The Daily Beast Podcast - Fox News Can’t Stand the Energy at This Year’s DNC

Episode Date: August 20, 2024

This week on The New Abnormal, hosts Danielle Moodie and Andy Levy break down Fox News’ response to the Democratic National Convention. Plus! Jonathan Metzl, the author of “What We’ve Become: Living and Dying in a Country of Arms,” joins us to break down Kamala Harris’ gun policy and why Tim Walz might be the X-factor needed to make it happen. Then Denny Carter, founder of Bad Faith Times, is here to break down his recent piece and why Harris needs to keep ignoring the mainstream media’s pressure. 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 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 Kedden, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have for you today.

Jonathan Metzell, the author of What We've Become, Living and Dying in a Country of Arms, drives us to break down Kamala Harris' gun policy and why Tim Walts might be the biggest part of getting it across. Then, Denny Carter, founder of Bad Faith Times, is here to break down his recent piece. Democrats are saying no to Leslie Nop Politics and why Kamala Harris needs to keep ignoring the mainstream media's pressure. But first, let's have some fun. So Danielle, as we record this, the DNC is set to kick off, and you are hours away from being on a plane to Chicago, I take it. Yes, I am super excited, because this is going to be my second convention that I'm going to, and never in my entire life. Did I think that I would witness the Democratic Party choosing a black woman, a black and Indian

woman as their pick. I thought that seeing Hillary Clinton eight years ago was historic. And so I'm super excited to attend. And for folks that want to follow along with me, because I'm going to be posting videos and just interviews and conversations on my new YouTube channel at Danielle Moody underscore, so you can follow along with all of the fun. And, you know, to quote Donald Trump, it's going to be wild, but in a good way, not in a insurrection. people will go to jail type of way. Right. So let's talk about Joe Biden's speech.

I thought it was an excellent speech slash didn't do the job it was supposed to. And I'm joking, of course, because we're recording this before he speaks. It's like, wait, what? Yeah. So just to let our audience know that we are recording this on Monday and Danielle is hours away from getting on a flight. So I guess let's turn since we can't really talk about the DNC all that much. What do the Democrats have to do?

in this convention. I mean, look, I think that there is actually a lot that we can talk about because Laura Ingraham and Fox News are seemingly losing their mind. Over the lineup of speakers and performers, they're saying that it is, you know, it's going to be like this rock concert type of vibe and light on policy. I'm not quite sure what policy Hulk Hogan or the washed up kid rock offered whatsoever, but I know that I think that we're going to hear a lot about their for the people, future-looking, Democratic rally where we're going to see what the Democrats' vision is for America, which we've already seen on the campaign trail over the last month. I think, oh, my God, it's only been a month. Has it been a full month? It's been a month. And I feel like I've aged 25 years.

But we've already seen some of their policy measures come out in comparison to Project 2025's 19th century Handmaid's Tale, Post-Civil Rights view of America. So I think that every night, beginning with Joe Biden, Dr. Jill Biden, Hillary Clinton speaking tonight, moving through both of the Obamas will be speaking, Barack and Michelle, then the first gentleman is also going to be speaking. I think it's going to be super exciting. And it's going to be a stark contrast to the nightmare that we witnessed that was the RNC. And I just am so grateful that we won't get a shot of looking up into the family box and just seeing it brought to you by Botox. I mean, that will be exciting too. Yeah, I agree with you.

I don't want, and I've never wanted, hardcore policy speeches at a convention. I mean, a convention is pageant. A convention is theater. It's, I guess, to put it in a more modern term, it's vibes. We saw the vibes from the Republican convention. We saw the people holding the signs that said mass deportation. I mean, the vibes were straight up. If you are not a white Christian, you are not welcome in America. We don't need to hear specific policies from the Republicans, although, as you say, we have them from Project 2025, because we sure as hell don't have them from Trump. But we got the vibe, and that's all you need to know. And I am perfectly happy if the Democratic vibe is inclusive and is basically the themes that, you know, that are basically the themes

that Vice President Harris and Tim Walls have been hammering that we're not going back. We're not going back to the 1950s or the 1850s the way the Republicans want us to. I'm all for the convention being fun. Like make it fun. Present an image of America. Present an image of the people that want to take this country into the future as fun. Everything the Republicans do is to paint a scary, scary world of people of color, of trans people, of gay people. of non-Christians and how everything is a war against those people. And here you have,

you have Harris and Walls out there basically going like, you know what, we're all going to get together. And that's our vision of America is everyone treated with respect and we go about our business and we have fun. And I am more than fine if the convention is completely about vibes and not about policy. I don't want Kamala Harris to give a two-hour policy speech on Thursday night. Do you? No. We have to understand that these conventions are about pageantry. The whole point is for us to get to know not only the presidential and the vice presidential pick, but to really understand like who Democrats are. And just again, by panning out into the audience, you're going to see who Democrats are and what our tent looks like.

Because in comparison, do you remember, Andy, the Hitler-esque, fist motions that were happening out in that almost entirely like 99.9% white crowd at the RNC, they don't look like America. They don't look like America and they sure as hell don't sound like America. And so it is going to be, I think, so exciting and contagious in its enthusiasm, What we've seen in small bits as Harris and Walls have gone from battleground state to battleground state and seeing the crowd sizes grow, this is going to be the culmination of that. And that's exactly the kind of imagery that we want to be projecting out to the American people. Yeah, 100%.

My guess is that that is what we're going to see. They seem to have, you know, they seem to have a pretty good handle on the kind of campaign they want to run. And I know it's, I know it's annoying the hell out of a lot of centrist pundits and a lot of newspaper boards. And honestly, I couldn't be happier about that. So I'm absolutely fine with that. Meanwhile, on the Republican side, the meltdown continues. Donald Trump gives a speech that was supposed to be on the economy. And, and of course, you know, news organizations fall for this. Donald Trump will be speaking at Bedminster about the economy. And everyone reading that was like, Yeah, I bet he doesn't talk much about the economy.

And of course, what he talked about was how he's better looking than Kamala Harris. The meltdown, it's a joy to watch. It's been a long time since we've seen Republicans flail like this. And I think it is very safe to say that this would not be the case if Joe Biden were still the nominee. I mean, it wouldn't be because they would have continued to just hammer away and the media would follow suit. on Joe Biden's age. And now they literally don't have anything. And what Trump is doing is what he's always known to do, which is just compare himself

and try and belittle like he just rolled out another, you know, negative name for Kamala Harris. Now he's he's on the broke down social media platform, Twitter, calling her comrade because Kamala didn't stick and whatever else he's done is not. sticking. Well, it's important because if we elect her, we will be stuck in a communist state where everyone will get health care. Be careful, everybody. Going to give us all health care. Be careful. Going to give us all health care. Yeah. And that should be the scariest thing for us. It's just, I hate them so much. But I really want Republicans to continue. I want Donald Trump to continue. Continue saying that you're better looking. Continue saying, you know, coming up with, you know,

another slur for Kamala Harris, like continue being Nancy Mace and going on television and saying you can call her whatever the hell you want because they don't offer policy that the American people actually care about. And the more that people learn about Project 2025, the more of a disgust that they have for the Republican Party and their agenda. And that just bodes better for all of us. Yeah. And one of the main reasons we see them flailing like this, and particularly Donald Trump, is, well, there are, I think, two big reasons. One is that J.D. Vance is proving to be a very unpopular pick for vice president and maybe the rare vice presidential pick that actually makes a difference because generally they just don't, you know, Sarah Palin, I think, did.

Tim Cain Eraser right there, man. Tim Cain erasure. Yeah. Tim Cain made absolutely no difference. But it does seem like J.D. Vance is, at least at this stage, is a major drag on this ticket. He polls horribly with independence. He has been really nothing more than the butt of internet memes. And, you know, I remember saying when we recorded right after he was a pick that I hoped that what this was getting at was overconfidence by the Republicans. And I think that's turning out to be the case. and I think they thought they just they had this election in the bag.

So they picked a guy who they just thought would appeal to their MAGA base the most. And I think it's turning out to, you know, again, look, the election is a couple months away, three months away. But so far it seems like it's backfired. I honestly, I think now when I look back on it, I'm like, why did, like what was appealing about J.D. Vance? What was supposed to be the appealing part of J.D. Vance? because I don't know what it is. And I get that people say, oh, well, you don't make a decision based on who the vice presidential pick is.

A friend of mine said that. And then I went through the last several vice presidential picks. And I'm like, no, they're actually really important in terms of round, when they say rounding out the ticket. But I don't know what value J.D. Vance was supposed to be. I guess I said this before, that he was the younger Mike Pence, who clearly has issues with women because Mike Pence couldn't be alone with another woman that he wasn't married to because I have no idea what's wrong with him. But it's clear that they needed and wanted someone who

shared and amplified Donald Trump's misogynistic views, who shared and amplified where they believe a woman's place should be. I don't know, honestly, like post the RNC, all we've seen is his numbers tank. And it's not just because of the unarthed. video, it's because of the stuff that he's saying on the campaign stump and when given the opportunity to backtrack, he triples down. So I, you know, I'm just glad that he's the gift that keeps on giving. Yeah, for sure. And I guess to answer your first question, like, who was he supposed to appeal to? I assume it was the people of, uh, of Appalachia or Appalachia, depending on which part of the region you're from. Um, but, you know, this all, again,

this seemed to be based on the fact that he wrote a book and there was a movie out of it. And it doesn't seem like there was a hell of a lot of vetting. I mean, all this stuff that's been turning up, the podcast appearances, the speeches he gave, not to take away from the people who are digging it up because great job, go with God, keep doing it. But it feels like a better run Trump campaign would have found that stuff. And maybe it would have raised some red flags. but I think they were so sort of taken by his story,

or as some people would call it, his quote-unquote story, that they just ran with it. And I think Don Jr. basically said to his dad, Hey, this guy Vance is really cool. You should pick him. And I think that was my Don Jr. impression, by the way. I think that was good. Yeah, nailed it.

But you need to, you needed to sniffle a bit. Like, you know. I know. I was going to say I didn't sniff enough. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, it does appear to be backfiring in a pretty big way. And in a way that I think, you know, like I said, I think Sarah Palin is the last time I can remember a vice presidential candidate having such a, what seems to be a drag on the ticket.

And we'll have to see if that continues. The other reason I think the Republicans are flailing are the polls. Danielle, every time we talk about the polls, we caveat that. And we say, you know, well, you know, the polls are not. aren't always right. And, you know, a lot can happen between now and election day and all of that is true. But on the other hand, the polls right now are good. So I think they're right. Okay. So here is what I will say. I, I, when polls are good and when polls are bad, I don't care. And the reason being, let me just remind people that a week before the 2016 election,

a week before national polls had Hillary Clinton up by double digits. We all know how that turned out. And so to me, the only polls that I put stock in are the poll booths that people are going to walk into on November 5th and vote for Kamala Harris. Because anything else doesn't really matter. And what I find most interesting right now is that the Republican Party and their amplifiers over at Fox, your friend Jesse Waters, in particular, is out there sowing the seeds of a, once again, a stolen election. I just heard Jesse Waters on Fox saying that he had his quote-unquote people

look into the change in the polls and that something doesn't seem right because Kamala Harris is currently up. But those very same fucking polls that they were running earlier in the summer that had Donald Trump up, did you hear any? Maybe these aren't right. Maybe the right amount of people aren't being sampled. No. And so they're rolling back the same old song that they played in 2020 around this time where Donald Trump started to see the numbers and be like, hmm, this doesn't seem right. So let me start saying that this election is going to be stolen if I don't win. And that is the same thing that they're doing right now. So I'm just grateful for the fact that the vice president's legal

team is double the size of what Joe Biden's legal team was in 2020. Because we know that the fuckery is going to abound right after this election if Donald Trump does not win. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I fully think that the challenges, look, I'm hopeful that there's not another January 6th. But setting that aside, I think what we're going to see after this election is going to be a lot worse than what we saw in 2020, just in terms of specious legal challenges to the votes or some states refusing to certify their own electoral votes if Harris wins. I think it's going to be nuts, unfortunately. And you talk about, well, you talk about Jesse Waters and his people that crack staff over at Jesse Waters tonight. And I guess the one thing. Like a staff on crack or a crack

team? That's a fair question. It's probably a different drug, is my guess. But it feels like they're looking around going, how could this have happened? And I think the thing that they're maybe overlooking, and look, it's a very subtle difference between now and a month ago. It's a different candidate. And, you know, it's easy to overlook that, I guess, when you're part of Jesse Waters' team and you need to start looking for other reasons and cry foul and all that, because you've overlooked the fact that the previous polls, you know, a month ago, Joe Biden was the presumed Democratic candidate. And now it's Kamala Harris. And I think if they noticed that, all the rest of it might actually fall into place. But they seem to have overlooked that little fact.

I mean, they overlook every fact, right? Isn't that why they were sued to begin with around all of their pushing around the big lie? Like, we have to remember that too. Fox News had to pay. pay out how much? Close to a billion dollars, $700 and some on million dollars for the lies that they were pushing on this channel. And now you have them once again beginning with this idea that something must be awry with the polls because Donald Trump isn't up. Or, you know, maybe people should start believing their eyes and seeing the people when he's mid-ramble, you know, leaving in droves and already empty arena where he is. Polls, you can get them to say what you want, based on how you're asking the questions,

what time a day you're asking the questions, what platform you're using to ask those questions, et cetera, et cetera. But when we start to see Donald Trump with these empty rallies where people are leaving midway through and you're comparing that just with your eyes to folks standing in line for hours

to that hanger in Detroit, thousands of people there, like you know where the energy is going and you don't need the polls to tell you that. but their desire to begin to sow the seeds of another big lie because they are beginning to see less than 80 days out the writing on the wall. Like we just know that there is still so much work ahead that we have to do because they're not going to give up.

Even if they lose, they're going to go back into the courts the same way that they did. And in some states, like in Georgia, they've changed how they certify the vote. for sure. We're seeing a lot of AI imagery being used online by the right. And I think this is just another example of how they're flailing and how divorced from reality they are is that they can't find things that actually happened to attack Harris and walls or to puff themselves up. So instead, what they do is somebody creates an AI image of Taylor Swift saying she's endorsing Trump and Trump reposts it on his busted-ass truth social. Someone else puts up a picture of Kamala Harris speaking at a rally and they put a huge Soviet flag in the background and have everyone looking like they are,

you know, like it's an audience of communist stooges. And there was another one, maybe like a month or so ago, where someone had put up a picture of Trump surrounded by black people who were completely AI generated and you could you know they had the the extra fingers and whatever and this was supposed to show Trump as the candidate for the black vote and instead what all of these images show is that you know terror swift is not endorsing Donald Trump for real so they have to make it up they couldn't find a picture of Trump surrounded by black people who liked him so they had to make it up and Kamala Harris is fairly far from being a communist. So they have to make that up to. And it's just this is, we're going to see more and more

of this as the months go on. And thankfully, we're still at a stage where AI does not look real. And, and all it does is make the people posting it look incredibly stupid. Yeah, but they know how media works. So as soon as those images go out, it's like people are like, oh, and then it takes time for folks to realize, oh, yeah, that's AI generated. It's the same face with different hair and six arms. You know, I pray that Taylor Swift's team is on top of this because what he has posted with her likeness, not okay, not okay. So I hope that she takes legal action because how embarrassing would that be for Donald Trump? And I'm here for anything that embarrasses him. This is just one of those internet things that's ruining it for the rest of us.

I really enjoyed AI image creation despite, you know, the moral whatever. I used it to make pictures that were Han Solo and Spider-Man being my best friend. Now I can't do that anymore. Thank God. Convierte your passion in a business with Shopify and bathe records of ventas with the form of pay with a better conversion of the world. Has you heard it? The Mereld Conversion of the World.

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Pruebae per year on shopify. Folks, I am so excited to welcome back to the new abnormal,

my friend and doctor of all good things Dr. Jonathan Metzell, who you may have known because of his

book Dying of Wightness and his new book, what we've become living and dying in a country of arms. Jonathan, you know, I wanted to bring this conversation here right now because as we continue to feel the energy and enthusiasm around the Harris-Waltz ticket, and they begin to roll out, you know, their policy measures and their vision for America. We have a serious issue here in this

country, which you know, which is guns. And it is upon every administration since mass shootings began back in the 90s with Columbine, that the violence in this country has increased. The access to guns has gotten easier. And with each administration, their commitment and their ability to deal with it has become more and more difficult. So I wanted to get your thoughts on first, how the Biden-Harris administration has been doing around the gun issue and how you think that will continue and or shift with a Harris-Wolz administration. Well, first let me say the honor is online to speak with you every week and to be on this show. It's really great. Thank you. I think that we're seeing a moment right now where the election

is going to be one or lost. Both sides have their base, right? The base is in Chicago. For better or worse, for the Democrats. And the base for Trump is very solid also. And so there are these kind of voters in the middle who are wanting to be spoken to. in a certain kind of way. Now, I would say first of all, and very importantly, I think it's incredible that we've had a presidential administration, the Biden administration, that has worked in very important ways to think about gun violence reduction and limiting our epidemic amount of gun-related injury and death. And so Biden largely hamstrung because of the judiciary has been, you know, doing, I just think it's important to acknowledge doing some pretty important things or trying to, at least,

and working with gun safety groups. Now, right now with Harrison Walt, I think there's an opportunity to build on that, but also to speak to those voters in the middle. And I say this because I've been working, as you know, interviewing kind of purple state and red state gun owners who are not so down with like a gun under the bed and three guns on the nightstand and everybody gets a gun.

But they also feel like they don't trust the Democrats because the Democrats are always pushing government regulation, which to a lot of gun owners is antithetical to why they own guns in the first place. And the other issue is, as we've talked about on the other show a lot, Democrats do a great job of talking about the role of government in gun safety, but they do a really bad job of talking about the issue of crime, which has been, I think, at the fore of pretty much every single interview I do with gun owners. Basically, their concern is, oh, my God, if I'm the victim of a crime, I'd rather have a gun. And, you know, we can debate whether they're

that's based in stereotype or racism or their daily reality. But the point is that when people come in and say, we're going to regulate gun sales or we're going to put tests on it or something, it just doesn't speak to them. And so I've argued in writing and on shows like yours that I think we have an opportunity now. Harris has an opportunity to, on one hand, signal, of course, the gun safety people have a champion. And it's great that Walsh is a gun owner who is a hunter who has a history in the military. So it's a unique opportunity.

But I also think we need to broaden our message to say, you know, hey, look, here are the reasons why it's important to own a gun. Here's what good gun ownership looks like. We're not against gun owners. Regulation is sometimes the opposite of liberty for many gun owners. I think you can kind of speak to the other side in a way that they're heard. And I also, as you know, have argued that we need a new way of talking about crime that used to be a democratic issue in the 90s. And then the crime bill really, for understandable reason, knocked it out of our lexicon. it became a four-letter word. And I think we need to get back to speaking about public safety in better ways. How helpful do you think that it is?

You just listed off the ways in which Walls is different from other Democrats and other Democratic presidential tickets that we have seen because he is a gun owner, because he was in the military and served for, you know, over 20 years. He used to have 100% rating at the NRA until he started talking about gun safety measures. and the need for gun reform. And then he dropped all the way down to, I think, a zero rating that he wears now as a badge of honor. But what does it say? What do you think the message sends out that this is who Kamala Harris chose as her running mate, right? This is somebody who, again, knows his way around a gun. She actually spoke about it, you know, in the sharpshooting, I think, contests that they do in Congress when he was a representative, you know, he won.

all of the years that he was there. What kind of message are they trying to signal to folks with this background and this commentary that they have? I really think it matters how they frame it, right? I think his individual story is super important. But I think the trap we've fallen into as liberals is that we often amplify in my book I call converts, people who like, oh, I was on one side, but then I saw the light and I'm on the other side. It's great. That's great for us. We have people who are also their converts and other agendas like Liz Cheney, for example, or other Republicans, politicians in Arizona, and they speak to an important constituency. But if they just become converts who then parrot liberal talking points, I think their usefulness beyond solidifying our base becomes not as

useful. And so I think the question of how Waltz talks about guns is going to be super, super, super important. In other words, if he says, I was with the NRA and then just says that our language, which is about regulation. Now, again, why do I say that? I say that because, I mean, the elephant in the room is that we have over 400 million guns in this country and background checks on red flag laws. It's kind of like taking five plastic bags out of the ocean. There's still a zillion plastic bag in the ocean. Okay. And so the things in our platform, like a background check, is what you do when you buy a gun. But if you already have 400 million guns in the country, you're not going to see a dent in that for a long time. And, you know, a red flag law,

people are very loathe to call the authorities on their relatives if it means disarmament. And so it makes sense if you're not a gun owner. If you're like in a red state, it's like, yeah, I'm going to call the government on my crazy uncle. It just, it doesn't happen all that often. And so the things we're championing make sense to us, but they don't make sense, I think, to a good core. of the other side. If I can use the side, I don't really buy that. But I think, so what I've been thinking is, you know, there are ways, as I was saying before, to talk about, first about the liberty and autonomy. I mean, we're using all this liberty language in the Democrats now, but it's weird that we don't extend it to the place where liberty is the core motif,

which is guns for many people. And so I think reframing in terms of some of that language is a good way to talk about it. I also, again, think we really need to hit crime much harder than we're doing. And I say that because there are a lot of GOP laws and proposals and regulations and legislations that do statistically increase crime in Tennessee. They passed a bill about five years ago that allowed people to carry gun, loaded guns in their trunks to work and things like that. What happened was trunk gun thefts skyrocketed and many of those guns because then they became untraceable were used in crimes.

There's something called a straw purchase, which is somebody who shouldn't be able to get a gun stands outside of a gun show, their friend goes in, buys a gun, goes out and gives it to them. Those things should be illegal because they actually increase crime. They literally increase crime. And Republicans have championed blocking that legislation in both cases. And there are many more examples like that, you know, stand your ground, et cetera, et cetera. So I think we can reframe the crime conversation in a way that shows how GOP policies are leading to increase in crime. I think, Jonathan, that that is brilliant. for too long, Republicans have had ownership over quote unquote law and order. I mean, we now know

that that is bullshit when you are putting forth a man that has 34 felonies and has been accused of multiple crimes and found guilty of them that they actually don't care about law and order, that their idea around crime prevention is basically rooted in racism and discrimination. And, you know, for all the reasons why we have a nasty taste in our mouth when we think about the crime bill that was passed and how that devastated black and brown communities in this country. But I think that what you're offering is the way that Democrats seize that messaging and look at crime as how these lawless Republicans are putting in place measures that make it easier for crimes to happen. Like the Tennessee example that you offer,

where, okay, so you're able to have a loaded gun in your trunk because I guess you need that for whatever reason. If you get a fight at work. Right. Yeah. And then now car thefts are going up. And so what are some other ways that you see opportunities that Democrats and particularly this Harris Wall's ticket can have in flipping the script on Republicans and a narrative that

they've owned for decades? I think there are three important points. that. Number one, as I was suggesting before, is that if you really look at it, doing more background checks and more red flag laws is not going to really improve public safety. I mean, I think we need uniform gun laws across the country. I think we need some regulation system. But again, we have more guns than people already in the country. And so I think that if you're a gun owner, you're kind of like, hey, everybody else has a gun, and I don't want to be caught without my gun. And so I think part of the issue is just to first realize the limitations of our messaging if we want to go beyond

rallying our base, which I think is the name of the game right at this moment. Number two, I would say is public safety is a really important issue if you can seize public safety. A lot of people believe in public safety. And so I think that you can talk much more about what it means to be safe in public. I think you can talk about all of the policies that lead to public safety. I mean, there's all this literature about fixing streetlights and green space and jobs programs and all these things actually reduce gun crime much more than government regulations. And so I think that framing public safety we deserve. We have the right as citizens of a democratic country to feel safe and public. I think that's an important way. And then I think it's important to just remember that this

is a pendulum. You mentioned the crime bill of the early 90s. You know, in my book, I talk about how we forget it a lot, but actually black Americans were 11 percentage points more likely to support the 94 crime bill, then were white Americans. And that reason was because that crime bill had an assault weapons ban. And many people were seeing the effects of assault weapons in their communities. And so black Americans were like, man, this is devastating our communities. So they supported it. And, you know, now we certainly remember mass incarceration and all these just important things. But in a way, I think that there was a public safety component of that crime bill. Now, it's also true that black Americans were then more likely to get arrested for gun crimes and all these things.

But I just, I think that we kind of potentially threw out the baby with the bathwater because in running so far away from the crime bill, which I'm not supporting the crime bill. I'm just saying that part of the crime bill was based in a message of public safety that a lot of people, including many black Americans, supported. And what we've seen since then is the opposite, which is, man, all these white people have guns. why shouldn't we? And also because we don't have uniform gun laws, a lot of guns that are bought legally then are channeled into what's called the Iron Pipeline and become illegal guns, which are using crime. There are a lot of things that we can use. And I understand, believe me, that crime rates are going down, et cetera, et cetera. But that data just doesn't resonate for people who don't feel safe. Yeah, and I think that that's right. What you offer is one acknowledgement of people's real fears.

And the reality is that for those of us who don't own guns and would never own guns and have a real desire to live in a country that doesn't allow regular citizens to have access to weapons of mass destruction, it's hard for us to understand why people would go running to a gun, like why we have more guns than people in this country. And so I think that your framing really allows Democrats to be able to be able. to both address those that are inside of the party who want really strict gun reform like we see in other industrialized countries while also acknowledging the fact that there are millions of people in this country that want to own guns and that because of our constitution have a right to own guns. Jonathan, I wonder, is the Trump administration, I mean, the idea of a Trump 2.0 administration, can they say that they are just the gun party? Like, is there ever going to be, even with the suggestions that you're providing, a way for Democrats to welcome in these people

that are single issue voters, that guns are their issue? I think we have an opportunity with a new candidate who is relatively undefined at the policy level for a lot of people to signal that we are reframing the conversation in an inclusive way. I live in Tennessee. There are a lot of people who are not going to vote for Democrats, but I would certainly say that I think this is a chance to signal that we are building off of the hard grassroots work that's been done, but we're also speaking to, I mean, think about who people speak to. Like the Democrats speak to people who trust government to regulate firearms. But Trump plays to the fear, the really deep fear that somebody's going to take your gun and you're going to encounter a gangbanger in a dark

alley who wants to mug you and steal your big screen television or something like that. And so everything Trump says about guns, it's not like, oh, I'm for the Second Amendment. It's like, they're going to take your guns or I'm with the person standing in the way of you in that moment of terror. So he's speaking to a fear, which I think is a really helpful fear for a lot of people. And so he's playing out a much more base level. But there are a lot of people. I mean, a lot of people who don't feel safe on the subway or I have friends in San Francisco and Chicago where there are tons of shootings in blue cities who are not convinced by just saying, hey, look, here's the crime rate, look at this data or something like that. And so in a way, I'm saying that we should

return that by countering it by talking about what it means to feel safe in public. And just as a plug, I have much, much more about this in what we've become, just kind of laying out this logic of why I think it's important and some of the historical backgrounds and what I think we can do. I think we, you know, I think it's an opportunity to change the narrative in a way that more directly counters. If Trump is saying you're going to get mugged and we're saying government regulation, we're going to lose that debate. And so I think that in a way, it's an opportunity to build on what we're doing, but also to expand in a more resonant way. Well, my friend, we will have to leave it there today, but I appreciate your insight so, so much. And folks. The book is what we've become. It is out now. You can purchase it. Get one for yourself. Get one for

your friends because it's a conversation we need to keep having. My friend Dr. Jonathan Matzel, always a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. In a piece titled Democrats are saying no to Leslie Nope politics. My next guest writes that for the entirety of the Trump era, Democrats in much of the center and left has wholeheartedly believed in the most adorable naive way that Trump's opponents could out policy him to victory. He then explains why this ain't the way. Joining me now is Denny Carter, founder of Bad Faith Times, which you can find at bad-faith-times.ghost.io.

Denny, thanks so much for being here. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to talk about the piece, and I probably need a website with a slightly easier title, but we'll go with that for now. Yeah, yeah. A lot of punctuation marks in there. So, okay, let's start with the simple thing. for those who may not know who is Leslie Knope and what do you mean by Leslie Knope politics?

Yeah, so I've written about Leslie Knope politics on Bad Faith Times before, at least twice early on when I started the site in 2022 because I see it as like the ultimate in Obama era politics. And so Leslie Knope is the main character in Parks and Rec, which was on NBC and good show. I enjoyed the show. But I found her politics to be, of course, infuriating and, you know, largely, toothless. Also, she lost her big bid to join the city council. I felt like there was a lot to take away from that show and from her approach to politics. But I do feel like at the time, this is like 2010, 2011, it reflected the way that Democrats were looking at politics. Like,

if we just assume everybody's going to operate in good faith, and if we operate in good faith, and if we propose good policies, people will like us and they'll vote for us, which is, of course, the opposite of true. And this is, as you say, you know, this is something that Hillary Clinton, and in particular in her 26th campaign, she was very emblematic of this, wasn't she? Big time. You know, I wrote in the piece about this memory I have of watching a very early Hillary campaign event where she's presenting charts and facts and figures and all that.

It's a presentation. It's a classroom presentation. And it's very well thought out. And again, it's earnest. It's well-meaning, okay, like all these economic policies that she's throwing out there. I'm not taking away anything from them, but it doesn't win. Okay, like that wonky stuff, voters don't care about that at all. The only people who care about that are Beltway insiders and columnists for major newspapers.

And that's it. And that's who she was appealing to. So then I saw that and I wrote in the piece. I remember seeing that early on and saying, oh, my God, this model, this approach to the presidential race is so beatable. And I got worried. As you just alluded to, what we're seeing now with the Harris Walls campaign is a lot of that, that, you know, the Beltway political class and I guess more specifically, the Beltway journalistic class and punditry, they're the ones that are sort of driving the idea that

the Democrat needs to be like this. And, you know, I don't think most Americans are sitting around wondering when the Harris campaign is going to issue a white paper on wind power. But you listen to some journalists and some pundits and you hear them talk and you think that by not doing things like this. She's basically committing treason. Yes, they're begging for like, you know, columnists, reporters, they're saying, you know, you have to sit down with this. You have to answer 100 questions

on wind power. And all these questions about fracking. I'm sorry, there's a thing about those two things. No one cares. Like, normie voters are not worrying about fracking or wind power, right? They just want their lives to be slightly better materially. And so I think that the Harris campaign is the first

in many ways, the first modern campaign for Democrats, because they have taken a page, honestly, from the Trump book and saying, no, we are, we reject this call for policy detail. And you saw that, by the way, with Kamala Harris coming out last week and saying, we're going to address price gouging, right? She didn't lay out a 50-point plan for that. She said, corporations are gouging you, working families. We're going to do something about that. And that's all people need to hear. Now, you know, New York Times and other papers, they say, well, no, this is insufficient. We need more detail. You don't. You don't. If you're talking

to voters. Voters don't care about that details. They just want to hear that you're on their side. That's all. They want your vision for the future, for America. And it seems to me that there are politicians who sort of innately grasp this and you can go back, you know, in our lifetime, well, I shouldn't assume in my lifetime. To Reagan, you can talk about Trump. And even Obama, to some extent, ran on sort of vibes and hope and everything like that. To me, that is the stuff that resonates with people. It's not the wonky stuff, as you say. You're right. And so I feel like the detachment from Obama era politics that we're seeing out of Harris and Waltz is only detached in a certain way. So Obama was, you know, his 2008 campaign was big time on vibes, right? But then, you know,

he would get into trouble when he would talk about details about the Affordable Care Act, right? And he would say, you can keep your health care plan if you want to. And this. He didn't need to go into detail. Like, those details are never used for you in media coverage. They're always used against you. And it's this game that's set up. And it's a game that I think millennials and Gen Xers maybe are sick of playing. And the game is Democrats release a bunch of white papers and a bunch of details, like you said. And the media presented and they say, oh, they're going to spend $10 trillion to give everyone health care.

And then Republicans use that to hammer Democrats for months and months and months. Just don't give the details. If you give the details, you are opening yourself up for attack. you're putting yourself on defense. One of the key lines of your piece is this one. You wrote, avoiding the mainstream media to bad faith right-wing pipeline is paramount. And that's exactly what you mean here. A Democratic politician can put out a white paper and, you know, the New York Times or whatever

will say, well, you know, how are they going to pay for this? And then the next thing you know, you have the right-wing media seizing on that and saying it's communism and it's going to bankrupt the country, et cetera. Right. I mean, we know, like, we know how this goes. It's not a secret, okay? And I think that, you know, Harris and Waltz and their people running the campaign are doing a really good job of saying, we are going to stay on offense.

We're not going to get on our back foot. I mean, have you ever seen in 10 years of Donald Trump running for president? Have you ever seen him on his back foot like he is today? No, absolutely not. And I couldn't agree more. Yeah. And that's on purpose. I mean, that's what you get with refusing to play this bad faith game, right?

I think that there is an asymmetry in the way that Republicans are treated on policy issues compared to Democrats. Democrats are expected to be the adults in the room, expected to detail every single policy. And Republicans are never expected to do that. Not just Trump. George Bush was never asked about his details. And the only time he got into details with the privatization of Social Security, and that sunk his second term, right?

So the only time that Republicans have been sunk by policy is when they actually specify it. And we see that, and I mentioned in the piece, Project 2025. That was linked to Trump. Those are specific crazy far-right policies, right? They're linked to him. He's trying to shake him off as hard as possible. It's not working. But now people can say, can identify, oh, here's what he wants to do. And that's a problem for him. A great example that you use is a New Yorker piece by Jay Caspian Kang. You note that one of the things he complains about is that we don't know where Harris stands on fracking, for example. And what really rankled me about this piece is the way he ended. his very last sentence is, the press, it seems, will have to persist in the thankless task of demanding answers, even if we risk disrupting the good times. And I was like, you know, I'm sorry, there are journalists who are legitimately, like, heroic and war correspondents, the ones who dig up dirt on corporations. But, you know, maybe slow your role here, Jay. Like, you're not defending the Republic here? I think the stakes of elections, obviously, it's not ideal.

to have existential stakes for every single election that comes along, but that's what we have right now. And I think that's all the more reason to ignore these pleas and these calls for policy specificity and to just get it done, to just win. I mean, that's the point of politics, right? It's just you must win before you can wield power. Republicans have known that and operated that way for my whole life, basically. And I sort of admire them for that. And I think the Democrats are finally catching on.

One of the things, you know, that you use as an example, is green jobs. And as you say, the overall decarbonization of our collapsing climate. And you note that, you know, the minute that Harris puts out any kind of specific details about green jobs or about any of this, it's instantly used as a cudgel against her, as you say. You made a really interesting point, which it's just, it's so key to me, is that Joe Biden, someone at least, there understood that. And they have been quietly doing some really, really good things on the environment, but it's really been under the radar. It has. It's one of the biggest under the radar stories in my political lifetime. So like I started voting in 2000. And, you know, since then, I feel like this is this effort to decarbonize and to get to invest in clean energy. It's happening.

Like, it actually is happening. Finally, finally, finally, you're not hearing much about it. And I think it's because the Biden administration is intentionally not shouting it from the rooftops because here's the thing, it costs a lot of money and it's going to continue to cost a lot of money. And that's just part of the deal. I think that the Harris campaign is, you know, privy to that and will continue to operate in that fashion. But it is a great thing. And, you know, for folks who might be of the mind that like both parties are the same and the unit party or whatever, the environmental stances are just utterly completely different. And I think that the Harris campaign, every signal points to them being as good as Biden will be or has been on this issue.

You know, I want to get back to something that you said earlier. It really grates on me. And I think it just really gets on a lot of folks' nerves. The double standard for Democrats and Republicans. All the things that they want from Harris, they do not demand of Trump. And go even further, as many people have been pointing out, they actually go out of their way to clean up the ridiculous things he says and make them sound coherent and more policy-oriented. They'll let him get away with pretending he's not 100% beholden to the anti-abortion folks. They talk about him as, you know, being kind of doveish on foreign policy, even as he's sitting there talking about bombing Mexico. I just, I look at all this and I'm like, why in the world would Harris be in any kind of rush to

sit down with these people. Exactly. And if she wants to sit down, maybe sit down with Team Vogue, you know, maybe maybe a publication that will address things in a good faith manner. And not necessarily like be a mouthpiece, but, you know, not play the how are you going to pay for that game, right? I think, you know, Democrats are finally realizing that people don't really care how you're going to pay for that. Okay. Like when people vote for, voted for Trump in 2016, they weren't asking, how are you going to pay for the tax cuts that you're going to give people who own three yachts, you know, you get a mention in the New York Times about like, oh, the CBO says this will blow a hole in the budget, but no one cares. I mean, no, no, truly no one cares about deficits and the debt. So don't

talk about it, you know, don't talk about the cost of these things. And I think that that can, you can take away that weapon from the right in how they attack the left. And then the other thing they do that drives me nuts is they'll complain that, you know, Harris doesn't do press conferences or whatever. And then the minute she gives a press conference, instead of asking her about specific policy things, you know, what they'll ask her is about, you know, the things Donald Trump has said about her. Right.

And she knows that. Like, I think she's savvy enough to know that they're going to ask about all the awful things that he says, like on a daily basis on the campaign trail about her and Tim Walts, right? So she's not going to deal with that. When, honestly, when they complain about, you know, she's not having press conferences, My first thought has been good. Continue to not have press conferences because there's only downside. The downside is so baked in to the details that you could offer during a one-on-one

with a member of the press. And again, that funnels into this far-right media ecosystem that then uses it as a weapon and it makes it impossible to talk about real issues. It makes it impossible, honestly, it makes it impossible to talk about how to solve intractable issues that we have. I could not agree with you more. And I think this also, tell me if you agree, this really gets to why they don't, they being the journalist types. They don't really like all the quote unquote weird stuff.

No, they don't. In general, they are very unhappy that she's kind of at least so far running a vibes based campaign. She's running a vibes based campaign because it works. Right. And again, Kamala Harris seems very interested in winning, which is nice. Because honestly, you can't say that about a whole lot of Democrats over the years. They seem to want to be respectable more than they want to win, right? And follow the rules and then complain about when their Republican opponents don't follow those rules.

Okay. So, again, it's a game. I think the Harris campaign understands it's a game. They're playing to win and they're doing the right things. It's hardening to see this. And it's something that I've really tried to write a lot about on Bad Faith Times is like, please stop doing this. Like you have to understand the current political moment and vibes can win in this political moment.

Yeah, absolutely. And look, I would be more open to the press sort of, you know, I think we're reaching the whining stage of, you know, she won't sit down with us. If they had done even a halfway decent job covering Trump for the past 10 years. Right. You know, I'm going to use a Trump term here. I think Biden was treated very unfairly in the way that they covered his policy decisions and how his administration has handled itself. But yeah, you talked a minute ago about how they clean up the Trump quotes to make him sound halfway sane, right? That's irresponsible. And I know that the game doesn't really work unless you have two reputable or respectable candidates because that's what we have traditionally had. We don't have that anymore. And they should be quoting Trump word for word with no ellipsies, no editing at all.

Show voters like what this guy actually sounds like, which is a guy who's not well. Absolutely. I remember during the Republican debate, so this wasn't necessarily Trump, although he's done it too. I was just astounded about how many candidates on the stage were talking about literally bombing Mexico. And then you read things and the headline is like, you know, Trump or Republicans take tough stance on Mexico. Yeah. No, that's not a tough stance. That's a ludicrous stance. It's a terrifying stance. Oh, and the abortion thing. This is the guy who single-handedly ended Roe. And we still see, you know, New York Times and Washington Post pieces saying, who knows where Trump stands on abortion? We know. I know. You know. Why don't they know?

Yeah. And it really does come down to, I think, as you sort of said, Harris's job is to get elected. And her job is not to make A.G. Solzberger happy. But this seems to very much annoy A.G. Solzberger and a lot of other people in the media. And she doesn't seem to care. And look, it's early in the campaign. And she may start having press conferences or see.

sitting down with media folks after the convention. But so far, she just doesn't seem to care about making them happy. And they just cannot deal with that. Because generally, the Democrat is more than happy to sit down and to do this whole game where they give really straightforward, honest answers about what they want to do and what they don't want to do as president. That doesn't work in this environment, in this like Trump poisoned environment, in an environment where one of the two major parties has been completely radicalized.

over the past decade, or more, you could argue, that formula is no longer viable. And I really truly, thank God, that I think the Harris campaign sees that. They truly see this for what it is. And they are saying, no, they are saying absolutely not. We're not going to be your Leslie Knopes to kick around for the next three months. Denny, thanks so much for joining me. The website is the bad faith times. And again, it's bad-faith-times.

dot ghost.io. I am a recent subscriber, but I've been loving the stuff that you're writing, and I really appreciate you coming on. Thank you so much, Andy. I appreciate that. I try to publish two or three times a week on Bad Faith Time, so I hope folks can check it out. Andy Levy. Daniel Moody. Andy, how are you kicking off this DNC-fueled week with your fuck that guy? I've got two people here, but they're both kind of for the same reason. First, there's Roger Stone, former campaign advisor to Donald Trump. He was on his little show called the Stone Zone on the Rumble streaming platform, beloved by all right people, white supremacists, and Glenn Greenwald. And he decided in talking about Tim Walls that he was going to quote

Blazing Saddles. He said, this guy, Tim Walls, I saw him at a rally. I mean, I hate to quote Mel Brooks and Blazing Saddles, but he was jumping around. around like a Kansas city, and the word he used is, let's call it an F-word slur for gay people. It's just, again, they are flailing so badly, and they are resorting to using slurs and complaining about how a guy was behaving enthusiastically at a rally. And then he tried to call Walls really, really weird. And it's like, you know, sorry, that ship has sailed. Everyone knows y'all are the weird ones and always have been. And the trying to turn that around is one of the saddest things that I've seen recently in politics. This is what they're doing. This is how they're going after walls because,

you know, I think at this point, the stolen valor claims, which were just straight up lies. I don't think anybody wasn't already a brainwashed member of the Trump cult fell for any of that, that a guy who served his country for 24 years was somehow stealing valor. And then you have, and this is, you know, a little more serious, but also at the same time as things usually are with Republicans inane and stupid, we have House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer saying he's launching an investigation into Tim Walz's ties with China. Again, nothing is going to come of this. They know nothing is going to come of this. Tim Walz has spent a lot of time in China. I believe he taught in China over the years.

He has talked about how he loves the Chinese people and hates the Chinese government. As usual, there's going to be no there there like the impeachment hearings on Joe Biden. But this is what they do. This is the only thing they know how to do. It's just not going to work. Anytime a House Oversight Committee chair announces they're going to be investigating you, you unfortunately have to take it seriously. But like I said, at the same time, it is just inane and it is just stupid and it is just emblematic of the absolute.

flailing that is going on on the right, right now. So for all of those reasons, and many, many, many more a hearty and full-throated fuck those guys to both Roger Stone and James Comer. Just naming a site Rumble and how to like show how tough you are is just so pathetic. Like they're so fucking pathetic. They're so pathetic. That's all I have to say. Fuck those guys. So Danielle, as you get set to head off to the Democratic National Convention, who's your fuck that guy?

Who will you be keeping an eye out for? Well, speaking of pathetic, I am not looking out for this man at all. As a matter of fact, I had to Google what he looked like again. But apparently, Mike Lindell thinks that he is like famous, famous and his facial image is like a household thing. You know, like we see Brad Pitt or you see Will Smith and you're like, oh, you. You know those guys. Mike Lindell, do you feel like you know what he looks like with your eyes closed? But he's decided, this is the My Pillow guy, has decided that he is going to go incognito

to the Democratic National Convention and he plans to shave his mustache according to the Daily Beast our outlet. This is, I just want to read this. This is what he said. I'm going incognito. I'm going to be shaving my mustache. mustache, everybody. He tells Bergquam on a show in Chicago, you won't recognize me. Mike, we don't recognize you. Sir, like, unless you're walking around with the pillow and Donald Trump attached to you,

we don't know who you are and we don't care. So if you want to get rid of your 1970s stash, by all means, do it. You want to come and join the party at the DNC and compare it to that shit show that was the R&C, come on. You know, you're welcome. But like to think that somehow folks are going to see you and be what? Scared? Like, are they going to run and go get a duvet? Like, I'm so done with these people, but I hope that I bump into him. And if I do, Mike Lindell will have a lovely conversation about all of the ways that you have tried to thwart our democracy and use your money from my pillow to overturn elections and what have you just to make yourself relevant. But, you know, stash or no stash, ain't nobody know who you are. And no one cares.

So fuck that guy. Yeah, I have three quick thoughts. One, unfortunately, from years working at Fox News, I know damn well what Mike Lindell looks like because his ads ran like 17 times an hour. Two is I always kind of thought if you were going to go someplace incognito, a good way to do that is not tell everyone you're going to go to a place incognito. Oh, yeah, that's a thing too. And three, I think shaving your mustache to go incognito is, and I can say this because Jesse's not here and Seamus will at least appreciate it. This is known among baseball fans as the reverse Bobby Valentine. Danielle, that's actually, that's actually very funny. Oh, okay.

Trust me. Yeah, fuck that guy. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.

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