The Daily Beast Podcast - Goldman Sachs Shatters Myth That Republicans Are Better for the Economy

Episode Date: September 6, 2024

Andy Levy and Danielle Moodie react to a Goldman Sachs report that suggested the U.S. economy may take a hit if former President Donald Trump retakes the White House. Then, a conversation with The Washington Post media reporter Will Sommer, who joins the program to discuss the indictment of two employees of Russian state-backed media company Russia Today (RT); part of an investigation that exposed a number of American right-wing internet personalities for allegedly taking money from an organization funded by Russian interests. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Kedden, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have today.

The Washington Post, Will Summer joins us to talk about the crazy, crazy DOJ charges against tenant media who is funneling Russian disinformation to a bunch of right-wing influencers. But first, let's have some fun. So for a majority of the country, the Labor Day holiday follows with the opening of schools across the country. And what has become a pattern in America is that when schools are closed, whether it is for the summer or what happened in 2020, the global health pandemic, that's the only time since Columbine that there have been no school shootings. And most recently at Appalachie High School in northern Georgia, a 14-year-old student, white student, brought a gun to school, and by 1030, had killed two students, both 14 years old, two teachers, and had been taken into custody while you saw just, I mean, scenes that we've seen, Andy, too many times to count.

And what has been wild to me, as we learn more about Colton Gray, the 14-year-old that is now in custody for the murder of four people, is how quickly law enforcement has decided to adultify this 14-year-old and say with swift action that they will be charging him as an adult,

calling the acts that took place, quote, evil. And that this school district, this place has no room for hate. And I just, I have a lot of feelings around the lack of responsibility that the adults in this state and the adults that sit in legislative offices are taking at this moment and instead placing it on this child and turning him into an adult that they don't really need to have any accountability towards. Yeah, my eyebrows went up when I saw. saw how quickly they were like, he will be tried as an adult. And look, obviously, neither one of us wants to minimize the pain of the families of the victims and the fact that four people are dead. And I would assume our listeners know that that's not even remotely what we're doing here.

But look, this is a 14-year-old kid. This is not even a 17-year-old. This is a 14-year-old kid. This is a recent teenager. And the idea of acting as though this kid in any way possessed anything even approaching an adult brain and adult cognitive functions seems to me to be very, very questionable. And look, the Washington Post, you know, there's a story now by Sarah Blaskey. His aunt is now saying that this kid had been, quote, begging for months for mental health help. from everybody around him. And she says, quote, the adults around him failed him. To go along with what you're saying, I think the attempts to make him an adult, it really

minimizes the actions of the adults around him and really lets them off the hook. This seems to me to be a very, very dangerous path to go down. I'm glad that you said that we're not minimizing the crime here. but I think that there are multiple crimes that have taken place at one time, which is the fact that the year prior when Colton Gray was 13 years old, there were suspicions about his mental health and there were threats of him shooting up a school. But guess what Georgia does not have? Any red flag laws.

I believe that his own father went to law enforcement and said, there's something that is wrong here and I want to bring your attention to it and nothing was done because there's no like minimum age requirement for possession of a gun in the state of Georgia. While I was watching the news unfold, one of the broadcasters said, well, he's 14, but I have to research whether or not this is a legal or illegal situation for him having a gun. And I'm saying to myself, are we insane that we can't automatically say that a 14-year-old, like, that would be clearly against the law, but it's not. And so the lack of accountability that these elected officials have, that to me is the heinous evil act on top of these murders. Because they

just prevent, like, sensical things from being able to happen. Putting in laws and protection, that would have our children not have to send their text messages to their parents, which have now gone viral that say, I love you, there's a school shooting fucking days into a new school year. The fact that we have legislators that refuse to take any action and have American kids live like this is what is most heinous. Yeah. Over on blue sky, I can't remember who it was, but I saw someone post and it was something along the lines of basically unfortunately back to school means it's school shooting time again probably soon. And I read that and I was like, oh my God, not at the poster. I was like, because the poster is absolutely right for saying that. And I was like, that's what this

country has come to. That with back to school season comes a renewed threat of school shootings. And look, we know damn well. This is not going to be the last school shooting we're talking about. this school year on the show. It just doesn't work that way in this country these days. And it's just such a horrific situation. And I really don't, I don't see what charging a 14 year old as an adult does to stop any of this, to minimize any of this, to prevent any of this. Like, as you're saying, there are things that can be done. Look, if not to prevent them 100%, because nothing is infallible, but to reduce, possibly greatly reduce the number of times this happens. And pretty much none of those things are being done. And instead, we sit there and

pretend that it's somehow, you know, quote unquote, tough on crime to treat a 14-year-old whose aunt is sitting there saying the kid himself had been begging for help from everybody around him. But it's tough on crime to treat him as an adult instead of looking at the systemic failures that are going on in our culture, in our society. It's wildly unfortunate, but we know that we will be back in this conversation. I'm certain, unfortunately, multiple times throughout the school year. This is going to be what people are thinking about on top of all of the other things with 60 days to go until the election between a decision between a party that, wants to continue throwing out any types of protections or gun laws or reforms and one that wants to create a safe society for all people. And like Donald Trump and the Republican Party continue

to tout this like toxic masculinity, this like garbage rhetoric that is fueling where we are, where we've been. And I just like, the more that I listen to Donald Trump these days, Andy, the more that I am convinced that something is actually not connecting there. And the fact that there is a possibility that this man can become president again, and we know that he is clearly sundowning with the things that he's saying. He's talking about the fact that, oh, anyone that's convicted of a crime should go to jail. And I'm like, I'm sorry, 34 counts say what now? Like, how many times did Donald Trump been found guilty?

just in like the last like a year plus and he's still able to wreck so much havoc on our country right now. Yeah. And somehow what's bizarre is he says these things and his supporters nod their heads. And they act like, well, he's right. First of all, no, not everyone convicted of a crime should spend time behind bars. That's an insane attitude. Start with that. And then as you say, second of all, he himself, he is literally saying he should be in

jail. He should be in prison. And it's so bizarre to me that he says these things and there are still whatever percentage of the country of the voting population anyway is still looking at this guy thinking, yeah, I'm voting for him. That's where we are. And that's where we've been, you know, for the past eight, nine years. And it's so weird. And you talked about, you know, this toxic masculinity. And, you know, I was thinking that's, the reason why Tim Walz seems like such a breath of fresh air is not even necessarily because he's special. It's because he's normal. You know? Like, the bar is so low.

The bar is so low because of what we've been exposed to, you know, for a long time now, but particularly over the last eight years or so in terms of what these people on the right seem to think is the correct way to be, quote, unquote, you know, masculine, what they're. ideals of masculinity are, and they're so bizarre and so retrograde. And, you know, here, here comes a guy who is just basically not like that. And you're like, oh, my God, this feels like, you know, it feels like I just stepped outside on a 70 degree sunny day. It's, it's so refreshing. And then you start thinking about it, and you're like, but that, he's just being normal, you know, he's just being a normal guy, like, friendly and trying to be helpful. And, you're like, and not talking about women shouldn't be working and people who get raped should be forced to carry their babies. All of that stuff is so normal. It's absolutely bizarre how you look at it and you're like,

oh my God, I've been waiting so long to hear this again. So everything with Trump now is just like he says these bizarre things. Anyone convicted of a crime should be jailed. Like you said, the bar is so low, like it's so easy to not say things like that. And it shouldn't be a breath of fresh air, if somebody were to say, well, hold on a minute. No, not anyone convicted of a crime should be in jail. But that's what we've been reduced to, is looking for for someone like that to save us. It's sad. You know what else is sad?

Donald Trump stocks right now. You know, and I say that listening to everything that you said, because I'm just like, one of the things that is always talked about with regard to Donald Trump and his followers is that he's this billionaire. He's smart on the economy. He knows business. And I'm like, even when reality is staring you in the face, like his entire truth social stock knows diving. I don't think that that stock has seen a green day, an upward trajectory in months. But there is like a mass sell-off that is happening right now. But yet they still think that this man, who can't hold his own businesses together, has been found. guilty of fraud, you know, has all of these penalties that he needs to be paying back, whether it's the libeling of E. Jean Carroll, whether it's the grifting at Trump University, whether it's the grifting with the real estate, and then now with the super inflated evaluation of truth social that is now nosediving, like everything, it's staring them in the face. And yet,

like, it's like eyes wide shut. I look around and I'm just, you know, everything about Donald Trump is fraudulent. Everything that he says, everything that he stands for, everything that he's offering is just based in lies and fraud and deceit. And the funny thing is, why does he continue to say these things? Because nobody cares. Mainstream corporate media doesn't care. They don't really dig into it. They don't ask follow-up questions. They don't say, how can you say that you're good on the economy when you can't even pay your own bills right now? We don't look at, oh, the hollowing out of the RNC to make really tacky, terrible music videos and look at the money that the Harris Walls campaign is investing in their down ballot candidates. We don't ask the Republicans, where'd that money go? Right? Like,

it's just, it's like a foregone conclusion that Donald Trump can do and say whatever he wants. And that's why he does, because there is zero follow-up and accountability around it. Yeah, I mean, first I'd want to, you know, I want to thank you for shouting out my favorite Christmas movie, Eyes Wide Shut. Trump's true social stock has plunged, I guess, as of Monday, is down 74% from its high in March. According to the New York Times, Trump's a $6 billion stake in the company is now worth about $2 billion. So I don't think that's good. That's kind of in line with pretty much every one of his properties in terms of worth. Again, this is the guy who couldn't keep a casino from not going bankrupt, despite the fact that the house always wins.

Right. Yeah. You know, you talked about how everyone seems to think, and the polls that will show you that a majority of Americans think that Trump will be better for the economy than Harris. And it's like, why? Why in the world do you think that? And it's interesting because analysts at Goldman Sachs, not exactly a hotbed of socialism, say that a second Trump presidency could bring a hit to growth in the economy. And they're basically saying that his policies on immigration, his policies on tariffs, things like that could cut our gross domestic product by as much as half a percentage point. It's nice to finally have someone like Goldman Sachs saying, hey, wait a minute, this guy is maybe not so good for the economy and MAGA policies in general are not good for the economy.

I don't know how much of a dent that'll make in people's beliefs that he will be better. for the economy than Harris. But we see this all the time. People always think the Republicans will be better for the economy than the Democrats. Despite all the mounds of evidence saying it's the exact opposite, I don't know how we get out of that. This is just something that is baked into our national psyche somehow that Republicans are good on the economy. I mean, it's not baked in somehow. It's baked in by corporate mainstream media whose interests are aligned with the Republicans because that's where they receive their tax cuts and they're fucking like corporate welfare is that those people, the Uber wealthy, who run our communications

are the ones that benefit. I was asked recently on MSNBC, well, how is Kamala Harris going to defend herself on the economy? And I'm like, which economy? The one that's the envy of the world? The one that's brought more jobs back than what existed before COVID? Like the one that's closed the racial wealth gap between in thoughtful and strategic ways between black and white people? Like, the party that's been trying to relieve debt to add more money into our economy, you mean what part of that looks like they have to be on the defensive? That's what I had to ask the host. And it was like, uh, uh, uh, uh, and I'm just like, so the response needs to be from Democrats who are forced onto the defensive by corporate mainstream media. It's just like, where are you getting

your facts from? Yeah. Because none of what you're saying is valid or true. You can look at data. You can look at graphs if you don't even want to read and see that every time that a Republican is president of the United States, this country goes into debt. And it is always a Democrat that has a shovel that is digging us out. It is not the other way around. But the only people that consistently benefit from Republican economic policies are the rich.

And those that for some reason, the lottery minded that think that they're just one fucking scratch-off away from being Elon. On Musk. On Wednesday, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment alleging that two executives of Russian state-controlled media outlet RT funneled around $10 million to an unnamed Tennessee company with the goal of creating propaganda videos to be spread on social media. Journalists, including my next guest, quickly sussed out that the company in question

was Tenet Media, a conservative organization founded by Blaze TV host and Turning Point USA contributor, Lauren Chen, and her husband. Here with more details is Will Summer, Washington Post Media Report. specializing and covering conservative media and conspiracy theories and author of the great book, Trust the Plan, The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhaged America. Will, thanks so much for being here. Hey, thanks for having me back. Absolutely.

Okay, so before we get to the fun part of talking about who was involved in this, give us a brief overview of the indictment. What exactly does DOJ allege happened here? Sure. So Tenet Media was a sort of self-described supergroup of star right-wing YouTubers. who all sort of pooled together to create content for one YouTube channel and a related Instagram account. This has been running for roughly a year. The Justice Department alleges in this indictment that Tenet was from the start, the creation of Russians,

who basically teamed up with two Canadians living in the United States, Lauren Chen and her husband, to create this and recruit influencers in the United States. So how did you all figure out so quickly that the company was Tenant Media? And give us a little more detail on what Tenant Media does. Sure. So this is kind of funny. So the indictments quotes tenant media, they say, well, you know, this Tennessee-based company, we're not going to name, but its profile is a haven for heterodox thinkers. Right. So if you look that up, it's tenant media. Now, in terms of what tenant media does, it can be sort of hard to describe because aside from being a Russian influence operation, it really doesn't have a reason to exist. So it was a YouTube channel, and it still is, where basically people like Tim Poole and Dave Rubin and Benny J.

Johnson would contribute on some sort of regular basis. So like Tim Poole hosted a weekly show, Dave Rubin had a show a couple times a week. This would all be kind of put out under this unified tenant media branding. I want to be clear about this. Lauren Chan and her husband, the two people who quote unquote founded tenant media, they're not named in the indictment, but it is alleged that they knew that this money was coming from Russian state media. Yes. The indictment says that basically the Russians had these very thin person. where it would be like an email account under a certain name that would claim to be not a Russian, but that Lauren Chen and her husband knew these were Russians and would privately in messages to

each other say, like, we need more money from the Russian. And at one point, one of them, I think in sort of an illustrative anecdote, emailed the Russians to say like, hey, we need some more money, and then got frustrated and then Googled Time in Moscow to see if anyone was awake to see if they they could send more money. I was going to bring that up because it's one of my favorite little anecdotes in the indictment. It's just absolutely hilarious. Okay. So in the indictment, there are six people who made these videos under the Tenet Media rubric, I guess.

And they're referred to as Commentator 1, Commentator 2, up to Commentator 6. They're not named. But we know Tenet has six commentators. Dave Rubin and Tim Poole, who you mentioned, Benny Johnson, who you mentioned, Lauren, Southern, Taylor Hanson, and Matt Christensen. I believe five of them have. posted on social media that they had no idea the money was coming from RT. And none of them are alleged to have known that the money was coming from Russia in the indictment, right? That's right. And in fact, the indictment goes into a lot of details about how Ruben and Poole specifically

were tricked by the Russians and by the tenant media's founders. I'd say tricked. I mean, this is not a matchstick men's scenario. It was not like the most elaborate trick. Basically, Ruben and Poole said, well, we want to know who we're getting into business. business with who's funding this. And the Russians created sort of like a LinkedIn page for a fictitious wealthy Belgian investor named Edward Gregorian, which also sounds kind of Russian anyway. I know. It was like there were misspellings. This was like a very thin alias. There was really no evidence that this guy existed online. You know, one thing that struck me is that in this sort of resume they created for him, they said he's active in free speech issues, which would explain why he's

funding tenant, but also that he's interested in social justice and that apparently Dave Rubin was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, that was the one thing that alarmed him. Yeah. The fact that the dude had absolutely no social media or online presence, basically, was not a red flag, but the fact that the phrase social justice was in his CV, you know, was like, whoa, hang on a minute here. That was alarming. Yeah. I mean, it is a sort of a remarkable thing that these guys who, and Christian Banderbrook on Twitter, I'm kind of taking his bit, but like that these are guys who see everything as a sciop or a conspiracy theory. And then a guy in a mask shows up with a bag of money and says, hey, hey, do this for me. And they go, oh, okay.

You know, I'm not going to look into this any further. Yeah, no, it's unreal. And they're all portraying themselves as victims. Yes. Nobody is, I don't think. I mean, certainly as we just covered, the indictment is not accusing them of knowing about this. And, you know, I don't think anyone is really saying they don't believe that. But are they really victims here?

I mean, have none of them ever heard the phrase useful idiot? Because that seems like a lot more accurate one. This is a new definition of victim, perhaps, being victimized to the tune of getting almost $5 million in your bank account. It is a funny situation where, yeah, I mean, both Rubin and Poole have sort of portrayed themselves as victims. There doesn't seem to be a ton of introspection about, even if they didn't know, what does it say about me and my content that Vladimir Putin would say, yeah, like, you know,

I would like to pay you to make a lot more. of that. Yeah, they don't seem as a very introspective group of people. I just saw that Lauren Chen has been let go from Blaze. Yes. And so this is interesting that Lauren Chen, she's like a pretty big right-wing influencer in her own right. She has like 500,000 YouTube followers. She hosted two shows for the Blaze, which is Glenn Beck's operation. But who's curious about this is you would think that if you're running a company based on basically a lot of like clout heavy people teaming up together, that she would do videos or at least be kind of like a public face of it. And she wasn't, which is interesting. Like she was sort of hidden behind the scenes. But yes, in the aftermath of the indictment,

the blaze has cut ties. And tenant media, I mean, did they have funding outside of the nearly $10 million they got from RT? Or, you know, like it'd be one thing to say, oh, well, that was just a drop in the bucket. We actually had, you know, $200 million in funding. But that's not the case, is it? You know, the indictment doesn't say this was their sole source of funding. But it seems that tenant was basically created by the Russians. I think like that was basically all the money was coming from Russia. And the two Russians that are named in the indictment, what's their deal? Yeah. So, so there are two employees of RT, the Russian television network, and that basically the indictment argues that after the invasion of Ukraine, when RT was banned from operating in the United States, that they then decided,

well, instead we'll create these kind of subterranean influence operations. And so the two people who are indicted here. It's a funny situation. So they were sort of operating as almost like employees or managers of tenant media because they would have these discord chat rooms that the site was run through. There would be these Russians in there under aliases who would be sort of giving orders. And so at one point, this woman, she is saying under an alias, she's saying like, our influencers aren't promoting tenant enough. Our numbers are terrible, you know, tenants floundering. And then when people ignored her, then she created a new alias. So came back in as a different person and said, like, yeah, you know, I agree. You guys need to promote tenant more. Wow. And they are not in custody, right?

Yeah, they're in Russia. And so it's an interesting situation because obviously there's basically zero chance that the Russians will ever, you know, face prosecution for this. But at the same time, it really hamstrings tenants operations and presumably is going to close it. Although as of today, it's, you know, it's still operational. This may not be your belly with because, I know you're not a legal correspondent. But in reading this, I was like, why haven't Lauren Chen and her husband been charged? Have they not committed any crimes here? I don't know that I would say they haven't committed any crimes.

I think there are a couple theories. I mean, maybe they will be charged in the future. Maybe they're cooperating and have already been charged under a sealed indictment. Right. Okay. I think there are a lot of possibilities. They have not commented at all. But I do think that based on what's in the indictment, I think they would have like some exposure

in terms of knowingly working with Russia to operate this site. Yeah, I would think so. Has there been any response from RT itself? Yeah, RT has a, I saw they responded to someone's request for comment and just said, ha, ha, ha, ha. And then, you know, there was sort of some comments on their certainty in life, death taxes, and RT's interference in the election. And so they seem to be enjoying themselves.

You know, honestly, the descriptions of these Discord chat rooms where they were running tenant media, I think perhaps they're happy to be. be done with it. Yeah, no, it does seem like that. The pin tweet on Lauren Chen's Twitter account is a little promo for America Fest, which is a Turning Point USA event, I guess, America Fest 2024. She says you can use the code Lauren for an additional 25% off general admission. Do you think that that code is still valid? Well, you know, yeah, she's a TPSA contributor among everything else. This is like a pretty big scandal, it seems to me. I mean, that it really stretches throughout the right wing media. I mean, Benny Johnson, Dave Rubin, Tim Poole, Lauren Southern. I mean, these are all

pretty big deal people. Apologies to the two other influencers. I didn't, you know, it's funny, this Matt Christensen guy who I would say is like definitely the smallest fish in the tenant media pond. He was on his live stream last night complaining that he's not getting mentioned enough in the indictment as commentator number six saying that. that like all these articles never mentioned he works there too and that he was just saying it's sort of disrespectful. That's unbelievable. Wow.

Something that surprised me because they're usually so level-headed and fact-based is that a bunch of people on the right immediately started screaming about how this was some sort of conspiracy headed by the Harris regime. One of them who goes by the inane online handle, the red-headed libertarian, and who is a Timcast news contributor, Tim Cass being the story. stupid name of Tim Poole's stupid media company. She took a picture of your tweet about this and posted it and added to it saying, Timcast takes steps to sue Kamala Harris for defamation and winds up on a list within 72 hours. What's that about, Will? Why haven't you put two and two together the way

she has? It is funny. Yeah. So Timcast is engaged in some sort of, what I would say is not entirely serious, lawsuit against Kamala Harris's campaign. And this has prompted a lot of claims on the right that the Justice Department sort of cooked up this indictment, lickedy split. Tim Poole's side of it is pretty funny. I was watching his live stream last night responding to this. And part of it is like, you know, he has this entourage and he has a compound or two out in West Virginia and Maryland. And I mean, if he was pulling in like roughly $5 million from this thing, I mean,

presumably this whole operation was really counting on this, what they did not realize ostensibly, was Russian money to keep coming in. And so cut to last night and the whole gang is sitting around. around while Tim reads the indictment on the computer screen and you have to imagine them as saying, I guess we're not going to open the new skate park or something like that. Yeah, I have noticed that as much as they're portraying themselves as victims, I don't think any of them has offered to give the money back or send it to charity or anything like that. Well, yeah, that's another kind of funny thing about it is that thinking about how much money

this was. I mean, it probably was doubling, you know, for a lot of these people or many times more than that, their income. I mean, this Matt Christensen guy, was who I think is makes vastly less than Tim Poole does, leaving tenant media money aside was saying, like now suddenly like my family's, you know, how am I going to make money for my family and all this kind of stuff. Oh my God. It was Poole and Rubin who got the vast majority of the money, right? Yeah. So it's not totally clear how much Benny Johnson was making. But yeah, if you figure that Poole and Rubin were making like yearly and it wasn't a full year that that they were paid for, but they would have each made roughly $4.8 million.

So it's $9.6 together. And tenant total got about $10 million. That's the vast majority of it. And even in the indictment, I think there's a point where someone says, Tim Poole and Rubin are taking up all our money. So talk about Russia's efforts in this sphere more generally. They're still very much at it, aren't they? And how much damage are they actually looking to do?

What's their end goal here? It's interesting. I mean, I think tenant media itself was always notable for how low its views were. At the time, people would say, like, why should I post my content here when I get far better views on my own channel? And so I think its actual reach was relatively low. On the other hand, if you imagine Tenet as just an effort to send money to influencers that Russia wants to support, it was pretty successful. It directed millions and millions of dollars towards them. And so presumably, if someone like Tim Pool or Dave Rubin gets $5 million in a

year, that that then helps them expand their operations even outside of the tenant media umbrella. Yeah, for sure. Something that happened or that was announced just before we started recording was that the Justice Department announced an indictment of a guy named Dimitri Simes, who is a Russian-born U.S. citizen and a former advisor to Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. And they are charging him with working for Russia's Channel 1, which has been sanctioned since the invasion of Ukraine. The Russians are really knee-deep in this, if not waist-deep or even further, right? Yeah, certainly tenant media is not the only example of this. I mean, we saw, as you said, this Demetri signs this new indictment against him. On the same day as the tenant media indictment came out,

the U.S. government rolled up sort of a network of Russian disinformation sites. And so there's clearly, like, this is part of a broader effort. In the tenant indictment, I think an RT staffer is quoted to saying that we have sort of an empire of these operasians. And so from my perspective, it makes me wonder, you know, how many more of these sites are out there? Are there any other conservative influencers who are wittingly or not being paid by Russia? We talked earlier about how this group of people seems to not be the most introspective in the world. But do you think there are people out there, conservative influencers who are taking a harder look at where their money might be coming from today? I think perhaps it's in their best interest to not look too closely.

You know, I mean, that's what's funny about it is the idea that there was this Belgian businessman who really desperately wanted to pay Tim Poole and Dave Rubin all this money. Even that wasn't that credible. But, you know, if a guy comes to you and says, hey, I want to pay you $5 million and you have sort of a thin shred of plausible deniability, you know, perhaps that's all it takes. I will say that it seems to me that people like Tim Poole and Penny Johnson and Dave Rubin in their heads. It's not weird that some random guy would want to pay them a lot of money to make videos because they think that's how good they are. The Dave Rubin one is especially funny to me because it's like the content was so low effort where it's like he's just watching like internet reaction videos and he's going like, oh, that's like a triggered SJW and then getting paid $25,000 per video. I mean, it's really incredible. Yeah, it's absolutely unreal.

Well, thank you so much for coming on and explaining all of this to us. I am assuming this is sort of a, sort of a fun one for you to cover. I love seeing how these things work from the inside. And so, you know, I'd like to thank the federal government for inexplicably deciding to write a 32-page indictment that just has, you know, you can definitely tell with some of these indictments, like, when the prosecutors are having fun with it, where they're like, we're going to include this bit about Googling, what time is it in Moscow and stuff like that. Right. It's beautiful. Thanks so much, Will, I really appreciate it. It's great to have you back.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. Tell us how you are closing out this week with your fuck that guy. I want to talk about a guy out in Montana. And his name is Tim Shee. He is the Republican nominee for Senate. It has now come out that just last year, there was a recording of him making pretty

racist comments about Native Americans. And at one point in 2023, he was, this is according to MSNBC, he was talking about the crow tribe of Indians. And he said he had roped cattle with crow members, calling it, quote, a great way to bond with all the Indians while they're drunk at 8 a.m. And you're roping together. And then at a different event, so not even in the same speech, he said about the crow Indians. He said, they'll let you know whether they like you or not. There's Coors light cans flying by your head. Apparently, he repeated this Corrie's light line at a couple other events because he loves it so much.

And this has just come out. So we don't know yet what his response to that is. Obviously, Native Americans are not happy about it. The Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council wrote him a letter saying that he, quote, insulted us with a stereotype that only seeks to severely diminish and dishonor our people. The Crow people are not your punchline. Native Americans are not your punchline, which, yes, to all of that. But look, it'd be one thing, if this were like an outlier, and this is just, oh, this guy happens to be a bad candidate, it would still be awful. But at least you could say, well, you know, okay, mistakes were made here.

This is the Republican Party. This is who they are. This is not an outlier. They've got a guy running for governor in North Carolina, Mark Robinson, who has made, you know, a ton of anti-Semitic remarks. and, to put it kindly, flirted with Holocaust denialism. The list goes on and on of comments made about Jews, about black people, about queer people, about Latino people. Name a group that isn't straight white Christian men. And there's a Republican candidate who has said absolutely awful things about them. So I'm highlighting Tim Shee here, but this really is a big fuck that guy to the entire Republican Party circa 2024 because we're just, just at the point where I'm not saying they're all like that, but if you assume they all are,

you'll be right more often than you're wrong. So fuck those guys. I'm going to go ahead and say that they're all like that and I'm going to stand 10 toes down on that. And I'm also going to say the reason why comedians tell the same jokes over and over again is because they get laughs. And so if those lines that he has offered on multiple occasions didn't get the response that he wanted, guess what? He probably wouldn't say. it. And so he is representative of the ideology and the thinking about anyone who is not white, who is not pseudo-fucking Christian, cis and straight. It is so disgusting to disparage, particularly the Native American population that has been forced into and type of minimalized

existence because of the policies of white pseudo-Christian cis men. There's a reason why, alcoholism, drug abuse and suicide is so high within that community, right? It's not like indicative of what their DNA. No, it's policies that have created the conditions that have exacerbated their situation because of what America, white America, has done. So like, fuck those guys. I could go on, but I won't because why. All right, Daniel, close us out.

Give us your fuck that guy to end this week. This is a person who is not a stranger to our hall of fuck that guy. He is actually a criminal that is still employed by the state of Texas, but shocker. Ken Paxton, who recently was behind the raids on Latino Americans who are in charge of voter registration and are parts of nonprofit organizations that are about amplifying the vote in that community. Raids, folks, like meaning that he sent the cops to kick in the doors of people that were doing nothing more

than trying to get out the vote. And if that sounds like something that you would only hear of pre-1950s, you would be right. But that is what it looks like to live in Texas and have Ken Paxton still remain as the Attorney General, knowing that he's also a criminal. But he's not just done there. Because now, in order to make certain that Kamala Harris and Tim Walls don't turn Texas blue

or purple or whatever, he's saying that he's also threatening legal action in, I think it's Beggzer and Harrison. counties if they proceed with sending out mail-in voter registration forms, which the counties have proposed doing, and this is according to the New Republic. So he's not threatening to sue them because, oh, I don't know, they're doing anything actually criminal. He's threatening to sue them for registering people to vote. If that is not white supremacy in fucking action and the weaponization of your position as attorney general that is supposed to be about justice in your state? I don't know what is.

I don't know what is. And I don't understand why this man is still employed, given all that we have learned about him. So it is a dangerous place Texas has become to not only be a pregnant person, but to also be a Latino person. a person of color because they're not just set on gerrymandering. They're now set on making it a crime to actually get people mail-in ballots. And they are using Gestapo fucking terrorist tactics in order to spread their message. It is wild that the Department of Justice should fucking intervene,

but then I remember who's head of the Department of Justice. And sloths don't move that fast. So for that reason, Ken Paxton, but really the entire fucking Republican Party that is in power in Texas is my fuck that guy. Yeah, this is just, you know, as usual, they know they can't win unless they do stuff like this. So that's reason one why they do it. In Ken Paxton's particular case, I think there's a reason too. And that is he knows damn well that if he hadn't had a Republican-controlled state house and state censor. and State Assembly, he would be in prison right now, more than likely, or at the very least,

he would have been thrown out of office. This is a lot of self-preservation on his part. He needs Republicans to stay in power in Texas so that he can stay in power and stay out of prison. This is among certainly the most egregious, but really this mirrors things going on in a lot of other states and a lot of other localities where Republicans are doing their damn best to disenfranchise as many people as possible who they don't think will vote for them. They know that's the only way, really, that they have a chance of winning. So they do it. Fuck those guys. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going.

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