The Daily Beast Podcast - Everyone’s Against Forever Wars Until They Actually End w/ Toure

Episode Date: August 27, 2021

“What is your Afghanistan hot take? Go.”“My number one hot take is that I don’t like occupation. I don’t feel like we should be permanently defending ‘democracy’ in any given country. If they are not ready for democracy or to be run in the way that we want them to, we cannot use military power to force them to have a democracy,” said Touré, one of this week’s guests on The New Abnormal, former MSNBC host, current host of an eponymous podcast, Toure Show and author of I Would Die 4 U: Why Prince Became an Icon. Hosts Molly Jong-Fast and Jesse Cannon are also joined by Jonathan Allen, a senior political reporter for NBC, and Noga Tarnopolsky, a Daily Beast contributor based in Jerusalem. In their regular “F**k That Guy” segment, the hosts raise their middle fingers to one Kristi Noem and South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg. If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes its just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Jong-Fast and welcome to The Daily Beast, The New Abnormal. I'm a left-wing pundit and an editor at large at The Daily Beast. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. Our world has been turned up day down. On The New Abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and figure out how to get ourselves out of it. And I'm producer Jesse Kennan. I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails.

Today we have a super informative show. NBC's senior political reporter John Allen will join us to talk the state of politics. Then we'll talk to Nogatarn Loposki about what's going on in Israel with COVID and their new prime minister meeting with Joe Biden. But first, we have Toray, who co-hosts Democracy-ish and hosts Toray show, as well as being the author of Nothing Compares to You, a new oral history on the recording artist Prince. Welcome back to the new online. abnormal Toray. Thank you so much. Afghanistan, what is your hot take go? No pressure. I mean, my number one hot take is that I don't like occupation. I don't feel like

we should be permanently defending, quote unquote, democracy in a given country. If they are not ready for democracy or to be run in the way that we want them to, we cannot use military power to force them to have a democracy. And it feels like this is just, you know, yet another American foreign policy quagmire in that, you know, we stayed 20 years, we lost, you know, thousands of American soldiers. You know, we spent, what, trillions of dollars. And boom, as soon as we start to leave, and as soon as we reach a critical mass, the Taliban rides in and takes over. This is not a Biden failure, this would have happened at any point in the last 15 or 20 years. Whoever moved us to, you know, X number of troops, then the Taliban would have ridden in and taken over.

Yeah. No, this is a total American policy failure that has been 40 years in the making since Reagan met with the Mujah Hadim and America armed them. And I think like good parallels are like South America. you know, when we get in there, nothing good happens. What I think is so interesting is like, if you have on the right and the left, Americans who are like, we don't want forever wars, right? I mean, unequivocally,

like Trump even ran on ending forever wars. And Biden, too, you know, was hardly like we're going to get, but you have a real, like, punding class that is like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Well, you know, people say they don't want forever. wars, like, you know, your boyfriend says, I will never hurt you. But then when he runs into that one specific X, he's like, well, you know, I got to go have a drink with her. You know, like if they said,

you know, no forever wars, then everyone's like, yeah. But then they said, pull out of Afghanistan. Whoa, like, we didn't mean it like there and right now. But, you know, I hope that the limits of American power are seen by many people of this is Georgia. And you know what? It's almost impossible to discuss how American foreign policy has been detrimental to our aims and to the locals. In many foreign situations, Afghanistan, absolutely in the Middle East, our occupation, has been part of the problem. And it's like we want to have a certain outcome. but our occupation is damaging that the potential outcome. But this is like one of the things that, like, you cannot say in the punditry, in the cable news sort of like, you know, sphere.

Like, you know, that is unable to be said like that our occupation of these countries is the problem that is creating the notion that we should be occupying these countries. It strikes me that the American people, they're sick of wars. They don't think they work. You know, I read a recently, I read an article where the author was saying, like, the left no longer cares about women and girls because they're leaving Afghanistan. And I was like, uh, uh, like, wait, what? And, you know, and the other thing is like, if you look at it, this is America is not, I mean, Afghanistan is a war we've been in for a long time. But, like, there are a number of humanitarian atrocities going on across the globe. I mean, look at the Uyghurs.

Yeah. I mean, like, China is building concentration camps. And, I mean, I think it is, like, kind of magical thinking in a way that, you know, we need to impose our values on this country where we have tried for 20 years. Yeah, you know, I would like to see an accepting of the Afghan refugee. You know, the right has absolutely left on the notion of like, do you want these people coming to your town? Yes, yes, absolutely.

That is the American way that I think, like that we should be welcoming people who are in trouble. I remember the Cuban boat people at one point. They have become an important and vibrant part of mostly Miami culture. I remember people coming over from Southeast Asia. I just watched this awesome documentary called The Donut King about why there was the proliferation of Asian, Southeast Asian-owned donut shops all over Southern California. This is largely one man facilitating thousands of families that were coming over and saying, hey, here's how you can make money. And this has been a really vibrant and important part of Southern California culture for several decades.

all these shops that are owned by first-generation immigrants and their children. You know, immigrants come here and make America better, and they are a vibrant, critical part of America, and the rights relatively recent, like the last 10 to 20 years, attack on immigrants, is the most anti-American part of our general conversation, and yet they claim to be, like, wrapping themselves in the flag and American values in the American way. But like welcome, I mean, like the Statue of Liberty is all about that. The history of America is all about

welcoming immigrants. Yeah, I think it's interesting, too. There was like a moment where the right was like, we have to get these people out of Afghanistan, you know, where they were like, we're going to get these people out. We're going to, you know, the Biden administration is botching it. And then they were like, wait a second. If we get. these people out. They're going to want to come here. This actually brings me to a good segue to

another thing I wanted to speak about because I think there's a common thing on the right that they float the right thing to do and then when they see the backlash of their base now, they cower. And that happened this week when Donald Trump said, I got vaccine and encouraged it. The audience booed and then he began to

backtrack it. And my feeling is that we're never going to see Republicans ever championed this again since the big boss tried to do it and it never did. What are you guys feeling about this? I'm happy to see private organizations stepping up where, you know, a lot of public institutions, governors, et cetera, are trying to say, I don't know what to do. I'm not sure if we can mandate. We're seeing all sorts of private institutions saying you must be vaccinated to work here, to walk into our stores, be it Delta Airlines, be it Goldman Sachs, be at Indiana University, various NFL teams have started to say this. I fully welcome this because those of us who are

vaccinated should not have to pay the penalty of saying, well, we are forced to be around the unvaccinated. You know, I mean, the right wants to make this about segregation. But the thing about segregation, be it in America or South Africa or whatever caste system we've had throughout history, India, whatever, you couldn't easily and momentarily and without price choose to move from one group to another, right? If in American segregation, any black person could just go to the doctor and say, hey, can I be white from now on? Like, segregation would not mean anything. And like, yeah, you are, yes, you are literally being discriminated against for a choice that you are making, not something that you were born into.

And you could change that at any time. And the continued fear of the vaccine is not based on fact. It's not based on reality. And I find myself insanely frustrated online arguing with the anti-vaxxers who, I'm frankly, I'm sorry, you do not have any good argument. to not go do it. No, they do not. I always think about this idea that anti-vaxxers are very, very good marks.

So there's a reason that the Trump administration has been targeting these people. It's because they're dumb. And they don't understand science. And they don't understand how stuff works. And so that's why we, as a culture, are going to have this fucking virus batting around until we get, you know, to a critical mass. Well, you're kind of touching on something that is really, important and distressing to me, which is, you know, start from the notion of we're each in our

own bubble, which I completely reject. There is no left bubble because there's nothing that I believe as a lefty where there is a community of experts who are saying, no, that's not true. And the right, the modern right, is completely in a bubble in that most of the major issues that they believe in are not rectified, are not referenced by reality. And what experts are saying on the issue, be it we're talking about the election, when we're talking about immigration, when we're talking about facts around climate or COVID or basking or vaccines or taxation or voting or racism, we could go on and on all their major issues, experts, transgender issues, Experts are saying, that's not true.

I mean, you know, just to, you know, immigration has been at a net negative for over 10 years, maybe 15 years at this point. And immigration does not cause prime. They don't take away jobs from Americans. But these are all the boogeymen that they use to make their points. And we can do that for every single major issue, animating the right at this point.

So they are against elites. They are against liberals. They are against significant serious media. So the guiding political, philosophical force of their movement seems to be what can we do to own the libs? If the libs believe X, we believe the opposite. That's not a political philosophy. No, it's not. I think you made a good point, though, about there's this outdated thing that people have voted even on the

podcast before that, you know, we all have our own bubbles. And what increasingly it is, is like our bubbles as people on the left are like, oh, you kind of weren't informed about some facts because MSNBC didn't tell you tonight. Whereas they are now living in a world that is so absent of facts, that it is beyond comparison and you can't draw the false equivalency anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I don't think we're in a bubble because we don't know a bunch of people who are anti-immigrant, anti-vax, anti-black people and anti-transit, that doesn't mean you're in a bubble. The things that I believe are based on reality and facts, the things that they believe in are not. I think the worst thing to happen to America besides Trump winning was that when Trump won, the American media decided that it was really important to talk to all the people who got tricked by Trump and give them a lot of, you know, sort of bandwidth. And so we really did, you know, have to suffer through innumerable, like, you know, diner stories about the guy who got, and, you know, a lot of these people, they were tricked

by him. Like, I don't think we call a spade a spade. Like, Trump promised them things. They never got them. Mm-hmm. Like, Trump promised them that he would make Mexico pay for the wall. Like, they were duped, you know? And now the wall is floating away from the storms.

That's right. The wall has floated away. Trump is a symptom of what's been happening on the right for about three or four decades. Yeah. Going back to the really the rise of Rush Limbaugh and the right-wing media bubble, which comes out of Ronald Reagan saying, you know, we don't have to have fairness doctrine at these sort of stations. And the right, systematically feeding their side lies and distortions and disinformation, and Fox taking that bullhorn to a whole other level, which it probably was never supposed to be taken to. Like, it's one thing for a guy to get on the radio and say this, you know, to several thousand people,

but to have a whole television network based on disinformation and performance art masquerading, as news and like fear mongering, masquerading as news, completely distorted the minds of millions of Americans and you saw politicians having to respond to that because they're constantly getting primaried from the right and often losing those primaries. And so the right has responded by moving further

and further right word over the last 20 years. And Trump is just part of that long-term trend of telling people lies and having them believe them and having the politicians repeat the lies back to them. Yeah, I think that's right. Well, while we're on the subject of him, so it was announced today that the Capitol cops will be suing Trump and a bunch of his other associates for January 6th. I know that it's very empowering for us all to get excited about these lawsuits, but do you guys

have any feelings about how this is going to go? I mean, I think that the only way that we ever. get back. It's like private businesses mandating masks, right? It's this idea that capitalism is sort of, you know, we don't have tort reforms. We have crazy lawsuits where people get millions of dollars. That's why our health care is so expensive. So, you know, bring it, man. Like, they should go for it in the way they can. I've been largely disappointed in how harshly the justice system has responsible. to this attack on America by Americans. It seems that everyone is kind of like,

yeah, let's give them some slaps on the wrist. Where are the big sentences? Where are the big gigantic fines? Where, you know, when black people show up in court, it's always like, you know, we have to make, you know, we have to make this a lesson so that other people don't do what you did. And, you know, it's sort of like thousands and thousands of white people. you know, committed a very serious block of crimes.

And everyone's like, you know, let's not, let's like killing. You know, I mean, you know, I haven't seen anybody get a serious number in terms of their sentence for having, you know, committed these crimes. These are extraordinarily serious crimes. They violently attacked our government. How is this not among the most serious things? How are we not seeing people getting 10 years and, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and really like, you know, damaging their lives to where people are like,

this will never happen again. Yeah, I mean, Mo Brooks is still running for this, you know, is still running for the Senate. Like, there really are, there is no accountability for Republicans who try to overthrow the government. And that, I think, the message that Republicans will take away from this is like it didn't work this time, but since the stakes are so low. I mean, you remember these people were getting arrested and then they wanted to get out to have a wedding or take a vacation.

I mean, you know, that's not how the criminal justice system is supposed to work. It's been incredibly dispiriting to watch the country seem to not take this as seriously as it is. This is an extremely dangerous moment in American history. And, you know, people have,

people have, almost shrugged. We've seen lots of people get arrested, but I haven't seen the justice system respond with the strength and the force

that I would have expected. Yeah, it's really fucking depress that. So speaking of proportional sentences that people actually get their due, though,

we did get the news that Dylan Roof is now going to be sentenced to death in South Carolina. I imagine both of you are like me who are not too fond of the death penalty, but what do we think of the sentence that was handed down? It's like I'm against the death penalty. Why not work to prevent guns from getting in children's hands? I mean, like, I'm not sure that, and again, I also feel like the death penalty is very expensive.

Yes, it is. Like, ultimately, it's very, very expensive. And, you know, it doesn't prevent people from doing things. That's right. That's right. So I'm not clear on what has been solved by putting this child to death, even though he's a bad guy. I agree up to a point. You are right that the death penalty is expensive. It is not preventative. That we have a system that makes permanent choices and sometimes makes mistakes. Like the chance that we might execute a person who did not do it is unacceptable.

The chance that we may have. bias, racial bias, gender bias, class bias, enter into the system that is permanent, right? Like, we can put somebody in jail, and it's a tragedy when someone gets out of jail after 25 years after not having done it. But there is a chance to reverse a bad decision. Obviously, the death penalty is irreversal. Right. That said. Yeah, we didn't make a mistake this time.

I mean, he clearly did it. This is horrendous and heinous. and unacceptable, and if anybody's going to be put to death, this person should not get to live in solitary or in prison for 40 or 50 years when everybody else who was there that day is in the ground. He should go to his death. And I see, I get it. The state should not be in the business of executing people. But it is. And if we're going to execute, execute anybody at all, this person should be executed. This is among the most painful racial hate crimes of the modern era. Right. That is true. I am deeply emotionally indebted to the situation

in terms of like, if there's any message that goes to other people, I need the message that this sort of hate crime is completely unacceptable and you will go to your. death. Yeah, that's a good point. I just don't think the death penalty is very, I feel like it's neither useful nor helpful and it's also very expensive. But yes, agreed. Hate crimes cannot be tolerated and for sure that is a really important point. I think that the interesting thing, though, is, you know, America always refuses to study whether the death penalty is more discouraging than life in prison. Right. And so we never get to see if there's a better way to do proportionality in these punishments.

But I'm glad he's getting as bad a punishment as it can get because if it does discourage people, hopefully that's what does it. No, I mean, it's a good point, Jesse, that like, you know, perhaps living in prison for decades could maybe, I don't know, I haven't seen any criminology data on this. Is that more of a deterrent than, you know, possibly becoming a martyr for these wacko, upside down brain people. I don't know. Maybe. Yeah, I mean, that I think is a really important point in this idea of martyrdom.

And we saw this. I mean, like, we saw this with Ashley Babbitt, right? Like, she committed a crime, was killed in the process of committing a crime, and is now a hero to the right. Mm-hmm. It's only going to get worse this week. And they want to go after the policemen who tried to prevent her from crime. committing a crime. Like, think about it's such a stark contrast to, like, unarmed, you know, it's such a stark contrast to like what happens to African-Americans

with the police. Totally. She's a really interesting story. I watched the little video of her being shot and killed many times. The police response to the folks who attacked the Capitol was quite often tepid. It was quite often, you know, Matador defense. But there was the thinking folks have said that, like, you know, we were physically overwhelmed. And yet there was a certain barrier that we could not allow folks to cross because then they would be too close physically to the lawmakers

and we would completely lose control of the situation. And like that, like we seated the, the building because we had to protect the people are our main protectorate. And we were like, fine, you could take over the building. But if you cross this line, then we can no longer protect the people. So we have to fight against that. And she was the first one crossing the final barrier that they were like, no, no, now you're too close to the lawmakers.

And, you know, if you don't, you know, just in terms of military tact, which the pleas are operating under in that situation, if you don't shoot her, then you start to be overwhelmed. And, you know, I mean, like, you know, really, guys? This is the one that you're fighting against? Like, you know, it's not like the guy is wildly shooting into a crowd. She was verbally warned.

She climbed through a window that, like, took effort to climb through and intentionality to climb through. She was clearly, like, being a leader in, like, We're going wherever we want to go. And, you know, somebody, somebody stopped her. Yeah, I mean, the idea that people being shot during committing a crime is not okay, but people being shot for having a piece of candy or sleeping in their bed like Brianna Taylor are is kind of amazing. I mean, Ashley Babbage should have complied.

Right. I mean, yes. If you just complied, there would be no problem. Hey, folks, if you haven't heard every single week we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media,

like Jim Acosta or Soladadobrian. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner, and sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's happening in the news. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a beast inside member where you'll support the beast fearless journalism, as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member, head to New Abnormal.com. That's New Abnormal.com. John Allen is NBC's senior political reporter,

as well as the co-author of Lucky, how Joe Biden barely won the presidency. Welcome back to the new abnormal John Allen. Thank you, Molly. I thought the new abnormal reformal refer to the podcast and not me, but probably both are fair. I didn't say welcome back, you are abnormal. You said to the new abnormal, John L. Yes, but I could have said, welcome back, you are abnormal. Speaking of abnormalities, I have a bee in my bonnet about Afghanistan. Okay. I'm seeing a lot of like hot takes about how this is Biden's fall of Saigon. What the fuck, man? I think, you know, from talking to sources who have actually been involved in policy.

How old are you, John Allen? Over the course of years, yes, I've talked to a lot of people who are involved in the Vietnam War. But in terms of people who have been involved in, you know, what George W. Bush called the Global War on Terrorism, which essentially started with going to Afghanistan. I think that the White House has offered a binary, which is you could either have the evacuated, as it's been going, or you could be in Afghanistan forever. And what many experts, and some of these were experts that have gotten it wrong before on, you know, on U.S. interests and waging war across the world, and some of them are not,

you know, what a lot of them are saying is that the evacuation could have and should have been better planned and executed. There have been adjustments made, which suggests that the White House is at least tacitly acknowledging that the initial push was not, you know, what they would have wanted. And of course, with U.S. service members being killed, nobody, you know, nobody wants to see that. And also Afghans being harmed in the explosions that occurred. But yeah, but it just seems to me like there's a lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on. There were warnings that this would be chaotic and difficult and that the U.S. should, you know, plant its evacuation differently and perhaps not on such a

a direct and hard time table. A lot of those warnings also came from people who have never met a war that they didn't like or a deadline that should be extended. So, you know, I think that the tendency at the White House is to tune out people who disagree with Biden's Afghanistan policy broadly, even if they may be making, you know, salient points or points that are perhaps worth listening to, certainly that even some of the people who disagree with them on the policy think are worth listening to. perhaps they shouldn't be throwing out everything that everyone says if they are not somebody who has always believed in an Afghanistan withdrawal or thought that it was the wrong thing to be there in the first place. And of course, among members of Congress, there was only one who thought it was wrong to be there in the first place.

Right. That's right. Barbara Lee. And who not only necessarily, I mean, it's not necessarily that she thought it was wrong to go into Afghanistan to chase terrorists. And she thought it was wrong to write an open-ended authorization for war that included basically anybody under. the son that the president deemed to be a terrorist threat. There is a legitimate tension between what appears to be a White House drawing of an America first line where the focus and emphasis has largely been, until very recently, largely been on talking about and ensuring that U.S. citizens and diplomats and U.S. military are able to evacuate before that August 31st deadline. And I know the Secretary of State has said that there's no division between those folks and the Afghans, but there is deep concern among Republicans, many veterans, some Democrats on Capitol Hill, that when we hit that August 31st deadline, that Afghan allies will not be evacuated and will not

have safe passage to get on commercial flights. And so that is going to be an ongoing tension point. I think, you know, so long as the United States is committed to that August 31st deadline. So let's talk about voting rights. Yesterday there was John Lewis voting rights bill went up in the House. No Republicans voted for it. Yeah, the difference on the view in voting rights between the Democrats and Republicans is one that has been, you know, essentially locked in place since the 1965 Voting Rights Act. So, doing the math on that real quickly, you know, 56 years or so. And, you know, I don't expect it to change anytime soon.

And, you know, I think at one point you could look at elections and say, okay, well, you know, one party is competing for this set of votes and the other parties competing for that set of votes. And now you can, you know, really sort of number into the, you know, down to the last voter because of all the demographic information that we have about people now, you know, who better. and who's harmed by particular politically, by who, you know, by particular voting rights efforts that would be undertaken, you know, and within the states, the restrictions that are being put in. Do you think that Democrats will be able to get some kind of voting rights, I mean, a thing passed? I mean, probably a sort of a cutout, but do you think they're going to be able to do it? I think it's unlikely that they'll be able to get carve out and Senate rules. rules. It's very difficult to write that, you know, to essentially have a rule in the Senate that

says, well, this is about the Constitution because there are things that Republicans look at as constitutional rights that Democrats find abhorrent in terms of getting rid of a filibuster. So it's hard to see right now how the Democrats pass voting rights legislation, particularly as ambitious as the John Lewis bill is compared to what Republicans would be willing to do. I would note that when the Civil Rights Act of 64 went through and the 65 Voting Rights Act went through, the filibuster was in place and the threshold was 67 votes. So it's not impossible to see a universe in which you can get voting rights done despite the minority party having a filibuster available to it. And at the same time, in the current Senate, it's very difficult to see being able to pass anything with the filibuster as it is. Republicans are not at all into the John Lewis Voting Rights Act or anything else that they perceive as

harmful to them electorally. Yeah. It's kind of amazing. There are still audits that are going to come out from the 2020 election. Do you see a world where Democrats are able to sort of telegraph that into more urgency in voting rights, or do you think that this moment has passed? I think it's very difficult. I think all of these things come down to the, you know, sort of the last same conclusion, which is that given the way that our republic works, how we elect House members, how we elect senators, how we elect presidents, the country is, is, you know, divided pretty evenly. That's not to say that the popular vote is even. It was not in the last election or the one before it, but when you talk about, like, you know, as the rules stand, you know, each side is pretty

evenly divide in terms of their ability to try to claim power. And so until there's a major shift in the electorate that favors one party over the other, I think it's going to be hard to get a lot of things through Congress. Talk to me about what is on the horizon now with the House and the Senate. The big thing to watch is the interplay between the two chambers over the next month or so before that September 27th deadline that has been set in the House for acting on The bipartisan infrastructure bill, you know, progressives say that they're not going to vote for that unless the, you know, unless the reconciliation bill, the $3.5 trillion is locked in place and ready to go. And so, you know, it is not clear what path that's going to take. I would be surprised if Congress sends President Biden a reconciliation bill that is $3.5 trillion.

Does Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema in the Senate and perhaps other Democratic senators are going to have an opportunity to try to whittle that down before it passes either chamber? And the Senate moderates are in communication with the House moderates. So if it happens, I would expect that number to come down. I would also say it is the fool who bets against Nancy Pelosi. Yeah. Why is Nancy Pelosi so good at this? And Chuck Schumer, not so much.

I think there are a couple of things. Pelosi's very good at finding the sort of politically moral high ground very early and standing there and forcing other people to come to her. So I think that has a lot to do with it. I think knowing the members of her caucus and what they want, being a listener, is something that's extremely helpful to her. And I think the way that she rewards and punishes people is, you know, especially in an era where you don't really have the tools that leaders have always had at their disposal. I mean, we saw already to see the return of earmarks, but right now they're not in either of those in either of those bills. She's still managed to figure out ways to give rewards and

deny rewards and deny favor to recalcitrance in ways that really, you know, that really tend to bring people aboard. She is not only the most effective congressional leader of her era, she may be the most effective congressional leader ever. Is it fair to say that, that, and I'm just going to going to go down this rabbit hole for a minute, that Nancy Pelosi is basically the Mitch McConnell of the sort of brilliance of Mitch McConnell is almost the same as the brilliance of Nancy Pelosi. I'll tell you why I disagree. What Mitch McConnell is trying to do is to stop things from happening. And the burden for that, especially in the Senate where you only need, you know, 41 votes to stop things from happening,

It's not that hard compared to putting together coalitions to get things done. The court is designed, I mean, just our Constitution designs action to be slow and difficult. And so, you know, McConnell effectively uses the rules to his benefit and to, you know, in a traditionally, you know, sort of conservative way to try to keep things as they are. And Pelosi is trying to make big changes. That's a lot more difficult. It just is, you know, it's an asymmetry between the charges of their jobs. And when Mitch McConnell is the majority leader, he is not as effective at getting legislation done.

I mean, look, they weren't able to repeal Obamacare back a few years ago. And really what he's been able to do should not be hard for any Republican leader to do, which is to cut taxes. Cutting taxes is broadly popular, usually. People like their taxes cut, and they like spending. And that's the other piece that Donald can get done. he's a long time appropriated or they get spending bills done. Well, you know, Congress has to do the spending bills or the government shuts down. Right. You know, I don't think he's been particularly effective. One could argue that the filling of vacancies on the court was remarkable in terms of the speed with which it happened and denying Merrick Garland.

But, like, you know, he was essentially breaking the norms of the Senate to do that. Right. Oh, it's interesting. Are your eyes sort of on the midterms now? or not yet? Not as much yet. I mean, I think in sort of broad terms, it's worth looking at, you know, what Biden's approval ratings are and how members of Congress and his own party are choosing to stand with him or distance themselves from him based on their perceptions of whether he'll be helpful and whether the Democratic agenda is helpful to them. But we still have redistricting to see across the country. And so a lot of these members don't even know what their districts are going to look like. And some of them don't know whether they are going to be drawn out of districts.

and some of them, you know, and perhaps run for a higher office or not run at all or pick another district to run in. And some of them will be drawn into primary competition against their colleagues. And so each of those potential outcomes for them requires a different kind of politicking, right? If you get a more moderate district, if you're a Democrat who gets a more moderate district, you may be more moderate over the course of the next 15 months or so. if you are a Democrat who gets stuck into a district with another Democrat and a primary challenge, that may push you to the left. So it's really too soon to get into that calculus? It's too soon to, like, do the exact math.

Do you feel like this recall in California, which is happening in the next three days, is actually quite a big deal? The polling on that is pretty scary. What's your feeling on that? I mean, that could change the calculus of everything. Yeah, I wouldn't predict what, actually happens in a recall election just because they're not exactly presidential elections in terms of what the turnout looks like. Right. Yeah, Gavin Newsom is in deep trouble. You know,

he's got his own sort of individual peculiar challenges to deal with that I don't think necessarily reflect on the entire Democratic Party or certainly the president. So I don't know how much I'm going to take from a California recall election in terms of where the, you know, the mood of the nation is. No, I agree, but if God forbid Larry Elder gets elected, I mean, it could change the shape of the Senate. Yes, if one of the California senators decided to retire. Which will never happen, but yes. There would be, you know, there'd be a Republican governor to appoint somebody at least temporarily. And I haven't recently looked at California's election law, but eventually you'd have an election for that seat.

that wouldn't be, you know, particularly helpful to Biden, be very harmful to Biden in the short term. Yeah, no, it's a fascinating little pocket-of-fuckery. You should get an award for coining that term. Nogatana Loposki is a correspondent covering Israel and Palestine and a frequent contributor to the Daily Beast. Welcome to the new abnormal Noga Turniposki. Thank you.

thrilled to be here. We're thrilled to have you. It is an interesting time in the world. Talk to me about Israel's new prime minister has come to the United States to meet President Joe Biden, and things have gone a little off the rails. That's a good description. So, Neftali Bennett was born in 1972, which is the year Joe Biden was elected to the Senate. Right. So he's a young man, and he's so inexperienced that Joe Biden actually never met him because all of those years that Biden was vice president and was chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the Senate, Bennett was either busy making millions in the tech sector, or he was really far down, I would say, in the Israeli political scene. So this really is a kind of generational change.

And what both Bennett and Biden want is a reset. They want to normalize relations between Israel and the United States to what they were, I would say, until 2008 or nine. In other words, during the Obama administration, basically Netanyahu turned Obama into an enemy, the former prime minister who was prime minister for 12 years. And then Netanyahu, and Donald Trump became these kind of like, I don't know, sugar high bros doing whatever they wanted. And so I think both men have a very big interest in just resetting everything. Were you surprised that you ended up being able to get rid of your last prime minister? Because it struck me that he might be in there forever. Well, you're not alone. I mean, I wasn't surprised in the end. Netanyahu lost four elections in a row.

in a period of two years. So I would say I was afraid because it did become clear to me, at least as of March 2020, that Netanyahu was willing to do anything to stay in power. And what he did that month was that he illegally suspended parliament. And the Supreme Court had to set him straight. Right. So, you know, without violence, that was sort of Israel's January 6th. And from At that moment on, I was pretty frightened. Right, because you thought anything could happen. Yeah, I knew that Netanyahu would do everything within his power to stay in power. And I think it's a compliment to Israel to note that the system didn't let him hold on to power.

In the end, he couldn't, but he really tried. Yeah, and if you hadn't had that alliance, which was the far right and the far left and everyone in between, he still would be there, right? Yes, but he wouldn't be fully prime minister. If this government hadn't been able to kind of patch itself together, what we would have had is a fifth successive election with Netanyahu staying on probably till around now, September or October, as caretaker prime minister. You know, in a way he was most dangerous then, right? Because it was a loosey-goosey situation. That is true. So talk to me about what you're seeing. with this new prime minister. He's pretty far right. He personally is very far right. He supported West Bank annexation when Trump and Netanyahu were pushing that. He vocally opposes the existence of a Palestinian state. He himself is really far right. But he's basically co-prime minister. The way they were able to put this government together, as you noted, with like everybody and his grandma, is he's co-prime minister with Yair Lepid, who right now is the foreign minister and alternate prime minister.

And he does support a two-state solution, which by definition includes the establishment of Palestinian state. So what they have done is sort of put together a technocratic government. And they are proposing to Israelis that they're going to write the ship, right, after these craziness and Yahoo years. And so vis-a-vis the Palestinians, what they're promising is stasis. But vis-a-vis the Israelis, they're promising kind of to make everything better and normal again. So now talk to me about why this meeting was oddly a success, even though it hasn't happened for Israel. Bennett needs this meeting because his number one,

task. Actually, it's exactly your first question. Bennett's number one task is to show Israelis that another person can lead Israel, that it doesn't just have to be Netanyahu who goes to the White House. Netanyahu was in power for so long that I would say most Israelis can't really remember the image of another prime minister going to the White House. So Bennett has several advantages. He's the son of Californian immigrants to Israel. His English is very good. He was a tech guy, like I said. He's very pleasant in his manner. He's not a kind of growling, aggressive guy like Netanyahu. And that's what he's going to bring to the fore. And I think for Biden, it's a relief to be able to greet any prime minister who's not Netanyahu. When Biden was vice president,

Netanyahu really, really, really disrespected the U.S. government in a completely off-the-charts way. And Biden and his team remember that. Yeah, that's interesting. So talk to me about what's happening in Afghanistan right now. I would say it's a tragedy. There are U.S. Marines dead. They're about 60 people dead. And what this means in terms of this visit, apart from the fact that Bennett, you know,

is left kind of cooling his heels in a hotel while he waits the call. from the White House, what it means, I think, is that Bennett will be able to stand up in the White House with Biden and say, you see, Israel's not your problem in the Middle East. We're the Middle East you can rely on. And Bennett will be able to offer Biden something, which is to appear like a competent foreign affairs leader vis-a-vis the Middle East. Right. Talk to me about what you're seeing. Israel is because of their incredible vaccination. program, kind of the leader of what we're seeing in vaccines. Talk to me about what you're seeing in vaccines. I want the bad news first, and then I want the good news. Okay. The bad news is that

ultra-vaccinated Israel is seeing the highest number of infections ever right now. And behind the the bad news is that as good as the Pfizer biotech vaccine is, and it really is a miracle, it begins to wane very, very seriously at about the six-month, five-month or six-month point. And this is especially true in the cases of people who are immunocompromised, like transplant patients, cancer patients. So they're the most vulnerable to begin with, and in them, the vaccine loses power fastest. So Israel right now is in a frenzy of triple vaccinating everybody, you know, and that's working. So what we're seeing now is this plateauing of new cases and even the beginning of a downward slide of severe cases of illness hospitalizations. I mean, more than 50% of the people who caught the virus are among the real minority in Israel who are not vaccinated.

80% of Israelis are vaccinated, and that includes children who can't get vaccinated. So a very high percentage of Israelis are vaccinated. Okay. And when you get triple-vaxed, it works. That's what the Israeli statistics published today in the New England Journal of Medicine show. But for the majority of the world, where no one is yet vaccinated and no one has access to these kind of luxury. vaccines, this is really bad news. So explain to me, you're having breakthrough infections, but your breakthrough infections are not the level where they need to be hospitalized.

Almost all of the breakthrough infections, people can take care of themselves at home. They're either asymptomatic or their kind of low-key symptoms. Right. Although I know one guy who, the boyfriend of a friend of mine, who had it pretty bad. He was at home. He was at home. he wasn't hospitalized, but he couldn't get up for two days. Right. I would say the important thing, which I feel like we're losing sight of here, is we didn't shut the world down because of people getting sick for two days. We shut the world down because it was like a 2% fatality, right?

Now, you know, we have where I feel like we're dealing with this in a way that we're sort of forgetting what the game here is. Like we want people not to die. You know, if people are getting sick, it sucks. But it's like it's still. much better than the alternative than what we had before. Well, Israel's completely open. You're right.

I mean, what you're saying is right. And people are not dying like they were dying initially. So Israel's in this middle range. I just came home from the Jerusalem Film Festival. So you have to get in, you have to show your vaccination QR code on your phone. Or you can't even like get into the, you know, the area of the cinematics. where this is held. And if you're inside the building, you have to be masked. But, you know, their cocktail parties on the terrace are in the garden and everyone is unmasked. Yes, vaxed,

but unmasked and having a good time. So that's where Israel's kind of hovering right now. All businesses are open. The government is encouraging people to work at home when they can. And they are really, really, really pushing the third vaccine. Basically, Israel, put all its eggs in that basket. And the initial scientific results show that it's working. But, you know, today I heard the former Corona Tsar of Israel saying that he thought we were going to live with COVID for the rest of our lives. He's a guy in his 50s. And he said we have to adapt. That really is urgent to learn how to live with this disease. Yeah. No, I think that's right. I mean, but hopefully we will, you know, if it turns into the flu, you know, with the fatality numbers of the flu, that's going to be a total game changer.

That's right. But for now, what it means is that the world has to produce a lot more vaccines, because if people are going to need a booster every six months, which is what we're seeing right now, you know, we're just far from that level of production. Yeah. No, it's a real problem. Do you think that what is happening in Afghanistan will have reverberations in the rest of the world? Well, sure. I mean, I think I see this as a big deal. I think that potentially this will be really a formative moment of the Biden presidency. I think that many, many allies are feeling a little jittery right now. Maybe not Israel or not yet, but countries that felt that they, were okay because they had an American commitment in this region, are starting to wonder if they shouldn't find another sponsor. I think also that relations between the United States and European

allies have also really been shaken up by this, and that also, you know, that has an effect everywhere. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, is on his way to Iraq right now, where he has set up a kind of summit with Saudi Arabia, with Iran, and it doesn't include the United States. So, you know, Putin has made an absolutely huge move into the Middle East. And I think that this, I don't know what to call it, this terrible tragedy right now in Kabul is definitely helping those forces right now. Yeah, I think so too. God, what a grim, grim world we live in. Thank you so much for joining us.

I'm sorry, it was a downer. No, it's good. We love downers. That's what we do here. We're all about the downer. Okay. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz?

The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from The Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer, checking in on the movement of the radical right.

Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's Fever Dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Jesse Cannon. Molly John. Fast. Today we have a very exciting, themed, fuck that guy. That we do. It's a pretty elegant

little crop of fuckery. Can we really call this state elegance? I love this state because when Republicans are like, the Constitution says that California cannot be, you know, 15 states or three states because this is the way it was written in the Constitution. And then you're just, like, yeah, and there really should be two fucking Dakota's, motherfuckers. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. South Dakota, you are the object of a lot of our ire today. You want to go first? Oh, sure. My fuck that guy is one Christy gnome. Christy has been trying to find how she angles in case Trump doesn't run, how she can wedge out Ron DeSantis and being the most reckless governor in America. and she's also got to mess with that Greg Abbott, Phyllis, but he's not doing so well these days.

But so she decided to let the Sturgis rally go on. She recently also said a very interesting one that she doesn't want to impose mass quarters on businesses because businesses should make their own decisions, which was clearly a diss at Ron DeSantis. So anyway, because she held the Sturgis rally during our fourth COVID surge in the United States, well, we now have record-breaking COVID cases coming to the two counties in South Dakota. She's making it just like Ronda Santis did, even worse than the last surge. So to her, I say, fuck you, you reckless, selfish asshole. So in South Dakota, besides your shitty governor, we have the South Dakota Attorney General, Jason Ravensborg.

And like the Texas Attorney General, he is a Republican with some legal issues. Now, the Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, otherwise known as the only person Trump didn't give a pardon to, had some legal issues, but not like this. See, Ravensborg actually killed someone with his car and then drove away. He did make a 911 call, so that was classy, but he did say he hit something, might have been a deer, and then drove off. I'm not, but my car sure as hell is. You know, in typical Republican fashion, he released a statement, which I want to read you the use of the passive voice here, because I think it's an important little moment of Republican fuckery. On September 12th, 2020, two families were changed forever. Okay, you killed someone.

So, I mean, I guess, first and foremost, I'm very sorry for Joe Bover, who lost his life in the accident. How did he lose his life? You killed him. He didn't lose it. You took it, you motherfucker. And for that, no jail time, because, of course, He is a white man in government and Republican. No jail time, no anything.

But, you know, in his statement, he does mention that we still face challenges. I mean, he did kill someone, but yes. And he will continue the dialogue about marijuana and how to regulate it. Okay. And for that, I say, fuck you, Jason Rabinsborg. If you're going to hit a deer, you got to do it the way Charles Grassley did it, you know, and tweeted out, I assume dear dead.

B.C. it was night and no carcass. Greatest tweet ever. Yeah, Chuck Grassley is a real Republican hero when it comes to Twitter. You know, you got to give a good poster his due. That's right. Good poster is due. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science.

We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. 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 thedailybeast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline head to the dailybeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.