The Daily Beast Podcast - Fire Team Snuffs Out Musk’s Disinformation Dumpster Fire

Episode Date: January 19, 2025

Billionaire CEO, DOGE co-director and “first buddy” Elon Musk’s surprise visit to California’s Pacific Palisades neighborhood didn’t seem to go as planned. Musk attempted to affirm an incendiary rumor about the area’s wildfires spreading because the city had a shortage of water, but a fire commander threw cold water on the claim. “You hear him go from his normal, ‘Oh, I’m so bright. I’m asking questions.’ To timid and realizing that he is a fucking jack—,” said The New Abnormal co-host Andy Levy. Plus! Author Bennett Parten joins the podcast to discuss his new book, Somewhere Toward Freedom: Sherman's March and the Story of America's Largest Emancipation. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

We thank you so much for being here. Author Bennett Parton joins us to discuss his book, somewhere toward freedom, Sherman's March, and the story of America's largest emancipation, all about the role of enslaved people in Sherman's March and how their contributions reshape the fight for freedom during the Civil War. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? No. Yeah, clip us. Clips. The last clips of the Biden administration, I'm sure they're all going to be fun and optimistic and heartwarming.

Right, Jesse? Right? I'm not going to pretend. Right, Jesse? I can't pretend with the slot. All right. So, world's richest idiot, Yon Musk, loves, loves spreading misinformation. So he thought he was going to really, really show everyone.

He's going to go talk to some firefighters and show how awful everything is being handled, and all the misinformation on his app that he's spreading is actually true. And, well, let's let the video do the talking. All right, what about water availability? Was water availability? I understand that was not an issue in Malibu. Is that correct? Was it water?

Yeah. So there was water. We have several reservoirs that we use a lot. Now, just an example, if we have one building. burning, we could flow 1,000 gallons a bit on that one building with the hose lays that we put in to stop it. You can imagine 1,000

gallons per house we can do, right? So the amount of water we're flowing, there really is no water system. That's going to keep that pace, so we have to bring in water tenders, which are these big tank water tanks at, you know, 2,500, 3,000 gallon trucks, and they'll come in, and that's what we have to do

to compensate. So they park out there to do it. DWTP did a great job. they brought in big water trucks for us. And we use them as basically mobile hydrants. All right. Right. And then we have our own agency as well that has water tenders. Okay.

I remember saying is that like along the, maybe I'm correct if I'm wrong, in Malibu along the coast, there was no shortage of water. In the palisades, there was a shortage of water at a certain point. Or is that not at all? Well, we were just, we were flowing just an amount of, amount of water that those systems couldn't overbearing. Just because of how much water these firefighters were utilizing. Okay.

All right. Sounds good. All right. Thanks, guys. He's just a loser. I don't even know how else to say it anymore. He's a big old loser. I'm confused.

They were just explaining how water works, right? And then you see him go from his normal, Oh, I'm so bright. I'm asking questions to timid and realizing that he is a fucking jackass. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Do you think that that's how he felt?

I actually do think you hear his posture change as the video goes. Like you hear him get timid as he realizes like here I'm talking to a competent person who understands things. And he realizes like, oh, I'm out of my depth. He sounds more timid as it goes. Okay. Well, I'm glad he knows things now. Well, in a week where Sam Harris put up all his exchanges with him, that basically after he made the world's stupidest bet on COVID not spreading with Sam Harris,

and they broke up their friendship, which I really feel bad for Sam Harris for not out to listen to talk anymore. We really see how this brain genius operates. Honestly, that's sort of a win-win for both of them, not having to be. to hear the other talk. It's a solid point, solid point. I don't know why. I came to Sam DeHaris' defense there. So in the Senate, for years now, we've had based Mike Lee.

But I got news for y'all. There's a new base senator in town. His name is Mark Wayne Mullen. He's going to tell you all the reality of the Senate. But we so quickly forget about that. And then Senator Kane, or I guess I better use the senator from Virginia, starts bringing up the fact that what if you showed up drunk to your job? How many senators have showed up drunk to vote at night?

Have any of you guys asked them to step down and resign for their job? And don't tell me you haven't seen it because I know you have. And then how many senators do you know have got a divorce before cheating on their wives? Did you ask them to step down? No. But it's for show. You guys make sure you make a big show and point out the hypocrisy because a man's made a mistake. And you want to sit there and say that he's not qualified?

Give me a joke. It is so ridiculous that you guys hold yourself as this higher standard and you forget you got a big plank in your eye. We've all made mistakes. I've made mistakes. And Jennifer, thank you for loving him through that mistake. Because the only reason why I'm here and not in prison is because my wife loved me too.

That garnered applause? I have changed. That was the applause line? Did you? got the memo, but we're in the wife guy era. Whoa. The only reason I'm not in jail is because my wife loved me. Like, bitch, what are you doing?

Like, what are you doing? That was my vows, too. Oh, my God. I believe that. I just, I, like, the fact that, God, Donald Trump really is a magician. man. To turn these people into just, I don't know, toads or shells of themselves, I don't, I don't even know what it is. But to stand up there and to say that, well, everybody in the Senate

is drunk and sleeping with other people and cheating on their wives. So like, and we all have jobs and don't we do a good job, maybe you should check your poll numbers. Because most of America doesn't actually think that you're doing a good fucking job, nor should that be a badge of honor. And the only reason that you're not in jail is probably a newsflash, like you're white, you're a man, you have a title senator, and you're wealthy. So those are the four reasons. But sure, I guess your wife really caught a good one. Thank you for loving him through this. Which wife was that?

Was that wife number three? Miss me with it. That's fucking disgusting. These are the people that want to dictate to the rest of us what family values look like. The fucking audacity is it's just, okay, you know what? this is not my era. You know what? I need to sit down. I need to sit down. Andy, take over the show. This is your era. We talked about this before we started recording. I know. And I thought that I could hold it in. And I realized, you know what? I'm just send me to the gulag now. I think it'll be fine.

I specifically said before we started recording that we needed to pivot to become a pro men podcast. And Danielle, I did my best. She did her best. What did I say? I said, I said, yay. men. Men are great. I wasn't feeling it and I'm not feeling it now. And anyway, Jesse, can we book Andrew Tate for next week? I have great news for you, Andy. He's our next clip. Oh, no way. No, he's not. I actually didn't even know that. You did not know that. Also, because I called a variable and put this first. But anyway, just before we get to him, I just want to add one last thing to the Mark Wayne Mullen thing. And that is that he keeps talking about how his head. Meg Seth made a mistake.

Girl, he was accused of sexual assault. That's not a mistake. Come on. You don't mistakenly assault somebody, sexually or otherwise. Like, yeah, whatever. All right, I'm sure Andrew Tate will clear all of this up. Well, what he's going to clear up for us is what a great job, Donald and Bolaudea are doing Raising Barrett.

Why don't we listen? And I'm very close to the Trump family. I know them well, and I spoke to Barron after the incident. And I look forward to once I am free, being. with Donald Trump in person and reminding him that he's a bulletproof badass. He spoke to Baron about what incident? Why are they letting a guy whose odd sex offender charges probably talk to a minor since Barron's not been 18 for very long?

What the hell is going on here? But like what incidents is he talking about? That part I didn't quite get because I don't follow. I spoke to Barron after the incident. Did he call him collect? Was that his one phone call? Barrett, buddy. You're so tall.

Can you reach my cell? I just, I, mm-mm. Well, I for one, normally think that most people would get their child put in child protective services if they were letting them come talk to somebody with Andrew Tate's charges. But we know Trump's not up for laws and following things. Folks, I am very excited to welcome to the new abnormal. the author of the book, Somewhere Toward Freedom, Sherman's March and the Story of America's Largest Emancipation. Bennett Parton joins us today. Ben, this book is one of those books that I find extraordinary in the research and history and also alarming because I didn't know anything about it.

And, you know, I like to consider myself fairly smart and studied. And yet it's one of those pieces of American history that I feel like was not shared. That was hidden. That is not largely known. And so this started for you. This book started for you, I believe, as your dissertation work. And I want to ask you, I guess the first question is, what? about Sherman's March kind of led you to say, oh, this needs to be a book.

Like, we need to, we need to dive into this period of the Civil War of American history in a way that hasn't been done before. Yeah, well, first of all, thanks for having me. And maybe a couple of things to say about that. Personally, I actually grew up outside of Athens, Georgia, and grew up driving the route of Sherman's March, basically all the way to surveyor. and Hilton Head every year to go on vacation with my family. Now I live in Savannah, so I drive the same route back to my home regularly,

which is essentially following in the traces of Sherman's footsteps. But even so, I had no real interest in writing about Sherman's March. It wasn't really a topic of consideration for me. But that all changed when I was reading E.L. Doctor O's fictional version of the March, called simply The March. If you know Dr. O, Dr. O, Dr. is one of our great historical fiction writer. He's probably most famous for ragtime. But in the march, he writes and includes as a cast of characters,

a real sort of kaleidoscope of different characters. There is a troubled German-born surgeon. There are two Confederate prisoners of war. I mean, really, the list goes on and on. But he also includes as a character, a freed woman by the name of Wilma Jones. She's a woman who drops everything, follows the army, and arrives with the army at Savannah. And it struck me while I was reading that,

that Wilma Jones was not a singular character, but in fact she was a composite character, and there was probably many thousands of Wilma Joneses that took part in this march. It also struck me, too, the way that Dr. Road described Savannah, basically experiencing this influx of people, was really as a city that was experiencing the later stages of a refugee movement. And so when I read this book, it really occurred to me that there was more there. And so I set out as a kind of mission to write a kind of nonfiction companion piece or handbook to Dr. Rose, The March. And really try to understand Wilma Jones's story not as a work of historical fiction, but as the work of history. So that's really the kind of origin story for this book.

So tell us about William Ticumse Sherman and this march that takes place in the throngs of the Civil War and why it's, is so reticent to what we understand as one, the fight for liberation and freedom of enslaved people, but also the throngs of the civil war being around this decision to break America apart because the southern states did not want to give up the practice of slavery. I feel like how we've always come to explain the Civil War is not actually deeply factual in terms of, oh, the South was bad, the North was good. Like, that's kind of, like, that's kind of how it has been packaged throughout elementary schools, middle schools, and high schools in America. And it isn't until you really get into secondary education that you really understand the nuances. So talk to us about William

to come to Sherman and this epic march that is the center of your book. Sure, sure. Well, there's a lot to say about Sherman. I mean, he is one of the most important figures in this war. And I would argue in all of American history, if you just look at the scope of his life and the role that he plays at various points in his life. But he is someone who is probably best known in the context of the Civil War as representing what historians sometimes refer to as a turn or a turn to a much.

harder form of war, being more or, excuse me, less restrained in the kind of warfare that it would take to win the civil war. And the march is probably seen as well as being kind of the high point of this turn to a harder form of war. Because the march itself comes after Atlanta is taken, Atlanta Falls to Sherman's army. And so Sherman makes the calculation that he can cut loose of his supply lines in Atlanta and make this roughly two months, 250 mile long march simply by foraging off the fields of the Confederate heartland, which in this case is Georgia, right, the farms and fields of central Georgia. But this is not just a ordinary campaign. I mean, part of what Sherman wants to do in foraging off the farms in the fields of central Georgia

is to really strike at the emotional and material wherewithal of Southern. but particularly rich plantation owners to continue fighting the war and continue keeping up the war. And so for this reason, much of the conversation around Sherman's March for a long time has been whether or not his kind of heavy-handedness has prefigured some of the strategies seen in World War II, Vietnam and others, right, this sort of move to total war. I think that's overstated. I think most historians now see that as being overstated. But nonetheless, for a long time, when people have encountered Sherman's March,

It's sort of the military, right? It's the fire and the guns. It's Sherman's heavy goodness. It's the sort of cult of his personality. It's the grievance of white southerners who have or who experienced the march on the opposite end that has been the main focus for historians, writers, and what have you. But what I've wanted to do in this book is really flip the script, right? And to ask the question of what the march looked like from the perspective of formerly enslaved people. And what happens when you do, it becomes clear that this moment, this episode in the Civil War was not just a kind of cut and dry military event, but the largest emancipation event in American history and a bona fide freedom movement. I think one of the reasons we have struggled to see it as such is simply, I think, the sort of grip that the sort of specter of war has had on this moment and the kind of attention that it always commanded amongst historians and other authors. I think another reason, too, we have yet to really sort of come to the march from this perspective is just the sheer difficulty of sources, right?

Enslaved people leave sources. Refugees leave even fewer, right? So sometimes it's hard to kind of get at these stories. But I think the point that you raised about the way we've understood the civil war is a good one, which is that oftentimes we tell the story of the Civil War as one of which two sides were fighting each other on battlefields. And that sense is a fairly contained story. But when you shift the focus and focus on how enslaved people acted as participatory,

in this war. Now all of a sudden, the kind of conflicts are multi-dimensional. Many of the conflicts are being had not just on battlefields, but on plantations and farms and roadsides all across the country. And so suddenly the war becomes so much more complex. And not like that, but we can see just the extraordinary role that enslaved people played in ensuring union victory. Even here in the story of Sherman's March, enslaved people acted as spies, scouts, lookouts. They helped point the way to hidden plantation treasures. They embedded themselves within the army. And even as Sherman's men approach Savannah, some of these farms become less abundant in its harvest and its food. And enslaved people share rice with soldiers and they sustain the army by feeding them rice. So one of the things I did want

to try to do in this book is really kind of flip the script on the way we've thought about the Civil War by really digging into some of these sort of under-explored corners of how the war or where the war played out. You know, there's something, and you tell me, because there's something about this story in particular that draws parallels to the liberation of Haiti. And the liberation of Haiti being the first country to overthrow its colonizers and gain independence for its black inhabitants. Because of such, has then bared the brunt of horrible debts. and been made an example of to the world in a lot of ways. As to say, do not follow this path of liberation because scorn and war and all of these

things will befall you. And I kind of think about as thinking about your book and why we have not learned about the deep participation of enslaved black people in not participating in their own liberation, but to your point in the sustaining of union soldiers for this fight that they saw their liberation very much entwined with. And I wonder in your mind, why do you think like larger history? Again, I'm thinking about what we teach young people and what we learn as a country. Why do you think it was seemingly important to withhold the power of the enslaved, of enslaved, people and their participation in their own liberation?

Well, that's a great question, fantastic question. And it kind of calls to mind the point that the historian Steve Hahn has made. And this kind of references back to Haiti, which is the Civil War may well be the largest slave rebellion we've ever seen. That the Civil War, from the perspective, enslaved people, was, in fact, one large slave in insurrection. And that's part of what I tried to do in this book is showing all the different ways that enslaved people became, you know, not just active participants, but a kind of third-party

broker in their own emancipation. In some cases, took up arms and did things like, you know, show the way to, you know, hidden trails, plantation treasures, you know, offered intelligence and were really vital parts of this kind of military story. You know, to your question of, you know, why this story hasn't been told, I think a lot of it has to do, again, just the sort of neatness with which we like history sometimes. You know, the great writer Robert P. Warren often writes about, you know, the idea that the Civil War, there was glory of plenty for everyone, right?

I think we as Americans sometimes get romanced to some degree by the war itself. We like these easy stories. But when we shift our focus to the perspective of enslaved people, sometimes those easy stories aren't as easy, right, to follow. They sort of break the mold, in a sense. And so I think that's one of the reasons we haven't. been able to kind of tell these stories until now. And I should say there's tons of fantastic historians.

And in fact, I see my work fitting in directly with them and being in conversation with them and couldn't have been written without them. You know, and I also think that the way we tell our history is a reflection of our own present-day politics. And so I think it makes sense that, you know, if you look at the history of the civil rights movement, you look at the history that came after the Civil War with reconstruction through Jim Crow, you know, all the way up to now, it makes sense that the way we tell our history would reflect our politics. And so that's one reason, I think, that these stories haven't quite been told until now. What surprised you most about your research for this book? One is, I think I was surprised by the number. I knew that there would be stories.

I knew, as I said, in the beginning, that there were likely hundreds, maybe thousands of Wilma Joneses. But I wasn't quite expecting. I mean, Sherman, when he gets to Savannah, he suggests that maybe that's the maybe as many as 20,000 refugees were following his army. And just for perspective, 20,000 is roughly the size of Savannah itself in 1860, and it's double the size of Atlanta. So we're talking about a refugee movement the size of a large southern city. And so once I started digging in and discovering kind of the numbers here, I realized just what kind of movement this was. And that 20,000 number, I should say, doesn't take into account the people who might have run to the army and then turned back, ran to the army that decided not to follow. It doesn't take into account the

unknowable number of enslaved people who experience freedom in this moment, right? So the sheer scale of this movement, this episode is one of the things that surprised me. The other thing that surprised me was just how rich the sources were. To write this, I had to rely on the personal memories and reminisces and diaries and letters and histories of the soldiers themselves. And when you read these documents, it becomes very clear that enslaved people were ever present. And if you get, once you get past the kind of prejudices and biases that the soldiers bring to their own accounts, enslaved people figure prominently. And you can see the way in which that they're working with the army and are active at every stage in the army. So I was surprised by the sheer scale of this story,

but also just the richness of the individual stories that make up the book. We just have a couple of minutes left, but I also want to raise for the audience that Sherman was not anybody's abolitionist. And so I just want to give you an opportunity to also speak to the fact that it wasn't as if he was welcoming of these enslaved people who were joining this march and by their sheer number able to do, able to accomplish his goals, but he was not himself an abolitionist. No, not at all. Farthest thing from it, in fact, when the war begins, he is someone who sees slavery as being tangential to the war, if that. The war is fundamentally a question of preserving the union and the sanctity of America, right, under its standing constitution. He does not see

slavery as having a place in the war. And he becomes a real resistor to the evolution of the war, to one that embraces emancipation. He does a lot to try to fight this evolution. He never becomes a full advocate of it. Though he does slowly begin to change his tune a little bit. By the time he arrives in Savannah, I think he recognizes the need to target slavery as a way of ending the war.

He knows that styling himself as a liberator is good for him politically. And it's something that he sometimes uses to excuse some of the behavior of his own army. But when he leaves out of Atlanta, he issues an order that tells his troops that enslaved people who the army meets along the way can come along. He specifies he wants able-bodied individuals, people who can take care of themselves and fin for themselves, who may be of service to the army. In other words, people who could potentially work for the army. But he also instructs his men that their first responsibility is to their own troops and their own well-being.

And there's a few things I think about this order that's notable. One is that Sherman himself always had a sort of hang up about military labor. If enslaved people were going to find refuge within his lines, they were going to have to work for it. The need for military labor for him was paramount, and that's kind of a condition he always put on freedom for enslaved people. It also was an order that doesn't really say anything, right? It doesn't really give his troops any clear directive on the issue, which comes back to divide him a little bit. But it's also bored of this kind of conceit that the army alone will control the course of. of emancipation as this march unfolds. And one of the things that Sherman realizes very early on, or at least halfway through the march, is that that is not going to be the case, that enslaved people are going to run to the army no matter what and are going to have a say-so in what emancipation looks like in his army. And I should say that the army in general is fine with allowing enslaved people to follow along early in the march, where the roads are good, there's plenty of food, there's not many rivers that are sort of slowing the army down. But the closer the army

gets to Savannah, there is a sort of army-wide consensus that the growing group or crowd of refugees that are following the army needs to be stopped and halted. I haven't found a directive from Sherman himself, you know, sort of smoking gun evidence saying that he ordered this army-wide cutting back. But there is nonetheless a sense that the closer the army gets to Savannah, that they have to begin turning people away and reducing the silence following them. Well, Bennett, you know, I want to thank you for this book for telling this story in the way that you did. I think that it is critical, particularly at a time when there are forces that are once again trying to rewrite our history and write the experiences of the enslaved out of the American story and black people out of the American story. And so I just, again, want to thank you for this work.

Folks, the book is somewhere toward freedom. Sherman's March and the story of America's largest emancipation. You should absolutely pick up a copy. Ben Parton, thank you so much for making time for The New Abnormal. It's a good pleasure. Thanks for having me. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday.

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