The Daily Beast Podcast - Fox News Is Literally Killing Its Viewers

Episode Date: January 28, 2022

“They are literally killing their viewers. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that,” says The New Abnormal co-host Andy Levy. “It was really interesting to see actual correlations between Trump voting counties and Fox News viewership and rates of death from COVID. It’s just amazing what they're doing." “Fox News has one job, right?” says Molly. “Get Republicans in power, keep them in power. So it's worth branching out into the idea that like Tucker Carlson is the kind of the spiritual leader of the GOP these days.” Andy says. Speaking of Fox hosts, The New Abnormal producer Jesse Cannon notices that in the midst of testing positive for COVID and then continuing to dine out in New York, Jesse Waters made sure to interview Sarah Palin from her hotel room, even though they’re in the city. Whatever the network says about COVID, its strict protocols for its own talent and building shows what they really think. Plus, Washington Post columnist Greg Sargent talks about how Glenn Youngkin managed to convince Virginians that school board members trying to follow the law were “power-mad bureaucrats who are trampling on the rights of virtuous parents,” and Stanford Prof. Michael Rosenfeld, the author of The Rainbow After the Storm: Marriage Equality and Social Change in the U.S , explains how America went from 11% support for marriage equality in 1988 to about 70% now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Info. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objective. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. What a great show we have today. Greg Sargent of the Washington Post Plumline blog will join us to talk about the latest in fuckery.

Then we're going to talk to the brilliant professor of sociology at Stanford University, Michael Rosenfeld, who recently penned the book, The Rainbow After the Storm, Marriage Equality and Social Change in the United States. But first, let's have some fun. Andy Levy. Molly John Fest. So last night I was on Sean Hannity. Oh, good for you. Making the rounds. Promoting the newsletter.

That's right. They love me on those Fox opinion shows. Do you have an estranged, elderly, conservative relative you were trying to communicate with? No, I don't. I thought that was the only channel you could get to them through. But I did have an opportunity to see that sort of flash of a picture of me on Fox News. Someone from Media Matters texted to me. And I thought, oh, shit.

It's going to be the beginning of like a death threat, like a, you know, sort of 4chan death threat news cycle for me. But luckily, it turns out Sean Hannity's viewers are much less death threaty than Tucker Carlson or Laura Ingraham's viewers. So it was a delight. So why were you on there? Well, because Sean was mad at Jim McCom. for saying that Yonkin with his teacher tip line

and his anti-masking and his various deep red kind of legislation that he's pushing through was a, you know, a Soviet-style kind of Stalinist organization. And that offended

Sean Hannity because Sean Hannity is a historian who studies Russian history. And he's very serious. And when you're going to compare someone to Stalin, he really wants you to have the kind of history and thoughtfulness that you should have. I don't think he's wrong because Yonkin, to me, is more of a Tsar Nicholas II, sort of a pre-Soviet Russian leader. So I think Acosta really screwed up there and owes an apology. When I think about Russian history, I often think about Sean Hannity.

and his in-depth writing on the subject. Speaking of Fox News, I don't know if you know this, but Fox News is killing its audience. I do know that, actually. And there is pretty clear, we shouldn't laugh because dying is bad. I think we both agree. And vaccine is easy and good and, you know,

pretty much as safe as it can be. Eric Levitts is a writer for New York Magazine saw that there was a correlation between how low Fox News was on the dial of the television and how likely you were to die of COVID. As well as Trump voting in each district. Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, there's been numerous studies that show that if your channel number is lower,

your ratings, your viewership goes up a little, I don't know how much, but it definitely goes up a little bit. So it was interesting to find that, to dig into that correlation in terms of COVID, you know, and where Fox News is on the channel guide, or the dial, as old people like Molly call it. The dial. The dial. Like a good 10, 15 years older than I am. Sorry, go on.

I don't think that's true. The fact check's coming back, no. You know, the other night I watched Tucker Carlson as I do every night at 9 p.m. or I'm sorry, or is it at 8 p.m. I can't even remember. It just feels like it's on all day. Tucker's 8. Yeah, and I watched him with Alex Berenson, one of my favorite COVID writers, who was saying that the vaccine should be, the mRNA vaccine should be pulled from the market

because they are actively killing people and hurting people. And I literally, I didn't obviously watch this, but I, you know, it got clipped on Twitter. I think Media Matters clipped it. And I quote tweeted it and I said, there's nothing I can say about this that won't get me kicked off this platform. Yeah, I retweeted that. They are literally killing their viewers. I don't think there's any doubt about that. And so the Eric Levitt's thing was really, it was really interesting to see, you know, actual correlations between Trump voting counties and Fox News viewership and rates of death from COVID.

It's just amazing what they're doing. Right. Rupert Murdoch, Lockland Murdoch. because they own this organization. They are not being held accountable. Okay, so I think the question is why are they doing this, right, Molly? They're doing it to make life harder for Biden. Tucker Carlson is not a stupid person.

So he just, he has to know the stuff he is saying and like the guests he is having on are saying things that simply aren't true. Like I just can't believe that he believes something that's so obviously not true. So why is he doing it? Like, what is it? just that they think that's what their viewers want to hear. So they're just giving them what they want to hear. I can't figure it out.

I mean, I think for sure some of this is that, I mean, Trump made this decision that anti-vaxxers were a pool that the Republican, modern Republican Party could pick up. And so, I mean, that has certainly juiced his numbers in some areas. I think there's some of that. And then probably some of it is this crazy. belief that if they hurt, you know, if the pandemic drags on, it's worse for Biden, right? Yeah, I mean, I guess it is that simple. It's just strictly political. And look, I know, I think there are people at Fox News who are dumb enough to believe this stuff. I just don't think

Tucker is one of them. I just, you know, I knew him long enough to know. He's just, he's just, he's not a stupid person. He's just not. And he's, and the points that he's repeating night after night are stupid. They are, they are legitimately stupid. And there's no way to look at them and not think they're stupid and not contradicted by everything that we know, you know, in terms of science and even from just looking around. I guess you're right, though. I guess it is just, it's just pure politics. And that's how, that's how deeply cynical he has become, that it's just everything is

about politics. Well, also, Fox News has one job, right? Yeah. Get Republicans in power, keep them in power. So it's worth, like, branching out into the idea that, like, Tucker Carlson is ultimately really the kind of spiritual leader of the GOP these days? I think it's true. And look, to me, Fox News' mission has always been, it's been two things, and I've said this before. It's to simultaneously scare their viewers about, you know,

the other and people that don't look like them, et cetera, but also to reassure them that, you know, they are actually right and we are here to tell you that you're right. And so this, I guess this really is just an extension of that sort of, broadcasting message that, you know, you out there who think that the virus has a microchip in it, you are right to be, even if we're not going to go that far, you are right to be concerned about the vaccine. And also the people that want you to get the vaccine are bad people. They, they are the bad people. As you allude to, Molly, that is sort of the message of the Republican party these days. So I guess it does, it is a perfect fit. In going with really stupid things,

I personally got a lot of amusement when Jesse Waters had Sarah Pale and on post her COVID diagnosis, where he laughed at her repeatedly. I don't know if it was for the incomplete sentences, but my read was that he was almost laughing at her for her anti-vax status because she doesn't get the grift of Fox News that they're all vaccinated while spewing this shit. And he even had her do it from her hotel, which since she was in New York was conceivably blocks and minutes away from where he was taping. Yeah, but you don't want her in your office, she has COVID. And Fox has one of the strictest COVID protocols, you know, of all businesses. It's a, you know, 90% vaxed. It's a vax or a test mandate. I mean, she probably couldn't come.

She, of course, could go to Elyos, which she did again last night. But she can't go, she probably can't go into the Fox building. We should say for the listeners who don't know this, that Sarah Palin has now been spotted out, eating unvaccinated at Elyos, a famed conservative hag. twice before she got tested and then two times she's been spotted out after getting tested but the point is she has COVID she knows she has COVID we all know she has COVID and yet she's still going out to dinner when she could be contagious yeah I mean I guess the the post-COVID thing they sat her outside which I guess I'll get them you know I take the tiniest bit of credit for that at least they did that the pre-COVID uh

They sat her inside, which is a problem because she's unvaccinated. She's proudly unvaccinated. I believe the phrase she used was over her dead body that she would get vaccinated. And they let her eat inside anyway, which violates New York City's regulations. You know, I watched a little bit of that Jesse Waters, Sarah Palin thing. And it was like, all I kept thinking was, like, maybe between them you hit triple digits in IQ. Maybe. It's debatable.

It was so painful to watch. It's just, it was literally, it was dumb and dumber. And I'm not sure who was who. I don't even know. Why is she even back? I think on Fox News, she never really went away. Yeah. She's a private citizen now, but I think she was Trump before Trump in a lot of ways.

Right. Certainly true. This is her time to shine. Tie it back to that. Do you remember how mad conservatives got about that article called the Wasilla Hillbillies about what they actually act like and like her daughter's boyfriend's always getting arrested and conservatives were so mad about this. And then I was like thinking about this. I'm like, yeah, this sounds exactly like what one of those people would do when they come to New York.

Oh, I got COVID. I'll keep going to restaurants anyway. Who gives a fuck? I just, I can't imagine knowing you have COVID like and even, again, the stupidity of just of saying, oh, I have COVID. I'm going to go to a restaurant and eat. Like just sit in your hotel room for five days or whatever and order in. I mean, oh my God. It's, you. It's, you. even worse than that because it's like, have you no shame? Like, everyone knows you have COVID. Right, but none of these people, none of these people have shame. So I've sort of long given up. You know, like, you can only do the, you know, the famous, you know, have you no shame, sir, at long last, have you no shame? Or I know I'm butchering the quote, but you can only do that to

people who are capable of feeling ashamed. And like, we've learned, you know, in the last six years, if not longer than that, no, none of them have. shame whatsoever. You can't do that. I mean, if you have any shame, if you have any sense of like moral responsibility, you don't go out and eat when you have a highly contagious disease. Even if, you know, even if you want to say, well, Amacron isn't killing people the way Delta did, it doesn't, you still, you don't want to get someone sick. Like if you have the flu, you don't go out and eat in a restaurant, you stay, you know, you stay in your room and, and you order in, you know, some nice matzabal soup or whatever. And, you know, you know,

You just don't do that if you care about other people. Like the only way you do that is if you legitimately do not give a shit about other people and don't care that you may well infect them with an illness, even if that illness isn't going to kill them, it still might get them sick. There are plenty of people who get Amacron who feel like absolute garbage for a week or whatever. Why would you want to do that to someone? Yeah, no.

Listen, I think it's crazy. Like, you have no shame if you're going to do it. You have no shame whatsoever if you're going to do that. So speaking of no shame, there is Ron DeSantis, perhaps you've heard of him, very tan, mini Trump, governor of Florida. Oh, that's right. Does not want to tell you if he's had a booster because that's his own private business, but would love to get you some monoclonal antibodies even if they don't work.

Perhaps one of the more stupid moments, and it's, again, there are a lot, so the competition's pretty fierce. There are three monoclonal antibodies that you can take for COVID. Now that we're on to this Omicron variant, the two ones that work for Delta actually don't work for Omicron. So two of the three don't work. There's only one that works well for Omicron. And the drug companies have been telling us this. And these are drug companies.

You'll remember drug companies filled with altruistic people who just want to serve and not make millions of dollars. But they're all about. So they, the people who want to sell the drugs, are saying it doesn't work. And Ron DeSantis is saying, we want it anyway. Yeah. And more than that, he's now accusing the, you know, he's accusing the Biden administration and the FDA of basically wanting to kill Republicans. I think, I don't think he didn't say that exactly, but his press secretary retweeted someone whose name I shall not mention who said that. And then he sits there and he said, oh, what he said about Biden was that he's forced medical professionals to choose treating their patients or breaking the law.

The thing is medical professionals know that those two monoclonal antibody therapies don't work for Omicron. So they're not choosing anything. This is, you know, but look, when you're when you're too cowardly to say that you've got the booster and, you know, you're not encouraging the residents of your state to get. vaccinated, you have to depend on therapies that help after the fact, after you've contracted the disease. And now that two out of the three don't work, it's like it's panic time. So what do you do in panic time? You don't change your views. You start yelling at the science. You're yelling at science is what you're doing here. And you're claiming that science hates Republicans, which, I mean, generally it's the other way around. But it's sort of true. And, you know, and you're claiming,

at this point. I guess science does hate Republicans because, you know, when someone hates you, you hate them back generally. So Republicans hate it. Right. I mean, it does, it, it shades of like, they're all really mad at Anthony Fauci. I feel like the moment where this was like, crystallized for me was when Megan McCain was like, was Megan McCain, I think was one of these conservative blonde women said, you know, every time I get something wrong, I'm just going to say the science has changed. And I thought, yeah, because the science has changed. Like, you know, the virus itself has changed. It's mutated. If we don't have the same virus we did in 2020, if we did, we'd be in a totally different situation. So there is like a fundamental disconnect here.

And it's what, you know, it goes to the book banning, right? Like, if you don't educate people, they don't know things. It hits the idea. They don't understand science. So they don't. So, you know, the science has changed. It actually has a virus. is mutated. I mean, they don't know. Yeah, science changes all the time. You work with the best information you have at the time. And as you said, it's not even that, you know, I mean, there's two things here. One is the people studying COVID overall have learned more about it in the last year and a half, which you would think is a good thing and you would want them to. Right. And, you know, not be dependent on stuff they knew when they only had like two months to study something

as opposed to two years to study something. Yeah. But the other thing is, as you pointed out, the disease itself has changed. So of course the science is going to change because you're fighting a disease that changes. And it's at a certain point, all these people are sort of actively pro-COVID. And it's just hard to figure out, you know, it's hard to say otherwise for a lot of these people. Like when COVID mutates and changes, they don't want the science to change. They don't want the science to keep up. Well, okay, what are you rooting for there? You're rooting for the disease that keeps changing. And whether you're actively or rooting for the disease, the bottom line is you, you're, are rooting for the disease ultimately.

Oh, yeah. So Stephen Breyer's retiring. What's that about? He's only, how old is he? It's only 80. That was my first, I want the listeners to be aware, that was my first pivot on this podcast. I think I did well. Oh, nice.

I think you certainly did. 83 years old, the fact check says. He's only 83? Can you put only in 83 in a sentence? No, I'm being sarcastic, but I mean, you know, dying. die five. 18 years older than the retirement age in America. He could be Speaker of the House for another 10 years.

Yeah, yeah. I don't care who Biden picks. All I want is for him to pick someone who's like 22. Like a lifetime appointment, like 17 years old. You pick that youngest person you can fucking find, man. I like that you're proving the Ben Shapiro tweet, right? He was like totally wrong about that. Democrats will dominate somebody with no qualifications,

but they dominate people with much better qualifications usually in education. But you're arguing, like, right out of college, like we're hiring. Seven. Seven years old. These Zuber's need jobs, people. Also, no, you put someone who's seven years old on that court. That's 80 years right there. 70 years.

I do want to say something for the fact check. Yeah. Nancy Pelosi, 81. Diane Feinstein and Charles Grassley, 88. Dye Fai is 88? I didn't even realize she was that old. She's sharp as a tack, though. She's sharp as putty.

But let's talk about Stephen Breyer retiring, because this is actually important, Molly. Maybe stop making your little jokes. So Joe Biden has pledged, and he reiterated in a speech he gave a little before we recorded this, that he is going to nominate a black woman. Surprisingly, to me,

this has outraged people on the right. Were you surprised at this, Molly? Yeah, I'm shocked. They're filled with good faith attacks, so I'm so surprised. Bad faith attacks coming from the right, impossible. From reading the attacks coming from the right, the two things I've learned are that, one, this means whoever Biden nominates will be completely unqualified, because how dare he not consider, you know, a white man who might have the same qualifications?

and two, it might be Vice President Harris, which has become like a thing on the right, much the way Hillary is apparently running again in 2024 became a thing on the right. So it's just, it's just unbelievable. I mean, we get this every time, but I don't even know what else to say. I mean, I liked Susan Collins being like,

I hope that we won't rush this. Like, oh, yeah, you don't want to rush. Oh, okay. Thanks for, thank you. Didn't Feinstein say the same thing? Like, we're going to take our time doing this. And everyone was like, what the hell are you talking about? There are midterm elections coming up.

We have to. We're on a bit of a timetable here, you know, Senator. It's, you know. Yeah, I don't think she knows which year she's in. I do like, though, that Breyer said he's retiring at the end of the term if his replacement has been confirmed. I saw that he said that. So that was actually a good thing to say because that holds over at the

least a little bit. Yeah. You know, if the Republicans try to stall this, then he's like, fine, that I won't go anywhere, which, you know, is not ideal because we, we need him to retire while the Senate is nominally in Democratic control and the president is a Democrat. But, yeah, but, you know, look, Susan Collins has concerns. You know, she always, she loves to raise concerns. You know, you know, she's very concerned.

Unlike Diane Feinstein, you know, the thing I admire about Susan Collins is how often she could say the most easily reputable bullshit and get away with it. It's truly like an epic, epic, epic god-level talent of hers. You know, yes. This is true. 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

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That's new abnormal. That the daily beast.com. Greg Sargent is the author of the Washington Post Plumline blog. Welcome back to the new abnormal, Greg Sargent. Thank you for having me on again. Well, you cover so much, and there's so many things going on and you write so much. It makes me super jealous. The first thing I wanted to talk to you about was what's happening with these Republican governors.

I actually wrote about it, too, in my newsletter, which I will not plug because this is from a different organization. But what's happening over the Potomac is kind of wild. Talk to me about that. Yeah, well, you know, those who suspected that Glenn Yonkin wasn't the cheerful suburban dad in a fleece vest that he presented himself as, I think, are being borne out right now. He is working hard to prevent school districts from implementing mask requirements in violation, I think, of the law potentially, because the school districts there are following the law in implementing these mask requirements. and he signed an executive order, essentially giving parents the right to opt out without any, without offering any reason for it. And now all of a sudden he's facing a big rebellion.

Yeah, you know, the whole idea was like the red fleece-vested millionaire was going to come in and give you control of your schools. And then you have this list of all these school districts that are like, no, we don't want our kids to be unmasked. You saw that there's a whole pushback on that. And then another thing, I mean, I guess the schools are sort of exciting to these Republicans, but another thing that they're doing, what you're seeing in other states, too, is tip lines. So you can rat out your teacher.

Yeah, I mean, you know, about the school mass rebellion that we're facing right now, what drives me crazy about it is that Glenn Young can keeps presenting the school boards or attacking the school boards as like these kind of power mad bureaucrats who are trampling on the rights of virtuous parents. But large majorities in Virginia favor. mask requirements in schools, for starters. And second, they're just following the law by any reasonable reading of the law. They should be implementing these mask requirements. Now, it's not a hundred percent clear cut. The law is a tiny bit vague, and the courts will sort it out and so forth. But to attack them as power mad bureaucrats for doing what I think is perfectly in keeping with what the law tells them to do is just disgusting. Yeah. It's also like a fallacy, right? He was saying,

I'm going to give you back the schools. And what he meant was, I'm going to republicanize your schools. Right. I'm going to magaize them. Right. And this is not a state. I mean, he is not, this is not Florida. This is not Texas.

This is not Alabama. This is like a blue, a very bluing state. Yeah, and that's a key point that you just raised there because for guys like Yonkin, a big question is whether they're going to follow the DeSantis and Greg Abbott model, meaning the governors of Florida and Texas, or whether they're going to be a little bit more like Larry Hogan, who has succeeded in Maryland by not being a MAGA-type governor and by allowing local officials to make some of these decisions. But it seems plain that Yonkin is opting for the DeSantis and Abbott course. I mean, it seems like this will be a kind of, you know,

you run as a sort of untrumpy Trump, but then you go in there and you put in real Trumpy stuff. Like, it strikes me that this, really, there could be a big rebellion towards this, but again, who knows? Because the polling is also wacky. Yeah, and I mean, the problem is that Yonkin is, in many ways, he's a pretty talented politician and he's cheerful. And, you know, he's already saying things like he's having a ball. So, you know, it may well be that his approval comes in at, you know, well over 50 percent, at least for a while. And that'll be, you know, obviously unfortunate, but we got to figure out a way to make the case to voters that these types of attacks on school boards are really out of bounds. I mean, Democrats have not figured out a way to make Republicans pay for this kind of stuff.

It seems like people are mad about COVID. They're mad about a year of school being missed. And so they're taking it out on the people they think who are responsible for it. I mean, I keep seeing again and again restrictions, you know, you're mad about the virus. The restrictions were necessary for the virus. But I feel like there's a lot of that. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think even Republicans said that Glenn Young can probably wouldn't have

won the Virginia gubernatorial race if it weren't for school closures. And I do think that Democrats probably underestimated the anger over the closings. I think that's pretty apparent. The question is whether that also. applies when it comes to things like mask requirements, which are a very different and far, you know, less onerous thing than school closings are. I don't, I think we'll have to sort of see how that plays out. But again, I think Democrats have to figure out how to make people like Young can, you know, pay for attacking well-meaning school officials. That's something that liberals and

Democrats haven't figured out. Yeah, I think that's right. And I mean, there are studies that show that There's less COVID where there's more masks. I mean, not that this isn't obvious, but it has actually been scientifically proven. Yeah. I mean, so the Center for Disease Control cites numerous studies that seem to back up their position, which is that there should be universal masking in schools. And just to return to the Virginia example for a second, so your listeners know what these school boards are actually doing. The law, which was passed by the Virginia legislature and signed by the previous governor, says that school boards have to exercise to the maximum extent practical what the CDC is recommending. And so it's reasonable for them to look at the CDC's recommendation of universal masking and require it. It's really strange. Now, I also want to talk of the five pieces you guys wrote today.

We're tired. I know, really. You guys talked about Tucker Carlson's pro-Russia rants. And that is so kind of amazing to me. What do you think? I mean, he's going back to do more stuff for Orban. He's gotten very involved in a sort of pro-authoritarianness. I'm curious your take on that.

So Tucker tries to present his stance on this kind of with this kind of phony sanctimony about not wanting American lives and treasure to be spent abroad, right? Right. But that's clearly not what's going on here. I mean, you know, the progressive position is to be a little, is to be wary of military escalation also. But progressives, foreign policy progressives also say that defending Ukrainian sovereignty against Russian aggression is important, has important global.

important global implications. And Tucker doesn't say that. And so you have to wonder, you know, to what degree Tucker is really kind of essentially trying to align with what you might call a sort of right-wing authoritarian international, right, with the urbanism and the Putinism and so forth. It's just not the innocent position that he presents it as. Yeah. I mean, it's interesting, though, like, conservatives for such a long time. We're pro-nation building. Like, we're going to be democracy in the world. And now it's a pretty radical pivot. Yeah. I mean, it's really interesting what's happened among Republicans on this particular issue. And as I wrote in my thing today, it's kind of great. I mean, Axios had some very good reporting on this, which told us that many Republican aides are saying that they are, under pressure from voters who are echoing Tucker's talking points about Ukraine and Russia. And that's complicated for Republicans because they want to be able to say that Biden is weak

when it comes to the situation now. But how do they say that when the Republican base is requiring them, thanks to Tucker Carlson, to essentially say the U.S. shouldn't do anything to defend Ukraine. Yeah. I mean, and I saw reporting earlier that said that Mitch McConnell is more aligned with Biden than Tucker Carlson. Well, like Mitch McConnell and the sort of traditional Republican hawk types, they want to say to Biden, you've got to be even more aggressive, right? Yeah. Because that's sort of the traditional Republican stance, no matter what a Democratic president is doing, it's weak. But Tucker is sort of not allowing Republicans to say. say it out that way anymore. He's insisting that Republicans adopt the stance that we shouldn't do anything in defense of Ukraine. It is completely crazy. I really want to talk to you about this piece you wrote, which is now, which was yesterday, so you've written five pieces since this piece. Pretty much one a day, one a day. I think what would a 2024 Trump coup look like?

What I wrote about was a new paper by an election law expert, which essentially, explored a real nightmare scenario, right? Which is that all you need is one corrupt Republican governor and a GOP-controlled house to overturn the election. And it works this way, right? A corrupt Republican governor sends a fake slate of electors for the Republican presidential candidate, even if the Democratic presidential candidate won the popular vote in the state. And the Republican governor says makes up some fake pretext about election fraud, right, to do that. If the Republican-controlled House counts those electors, they count, even if a Democratic Senate does not count them. And so, you know, it's not, I'm not going to go out there and say that

this is a likely scenario. It's, it's a lot of things would have to line up for it to happen. A lot of bad things. You'd need the courts to kind of comply to. Um, so it's, it's, it's, you'd need the courts to kind of comply to. Um, So it's not a likely scenario, but right now we're kind of in this big debate or whether we should reform our election laws to protect against these things. And so that's why I thought it was worth raising. And that is the nightmare scenario. Under current law, that could happen. Yeah. I think the larger question is now Congress has at least a year, hopefully more, to pass this election, something to safeguard our elections that's very targeted. Do you think that's? that they're focused on that and that they have taken into account some of these vote-switching scenarios. Yeah, I do, actually. I mean, I think this is one of the things that they're looking at.

There are a number of different ways you could get to an overturned election through exploiting ambiguities in what's called the Electoral Count Act, which governs how electors are counted and so forth. And it does appear that a number of Republican senators are in serious talks with Democrats about plugging the holes in that law. Now, this is not at all a substitute for doing the stuff that you and I and liberals would like to see on voting rights and, you know, and gerrymandering and so forth, but it does have value. And I don't really have a clear sense of whether there will be 10 Republicans to support this at the end of the day, it's possible or maybe there won't be. The bottom line is it does seem like there are serious talks in Congress.

And as you say, those talks do center on looking at numerous possible scenarios for a 24 subverted election like the one that we talked about. Yeah. It's hard to imagine 10 sane Republicans, but I guess you could get to maybe you could get to 10. I don't know. Here's the reason that it's at least possible, right? Like, so if you're a Republican who doesn't want to be pressured by Trump to overturn an election, right? Right, right, right.

Or by a Trump want to be or whatever, you know, I don't know who would be. But, you know, we can sort of expect the next Republican candidate for president to be at least somewhat Trumpy, if it's not Trump himself. If you're a Republican who doesn't want to come under the kind of pressure, and clearly a number of them don't, if you do reforms like this one, making it harder, to overturn an election, then it becomes less likely that they come under pressure, right? And so you'd think they would want that, right? And I think maybe some of them actually would like it. The concern is what happens if, you know, something like, you know, reforming the Electoral Account Act becomes associated with something Trump's enemies want, right? Right, right. And then all of a sudden, even Republicans who want it might not be able to support it. Yeah. You know, we're in that

situation where it seems impossible to imagine good things. partisanship, but I know there are things right now that are passing in Congress and the Senate that are being passed in a bipartisan way. Right. I mean, this thing, this does seem like something that could happen. And the other reason that Republicans could get to it is that it's not sort of open to the usual fake objections that they they lodge against protecting democracy. Like, you know, it's not a federal takeover of states. If anything, it actually reduced the federal role a little bit. And it doesn't make it easier to vote, which of course they hate, right? And so all it concerns is just kind of tweaking an already existing statute that's

frankly a real disaster. And so you'd think they could get there. As we know, they are happy to disappoint us at every turn, but... That is certainly true. It certainly theoretically would be nice to see the people that at least I fantasize could be really actually, you know, concerned with them, you know, keeping democracy in its current state. I know what you're talking about. Like, sometimes it seems like they look, they determine what the right thing is to do and then just do the opposite. And at least it feels like that's lost, right? Right. But occasionally there's hyming and hawing, which, you know, I guess I appreciate more.

than a Ted Cruz, but still, I would prefer that people just did something that wasn't, you know, that they sort of just could get along and pass the goods. You know, some of this stuff is really good. And, you know, you've got Republicans taking credit for infrastructure. So obviously, you know, even though they didn't vote for it, if you're willing to take credit for it, it's a pretty interesting situation. Right. And this is sort of the type of thing where you could see people like Collins and Markowski and Romney especially. And a few like, that sort of wanting to be perceived as defending democracy in some way without making the voting easier. Right. Exactly. And so that would be an easy way to do that for them because it should

be an easy thing to justify. Right. Of course. We'll see. Thank you so much, Greg, for joining us. I hope you'll come back soon. Yeah, definitely. Thanks so much. at Stanford University and the author of The Rainbow After the Storm, Marriage Equality and Social Change of the United States. Welcome to the new abnormal, Michael. Molly, it's really delightful to be here. I'm very excited to have you because I feel like, especially right now in this time when it feels like Democrats are losing the culture wars on a lot of fronts,

gay marriage is like one of the few real bright spots. That's right. One of the lessons to learn from the gay marriage story, the same-sex marriage story, is that it was a same-sex marriage and gay rights in general were tremendously unpopular in the United States for decades and decades and decades. And gay people were buried politically under an avalanche of lies for a long, long time. And they turned that story around. And one of the ways they turned that story around is by coming out of the closet and making themselves known to the rest of their family and friends and basically transforming American popular opinion into a pretty amazingly positive opinion about gay rights. So in 1988, only 11% of Americans

supported marriage equality. And now it's like 70%. How did it get from 11% to 70%? It was face-to-face contact between gay people and the other people in their lives. So straight people learned about gay rights from having gay friends or gay children or gay uncles. And it totally transformed the way people thought about gay rights. And one of the context for this, one of the reasons I think about this is I read your piece about Thanksgiving, about, you know, deprogramming your relatives over Thanksgiving, which I know you got some static about, but I want to say that I love that piece in the Atlantic. And I want to put some social science backbone underneath it because I'm a sociology professor. And what I want to say is that intergroup contact theory is this

theory that was invented in the 1940s and 50s by prominent American psychologist Gordon Alport. And The inner group contact theory tells us that we can change the hearts and minds of people who know us already. That is family, friends, coworkers. And this is kind of the only way that attitudes ever really change. This is the only thing you can really do to change people's view is really tell them how you feel. And of course, the challenge of that is that you create friction with the people in your family. And nobody wants to think about a Thanksgiving dinner where people, are yelling at each other. But then again, this is family. What else would family be doing over Thanksgiving?

I think that there's a role for venting and airing of the grievances. It's important to let the Uncle Frank, who loves Donald Trump in your life, know that you think it's nonsense. It's not likely to change their view on the matter right away, but there's a chance that somewhere down the road, when they have doubts about that when they start to doubt Trump a little bit, that they'll rely on you to pull them out of this cultish belief that they're in. This is a dangerous time in American history, and anything we can do to shine a little light on the darkness is worthwhile. Yeah, that sounds. That's fascinating, especially coming from you. Now, I want to get back to gay marriage for a minute because it really was, same-sex marriage was so incredibly successful. How much did celebrities like Ellen,

how much did that move the needle? Or was it really just knowing people and seeing their lived experience? I think Ellen moved the needle quite a bit in part because she was one of the first really famous Americans to come out of the closet as gay or lesbian in a really public way. she had a public persona that was really, and maybe still is, sort of Midwestern nice, everybody likes her. Very non-threatening. And I think that she brought a lot of people along to understand that gay people are just like themselves. There's nobody more normal, more mainstream than Ellen's public persona. I don't know what she's like in person. Doesn't matter. I have no idea, but it doesn't matter.

But all it matters is for public persona for this case. That's exactly right. And, you know, the other relevant story, I think, the other relevant lesson for gay rights that I think about a lot these days is you can be in a dark situation for a long time before the light shines through. Gay people were really oppressed in this country for a tremendously long time and they had no rights and they couldn't even be themselves. And it takes a long time for the truth of the matter. So the truth of the matter is that gay people, lesbian people are just like everybody else. The fundamental lie that was shared and spread about them was that they were sick and abnormal and dangerous. And that lie had the upper hand for many decades. And it's important to realize and remind ourselves that lies always have an advantage to start with.

It's easier to tell a lie. It's easier to spread a lie. Lies have a lot of attraction. And so in politics, we have to understand that lies are advantageous at first. And that's partly why people fall into telling and believing lies, because lies are attractive and easy to sell. It's a lot easier to tell lies than to do research, for instance. The gay rights story is a story of an arc where the people who made their careers being lies. liars about gay rights ultimately got discredited. And that is a story that's worth reminding ourselves when we're in a time where the lies seem to have the upper hand. Certainly, lies have the upper hand right now. Can you explain what happened there and how that played out? So for a long time in American politics, the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, it was easy for conservative politicians to gain popularity by spreading fear of

about gay rights, gay people, homosexuality, the homosexual agenda. There was no way for gay people to respond. Most of them were in the closet. People weren't even out to their friends. There just wasn't a lot of research about gay people in the 50s and 60s and 70s. And so it was easy for right-wing religious leaders to dump on gay people. And there was an opposition. And the lies just had the upper hand, anti-gay groups raised mountains of money, just untold mountains of money, supporting giant programs for decades. And what happened in the 1990s when gay people started coming out of the closet in the United States is the anti-gay rhetoric, the lies, started to lose credibility. And people who spread those lies then started to lose credibility as well. And so anti-gay ministries and

anti-gay right-wing movements became suddenly less influential. less popular. They didn't disappear. Some of those movements are still out there. They still exist, but they lost credibility with a lot with the majority of Americans. And that took away a lot of the power that those anti-gay right-wing movements had. Not all of it, but a lot of it. And this is something I think we may see in the coming years with Trumpism, anti-vax, QAnon, Big Lie. When they suffer defeats in the courts, when leaders of those movements end up indicted and convicted, as we may see with some of our big lie promoting people in the next year or two, all of a sudden, defeat takes a lot of the fun and action out of lying. You know, it's fun to be a liar when it seems like all you do is get away with it. And there's a lot of sort of excitement in it.

But when people start to lose, it loses its appeal. You know, part of the appeal of authoritarianism is the appeal of vanquishing enemies and triumphing over everybody. And, you know, part of what made Donald Trump so appealing to so many Americans was that surprising 2016 electoral victory, which seemed to, you know, victory seems to prove you right about everything. Well, people said he wasn't going to win and he did win, right? So that inclines people to believe that he must be right about everything, people

who are inclined to follow him. But defeats and then defeats in the courts and then potentially convictions have a way of taking that sheen right off the indomitability of the would-be authoritarian. So, you know, we see a trajectory where lies and liars have are in ascendancy at the beginning. And it can take a long time for the truth to catch up to the lies. And it doesn't always, right? I mean, lies sometimes, sometimes the liars have. the upper hand forever. So there's no guarantee. That's an important thing to understand. But certainly in the case of gay rights in the United States, we see the liars who promoted anti-gay nonsense, having lost a lot of the credibility and a lot of the political power that they had.

So it's interesting because the idea here is you lie about gay rights, you lie about gay people, and eventually people meet gay people in their lives or they watch Ellen and they decide, you know, gay people are just like us. It's just they love someone else. So the theory of the case here is that you could conceivably have a situation where you have a person who has been lied to about the vaccine or even lied to about, you know, Donald Trump is going to do for the men and women of this country. And then eventually when Donald Trump starts losing like court cases or, you know, the January 6th committee has testimony, that they could slowly stop believing the lie, and that losing would get rid of the shine. That's absolutely right. Losing gets rid of the shine, and also knowing somebody who's on the other side of the issue helps people get out.

This is sort of coming back to the Thanksgiving family gathering story. It's important to build that bridge to people. If you think about people who are believers in the big lie, you can think of them as like someone who's in an abusive relationship. They're being lied to, they're being abused. And in the case of the anti-vax campaigns, their health is being put at risk by the lie that the vaccine isn't safe. And one of the things that we know about people in abusive relationships is they stay in those relationships for a long time. And the abuser tries to keep them from having ties to anybody else. And it's kind of our job to build those ties that the abuser doesn't want them to have. So it's like conservative media, right?

They don't want them to have sort of more impartial information. They just want them to have this sort of very Trumpy information. That's right, which is part of the reason why your Thanksgiving essay, which again, really enjoyed that essay, part of the reason why your Thanksgiving essay got so many people, so many conservatives angry at you because part of their program is to keep the people who are hearing the, you know, who are sort of addictive. to the lies to keep them in the cult. And in San Francisco, we have this terrible history with the People's Temple cult, this left-wing cult that moved from San Francisco to Guyana to keep people away from their relatives and friends in order to isolate them so that people couldn't go back to their relatives and friends and learn and get this other perspective about how crazy the cult was, right? In other words, they really had to get people

way. And it's our job as people who know a little bit about what's going on in the world to keep those lines of communications open. And sometimes that line of communication is, hey, Uncle Frank, that's crazy. And it's a kind of family confrontation that gay and lesbian Americans know a lot about because coming out of the closet was often a really traumatic family experience. And a lot of the people who eventually came around to be supportive of, let's say, their gay children, were at first horrified, mortified, angry. And so in order to get to the stage where people accept you for who you are against all their prior expectations, you kind of have to challenge them. And that challenge can be very disconcerting. That can be, that can cause friction, right? A lot of

people shy away from friction, and I don't think we have that choice. You know, the United States' current political system is in a real, it's in a dangerous moment, and we don't have the luxury of being polite to everybody. Right. Right, right, right. This was so interesting and so good, and please come back, Michael Rosenfeld, and it's even better because you are the first cousin of my husband. So not only are you a fabulous sociology professor at Stanford and brilliant writer and thinker, but you're also related to me. That's it. 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 in 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. And now we have arrived at fuck that guy. Fuck that guy. I want you to go first, Andy, because it sounds like you have a very specific, fuck that guy. I do. There's a school board in Tennessee has now banned a graphic novel about the Holocaust called Mouse, M-A-U-S, for people who don't know it. Written by a Holocaust survivor.

Yeah, it's an absolutely phenomenal book written by Art Spiegelman. It's considered one of the greatest graphic novels ever written, et cetera. And they have banned it. And they're tiptoe around why they're banning it. And it, you know, it doesn't look like they're, they're not banning teaching the Holocaust or anything. It's not. that bad. But the reasons they're banning it is, you know, one of them is it's too graphic. So I guess, you know, what they need is a way to teach the Holocaust that isn't icky. Which is, you know, exactly what you want

when you're teaching about a, you know, unbelievable crime, genocide. You don't want it to be icky. Light genocide. Yeah, well, this wasn't light genocide, though. But this one board member, he kept complaining, first of all, they're upset because I guess at one point in the book, there is some female nudity, which, of course, when you know, when you're talking about the Holocaust, it's important to focus on the important stuff. Like, are there breasts? And the other thing is that they didn't like some of the language. And this one guy kept saying, he was like, well, if the students use those kinds of words, I think bitch was one of the words. But he said, if the students were using one of these words in the cafeteria, they would get in trouble. So therefore, they can't be in any of the books they read. And this is the biggest sort of nonsense.

And it's the same thing that has led to like, you know, to Huck Finn not being taught because the N word is in it and you can use the same argument. Well, you don't want people saying the N word. Of course you don't. But when it's used in a book for a specific reason to teach a lesson, you do want it there. And you do want kids to know to learn how awful this word is and, you know, see exactly why. So it's just, it's history repeating itself. It's the same thing over and over again.

These close-minded people who are afraid of an eighth... By the way, these are eighth graders. That's where the book was being taught, mouse. So these are basically, what, like 13-year-olds? Do we think they haven't heard the word bitch before? Yeah. I mean, what world are you in if you think that with all the stuff out there on the internet, that an eighth grader hasn't seen or heard things that are far worse than the word bitch

that is being used in a book because a... Nazi is calling a Jewish woman that. And it's just so anger making and it's unconscionable. I'm telling you, these people, it's like, do they not remember that the internet is right there? I know. Like, you know, they're banning books in libraries. Like, these kids can just look at their phones. Yeah. No, it's absolutely insane. But, you know, there's the famous quote, those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it. But the problem with these people is they remember history and they want to repeat it. Like, it's not, you know, this is the same stuff that has been done. Again, with Huck Finn and many, many other books throughout the years. And it's been done over and over

again. It never is a good idea, but they want to keep doing it. So it's just, it's the worst, it's the most vile kind of ignorance to me. So fuck that guy and fuck that board. Yes. That's a good point. So do you want to know who my fuck that guy is? I would really like to know who your fuck that guy is. I don't know if you know him. He's a young congressman from the state of Florida. He is involved in a scandal that he actually named Gatesgate. Right. He tweeted, before the scandal broke, he said, if I ever have a scandal, I wanted to be called Gatesgate.

Well, you got your wish, buddy. Matt Gates yesterday, Daily Beast broke the story that his associate, who has come. a plea deal can attest to the fact that Matt Gates knew he was sleeping with, an underage young woman. A funny thing I learned when you said mini-Trump about Ron DeSantis is I wanted to fact-check his height so that we could have that accurate. But you can't find Ron DeSantis's height, so I went to look if you could find Matt Gates as he's in a lower office. And you can find Matt Gates's height.

But what is Ron DeSantis hiding aside from his vaccination status? Is all I'm just saying? I think he's normal height. I don't know. People are asking questions, Molly. Might be time to take him off some committees. That's right. Well, yeah, he needs to have more time to do his little show with his good friend, Marjorie Taylor Green, anyway. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast.

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