The Daily Beast Podcast - Gavin Newsom Trolled the Supreme Court’s Crazy Conservatives​ w/ Kurt Anderson

Episode Date: December 17, 2021

Molly and Andy talk about what Gavin Newsom is hoping to accomplish, past lulz, by using Texas’s crazy anti-abortion vigilante law as the basis for his own law targeting guns in California, former Spy editor Kurt Andersen looks at how “America has always had a weakness for exciting falsehoods and conspiracy theories,” and New Yorker writer looks back on “the last few years of this Democratic crisis in the United States as a rolling series of the impossible not only becoming possible but happening.” 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 Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at The Atlantic EnVogue. 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 people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down. and 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. We have a super fun show today. Former Spy Magazine editor and Studio 360 host Kurt Anderson, who we are now calling the Prophet, Kurt Anderson,

is going to come by and explain to us how his book Fantasyland is becoming even more true. Then we're going to talk to Susan Glasser, who's a writer at the New Yorker, as well as a CNN Global Affairs analyst, and co-author of The Man Who Ran Washington, The Life in Times of Jim Baker. But before they join us, let's have some fun. Andy Levy. Molly Youngfast. Oh, Jesus fucking Christ, man.

It's Jong, like Kim Jong. Really? It's not a soft chain. And we're not Dutch. We're North Korean. Come on. Get with the program. I've been saying it wrong all morning. I'm part of the, you're going to get, I'm going to tell on you in the New Florida law. I'm going to dime you out for trying to teach my. Kids, critical race theory.

And you're going to get arrested and you're going to go to jail in Miami. I don't know. Well, I don't know if there's jail for this. It's a little too humid there for me. Can I go somewhere else? Florida's first district represented by one Matt Gates. Oh, excellent. Yes, the best.

So the New York Times has a pretty blockbuster reporting about some of Mark Meadow's texts. You know, we love to be able to read somebody's text. This really is scintillating stuff. Jim Jordan's telling on himself, what are you guys seeing with this article and what's going down around all these new texts we've gotten to hear about? So these texts were introduced by one Liz Cheney, who read them during a January 6th hearing before they voted to hold Mark Meadow in contempt of Congress, something that hasn't happened since the 1800s. And then they sort of drew out from there and named some of the people, and you saw some journalists saying that they were in these texts. I mean, I think a lot of people got really worried about these text messages. And I think that

Benny Thompson, who's the head of the committee, said something to the effect of, you're not going to be surprised by any of the people who he was texting with. And in fact, we are not. Yeah, that was a good call on Benny's part. Right. Representative Jim Jordan, pugnacious, former wrestler, has not. never worn a jacket in his entire life, was born just in a shirt with no jacket. Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, did you know that his assent into politics was patted with a $10 million sweepstake win? I did not.

I did not know that. I imagine that's not common, right? I mean, Paul Gosar is an Arizona dentist. he is not the worst member of Congress, but he is. Oh, no, maybe he is. But he's also the worst dentist. I picture him giving the Novacain shots after he drills you. That's just how dumb he is.

One of the things I appreciate about him is that he's always sweaty. He really has some very odd mannerisms. I watched all of that Matt Gates podcast on video, and I was like, I don't even know what to make of this. during the Iraq war when all those guys would be like a little wincey this is like level 65 of that so uh louis gomer known for his fiery speeches to an empty house chamber and he's also running for republican office he's running for a g in texas yeah the best so seems to me that these are not surprising guys i mean the biggest surprise of all of this was that they were trying to overturn the election even way before it actually, even the votes were counted.

Right. I mean, that seems like the most important data point. I totally agree. And I think that, you know, it was interesting that they were, as you alluded to, they were trying to get votes in states that were not, you know, the states hadn't even been called yet. And they were already trying to get to throw a monkey wrench into the whole thing and declare the voting invalid.

Early on, people were saying this is a coup, this is a coup, and a lot of other people were saying, no, no, it's not a coup, calm down, you're out of control. The fact is, every single day now, we are learning more and more about how this was a coup. You know, you can call it other than the capital stuff, you can call it a bloodless coup. That's fine. These were people who were legitimately trying to find any way they could to overturn a free and fair election by pretending it wasn't free and fair. I'm not sure what you need to define this as a coup. They were trying to overturn an election and keep their guy installed in power. They were trying

an aggressive strategy, all caps. Right. An aggressive strategy. The states of Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and other art-controlled state houses declare this is BS. I mean, yes. No, they clearly were working on a coup and I don't know how much more coup proof you can get. There were maybe a couple of things that saved the country. One, I mentioned, I don't know, last week or whatever. Mike Pence, actually, for once in his life, coming through and doing the right thing. Spurred on by one Dan Quayle. But the other is just how nakedly stupid the people trying to do the coup were.

There's a little thing in this New York Times article about Dr. Gosar's chief of staff rushing to an airport hangar in Phoenix because they had gotten a hot tip, i.e. they had read a conspiracy theory, that a jet was it going to land there that was carrying ballots from South Korea in order to steal the election. And I love how the Times puts it. The claim turned out to be baseless. Really? You think? This is how stupid these people are. And like it's like we need to make fun of them for being stupid, but also we need to count our blessings that they're this stupid. And because otherwise, who knows where we'd be right now?

Well, I think it's interesting. Remember, the cyber ninjas where they did look for bamboo, which was part of this insane conspiracy theory. And the cyber ninjas decided that actually Arizona, that Biden had won. Right? So the cyber ninjas, the sketchiest organization that ever, you know, that anyone had ever put in to do an audit actually found that Biden won. That is all. And again, it's like just, just thank the Lord for the stupidity of these Republicans.

If you had put equally insane people who were actually intelligent in these same positions, we might be in some serious trouble right now. Not that we're not, but we might be in even more serious trouble right now. Right. You know the sitcom I really want to see? Remember when the cyber ninjas got COVID right before they released their report? I can't prove that this is true, but I'm, Occam's razor tells me that that was them panicking and be like, okay, we need to buy some more time and figure out how Joe Biden installed us. We'll say we got COVID. We've already exhausted the bamboo option.

What else we got, fellas? What else we got? This is where, you know, you start being like, well, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but. Right, exactly. It just seems like that would be the reality. Yeah. See, I think one of the funniest things, though, is since we had all these leaked Fox News anchor texts that were showing a lot of concerned while they were not being concerned on air has been going

down, what have you guys been seeing with the drama there? I don't know if you saw that video of Hannity and Lauren. Hannity's like, I'd like to read Liz Cheney's text messages. Remember, it took them 24 hours to respond to their text messages being leaked. And a lot of people, including Brian Seltar, thought they just wouldn't because, you know, if something doesn't happen on Fox News, it's like it didn't happen to a lot of their audience. But they did decide 24 hours to address it. And Hannity goes, I'd like to read Liz Cheney's text messages. And Laura Ingram says, I don't want to read her text messages because she's so boring.

Oh, burn. I was like, boring. Isn't boring the point of this whole fucking thing? Don't we want boring members of Congress? that's some kind of sick burn. Right. Like, no, I would much rather have my member of Congress wanting to over to the government. Yeah, that's what I want to see in Texas. As you pointed out, they waited 24 hours. Basically, it was the next night before responding, even though I think it was Hannity had Mark Meadows on, like the night that this actually happened and they just somehow

forgot to talk about it. I guess, you know, oh, I'm being told we're out of time. You know, one of those things that's always, you know, fun to do when you're on air. And then, you know, they got their ducks in a row and they figured out that the whole story was that there was no story and which is the classic Fox News move. And, you know, what they did also, they let, I noticed for like in that 24 hours, this all got seated by the usual suspects like the federalists, Molly Hemingway, Ben Shapiro, and all the usual people saying, you know, let me get this straight. Is this story? that the Fox news hosts were concerned about the riot. You know, now we're trying to pretend that's a bad thing.

It's like, no, that's not the story. The story is they were concerned about the riot slash insurrection until they got on air and then decided it was Antifa and or a vacation trip for the protesters. That's the story. But they got their ducks in a row, and they were, of course, as always, alien abetted by these other, you know, conservative media hacks like Molly Hemingway.

Ben Shapiro and all the other federalist people, I imagine, even though they all have me blocked on Twitter, so I can't read their tweets. It's amazing to me, this, like, conservative media complex and how tight their messaging apparatus really is. It's a work of art is what it is. And it's something that, you know, the left just doesn't have. One of the funniest things is, and I can't remember,

I think it might have been Molly Hemingway, but someone else is what they do is, and people said this about Trump all the time, is what they do is they accuse other people of doing exactly what they're doing. And so in this case, it was, you know, these text messages, you know, it was sort of a conspiracy between Liz Cheney and the Democrats and the liberal media to push this story. And, you know, that there was a not just a conspiracy, but that they all got together to decide to push this story, is, you know, obviously not true, but it is exactly what conservative media does.

They all pick, and I'm not saying they all sit in a room together and do this, but they all end up picking the same exact, you know, storyline and pushing it. And, you know, one week it's critical race theory is going to destroy America. The next week, it's the, you know, migrant, the immigrant caravans or the migrant caravans are coming to destroy America. The next week, it's MS-13 is destroying America. And they all hype the same thing for the same period of time. And it works for them. And it's something that the left will never be able to do that because the left just doesn't think like that. And what's going on in one area of the left, another area of the left couldn't care less about. And they've got their own certain thing.

But it's just, you're right, though. It is amazing. You know, if not outright coordination, it just the message discipline is unbelievable. Yeah. No, it's true. And I also think it's kind of interesting to see where, like, a story will start on the federalist. It will go to right-wing radio. It will end on Sean Hannity. Even more clear than that, which also happens, that you'll see these conservative news sites like the Free Beacon, Free Beacon, R&C research account, Far Right Radio, Fox News. Yeah, I mean, that's just, that's just how it works. Look, I remember when I, when I worked at Fox, you know, I used to pitch, I would pitch stories. Again, I have to point out, I was on like a news comedy show at 3 a.m. So things were a little different for us. But like I would be sitting there all the, I'd be, you know, for story pitch meetings, I would find stories from like, you know, sites that were not common at Fox News. Like I would look at Jezebel and other places like that to find interesting stories. But then what I would do is find the story from somewhere else. and pitch it with that link because I know it wasn't going to go anywhere if I pitched it from from Jezabel but in general what you did was you looked at you know you looked at drudge you looked at the federalist you looked at the free beacon you looked at you looked at the main

conservative websites and that's where you that's where you did your story pitching from and that was us on a 3 a.m. news comedy show but imagine what that's like you know for the actual you know afternoon morning afternoon and evening shows because that's like you said, that's that that's the ecosystem. That's how it works. It goes, it metastasizes from, you know, from one thing to another. It's a cancer is what it is. And it just, and it spreads. Yeah. I mean, I think that's right. And I also think that it's interesting to see that this all happened. They've really worked hard to like kill whatever little news division they had, right? Like they just, they had this very kind of venerable and

respected decision desk, it's gone. Right. Chris Seywalds, they're all gone. Chris Steywallis's guy. Brett Baer is, you know, Shep Smith really started the Exodus, I think. And then, you know, Brett Bear is basically the last man standing as far as actual news goes over there. And I mean, I honestly can't, you know, I don't watch cable news. So I haven't seen his show in years. But it at least used to be a good news show. I don't know what it is now. You're too young to watch cable news. If you look, I'm on TikTok all day. If you look at the same. By the way, I tried to do TikTok.

My kids had done and did an intervention and were like no TikTok for you. And like one of my kids was crying. They were like, please don't ruin this platform for us. Wait, you tried to post on TikTok? Well, no, I just was like, should I join TikTok? And they all like got hysterical. One of them was like, please don't ruin this for us and was like crying. They're absolutely correct.

But I try to like watch. You will destroy their lives if you do that, Molly. Even more than you probably already have, if we're being honest. Jesse sends me things to watch because he's my only friend. But I mean, I think it's also like there is a problem with cable news, which again, we've talked about ad nauseum, but this audience is getting older. Yeah, this audience is dying. I mean, no to put a fine point on it.

I mean, dying of COVID. Right. But also just of being like, you know, 95 years old. Yeah. So they, you know, I don't know that there's a way out for cable news. I just, I don't see really any way that younger generations, you know, like Gen Z in particular, is wholly uninterested in cable news to the extent that I can tell. And I'm pretty tuned into Gen Z stuff. So I think I think I'm right about this.

I always think of you as having your finger on also these things. I really do. I will because I'm on TikTok all day. Nice. So Ron DeSantis, show favorite, I think is finally put out the stupidest legislation I've ever seen. Like I didn't think we were going to top all the Sharia law shit, but that was my mistake. He's introduced the Stop Wokeness Act.

I kind of can't believe these are the same people who kept telling us that America's turning into 1984. And as usual, they haven't read the books that they talk about. And they're kind of not getting that. Telling on your neighbors all day is, 1984. I like any law where you can make a citizens arrest. Curtis Lewa is having his moment.

He doesn't even know it. Yeah, his mayoral candidate was just, it was like a decade too soon. That's right. Or he's just in the wrong state. He should move to Texas and he could probably get, you know, become the mayor of Houston or something. He could probably become the governor of Texas. Well, yeah, that's probably true, unless McConaughey stops them. Right. It's true.

These bills are just, I mean, this is obviously modeled after their heinous abortion law, which also calls for like basically citizens' arrests. And, you know, it's all modeled after the, if you see something, say something thing. And it just keeps taking it to further and further extremes. Beyond that, it's like my number one rule is a good way to tell when a conservative is full of shit is when they invoke Martin Luther King. And DeSantis did that in his speech announcing this dumb bill. But that, you know, that's, you know, red flag number one. Another good way to know when conservatives are full of shit is when they talk about critical race theory,

which they, A, don't understand and have no interest in understanding. And B, they basically use as a cover to object to anything that paints America as less than perfect. And it's, it's phony patriotism. I sort of figured out what it is. They're fanboys for America. And they are exactly like to our viewers who are listeners, rather, who are probably smarter than us and aren't online all day and aren't on Twitter all day. Smarter than you, man.

Don't bring me into this. No, I'm just kidding. Yeah, because you're not on Twitter all day. Certainly not. Oh, no. Couldn't be you as my Gen X friends say, what my Gen Z friends say. I want to meet all these young friends you say you have. No, I have nieces. It's basically what it is, so I keep in touch through them.

If you're online at all on day, especially if you're a part of anything that involves movies, which I am vaguely a part of this nebulous thing called film Twitter, you have what are known as there are these Marvel fanboys. And what these Marvel fan boys do is anytime someone gives the slightest criticism of a superhero movie or of a Marvel movie, they go absolutely insane. and they inundate that, you know, that person with, with obnoxious tweets and basically accuse them of being bought and paid for by either like Warner, because Warner owns DC Comics and makes the Superman Batman movies, you know, or whatever.

And this is exactly the same. But instead of accusing people of being paid by DC or Warner, they accuse them of being paid by Soros. And so it's like anytime anything like critical race theory comes around that might portray a as less than, you know, a utopia from day one, they get absolutely incensed because their version of patriotism cannot abide the idea that America is less than perfect, which is not patriotism at all, obviously. It's, I don't know if you can call it nationalism or call it whatever you want, but that's, it's not patriotism. But this is what they do. And this is, and this is what we're seeing here with, with all this critical race stuff. And then on top of that, as, as you pointed out,

it's not just that they want to ban critical race theory or what they perceive to be critical race theory. It's that they want this stuff to be reported by citizens. And it really is. It's, you know, if you brought up 1984 or it's just, it's like, you know, any of those dystopian sci-fi movies you see where there's always announcements, citizen, you know, be a good citizen. Let us know if your neighbor is, you know, thinking something ungood. It really is amazing. And it's all predicated on the so far success of the, of the hideous abortion law, which, you know, the Supreme Court, for God knows what reasons decided to let stand, at least for now, where again, the premise of the abortion law is that people should report doctors who were performing abortions,

etc. Which is just, I mean, you want to talk about un-American? My God. Well, it's an interesting law, too, because it was crafted to get around laws, right? It was crafted so that judges couldn't strike it down. It was written with all of these different sort of you can sue the Uber driver, you can sue the doctor, you don't have to be involved in the abortion. It's also a crazy law that completely fucks over ultimately the Supreme Court. So they were voting. They're basically by letting this law stand, they're saying, you can do whatever you want. If we like it, Texas, like, you can do whatever you want. So that's why what Gavin Newsom did is so kind of amazing, is because he's saying, okay, we'll just do whatever the how we want and we'll ban ghost guns. Now, I think that every person in America knows that when this case comes up to the Supreme Court, they will absolutely not let it stand because they are, I mean, the thing that this case really did was show that they're partisan hacks and that they don't really care about even. I mean, Roberts's whole life, the Chief Justice Roberts's whole life was about trying to make the court still appear like it wasn't partisan. And now that mask is off, right? They don't care. Amy Comey, you know, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh. I mean, don't even get me started on Thomas. These guys don't give a fuck. So I think we're going to see a really partisan Supreme Court that has. full control. And, you know, I don't know where that goes in the long run. What news is doing is saying basically he's talking about these ghost guns, which are guns that don't have serial numbers on them. And he's basically giving people the, assuming I understand it correctly, he's basically doing what DeSantis is doing in Texas, but saying, you know,

oh, if you know someone that has a ghost gun or something like that, you can sue them or whatever. And so it's not the state acting. It's, it's a citizen. acting, right? Do I have that right? It's actually just that they could sue the manufacturer, so it's a little bit different. But the point is, it's not the state doing the suing. It's an individual citizen. And that's the similarity to the Texas thing, right? Correct. Yeah. So what Newsom is doing here is he's trolling. And I'm usually completely opposed to trolling, particularly when it's, you know, elected officials. In this case, I really don't see any other choice, you know, that's the point we're at. But the problem is, and Molly, you know, you said this. Yes, he's trolling

Rhonda Santas, yeah, and great, you know, I have no problem with that. But ultimately, he's trolling the Supreme Court. As you said, it's going to be really easy for the conservatives on the court to just, all they'll do is say, well, guns are different than abortion because the right to bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution, but abortion isn't. So we'll let the Texas law stand. But the California law, oh, no, we can't have that. And you're right, it exposes, you know, some level of partisan hackery. But also, as, as you said, we already know that. So I don't. I'm not sure ultimately what this accomplishes other than being like a troll and like a message to DeSantis and other state governors who want to try this kind of thing that like, you know, you're going to reap what you sow. I think it's good that Newsom does this because they're already hugely hypocritical and we know this. But if they're going to make laws and they're going to say states can make their own laws, make them show us all how partisan they are. Yeah. And again, and I agree, except I do think they have a pretty easy out here for people who are looking for an easy out by simply saying that, you know, well, this is a violation of the Second Amendment and what Texas did does not violate any amendment, you know, or the Constitution at all. So I think they, they have, you know, they have that out. And I think, which I think is, you know, unfortunate if the point is to expose their hypocrisy because the fact is a lot of people will buy that out and say, well, you know what, they're right. Second Amendment says this right here, but the word abortion does not appear in the Constitution anyway. So that said, I still agree with you. I don't have a problem with Newsom doing this.

And I think his point is an absolutely valid one. Right. You know, it's just, it sucks that it's come to this where you have to cheer one state doing something that is icky because another state did something that is icky. And it would, you know, I would, I'm not pro-icky and I never have been. except for the icky shuffle back in the days with the Cincinnati Bengals. Yeah, I mean, I think the fundamental problem here is that this is the highest court in the country. It is now completely partisan. We cannot trust any of its decisions. And, you know, sure, they may say stuff that's like slightly more liberal and we can celebrate that.

but ultimately we can't trust that. So I don't know how, you know, you go on without increasing the court. And, Molly, I think the thing is, is that what Newsom is doing is what the Democrats in general refuse to do, which is understand that the rulebook is out the fucking window. And the Republicans threw it there. And you've got a lot of Democrats running around saying, well, you know, we can't do this because it's wrong. as the Republicans are doing that wrong thing every day, which is just going to increase Republican power

and further, you know, diminished Democratic power. And Newsom is really one of the few who is actually saying, you know what? If you assholes are going to throw the rulebook out the window, I'm then fine. The rulebook is out the window. And I'm going to do exactly what you do. And there's a lot of people, you know, on the left who would like the Democrats to show that kind of spirit and show that kind of fight instead of hiding behind, you know, we're not hiding behind, but instead of being too wrapped up and like, well, that violates the Senate rules. And we can't violate the Senate rules that have been in place for, you know, 12 years or something like that.

And there's a lot of people on the left who are fed up with that. And I'm one of them. And so at least what Newsom is doing here is saying, okay, you guys want to say fuck the rules, then fuck the rules. Then we're going to fuck the rules too. And I'm not a huge Gavin Newsom fan, but I give him credit for that. 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 Soladad 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. That's new abnormal.com. Kurt Anderson is the former host of Studio 360 and the author of Evil Geniuses and Fantasyland. Welcome back to the you abnormal, Kurt Anderson. Well, as you know, I come calling like you're my dominatrix anytime you command it.

Well, you also owe me because you stood me up this week. More importantly. You know, yes. Yes. If we're going to discuss this, I was instantly and totally mortified. That's right. That is true. Yes, indeed.

I blanked you from my consciousness briefly. It's all right. And I had a very good time eating pretzables on. No, no fat. Cheez-its as well? Yeah, I didn't have the cheeses. I am like one of the few people where if you cancel at me, I love it. I know what you mean. Because, yeah, I can use the break. Well, and there is the, there is the favor bank deposit. You know, it's usually not cashed this quickly, but I always like that. I like that. It's true. It's been very, it's been very

cashed today. So it turns out that you were right about everything. What do you mean? You mean my book, Fantasy Lane, which came out? was right about everything. Which, yeah, well, you know, it was, alas, more prescient about the trajectory of America and its post-fact, alternative facts, deep history than I imagined. Yeah, I mean, you know, I started writing it, you know, when it seemed like a kind of weird, eccentric idea, you know, in 2014, like, oh, this history of how America has always had a weakness for exciting falsehoods and conspiracy theories and so on and so forth, partly.

out of our peculiar religious heritage. But I thought, okay, this is true. This is, you know, an idea I have, and I'll write it's deep-longed history. And then Donald Trump, as I was finishing the book, started winning, you know, primaries. And I turned it in before he even won the nomination, and here we are.

Yeah, I have, alas, been proven correct in, oh, this analysis of this really deep-seated American weakness. that was always kept in check for hundreds of years until, at least as I tell it in the book, you know, the last 50 years, it stopped being kept in check by, for various reasons. And, you know, as I've said before, it turned from a chronic condition that was okay and had its actual good sides for many years, many centuries, to this acute, perhaps fatal condition the last few years. And here we are. Yeah, I'll say it happened pretty quickly in a way.

I mean, I often think about this idea of the Hofstetter, stuff. Yes, yes, the paranoid style. Right. He and his contemporary Daniel Borstein, another great historian of 50s and early 60s, had it so right, what we're going through now, both in that book and in Borstein's various books. Absolutely. And, you know, we had the John Birch Society, and we had this long period of anti-communism as our central unifying idea. You don't have to tell me about that anti-combatism. I don't have to tell you. But then, on the other hand, As you know, there were real communists like your grandfather. So it wasn't entirely fanciful and fantastical as what we are seeing now is.

And it wasn't entirely – this is different because it's both entirely fantastical, I mean, QAnon and the big lie and all the rest, but also so completely cynical. I mean, Joseph McCarthy was, God knows, a cynic of the, you know, very much Trumpian kind. But there were plenty of earnest anti-communist back in the 50s. This is nuts. And so, and yeah, it's ugly. And the thing about Trump and this and this and what we are experiencing now, Trumpism, my goodness, is, especially with Donald Trump. It's always like, okay, what, how much of it is just him being a liar and a con man? How much of it is him being stupid? And how much of it is him being kind of a, you know, mentally disordered true believer? And it's often a mix. And it's off, it's hard to parse. And I thought of that again, just in the last few days with Mark Meadows and seeing that it's unclear. What combination, even in a guy like that, who's, you know, a normal congressman kind of guy. But when you read that he actually, apparently, wasn't just obeying the master by bringing him nutty conspiracy theories last December and January. According to the reporting, kind of sort of maybe believed in Italy Gate and Chavez Gate and all the rest. So it's this combination of, and as I talk about in Finland, it's not just nuts.

And it's not just liars and charlatans. It's often a combination of those. And in this case, a combination with a lot of just general ignorance of how elections work or the world works. Which, again, enables people to believe in preposterous conspiracy theories. Right. It's also the paranoid style, right? Yes. And believing in conspiracies in the paranoid style way, which, by the way, a certain kind of Protestant fundamentalism has a natural affinity.

for. Because look at, look at revelations, right? I mean, look at, you know, I mean, the New Testament is a lot about a big conspiracy, all kinds of conspiracies and, you know, fantastical beliefs and plans that are going to, you know, work out over time in these amazing ways. Well, I think that's part of why there is this particular paranoid style and weakness for fantasy in America. I mean, I think, you know, the fact of this large majority of Americans who have been and are Protestants and a significant part of that majority who are, have become in the last half century, believers of various extreme things that, you know, Episcopalians and congregationalists back in my day didn't believe. It is this idea of grievance, right? Which is something that we did see

with Nixon. Totally. I mean, Nixon, I mean, and I, as you know, and we spoke about, about it. I did this podcast history of Nixon and the Vietnam War and how he used so skillfully back then, 50 odd years ago, the grievance of the white middle class, white working class against these hippies and these professors and these liberals. He invented that, really, you know, as a presidential set of tools back in 1969 and 70 while he was president. Those are the chickens that have now come home to Roost. And also, by the way, yes, there was this cultural grievance, but now we have, as we've had for the last 20, 30 years, to whatever degree it has had an effect, various economic grievance, if you will, people who've been left behind, people have,

we can argue all day long about, oh, is it more racism or is it economic anxiety? It doesn't matter. It's all of those things, and there's just a lot more grievance, unhappiness to play into, given, you know, the inequality that's gone on, that's gotten out of control the last few decades. and, you know, if you want to blame somebody for that, other than the billionaires and CEOs who are significantly responsible. But really tell us what you really think. Wow, there you go. I saw that the mayor of Anchorage shut off the fluoride supply and the water the other week.

And I think about the John Birch Society. And I'm like, I cannot believe we're still fucking doing this. But I then think of your book Evil Geniuses, where you kind of get into a little bit of the brains behind the operation. Do you see anything today, like where you really think who the brains are of what's going on? Well, it's a good question, you know, and I ended evil geniuses wondering about to what degree the evil geniuses, the Mitch McConnell's, the Charles Cox, the people who are not crazy or demented, just evil. Right.

Who have run and do run the Republican Party, you know, the donor class, the Republican Party. how uncomfortable or not they are with the lunatics whom they've, you know, permitted, whatever, I don't know if that's the right word, who have taken over their party in the last 10 or 20 years. And I think they just assumed that they didn't need those lunatics to get what they want, which is to say no regulation and no lowest possible taxes. I think they have been less in charge than ever for the last whatever, most of the last decade. And one of the reasons everything seems so uncertain and crazed is that those grownups, those evil genius grownups, aren't entirely in control, right? And I think the Taylor Greens and Gohmerts and all those guys of the world are their people.

And so, like, you know, those lunatics, if they don't run the asylum, they co-run it with the McConnell's and the Cokes. That's sounding right to me. I wonder, though, if it really is the thing that we're on. than the avalanche of the base driving those people more than they drive the base. Yes, I think that we're, and that's the bubble we've been on for a while. And that's why, you know, you wonder, once they try to, once they say, okay, we're the working class party and occasionally have a Josh Hawley saying, yeah, and we're going to break up the big tech, or we're going to give you a thousand dollars,

or these little gestures toward actual economic populism that one or two guys on Republicans, make, I think it's going to be hard to maintain. Once the base, once the, and, you know, once the, once the the anti-vaccine, conspiracist, QAnon, you know, base of the party really does take over. They're not going to be people, I don't think, who say, oh, yeah, let's make sure we don't overregulate big corporations. Let's make sure we don't apply tough antitrust to Facebook. You know, I, so yeah, I mean, yeah, sure. I'm sure the Republicans, the grownups in charge or the Republican Party are looking. In horror. In horror of those.

And yet, very happy that they think they're going to win, you know, the House and Set it back in a year. I think they live in a perpetual state of nervousness and or they just decided, nah, it's probably going to, you know, tip over into some kind of undemocratic, authoritarian thing and it'll be shitty. It's too bad. But, you know, we'll still have, make sure we can have our low taxes and no regulation. But, you know, we'll see.

We'll see how whatever version of Civil War that does or doesn't come along suits the owners of bonds and suits the, you know, Elon Musk's of the world and their $200, $300 trillion. It won't work out well, I don't think, for the rich, because, you know, at a certain point, when the pitchforks and nooses and torches come out, it can get pretty indiscriminate about who suffers in those moments. Well, it's the thing you and I keep talking about, Molly, is that it just seems so weird that the corporate donors are not saying, you know, y'all, maybe we've had enough of this. And I'm just, I'm just everyday shock that they don't see this as bad for business. No, totally. And, of course, you know, I mean, as many people have said, and it's true. Look back at Teddy Roosevelt. Look back at Franklin Roosevelt.

They were trying to save capitalism and your golden goose, dudes, so it could keep on going. and you could keep on being rich, and the whole thing would work in a virtuous cycle. I wonder the same thing. And at what point, as you guys were suggesting earlier, does it get so out of control with the fantasy land base that they have no more control over it? And they are barely in control. It's pretty close. They're barely in control now. Yeah, yeah.

I mean, they have control in Washington, D.C. They have control in the Congress, but beyond? I don't know. Right. I mean, it's funny because I always think about how we always thought that small dollar donation would democratize democracy. Right. And it turns out that the craziest people in the Republican Party

are doing it to get small dollar donation. Small D democracy is great until the insane people are running one of the major parties. And they aren't totally and quite, but they are. And again, it's the choice. Hmm, do you want Charles Coke running things or do you want Matt Gates running things? That's one of those horrible choices one never wants to make,

you know, Lady and the Tiger or whatever. It's also not a real choice, right? I mean, the people will choose what they want, and Charles Koch won't be able to stop it, especially because one of them is already dead. No, exactly, exactly. And what is the thing? I mean, we've yet to see it that breaks the fever as the phrase goes or, you know, pushes the reset button, and people go, oh, okay, we've gone too far.

I don't know. I don't know because it hasn't happened yet, at least in the institution of the Republican Party. Yeah, I mean, it seems like we're heading somewhere bad. It does seem that way, but, you know, until we've lost all hope, I retain hope, you know. Until I'm in the camp, I still retain. All right. Well, that makes me feel much better. Good.

We can be bunkmates. Do you feel like there's a world in which there is a separation? That's a longer whole conversation. I mean, yeah, I can. I mean, I wouldn't bet on it, nor would I bet on a civil war. of the kind we had 160 years ago, but insurrection of various kinds with guns and violence and that leads to some kind of separation,

some secession breakup, I can imagine that, and the more peaceful, the better, as far as I'm concerned. So, yeah, I can't. And I'm not sure, depending on how peaceful it might be, that that would be as tragic and sad and, you know, only a few years ago,

unimaginable as that would be, might not be the worst outcome. Yeah, there are certainly worse outcomes. Kurt Anderson, thank you so much for joining us. Please come back soon. Always a pleasure. Susan Glasser is a writer at the New Yorker, as well as a CNN Global Affairs analyst,

and co-author of The Man Who Ran Washington, The Life in Times of Jim Baker. Who said, I mean, there did start to be a real fever pitch of people who were saying that they had to get on the voting. Okay, but what does that mean? I mean, I guess that's my question for you is like, this has been a year with a lot of sort of progressive chess thumping saying, like, we've got to prove, you know, sort of how much the Biden administration is on our side. But they still don't seem to have grappled with the reality of the 50-50 Senate or of the political headwinds that they're heading into in the next midterm election year. Right. No, that is certainly true. And I do think it's hard to see. how, I mean, we keep coming, that we're seeing these Democrats keep coming up against

these two senators. Like, you can't, you can't, you're never going to get 60 senators to pass any of this. No, no, that's right. Not only are you not going to get that, but, you know, there just, there seems to be sort of this kind of wave after wave of a certain amount of denialism that's been going on. The Democratic version, obviously, is not the same as the, you know, toxic election denialism and COVID denialism and vaccine denialism that we've seen, you know, from Republicans over the course of these last few unbelievable years. But, you know, I'm very sympathetic to it that this

human desire to return to some normalcy or some idea of some status quo ante that's just going to like kick back in because Joe Biden is president. And I feel like at the end of this year, it would be good for people to sort of take a breath and step back and say, well, okay, well, that's not happening. And where are we now a very different place than people might have thought that they would be a year into the Biden presidency and Trump being out of office? You have lived in different places. You've lived in Russia. You've covered different political worlds. Did you ever think we would be here? Well, I have to say, Molly, I've just been thinking a lot about this. Try to conjure up, forget about like five years ago when the answer obviously is no, it was unthinkable that the United States would be in the kind of running

Democratic small-de crisis that we're in. But even a year ago, on January 7th, did your January 7th self would have thought that the Republican Party, rather than doubling down on Trump and Trumpism, you know, might finally be making a break with a president who brought the party to such a catastrophic place of contesting the election results even to the point of attacking the capital, you know, and that hasn't happened. And so, you know, I've experienced the last few years of this sort of democratic crisis in the United States as a sort of a rolling series of the unthinkable, not only becoming possible, but happening. Yesterday, I sat on my house in northwest Washington, D.C., and I listened to the bells of the National Cathedral toll for nearly an hour,

because of 800,000 dead Americans in COVID and huge swaths of the country continue to pretend as if it isn't even happening. And 100,000 of those deaths just occurred in the last 12 weeks. Yeah, I mean, I just don't know how we go from here. Part of it is that we are not moving on or just in the mode of assessing something that's happened. We're still in the middle of the crisis. And, of course, that always makes it very hard not only to move on, but even to understand exactly. what is the nature of the problem that you're dealing with. And so I think that remains a big part of the struggle. The 800,000 death number, it's a profound number. And the other statistic is one in 100 people over 65 have died of COVID.

Yeah, no, it's just, it's a monumental scale. It's at this point, well more than all of the wars that Americans fought in the 20th century. Yeah. More deaths. And not only does it continue. continue, but we're actually poised at this moment of great uncertainty where we're bracing for whatever this next Omcron wave is going to be. And, you know, I feel like, you know, you're sort of in that point in the horror movie, you know, or before the storm hits where you're just sort of sitting there knowing that this storm is going to hit and how bad it's going to be and how much denial people are in. Still. I mean, that's the thing that strikes me is that people are still in such denial. Yeah, I mean, if anything, it may actually be increasing rather than decreasing as their

sort of capacity to sort of readjust their lives and to process, it becomes less and less. And, you know, I just speaking with a family friend the other day, an emergency room doctor, pointing out how very real the nursing crisis is in this country, which of course is going to be something that we're all unfortunately going to be hearing an awful lot more about in a fourth wave. You know, I think something like 15 percent of the, nurses in this country have quit their jobs. And, you know, that's a crisis in basically every hospital in the country. And we're not prepared for another deadly massive wave. The thing I'm also struck by is we have a labor shortage, but nobody's talking about immigration. Yeah, I know.

Well, and by the way, that was always the madness of Trump's sort of nativist anti-immigration platform and pivot of the Republican Party to embrace that even more at a time when demographics alone suggested that being anti-immigration really wouldn't make very much sense in the longer, even the medium term for Americans, given our needs as a country in terms of a workforce over time. And we're an aging population. We need the immigrants coming here. Yeah. I mean, I just am completely overwhelmed by how strange it is. Do you see anything hopeful as we head towards this new year? Well, it's always, you know, there's always a burst. of hopefulness at the beginning of a new year, by the way, that's a well-known Wall Street phenomenon.

True. People somehow get a dose of optimism as soon as the ball drops. So inherently, there's that look. Amazing news, potentially knocking wood here the other day on the COVID pill. Science has just delivered again and again. It's humans who feel in many ways. Human behavior, but no, I mean, the vaccines are a miracle. The good news that they're saying we don't.

don't need another vaccine specifically targeted at this new variant. And then following that up with what appears to be extremely effective potential pill being close to being approved to treat COVID symptoms. This is unmitigated good news. That's right. And we should be happy. And we've survived another year of pandemic, right? Well, it's not over yet. I'm knocking what on that one too, Molly. What did you think about that committee meeting on Monday night? Look, The spectacle of the January 6th investigation, it strikes me, is extremely important. First of all, we don't know what we don't know. We're a year almost away from this really historic attack on the Capitol in the effort to stop the Electoral College from being certified.

And the role of the President of the United States, former President of the United States and his chief of staff and top advisors, has not been documented. And so this represents, I think, our best shot yet at understanding more fully. the role in culpability of the leaders. One thing that really, I think, should concern every American is the idea that we've arrested and the Justice Department is prosecuting more than 500 individuals who stormed into the Capitol and not a single person who told them to go there. You know, that's a classic example of, I think, an unjust outcome. This is not a prosecution on the part of the January 6th Select Committee, but, you know, at least it's a form of accountability that seems extremely urgent and necessary.

They seem to be taking the job very seriously. They've interviewed more than 300 witnesses. Liz Cheney continues to sort of astonish in her willingness to, you know, having broken with the leadership of her party in the house that has, you know, remained this sort of Trumpist cult of personality type leadership. She's just, you know, doubles down on it and doubles down on it. And, you know, has become probably the most effective public scourge of Donald Trump and his. circle when it comes to being determined to unearth their role in that catastrophe. Yeah, I think that's right. And she is a powerful force, you know, I hope it works.

I can't believe they have, you know, that they're letting Louis Gomer. I mean, Louis Gomer is a member of Congress and is running for AG and he's involved in all of this. And he's also just an abject moron. The thing is, though, Molly, there were always, you know, crazy fringe lunatic. type members of Congress, as long as we found Congress. You know, when I was a young reporter on Capitol Hill, there was Jim Trafficant, you know, this sort of ranting and raving former sheriff from Ohio who had been prosecuted for tax fraud and he was like sort of doing aeague famous for

ranting. The difference, as someone put it to me recently, is just that these people now represent something closer to the mainstream of the House Republican Conference than Liz Cheney and Adam Kinsinger are two extremely conservative members. And that tells you something. It's not that there are the individual kind of wacko members of Congress, which we've always had in our history, is that they now seem to be basically in charge of the House Republican caucus. Right. Exactly. Thank you so much, Susan Glasser. This was great. Great to talk with you, Molly. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizagate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next.

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With a hard J. With a hard J. It is our segment and it's called Fuck That Guy. Who is your Fuck That Guy? My Fuck That Guy is Fox News personality, Dan Bongino, who was on humanity the other night along with Geraldo Rivera. when Geraldo had the temerity to talk about what happened on January 6th in regard to, you know, Sean Hadadie's texts and all of that stuff. Dan Bongino reacted by going after Geraldo for what he said was backstabbing Trump.

He said the backstabbing that you're engaging in against the president is really disgusting and it's really vile. Now, that's fine if you have that idiotic opinion. You're just stupid, which I didn't. Dan Buncino is. He's just objectively stupid. We all know that. I think when he looks in the mirror, he knows that. But to be on a news channel and to be an employee of a news channel and to yell at someone for backstabbing the president is like literally the most anti-journalistic thing you could say in your life as a professional broadcaster as a quote-unquote journalist and someone employed by a news organization. He's so dumb and he just doesn't even understand that what he's saying because have I mentioned that he's dumb?

Because he's real dumb. So anyway, that that's my fuck that guy. He's run for Congress like 500 times. All successfully. Yes, exactly. And that is why he is the Speaker of the House today. Yes. Just like his lawsuits against the Daily Bees, very successful.

He's America's, he's the longest serving candidate in the history of. of Congress. It's true. It is kind of amazing that he couldn't get elected, but I guess. I know. It might be because he's dumb. I don't know if I mentioned that he's dumb. Yeah. And meanwhile, people like Louis Gomer and Marjorie Taylor Green are running think tank. It's true. My fuck that guy today is Exxon. You may remember Exxon as the company that ensured us that global warming wasn't real. They had no ties to it. Okay, it's 67 degrees in New York City today. So I'm going to go with there have been tornadoes throughout states that have never had tornadoes in December.

I'm going to go with climate change is real. You know, we'll see if I get to like wear my coat this winter. One can only imagine what's happening with the ice caps. We're so fucked. Climate change is real. Thanks, Exxon. That was great. Good job, guys.

Well, at least they never spilled a whole bunch of oil. Yeah. At least they didn't spill a whole bunch of oil this year in Southern California. I mean, they've really got it down there between the oil spills. Yeah. I mean, they really fucking sucks. But you know what? I do really enjoy their ads where they pretend that, in fact, they are doing things to clean the environment by just not.

So, yeah, those fuckers, they could be fucked. They're my fuck that guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, forever and ever. Yeah. They're spilling a lot of ink on newsletters that then suck up to them. Yes, if your newsletter is sponsored by Exxon. Right. They go into the Fuck That Guy Hall of Fame,

which means they're no longer eligible for the weekly Fuck That Guy. 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 will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens?

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