The Daily Beast Podcast - GOP Hits the Bottom of the Barrel to Dredge Up New Speaker

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

On this week’s episode of The New Abnormal, Republicans have been scrambling to figure out who they could dredge up as House Speaker. Plus! U.S. Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) adds her thoughts on GOP efforts to replace Kevin McCarthy. Then, Dannagal Young, an associate professor of communications at the University of Delaware, describes the “three Cs” behind the social nature of human knowledge. 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 for you today. Congresswoman, Ovet Clark, representing New York's 9th Congressional District, is here to talk to us about her recent letter to major tech companies about the dangers of AI-generated political content and advertisements on their platforms. And of course, she's also going to tell us what it's like to be in Congress with the Republicans trying to replace Kevin McCarthy. Then, the University of Delaware's professor of communications and political science, Danigle Young, is here to tell us all about her.

new book, Wrong, how media, politics, and identity drive our appetite for misinformation. But first, let's have some fun. So after booting out Kevin McCarthy a week and a half ago or so, the Republicans have been scrambling apparently at the bottom of the fucking barrel or at the bottom of the sea or at the bottom of a sewer to figure out what two people they could drudge up that should be the voice, aka the speaker of the House Republicans. And my, oh my, with the ability to choose what from 200 plus people, the choices that Republicans landed on were Jim Jordan,

a man that wild coach at Ohio State met with young men who asked for help, who were assaulted and violated by their trusted doctor, Jim Jordan looked the other way, told them, pleaded with them, don't say anything. The other choice that they put up, Steve Scalise, a man who voted to overturn a free and fair election in 2020, a man who refers to himself as David Duke without the baggage. And by baggage, he means the hood.

So I am at a loss that this is who the Republican Party has decided are going to be their new standard bears. And they've put forward between Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise, they did their little secret ballot. The funny thing about their secret ballot, too, is that they're all a bunch of fucking liars. They don't even trust each other. Yep. Do you not? Like, that's crazy. They don't even trust each other to say, you know what, this is going to be my vote and I'm going to stand by this vote.

No, they're going to do it behind closed doors secret so that they can go out in front of cameras, say they supported one person when they know that they really supported another person. But I'm telling you, by putting up Steve Scalise, a man that has advocated for a national abortion ban, didn't certify the election and is an open white supremacist, the Republican Party has told, the American people who they are and what they stand for. And I am just at a place where I'm like, stop trying to make these people better than they are showing themselves to be. Hi, producer Seamus jumping in here for a second from the future. Since we record these episode in advance, sometimes things change. And as of this episode's release, Steve Scalice has actually withdrawn his name from the House Speaker race. So, I don't know, GOP again a GOP.

Back to you, Andy. They've been showing us who they are for quite some time now. But for some reason, we're always told by various media outlets and whatever, but oh, it's complicated. It's very complicated. The politics are very complicated. No, they're not. No, they're not. Steve Scalese spoke at a white supremacist conference. Jim Jordan, who we'll get to in a bit, did exactly what you described, you know, a few minutes ago. We know who these people are, and these people are the party at this point. Steve Scalise and Jim Jordan are not. bomb throwing backbenchers. They are the mainstream of the Republican Party.

And we were saying on this podcast and a bunch of, you know, and we weren't alone, we were saying the same things about Marjorie Taylor Green when people were saying, oh, stop paying attention to her. She, you know, she's just one Congresswoman and she has no power. And then we see now she is the occasional fill-in speaker of the house, or was when Kevin McCarthy was speaker and couldn't be there. This is who they are. And yeah, it'd be one thing if you could just say, well, you know, well, both. parties have their extremists and thankfully they're not the norm. The Republican Party doesn't have extremists. The Republican Party is extremists. Come on. And I'm not even one of those people who thinks extremist is automatically a bad word. Like you can be extremely in favor of good things. This ain't them.

These are the extremists who, as you said, want a nationwide abortion ban. They play footsie with white supremacists and then want us to look the other way, you know, when they wake up with a hood in their bed. can't look the other way and we have to keep calling this out and we can't be told well scolice is really you know out of the two he's the better choice because he's more of uh you know he understands the rules and and because he's been in leadership positions i don't give a fuck what rules he understands i i know who he is i know who he is because i know what he stands for and what he stands for is appalling and is he maybe marginally better than jim jordan i don't know maybe he is Maybe he's just a little bit smarter than Jim Jordan.

Even calling himself David Duke without the baggage, which I think he's not happy that people knew he said that. But he is at least smart enough to know that you have to hide certain things. I don't know that he's any better than Jim Jordan. I just think, again, I think maybe he's a little bit smarter. So he occasionally doesn't say the quiet part out loud. But these are bad people. I'm completely out of loss as to how to describe people like this anymore. These are bad people.

And the fact that if the Republicans can get their act together and vote for Scalise in the actual vote for the speakership on the floor, that he's going to be the leader of Congress. It's appalling. But at first you've got to get through that fight. And as we saw with McCarthy, it ain't easy. That ain't going to be easy. And there's already a bunch of Republicans who are saying they're not voting for him, that they're going to vote for Jim Jordan or they're going to, you know, vote elsewhere. So who knows? I mean, I don't think we're going to end up with Speaker Hakeem Jeffries.

That would be a truly unbelievable event if it happened. And I really don't think it's going to. But I would imagine on at least the first bunch of ballots, he'll get the most votes. Everything that you just laid out, first of all, we know Steve Scalese is going to need 217 votes. And I believe in the vote that they took, Jim Jordan with the secret ballot got 99. So it was 113 to 99. He needs 217. Right.

And the math that I do know is that 113 is not close to 217. And so the fact that they were supposed to have a vote and they needed to quench that so that they could once again return to their closed doors to bite each other's heads off. But you have people that are walking out in front of cameras that are saying, I'm not voting for him. Right? You have Nancy Mays who we're going to talk about in a bit that says, I'm not voting for him. I'm not going to vote for a white supremacist. Funny, because she voted for Donald Trump and will likely vote for him again, who also dined with white supremac and lifts them up and tells them to stand back and stand by. So, okay, Nancy, sit down. You have Marjorie Taylor Cuckoo over there who has also said that she is going to, I believe she said she's going to vote for Kevin McCarthy. And I'm like, I'm pretty sure he's not on the best. But okay. I'm glad she's voting with her conscience. Right?

This is playing out. And unfortunately, it isn't as if we have any guardrails that say that if you don't fill the vacancy of speaker, these are the next steps that happen. Right. Like, we don't have that because the founders did not imagine this moment. In the past, okay, so you won the vote from your own party 113 to 99. In the past, that would mean you had, that was. 212 votes that you would get in the overall in the, you know, when it came to the floor.

Because what would happen was, yeah, the party would fight internally. But then once the party voted and chose someone, then all the other party members would say, all right, it's time to fall in the line. That ain't today's Republican party. No, it is not. No. And like you said, like there's no real mechanism here because it's, I mean, at least in my lifetime and going back, I don't know how far.

it's never been like this. You know, it's always been, yeah, sometimes there have been contentious intra-party fights to see who would win. But once that person won, the whole party would rally around them. And then you'd get eventually, you know, you'd get five or six of the other party or eight or nine, whatever you need would just be like, all right, fine. You know, you guys voted. So we'll go along with you.

But yeah, everything's changed now. Like, norms are good if the norm itself is good. Like, I don't have a problem with saying, oh, well, these are the norm. We have to follow them. Sometimes the norms are bad. You know, for a long time in this country, the norms have been bad. This one strikes me as a norm that is probably good, this little procedural norm. Because like you said, there's literally no other choice other than to just keep voting and voting and voting and never electing somewhat, I guess.

These people who are currently just destroying our democracy from the inside out were voted in by, a constituency that wants to burn it all down. So should we be shocked then that once they actually get the gavel that only dysfunction reigns? Because this is what the fucking Republicans voted for. Right? You had an opportunity to get rid of people like Bobert and Taylor Green and Gates and the rest of them.

And their constituency doubled down. When we're here, I can't help but ask like, what is the end game? Right. for these people. Because what we are seeing is that there's no unity within their own conference, let alone unity at all within the country. So what's the end goal here? Like is it just, is the goal then just to dismantle? So we'll bring in Donald Trump again as president to just finish the hit job. And then what? I feel like, I mean, aside from these folks not having any grounding in history, any grounding in law, any grounding in government, because apparently any motherfucker can

do this job, I don't think that they are asked and pressed enough on what their end game is. Because you can't run a country based on what you're entirely against. We're against wokeness. There's a war on this. There's a war on stoves. There's a war on crayons. What are you actually doing once you get there? And what we are seeing is absolutely nothing. Most bombs throwers are not good at what comes next, which is the rebuilding. And most of them, or at least a lot of them, don't even think that far. They're so mesmerized by, ooh, fire. Fire good. And they don't think about what has to come after that. And I think that's what we're seeing now in this party. Yeah, it's beyond me. And this is how people get disenchanted. Like, this is how people become

disenchanted with politics. But, you know, I had a friend of mine say, as Steve Scalise was being anointed, say on my social media, I think Dems might have played this wrong. My response was sometimes the play is to let people err themselves out, is to let things burn all the way down and understand that there will always be some type of collateral damage, but the reality is that we can no longer move forward with the both sides narrative when you are seeing Democrats completely unified ready to work and offer a policy for the American people and you see this band of idiots that can't get themselves together and are continuing to show that they are an embarrassment and don't have a plan. I don't think that the Democrats played this wrong at all

by choosing unity over saving somebody's ass who said, I don't want your votes. Yeah, we've talked about this. And we're in agreement on this. It's not the Democrats. job to save the Republicans from themselves. That's their job and the fact that they can't get their shit together to do it. And particularly in, as you said, these are people who have absolutely zero interest in reaching across the aisle or working with Democrats or compromising or anything like that. Why in the world should the Democrats lift a finger in a situation like this? There's just no reason to. We will quite possibly end up with the speaker who's worse than Kevin McCarthy, I guess, or more extreme than Kevin McCarthy.

On the other hand, there's been a couple of sort of, I hate to use the word gratifying, because the whole situation is gross. But there have been a couple of things that have come out of this. And one of them is, you know, a bunch of the former wrestlers from Ohio State University have surfaced again to remind everyone that Jim Jordan, while he was there, as you said, turned a blind eye toward what was going on. So you have a bunch of wrestlers. you have one guy saying, do you really want a guy in that job, House Speaker, who chose not to stand up for his guys? Is that the kind of character trait you want for a House Speaker? You have others saying Jordan has long claimed that he didn't know about the abuse. And all of these wrestlers are just like there is absolutely no way. One of them said, Jimmy knew about it because we talked about it all the time in the locker room. It practices everywhere, et cetera, et cetera. So it's never bad to remind people,

who these guys are. If this is what it takes to do that, then so be it. I'm just constantly, like, at a loss that it is victims of assault and abuse that consistently have to put themselves out there, put themselves through the retelling of heinous stories in order to bring attention to an accomplice, because that's what Jim Jordan was. I love how these people always want to claim, like, I didn't know, I didn't know. Like, so stupidity is. your defense? Right. Ignorance is your defense because either way, if you're stupid or you're ignorant,

you're still not fit to lead. So if you want to use the defense, like I didn't know, nobody told me or I didn't know what to do after people told me, you're still not fit to lead. And then if you did know, which we know that he did, and then you chose to do nothing, you've already shown yourself for what kind of values you have. Yep. So again, unfit to lead. Jim Jordan's a real assistant coach, isn't he? I mean, I just think to myself, Wow. Out of all the Republicans, this is who y'all chose. Yeah. Look, it could be worse. I mean, we're talking about guys who are unfit to leave. There's also the people who are unfit to serve, just period. And we've just seen in the last

day or so new charges against both Republican Congressman George Santos, if that is his real name. It's not, but go ahead. And Democratic Senator Bob Menendez. So just unbelievable stuff. Santos is charged with things like using the credit cards of people that donated to his campaign, using their card numbers to buy stuff. Menendez is accused of actually being a foreign agent for Egypt, which strikes me as something you shouldn't use when you're in the Senate. I don't know.

Yeah. Like I laugh not because it's funny, but because like, oh my God, the charges against these people are not like a. jaywalking ticket. It's not something light. Like George Santos, first of all, there are now finally Republicans in New York that are introducing legislation to boot him, right? It's about goddamn time. Like I said before we started recording, I'm like, did they need to get a search party together to go find their values? Because it's unclear. But I'm like, the charges against George Stentner, I mean, identity theft, stealing money from your donors. If Donald Trump,

was the blueprint like this motherfucker just traced, you know, and then went off with his own, like, creative force. You know, the untalented Mr. Ripley is going to be a case study. Because when he is interviewed and he is asked questions, it's like he is on a different planet. Because I'm assuming that he has assumed his other identity. And he's like, I don't know who you're even talking about. And then you have Bob Menendez, no one. And I mean, no one. And I mean, no one. outside of a bond villain has gold bricks in their home. No one. No one does.

That is not a normal thing to have lying around the house. We apologize to our one viewer who does have gold bars lying around their house. Maybe they're a collector. We're not coming for you. I mean, and stuff in different pockets and suits with cash and saying, oh, but that's a product of having been from Cuba. If the country of Cuba could please stand up and be like, what? They said to have emergency cash, not like a fucking vault.

Like, leave us out of this, man. Yeah. So we are in a wild ass place. But again, this all goes to show that when folks wanted to turn, make Donald Trump into a joke. And by virtue of giving him all of the screen time, all of the audience, all of the microphone and attention, this is what it has opened the door to. And this has now become normal in our politics. So if these people are not booted, if people's backs do not turn on them, we're never going

to get back to a place of integrity in Congress. And it, you know, but again, you know, Menendez may be looking over at Clarence Thomas and saying, God damn it, I wish I had a black robe because apparently that makes, I should have been a judge because apparently that makes these crimes invisible. Yeah, you kids out there, let this be a lesson to you. It is much better to be a Supreme Court justice than a U.S. Senator. Correct. You can pretty much do whatever the fuck you feel like if you're a Supreme Court justice.

Yeah, there you go, kids. Folks, I am very happy to welcome on to the new abnormal Congresswoman Yvette Clark, who represents the ninth congressional district in New York. And full disclosure is my former boss and how I got my professional chops on Capitol Hill. Congresswoman, it is, it's so good to have you. I first want to start with asking you, as I did one of your colleagues, Eric Swalwell,

a couple of weeks ago, how are you doing at that place that I refer to as Crazy Town on Capitol Hill? How are you doing? Well, first of all, let me, Thank you for having me on the podcast today, Danielle. And I have to tell you that you have an abnormal podcast. Well, we have an abnormal of representatives.

And so it takes some adjustment. But when you're a Brooklynite like me, you know, you have to be nimble. You have to be quick. And you have to stay focused. And I think being focused on the people of the 9th District of New York, their dreams and aspirations has made it possible. possible, along with, you know, really being in a great group of Democrats here on the Hill, have made, you know, the labor that much smoother than it could be under the current construct of Congress. You know, before I get into what has taken place this week with the GOP and Representative Steve Scalise, who they've decided to nominate as their speaker, I want to talk about some serious things, which is work that you are doing.

around artificial intelligence and how the use of AI is handled on social media platforms. You alongside your colleague and the Senate, Senator Amy Klobuchar, put together a letter to CEOs of meta, of X, to talk about how they are going to address AI-generated political advertisements and content. So I want to give you an opportunity to talk about that letter and the seriousness of, you. of AI interference in our upcoming presidential election. Absolutely. Well, let me say this.

I actually introduced a piece of legislation earlier on this year called the Real Political Act. And there were some colleagues that kind of picked up on it, understood the necessity for it. Being in the minority in the house, I really just didn't expect. And the legislation not having bipartisan Biden at the time of our introduction, I knew how critical this would be to the upcoming election cycle and why it was really important that we bring attention to it. And so I tried to find as many means of making it known to the public that this is an impending threat to our upcoming elections. And so in addition to introduce

in that legislation, like you stated, I teed up with Senator Klobuchar to reach out to, you know, some of the more prominent social media platforms to get them to make some moves on their own. Now, Google, to their credit, actually have moved to get their advertisers to, if they're using AI generative content, to put disclaimers and make it known. However, we didn't get the buy-in from the other. as you stated, prominent social media platforms. And I figured, you know, we got to use peer pressure here and get these folks to understand the existential threat that AI generative content in the advertising context, particularly during an election cycle, the existential threat that it poses

to the American people who may not know or be able to discern an AI generative fictitious content or audio content and, you know, cause a real disruption to our elections this year. So I thought it was critical that I use every means at my disposal to sort of shout from the mountaintops so that it's given proper attention. And with the legislation that you introduced, Congresswoman, you said that there was not bipartisan support. Have Republicans expressed why combating AI? generative content, which is disruptive as a whole to the function of democracy, why that's something

that they wouldn't support? Well, I think that, you know, there's some who mix up the idea of putting out a disclaimer or in some cases we're talking about digital watermarking so that people can discern the content, particularly when you're using video content. I think there may be some members who are conflating that with their First Amendment rights. However, I also believe that unfortunately, many of our colleagues are distracted at this stage. And those distractions aren't giving us the type of focus we need on upcoming elections. Because the moment you say elections, everybody runs to their respective corners. When this is truly a bipartisan issue, because, you know, what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

in terms of using AI to generate content to create advertising. And the fact that anyone can do it from any political party to, you know, create a disparagement of an opponent in a particular election, to distract and or disorient voters in terms of where voting locations are. I mean, there's so many ways. You know, there are a multitude of ways in which utilizing, AI generative capabilities can disrupt an election. And as creative as we are in our imaginations are all of the iterations that could be actually, you know, thought of and utilized,

weaponized on our platforms. And what makes this even more so a threat is the fact that at the click of a mouse, it can be distributed to millions of people. Right. I mean, we saw this happen in 2016 with the troll farms put together by Russian intelligence. We saw it again in 2020. And now the technology, to your point, has become increasingly sophisticated in its ability to mock voices, in its ability to mock facial expressions, to mock faces. And so it isn't even for folks to understand, it isn't even about what either political party would be able to do. It is about outside. It is about outside influence, which we know outside influence, namely Russia and China, have utilized social media platforms to thwart our elections. And so now with the advent of AI, it makes it that much more

important, I think, for legislation to be passed. How difficult do you think, I mean, look, I understand the state of the House, which we will get to in a moment, but do you think that it's difficult for your colleagues to really truly imagine, to your point that you made, how dangerous this can be when we don't necessarily know or can see all of the threats that AI pose. Like, do they understand the gravity or is there more education and quickly needed to happen? I think that there's some who do recognize it, but see it as an advantage to, you know, their political agenda. And then there are those who just don't quite get it. I also, like I said, believe that members are truly, truly distracted by other priorities,

you know, more political in nature as opposed to governance and the protection of the American people. And then whenever you bring up the issue of elections, they kind of gloss over because they're still trying to get over the fact that so many of them are caught up in the conspiracy. theories and the whole who won the last election debacle. And so I think that, you know, for some folks who aren't the grownups in the room, it's a third round for them because they were able to perpetrate a fraud on the American people over this. The election was stolen through a narrative that was created, you know, to advantage their candidate. And so I think, you know, whenever we say, you know, we need to protect the election. there are some who are shying away. It's really up to the chairpeople of these committees,

of jurisdiction, to do hearing on these bills. And this one is so appropriate. When you think about how much time we have before the next election cycle begins, it's just been, listen, we don't have a speaker of the House right now. So it's almost a moot issue until we get someone in place and we're able to actually move legislation through the legislative process. So I can't get into the minds of all of my colleagues. I know that many of them know no better. I have not been able. No one has reached out.

I have not been able to find any of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. I'm looking for a colleague on a committee of jurisdiction, which is energy and commerce, to work with us, to move the ball forward. And in the meantime, like I said, we've been. We've seen Google already step up to say that it will be putting a requirement on advertisements that are on their platform to make sure that there's a disclaimer on generative AI content. So let me switch gears for a moment with a few minutes that we have left with you to talk about the recent actions by your Republican colleagues to nominate Representative Steve Scalise

to be the Speaker of the House. Now, Steve Scalise is somebody who voted to overturn the 2020 election results. Steve Scalise is a person who wants and has discussed a national abortion ban. He is referred to himself as David Duke without the baggage, unclear of what that means outside of the outfit. So tell me what you make of this being the person that the Republican Party is putting up. to be their voice in the House? And what message you think that that sends to the country? Well, unfortunately, the members of the House Republican Conference have become radicalized and

are, you know, part of the MAGA extremist wing of the Republican Party. And so, you know, you're only seeing a reflection of that in who they're selecting for the leadership of the House of Representatives. That's all that is, Danielle. And it's unfortunate. We're just looking at varying degrees of magification, if you will. Yeah. But MAGA is MAGA at the end of the day. And that has accrued to, you know, nothing getting done, everything being politicized. And, you know, it harmed being harmful to the American people. We've got to put people over politics. We've got to govern. I've always said when the election is over, it's over. and then it's time to govern.

They've not been bipartisan in any way, shape, or form. And they've got a skinny majority. So at the end of the day, they're having difficulty holding on to a speaker because they've got a civil war going on. And then they have a slim majority. They're not unified. It's all about who's going to be the most cruel.

That's ridiculous. Right. What do you say to folks who have critiqued, the Democrats for not voting to quote unquote save Kevin McCarthy from himself. What do you say to those folks? Because in my opinion, it was a perfect display of unity by the Democrats that I thought I think is increasingly necessary so that the Republicans can error themselves out. But what do you make of that critique that Democrats should have jumped in and saved Kevin McCarthy so as to avert a Scalise from happening? Yeah, I think that these folks weren't paying attention. There was nothing in common with the agenda that Kevin McCarthy as Speaker had with respect to Democratic values.

Jumping into Save Him meant voting to harm our own constituents. In what political world is that a reality? We're looking at how we can create by. partisanship in an environment where folks are hyperpartisan. And not only are they hyperpartisan, but they have espoused values that are not your historical conservative values, but have really morphed into, you know, these anti-Semitic, racist, misogynistic, anti-LGBQ. You go down the list and we're dealing with white supremacy. There's no way that the Democratic Party could undergird that.

You know, we'd be voting against our own interests. So this was not about saving Kevin McCarthy. They need to save themselves. And I think that that's what this whole battle around the speakership is all about. And let me close by saying this, Danielle, the gentleman did not want our support. He explicitly said that he doesn't want Democratic votes. So not that his word can ever be trusted, but at the end of the day, we took him at his work.

And his word was, I don't want any Democratic votes to make me speaker. Yeah. And we know that you know, as a Brooklynite, how important your word is supposed to be? Absolutely. Right? And a man that speaks out of both sides of his mouth cannot be trusted. Let me ask you, Danielle, if I voted,

for Kevin McCarthy for speakers. Do you think I could go home to Brooklyn? No, I don't. No, I don't. So let's be clear. Hakeem Jeffries will get my vote every time. Every time. Every time.

Congresswoman, Yvette Clark, thank you so much for making the time to join the new abnormal. I continue to send you light and strength as you battle these folks on democracy's behalf, on America's behalf, and on Brooklyn's behalf. We appreciate you.

Well, thank you so much, Danielle. Take good care, darling. You don't need a PhD to know that in the year 2023 AD, way too many Americans are susceptible to misinformation and conspiracy theories. But you might need one to explain why. And that's where my next guest comes in. Dr. Danigell Young is a professor of communications and political science at the University of Delaware. Go Blue Hens. And she's written an absolutely fantastic new book called Wrong, how media politics and identity drive our appetite for Missingell. information. She joins us now. Dana, thanks so much for being here. Thank you, Andy. Let's jump right in. A key part of your book is explaining the difference between evidence-based thinkers and intuition-based thinkers. In other words, between people who want facts and people who trust their

gut. And it's the latter who are more prone to believing both misinformation and conspiracy theories, right? Yeah. Well, it's the people who say that they trust intuition and emotion more than evidence and data. This is what's tricky in this space, Andy, is that we don't really know what's going on under the hood, like inside people's brains. But we know that the people who say that they value intuition and emotion and that their hunches don't need to be confirmed with evidence, that these are people who are more likely to believe misinformation and conspiracy theories. And what I think is most interesting here is that these are also the people who are most likely to support authoritarian populace. And in the U.S. context that includes support for Donald

Trump. I'll note, though, that all of us use both intuition and evidence all the time. So, in fact, when we do measures of this, like to what extent people report using intuition or evidence, those two things are positively correlated. Like, people use both. But what I think is unique here is that for the folks who believe in misinformation and conspiracy theories and for folks who support Donald Trump, they really report greater faith in intuition and emotion. We can talk about why that's strategically advantageous for someone like Trump, if you want. Absolutely. But first, I want to ask you, you talk a lot about the social nature of human knowledge,

which involves what you call the three Cs. Explain what those are. Right. So we want to think that we are motivated to understand the world as it really is. But that's not actually how most of us, by default, are coming to understand the world. Rather, we're motivated to understand the world, to feel that we comprehend the world, to feel that we have control over the world and to feel like we are connected

with our community in the world. And so because these are our guiding motivations, all of these are actually socially driven. We want to comprehend the world like our team does. We want to control the world in ways that are good for our team. And we want to connect with community in the way that our team does. Okay.

So the three Cs that we're talking about are comprehension, control, and community. So when you write that when we talk about the people who believe misinformation about COVID and the people who believe misinformation about the 2020 election, in many cases we're talking about the same people. I think fairly obviously, these are the people who say that they are intuition-based thinkers. How does this play into the three Cs? This is so wild to me because I think that some of the beliefs around COVID, right, like thinking that COVID wasn't real or thinking that the vaccine would have dangerous like side effects or would give microchips to people,

all of these demonstrably false pieces of information. Belief in those things does offer up these three Cs. Let's just deal with the notion that maybe COVID is a host. Maybe it's all made up. Maybe it's not real. Think about what that does. It offers you a way to understand the world. It gives you this sort of grand narrative that says, okay, this is all a conspiracy. It's not real. I can go about my life. I can go about my business. It gives you control because my gosh, now you're safe. If it's a hoax, well, gosh, I feel way better because I'm not going to die. In community, it's going to allow me to feel really connected with those other, quote unquote, in the no people who share my belief, and we are now the ones who are enlightened and the other people are not.

Now, when it comes to the election denialism, that to me is where you really see the three Cs very clearly. Because, you know, here folks had been told by Trump for a very long time that if he lost the election, it would be because it was rigged and there was cheating. He set that out early on. He put out information early on about how mail-in ballots were unsafe and all of this stuff. And you got, you know, your Fox News shows and other conservative networks sort of amplifying those claims. So then the election happens. And what happens? Biden wins. And Fox News calls it for Biden. Like you can talk about that, too, as like a grand violation of expectations, right? Yes. So now you're someone who has supported Donald Trump. You see the left as a threat to your entire way of life and identity because of

these stories that you have been told. How are you going to make sense of this? Well, you're going to comprehend it by telling yourself, oh, no, no, Trump did not lose. That's how I comprehend it. He actually won, but there was cheating. How are you going to control it? Well, you could go to the Capitol on January 6th and you could stop the certification of the electoral vote. That's control. That offers me control. And community, all you have to do is look at the pictures of the folks and the rioters who were there at the Capitol that day. It was a celebration. Once they got inside, they were angry and they were riled up, but they were enacting their community. They were connecting. They were using symbols and chance. So I see the three Cs so exemplified in that particular lie. And we talk a lot about the supply side

of wrongness, misinformation, lies, et cetera. But in this book, you also focus on what you call the demand side of wrongness. And you say it's important to recognize just how much of our wrongness can come from us. And that sounds a lot like what you're talking about here. Like, yes, misinformation played a role. But these were also things that they wanted desperately to believe. Look, you've got to really focus on the fact that there are bad actors who are spreading mis and disinformation. And a lot of times it comes from the top. But it would not land and it would not spread if it were not, you know, desired by individuals. I talk early on in the book about the kinds of misperceptions and wrongness that we just have on our own without having to be told

something that's untrue. And I talk about how for a long time, I really thought back when I was a kid, I was like, if I, if I tan on top of a picnic table, I'll get tan faster because I'm closer to the sun, you know, like we tell ourselves that is such a, you know, baloney all the time. because it gives us control. So until we reconcile the fact that there is that demand and that there are bad actors who are tapping into preexisting needs, we're not really going to solve the crisis. And something else you mentioned frequently in the book is the asymmetry between party members, Democrat and Republicans when it comes to believing misinformation.

And this doesn't mean that all Republicans are susceptible to it and that no Democrats aren't at risk for it. But it is far more likely for a Republican to subscribe to a conspiracy theory or believe things that just ain't so. This is a sticky wicket because what we have in the United States is a unique situation. A lot of political psychologists have been trying to understand if it is cultural conservatism that is perhaps well paired with belief in misinformation. And it turns out that when you look across nations and you look at these relations, and you look at these relations, It's not the case that conservatives around the world are more likely to believe misinformation and conspiracy theories. However, in the U.S. context, a lot of what we've been dealing with over the last

10 years is asymmetrical wrongness and asymmetrical supply of misinformation and disinformation. And I would suggest that those two things work in tandem. The fact that there is more mis and disinformation on the political right, you know, can fuel the fact that there are more misinformation beliefs on the right. So why is that? Well, and this is where I think it was important to write about this in a book and not just an article because the story is layered. And the political history of the United States has created these two political parties that today are so distinct, not just on policy positions, but really on our entire ways of life. Political science, like Lillianna Mason have documented that, starting with the civil rights movement, really,

there was the racial realignment of our political parties. And that's when the Democratic Party became the party of cultural liberalism, but also the party of ethnic and racial diversity. And then of a secular, agnostic sort of clientele and folks who lived in suburban and urban areas. Now, on the other side, the Republican Party became uniquely homogenous, white evangelical Christian, rural, culturally conservative. When you have those kind of aligned identities in a homogenous way, it creates an engine that works very efficiently for emotional responses, outrage, threats to identity, perceptions of outgroups. So that is what I see is at the heart of the success and demand for misinformation on the right. It's just so fascinating to me. And along those

lines, explain what actively open-minded thinking is and how it correlates with party affiliation and why religiosity is such a huge factor in whether someone engages in it. So actively open-minded thinking, there are a couple of constructs that are somewhat related. Actively open-minded thinking is the idea that I'm always open to the possibility that there might be additional information out there that will contradict my beliefs. And I'm actively pursuing that. Like, I come to the table and, sure, I hold beliefs, but I'm not holding them really tightly because I'm always, always looking to see if there's new information that could tell me I'm wrong. That's really, it's sort of the perspective of a real scientist, right, where you're actively trying to break your theories all the time.

Right. Actively open-minded thinking is negatively correlated with religious dogmatism, which makes sense. because if you are someone who believes firmly in your religion and you're really not looking to break your theory, right? You're looking to support it at all times. And you're operating based on faith because that's what religion is. And so we do tend to find that those things are related negatively. In the U.S. context, because of the unique social sorting process that's happened over the last 40 years, with especially evangelical Christians moving into the Republican Party.

And a lot of that by design, by the way, the strategic courting of evangelical Christians through the 70s and 80s. What we see is people who have a unique way of coming to understand their world based on intuition, based on faith, based on the ideas that they already hold in their mind, right? Because that is what it is to be someone who is faithful. Now those folks cluster in one political party. So perhaps it isn't republicanism that is driving this unique way of understanding the world, but it's who is in the Republican Party.

So if you're a faithful person, you're going to be less likely to actively pursue disconfirming evidence on a regular basis. And is this what you mean? Because you talk a lot about polarization in the book. And in particular, there's a term you use called effective polarization. polarization. Explain that. Right. The political scientists for a long time were worried about ideological polarization among elites in Washington, right? Where party leaders are moving farther apart from each other on the issues and where we see less compromise, right? We see less bipartisan

legislation than we used to. So that is happening. One of the things that political scientists have been concerned about among regular people is less ideological polarization and more about affective or sort of emotional or feeling-based polarization, where Democrats and Republicans report disliking members of the other party a lot more than they used to. But it also be known, though, that there are more political independence than there were 40 years ago. You know, it used to be a third, a third, a third, right?

Democrat, independent, Republican. We see people leaving the major parties in kind of, sure, they still have leanings, right? But they report being politically independent. But we see more hostility across Democrats and Republicans. But what I think is kind of important here is that there's work that shows that Democrats and Republicans, when they're thinking about the average member of the other party, they're thinking of a stereotype that is way more politically extreme and way more politically engaged than they really are.

And when you correct these misperceptions, it can reduce that affective polarization. it can make people less hostile towards their outgroups. I think that that has important implications for how we talk about these issues and how we talk about the quote unquote divide that exists. And I'll say when you look at the policy positions that Democrats and Republicans hold, we are all a lot more complicated and nuanced than any of these sort of socially sorted categories would ever suggest. Like even if you see someone who checks every box, right? You're like, oh, white, evangelical Christian drives a pickup truck, listens to this music. Right.

It doesn't mean that their policy positions are all aligned. And that is where we always have to make a seat at the table. So I would be remiss if I didn't ask you to talk about the role the media plays in all this in effective polarization, in the fact that we think about, you know, the other party, we think of the stereotypes. I guess there's various ways to look at it. You could say the media, well, the media is simply reactive. It's giving people what they want. You know, and that's why you get Fox News on the right. You get, you get an MSNBC type on the left.

But then you could also say maybe it's causal. Maybe it's a reason for the increase in things like identity driven wrongness and effective polarization. Or you could say, well, no, it's just reinforcing. It's not really a reason for these things, but it sort of aids and abets them. Is it all of the above? Is it none of these? Is it something else? Yeah, I was just going to say, could we check the D box all of the above? How about all of those things happen?

In fact, you know, early on, media scholars really couldn't find a lot of evidence that media had strong direct effects on attitudes and opinions. But they did find evidence of reinforcement effects. And they chalked that up to like, oh, well, okay, so media aren't that powerful because all they do is push you more in the direction you were already inclined to go. And I'm sitting here now, and I'm like, on what planet is that not a huge? hugely, hugely important media effect. Yeah, for sure. Right? For where we sit right now, the notion that our attitudes and beliefs can be reinforced, that we selectively expose ourselves to content that reinforces our worldview, that our

media platforms are constantly making use of our individual level data to deliver us content that's going to engage us the most so that we come back or so we click or share things. All of that is designed to. reinforce. But it's not just reinforcement. It's not just like making us more of what we were. It is what I call distilling who we are. And it's distilling us through the lens of these giant social identities. You know, because the media platforms and political elites and news organizations, as they are trying to resonate with our social identities and get us engaged and make us pay attention. They're constantly activating our team membership. Oh, you know, I'm on the right. I'm on the left.

And this is then how I think about myself. The more that I think of myself in those terms and the more I see information that is going to reinforce my worldview, the more distilled my social identity will become in terms of not just how I think of myself, but how I think of the other side. And perhaps that's the more dangerous one, right? We know that these days compared to, you know, 20 or 30 years ago. Political participation today is a lot more driven by my contempt for the other than it is by my love of my own. You know, people vote because they hate the other side and they see them as a threat. To the extent that these entities are constantly tapping into who they think we see ourselves as and then offering up more distilled versions of that for us to use, to then use as our

observations of the world that we use to update our beliefs, this is going to constantly be refining and distilling and, quite frankly, caricaturing how we think of ourselves as members of teams. You said we could talk about how some of these things are used as actual strategies by people like Trump. And talk about that, you know, even with regard to the media, people like Trump and Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham, you mentioned in the book, how they feed into this and how they, you know, I guess somewhat canily use this as a strategy. Well, there's examples every day all the time. So in writing the book, I'm like, which one of the gazillion am I going to write about? Well, it happened to be during the Supreme Court nomination hearings for Justice Jackson. There were various questions they were asked that were very emotional and identity threat activating. You had Josh Hawley talking about how Judge Jackson had maybe given what he perceived as a too lenient sentence to someone who was, I think it was either accused of child's sex abuse or perhaps child. pornography. And then you have Ted Cruz with these blown up, like, poster boards of a children's book.

And he's asking Justice Jackson, you know, do you think that this is true that all babies are racist? So the reason I talked about that was, well, it was what was happening that day and it happens all the time, but that it exemplifies these performances of identity threat that political leaders are constantly doing because they are constantly rewarded for it. And I did a content analysis of the news coverage of these displays within the hearings to figure out, okay, so this is Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. So is it just that they're making the headlines on Fox News? Is that what's happening here? And the answer is no.

They actually were also the subject of a ton of coverage on MSNBC, which makes sense because what they're performing is a form of identity threat. Right? They're talking about issues related to sexuality, to race, to LGBTQ issues. which was another aspect of the hearings. So as they tap into those high-profile culture war issues, they are banking on the fact that they are going to get a ton of press coverage. And perhaps my favorite aspect of that chapter is that there was a photographer for the L.A. Times later that same day who was there in the hearing room and caught a picture of Ted Cruz

searching for his own name on Twitter. Like probably looking to see, did it work? Did I get the hits that I was looking for? And that is what I see as the engine that fuels identity-driven wrongness. Yeah, that picture. I remember that contemporaneously. And then being reminded of it in the book was just amazing. Unfortunately, I am out of time.

I could talk to you for hours about this book, which to our listeners, I just have to tell you, it's one of those books where almost literally every page, I found myself saying, oh, that's really interesting. And run out and buy it. I can't say that strongly enough. The book is wrong. How media politics and identity drive our appetite for misinformation. Dana, thank you so much for being here.

I really love talking to you. So much, Andy, this was great. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. Andy, how are we closing out this good, good week? Oh, God. Well, for my fuck that guy, I am going to go with my beloved National High hockey league. I'm a big hockey fan. And they are just, I don't know what decade they think this is,

but there was a whole big to do last year. The NHL, various teams have Pride Knights, which is, you know, as you would expect, an LGBT-friendly event that teams will hold. And in the past, they have worn, just in warm-ups, not in the game, they have worn rainbow uniform jerseys, done things like used special tape on their sticks. Usually the tape on hockey sticks is black. They would use rainbow tape. And they would actually use that during the game. And then there was some blowback last year because there were, as there always are,

there were players who didn't want to participate for various reasons, ranging from being a raging homophobe to possibly some understandable reasons. There's a lot of Russian players in the NHL. Some of them said they were actually. they were legitimately nervous of what Putin would do to their families or whatever if they did this. Regardless. So you would think, okay, so the correct move to make is you still have your pride nights and you allow players to wear the jerseys if they want to. And if players don't want to, they don't have to.

But the NHL decided, no, we're not going to do that. What we're going to do is, yeah, you can still have your little pride nights, but no more rainbow jerseys and no more rainbow tape on the sticks. And the tape ban, for whatever reason, is somehow bigger than even the jersey thing. Because, again, the jerseys were just worn during warm-ups. The tape was used during the games. And there were some players who just took it upon themselves to show their support for the LGBT community and use the rainbow tape. And the NHL has now said, Rainbow tape is banned for Pride Nights.

And to their credit, there's actually been some player pushback on this, including the Eminton Oilers, Connor McDavid. who is, if you're a hockey fan, you know he is the best player in the league. I mean, watching him play hockey is absolutely ridiculous. He is that good. And he was a big supporter of the rainbow tape. And he is not happy about this. Brian Burke, who was a long time executive in the league. He's out of the league now. His son, Brendan, is gay. He put out a really strong statement saying, this new league policy strips clubs and players are one of the most important and visible ways of supporting causes they care about. Let's be clear. This is not.

not inclusion or progress. This decision does not grow the game and does not make our fans feel welcome. Fans look to teams and the league to show they are welcome and this directive closes a door that's been open for the last decade. So good for him and good for Connor McDavid and the other players that are pushing back on this, but absolutely a big fuck that guy to the league officials and just anyone who thought that going backwards like this was a good idea. It is just, it's infuriating. As a syshet hockey fan, infuriates me and it makes me like the sport less and I don't want to like the sport less. I love the sport. So fuck these guys. I will just say that if there is any moment to show some courage, it's now.

And after a decade plus of showing support and solidarity and inclusion to make an inane decision based on fear and cowardice is really sad. Yeah. But I really commend the players for coming out and saying that this is wrong and not just going along and just going, you know, quietly and being concerned about risking their job or their position or what have you. Because if there's a moment to speak out, it's now. So fuck those guys. Yeah, absolutely. And a couple of players have actually come out and said they're going to ignore the band.

Love that for them. And so, you know, good for them for actually for seriously pushing back on this. But fuck the league. Danielle, who is your fuck that guy to close out this week? Well, she has become my new favorite dumb dumb, which is representative Nancy Mace. Now, I believe that we spoke about her earlier in the week because she is really stupid and is showing herself to be a shining star of foolishness. At a time when there are serious, serious fucking things happening around the world,

This woman thinks that performative politics is where it is at, because apparently she is inside of a thirst trap for attention. The other day, she wore a scarlet A, a scarlet letter taped on a white tank top. This is what she said. I'm wearing the scarlet letter after the week I had being a woman and being demonized for my vote and my voice. And she has been a staunch advocate for whatever reason of Jim Jordan, even though Jim Jordan has ignored the sexual assault and violation of players when he was a coach at Ohio State. Nancy Mace has been an advocate for sexual assault and abuse because she herself has experienced that. We spoke about this earlier that when asked, she said, oh, I don't know what you're talking about. Because again, feigning stupidity and ignorance seems to be the way for the Republican Party.

But what she also does not know apparently is literature. Because the Scarlet Letter, dear friends, is not about being demonized for your vote or voice. It is for adultery. And so I just read a book. Read a fucking book. And as a matter of fact, I don't know. Let me age myself. Get the cliff notes.

Right. Somebody has got to have, you know, at least two, three bullet points that you can skim before you perform your next stupid trick. So for that reason, Nancy Mace, my favorite new dumb dumb is my fuck that woman to close out this week. What do we think the A should stand for here? Should we count it off or just say, asshole? Yeah. Asshole. Asshole.

Amoral. Amoral. There's so many advantageous. That makes no sense. Sheamus. She wants to advance her career. Yeah, okay. See?

Yeah. I got it. Or, ha-ha, what about abnormal? Ooh. Oh, I like that one. 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.

This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Shamus Calder. 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.