The Daily Beast Podcast - How Mike Lindell Got Boxed In at the Hardee’s Drive-Thru

Episode Date: September 20, 2022

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell was going through a Hardee’s drive-thru after ordering a burger and chocolate shake when he was approached by the FBI. That’s according to Daily Beast politics reporter Zachary Petrizzo, who has more details of the FBI’s seizure of Lindell’s phone while he was at a Hardee’s restaurant last week. “I had heard from Mike that he ended up ordering a Swiss burger with a chocolate shake,” Petrizzo tells hosts Molly Jong-Fast and Andy Levy on this episode of political podcast The New Abnormal. Also on the podcast, Iuliia Mendel, former press secretary to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and author of the new book The Fight of Our Lives, discusses what it was like meeting Russian President Vladimir Putin for the first time. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Invo. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart, conversations with the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down. And on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. What a great show we have today. First, we're going to talk to Daily Beast political reporter, Zach Petrizoe.

And he's going to tell us about all the latest wacky stuff in Maga World. Then we're going to have an amazing conversation with Yulia Mendel, who was, of course, first a journalist who then turned to be President Zelensky of Ukraine's press secretary. And she's going to tell us about her new book, The Fight of Our Lives. My Time with Zelensky, Ukraine's Battle for Democracy, and what it means for the world. But first, let's have some fun. Andy, Levy. Molly. Jongfest.

Jesus. It sounded like you had forgotten my last name. Johnfest? Johnfest. I don't even know where to start. The Republican governor of Florida wants to run for president. And so he took a group of immigrants from Texas and flew them to Nancy to Martha's Vineyard because Barack Obama has a house there.

Basically, yeah. And I want to point out, I don't think Barack was at his house. No, it's off-season. Come on. Yeah, just checking. Like you don't know that, Molly. Yeah, I do know that. And around that last week also, Governor Greg Abbott, who may also have presidential ambitions, he took two busloads of immigrants and he dropped them at the vice president's house.

It was stunt week for Republican governors. Just guess. It's a real race to the bottom here as usual. And it's actually, what's a little scary is 2024 is still two years away. And this is where they are now. So imagine, I mean, they're going to literally be, you know, they're going to be holding executions,

public executions by November 2023 in an attempt to rally the base, I think. I would just want to say, in case that gets clipped, that he's kidding. Am I? Am I kidding? Am I kidding? About the idea of this. But I think there's a good point here, which is that these Republicans have decided that

this is a good way to delight the base and win the GOPian nomination. And also, and this is something I actually want to talk to you about, and I'm curious what you think. There certainly is a sense here, right? that these Republicans had gone all in on inflation, and they had been like, gas is so expensive, this is so expensive. Biden is doing a terrible job, right? And, you know, I mean, it's true that inflation is everywhere. It's true in the States, but it's much worse in the UK.

And now gas has been going down every day for like 90 days, I think. And so gas prices are no longer the thing that Republicans can run on. And I feel like around the time we hit 90 days of. descending gas prices was like the moment that these two Republicans were like, let's go do a stunt. Yeah, I think it's that. And I think it's also, as you've pointed out numerous times, it's abortion. They don't want to talk about abortion either. So what do you do? You dangle a shiny object in front of your base and in front of, you know, Fox News and the conservative media sphere. And this is what you get. You get people now talking about this, which you think is a good thing, which hopefully,

will not turn out to be a good thing, but they at least think it is. And they would much rather talk about immigration than they would abortion or at this point, as you said, you know, they've lost gas prices, shocking once the summer ended, gas prices went down. And, you know, inflation seems to be not as bad. I mean, we'll see if it keeps going in that direction. But for the moment, anyway, I totally agree. You know, it's stunt week. It's shiny object week. And I, I, And I really do think it's just going to keep getting worse. There was an interesting quote from DeSantis. He said, when people are brought to their front door, they go berserk.

Their virtue signaling is a fraud. He was talking about, you know, moving the immigrants, who, by the way, are asylum seekers. As we should always note, when talking about this, seek asylum is not illegal. Exactly. It's the definition of legal. It's like it's exactly what you do. But I thought it was interesting that he used the term their virtue. signaling because what he's doing, I know what he thinks he's doing there, but what he's really doing

is he's admitting that taking in the migrants is a virtue. Right. And that he is doing the opposite of something virtuous. He's not even bothering to signal that he's virtuous. What he is doing is wrong. And he's sort of admitting it there by calling, taking in the migrants, virtue signaling. And also, by the way, turned out to not be that much of a friend. fraud because they did take them in. They didn't go berserk, which is what they wanted.

That's the response the conservatives were expecting, and that led to, you know, the people of Martha's Vineyard took them in at a church, gave them food, and then the National Guard took them to an airbase where they could, you know, that was better set up as a facility. And you get places like the the Rupert Murlock owned New York Post talking about how... Saying how they were deported, yes. Yeah, saying that they were deported from Martha Zunier, which of course isn't true. But it doesn't matter because they're so used to lying that if something's not true, they don't care. Yeah.

So, you know, they didn't get the response they were hoping for, so they had a lie about that. And so the entire thing is just, you know, if you want to call anything a fraud, the fraud is obviously, it's DeSantis, it's the conservative media sphere. etc. And now we've got maybe a document that shows that possibly DeSantis at all broke the law by giving these migrants false information to get them on the flights. So we see these fake pamphlets that the immigrants were given. Now again, with all of these things, right, like with the Trump stuff, it's like, can you prove that DeSantis knew? Can you prove that DeSantis's people knew? Can you prove that they made the calls? So again, we're not speculating. We don't know. We just know that these people were given printed pamphlets.

We don't know who they were from, but I don't think they were from Democrats. Going to go out a lim here and say, I don't think that the Florida Democrats were printing these up, but we don't know who they were from, right? Yeah, but it's this document that was obtained by Judd Legham, who has a newsletter are called popular information. And the document seems to show that if, in fact, these documents were given to the people, which is the claim right now, the document told these asylum seekers that when they got to Massachusetts, they would be eligible for a whole bunch of benefits, none of which was true. What you're looking at is possibly, again, as you said, we don't know where this

document originated, but look, DeSantis chartered the planes. It was his office that took care of all of this. So who knows. But if you're getting people to go travel interstate on false pretenses, I believe there are laws against that. Yeah. And again, with these things like they're illegal, but again, who will prosecute? Will the DOJ do it? Right. I mean, there's a lot that can go wrong or for DeSantis in this case, right, that could lead from this to actually somebody being, you know, indicted. But that said, clearly they're in a very slippery slope here. And luckily, I think that I think Democrats are going to try as much as possible to hold them accountable. Yeah, I hope so. I mean, look, I don't have a hell of a lot of faith that the legal system will do anything about

this. But I do think that the more evidence that turns up like this and the more that just exposes how shady this whole thing was, the better. If nothing else, maybe it'll, you know, make them a little of trying these stunts again, hopefully. On the other hand, they might just, as we're seeing now, they might just fight over the credit for these stunts. Right. I mean, we don't even know where this is going to go. Yeah, we've got, you might remember Donald Trump.

Tell me more. He was president of these United States somehow for four years. I think he's still president, apparently. I think he's shadow president now. He might be the shadow president. Yes. That is the one thing I think we should take from the British government, by the way. think we should start using that term for the out of power party.

I really like it. Yeah. It just sounds cool. I think we should take nothing from the British government. Yeah. That's the only one. That's the only one. Corgies are good.

We like corgis. Also, we should maybe have a monarchy and then we can make Trump king and then he just, you know. Yeah, shut the fuck up. Continue. Let's go. He wanted to do anything about it. Anyway, he is apparently very upset about that Desantis sent these migrants to Martha's Vineyard.

Now, you're saying to yourself, Donald Trump is upset about this? He thinks this is bad? No, of course not. He is upset because he thinks it was his idea. And he is apparently, according to reporting at Rolling Stone by Adam Ronsley, he is fuming that DeSantis is getting all the quote-unquote credit for this when it was originally his idea. So again, as we said, race to the bottom and between Trump and DeSantis

and God knows who else might actually run. It really could get pretty scary the depths that they will sink to between now and 2024. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I don't, I think, yeah, it's not good. This is not what any of us want. It's so funny because it's like I think about it and I was so sure that Republicans would, like Trump would leave. I don't know what I was saying.

I thought Trump would leave and Republicans would like go back to Mitt Romney. I mean, I was really living in Lolloland, not that Republicans under. Mitt Romney were so great, but they weren't at least trying to, like, kill other politicians. But it turns out I was wrong. Yeah. I mean, the first thing you were wrong about was Trump leaving. Yes, also that. By the way, remember all those, like, incredible Wall Street Journal op-eds that were like,

Trump will leave happily. Oh, yeah. Trump, yeah, those are my favorite. Yeah, written by people like, I think it was Mick Mulvaney. Yeah, the best. Mick Mulvaney. Who's still now, even though you would think writing that and then given what happened, and that nobody would take him seriously or use him as a source or quote him anywhere,

but you would be wrong. You would be wrong. What about Mike Pence? He wrote that the pandemic was over. COVID was over. I remember that. Yeah, yeah. But he's also, you know, made peace with the fact that Donald Trump and his fans wanted to hang him.

So I guess there's a lot of things you can do and make peace with when all you care about is power. I don't know. It's very weird to me. Yeah. It's pretty bad. You would know more about that than I'm. I would, Molly. Clearly. Undoubtedly. Very likely. My quest for power noticed no bounds. None whatsoever. Except for all the bounds. Right. Except for the bounds. Speaking of Trump, Molly, even though you're barely here at this point.

Thanks. Very merry. No, speaking of Trump, he held a rally over the weekend, and those are always good times. the great state of Ohio. Yes, and the great state of, uh, of J.D. Vance. Yeah. Neither Great nor a state. No. A kind of weird thing happened toward the end of the Trump rally. A bunch of the people in the crowd just all held up one finger. They all held up their index finger. And as some sleuths found out, there was music playing under this. QAnonon music. Yeah, that is QAnon music. That called Qusik?

I don't think it's called Qusick, no. And Will Summer of the Daily Beast says the song is entitled WWG-1 WGA, which of course is the Q-Anon slogan, where we go one, we go all. I say, of course, because somehow we know this now, which is not something we should ever know. Yeah. All this stuff is now going on with Trump, where he had posted a picture of himself over on over on truth social. I think you might have retruthed it, Molly.

Yes, I definitely was the one who retrothed it. And he was wearing a lapel pin that said the storm is coming, which is another queue thing. I don't know. So what do we think is going on here? Is Trump going full queue? Is this just another way of trying to outright dissantis? Like what do we think is going on here? I think what's happening is that Trump knows that those are his people. He's feeling scared, that he's is losing, you know, he's sort of losing it. He loves that they love him. Yeah. Like, I don't think there's a complicated answer for this, if that makes any sense.

No, I think you're right. It's probably not a complicated answer, but it is, I mean, it's the most cue that we've seen from DJT. Yeah. But I mean, look, those are his people. Those are the people who will go with him anywhere, that he cannot alienate, that will do stuff for him that is just beyond the pale. So I think ultimately that I think he just knows those are his people and he doesn't want to lose

them. Yeah, I guess my only question would be, where do you think this advice is coming from that he needs to do this? Like, I find it hard to believe that he is knowledgeable enough about Q to do these things on his own. Like, I feel like someone is telling him he needs to do this. I mean, it's certainly possible. I also just think, like, think about being trying to.

Trump and having an implanted wig and having spent all this time being like the king of the Republican Party, right, with people worshipping you. And then all of a sudden you have all these different legal cases that are piling up. You have lawyers. You have the RNC telling you not to announce. And they threatened him that they would stop paying some of his legal bills. Right. You have all these lawyers that you're paying, even though you're paying them out of your

pack. You still have to pay millions of dollars a month in lawyers. I mean, if I were him, and again, I'm not him and, you know, for any number of reasons. But, I mean, I think, like, I think he's probably pretty panicked. And so, like, he knows these people love him. He loves adoration. And I think he feels like these people won't abandon him. And remember, like, on January 6th, he did everything he could to stay in power.

Right. And he was willing to, like, have people do violence on his behalf. And he never called them off. And so I do think, like, you know, this is a person. who will do desperate things. And I think that that's important to realize it's not important. It's depressing as how. Yeah, no, it really is.

And it, I mean, again, I think it fits in with the, you know, the race to the bottom with this antis sending the migrants. I think it's just, I think you're right. I mean, I think Trump knows that these are, these are his people and this is the core of his sort of, of his fandom or whatever you want to call it, are these people that have just gone more and more off the deep end. And, you know, that also, I don't know, that also leaves a lot of room for someone like DeSantis to seem a little saner, even though we should make clear he's not, really. Right. I mean, he's just as bad as Trump. I don't want to hear anymore that DeSantis is like

the civilized alternative to Trump or whatever. He's not. It's just that as Trump goes further and further off this deep end, and, you know, obviously we'll have to see if this continues and if it becomes even worse, it does run the risk of making DeSantis look a little more palatable. And I'm worried that we're going to see a lot of sort of media coverage of DeSantis be more favorable than it should be because he's not Trump. Yeah, I'm sure that's true. I mean, I think that's already, I don't know that you can even, like, I think that ship may have sailed.

We're already seeing people saying, yeah, DeSantis. is a little bit better than Trump. And look, he is, I mean, we're Democrats, so we don't agree with him because he's, the stuff he does is in my mind completely intolerable. But, I mean, he is more of the normal trajectory. Like, he didn't start out as a reality television host. I want to also say, like, he's not a charismatic guy.

So, like, while we're in this, you know, he does seem like he is racing Trump for the nominee. you know, he is about as charismatic as Marco Rubio. So I'm not sure that like a lot of us behave like he's the heir apparent for, you know, whatever. But I'm not sure that he actually is. I mean, that said, he's certainly a danger to democracy. Yeah, absolutely. Actually, I think that's the maybe the key phrase is the danger to democracy that Trump clearly is.

And I think that's maybe what's overlooked about DeSantis because he seems maybe it's because he's not charismatic, that he seems less of a danger to democracy. But I think you're right. I think he is right up there with Trump in terms of that. Yeah, it actually could be because he's not a charismatic guy that we look at him and we're like, well, if he killed someone on Fifth Avenue, he probably couldn't get away with it. But I don't know. I don't know that he couldn't. Yeah, I mean, I think he probably could.

Zach Petrizo is a politics reporter at The Daily Beast. Welcome to the new Abnormal's Act for Trezo. Molly, thanks so much for having me back. So first, I think we have to start by talking about Mike Lundale. The Fed seized his phone at a hearties discuss. Yeah, that's right. You heard it right. It wasn't an Arby's.

It wasn't a McDonald's. It wasn't any other fast food franchise. It was, you know, Hardys, which of course is kind of a throwback to the past, kind of like Mike Lindell himself. You know, I had heard from Mike that he ended up ordering a, what was it, a Swiss burger with a chocolate shake. Right. And the onions. Right. Exactly. So that was his big meal. And of course, while he's kind of going through the drive-thru, he orders, you know, his big meal and he's getting ready. Oh, he was going through the drive-thru. I thought he was, like, in the restaurant ordering. Yeah. So he was going through the drive-ththrough. So he was pulling up to like the first window. And the first window told him, hey, Mike, you know, you got to move forward.

you know, we'll get your meal out to you in a minute. So apparently he kind of already paid, this is kind of how it's going down, and he pulls up to the second window. Long and he's very short, a bunch of FBI vehicles, you know, SUVs kind of pull up behind them, a side of him, and box him in. And Mike Lindell, of course, thinks this is some sort of, you know, skit from a movie. He thinks these are possible attackers. If you, you know, if you really study Mike Lindell, you know that, you know, he views

pretty much any adversary as an attacker traditionally of the Antifa set. Oh, yeah. Who among us? So these weren't Antifa attackers. Of course, these were, you know, federal agents. And so he gets out of his car, kind of sticks his head out the door and says, Who are you? Show me your badges. And long story short, the FBI approaches Mike and, you know, in the middle of this Hardy's drive-through and shows him his badges.

And Mike Lindell's pretty hesitant. Long story short, Mike Lindell kind of is, you know, back and forth with him for a while, you know, trying to tell them about Jesus and Christ and all this. type of stuff trying to like convert them and and all this type of stuff telling him about all the evidence quote unquote that he has about the 2020 election and then long story short they take his phone so of course they had one for this this all tracks back to basically Tina Peters which is of course is this Colorado election official who basically tampered with voting machines and it's an ongoing investigation out there into kind of Mike Lindell's role into all this as he's been kind of

Tina Peters closest advisor and you know he's helped to stash her away in secret locations and things like this. So the investigations are really heating up and Mike Lindell is really at the center of it. Wow. Can you explain to us just the story of Tina Peters for those of us who are not as online as we are? Sure. Yeah. So Tina Peters was this election official in Colorado. Was running for Secretary of State, right? She was a county clerk. Oh, right, right. But I think she was running for Secretary of State before she got indicted or arrested. Correct. Yes. And she ended up claiming, of course, in true kind of in true, you know, of these people, she claimed that, you know, that election was fraudulently taken from her,

and I think she lost by a landslide, I would recall correctly. Tina Peters was this election clerk. She kind of rose to stardom after she kind of took matters into her own hands and copied a bunch of data and information, kind of took it from a diminient voting machine. Long story short, you know, she had all this kind of information. It's still kind of unclear exactly what, kind of a scan of the machine, which is, you know, kind of illegal to do. It is illegal to do.

And long story short, this is kind of snowballed, if you will. And Michael Lindell has kind of taken her under his wing and said, hey, you know, this is all the evidence to prove that the 2020 election was stolen. The machines, you know, messed with the votes in the middle of the night type of stuff. And, you know, since then, you know, Mike Lindell has paraded Tina Peters at his, you know, cyber events, right? We've had two different ones so far. And basically she gets up on stage, does this whole thing and kind of claims, you know, a bunch of stuff. And then Mike Lindell claims, you know, his big things attackers, as we know, he thinks that like Antifa's after her and other entities.

So then he like stashes her away in secret locations and things of this nature. So he's clearly had a role in kind of helping to hide her from authorities and things of that nature. So it is kind of interesting to see how this probe is kind of heating up. And Mike Lindell is now really entangled in a lot of legal issues. Of course, when this podcast episode airs, which, you know, on Tuesday, and Mike Lindell claims he's suing the FBI, which is really hard to do. So it'll be interesting to see what comes to that.

Yeah, how do you sue the FBI? Yeah, that's a really interesting question. You know, the Daily Beast has tried to get some answers to that. For example, Mike Lindell told me that, and told the Daily Beast that he had enlisted Alan Dershowitz to help him. Oh, yeah. But of course. I call up Alan Dershowitz and he's like, I can't talk about this.

Oh, why? Yeah, so it's like no one seems to have answers about how they're going to sue the FBI. Just pay up on caveos, Zach. That's how you get up to talk. Right, that's what I would suggest. Yeah, wow. So we have Mike Lindell. He no longer has his phone.

He just has like a burner phone? Yeah, so basically what had happened was is they took his phone and he had some stuff on an ICloud with an assistance phone. And apparently what he did is just kind of got a new phone somehow, remains unclear, probably just bought a new phone, and got basically all his information from the iCloud onto a new phone. And he was at the Trump rally Saturday, basically, you know, seen picture, you know, on his new phone. So that's pretty much it. I will say the big winner out of all this is hardy's.

Explain. Well, they sent out a series of tweets and it was like something to the effect of, you know, Now that you've heard about us, you can try our pillow-y biscuits, right? Oh, yeah, pillow-y biscuits. You know, this is like, by the way, this is like a middle America thing. It's, we don't have it in the north. Yeah, I don't think it's... That's not correct.

Okay, cut me out, Jesse, because I don't want to be spreading misinformation. Where are hearties, Jesse? We can't say the north because they're in Ohio. Oh. Have you been to a hearties, Jesse? A lot. In fact, not the chocolate shake, but I've had that sandwich he ate. What the fuck, Jesse?

And how is it? Fucking terrible. It's the only thing worse than it is Arby's. What the hell is happening? Things have really gone off the rails. Speaking of things going off the rails, Texas dumps two busloads of migrants in front of Kamala Harris's D.C. residents. Explain this to me. This story did not get as much play as DeSantis' Martha's Vineyard situation.

Yeah, so this is kind of the work of Greg Abbott. I would say, as you noted Molly, you know, just the DeSantis. world, you know, DeSantis has done this with migrants. And basically, I mean, it's almost right out of Trump's playbook. I mean, Trump was pushing this idea for a long time of basically dumping migrants in democratic cities as kind of this really ugly, disgusting stunt. And the latest one to kind of partake in this stunt is Greg Abbott of Texas. So yeah, so he took basically a busload of migrants, put him on a bus, sent him up to the Naval Observatory, which is Kamal Harris. versus kind of residents in Washington, D.C.

Right. It's where the vice president lives. And the Daily Beast was up there, and, you know, we'd spoken with an advocate for the migrants up there. And she had told the Daily Beast that, you know, a lot of the migrants were very worried and were very confused as well. So that was really a sight to see as they, you know, usually will go to a place like Union Station in Washington, D.C., which provides them an opportunity to kind of, you know, they

have transportation, they have food there. But, you know, up near Kamala Harris's house, there's nothing, right? Right. I mean, it's just, it's a bunch of fenced in, closed-door embassies. Right. With nowhere for these, you know, migrants to go. So, you know, it's already super, super messed up that it's happening and they're sending them to the Union Station.

But on top of it, they were sent to, you know, nowhere's land up in D.C. And you could see these people were really confused and, you know, quite frankly, struggling. I mean, they didn't know where to go or what to do or who to call or things like that. So, yeah. I can't believe how just incredibly grim this all is. It's so tragic. I mean, like, these are human beings. Yeah, no, they are. I think you're right. I think, you know, as all this is happening, you know, we see people like Stephen Miller on TV, you know, kind of, you know, giving the evil laugh and enjoying and enjoying this as, you know, these these migrants are kind of pushed around all over the place. It is kind of, you know, pretty pretty depressing and super

sad to see. Yeah. I mean, it just is such an incredible bummer a little bit more about Mike Lundell. Trump had a rally this weekend in Ohio. Mike Lundell was the opening act, but he was outside. Explain. Yeah. Yeah, so Michael Endell gave this kind of speech outside on this podium. Long and very short, I think Michael Lindell and Marjor Taylor Green are becoming larger fixtures at these Trump rallies. I mean, possibly, you know, an interesting person quote here is Anne Colter, who said recently in a podcast, she said, all these people at these rallies are deadheads. They follow Trump around.

Yeah. While Anne Colter is, you know, possibly, you know, worst human being, you know, not great stuff. But, you know, I think she is kind of right in this situation. I mean, to a certain extent. I mean, these people aren't necessarily local people from the area. These are Trump supporters that, you know, get in the, you know, that load up the RV, load up the car and travel across to Trump's next rally, right? And one of the things that they really love is Mike Lindell and Marjorie Hiller Green.

And, of course, you know, Mike Lindell kind of got on this stage and said, you know, we're going to sue, you know, the federal government. We're going to sue the FBI. We're going to sue them for infringement of the Sixth Amendment, I think the Fourth Amendment, the Fifth Amendment, the First Amendment, you know, all these amendments. When you don't know what the amendments are, you can say anyone you want, right? Yeah. What about the 104th Amendment? Are we going to get that? You know, with Mike, I think you might.

You know, I'm surprised he just doesn't sue for all the amendments, quite frankly. But yeah, no, I think, you know, as these rallies become more and more of, you know, kind of a carnival, if you will, of characters, you know, and Marjorie Taylor Green are really taking center stage, quite frankly. And we see, you know, places like, excuse me, RSBN really, you know, growing. Explain to people who are less online what RSBN is. Yeah. So RSBN is just pro-Trumpian, not kind of a YouTube channel. Now it's more a rumble channel.

It's basically this pro-Trump podcasting folks that basically, you know, right around the country of the Trump, promote Mike Lindell, promote a bunch of right-wing causes. is, you know, their new thing is a frying pan that cooks pancakes in the face of Trump, right? So you can have, like, Trump pancakes now. It's really just the Trump Roadshow, if he will. Right. That is, you know, continue to pick up speed and continue to grow even more pro-Trumpian. You know, they have on, like, you know, January 6th defendants and, you know, on camera and stuff like that.

Wow. So say I were a young conservative woman and I wanted to meet a man. believable. Yes, who was as unhinged as I was. Where would I meet that man? So I guess one place, if you're part of the D.C. media conservative bubble, one of these places that, you know, the right is hoping you would go to is this place called the right stuff, right? Why?

Not to be confused with the white nationalist site called the right stuff. Yeah, it's good when you share a name. Like, that's probably the best is to share a name with a white nationalist. Yeah, a white nationalist website that, you know, similar to like V-DARE, right? Yeah. Not to be confused with the other right-wing dating, or excuse me, the other dating app called The Right Stuff that has been around since the early 1990s. Right, that's the one I've heard of where the Ivy League graduates to meet each other.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, yes, yes, yes. So not to be confused with those two things. Yeah. We're talking about the third, the right stuff, which is a conservative. dating app that has been launched by none other than Kaylee McInney's sister, Ryan McIennie. Who do you know these people? Yeah, go on. Yeah. And the guy named Johnny McEntee, who was Trump's former body man, right?

Yeah. So these two have basically said to each other, hey, you know, let's kick up this dating app. Let's get this thing started. And they have some other, you know, former Trump, you know, younger former Trump folks that are working with them. And basically they went to Peter Thiel and said, hey, you know, help us fund this project. Longer Story short, Peter Thiel tosses in a million and a half bucks. Wow. That's not very much money for Peter Thiel, though it is a lot of money for the rest of us. Yeah. You know, it might not be a ton of money for an investment for someone like Peter Teal, but I will say it's without question kind of the best funded one of these ventures, one of these companies, that's like, you know, an app, you know, it's way better funded than Donald Dators was,

for example. What? Wait. Donald's Daiters? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mumble, you weren't on Donald Daiters? I mean, I don't think my husband would have liked it, but what is Donald Daters? Donald Daters was another app that was like, it failed almost immediately. But it was geared towards the Navy Yard, Washington, D.C., young conservative crowd. And it was basically, you know, all the Trump administration folks, the younger Trump administration folks were, you know, trying to get on to this app called Donald Daters.

And it was basically a bumble for Trumpian folks, which is pretty much the same thing we have with the right stuff, except, you know, as we reported this weekend in a report over at the Daily Beast. My colleague and I know what Kirsch kind of unraveled that the right stuff has a lot of issues, Molly. So not only does it have a potential cease and desist letter from the other dating app called The Right Stuff, right? Of course. I would hope. Yeah. So not only do they have that trouble on the horizon.

But they also are having a problem recruiting women in D.C. Really? Yeah. Just shocked. Continue. So long and short, you know, the Daily Beast had obtained a bunch of group messages, basically showing that, you know, instead of, you know, women, Trump associates, Republican staffers saying positive things about this app, they were passing around screen grabs, basically bashing it and kind of mocking it and be lit.

What? There was one source for the story that joked to the Daily Beast. Look, it's all. Mitch McConnell staffers, right? So. At least it's them. So the whole project's kind of

off to a bad start and seems to be kind of going downhill as, you know, kind of apps like hinge and bumble, you know, you already can kind of sort through people based on political preferences. So I will note this is a pretty big Peter Teal investment in

the space, right? I mean, this is a pretty big bet on some little dating app to basically turn into the next hinge or Bumble or the next, you know, match.com, if you will. And quite frankly, in a matter of, you know, the app hasn't even launched yet. And it's already, you know, facing legal issues and people are mocking it. And, you know, like I said, it hasn't even launched. So it is a pretty big failure in kind of the, in the portfolio of Peter Thiel Ventures that I think is

really interesting. Thoughts and prayers. Maybe neither thoughts nor prayers. Tell me what else are you seeing? in like the sort of peripheral characters of Trump world. Anything else exciting and interesting and strange that you want to tell us about? Sure, yeah. I mean, I'm really seeing kind of a, if you will, the temperature on the DeSantis Trump kind of rivalries, really heating up.

You know, I would say more, you know, pro-Trump pundits that are kind of with the Fox News set. For example, Lisa Booth, right? You know, it seems like she, you know, wants a pretty big Trumpian voice is now kind of moving more towards the DeSantis camp, right? We see Fox News kind of, you know, drifting away a little bit at a time from Trump. And there's been some frustration expressed, you know, among the higher ops in Trump world about this. So, yeah, so I'm kind of watching that drift and kind of a growing faction, if you will. We know that Trump world is already full factions, right? We know that, you know, Bannon World and Kushner World hate each other and we know, you know, all those different factions

in between. But I think it is interesting to see kind of this emerging DeSantis World faction among these people that have kind of, you know, made their name of chilling in a Trump in all of his, and all of his craziness. Does it really seem like there's a sense that this group could go somewhere else? You mean in terms of the DeSantis? Could Trump's people switch? Like, is there a sense? Like, are they loyal to him or does it sound like they're really not?

The hardcores really are, right? But I would say that Trump, even more than the hardcores, even though people like Cash Patel, right? Trump needs right-wing media, you know, I think more than ever, quite frankly, right? Because he's not on Twitter, and he's relying a lot on Fox News. He's relying a lot on Fox News digital. He's relying a lot on showing up on these podcasts, you know, these more fringe QAnon podcast than ever before. And, you know, I really do believe that, you know, if we start seeing a drift away from some of these Fox News pundits, you know, and they start swinging to the DeSantis camp, You know, it makes it all that much harder for Trump to really get in a word and what could become a very, very messy Republican primary down in the year, you know, with the years to come in terms of Trump and Distanhas. So I think, I think watching some of these pundits and the way in which they move, you know, is quite interesting. That was great. You're amazing, Zach. Thank you. Thank you. Julia Mendel is a former press secretary to Ukraine's President Zelensky and the author of The Fight of Our Lives.

my time with Zelensky, Ukraine's battle for democracy, and what it means for the world. Welcome to the new abnormal, Julia. Well, thank you, Molly, for having me. I'm very excited. I want to talk first about the May 2019 phone call you got. Explain to us how that went down, because this is kind of amazing. Molly, that was a crazy story. So when Zelensky came to power, he's the president of Ukraine now, right?

he won this like enormous competition with 73% of support. He comes to power and he is popular as a rock star. Like literally everyone works to work with him. And he announces the competition for big top political positions as well as of his press secretary. And I remember he announced it on Facebook. He just went to Facebook and said like, I need a press secretary. We're opening the competition here.

And I applied. I applied to learn later that there was. were 4,000 of applicants. Imagine that number. So we had a lot of stages and the latest stage is the interview was the president. And I'm coming to the office on Saturday and I'm like, what I expect, right? And they're right there. The president full in jeans, suit and t-shirt and his team and they're testing me as if they're media sharks. And then there is one question that he asks me about my motivation. And I think that was the most important question during our conversation. So he asked me why he needed to hire me. And I think that was the most important question and answer. And I

improvised, but I thought, okay, he is a person from a modest background from some province and he becomes the president of the country. And I'm a journalist from the poor background somewhere from another region and I can become his press secretary. So what is it, if not a Ukrainian dream, when everyone can achieve whatever he or she wants? So I think, I think. then he understood that we shared the vision of the country and he hired me. So cool. So, and you're both young, right? Well, he's 44. I'm 36. In Ukraine, it's quite a matured age. Over here, at the new abnormal, we consider that to be very young. So explain to me what it was

like taking this job. I mean, I feel like almost immediately you started getting attacked by Russian propaganda. Oh, absolutely. First of all, imagine me 32 years old, females sitting at the table with men who are more matured, who are richer, you know, and who are powerful, and all of them want to influence the decisions of the president. And they literally thought that my voice was not that important, right?

But I needed to do the job. And I knew how to do that, and they did not. So there were a lot of interest. weeks inside the office, but the president decided to make my voice stronger and he provided me this opportunity to be equal with this man. But on the other hand, I was literally attacked so much that if you go in Russian information space, you will find absolutely different Yule Mandel. And I don't know this Yulein Mandel. And they were saying that I was like, I bought a luxury car for my very small salary and put on template my last name or they were like saying that I could

have some personal relation with the president and they literally made the biggest show about this. So it went like hugely around Ospo's Soviet region. It was all the time. Like all the time I was attacked and I think there was a lot of this misogyny for the reason that I was attacked for my appearance. like I didn't look enough to represent the country or that I didn't have skills enough. They tried to attack the presidents

through every member of his team. And I was there on the front line of information war. So interesting. They even said about that you were pregnant with this baby, right? Which is ridiculous, absolutely, and didn't make any sense. But there were six experts in Russian TV talking for 11 minutes about something

that did not exist. First of all, you met Vladimir Putin. Can you talk about that? Yeah. Volodomr Zelensky met him once, and I was the part of the team, so I was there. That happened in December 2019, when Zelensky tried to achieve peace. For the reason that Russia attacked Ukraine

for the first time back in 2014 and made military conflict in the Donbass and the next Crimea, and we wanted to finish this battle. And I think that when I saw that, I thought Putin was so outdated. He was like from the past. He had outdated worldview, outdated thoughts, outdated behavior, outdated wording, everything from him. It was like the atmosphere of the past. And you know what's interesting?

He developed this image of a strong man, of a dictator, and everybody thinks that he is very strong in negotiations. But it's absolutely wrong. He's absolutely weak negotiator for the reason that for the last 23 years, he never negotiated anything. He just was ordering. He doesn't like when people contradict. He doesn't like when people oppose. He just orders and expects that his orders are implemented.

So negotiations was not his really like a great side. And he never agreed for the next meeting with Zelensky. Were you scared? Because like, I mean, he has meetings where he poisons people. Well, I didn't think I would be poisoned in Paris, but I was scared. Like, we all were one nerve. We were sitting there and watching how the fate of our country was negotiated. It was really nervous, and Zelensky was preparing, like, hugely.

The more than he prepared for any other meeting I've seen for this meeting. Wow. Zelensky was, and a lot of people were sort of like, it's not going to happen. and the war's not going to happen, like, just keep going. Did you really think it wasn't going to happen, or did you think it was going to happen? I'm explaining a lot what was happening before the war in my book, The Fight of Our Lives, that was out last Tuesday. And definitely, we saw a lot of intelligence.

And with our minds, we analyzed the situation. But it's so unbelievable to see that somebody comes to your country and repeats the whole horrors from 20th. from the Second World War, from the artificial famine, genocidal practices on such a large scale, that hearts of Ukrainians, they could not believe that. Even today, living in Ukraine, I talk to people and they see all this happening. They go through this experience, and they say we still cannot believe it's happening. It's so far from our identity.

We never attacked anyone. We are civilized country. We share Western values. why on earth? So, yeah, the fight of our lives explains all those moments before the war, like what we experienced

and how we were preparing some governmental structures were preparing. Some people did not believe, but then, you know, we just needed to deal with it. And here, Zelensky really behaved as a leader

and that's why he is so much prize throughout the country. Can you believe how well Ukraine has done in this war? Were you surprised? To be frank, at the very beginning, we were not acting and living life of normal people. Right. Like we saw that around us, the world was collapsing.

Everything that we were building, everything that we believed in, everything that we planned or dreamt about, it just was collapsing. So, but Ukrainians, you know, we are very strong nation. To be frank, we were strong because we believe in our country. And I know that through 31 years of independence, we have already had generations who do not have any traumas from post-Soviet time. And they don't know what it was like. They share the Western values. They want to have their open world, their global citizens, but also they are peters because they understand that this is their home.

They are, you know, they were brought up as generations of freedom. And they cannot also believe that it's possible to take something from us. So we principally made the decision to stay in the country to do everything what's possible. And my now husband then went to a front line because every man had that, you know, feeling that they needed to do something. I can't say I was surprised, but we believed, you know, that's the power of hope and the power of belief that we would fight back. And in this, in my book, the fight of our lives, I'm explaining all those emotions, that Ukrainians are passing while making decisions to go to the front line where they can die.

And we still do not know how many Ukrainians died on the front lines. But the civilians numbers, they are huge. They are thousands and thousands of thousands. We really need to stop these atrocities and to stop Putin. Otherwise, you know, the democracy can just fail. I'm curious when the war first went on, there were a lot of people who wanted to to leave. And in fact, the Russian disinformation, you know, world was saying, oh, he's left, he's left. How do you decide to get him to stay? I mean, were you like, oh, my God, I could be killing our

president? I'm not talking about you. I mean, by you, the group, yeah. Absolutely. I understand what you are asking about. Because, you know, the leader in the war is one of the most important pillars, right? We had seen all Afghanistan and, you know, when the leaders leave, people lose hope. Within this, I must say that due to the fact that Zelensky wanted to achieve peace with Russia in Donbass, Russia attacked it back in 2014. He was traveling a lot to Donbass military zone. And I was traveling with him. And I saw how many times he was not afraid to go to the front lines just to handshake with the soldiers. And there were many moments when the shaling started. And once we were staying there, the shilling started, but we were living, he returned

back. He fought his security and he went to the front line where the shilling was. He said, I'm a leader. I'm not living when my people are under threat. He was taking this so personally that he thought, you know, he needed to risk life to get there and to show the people he is with that. So if it was happening somewhere, you know, in more smaller situations, then it just happened on the large scale. And I was not surprised that he stayed because he always believed that the leader must stay with the people. You know, despite of probably mistakes that he made as semivis in the wartime during the wartime, he made huge steps that united Ukraine and he united the whole civilized world to help us. So of course, you know, he is behaving as a leader and prized a lot. And I'm

explaining a lot about his portrait in my book, The Fight of Our Lives. And I think it's interesting to see him from inside. It's so interesting. The other thing that I think that is really amazing is that you kind of did, and I mean you in the whole Zelensky government, you were so brilliant on the messaging. Did you know when it was happening that you were just so smart about it? Or did you, were you surprised at how well you'd done, ultimately? If you ask me about how Zelensky shapes the messages, definitely at the very beginning, I was there to help him message. I mean, at the beginning of his presidency. At the same time, he's well-talented person in writing

because he developed this humor business empire, and he started from writing with the whole team long ago, these great pieces of scenarios. So, in fact, when he is writing the speeches, he actually provides the best ideas and the best metaphors, And he manages all the speeches by himself, what he wants to say. And he is really, really very attentive to the speeches, especially when he speaks to the governments and, you know, the people who can influence. That's why they're so great, usually, because he puts his own talent in the speeches.

Do you feel safe in Ukraine now? Like when you go home, are you feeling safe or is it still really scary? You know, I don't think that anyone in Ukraine feels safe for the reason that, you know, our security, levels, they were damaged a lot because there were a lot of the situations when we were attacked in different parts of the country. For you to understand, once we came,

during the hot stage of the war, we came to Kiev, which was absolutely empty and was a fortress with checkpoints and, you know, curfews and people with rifles. And Russians were not far from the house where we stayed and they shelded with greats. So we were just the only house that stayed

without fire there. All the forest around was in fire. the houses near were in fire. And I remember I was staying. They were firing. And I stay, I'm not afraid with my mind, but by my legs, they're shaken. Right. You know, then that was happening everywhere where we were going.

They shelled every city where I was. So we don't feel like very safe, but it's much better for the reason that Russia does not shell so much the other parts of the country. They understand that they are being defeated right now. Wow. And they focused more. in the East and the South, but we also understand that with the help of the weaponry and all the resources that the US and European country provides us, we can really keep them out. And that's very

important. And in the fight of our lives, I'm explaining how important it is for every Ukrainian because millions of people believe in this country. Because we have the values and we have the motivation. We are fighting for our families, for our homes, we are fighting for our choice to be Western oriented country and they don't have any motivation. Corruption became the part of Russian identity. That's why the servicemen did not have food, didn't have fuel, didn't have good equipment, and they don't have any motivation to kill people. That's why Russians are sending there now criminals. I'm sure that you saw the reporting. They are sending their Chechen guys, mercenaries, but I'm sure if the world stays united, we can win this war. We can gain our territory and

get back our people. So interesting and so important. Thank you so much for joining us. This was great. Thank you. Molly, thank you for having me. It's my honor to talk to your audience. Andy Levy. Molly Jongfest. Who is your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy is a Republican governor, but not from Texas or Florida. He is from the great state. slash Commonwealth of Virginia, because I'm blanking on which one they are. Does he wear a red flannel vest? Yes, he does wear he is partial to the red flannel, sands, sleeves. Always a good look.

But he would, you know, he's kind of been touted as, he's been touted as the, as the, a return to normalcy for the Republicans, a sane guy, you know, not a trumper. And a couple things. One, he's out in Arizona campaigning for Carrie Lake. Who is not a sane girl. By any stretch of the imagination. Yeah. So already, no, he's not a sane alternative.

And he's continuing to do really, really bad things to transgendered students. And in this case, he's rolling back a bunch of things, and he is getting rid of the bathroom policies and making a bathroom and locker rooms have to be based on, quote, unquote, biological sex. and that students who are under 18, which is basically all students who aren't in college, have to be referred to by the name and pronouns in their official record unless their parents approve of something else. So he's taking agency away from these kids and if, you know, for whatever reason they have parents who are not sympathetic. She's picking on LGBTQ kids again. That's exactly what he's doing.

And again, there's the only reason. for stuff like this is to make people uncomfortable, is to make transgendered kids uncomfortable, and to make their lives worse. And this is where we are right now. I mean, it's the, you know, it's the Adam, sir, quote, the cruelty is the point. And all of this is intentionally cruel,

and it has no point beyond that. It really does show that even the, quote, unquote, sane Republicans are sort of, They're just not good people. They're just cruel. They're using cruelty to advance themselves. Yeah. I never thought I would be the guy who would talk about political differences by saying they're

not good people. They have changed. It may not be forever. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I hope it makes people's blood boil that they are doing this and stuff like this. And I'm losing the ability to speak because it gets me so upset. So I'm just going to end with Governor Glenn Yonkin.

Fuck that guy. My fuck that guy is one, Matt Gates. Remember when Matt Gates said that it could be, if he had a problem, it could be Gates, Gate. Yes. Yes. Remember that? He said, if I get into trouble, it can be Gates, Gate. I bet he regrets that joke.

Like, I bet he's like sitting there going like, going there like, oh, I shouldn't have made that. Like, I've played it a little too fast and loose. Anyway, every day is like a different. piece of this story, but ultimately, Matt Gates is kind of continuing to be under FBI investigation, though has not been charged. Last week, we learned that Matt Gates had asked for a pardon, which makes sense because the Justice Department is investigating into whether Matt Gates paid for sex, paid for women to travel across state lines to have sex, and had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old. I would like to point out that Matt Gates' best friend and I want to say wingman, Joel Greenberg, has been pleading out in the since, since spring of 2021 for sex trafficking and he is fully cooperating with prosecutors and planning to testify in court.

Now, I'm just going to say it tends to be you don't let someone roll unless they're coming in on someone who's a bigger fish. So my hot take, and again, we never know how this is going to play out, but it certainly seems like Matt Gates' gate ain't over. So he gets a hardy, fuck that guy. I can't argue with your fuck that guy. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science.

We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite. podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber.

Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast. podcast and sign up today.