The Daily Beast Podcast - Gaetz Keeps Digging Deeper Holes for Himself

Episode Date: April 2, 2021

The New Abnormal’s least favorite Florida congressman, Matt Gaetz, is in hot water over mounting allegations that he’s been involved with underage women and taking them across state lines. To discuss the burgeoning scandal, co-hosts Molly Jong-Fast and Jesse Cannon brought on The Nation’s national affairs correspondent, Jeet Heer, who says he isn’t the least bit surprised.  “It’s the ones you always suspect the most,” he says.  Noting Gaetz’s strange appearance on the Tucker Carlson show, where he tried to get Carlson hitched to his sinking ship, Heer says he sees a connection with what other people in the alt-right swamp engage in. “Occasionally you see racists try to implicate the person they’re talking with, like, ‘You think this as well. You also don’t like those people right?’... To normalize this behavior. That’s basically what he’s doing: ‘Oh yeah, you remember the dinner that we were at with your wife? And wasn’t there some sort of really sleazy scandal involving you?” To Heer, Gaetz describing his dinner with a young date along with Tucker Carlson and his wife is reminiscent of the Woody Allen movie Manhattan. “In the movie, Woody is dating a 17-year-old [Mariel Hemingway]... and they go out to these dinners with their adult friends who are middle-aged.” The imagery is hard to unsee.  For more strange twists in the Matt Gaetz story, Molly and Jesse brought on Daily Beast senior politics editor Matt Fuller, who says he’s been hearing rumors of Gaetz’s bad behavior for over three years.  “Let’s just say he has a proclivity for younger women. He certainly has been open to dating college-aged women, congressional staffers, maybe some interns from Turning Point USA. He’s a man about town,” Fuller says. The crew agrees that you’re not in a good place when reporters are having to pin you down on the language you’re using around accused pedophilia.  “It’s been very odd to hear exactly how he phrases these answers on a lot of this, because he always says, ‘I haven't had any inappropriate relationships with underage women.’ And it’s been unclear if he’s saying underage women, like, with an age of consent, or…? We don’t know what he’s talking about.”  Also on the show, Molly sits down with one of the foremost warriors in the fight against the “anti-science movement,” vaccine scientist Dr. Peter Hotez, who talks soberly about what we have ahead of us in the COVID-19 pandemic.  Plus, getting so high you end up flying from Kentucky to Kenya, how you troll Joseph Goebbels, and podcasting with the Original Gangster Villain—that’s all on the latest The New Abnormal. If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes its just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, and welcome to The Daily Beast, The New Abnormal. I'm a left-wing pundit and an editor at large at The Daily Beast. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. Our world has been turned upside down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and figure out how we get our out of it. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure everything doesn't go too far off the rails while we have fun discussions about our world gone mad. And while I take

that duty seriously, ourselves, not so much. Today we have an awesome episode with Dr. Peter Hotez, who's a vaccine scientist that will update us on the latest on vaccines in the race against COVID variants. And then Daily Bee senior political editor Matt Fuller will break down the strange details around the allegations against everyone's least favorite Trumpy congressman, Matt Gates. But first we have author and national affairs correspondent for the nation, Jeet here to talk to us about all the fuckery surrounding us. Hi, Jeet. Hi. I'm so excited to have you. So I know you live in Canada. Yes. I think we should start by talking about Tucker Carlson. I don't know if you know this, but Tucker Carlson has

decided that Canada is terrible. Yes, I saw that. He did something last night too, right? Yes, that you guys have become an authoritarian state. Yeah. Sought, questions, comment, discuss. Yeah, well, here in Soviet Kenekestan, we love dear leader. I mean, he's very handsome at least. He's very handsome, yeah, exactly, exactly, yeah. Yeah, him and Molly's cousin, Kim Jong, I.

That's right, yes. I wrap the two most handsome young leaders of the world. Exactly. I would say it's a little bit unusual for Canadians to be demonized, but not totally out of the picture. And I think the one predecessor that one can think of in the immediate past is Pat Buchanan. Yeah. Who also talked about, who did use that phrase, Soviet Kenekistan. Oh, he did?

Yeah. And I really think that the origins of a lot of this on the right really go back to the end of the Cold War. And I'm old enough that I was actually Remember some of this. I was very palpable In the late 80s, early 90s I'd gone to some talks by Alan Bloom and other people and you could really sense, really feel

in the atmosphere that these are people who were a bit worried that the Soviet threat was disappearing and it had to be replaced by a new enemy. Yeah. The whole question was what was that enemy going to be? And that's really when a lot of this sort of

culture war started. There was a move from the Cold War to the culture war. The idea was that anything progressive is bad, and Canada not totally accurately is seen as being more progressive than the United States. I think it really depends on the issue and where you are, but it becomes a kind of convenient scapegoat. And in terms of the situation of enemies, I also feel like the thing that's scary for Republicans about Canada is you have government medicine that works. Yeah, well, not just government medicine works, but actually in a sense, a democracy that works. Right.

I mean, I do think that the Westminster model, like, if you have a majority government or even in the case of liberals, the minority, but you're supported by one of the other parties, you can actually pass things and get things done. That's a kind of scary thought. Like, I think that the Republicans are really committed to the kind of gridlock model where, like, if you can pass anything, neither can the Democrats. And so the idea of a nation where, you know, you can actually. get missions dealt with or have the sort of child care relief that Trudeau pioneered and then Biden is sort of doing something along the same lines. I think that's a scary thought. Right. I mean, what's interesting about this clip on Tucker is Tucker peddled outrage porn. That's kind of what he does. So that makes sense. But what he's mad at is this idea that Canadians are making people who come into

the country quarantine. Now, this is happening all over the world. And, And, you know, it happened very successfully in New Zealand and Australia. And it's kind of the way you do it to keep from getting people coming into your country with COVID. I just think it's sort of fascinating that this is the thing he picks up on and not the – I mean, I guess it's a way to sort of slide into the larger aspects of being mad at Canada for other stuff. But it is sort of interesting. Yeah, yeah, no. And I want to add to underscore that sort of like control of travel, it turns out that that seems to be the real key for dealing with COVID. That if one looks at like the areas that did it well or have done badly, it really seems like shutting down travel until it's just a bare essential is really key. I think it kind of just makes sense. I mean, this is like a sort of pandemic, right? It's transmittable.

And if you have all of people flying around, it's just going to spread it that much more quickly. So just as a health measure, it seems very basic. And I mean, the kind of irony is one would think that, you know, like the American right, which has all these anxieties about immigration and whatnot. Right. You know, if you want to build a border well, then what's the deal with, like, having people quarantine for two weeks, right? Right. But, but, yeah, I think it really plays to a lot of the fears that we're going to see them play up,

which is a fear of sort of, you know, like totalitarian government. It really, I mean, I think it really goes back to the Q&ON thing. Like it really is kind of like the people that they're going to try to appeal to are the ones with the most deep and paranoid fears about society and sort of really create a lot of distrust. So that's very dangerous. I mean, I think like in a kind of pandemic situation, you need people trusting. I think it goes along with, you know, Carlson's other big thing, which is not with Canada, but with vaccination. Right. Like we're kind of the leading person that's kind of promoting vaccine skepticism.

Yeah. I mean, no, I definitely agree. Now, let me ask you. I'm going to ask you something negative about Canada, so prepare yourself emotionally. Okay. Listeners, please prepare yourself. I love Canada. I'm a liberal, I promise. What is going on with Canada and the vaccines? Well, the main issue is just production, which is that Canada, going back to the 1980s, had sort of signed trade agreements, which got rid of domestic vaccine production. because the idea is you have free trade and wherever you can buy them from. We don't have any vaccine production capacity. And that's something that's, I think, you know, going forward, we have to kind of rethink a little bit.

So you guys got screwed because you don't make vaccines. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't make vaccines. So we have to buy them. And, of course, you know, vaccines are scarce. We're sort of dependent on people making them. I think that Johnson and Johnson is probably going to change things a little bit because production on that is so easy. and also it can store easier.

Yeah. Yeah, so things on the vaccination front are like we're a couple of months behind the United States and many other places. Right. I mean, I think what you certainly have seen with the vaccine stuff is that, I mean, France is locking down again, right? So there are all these countries where they're not able to get the vaccine. And some of that is because, I mean, we are very happy with our vaccine program here, but the reality is it's happening because we are not giving vaccines to other countries. Yeah, that's right.

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, but I think, I mean, like, if we're looking at it on a global scale, like, I think really what you need is like sort of, you know, maximum vaccine production and it being given to anywhere quickly as possible. I mean, like, I understand, like, obviously you want to give it to your people first, but after that, you actually want to continue making it just because it is a pandemic, you know,

like the virus will continue to exist as long as people aren't vaccinated and it's spreading and it'll continue to mutate as well. Right. Ideally, like what you're going to need. And I think there's signs that the Biden administration is heading there is, you know, like opening up intellectual property rights. Right. So a lot of countries can make vaccines and then also making vaccination part of foreign aid. I mean, I think doesn't they actually like, you know, China and even Cuba are kind of ahead of the United States. Like they're exporting vaccination as a way of getting international goodwill.

It seems like a relatively cheap and easy and self-interested thing to do that the United States might want to do as well. Yeah, no, I agree. I think it seems easy. All right, now we have to talk about the most important scandal rocking American life today. Okay. Are you ready? Yes. Are you emotionally prepared? We are going to talk about Florida's most. disgusting congressman from Florida's first district.

It's an R plus 22, 38-year-old Matt Gates. Yes. What the hell, man? It's Florida man. He's Florida man, isn't it? It's a restaurant. I mean, you know, for a while it looked like Georgia was going to have the biggest foodcake in Congress, but never understood me. It falls under the category for me.

It's the one you always expect the most from. this character, you know, like going back to Trump, he was one of Trump's biggest and most vocal supporters in a way that kind of make, like, you know, you can almost feel like Lindsey Graham going like, you know, tone it down, dude. You're going a bit too far in the kind of bootlicking department. But also, you know, I mean, yeah,

he always exuded this air of sleaziness above and beyond a normal congressman. which is a pretty high bar. What I'm really appreciating is that he's so Trumpy that there's also a tweet for everything. Right. The question is, look, nobody is making light here of sexual, whatever this is. You know, a 17-year-old is not an adult. A 17-year-old is a child.

The congressman himself is very hilarious because of his ridiculousness, but we are in no way making light of people who, you know, traffic children or, and certainly there's clearly, you know, this is wrong on all sorts of levels. But I can't help but feel we only know a very small part of the story. Yeah, no, I mean, just based on what he himself said, I mean, that's one of the things. Like usually if there's a scandal like this involved, you kind of clam up and say, you know, like, you have to talk to my lawyer. Right.

But this guy, you know, he's going on TV and he's saying stuff that we didn't even know about. Like he's saying, well, there's like allegations, these photographs of me with a child prostituted. We're like, what? Are you putting this out there? I mean, when I wrote the thing this yesterday for Vogue, I was watching this Tucker Carlson interview that he did. And the thing that really impressed me were just back to Tucker Carlson, of course, but was that he kept trying to drag Tucker into this? Yes, that was very notable. And you know what it reminded me of? Like, occasionally you see

sort of, like, racist talking and they try to impress. implicate the person they're talking with. Like, like, you think this as well, right? Like, you also, like, don't like those people, right? Phelas, who amongst us doesn't say the end word every two minutes? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think that to sort of, like, normalize this behavior.

And, like, that's basically always doing. Oh, yeah, you remember the dinner that we were at with your wife? Yeah, with your wife. And, yeah, wasn't there some sort of, like, really sleazy, scandal involving you. So it's really, yeah, I know, it was kind of and actually, the talk of that dinner with Tucker Carlton, for me,

remind me of nothing so much as Manhattan, the Woody-Awa movie. Yeah. Wait, why? Where Woody goes with a movie, he's dating a 17-year-old. Hemingway. Assy did try to date as well in real life in addition to casting her in this movie. And then they go out to these, like,

dinners with their, you know, like, adult friends, middle-aged friends, right? So, the giddy and this middle-aged couple and this 17-year-old. So, like, yeah, so I feel like the idea of Tucker Carlson in Manhattan, I have to say, does amuse me a little bit. It's amazing. But, yeah, it is, that scandal, it feels like we haven't really even, because, you know, Bill Barr is involved, right?

I think it's actually going to be big. I mean, like, I think just because of, you know, Gets' his, he's very connected, right? Like he's not a, he's not like a no-name congressman from Hicksville. Right.

He's like, he's like, he's been one of the top Republicans in Congress, you know, involved with all, elevated by Trump in a lot of ways. Yeah, a lot. And I think that's part of you what he's trying to do

with that interview with Tucker Carlton. Just to say like, you know, like if I go down, you're all going to go down with me, right? Yeah. I think like, yes, cast the popcorn.

Let's just, let's just see how we're going to go Speaking of going down with the ship, Donald J. Trump, perhaps you've heard of him, is starting a social network. Discuss. This has always been the kind of logical endgame of Trumpism for some degree. It's a kind of grift. And I remember myself and many other people are writing in 2016 that if Trump loses, you know, he's going to create Trump TV. And he's going to figure out some way to monetize his, like,

enormous fan base. On the other hand, I sort of feel like, I don't know if it's going to work. And it's interesting why he's not going to work, because Parlor hasn't really worked and gas. There's been a few attempts of these. And the problem is that they only attract the hardcore Trumpist. So it's not really fun for those people. Like the thing with Twitter, when Trump was on at the early days of Trumpism, is that they would allow all these like horrible people on to do like all these racist, anti-Semitic, misogamous things, and they could, but normal people were also on. Right.

And they could troll the lips, right? Right. Which is what they love. Whereas if you just have Gab where everyone else is like also a Nazi, then, like, what are you fighting over? Yeah, who you, how are you going to troll, you know, like, how do you troll Goebbels? I mean, I, I don't know. How do you troll Gervels?

That's a book title if I've ever heard one. Let's say, you have like, you know, Himmler fanboy. You have their fear or two, you know, like, you can't, like, troll the other people who are also trolls. Right. I think that's right. I just keep wondering if this is going to be even sustainable for two weeks now that, like, Apple and Google are saying, like, you got to have content moderation. And, like, it was proven that parlor put this week, zero dollars. It came out that they put towards that.

And so I can't imagine that this is for how small the crowd is, the amount of content moderation. they're going to have to do is going to be worth anything. Yeah, I'm sure they're going to do a ton of content moderation. That's a very Trumpy thing. Very, very. Yeah, they love to moderate content. If you moderate content, you have nothing. I mean, Trump is, that's his thing.

It's not moderating content. Exactly, that's right. I also think, I mean, it's really very, very, this is something that I've actually sort of changed my mind on. Now I really think that deep platforming work. Yeah. And this is like, before I was skeptical, just because I thought, well, Trump is president.

Like, you know, like if you've banned it from Twitter, he'll find other means of getting out there. And even after he's president, you know, he'll be a former president. And that's always newsworthy. But it turns out like he actually did need that kind of space that's accessible and direct to the public. And not just him. I mean, we've seen a lot of other people like, you know, Milo, you know, a very hard right Trump supporter. And I had quite a few people who, like, once they're denied that platform, they kind of, It's like the wicked witch of the West, you know, like you pour water on them and they just like, help me on melting.

Yeah, yeah. Content moderation is that little bit of water. Yeah, it's kind of amazing, but it actually does work. And you see, you saw that, I mean, with Trump, I mean, it really has worked. Now, I want to talk to you about one last, very important thing because, and I feel like because you're Canadian, you will appreciate, I don't know, do you, will you, you, you. You will appreciate this. Trains. Americans are suddenly super excited about trains. Yes, yes, which is that fight this whole thing. And I think if you actually fulfills out, that would be great.

I mean, it is. Actually, I think Canada, historically, trains have been very important. They're one of the things that kind of united the nation, like the kind of east-west line. But I think Canada, like the United States, has really fallen behind. I mean, like, you know, you look at what China is doing, what China is doing, what you're Japan's doing, you know, they have like these kind of, you know, like high-speed trains that can take you like, you know, thousands of miles, like, very quickly. Yeah. I mean, so yeah, I think that if Biden's into the infrastructure for spending, then upgrading the train system would be great. And I think especially,

you know, like air travel, like sucks, right? Like, it's really terrible. And even if the trains are, like, the thing is, even if the train takes a little bit longer, like, it's just like so much. better like to travel by train if it runs smoothly and quickly. Yeah, let's bring back trains. Yeah, it's so interesting because it is, like it's hard to think of a person who is against trains. I've seen some people on the right, like, who are kind of making the argument that it's like, you know, the usual stuff like socialism or whatever, but yeah, I don't know. I don't think that there's a kind of like a mass base for that. And I think that, yeah, if you can go back to the the golden age of train travel, that would be, like, fantastic.

And the thing is, I mean, it seems like a very old, you know, 19th century old-fashioned thing. But again, like, you know, there's some of the most modern nations out there. They've, like, really done a lot of great innovation with trains. There are some people who are smart people on this sort of, you know, the left-ish, right? Light-left, let's say, who are saying, why didn't Trump do infrastructure? And I am like insulted by the premise of the idea. Like Trump didn't do shit. Like he didn't do infrastructure because he didn't do anything.

Right. I mean. Well, that's right. Yeah. I mean, the only thing that Trump could do are stuff that the Republicans wanted anyways. Right. Which is like, you know, so basically he was like a hand that could sign a signature. They could sign a signature for like the court appointments and for the tax.

Right. I think that like it's always a challenge for a president. to go against the party and the Republicans, you know, Mitch McConnell, he's not into trades. If you're asking, who's not into trades? There's not a big district to spending. It would be the Republican leaders. I think I see the Republican base, like,

all of the polling, they love it. They would love, you know, I think a lot of people understand that America, over the last 20, 30 years, has not kept up with, like, just very basic things. And, like, to upgrade everything would be very popular. But, yeah, of course, like, Trump is,

I mean, is a fundamentally lazy person. Right. The laziest, you know, a white man in America. Yeah. No, but seriously. Wow. Yeah. The idea is just completely nuts.

So, yeah. I thought particularly, too, the people who drew that back to, like, how he would always say, like, I don't care about that. I won't be here when that happens. Right. Infrastructure. A thing you won't be here when it happens. Yeah. So the whole idea that Trump could actually, I mean, the thing is, there are ways in which a Republican president can buck his party.

But you have to be of a strong character. I mean, I think Nixon, to give him credit, by going to China, he was going against his own party, which is very anti-communist. And a lot of other stuff he signed, like, the EPA. So, but to do that, you have to have a president that, like, kind of thinks for himself and realizes, like, you know, I can buck my party and still get away with it and has core beliefs, you know, rather than just like, I want to be president and have everyone spawn over me.

Yeah, I mean, it really does sort of point to the fundamental poverty of Trump. Dr. Peter Hotez is a vaccine scientist combating anti-science and the author of Vaccines Didn't Cause Rachel's Autism and Preventing the Next Pandemic. And he'll be talking us today about vaccines and COVID variants. Today at the new abnormal, we have Dr. Peter Hotes. Welcome. Thanks so much for having me, Molly. You've never been on the pod, but I'm a big, big fan. Oh, that's so kind. And same here. I love all your stuff. It's just great. I'm just very, And one of the things you do, which I'd love you to talk about for a second, that I think is really God's work, is that you go on Fox News as much and also on other right-wing media outlets as much as possible. Can you talk about that? Yeah, you know, well, obviously everything's been so polarized, but, you know, lately we were, what we started to see is in 2020 was the red states got hit really hard.

And that's big southern surge in the summer and in the Midwest and the fall. And a lot of that was out of deliberate defiance as a show of political allegiance to the president and the White House. And I saw how many people are going to die. And then, you know, one of the naters was when we had that ICU nurse and I think it was South Dakota weeping, you know, because she described her patient's dying words were that this was a hoax. So people weren't even dying with dignity. And that really broke my heart because, you know, I've, as an academic, as a physician scientist, I visited universities all over the country, including all, you know, great land grant universities in the heartland. And so I felt like these are people I know and can reach out. to. And now I'm doing it again with all the new information coming that those same groups are that are vaccine hesitant. And the highest rates of vaccine hesitancy now are, according to the PBS NewsHour poll is our white Republican. So I'm trying to reach out again. Well, you really see with an infectious virus that you can't have to America's. Absolutely. And what's interesting is,

And this really got started for me back as a year ago this time, and I was going on CNN and all the cable news networks regularly. And then I saw the disinformation campaign coming from the White House that for whatever reason, there was a conscious decision to decide that the pandemic, they were going to call the pandemic a hoax or the flu. And they started getting up there attributing COVID deaths to other causes and discrediting masks. saying, you know, you had Kay Lee McAnney saying that the hospital admissions were due to catch up in elective surgeries. And, you know, you started to look at this and that and spectacularizing hydroxychloroquine and you looked at this in aggregate. And I said to myself, you know, I've seen this before because I've spent years as we've just talked about before going up against the anti-vaccine movement because I'm a vaccine scientist and I have a four adult kids and

my youngest daughter, Rachel's autism and intellectual disabilities. And I wrote this book called Vaccines Did Not Cause Rachel's Autism, which kind of made me public. like enemy number one with the anti-vaccine groups. In fact, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. calls me the OG villain now. That's my new name. So you're talking to the OG villain today. Wait, why is it OG? I had to look it up myself, so don't feel bad.

It means original gangster. The original gangster. Wait, you're the original gangster villain? I'm the original gangster villain because I... Because you're saying that vaccines don't cause autism. Right. That's exactly right. It's craziness, right? But, and I've been doing this for many years. And so I

I learned, you know, even though that's not why I got my MD and PhD, I wanted to be a physician scientist making vaccines, which is what I do. But by default, I became an expert in the anti-science disinformation. And I saw what the White House was doing and the coronavirus task for us. I said, you know what? I know what this is. And I was really, I was in a very dark place because as a scientist, you know, the message is, you know, Peter, just stick to the science. You're not a political guy. You're not a politician. You know, don't go in there. You'll just make yourself look silly.

And it'll be embarrassed, you know, the university. And it's not just, you know, it's every place I've ever worked. And that's been that way. And, you know, I just talked to my wife, Anne, she said, you know, I see this is tearing you apart. And, you know, the worst thing is you say nothing. And then a year from now, you have all of these people who've lost their lives from COVID.

You'll feel terrible if you don't say anything. And so I did it. I just let it rip. And I became one of the first to really call it a organized disinformation campaign. It's not because I was so brilliant. It was just that I had the years of background knowing about this. And that was tough in the beginning because I got no backing. You know, the academic professional societies were silent.

And that was tough, you know, just being out there and going to that very dark place. But eventually people came around and it had an important effect. But it came at a pretty heavy price for me emotionally. I have to say, I know how infuriating it was to me. and I only have a master's degree in fine arts. And I was pretty infuriated, and it did seem like it was one of those moments where we needed our medical community to step out.

And eventually they did, but there definitely was a pause. And, you know, hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost. Yeah, that didn't have to be that way. I mean, you know, I understand that terrible first wave in New York City, and, you know, when you were there, right? You were hearing Sirens Day. And that was heartbreaking for Anne and me because we, you know, in some ways we're New Yorkers. We did my MD and my PhD in New York and I met Anne in New York and we've always felt like New Yorkers. And so it was heartbreaking for us to see what was going on. And we were in touch with colleagues. But and that, even that, you know, could have been stopped, I think because that turns out the virus entered into the U.S., into New York City from Europe, from Southern Europe. And it was circulating for a month before. anybody figured out that it was, that anybody was getting infected. But, but okay, you can maybe forgive that first wave of deaths that came out in New York, you know, what was that, maybe

100,000. But from then on, you know, it was all defiance. And it was, and so what, especially that surge in the southern states in the summer and then the big surge in the fall and in the red states. And that's what could have been halted or prevented or delayed. Or, you know, if we had delayed that fall January surge until now, you know, when we have vaccines here. I mean, who knows how many lives we would have saved. No, I mean, it is definitely, we will look back on this time, like we looked back on the pandemic of 1918, you know, that there were, it was a time when the American government did wrong by the American people, and we will see that when we look back at this, but now, you know, I'm really getting equally concerned of the fact that this is accelerating.

The first thing I want to talk about is the rollout because this, we have had this spectacular rollout, which we have gone from being basically Europe was afraid of us to now Europe is locked down and we are doing these incredible vaccine rollout. This feels like it has to be declared a victory for Biden. Yeah, I mean, but with two statements around that, both positive and negative. The positive one is, you know, when the Biden team finally got into office, and they, you know, took them a few days to find where to figure out how to work the microwave in the White House and where the washrooms were. But once they did that, you know, they came out with this plan that we were going to vaccinate 100 million people in 100 days. And I was very supportive of that, as was the scientific community. But then it became pretty obvious that within a couple of weeks that

the B117 variant was accelerating. That's the South Africa or the Brazil? No, that's the one from the UK. And it was clearly, it was more transmissible. And it had a higher mortality rate and higher lethality rate. So I was on Zoom calls regularly with colleagues like Eric Topol and Mike Osterholm. We were looking at this and realized, you know what? I understand the $100 million in 100 days is well-intentioned, but it's, it ain't going to cut it.

This is bad news. We're going to have to accelerate this. So, you know, and we were out there talking on the cable news networks about this. And I got beat up a bit because, you know, it was seen like a betrayal. Hey, how can you criticize the Biden administration? Well, I'm not really criticizing. I'm saying they've got to call an audible. They've got to change things around. And you know what? They did. And that was really impressive that they were able to listen to the scientific community and say, you know, maybe we don't know everything. And they, you know, they redoubled and literally redoubled. They moved it up to

two million immunizations a day, not three million immunizations. So that was really impressive. I have to say. And they went out and procured the extra vaccines that they needed. So that's great. And I've been very complimentary, not complimentary, and very supportive of what's been happening. The one piece that's missing, though, is there's nothing for Africa and Latin America. That really worries me. That I want to talk to you about. But first, let's just talk for a second about, because you guys are working on a vaccine at Baylor. That's right. So I'm co-ahed with my science partner for the last 20 years, Mary-Elena Botazzi, the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital, which is part of our National School of Tropical Medicine. And we've been developing vaccines for decades for parasitic diseases.

We adopted a coronavirus program a decade ago because at that time there was orphaned. Nobody cared about coronavirus vaccines. So then we started making COVID-19 vaccines. And because we've always made low-cost global health vaccines, that's the only thing we know how to do. So we wound up making a low-cost recombin protein global health vaccine. an older technology, the same technology used to make the hepatitis B vaccine that's been around for four decades. And it's looking, it's a recombinin protein vaccine made by yeast fermentation. And it looks really good on terms of clinical trials so far in people and also in racist monkeys, vaccine trials. Everything's going really well. And so we think this could become one of the

first people's vaccine, as they call it sometimes for COVID-19. And now we have a huge gap because is, you know, as important as the vaccines are for the U.S., the RNA vaccines, the adenovirus vaccines, they're new technologies, and I don't think they can be scaled at the level we need. We need to vaccinate a billion people in sub-Saharan Africa, 650 million people in Latin America. You need four billion doses of vaccines. That's not going to happen with the mRNA vaccine. So I hope our vaccine will really come along and make a difference, and that's really exciting. Do you have a sense of your efficacy?

We know the levels of neutralizing antibodies in people. It looks really high and there's sort of a conversion factor. So we think it's going to be really high. But until we do the phase three trials, we won't know for certain. And it's a one shot. No, it'll be two shots. It'll definitely be two shots. Do you think that you can get to, I mean, it seems to me like South and Central America are a ticking time bomb. Yeah, except, well, arguably it's already exploded, right? It's a mess. And part of the problem was everybody was so focused on innovation, right? And they wanted to make really good vaccines for North America and Europe. But when you do a brand new technology, it takes years to learn how to scale up and produce it at the level you need. And we're not there yet. So there was not enough. The one flaw for Operation Warp Speed was there was not attention to ensuring that we had a low-cost, easy, breezy, durable, old-school. recombin protein vaccine, and hopefully ours will come and fill that gap.

So are you, can, the worry that I have, a big worry that I have and can now talk me off this ledge, is that, because that's your job. No, I'm just kidding. Is that we are, if we don't vaccinate everyone, COVID continues to bat around and get worse and mutate and find its way around the vaccines. Yeah, well, let's, let's take. in steps. So let's project out now what's going to happen in the U.S. So the B117 variant from the U.K. is the one that's accelerating now. And that's the one that's causing the numbers to go back up in Michigan and back in New York and New Jersey. And that's the one we're racing to get ahead of. And that's why we had to accelerate our vaccine timetable. The good news there is all of the

Operation Warp Speed vaccine seem to work just as well against the UK variant as all the others. And I think if we can fully vaccinate the American people by the summer, we will have something that closely resembles a normal quality of life. I'm that optimistic. So that's really good news. The problem is some of the newer variants coming out of South Africa and Brazil have an extra amino acid substitution that makes them partially resistant to all of the vaccines. They're here in the U.S. in small ways. I don't think they're going to loom large, but I think by next year they could. So what I imagine is each of the vaccines that you're getting now will require an extra boost.

So the two-year two-dose, Modera and a Pfizer vaccine will become a three-dose vaccine. You'll get a third dose either later on this year or next year. The J&J will be a two-dose vaccine. But then I think we'll be sort of done. I don't think we're going to need a new vaccine every year. You know, we don't know for certain that, but that's my, it's still a guess, but that's my guess is that this could be it, as we go through this. So I think the, and the reason I say that is some people say,

well, this is all futile. Why am I bothering getting vaccinated? Then the variants are going to come anyway, and I'm doomed. And it's not the case at all. There is some mid-course adjustment we'll have to make, but it's a modest adjustment that we're going to have to make. Right. Okay, good.

I mean, I do think that it does seem like right now, Pfizer is not doing a booster. Well, they're working on it. Oh, they are. All of the drug companies, and we in our group as well, are working on boosters that will be specifically tailored for something resembling the South African and the Brazilian variant, which are both pretty similar in some respects. I have a question, which is generally these, like the flu, get less fatal, these viruses as they continue to mutate. Why is this one different? It really varies. I don't know if we can really say that. But, you know, we've let transmission get so out of hand that now it's just, you know, we've got viruses ubiquitous and things start to happen.

So unfortunately, that's definitely the case with the UK variant. Do you think that what's happened in the UK where they're doing one shot is going to work? We'll see. The scientific community is not divided. I tend to be more in the two-shot camp, given the fact that we're getting such a high level. of protection and the numbers that I saw come out of Israel are not nearly as impressive after a single dose. My colleagues, who I love to death, Mike Osterhoman and Eric Topal, you know, don't agree with me. They think we should move to a single dose now. And they have good reasons for it as well.

And so we'll see how it all goes. Are you seeing any evidence of this idea that if you get the vaccine, it somehow treats long COVID? Yeah, I've seen that. I don't have an obvious explanation for us since long COVID's not due to active virus infection. So while it's not impossible, it sounds, there's no obvious mechanism for me. And so you always wonder how much of that is a placebo effect or, but we'll see. You know, we'll learn more about it in time. We're learning a lot about long-haul COVID.

And, you know, it's both scary and fascinating. Scary because such a high percentage of people are developing, you know, the shortness of breath, the palpitations, the fatigue, the brain fog and sometimes unipolar depression. On the other hand, you know, one of the things that I find really interesting is the symptoms resemble quite a bit, things like chronic fatigues in German fibrobialgia. And the reason I spring that up is because now we're uncovering really interesting mechanisms about COVID-19, like how it activates microglial cells in the brain, and maybe that's responsible, or my colleague, Kiko Iwasaki at Yale, she's found that it creates

auto antibodies, and maybe this will give us some ideas on how to get our arms around fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome as well. We might. So COVID-19 may prove to be a window into helping us learn about other diseases. Are you excited about the MRNA vaccines being scalable for other viruses? Yeah. Well, I'm excited about it for a couple of reasons. One, right now the technology is still a bit fussy and is not being scaled for low and middle income countries, but we know from history that's going to improve. We'll get better at scaling it up. We'll figure out eventually how to keep it at room temperature.

So in that sense, it could revolutionize vaccines. On the other hand, you know, sometimes I would have said that about the VSV technology that Merck and company used to make the Ebola vaccine. And I thought, gee, this is going to work really well for COVID-19 and it didn't. So sometimes, you know, this may work. for one, not the other. I think the, well, one of the things I think the MRNH vaccines will be good for also is now there's a new wave of vaccines for things like cancer and other chronic conditions, vaccines for neurodegenerative disease. And I think that's one of the reasons why Moderna and Pfizer-Biontech

are in this, because I don't really think they're making much money on the COVID-19 vaccines. It's going to, but it provides a glide path for them to go into those new areas. So teenagers, like young teenagers, what do you think? When do you? you think that happens? Will they need a second EUA? Well, we've got the data now on 12 to 15 year olds for the Pfizer-Biantec vaccine. And I would, and I don't know the exact mechanism, whether the EUA will be expanded. I think it'll go through the Verpack review committee because if you remember, it was not a unanimous vote around the 16 and 17-year-olds. It was a 17-4 vote. So they'll probably want to go back and confirm that. But I think starting in the summer, we will vaccinate to 12 to 15-year-olds.

the fall school year, I think we'll be looking at middle schools, junior high schools, high schools, fully vaccinated, students, teachers, staff, it's going to be, it'll be great. I think the little kids will take longer. I don't see a path by which we have that before next year, but that may happen eventually as well. It does seem with little kids. I mean, I know that this new variant may not act the same way, but a lot of, you know, earlier on with the virus, it wasn't being, you know, it was not affecting little kids. Well, what you were seeing are a lot, you know, especially in the five to nine-year-old age group, you were seeing this very worrisome syndrome called MISC, multisystem, inflammatory

syndrome of children. And there were about 2,000 cases of it, and kids were very sick. So you might justify vaccinating kids on that basis also. And that's also going to slow you down because that's an odd syndrome that it happens later on in the course of COVID-19. So you'll want to make certain. that the vaccine is not making kids more susceptible to that. And that's going to slow you down in the clinical testing, I would think. So there is this news. It was out earlier, but I know the messaging

on this has not been amazing for, I think, obvious reasons. But it seems to be now the CDC is saying that if you're vaccinated, you don't carry the virus. I saw that pretty early on because in the non-human primate studies, the vaccine after challenge with the virus was, you had low, and some of the vaccines, low amounts of virus shedding from the nose and mouth. And that's what that means. And that's why COVID-19 has been such a problem because asymptomatic people are shedding a lot of virus and her nose and mouth. So I think what's happening is the antibody is crossing into the mucus membranes of the nose, mouth and throat and the halting virus transmission. So that's probably the basis of it. So that is really, and we saw that in the Israel study, it was starting to do

it. And that's tremendous news because it means that if we can fully vaccinate everybody, we can potentially halt virus transmission. And that's how we, and so it means we're going to vaccinate our way out of this epidemic provided. We can figure out how to deal with this new wave of vaccine hesitancy, which is now cropping up in the Republican Republicans. And so that's the reason I'm reaching out to those groups. You're going to need Mitch McConnell doing PSA is about vaccines. You know what? I'll do whatever it takes. I do think, though, it's pretty exciting.

You know, the reason why I always suspected it was true was, and that people were sort of slow walking the information to make sure it was right, which I respect is because Fauci had said something like two months ago about how, that how contagious you were was related to how much viral load you had. Yeah. Well, also, the CDC, about two months ago, came out with this recommendation that if you're vaccinated and you're exposed, you don't have to quarantine. And the only way you could justify that was what we were just talking about. I thought, wow, that's pretty bold of the CDC to do that. And I think that's what they, but they could have done is come out and explain the reason for it, which they, which they're not, they're not always the best public health communicators. And vaccinated people really, I mean, doesn't it seem to you likely that the CDC should say something the effect of vaccinated people can travel? I think they will. I think actually, and this one I don't fault the CDC so much. I know a lot of my colleagues have been very critical. You know, why is the CDC being so conservative?

I think it's because the B-1-7 variance is just all over the place. And the percentage of the American people vaccinated is still really low. So they were quite conservative in their guidelines. And they call them interim guidelines. I think version 2.0 is going to look quite different. I don't know when that's going to happen later in the spring or the summer. But I think at that point, people, they're going to say if you're vaccinated, you got your get out of jail free card. You can do pretty much what you were doing before the pandemic.

And I think there's a good likelihood that may happen. Thank you so much, Dr. Peter Hottaz. I hope you'll come back soon. Thanks, Molly. It's a real honor to be here. Hey, folks, if you haven't heard every single week, we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media. like Jim Acosta or Soladadad O'Brien.

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

Matt Fuller is a senior political editor at The Daily Beast, and he's with us today to talk about the insanity surrounding the allegations against Matt Gates. Welcome Matt Fuller to the new abnormal. Appreciate it. I'm very excited that you are at the Daily Beast now. This is big excitement. And you tweeted something like two days ago that captured my imagination. Do you know the tweet of which I speak? I'm thinking that I basically said we're still just.

like scratching the surface here. I have known about him dating young women for years now. Yes. Yeah. I mean, to be honest with you, I started working on this story almost exactly three years ago. I looked back through my notes. So we are talking, when we say him, we are talking about Florida's first district, Congressman 38-year-old Matt Gates. Correct. And at the time, when I started this, he was 35. Oh, wow. Time passes.

Yes. Let's just say he has a proclivity. for younger women. Certainly has been open to dating college women, staffers in Congress, apparently maybe some interns from TPUSA. Oh. He is a man about town. He is only in his,

is this his second or third term? Second, right? This would now be his third. No, he started in 2017, so the 2019. Yeah, so this is his third. Yeah. Yeah.

So what do you know, that you can tell us. Some of this is sort of out there. We don't know the truth about this, quote, 17-year-old girl who would, you know, be a victim, really. We haven't been able to verify that. I don't think anyone has really been able to verify that. What I can tell you is that he has dated women in their early 20s.

He is, again, someone who is or was very active, at least on the dating scene, the sort of congressional world. He didn't really hang out with many members of Congress. He wasn't going out to dinner with them. He was sort of going to the Trump Hotel and hanging out with women. And that was his sort of M.O. He just kind of kept to himself, but was also just dating around. But this story comes out because, and I think that this is maybe Matt Gates' worst move here,

this story broke because of the blackmail attempt. Well, yeah, we don't exactly know if this is coming out from the, blackmail attempt. These almost seem like they could be kind of concurrent stories. Okay. Interesting. And we're not really sure whether either of them are true or if they're both true. Right. It certainly seems like

yes, the Justice Department is investigating Matt Gates. And it also seems like these lawyers that he's alleged were trying to extort him and his father. It definitely seems like there was something very sketchy there. He has some documentation. There's

clearly contact between this this lawyer. This lawyer had a lot of contact with someone who was a convicted felon years ago. Stephen Alford, who was basically convicted for, in essence, like, bribery. There's a lot of wire fraud and things like that. I'm not going to say that David McGee, the lawyer, is not an upstanding, you know, debt as an unbelief. Because who knows? Because who knows? But it is sort of curious that he'd be paling around and involving himself with one of his former clients who was convicted of pretty serious crimes. And also there's this other sort of international angle to the story with Bob Levinson,

who was a former CIA spy who, when missing in Iran, is very strongly presumed dead. But this lawyer has been the family's lawyer for Bob Levinson for years. And for whatever reason, Levinson is making an appearance in this story where the basic premise is that, or this is, again, this is what Gates alleges, that McGee came to the family and said, if you give us $25 million to recover Bob Levinson, you'll be a hero in these communities. And we think that your son's legal problems with underage, dating underage women. We'll disappear. Yes. All that will sort of disappear. Yes. So it's a very bizarre story, and it's very hard to sort of keep track of it. And we are all

sort of struggling to figure out who's lying, what's true. It's just sort of a mess. How did this story come out in the first place? Well, the New York Times wrote a story basically saying, hey, Matt Gates is under investigation by the Justice Department for dating underage women. And we don't know how they got that information. We don't, but it seems pretty solid that it seems like that is true, that there is an investigation and the investigation seems maybe even broader than that.

We know now that he's under investigation for misusing. campaign funds. There could be many dynamics to this whole thing. Matt Gates hears this news and he kind of goes on the offensive and says, the only reason this is happening, this is all trumped up lies. I've never dated a 17-year-old, something he told me last night. In fact, his line to me was the last time I had sex with a 17-year-old, I was 17. Which really TMI. I'm not sure that is the defense he thinks it is, but yes. I will say this. It has been very odd to hear exactly how he phrases these answers on a lot of this because he always says, I haven't had any, like, inappropriate relationships with underage women. And it's been unclear if he's saying underage

women, like, with an age of consent or we don't know what he's talking about. So it was at least nice to put him on the record to say, I've not had sex with a 17-year-old since I was 17 or, you know, while in Congress at least. Yeah. I mean, someone said to me yesterday, if you have your name next to the woman 17, you're losing. Yes. And I, you know, I would say that, again, having sort of reported and looked at this stuff for years, we didn't go forward with a lot of it because we kind of said, what's the impact of this reporting if it's a 21-year-old, a 22-year-old?

Certainly those women, we know he was dating them. And, you know, it's certainly a bit unseemly for someone in their mid-30s, now late 30s, to be dating women that young, certainly if they are interns, even if they're not in his office, or staffers. But it was nothing illegal. So now there's an actual tie to this that says, hey, the investigation at least is that he was dating a 17-year-old. And he seems to have a woman in mind. He mentioned during a Tucker Carlson interview that he went to dinner, whoever this woman in question went to dinner with Tucker Carlson and his wife, which was seemed to be news to Tucker Carlson. Have you ever seen Tucker Carlson less pleased with a guest?

Unfortunately, I probably have just because I've watched his show too much, but it was actually kind of a classic Tucker Carlson moment of mix of disgust and bewilderment. Right. I think that Matt Gates seems to be clinging to some sort of truth that maybe this girl wasn't ever 17 when he had sex with her. She might have been 18. Right. Which again, that would, you know, he'd be, I guess, legally in the clear, but it's certainly unseemly. Yeah.

And, you know, the big thing for us has been no one's really jumping to Matt Gates's defense. I mean, there's been a couple of side characters in Congress who said, you know, I believe Matt Gates or I support Matt Gates. MTG and Jim Jordan, right? Right. Yes, Marjorie Taylor Green. Kevin McCarthy, whose job he's gunning for wasn't even that harsh on him. What he said was, let's wait for the facts. If it's true, we'd certainly remove him from the committees.

I agree that it's not exactly the same standard that he applied to Eric Swalwood. Well, with Eric's Wall. It was like, well, there's some allegations just remove him. Yeah. I also think that Kevin McCarthy could have come to his defense a little bit more strongly, and it's notable that he didn't. And I think that's because there's a lot of Republicans right now who are looking at Matt Gates and going, yeah, I can kind of believe a lot of this.

And yeah, let's wait for the next shoe to drop before we come out with a statement there. And also, you know, Matt Gates hasn't made many friends in Congress because he's just gone about his business with picking fights and attacking fellow Republicans for not having sufficient Trump support. Yeah, no, I agree. And Jim Jordan has never been one to be bothered by inappropriate, you know,

sexual relations with children. So where do you think this goes next? Do you have any sense on this? Well, there's, I think there's still a lot to come out about this investigation. We don't, again, we still don't know the specifics of whether or not this is true that he was

ever sexually involved with a 17-year- old. We don't know exactly who this girl is. We don't know her current age. We don't know when their relationship. If there ever was a relationship ever started, again, I'd say he's been couching his words very carefully. But in the sort of the extortion plot, there's a bunch of information that's in there about pictures of him in an orgy with like underage prostitutes. And there's allegations of all sorts of unseemly things. And then there's also the behavior that we sort of do know about, you know, what's going to come out about Matt Gates' drug use? What's going to come about about him dating other women? Maybe they weren't underage per se, but it's certainly going to be

a political problem for him if the whole world knows that he's dating like 21-year-olds, 20-year-olds. Yeah. So there's, you know, plenty of things that could come out in that respect. It does seem to me like the fact that he said there isn't a picture of me with an underage prostitute, or did he say that? He said something to that effect on Tucker Carlson. He said, there's no picture of me with a nobody has a picture of me. Do you remember that?

Yes. And, you know, at the time, we had no idea of these pictures. But we do see, you know, it's like one of those, it's like the old tweet, my t-shirt saying, I don't support child trafficking, is raising more questions that are already answered by my t-shirt. Right. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it was in the sort of the documents that he shared with the Washington Examiner yesterday,

or a source, we should say a source, Sheriff Rueck, Examiner. So the guilty flee where no man pursueth, is what you're saying? Yeah, exactly, yes. All right, well, hopefully you'll come back and tell us more about this

very, you know, this sort of it's, I feel like it's a lot like the Ted Cruz Cancun Gate because it's like, he really is, he's the Bill de Blasio of Congress, right? Like, nobody is particularly interested in not seeing him

There are plenty of people who are very interested in seeing him go down. Yeah. And again, I'd say there aren't many people jumping to his defense at this moment because everyone sort of is looking at the allegations and going, yeah, that kind of, that rings a little. Just MTG. Yeah. 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 Daily Beast.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. Hi, Jesse Cannon. Hi, hi, Molly. Jay Jong Fest, tell me who is going to be the person that sucks the most today. I think the person who sucks the most today, and look, it's a competitive field, all right? I don't want you to think that by me picking this one person, I'm not saying that there isn't space for lots of other really shitty people to emerge.

For now, my fuck that guy is fucking Alex Berenson, a man who, he's become the sort of king of anti-vaxxers, and he's on Fox News all the time, and he was debunked today by sort of doing God's work, the Atlantic, and now he is debunked, and he's enraged. And so for you, I say, fuck you, Alex Berenzen. Okay, my fuck that guy actually is a tip I just got from you, which is Greg Kelly. Greg Kelly, if you're not familiar, is a Newsmax personality who literally does a Trump imitation while doing the news, which is like horrifying. And if you haven't witnessed this, I suggest you keep it out of your brain for as long as you can. Okay. Today, Greg Kelly sent out a tweet. And so we should also say this.

He's clearly hired some social media savvy teenager to make his Twitter account really outlandish so it gets shares for owning the webs and stuff. But his tweet today was smoking weed, aka grass, is not a good idea. I've tried it back in the day. And it was worse than anything that ever happened to Hunter Biden.

I toked up with some buddies in Kentucky and woke up four days later in Nairobi, Kenya, with no idea what happened. don't do drugs. Yeah, it seems to say more about him than drugs, but yes, continue. As they say, they say, you're telling on yourself, Greg. Yeah. So not only is this some sort of ploy because he thinks this is going to help him rise to the ranks,

just as Marjorie Taylor Green's thinly veiled social media attempts, they're going to make her the next trumpet address. This is him doing the same thing, and he thinks he's going to shitpost his way to the top. But really, this is also reputational. clean up because Greg Kelly's dad is Ray Kelly. And if you're not familiar, Ray Kelly is the guy who pushed stop and frisk and put tons of people in jail who are now getting their records expunged from his father's stupid policy that they knew didn't work

and kept doing it because they don't care what happens to black and brown people. And Greg has to try to rehab his dad's shitty decisions. So for that, I say to you, Greg, fuck you. Here's a question. Uh-huh. I ask this as someone who also has a parent who may. have made bad decisions in their life. Is that really his responsibility?

I mean, couldn't he just, I mean, clearly that's what's going, I mean, I assume that's what's going on here because nothing else makes any sense. Yes. But does he have to do that? I mean, couldn't he just ignore it or pretend it didn't happen or just hope that no one makes the connection? As we've seen with so many power hungry people, the daddy issues are everything. I mean, that thing about how Joe Biden is the first president to have a decent, really. relationship with his father in something like 50 years is like absolutely insane. Yeah. Wow. Something to think about.

On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening. And we'll see you. you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh,

and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.