The Daily Beast Podcast - Getting a Presidential Pet Is a Great Distraction From Scandal

Episode Date: March 23, 2021

When we think of presidential pets, we think of their cute moments and endless photo-ops on the White House lawn—but the reality is you sometimes need to acquire a pet to distract from a scandal.  So it was in the 1990s, CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Mo Rocca explains on the latest episode of The New Abnormal, when the Clintons adopted Buddy the dog.  “The Clintons had Socks,” Rocca tells co-host Molly Jong-Fast. “And then in the depths of the Lewinsky affair, when Clinton was in real turmoil, Dick Morris advised him to get a dog. This is totally true. And because dogs were more popular, they got a chocolate lab, Buddy. Labrador retrievers were at that point the No. 1 breed in America for 17 years running. And so the cat was given, I believe, to [Clinton personal secretary] Betty Currie. I mean the cat, it was like, ‘Exit, stage right.’” Rocca also explains why he enjoys writing his popular podcast Mobituaries: “In general, I deal with dead people because they don’t have publicists, so they’re a lot easier to deal with.”  Molly and co-host Jesse Cannon are then joined by civil rights activist and host of Pod Save the People DeRay Mckesson, who tells them that police violence is actually getting worse, not better, despite increased public scrutiny.  “Police actually killed more people in suburban communities in almost all our communities combined,” Mckesson says, adding that the public perception of what is happening in legislative changes to policing is not reflected in the actual practices of policing. “New York City has never banned strangleholds. So when [Eric] Garner gets killed, the police immediately say, ‘We didn’t choke him.’ They’re like, ‘We strangled him.’ But that’s essentially their argument right there: ‘We did not use the “banned” technique.’”  The conversation then turns to school reopenings amid the pandemic, with Molly and Jesse joined by Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, who is none too happy about New York City mayoral frontrunner Andrew Yang leading educational policy.  “I think that people are very, very intrigued by the universal basic income proposal that he’s made,” Weingarten says. “...And what Yang is raising by basically undermining the public schools at the same time as he has lifted up privatization charters and yeshivas is actually walking away from the common good and the public good of what a city needs to run.” And then for the people’s favorite New Abnormal segment, “Fuck That Guy,” Molly aims her ire at New York Times best-selling author turned aspiring Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance, who is trying to up his chances of getting that seat by firing off tweets flirting with white nationalist tropes. 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 Rick & Molly 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 a show that I learned a ton from it, and my mind-blown a few times. We're going to talk to civil rights activist to Ray McKesson about police reform, and then we talk to the president of the American Federation of the Teachers, Randy Weingarten, and she's going to talk all about the growing union movement in America, as well as schools reopening. But first, we have Mo Rocca, who's a correspondent for CBS Sunday morning and the host of My Grandmother's Ravioli.

If that wasn't enough, he also hosts the Henry Ford's Innovation Nation on CBS. Welcome, Mo. I'm so happy to be talking to you because, you know, we met on Twitter. That's right. And it was like a tweet cute, right? And I didn't, I had never heard you speak before,

so I'm listening to you now. And I'm thinking, is this what I imagined you'd sound like? I sound terrible. No, I like it. I want to hear you sing totally eclipse of the heart now. No, you don't. Talk to me about presidential pets. Oh, there have been a lot of different pets in the White House.

Before World War II, the pets were a lot more exotic. Yes. President Martin Van Buren had tiger cubs from the Sultan of Amman. That's pretty cool. And I've always thought of Martin Van Buren as kind of, he's very, very flamboyant. So he is sort of Sinkfrieden Royish. So it totally makes sense. He would have had that. He has this beautiful house up in old kinderhook, New York, which everybody thinks is the origin of the term, okay, that's not true. But he has this beautiful estate called Lindenwald. It's like this Italian villa. And in it, there's a sink made of Chinese marble. And it was the first home in the town to have plumbing. So it totally makes sense that he would have tiger cups from the Sultan of Oman.

because everything, he was all about finery and just like way over the top. Did the tiger cubs grow up and stay in the White House or did they go to a zoo? You know, I wish they had because then there would have already been an amazing animated movie about it. Right. I'm not sure what he did. I think he just got tired of them once they started growing claws. But there have been, Woodrow Wilson had sheep. He had a ram called Old Ike.

And the sheep would be used to actually keep. the lawn at the White House. They basically, so that young men could be sent off to World War I, which I'm sure they really preferred. They basically had sheep that were keeping the lawn at the White House. But old I ate all these discarded cigarette butts and cigar butts and ended up developing a nicotine addiction and died at on a farm, probably a treatment center in rural Maryland. So that's kind of sad. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, stop. Did he really?

Yeah. Oh, yeah, this is all true. This is all true. And Teddy Roosevelt, who I think is probably our most exciting president. That's why anybody can write a book about Teddy Roosevelt and it will become a bestseller. It's kind of crazy. Like, there are so many books about him just because, you know, he was an asthmatic child who grew up to be our most sort of strenuous president or something. I actually think kind of sexy about Teddy Roosevelt, but that's a whole other issue.

And he had 36 pets and crazy. Like the kids, and he had really fun kids. They're the most fun kids. Like you, Molly, should aspire for your kids to be like Teddy Roosevelt's kids. Hopefully a couple of them won't die in battle. I have 26 pets, so I think we're going to be good. Well, what you really need is you need a one-legged rooster like TR's kids had. The co-op board.

is going to be really into a one-legged rooster? I think they probably will be. And also, well, is your building candy cap accessible? I mean, certainly for a one-legged rooster, I think we can make it work. Well, have your kids make a little crutch for him, because that's what TR's kids did. And I love that one-legged rooster

because I feel like it's sort of a stand-in, it's emblematic of TR, because I can just imagine that one-legged rooster just hopping up San Juan Hill, not letting anything stop him, even though it was actually Cattle Hill. I don't know why everyone thinks it's San Juan Hill. But after World War II, the pets get really boring.

Everybody just has dogs. I mean, doesn't JFK have a pony? Yeah, macaroni the pony. Caroline had macaroni the pony. T.R.'s kids had Algonquin the pony. And an elevator had just been put into the White House at that time. And one of the kids was sick on an upper floor. And one of the siblings put the pony into the elevator

so that he could go upstairs and surprise the boy that was sick in bed. But the pony got stuck in the elevator and hilarity. ensued. Oh, that is a great story. Those are great kids. Yeah, they're great kids. But yeah, Carolyn had, um, had macaroni. But macaroni didn't live in the White House. He lived in a fancy stable, right? Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure Jackie had used some, but probably in an Auchin-Claas stable somewhere. That's right. All comes back to Ockin-Claas. We actually had Jake Ockin-Claas on Friday's episode. So the circle of fancy... Are you serious?

Yes. Wow. Oh, my God. Did you bump a Van Rensselaer for me today? Always. And then Bill Clinton was the first one to have a cat. Well, no, he wasn't the first one. There have been cats in the White House. The Carter's had Mr. Malarkey Yang Yang, which Amy Carter loved. And actually, TR had a cat named Slippers, who was a really nasty cat. And once swiped the butt of the French ambassador, Jules Jusseran, and actually ripped a piece of his of his pants out.

Wow. But the Clintons had socks. And then in the depths of the Lewinsky affair, and when Clinton was in real turmoil, Dick Morris advised him to get a dog. This is totally true. And because dogs were more popular. And so they got a chocolate lab buddy.

Labrador retrievers at that point were the number one breed in America for 17 years running. And so the cat was given, I believe, to Betty Curry. I mean, the cat, it was like exit stage right for the cat because they needed that dog there. And the dog ended up in a lot of, you know, getting a lot of coverage. The dog eventually was run over by a 17-year-old young woman. Jesus. Obviously just gotten her driver's license in Chappaqua.

But they really should have put an electronic leash. Wait, the dog died? Yeah, a young woman, I don't want to give her name because I don't want to shame her here. She doesn't need to get retroactively canceled for killing the club. Clinton's dog. Yeah. No doxing dog killers on this podcast. That's right.

We're very classy that way. We'll do it when you leave. Yeah. So they... Yeah. And so, but the Clintons should have put an electronic leash on the dog. I'm just saying. That's right.

You'd think the family that had a heart attack gun. I'm just kidding. They didn't have a heart attack gun. So is Biden never going to get this cat? Yeah. Well, on CBS Sunday morning, we actually, we had a pet special and that was our big exclusive. They gave us the exclusive. I wanted to go and meet with the dogs.

And they were like, it's right now with COVID. It's just too complicated. And also because Major is like persona non grata. Exactly. Exactly. And I think Major, there are some behavioral issues. But indeed, a cat is supposed to be arriving on the scene, so we'll see. You read that quote from Biden, 85% of people love Major.

Right, that he has an 85% approval rating the dog, right? In the White House. Yeah, yeah. And the other 15% are just. getting band-aids. Just, yes. Exactly. They're all getting tetanus shots.

Go on. So the cat's coming, though. I think the cat is coming. You know, I deal more with dead presidents, honestly. So, I mean, in general, I deal with dead people because they don't have publicists, so they're a lot easier to deal with. And so, yeah, so I'm not really up with the current pet scene as much as I should be. Talk to us about dead people.

Well, there are a lot of them more every day. Who's the best one? There's such a competition for best dead person. Yeah. I mean, I'm a big fan of Sammy Davis Jr. I think that he just was just an extraordinary entertainer. Overcame so much and doesn't, you know, in Harry Belafonte, a lot of other people have said this about him, that Sammy doesn't get the credit also for, you know, his support of civil rights.

I mean, he was at the March on Washington. He was in Selma. And so people seemed to think that he was just hanging out with a rat pack, just kind of indulging them and entertaining for them. And that's not the case. I mean, he was like a fully fleshed out person. And just a crazy entertainer. What I love about him is that I feel like when people talk about entertainers now,

there's a little bit of a cheesy veneer to it now. People kind of laugh at it. But he was really a quadruple quintuple threat, but wasn't just, couldn't just do all these things. He was, you know, almost the best at each one of those things he did. Singing, dancing, playing musical instruments. He even had like a six-shooter routine, like a pistol routine. And his impressions were amazing.

So didn't he convert to Judaism? He did convert to Judaism after the car crash in the mid-50s in which he almost died, driving back to L.A. from Las Vegas when he, His eye was basically impaled on the hub of the steering wheel of the El Dorado that he was driving because it was so crazy. The hub of the steering wheel had like a conical design, like a cone pointing out towards the driver's face. You would think that was a bad move. Bad move, especially when it doesn't come with seatbelts, literally. The doctor in the hospital that basically helped him live talked to him about Judaism, and that was part of what inspired him to convert.

And it's just so interesting because years ago, somebody, a friend of mine, I was pronouncing a Judaism. And she was like, oh, my God, don't say it like that. You sound so anti-Semitic when you say Judaism. It's a Judaism. And I was like, well, Judaism sounds like some kind of campy play on like scholars of Judy Garland. And she was like, no, say Judaism. Do not say Judaism. She's like, you sound like an anti-Semite.

I have to say, as a Jew, I can't believe we got Sammy Davis. And, you know, a testament to your choice here, Bo, of this person. I don't like to quote Bill Maher often because reasons. But Bill Maher's quote of, I'd much rather live 60 Sammy Davis years than 90 Jesse Helms years. Always has been a quote that stuck with me. I've never heard that. And that's great and so true. So what do you, who are you excited about dying?

No, I'm just kidding. Don't say that. Don't answer that. That was just a very classless. joke on my part. I get asked it all the time. You do? Yeah, I do get asked it all the time. But I, you know, and I'm sure

I could think about, I'm sure I could come up with an answer, but you know, it's unique distance from people, I think, at least I do, to kind of evaluate what's really interesting about them. So anyway. What do you think about a state of

pre-written obits? So what I think about pre-written obits, I think they're necessary, obviously. to some degree, and they make sense. At CBS, for a time, I was working across the hall from the keepers of the pre-obits, and it was incredibly exciting to me. And I would just hear, you know,

one of the people there, really nice guy being like, Carol, we need to refresh that Jimmy Carter obit. Oh, oh, oh. I mean, it's true. It's true. And they only had a few, you know, I'm old enough to remember when it was like, we interrupt this broadcast, you know, to tell you about, you know, the passing of this legend. And they don't really do that anymore, at least on network TV, because of cable, because cable has nothing else to do all day.

So they'll make sure to just beat the street of death. So anyway, I know. It's quite a dish there for cable news. I know. We're like sharks and jets, cable and network. I think they're necessary. What a friend of mine who's an overt writer told me, which I could not get over,

is that there have been cases of people, of luminaries, calling the New York Times, cold calling the New York Times, and saying, hi, I want to talk about my obit. Oh, yeah. And that is such huts, but so presumptuous. I would be so tempted to say, like, that's it.

You know, we're kind of on the fence if you're going to get an obit. I have no trouble imagining celebrities doing that. Right. It's crazy, right? No trouble. No, I mean, it makes a lot of sense. Like, from what I know about celebrities, them calling Obit, you know, calling the New York Times to, like, suss out there, Obed and make sure it says nice stuff. Now, my grandfather was this communist writer, Howard Fast, and he was, like, obsessed with the New York Times because he thought they hated him because he was a Trotskyite. Right.

And then he got this amazing obit. It was like the nicest thing anyone had ever written. And it was just like pages and pages of like how brilliant he was. And he was dead so he couldn't see it. Well, do you remember what the first line was? Because the all-important first line is always fascinating. Do you remember what his first line was? I barely remember my own name.

It was written by Mervyn Rothstein. Howard Fast, whose best-selling historical fiction often featured the themes of freedom and human rights, elements in his own tumultuous political journey through the blacklisting of the 1950s, died yesterday at his home in Old Greenwich, Connecticut. He was 88. That's a great first line. And certainly well justified. That's terrific. You have any partisan hot takes you want to share with me? The only reason I don't is I love that you're asking that. The only reason I don't is because what I cover, you know, going to North Dakota to cover, you know, something like the legacy of Peggy Lee, the kind of story I love doing, takes me a couple of weeks

of preparation. And I'm not embarrassed to admit that I'm okay, not really following current events day to day when I'm deep into something like that. I just, you know. Sounds like paradise. I want it. It kind of is. It kind of is. So I love doing that. And, you know, I do, I do oddball stories on, I love bad preface. I love bad. I don't love them, but I love covering them. I did a story that's waiting to air on Franklin Pierce. Okay, talk to me about Franklin Pierce, because I'm quite curious. Okay, so Franklin Pierce, it's actually really interesting right now because of all that's going on the Republican Party. So Franklin Pierce, who is a Democrat, is our 14th president. He was from New Hampshire.

He was not pro-slavery, though he certainly as he was coming up, but he was, you know, a big political star, considered by many to be our best-looking president. That's what Harry Truman said, which I don't know what the metric is on that. Like how you, why is Harry- Also, it's, why do you want that? Well, agreed. And also, like, why is Harry Truman the arbiter of good-looking presidents? But anyway, so he ends up in 1854 signing the Kansas-Nabrasca Act into law, which, you know, was a repudiation of the Missouri compromise, which basically said that no area over a certain latitude could allow slavery. And the Kansas Nebraska Act said there's this chunk of territory. I think it had been called the Kansas territory. I could have that wrong. But anyway, we're going to carve it into two states and we'll let the

residents of those states decide whether there's going to be slavery, which was a total betrayal of the Missouri compromise. And that act inspired the creation of the Republican Party. So it's interesting right now I'm thinking of the birth of the Republican Party, which was in reaction to that. And the historian I talked to made this really interesting point about, and then after that, Democrats would be out of power. There wouldn't be an elected Democrat for 28 years until Trevor Cleveland. But the historian I spoke to said, you know, it's also a demonstration of why it's bad when, why it's important to have two strong parties. Because previously it was the Democrats and the Whigs, like the signing of that act, like just basically decimated the wigs and and created this new party.

But the Democratic Party had become so big and unwieldy. And it was trying to accommodate so many different interests in the north and the south that it collapsed under its own weight. And so it is sort of an interesting lesson of like why you actually don't want the other party to be destroyed. Right. No, no, I agree. And I mean, and this was one Republican. Republicans were anti-slavery. Right, exactly. Which is very hard to remember, but for any number of reasons. Derry McKesson is a civil rights leader and activist around Black Lives Matter and police violence,

as well as the host of Pod Save the People. Welcome, Dorey. Hey, it's so good to be here. I saw that you are working on a database of the police unions. Yeah, so we've been working on this for a while, actually, in 2015. So before I say that, so I used to work in. education. I was a teacher and I also more recently was the chief of human capital in the school system in Baltimore. So I managed all of the adult work that happened in the district. We had 10,000

employees. We employed as many people as the city of Baltimore, big operation. And I also did similar work in Minneapolis. And I was actually in Minneapolis before, right before Mike Brown got killed. That's where I was working. I was there when he got killed. And then I went to Ferguson because of the protests and the rest of his history. But in that work, part of my work in human capital was that I actually manage the implementation of the teacher contracts. So there would be all these things that happened in the district that like, you're like, why do we do this? Or like, why is this thing? And then it would come back to like, oh, that's in the contract. Right. So I had a lot of familiarity with all the labor contracts, like the principal's union, the teachers union, the bus drivers, the sectors. And one day when

we were sitting down trying to think about our structural work, it was like, let's just figure out, do police unions have these kind of things too? So like we didn't even know. We worked with Muck Rock, which is like a great service around FOIA. We partner with them, and then we FOIA, the 100 largest cities, their police union contracts. Just as a like, let's see if there's anything there. We get 80 of them. It's like 80-ish of the 100 largest cities had police unions at the time.

And we look at the contracts and we're like, not only is there stuff there, but we see, right? We get it. We're like, not, you know, people often are like the police are above the law. No, they just have a different set of laws and rules. Like, it's just like a whole different set. And that's what we learned when we did this. Well, you know, it's interesting because we had,

this mayor of Minneapolis on. And we were talking about it. And he said the policemen's union is the most, you know, is the single largest issue he has with being able to discipline the police, which I don't know that people quite understand that. Yeah. And, you know, police chiefs say this a lot. And sometimes it's true, right? Right. Like, that there are, that structurally it is actually really hard. Right. In a lot of places, if not only because they can go to arbitration. So, like, there are, there are number of cities like San Antonio where what you find is that like the leadership just gets fatigued by discipline because the way that the way that it works is that officers who get fired get reinstated at such alarming number is 60, 70 percent that they're

sort of like, why even go through the problem? I might as well just suspend you for two days or something because you're not really going to get fired anyway. So I'm going to expend all this capital trying to work you through the process and then it's going to go to an arbitrator and you're going to get put back, right? So like that is true. What you also find though is that police chiefs could, some of them could fight much harder and they don't for political reasons. Right. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, what have you seen from having all these contracts? This would be the first place that I've ever said this publicly. So in 2015, we had 80 and that was, so we maintain the only database of police shooting contracts in the United States. And we have a commitment to them being public. So what we do is that we find the contracts, we code them across these six buckets that I'll tell you about.

And then we make the coding public and we make the contract public, right? One of the things that it stresses us out about the way we're reporters normally cover this, is that they'll say, like, these contracts have da-da-da-da-da. And then, like, you can't find the contract. You don't know what clauses they're talking about. Like, we actually want this to be a resource. And we don't need people to, like, call us about it if they don't have to, right? Like, if you want to work with us on it, you can. If you don't, you should just go do something good. So we started with 80 in 2015. And then we quietly worked to get more. So we publicly have 700 on the website. It's called nixthe6.org because there's six things that we look for. So we publicly have 700. Now, what I had not

said publicly before because nobody's asked is that we actually have another 2,000 that are waiting to be coded or that are in the process of being coded and we have a little bit over 300 volunteers helping us find the next 5,000. Wow. So every contract is actually reviewed by three people. It is a logistical feat. So any of you out there that want to help us, if you know anything about any contracts, you don't have to know anything about the police, but just like a contract law. Yeah. Or just anything. Like if you just have an attention. of detail. We can help you, like, learn this. But some people are like, you know, these contracts can be in between 15 and 70 pages and some people are like, I don't want to calm through them. But we have

this huge database that we're working on because, like, we know that this actually, the police union sit at the nexus of all the things you care about. 80% of a police department's budget is personnel. That's tied up in the union. The disciplinary stuff is in the contract. Like, all of the things that you care about in some way come through this process. That's fascinating. Do you, You think that by having this database, you'll be able to enact some change? Yeah, I think that, you know, we've already seen it. So, like, one of the things that we're most proud of is our relationship with the Austin organizers, the Austin Justice Coalition.

Right. So years ago, 2016, I think, we linked up with them, and they got the whole city council to unanimously vote against the police union contract. First time it's ever happened. It was incredible. You know, it wasn't in the middle of a national conversation. Like, it was, this was sort of an off year from people thinking about. policing often. And it was great. And they did it. And they really set a model for people. So we're

working with San Antonio, working with Louisville, working a lot of places right now as they are working to dismantle the power of the policing union. And it is, you know, there's a set of strategies I'm happy to talk about. There's a set of tactics that, you know, we encourage people to consider Portland's doing something interesting. So this work is happening. And I think that people are starting to see that like, if we don't do the policing your work, nothing will move, right? Like if we don't do this, and like nothing will be permanent because the police, you know, I don't know if you saw our other report that we put out, but that the police have actually killed more people in 2020 than every year of data we have, but 2018.

Yeah. So the police are just like lay in low. They get it. They're like, you know, all the PR, all the narrative changes, they're like, let us ride it out. And if, because they know that if the system doesn't change, then the outcomes won't change. Right. You said in 2018 that you're actually optimistic and you have a case for a hope.

Do you still feel that way? I've never been more convinced that we can win and more nervous that we might not, right? Right. And I say that because we know more than we. ever known. Like, we understand the systemic part. We know the laws that are bad. We had the ability to, like, connect with people in ways that we've never been able to connect with people. Like, all those things that the people before us didn't know no fault of their own, right? It was just, like, a resource thing. We now have the ability to understand unpack and use. Right. I think the

hard part is that there are a fair number of people, and I would say the media is complicit in this, who really do believe that, like, the narrative changes the win. So, like, they're all, like, I think about how people reflect on 2020. They talk about it as a banner year for racial justice. The police, feet to the fire, and you look at the number, and the police actually kill more people, not less. Some of that is, like, we think that people are looking in the wrong place, right? That, like, one of the things we also learn is the police actually killed more people in

suburban communities and almost all other communities combined, right? It's not cities. People think it's cities. People, the reporting is cities, like the energy cities. But, like, I can't show you the graph because we're on a podcast. But if you saw the graph, it is like suburban, suburban is way higher than rural and urban. Like, it's not even click. Wow.

Who knew? Who knew? Who knew? Who knew? Who knew? I mean, you knew, but that, I'm surprised. Cities, interestingly, are the only place that it's getting better. And, like, we believe that that as a result of, like, the intense activism.

Rural and suburban communities are the places where it's getting worse. God, that's so counterintuitive. So, you know, you think about, and I would push you and say that, like, it's actually not, it wasn't counterintuitive to, it wasn't counterintuitive to, when we finally realized it last year, when we slowed down and thought about it, Ferguson's the county. Right. Ferguson's not the city, right?

Jacob Blake got shot in a county, you know, like, it wasn't Milwaukee. So you think about some of these cases that we, you think about Sandra Bland. That's not like the middle of the city, you know? So, you know, I think that this is one where like our bias towards cities actually hurts us from like a reporting standpoint, from a organizing standpoint. The other thing that I'll say is that, and this is something that is always, frustrating to me is reporters are guilty of this. A lot of people, like, they feel like they just are experts because they've had in an encounter with the police, right? Right. So, like,

I'll give an example. We did this big campaign called 8-Can't-Wa-W around use of force. And some people thought it was not far enough. Some people loved it. It is one of the single-bigest reductions of the power of the police in U.S. history. We're proud of it. Wow. We know that alone, it doesn't do everything. And it's like around these eight. Will you say it again? Will you say what it's called again? It's called A-C-Can-W-W-It's around use-of-forth policy. So it's banning neck restraints. requiring the escalation, a warning before shooting, requiring all alternatives before shooting, like exhausting alternatives, a duty to intervene, banning shooting and moving vehicles,

requiring a use of force continuum, and then making sure that officers have to report every time they point their gun and people. Yeah. So, you know, people wrote all types of things about this. They were like, this doesn't matter. We already did this, and it was so frustrating. And this is just like, this is an example of a larger point, is that people write really definitive things. Like the L.A. Times editorial board wrote something that was incorrect about it. like all the major publications did, is they would say things like chokeholds, chokehold bans, we already did it. They were like, we did this years ago, right?

Like, we don't banning neck restraints is old news. It didn't matter. And what's interesting is that, like, we didn't. So when we launched this in June of last year, only 28 of the 100 largest cities have banned neck restraints. That's not everybody, right? No, yeah. And people still highlight, they say, like, in New York City,

chokeholds are banned in 1993, and what people will say, like, people still write this. Like, I get in fights with reporters all the time, it. They will say the chokeholds were ban in 1993, Eric Garner still got killed. This is an example of how it doesn't matter. You've heard that. Yeah. Yep. So what is true is that chokeholds are banned in 1993 and that Garner was killed. Yeah. There are two types of neck restraints. There's a chokehold, which is your airway, like your adam's apple right there. Then there's something called a stranglehold or called a carotter strain or there's another more technical name, is that that is the muscles around your neck. So it's like the side of your neck. It's somebody squeezing the side in killing you as opposed to like blocking your airway. It's the muscle. In the moment, they all look like the same, right? Like, in the moment, it's not, like, in the moment, what is a chokehold versus a stranglehold? Like, you don't know, right? Right.

New York City has never banned strangleholds. So when Garner gets killed, the police immediately say, we didn't choke them. They're like, we strangled them. Like, that's essentially their argument, right? They're like, we did not use the band technique. We use the other one. And then after Garner gets killed, so the policy today in New York City says, so there's a page, and it's like, all these things are banned. Like you can't hog-tie people, you can't do whatever.

The next page in very small print, this is new. It says everything that was banned on the previous page can be deemed appropriate by committee of the NYPD. That's not a ban. That is not a ban. So what you find is that like there are a lot of reporters who get put on the policing beat who like frankly just don't know much about policing, right? Right. Like they don't, they didn't read it. They don't know the policy.

They just go because everybody else has reported that choke holes are banned. And they're just like, well, they must be. And it's like, did you read the policy? Because, like, that's not a ban. It's not a ban if the department can unilaterally say it was okay. That's not a ban. You know what I mean? Yeah.

So I get worried a lot about those sort of details or even things, like, you know, one of the things we call for an A can wait is that officers should have to report every time they point a gun at somebody. Seems trivial. What we find, though, is that pointing a gun at somebody is actually the single biggest use of force that police officers use when we have the data. Yeah, that makes sense. That police are pointing that gun and right.

And there's a new study that literally came out a couple months ago that uses Dallas that shows that when you put this policy in place, there are less officer-involved shootings, right? It actually matters. Now, we get rolled into this conversation about, like, is this abolitionist? Are you being reformist? We should. And what we would say to people is that, like, part of our work is engaged in harm reduction, right? Right.

Like, people are being impacted by the system negatively today. And we got to deal with that today. So do you believe in the end of solitary confinement? Right. Is the end of solitary confinement, the end of incarceration? No. But does that mean that it's not a good thing? No, right? Like same name with private prisons. When you end private prisons, the people aren't free. They're in a public prison. But should we get rid of private prisons? Absolutely, right? So trying to push people out of this zero-some way of thinking about it. And there are some hard lines, right? We should make sure that we don't build the carcrow state. We should make sure that we don't add to it. Like, all those things are true. But like sometimes I worry that people feel like if we don't do the one-fell swoop, right now, then it doesn't matter. And the reality is that, like, one is the biggest number when one is your sister, when one is your brother, when one is your mother. One is a huge number. You know what I mean? Consequential. Yeah. No, I think that's right.

So one of the things Molly and I have been discussing with a lot of people is everybody's on this beat of that. The Democrats had a messaging problem this last time around in 2020, and particularly people really love to point to defund the police. But we all feel that these things need to get done, that social justice needs to be achieved, and that the Democrats have to be the party of that. Do you have thoughts about the messaging on that and what needs to be done there? Yes, I think a couple of things. One is that I never fight with people about the language. I want to fight you about the idea, right? Right. Like, we can call the, you know, part of our work as organizers is to build entrances and arm ramps for people. And I know that there's like not one entrance that works for everybody.

There's not one arm ramp that works for everybody. So there are rooms where I can go in and say we can work to move beyond policing and people are like, yes, let's figure it out. There are other rooms when I go in, like I think about my aunt in Baltimore where we live, like we don't live together, but we both live in the city, is that when I tell her that, she's like, Doree, this is the sixth year of 300 murders. So like she's on board with the like rain in the police. She is not with me yet on like beyond policing, right? But I need to get her in the door. And if I don't get her in the door, I can't move her at all. So part of my work is to figure out how to get her in the room so that then we can have a conversation about all the

things, right? So at defund, it's like knowing up front, this is like not the message to get everybody in the room. For some people, it'll get you, for some people, it's move the money, some people, it's reallocation. Like, I think that anybody who devils down on the phrase is the thing you dial on, like, I just think that's like a, I don't think that's a wise strategy because there's no, like the idea is what we care about. Right. And move the money is smart. Yeah, move the money. I think there are all these ways that we talk about it. What I said to people immediately when this broke was this idea that like you actually already believe in the idea right like i remember i was on a call with um with NBA coaches and doc rivers this was like the week that people started saying defund

he's like to rey i agreed a lot of stuff and he's like i'm not with it right he's like the freight like i don't i think it's like whatever he said all the things that you've heard people say and i said to him i'm like doc i think you actually believe in the idea and he's like i don't know dera did them and i say you believe that experts should do what experts do right he's like absolutely and i'm like well who should respond to him in the dog crisis probably an expert in mental health, right? Yeah, he's like, yeah. Who's your respond to homelessness?

Probably an expert in social work, right? He's like, yeah. I'm like, see, you get it. Like, you actually believe in the idea. So, like, once we start thinking about what are the things that require expertise, then that leads us that in, where we end with that is actually a conversation

about what are the police experts at, right? And what people, the only thing people can say is sort of violence. Like, that is what people sort of, when you whittle down everything else, because it's like, do you really need somebody with a gun to respond to a missing kid?

alert, no, right? Like, do you really need somebody with a gun to respond to a cat and a tree? You know, like, no, right? So there are all these things that you actually, even people who like don't love the activists are like, yeah, you don't need a gun for that. The slice of things that people believe you do are the smallest slice there is. You know, you think about like only 5% of the arrest that happened in the country are for violent crime. It's a pretty small, that's a small, you know, it's just not a big thing. That's how I think about this. So like the phrase, I'm not stress out. What I'd also say, right, is a reminder that no one strategy will get us to zero. So you think about the places that have cut the budgets is almost none of those places have decreased

the number of police or have decreased the power of the existing police as they did that cut. Does that make sense? Yes, absolutely. That's really great. 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 Soledadadad 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. Thedailybeast.com. Randy Weingarten is the president of the American Federation of Teachers, a member of the AFL-CIO, and today she's going to talk us about the issues surrounding schools reopening as well as America's growing labor movement. I'm so excited you're here and welcome to the new abnormal, Randy. I feel like unions are back in the news in an amazing way.

I think what's happening, Molly, is that Joe Biden actually believes what most of us in the union movement, have believed forever, which is that increased collective bargaining and a resurgence of organizing is really an economic tool for shared prosperity. You know, and it is also something that can be done within a mature capitalist system. He really believes this. And I think that there's a shock around, You saw so many of these, you know, big corporate leaders in the last several years moan and grown about income inequality. Yet, you know, they don't do anything about it and look how hard it is even to get an increase in the minimum wage.

But if you really want to recreate a middle class, you need to have in communities around the country the kind of unionized workforces that can help lift wages. and conditions in work throughout the country. That's why people have talked about kind of sectoral bargaining as well. So I think that what you're seeing is, just like with FDR, you're seeing a president who's saying, this is an economic tool. Don't think about unions politically.

Think about this as an economic tool. You know, that's catching those who've never really thought about unions economically. They're shocked, shocked, shocked. They shouldn't be shocked. Like take a GM. When GM was in Lordstown and GM and the UAW negotiated a contract, it would lift up the community. You'd see more money in people's pockets. You'd see more spending on Main Street. And you'd see that kind of circle. And so I just think it's really important that you have a president of the United States actually seeing it as a tool and a vehicle for lifting economic growth in a shared way. So can we talk about what's happening in Alabama?

Because that strikes me as a very interesting situation. Let's just give a little backstory here. There's an Amazon factory that is trying to unionize. The RWDSU is unionizing or is in the midst of representational election with Amazon in Alabama. And for that to have happened, it meant that the workers in Alabama, you know, put in enough cards and enough showing of interest that Amazon needed to allow an election for whether or not there would be a union. And Amazon has been famously bad for workers. Amazon's been terrible. And in fact, you know, you saw at the beginning of the pandemic several.

sickouts in Amazon plants throughout the country because they were so terrible. And then you saw Amazon because they had gotten such bad, you know, PR basically, you know, doing ads all across the country about, you know, how great their workers are and how safe their conditions were. And Amazon is owned by the richest man in America, right? who has done extraordinarily well during the pandemic. Right. Yeah, so Randy, I saw you criticized Andrew Yang this week for his comments on teachers' unions. I feel like for years he's been pretty inflammatory towards teachers' unions. Can you talk to us about your feelings about that?

There's two things that I was really shocked by Yang about. One was his positions on education and on basically giving the yeshivas in New York City a pass to not actually ensure that kids that go to these yeshivas have a sound basic, you know, secular education. And I was moderating a panel for something called the New York Jewish agenda. and ask the question of all the panelists, of all the Merrill candidates, you know, how would you make sure that these Jewish schools or these yeshivas that teach basically the most religious community, most religious Jewish community, how would you make sure that they are giving their kids a sound basic education? And he basically said, well, they should have religious studies, just. like he did when he was in Somers, New York, and he could actually use the Bible as literature study for a month or so, which was completely at odds with what is going on right now, where you need to actually make sure all kids are numeric and literate. So here he gave

these institutions that are not actually helping their kids really have a secular education, the kind of education they need. And then, then at the same time starts criticizing the UFT for not reopening schools in New York City when New York City and the UFT was the first major school system throughout America that ended up reopening for in-school learning and where I know that they have worked all last summer to actually reopen schools and figured out how to do it unlike other major school systems. So this is the constant, you know, Andrew Yang is about destabilizing. He's always been a charter school fan. He's always been a fan of, you know, destabilizing and deconstructing,

you know, institutions and taking on the teachers who have actually been working to turning on a dime when he and his family moved out of New York City, they were working, they were trying to get schools stood up, they were trying to get remote education stood up, they tried to do everything they could to engage kids and taking them on, I thought it was a really, I thought it was a really terrible cheap shot and in line with what Giuliani and Trump and others try to do, which is instead of actually making government work and making it work in a way that really helps all people, he's just trying to undermine the very people who are the essential providers during this pandemic. So do you think Andrew Yang is like Trump?

I think his cheap shot at the teachers in New York City was really terrible. And I also think his refusal to understand that we need to actually help ensure that all, all kids get a decent education is really bad as well. I'm really surprised at the way in which he is running for office right now. There is a real possibility, though, that he could end up being mayor. Right. I don't think people understand that. I think that people are very, very intrigued by the universal basic income proposal that he's made.

But the point of, you know, what you have in terms of New York City is you have a need to ensure that New York City recovers as a city. You have a need to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to thrive. And what Yang, you know, is raising by basically undermining the public schools at the same time. as he has lifted up privatization, charters and yeshivas, is actually walking away from the common good and the public good of what a city needs to run. I'm very alarmed by the way in which he's running his campaign, and it doesn't mean that he's not going to be the next mayor, but it's important to raise, you know, to actually look at what he's doing

and raise the alarm bells. Well, and there are a lot of union jobs in New York City. It's a very different view about how government should work. Government should work to help people. That's essentially what Biden is trying to do. What Yang is really pushing at is he's, you know, one of these people who actually believes that, you know, competition and the market will solve all problems. and so he doesn't say it that way, but his actions are saying that. Can you talk to us about the difference between three feet and six feet in reopening schools?

What will that mean? So there is a roadmap for how to reopen schools safely. And let me say that we in the last two, three months, you know, essentially since Joe Biden has been president, there's been a huge change in the numbers of schools that have been reopened for in-person learning. So the last, for example, the last Burial report, which I think just came out this weekend, has less than 14% of K-5 students attending virtual schools, only attending virtual schools. So we now are really, we've now completely turned around the situation where the vast majority of kids are in school or have the option of having in-person learning. And I give great credit to Joe Biden and to educators and to our unions for being able to do that over the course of the last.

last few months. So the path is essentially you have to have these layered mitigation strategies to stop the transmission of the virus. You have to have COVID testing, since much of COVID transmission is asymptomatic these days, you have to have testing so that you have an early warning system. And you have to have vaccine access, you know, to now adults, and then ultimately when it's found safe and effective for kids. So you need those three things, layered mitigation, vaccine access, and COVID testing. So what the CDC said on Friday was that the one piece of layered mitigation that had pretty much been what everybody had been following from the beginning, six feet of physical distancing,

they thought in schools because kids don't get very sick in terms of COVID, particularly little kids, that they thought that they could reduce it to three feet if you did the other mitigation strategies, like good ventilation, like universal masking, like access for vaccines and testing. And what they also did the day before was to say, and by the way, we're putting $10 billion into the system so that more and more schools could have COVID testing. So I'm answering the question in this much detail, Molly, because it's not simply about three feet versus six feet.

It is about if you're reducing that distance so you can have more kids in a classroom, you've got to have all the kids wearing masks. You've got to have good ventilation systems. there's not been the kind of change in ventilation that we need throughout the country. So what will it mean? It's going to mean that there will be some districts like New York City who we're going to say immediately, let's figure out how we can create a new opt-in for parents. And then you're going to have districts like L.A.

where the superintendent basically said, not so fast, let's create a way of trusting that what we've just put on the table and just are planning for this in the last few weeks, let's actually plan to do that well, get people parents to trust it, and then we'll take another step. So I think that in some places, you're going to see more kids in classrooms and hopefully better ventilation systems. And in some places, you're going to see people saying, let's actually get right what we're doing right now. And then if we can do something more and create confidence that it's safe will decrease spacing. I have all these teenagers and I just wonder why there isn't a chance to like do an extra month of school, like to go to July, just because like everyone really lost. I mean,

my kids have been sort of hybrid and I feel like they've lost a lot of time. And I just wish that we could have this option to do another month or just to like tack a little bit more time on there. So Molly, I think that that's part of the reason that some of us. are pushing for a very robust summer program because lots of, this is where the inequities start showing up as well. Lots of parents are, you know, thinking about parents with means are thinking about having their kids in summer camp this summer. Right. And that starts in July and August. So why can't we do that for all kids? Why can't we have a summer of enrichment and fun and make sure that kids of parents that don't have means have that for July and August.

But it's just a different kind of planning, and we need to plan that now. And now that we've gotten the money from the American Rescue Plan, we need to plan that now for the summer. And it should be kind of an in-person summer. The thing I worry about is I don't, you know, I mean, I worry, you know, and you saw like on Friday, you know, I reserve judgment about the three-f versus six feet. It's, you know, everybody can understand three feet versus six feet, but it's really making sure that you got enough air, fresh air in classrooms, so that kids and teachers can breathe fresh air and that droplets or aerosolized virus gets evaporated quickly. That's why you had six feet, because it was a matter of how quickly can an aerosolize virus evaporate, you know, before it, you know, show, up on another person. So the ventilation stuff and the masking become really, really, really important,

particularly because of all these variants. Having said that, the summer and the school year next year is what's going to be really meaningful for us to help kids get their mojo back, and that's what we need to do. Thank you so much. This was great. Thank you, Randy. My pleasure, Molly. Thank you. 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 of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, the new podcast from The Daily Beast,

tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer, checking in on the movement of the radical right. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's Fever Dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Jesse Cannon.

Hi, volley jog fast. Tell me who is the object of your ire today. Just one. I'm only allowed to pick one. No, I'm just kidding. You feel free to go on a massacre today. Well, the person that I'm picking today is, you know, I know that our listeners know this. 2020 is going to be a sea of extremely contentious Senate races, which will decide who controls the Senate again.

And one of the many very contentious seats will be the seat of Ohio. Senator Rob Portman's seat. Right. Rob Portman, who is relatively speaking, a less objectionable Republican, is retiring because there's no place for less objectionable people. in the Republican Party, and he has emptied the seat and already some of the really the worst actors in the Republican Party are vying for it, including Josh Mandel, frequent clubhouse guest, Josh Mandel. Frequent run for the same seat and always lose because you're an unlikable little twit. Yes, Josh Mandel. And also the man whose book was going to change our lives, whose book everyone needed to read. whose book sat on the bestseller list so that we could figure out how we as liberals had alienated all of the people in the middle of the country.

That guy, he turns out to not be a great guy. Who would have thought? Who would have thought? His name is J.D. Vance. He's doing a little white nationalist dance, a little white nationalist tweeting. He's being funded by the man who took down Gawker. So there was an article this weekend, got a little white nationalist dance. a lot of traffic. It was by an economics professor who's quite smart, but I think actually is

probably wrong, which says kids are low risk, so you should just assume that they're vaccinated, which is a pretty controversial take. So, I mean, which is not to say that kids, kids do tend to get less sick from this virus and kids tend to not get it as much. And certainly younger children seem to really not get it. But again, that's a really dangerous. It's a pretty dangerous theory. Yeah. But J.D. Vance, you'll see, I just want to read this tweet because I feel like it is just sort of amazing. How many of the insane replies to this tweet are from people without children?

Our country's low birth rates have made many elites sociopaths. So, as you know, this is a group that is very against immigration, but is complaining about low birth rates. and that is why you get the fuck you today, J.D. Vance. And I hope he don't win. I'm mostly giving him the fuck that guy because I had to read that terrible book after all the hype to just know what my friends were talking about and God was it a stupid book. So fuck that guy. Jesse, who is your fuck that guy? My fact that guy is Matt Walsh.

Now, you may know Matt Walsh because... You can have to explain to people who he is. Matt Walsh is one of those people he writes for that cesspool of a sense. The Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro's little journal of hate of getting back at people who were mean to him in high school and now he has to torture the rest of us with the opinions of all those people that he's assembled that have this problem. And particularly Matt Walsh comes from the blend of AOC feet pick reply guys and real hatred for transgender people and just loves being mean to people in general. And today I find Matt's aggression that earned him to fuck that guy to be

much like most of Daily Wire, which is that every time they present an argument, you go, hmm, until you realize it's always missing one little fact that makes it not true and it is a glaring omission of why it's a totally stupid fucking idea. So with that, Matt Walsh tweeted this.

Got it on an elevator without a mask. Guy with his wife demands I put one on. I say I don't have it, but you'll be fine. Calm down. He stops the elevator, storms off, calling me disrespectful. It's true. I am.

I'm not going to respect your paranoia. Get a grip. Unfortunately, Matt, you're the one who has to get a grip, but this virus doesn't care about your skepticism. The virus doesn't care about how short a time you think it takes to get someone infected. It only cares about the virus does not care what your rules are. The virus has its own rules.

It will infect people and you're the one being disrespectful. I've been seeing people call people mask Nazis now. The last time I checked, the Nazis weren't the Nazis. the people trying to save people's lives. Well, and the other thing is, like, this is not like us saying you need to do something crazy, right?

It's just a piece of fabric on your mouth. So for that, Matt Walsh, fuck you. 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 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.