, the Ukraine scandal, the entire Russia scandal with Donald Trump. And he has very much been in the center of all these controversies. So we're looking forward to a great conversation with him today. And my first question is, can we talk about the beard? Yeah, it's probably time for it go. What's happening? So I worked as a prosecutor for seven years and it's a buttoned down job. You're in

front of juries. You're wearing a suit. And I was like the only one in California wearing suits that most people are like jeans and collared shirts, the tech pros. And so then I got elected to like the only other job where you really have to wear a suit every day, you know, being in Congress. So you're clean shave and you're wearing a suit. And so this was just for me like the first time in I guess like 15 years where I didn't have to shave, wear a suit every day. So I really just indulge myself and I'm really sorry I did it. I regret it. Well, I thought it would look cool. But so Mike Flynn is back in the news.

Do you think the phone calls between Flynn and Kissley-Act should be released? Do you want to talk a little bit about Mike Flynn too? Yeah. So let's just back up. He pled guilty twice. He issued a statement saying he was in fact guilty. And the president tweeted that he was fired because he lied to the vice president. So you may not like what happened leading up to the investigation.

You may not like that he was ultimately prosecuted. but there's no question that he lied. He said he lied. The president said he lied. The vice president said he lied. The vice president said he lied. The warping of that fundamental truth, I don't understand. What's interesting is my parents are Republicans. My brothers are cops. They're Republicans. My wife grew up in the Pence hometown and they were all Republicans. I was talking to a family member last night. And they were just giving me this, I call it the Flynn Fog, where they were talking about what led up to the investigation. They were talking about what the judge is doing is wrong. And then finally, I was just like, let's just cut to the chase. Like he said he was, guilty. Like, it doesn't matter if you don't like how it started or how it's ended. Like he said he was guilty. So, like, I don't know. It's the Flynn Fogg that were in. But also, didn't he try to kidnap a cleric? Yeah, there's that issue, too. Oh, that. Like most national security advisors, but just before he takes office, he's involved in taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from Turkish interest to kidnap a dissident cleric in the U.S. and returning to be murdered. I mean, call me crazy, but that doesn't strike me as like a good resume item. So, Congressman, like during the impeachment hearings, they were pushing forward a line of absolutely spurious non-fact. and spurious reasoning about the Ukraine situation. Do you think there's going to be a similar, are they going to be able to pull that off in the Senate, which is where the action is going to be on the quote-unquote Obamagate investigation? It's hard for me to see that Mitch McConnell is having

a happy day thinking about the fact that there are going to be show trials in the Senate now. I think the concern would have been heightened if we weren't in a pandemic, right? I don't think we, frankly, would have moved forward with impeachment if we were in a pandemic. He would have been just as worthy of being impeached. But I think we would have just realized, look, like, the priority has to be health care and getting this economy back up. And so I think the fact that they are focused on this, their priorities aren't astrayed. But all of that being said, to me, I just see between now and election day, this gauntlet that we're going to have to run through of misinformation, voter suppression, welcoming foreign interference. Because on balance, when a president

has the worst economy in 100 years and has had all of his leadership flaws exposed in this pandemic, he would be well on his way to being thrown out of office. But I think we have to run that gauntlet. And part of that gauntlet is what is going on in the Senate. Can you explain to me what broke Devin Nunes's brain? There's no bias here. I just am curious. It was the Trump flight, right? You know, we had worked with him pretty worked well together on the Intel committee until Devin Nunes flew on the Trump plane to his district and Trump did a fundraiser. And if you think about it, California wasn't in play in 2016, and Devin Nunes gets the president to come to his congressional district, and next thing you know, he's taking phone calls from the president down in the Intel

Committee routinely while we're investigating Russia, and then he's doing the midnight run. And so I think he got a little peek at power, and he's just been completely intoxicated and forgot about his duty to be independent and do oversight. I also have to think a little bit of that, is that he's got Derek Harvey in his orbit now. And you know, that's like a black hole of cray. But do you think he believes any of the stuff? That question, Molly, I'm asked that a lot. Like, do they really believe this? And I think when people ask that, my constituents ask that, they're saying, like, please tell me that they're only doing it because it's kind of like pro wrestling, right? Like, it's not real, but they're just doing it to put on a show. I don't know the answer to that. What I can tell you is that

right after the 2016 election, Republicans and Democrats on the Intel Committee were very concerned when we were being briefed about what Russia had done. However, once the president started calling it a hoax and just tweeting at anybody that called into question what Russia had done, Republicans on the committee started privately saying that they were afraid to speak up. And one told me, she said, when he tweets at you, he wins. And so I think it went from they were afraid to speak up. They knew it was wrong. We beat 41 of them in 2018. And we beat ironically the 41 most reasonable ones, right? That's just like the curse of how our elections work with redistricting, is the more moderate ones are the ones that pay the price for the sins of the fringe. And so the

ones that would have been more reasonable on impeachment in other matters are gone now. And so I think the ones that are left around, I think they do believe it. I do think it, unfortunately, with redistricting having reduced the number of competitive districts in the country to around 30 or 40 districts, you end up with a lot of the herd got culled pretty quickly. And so now you have left either the ones who are pure opportunists like Matt Gates, who really doesn't believe in any of this stuff. He's just playing the ball game. That's the pro wrestler. Yeah, that's the pro wrestler. But that's his charm. I use charm in quotes. Yeah. In a loose sense? Yeah. Okay. We have to talk later. One of the things I'm curious about is whether or not the FBI and the intelligence community are still being

forthcoming about Russian interference and Russian threats, or are they so snake bit and so worried about the eye of Bill Barr over their shoulder now or the eye of Rich Grinnell over their shoulder, they're pulling their punches because it seemed like we were getting indications that the team Putin was coming back to play again. I'm afraid we're not being told the true threat. And I think the line special agent who's out there just keeping his or her head down, their job is to follow the evidence, not think about the politics and then report it up through their chain of command. And it's not frankly their job to break that, to tell us what's going on. It's their leader's job to tell us. And as you saw just a couple months ago, people were fired for being forthcoming,

or the press was reporting that people were fired for being forthcoming about Russia. And now Mr. Grinnell has not come to brief Congress at all. We've had multiple briefings with every other lead in the intelligence community except Grinnell. And now we have this kind of cleaning house at the Directorate of National Intelligence. I am afraid that we are not being told the truth about what Russia is doing. And the last piece of information I have that I can say publicly is we had FBI director Ray in front of the Judiciary Committee right before the pandemic. And I asked him, is Russia interfering in our elections right now? And he said, yes, they still are doing it. That's a huge sort of sleeper issue. But I mean, I know there are plenty of people of good

faith still in the FBI and the intel community, the counterintelligence world. I'm just worried that Bill Barr will look at any of it and say, no, we'll wait on that. What do you think went wrong with Mueller? I have a theory about that. So Donald Trump is brilliant, I think, at getting in your head and getting you to do something that you would otherwise not think about in 2016. He was saying over and over, the election is going to be rigged, the elections rigged. And he was really projecting that he had basically asked the Russians to do this. It was, they were hacking and dumping. And he ends up getting the Obama administration to really delay attributing it to Russia, to not take any real steps to counter what Russia was

doing. And we learned in our investigation, you can see in the transcripts that it was in their head that Trump was saying the election was going to be rigged and they didn't want to be seen as furthering that or playing to that hand. So then you have Mueller, right? The president over and over is saying it's a witch hunt, that it's taking too long. I'll never forget when Mueller testified and Sean Patrick Maloney, my colleague asked him, he said, I don't understand why you did not subpoena him to come in. And it was clear that they knew that if they did that, it would go to the courts and it would delay the investigation. But there was no reason to have an arbitrary timeline. It was just that the president kept saying it over and over that this is a witch hunt. It's taking too long.

And ultimately, Mueller played into that, just as the Obama administration, they didn't want to affirm what Trump was saying. Mueller didn't want to affirm what Trump was saying. And the outcome is that Trump got his way and we lost. Same thing with the finances. Trump said, my finances are a red line. And so Mueller and the team don't go after his finances. But can you believe they didn't interview junior? No. And again, I think the fear is that the president putting out these red lines, his family and his finances, and they were treading very carefully. And, you know, Bob Mueller is a hero, right? I mean, we can't even put him in the same plane as Donald Trump. And I don't suggest that he is flawed in any way. I just think this is what the president does is he projects and then he gets you

to do something that you otherwise wouldn't do because you don't want him to be proved right. And I fear that he's doing that right now with mail-in balloting, right? He's just seeding the doubt about the fraud that could be out there. And he wants states to just not do it because they're afraid if they did it, then he would say it's fraudulent. So he wins really either way. So my fear is that we win in November. However, it's just a national hell between November and January because the president refuses to accept the result, says that there's massive voter fraud, but also that there would be, this is where I think the disinformation could really come in, right? Where Russians and domestic actors could kind of amplify bullshit stories about voter fraud and just create a cloud around it.

Steve Bannon. Exactly. I made this challenge to some reporters yesterday. I've done Republican campaigns all over this country for 30 years. In the last 15, every single successful state party in the GOP has run massive early and absentee ballot programming. Massive. This is a complete head fake. If the Democrats take the bait on this, I'm going to slap them upside the head because they are absolutely fucking with them and playing a head game here.

And they are all those state parties and the RNC are going to run massive. massive early vote campaigns. You want to bank votes early, especially with Trump. You want to start, you've got five, six weeks ahead of the election day where you can start getting your A-Bs in, your absentees in. You want to do that early with Trump because he's crazy and he's likely to come out to say something insane one day. Like, give me your daughters for a virgin sacrifice. You know, he's going to say something nutty and they want to have all those votes in the bank before that. So it's a pure head fake and Democrats need to be absolutely mindful that he's just playing that same game he played with Mueller, the same game he plays about.

his taxes, the same game he plays about everything else. And by the way, they just won an election in California where it was 100% mail-in ballot. If he didn't say that was a fraudulent result, right? California 25, the special. Is that Katie Hill seat? That was Katie Hill seat, yeah. Yeah, and a Republican warrant. You didn't see him call that one into question.

One of Rudy Giuliani's pals from the Ukraine, Andre Derkak, recently released a call between Biden and former Ukrainian president, Perchenko. Can you talk to us about what you think about that? Yeah. This is the gauntlet of foreign interference, voter suppression, and misinformation I was talking about. We can expect, you know, more and more of this. And this is coming from Ukraine. This is, yes, this is kind of out of the playbook of what Rudy Giuliani was doing around the impeachment investigation.

I think the fact that we, one, the president deserved to be impeached, but two, I think the fact that we conducted that investigation and showed the world who inspector Giuliani really is, the lack of. credibility he has. I think that probably has inoculated as a collateral, has probably inoculated the vice president against these spurious attacks. Frankly, I think when people see this now, they're just like, okay, this is just more from the Giuliani bag of tricks. Do you want to talk a little bit about your presidential run? No. Okay. Done. That's about as long as it lasted. It was that extreme. I ran because in 2018, I had worked to try and elect new younger members to Congress. And I led an effort to do that in 29 of the 40 that I had supported in their 40s and under one. And so I saw an opportunity to meet this momentum of new energy

and ideas with a candidate for the presidency who could work on those issues of gun violence and climate from the white house, student loan debt, you know, issues that our generation have been going through. What I found on the trail was, it was funny, you know, a lot of people would say to me, and these are people who were like hosting me in their homes, like supporting me. And they would say, right before they introduced me. I'm so glad you're running. I don't know if you're going to win this time, but I'm glad you're doing it and I'm sure you'll run again. And I'm like, I'm running to win this time. We're in your house for me to win this time. I came to realize the voters really wanted a seasoned hand. And I think when you look at the candidates that went all the way to the end, the senators Sanders and Warren and Vice President Biden,

they are regarded for good reason, you know, people with experience. And we didn't even know that a pandemic was coming. And so now that I look back on it, like if I was the candidate, I think I could assemble the team that would be needed to take on a pandemic. But I actually think I'd be interested in Rick's perspective on this as a consultant. I think it would be hard for a younger candidate in a pandemic right now to go up against the president. Because people may just think, I don't know if I want to roll the dice on a young candidate. And that's why I think Vice President Biden actually will be a winning candidate because of his experience. I think, Eric, you've hit on something here. A large part of Biden's brand is that he is viewed as somebody who has been around a,

competent administration. And that competence is something right now. I'm in a weird spot politically, obviously, as the sort of apostate Republican guy who believes in like the George H.W. Bush version of the GOP that I grew up in, right? This idea of competence and getting stuff done and when there's a crisis of such a magnitude, you drop all the political bullshit and you call everybody in the room who can do the job and you get things done. That is anathema to Trump. But I think Biden, look, and Joe Biden would be the first guy to tell you, he's not an expert on this stuff, but he knows how to find him. He knows how to get him and he doesn't feel like he is diminished by having smart people in the room with him. And Trump does. He feels like if somebody's smarter or better at

something that he is, that it is a slight to him in some way and not how a leader works. But I think that's where Biden will end up having some viability in this, in these debates and this discussion, is that he's not ashamed to find smart people to work with him. And I do think a younger candidate would have trouble putting that same image together. And sometimes younger candidates have had to sort of find an older mentor figure to validate them. I think your observation is largely correct. What do you think went wrong with impeachment? We didn't have enough Republicans in the Senate voting for witnesses. I think on the presentation side, there are no regrets. Something occurred to me in the middle of our hearings on the Judiciary Committee as I was thinking through what we had done

and what it had revealed. And yes, we were holding him accountable and he deserved to be held accountable. So, you know, as you started to look at the timeline, when did Ukraine get the fucking money that they were supposed to get, that taxpayers, you know, had voted for representatives to give to him. It was only once we started the investigation. So, like, it showed me you have to stand up for this guy. And one, he's a coward. He always backs down. When you actually stand up to him, he backs down. And Ukraine got the money. So if anything, Ukraine got the money to fight the Russians. And it took an impeachment investigation to do that. Again, he should have been held accountable. I learned that the right result occurred because we stood up to him.

You've learned the fundamental lesson of Trump. He is a gigantic chicken shit coward. He's the classic bully figure. He will strut and yell and scream and intimidate people. But the minute you punch him in the nose, he rolls over and you've got him. So there's almost no scenario under the sun where Republicans recapture the House. And now the Senate is looking increasingly shaky. Let's hypothesize two things, just for the fun. On track one, Donald Trump, Joe Biden is struck by a meteorite or eaten by a Wolverine or something happens.

Joe Biden's not successful on Election Day. We have Donald Trump Part 2, National Tragedy, Bougaloo. And what happens in the House and Senate at that point, not in terms of impeachment, but in terms of accountability? How does the world feel different to you? What are you thinking, here's some day one things we need to do to keep the country in line now that Captain Crazy Pants is in charge again for four more years? And the second scenario is more fun. What happens if he loses, hint, hint, I think it's valuable to at least go back and finally get on the record all these things that were fogged over by all the Trump BS machines. for the last couple of years.

We can't let scenario one happen. Yeah, I was going to say. Couldn't agree more. In scenario one, though Democrats right now have a third of government. I think we've been quite effective. What limited resources we've had to be an ankle monitor that he needs. If we had the Senate as well, it's an ankle monitor and like a probation officer 24-7 erupt.

So, I mean, his corrupt movements are restricted, I think. Maybe we get that infrastructure deal that he's always talked about that we've never been able to move because of McConnell. I think that might be the biggest achievement between the president and Congress. Scenario to, Rick, this is what I've spent a lot of time trying to do, is to think beyond Trump, the day after Trump, and really informed by what happened post-Nixon and the era of reformation that stood up the church committee and that had the campaign finance reforms that were put in place. I think we have to move forward, but look at what we've learned, look at the vulnerabilities in our democracy that he's exposed. We have the rule of law and the honor code.

The rule of law is written in stone, and we all follow those rules. The honor code is what we all agree to follow, but it's not necessarily written in law. And so now we've got to codify the honor code because he's exposed those vulnerabilities, like putting your kids in the White House, like taking gifts from foreign governments, where we have an emoluments clause, but there's really no deterrent to it because it's not a criminal penalty if you do it. It's just at best an injunction. Like getting rid of this DOJ policy that says that a president cannot be indicted,

not allowing the statute of limitations to run out just because he's elected beyond when he could be held accountable, making it illegal to out a whistleblower. A lot of things that we just assume people wouldn't do, like Rand Paul, right, going on the floor of the Senate and trying to read the whistleblower's name. Like, you just assume good people wouldn't do that. And now they're doing that. And so we have to put, I think, in place the rule of law where the honor code has always existed. By good people and Rand Paul. How does that work in the same sentence? Yeah, wait, I have a question.

What happened to Rand Paul? What happened to Ted Cruz, right? There's a great ad. I just saw it. I think it's called like the Midas touch. It was on Twitter this morning, but it's Ted Cruz in 2016 calling Trump a liar, describing the Trump as we know it, and then overlaid on that are Trump's comments about COVID. Trump bends people to his will, and it's never the other way around on their side. And so that's why, as I said earlier, you just have to keep standing up to him. And what I think I can do from now until election day is to focus on keeping the house and candidates that can win the Senate and get people to register to. vote. And so I launched yesterday. It's called Remedy Pack. And we had the first video, it went online. It's got 1.5 million views now. And it's because it's what I believe is the first direct to camera testimonial of a COVID victim family member talking about her father back in February. We would call it America's Lost Month where he's on his deathbed, not being able to get any tests because they're not available. And the president's at Super Bowl parties. He's at Daytona 500. He's flown over to India.

just disregarding the pandemic. At the end of it, she says, we literally have to vote for our lives this November. My father can't vote, will you? We're going to continue to try and reach voters with that message that this is truly an election about your health and our leaders and their governance and a crisis. So that's Remedyepack.com. Hey, in case you missed it, the Daily Beast recently launched a crossword puzzle. It's made to let news junkies like us flex our mental muscles with clues based on what's happening in politics and pop culture. Head on over to the Daily Beast. com slash crossword dash puzzles to play now. It's a great way to pass the time during the coronavirus, and it's free. We have a very popular segment on our show called Fuck That Guy, where we talk about someone who's really even more appalling than usual. And today, my Fuck That Guy is going to be the New York Post and Rupert Murdoch and Sorab, who is the opinion editor for the New York Post. So today,

which is Thursday. The New York Post, they use an op-ed as a cover story. So, again, it's like the uncomfortable and one might even say dishonest using a opinion piece as news and putting it where you might put news. But it is the cover says one man's plea. The big apple is dying. Its streets are empty. Tens or thousands are plunged into poverty. Our leaders have no plans, no answers.

It needs to end now. Columnist Dave Marcus on the devastating lockdown, page 21. I think that fuck all of these people. I mean, they're confusing the lockdown with the virus, right? Like, how dare people want to keep us from killing ourselves? How dare they? And I've seen a lot of this, and it really just makes me nuts, because I feel like we've seen in Sweden and in countries that haven't had a lockdown,

people still don't want to die. The whole odd thing about not wanting to die, it really is sort of a deeply wired ingrained trait in human beings. except for, of course, Rupert and his mighty band of minions. Now, you may have also seen Dave Marcus' prose stylings on the pages of the Federalist. Yes, who funds the Federalist? I don't know, Molly. I will say this.

The president's allies, and of course Rupert Murdoch and his constellation of media properties, is by far the single most important media ally or ally of any kind of Donald Trump's, by far. This idea that they're going to have this sort of oppositional defiant disorder interpretation of why we had a lockdown, why we have restrictions on people being circulating out in public, why we're trying to flatten the curve. They have come to believe that this is some sort of socialist plot against freedom and liberty. I feel like they can't think of what it is that why Democrats want this lockdown. They can't think of like a reasonable theory. So they're like, they just want to take our freedom. Freedom. Right. I just did the full brave heart for you.

So you're welcome. I've heard of it before, though. But. What I think is interesting is it's like they've decided it's going to be the gun. That's ended a lot more compromising than you meant it to be. It's like they're putting the gun argument on the lockdown. So it's like, well, they want to take our freedom, right? And I think the thinking here is they've completely forgotten that the reason that we have these lockdowns is because of the virus. Right. They continue to conflate scientific advice given by nonpartisan medical and

epidemiological and scientific professionals with this idea that this is a deliberate plot to wreck the economy so Donald Trump's feels will be hurt. And there's a broad concern that we're going to have a bump this summer and a bump this fall. And the more we do this, we've talked about this once before, I had a smart actual epidemiologist explained to me. When you end quarantine, you go back to work, you throw the doors wide open and all of a sudden we have a spike in cases, we don't just get to say, okay, we're back on quarantine again. It resets to zero. It starts all over again. So the idea of having some discipline right now, the idea of taking the hit right now and

trying to figure out ways we can reconfigure our economy and get people back to work, because there is literally no one in this country. There's not a single person in this country who thinks, yeah, it kicks ass to have all these unemployed people. This is great. No one believes that. It's ridiculous. It's just Trump is so self-involved and his allies like Eric the stupid are so self-involved that

they're convinced that this is all about Trump and not about the virus. So we remember Eric Trump said that this, the Democrats had made up the virus to hurt his dad, right? And that it would go away after the election. And it's just when you're this self-obsessed, you forget that there are other forces. And so it's just bizarre. And you know what they are also? Those other forces. They are notoriously impervious to presidential tweeting. The virus is the honey badger of the, you know, the the microscopic world, it doesn't fucking care what he says or does. All these ideas that there's some ideological overlay to the virus and how we handle it is mind-boggling.

Well, it's interesting, too, because if you think about it, well, you'll say, well, you know, South Korea and Hong Kong and Australia, which is actually led by a conservative, and New Zealand, all of these places, they were able to control the virus by testing and tracing, and people will be like, well, North Korea isn't a democracy. And you're like, no, but. South Korea is. The ideas that emerge from any kind of request for personal or societal discipline were once interpreted as things conservatives believed in, is that we had to constrain our baser impulses. We had to manage our lives in ways that weren't just run by the lizard brain or the hind brain and that elevated big, longer strategic and moral decisions.

Well, now it's like, well, screw. Grandma, I need to go out. I got to go to Applebee's, man. I need those deep fried sheep, dip, deep shit, whatever they serve there. Well, what about the woman with her long roots? You know, Molly, right now, as I've said, I feel like I've got a mullet coming on here. I need a haircut desperately. But I'm just going to have to go out in the backyard with the floby and do it myself. I'll just do it. I've shaved the dogs now. I have like, I'm really figured it all out. Well, come on down. To Florida. We'll go take the truck and go mudden and you can shave my head. Yeah, I don't know what any of those words mean. That's going to be their best day ever.

You'll live stream me shaving your head. You'll live stream it for charity. That's right. That's right. To raise awareness. All right. So, Rick, who's your fuck that guy? Well, I have a fuck that woman this week.

Not in the Matt Lauer way. I threw one for you. See, I threw you. I gave you one. I wrote a very mean piece about how Matt Lauer should stay canceled. My fuck this guy the week is a woman with the poetic name of Joe Ray Perkins. Joe Ray Perkins. Who is Joe Ray Perkins?

Please tell me. Joe Ray Perkins will be representing the Republican Party in the great state of Oregon in the 2020 United States Senate race. What makes Joe Ray Perkins so special? It's a letter, Molly. It's a letter that falls after P and before R. Does she trust the plan? She trusts the plan.

The Republicans in Oregon have elected for their candidate for U.S. Senate a full-blown nutcase QAnon supporter. Of course they have. She issued a video after her election, holding up a Q&on bumper sticker where we go one, we go all. Perkins said in the video, reciting the Q&on slogan, I stand with President Trump. I stand with Q and the team. Thank you, Annons.

Thank you, Patriots. And together we can save our republic. So this is what happens when a party is consumed by a cult figure. This is what happens when you all. All those bitching and moaning Trump supporters, the establishment sucks, man. They're horrible. Those guys don't know nothing. They're like awful.

They're stupid. Well, guess what? The establishment would have kept a goddamn conspiracy lunatic off the fucking ballot. And now, look, it was a long shot anyway. Yeah, I was going to say. I think they're pretty safe. But now Merckley's going to win with like 97% of the vote because she's a complete bat-shit, nut job.

I would also have an ancillary fuck this guy to the head of the guy. to the head of the current NRC, Senator Todd Young of Indiana, who was asked about Joe Ray Perkins and said, I don't know anything about that. I'll have to learn more about it. But the NRC tends to support Republican candidates, as you know. Dude, learn to say no. There's an example of this, and it's a perfect example. When David Duke was running for governor of Louisiana in 1991, you know who issued a fuck this guy on him? George Herbert Walker Bush, who said, we're going to dispatch the Republican Party down there. to beat the shit out of this guy. We're going to beat this candidate. We ran basically Edwin Edwards, the Democrats campaign for him on the theme of, and Edwards was a notorious crook. Vote for the crook. It's important.

This is where this kind of conspiracy twaddle gets into the DNA of the party of any party and destroys it. So they're going to have to go right now. Oregon was already out of reach. Let's just posit that right now. But this is still going to be. This is the kind of thing, though, that spreads. Right.

This is the kind of. shit that spreads. And you know what? I'm sorry, call me crazy. But even in the great state of Oregon, I can make a case that an excellent candidate who was running on a platform of, say, I don't know, individual liberty and personal freedom and innovation and constitutional loyalty. Guns. I can hear you say guns. Have you been to Eastern Oregon? Well, no, I'm saying that you could maybe have a gun candidate there. I wouldn't because I have a soul. But yes, continue, sorry. You'd be shocked how much like Eastern Oregon is like Alabama. Yeah. But anyway, but the fact of the matter is, you've now got a candidate.

who is so far outside the boundaries that there won't be follow-on candidates who are of high quality. There won't be people who say, oh, yeah, Joe Ray Perkins ran on a centrist Republican platform in a left-leaning state and managed to do 36%, 38%, 40%. Now it's going to be Jeff Merkley's going to win by 9,000-cigillion percent. And future candidates are going to go, no thanks. I'll have to run against the Q&ons or the Trump crazies, and I'm not going to bother. I think political climates are always better when they're not so homogeneous. But that's just me. I would like to remind you that in your state, you have a woman running for Congress who is just about as bad shit as they come.

Would you be referring to Laura Lumer? I would be. Laura Lumer has been denied her free speech rights by those horrible social media companies because her ideas are just too powerful, Molly. She chained herself to the headquarters of Twitter. So let me tell you a little bit about that seat. Yeah, tell us about that seat. What district is it? It's Florida's 21st congressional district.

The number's been changed a few times in the last couple cycles of redistricting, but the 21st is one of the bluest of the blue. And Lois Frankel is a harsh, grating, terrible candidate. She's God-awful, on a thousand different ways. You would want to peel your eyeballs out after listening to Lois Frankel, berate you for an hour. I promise you. So should we have her as a guest? Yes, right?

Not if you want to remain friends. But let me say this. Lois Frankel will take Laura Lumer out and beat her like a cheap government mule. I'm going to argue, I don't know the numbers right now. I'm going to bet you it's probably one of the highest performing Democratic districts overall in the country. It's going to be in the top 10 no matter what. So Laura Lumer's griftapalooza down there, ironically, little known fact, Laura Lumer's consultant ran Donald Trump's 2016 Florida operations. Oh, you don't say. A woman in Karen Giorno. And guess who Karen Giorno was, I think she may still be, I don't know for sure. She's business partners with our good friend, John Cardillo.

John Cardillo, who correctly predicted you were in jail. Yeah, by now I'd be in jail. It's been three and a half months. The Durham investigation was after me. What's interesting about John Cordello is in my head, he's Michael Caputo. Even though I know that he's actually less legitimate than Michael Caputo. For some reason, I have a lot of them confused. He's one of those guys that somehow Twitter got famous. He used to have one of those radio shows down in Adela Ray Beach or somewhere like that. The kind of radio show where you pay for a slot on Sunday night. I don't know, like 400 bucks a night or something like that. You go in and... So not quite Bill Mitchell. I think Bill Mitchell is actually a separate kind of weird internet phenomenon because he is, of course, it's actually like a sort of a titanic competition between dumb fuck super villains. Jim Hofft and Bill Mitchell are always fighting to be the

dumbest motherfucker on the internet. And it's gorgeous to watch. Anyway, I still think Bill Mitchell is the dumbest person on the internet. And I don't think that's a controversial opinion. Look, the gateway pundit. Right. It's true. He's always punched above his weight. Yeah, that's certainly true. I like it when the president of the United States retweets the gateway pundit. Right. He has his finger on the nuclear arsenal. He's retweeting a Seth Rich conspiracy theorist. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science who will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your

favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm Molly JongFest and he's the Rick Wilson. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover

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