The Daily Beast Podcast - How the Trump Campaign Lit a Billion Dollars on Fire

Episode Date: September 18, 2020

The Trump campaign raised more cash than just about any campaign in history—and it’s still broke, pulling TV ads in big states and slowing down key data operations. On the latest episode of The New Abnormal, Rick Wilson breaks down for Molly Jong-Fast—and the rest of us—how Team Trump managed to burn a billion bucks. First off, the Trump spent something like $400 million to raise that billi, an absolute ungodly sum, straight into the fundraisers’ pockets. So you’re down to $600 million. Then you take the Trumps’ skim off the top, call it 20%, and you’re at $480 million. Throw in some bonehead moves, like $11 million on Superbowl ads and another million on D.C. market ad buys. Layer in $20 million per month in staff costs and—well, it ain’t the first enterprise Trump has run into the ground. But that doesn’t mean you should count Team Trump out of the election. “There's nothing they won't do to hold power,” Rick says. “If Donald Trump was told tomorrow, 'you have to go personally kill Ruth Bader Ginsburg.' He would do it. If Donald Trump's told tomorrow that you have to feed Melania to dogs, he would do it. This guy has to hold power or he is in the deepest possible hole.” Then! Molly talks about taking part in a COVID vaccine trial—to show the skeptics on the left that it’s safe. Former Obama national security aide Ben Rhodes talks about how world leaders have “already moved on” from America. And progressive congressional candidate Jamaal Bowman dishes on the advice he got from AOC: “Jamal, don't be shocked when you get here. It's like an upside down world.” Plus! Fascist Huckleberry Hound! ‘Sexy’ Ben Shapiro! Gourmet food stores filled with Antifa! Teen trolls! And the Trump campaign kid who’s monitoring this pod for his slice of that billion-dollar pie. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi folks, it's Rick Wilson, and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, a left-wing pundit and editor-at-large at the Daily Beast. I'm also an editor at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, best-selling author, and full-time troublemaker. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, business, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. I'll try to keep Rick to the minimum number of F-bombs and try to keep our... kids, pets, and other wildlife sounds from invading our respective bunkers. Rick Wilson. Yes.

Has your state of mind changed since you are now in your new special undisclosed location? My state of mind is warlike, bloodthirsty, bordering on unconstrained violence. I just sound calm. So you've been subjected to herd mentality? If I were with a group of people who were all equally feeling the same way, some could say that that would be a herd mentality. Or if you were a president admitting that you never really had a fucking plan and that all the whole thing was essentially based on getting to herd immunity. So I was talking to Andy Slavitt last night about this. It didn't affect like 60 to 70 million Americans.

And even if you have like a 1.9% fatality rate at that point, you're going to kill 3 million people. So he basically admitted that his plan that the Trump plan is to kill 3 million Americans. Yay! Here's my other question about this hurt mentality, as it's called, by. the president moron. He doesn't realize there's reinfection. Look, there's a lot of things that President fuckwit von medieval scientist doesn't understand.

He's burning down the head of his own CDC. Who's already pretty fucking sketchy. I mean, Redfield is pretty... I mean, Redfield's no Scott Atlas. Right, exactly. Because if you could detect COVID with x-rays, Scott Atlas would be very much at home,

but apparently he's unable to. This is like saying, hey Rick, I know you're an accomplished pilot, but could you go ahead and fly this rocket to the space station for me? No, no, I can't. It's a different set of specializations. But anyway, the story was Scott Atlas, is a radiologist from Stanford who has been brought on by President Trump to push this idea of herd immunity, and he's already been sort of disavowed by numerous Stanford professors and doctors, just for those of you keeping track at home. Is that fair? There is very little to recommend him to manage.

a national pandemic that is about to enter the second phase. Pandemic two, this time it's personal. And now, folks, I've officially ticked off with doing one voice for the week. I know, that's it. We're holding you to one voice. We are in this fascinating and terrifying time where the president has been, like, it's so clear, we have 20% of the COVID deaths in the world. The numbers aren't good. When Kaylee was confronted by that yesterday, she was like, those aren't our numbers. Well, yes, because her numbers, are that no one in America really got COVID.

What they all got was another condition that just simply caused their lungs to shut down and have fatal pneumonia. I mean, they must have already had fatal pneumonia. It couldn't have been COVID. Right, exactly. So there's a lot of insane conspiracy theories being pushed by this president,

which is so weird. So we're basically, I think we're waiting for the fall spike, right? We are waiting for the false spike. Molly, speaking of coronavirus, I saw your excellence in the New York Times today. congratulations. Oh, thank you. It was well done and well put. But tell us a little bit more about it, about what's happening in your secure out of its closed location. Yes, otherwise known as New York City.

The blazing air escape. That's right. It's burning. Actually, I went to this, we have this, like, very good gourmet food store that just opened. It's very dangerous, filled with Antifa. I wrote this piece. I went to Yale, and I had the first vaccine, though we don't know, because it could be a placebo. And then it was totally fascinating and they took blood. And it was the first time I've ever had a COVID test. Because even though I lived through this terrible period of like crazy COVID where 10 feet from me, all these people were dying, I actually have been really careful. So I've never needed a COVID test.

So I did this self-administered COVID test. It was just a very interesting experience. And in the end, I didn't have any symptoms. But everyone I know who's in this trial and I know about seven people who are in the Pfizer trial all believe they got placebos because they're just, I don't think you get a lot of symptoms from this vaccine, but I felt it was very important to take it because I knew that people have a lot of hesitancy, even on the left, which is baffling to me. Literally, every time Trump talks about vaccines, people become less likely to take them. Like, it's amazing. And that's true on the

left. I mean, I guess that on the right, they're more likely to take it, though they seem to be huge anti-vaxxers. But I wanted to take it to show people that it was safe. And so that's what I did. Well, I have to say this. I'm glad you did it. And given the same opportunity, I would do it. As much as Trump has tried to oversell the arrival time of a vaccine, I'm enormously hopeful we will get a vaccine. But as Fauci and everyone else who's a grown-up has been saying, it's not going to be this fall, folks.

It's not going to be the spring. It's going to be next summer or next fall by the time it's tested, verified, validated as safe. And we build the massive distribution network that's going to be required because apparently the vaccines in this category require. Why are they be kept at like 80 degrees below zero or something? Yeah. It's not an easy lip. Let's just say this, though. If we had a vaccine today, I know we could count on Jared Kushner to organize a great

team of his friends from college to, oh, wait, we couldn't. I mean, we couldn't even get the testing swabs, right? I mean, it's an interesting situation because there's so much incompetence at every level. I mean, they couldn't get the masks. They couldn't get the PPE. They couldn't get. So the idea that they're going to be able to deal with this highly fractal. vaccine that needs two injections, it's going to be problematic. It's going to take a long time.

That said, I think if we're in a world where at least healthcare workers are getting vaccinated and we have some level of vaccination, I mean, we saw this summer in New York, people were, even though we are, there's reinfection and our testing numbers are going up, so we're probably going to have to shut down all the schools again, or at least, they're pretty much shut down, but even still, like a little bit of vaccine will be helpful. I think that's right. And I think there's a degree to which anything that starts to cut the numbers even at the margins of spread or of additional infection is a valuable and meritorious thing. But I'm confident folks that we're not going to have a vaccine before election day, but brace yourselves for the president declaring that

we will. And even the serology tests, so they made it so these serology tests got passed much faster and the CDC didn't weigh in on them and they didn't need to be approved. And so now the serology tests are basically just junk. And a lot of them don't. tell you anything. And so I do think, even though, I mean, Trump's idea was that regulation is bad and any regulation is bad. And certainly that can be true. But in this case, I'm a person who really believes in taking care of the environment, but I also believe that the government sometimes does make really stupid regulations. But these regulations about things working and your health care, those are in there for a reason. Well, yeah. Look, the idea that there are regulatory hurdles in

getting a COVID vaccine and COVID treatments and COVID testing out the door that should be minimized and mitigated? Absolutely. It would be very smart if very smart people could do this. But what's the problem with the Trump administration, Molly? What was it? Oh, they're not very smart. Thank God they're stupid because they're also super corrupt. And let's talk about the most corrupt member of Trump world, shall we? Let's do that. Who am I talking about? Well, I consider the most corrupt member of Trump world to be, of course, Donald Trump. But second is the boy blunder. Jared Kushner. No, I'm going somewhere else with this. You are? He looks like Huckleberry Hound. Will that be Bill Barr? These prosecutors do you know, remember who they work for. It's not

Lady Liberty. It's not justice. It's me, bitches. I am really looking forward to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission because I am going to work his ass over. That man is a truly terrifying example of all autocrats and dictators. They may start small, silly, and stupid, But when you find your interior minister who's willing to do the hard work and get themselves bloody, things go easier. Bill Barr is that man. Whoever thought there would be someone who would make us long for Jefferson Bow regards secessions? You look at Jefferson and you think, you know, I know he's getting a little older. I know he's not thinking about this job in the same way that he would have as a young man.

And I know Matt Whitaker's busy, but damn, could we use somebody else in that job? Yeah, but I actually think, I think Bill Barr is worse than both Hot Tub Crime Machine and and Jefferson, Bell regards, Secessions. Oh, yeah, of course he is. The degree to which Bill Barr has bent the Department of Justice into an arm of the Trump administration and the Trump campaign and the Trump organization has not yet fully reached its peak. You will see more.

It will get worse. In the next few weeks, it will get much, much worse. Yeah, that's not fun. No, it's not fun at all. And I think there's nothing to stop him. Of course, there were Republican senators today being quoted saying things like, well, I don't know if that's what he really said. in the quoted article where he was on the record giving a speech in public.

But they have absolutely come to depend on this guy in a way that if he was taken off the battlefield would hurt the Trump administration instantaneously. But we'll see. I'm telling you it's not going to be pretty. What do you think the plan is, just spitballing here? I think they deploy little green men. He declares things like, the ballots in Miami-Dade County are being stolen and deploys the DHS. He calls Chad Wolf and Chad Wolf says, can I do this?

And Bill Bargoes, sure. And they quote unquote seize the ballot boxes for election security. I can come up with a hundred terrible ideas, which I shouldn't repeat on the air, because I know that the Trump opposition research group keeps track of everything I say on Twitter and on social media and in interviews and even on our podcast. They have a listener for our podcast. It's so sweet. Oh, that's so cute.

I know. Look through the link team because if you buy a standing desk, I think we get a special hot. Yeah. So if you're the Trump. If you're the Trump-Apo kid following us, big love, okay? Yeah. Welcome. Bless your heart.

No, Jesse, our producer is trying to rein us in, but good luck to him. Hey, Molly, who's the sexiest young star, the conservative firmament? You know, what I enjoy about young Charles Kirk is that all of the elements of his face are extremely close together. You skipped over all the other possibilities. Yeah, because there's only one, Charles Kirk. Young Charlie Kirk, you know the guy who provided this. seed money for turning point.

You should say that in a more breathy voice. No. I'm not doing that. I hate them. And also, I don't do funny voices. Yes, you do. No, I don't. I don't do them well.

Anyway, I don't do them well enough. I only do them in private. But also, the other thing is that, you know, the guy who did all the early funding for turning point. Died of the vid. Yeah. He did. I was just wondering if you might have put Ben, sexy Ben Shapiro in that category or

Dirty Dan Bonino. I guess they didn't really count. in the same youthful way as far-right catamite Charlie Kirk does. But, oh, did I sit? She's a luscious, luscious young man. But T.P. USA has now been discovered to be engaged in running its own little troll farm. Who could have seen that? Which I find so not surprising in any way whatsoever.

Yeah, I mean, it just makes sense, right? It's very much on brand for we Charles and his friends to be running a troll farm. And of course, it's also a. sign, I think, of the sort of rising, weird sense of desperation in Trump's world. They're all over the board looking for things that are going to stick. They're all over the board looking for things that are effective hits on Biden. And so now you're going to see the sort of de juree troll farm that Charlie and his little minions at TPUSA and his allies run actually doing it, which... They kind of were doing it before. Do they not have confidence in the Russians? I mean, honestly,

if you can't trust Vladimir Putin, who can you trust? Here's my question for you. Here's my question for you about this. What are you the most worried about Trump world doing? I'm most worried about Trump world on a contested election day. If Joe Biden wins the electoral college by fewer than 40 votes of Donald Trump declaring the election has been stolen from me, rise my boogaloo boys, go to the streets and teach these libtard cucks a lesson they'll never forget. That's legitimately, I could be saying that jokingly, but I'm not. I also have a honest and well-placed concern that Bill Barr is going to send out the Little Green Men, that Trump is going to try to mobilize the National Guard in various states, that they're going to try to seize ballot boxes. They're already engaged in a widespread legal effort to stop early voting, to stop mail voting in a number of states.

They're fighting cases. Like, when disqualified Green Party candidates are being taken off the ballot, they're fighting to have them put back on to dilute the Trump vote. Hey, somebody read about that in a book. That would be me, America. But they are engaged in a whole wide spectrum of unconstitutional fuckery right now, and it's going to continue, and it's going to get worse. And my fear is that there are enough people around Trump who believe that violence is on their side. And with violence on their side, I think they have this idea that they can intimidate people. I mean, remember in 2008 when there were four Black Panthers in Philadelphia at a precinct?

Right. And Fox ran it with the breathless screeching kind of coverage. It was essentially saying, the Black Panthers are everywhere. They're intimidating white voters. That's why we're losing. Well, it was four assholes, right? I suspect you're going to see them respond to real or fake Antifa protesters all over the place with police presence. I think, and I wrote about this in the new book, available everywhere books are sold, running against the devil by Rick Wilson.

Tell me more. I know, right? But I wrote about this in the book. There is no bottom for these guys. There's nothing they won't do to hold power. If Donald Trump was told tomorrow, you have to go personally kill. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, he would do it. If Donald Trump was told tomorrow that you have to feed Melania to dogs, he would do it. This guy has to hold power, or he is in the deepest possible

hole. So I wrote a piece for The Beast that also agreed with you here, but my question for you is, is that totally true? Because I also feel like he's very cowardly. And if you fight back against him, you can win. Like, we saw this with the brief, you know, they weren't going to brief on election interference and now they're doing it again. If you fight, hard enough against Trump. Like, they did that crazy thing in the church and then they were able to sort of, if you push back hard enough on Trump world, it does work. Like, he is very cowardly. Look, the cowardice of Donald Trump is real. The desperation of Donald Trump is more real. And the desperation of the people around him and his enablers is not just real. It's vividly real.

It's tangible. They reek of absolute fear every minute of the day. And it is clearly something that experienced political operatives around him right now are super worried. They're out of money. They have tied themselves to this nightmare. And I heard a piece of intel yesterday that the pollsters are now being told they have to go through Jared before they brief anybody else on the campaign. Wait, what? That's a sign of a healthy campaign. What? Yeah. I heard that yesterday from a pretty solid person in the White House. Because Trump doesn't want to see bad polls. Correct. And they don't want to spread them. But there's another thing that's really fun about that Trump campaign says they're so broke. They've stopped their data modeling, largely. They've stopped a lot of their other polling,

and they're dark in swing states. This rumor that's banging around right now is that they're about to go off the air in Florida on television. Wait, why are they so broke? The mistresses, the wives? It's called criming. Crimeing. Tell me more. So they took a billion dollars of small dollar donations. And by the way, the wildest, highest percentage majority. Let's put it this way. Bernie Sanders had a higher percentage of major donors than Donald Trump does, percentage-wise. Wow. There is no big money out there. That's kind of amazing.

Aside from Sheldon and Steve Wynn and Bernie Marcus, that's it on Trump's big, the Eulian guys. That's it. They're just not out there. So he's raised a billion dollars largely from people on Social Security, disability, Medicare, Medicaid, sitting in. So the people he's hurting the most. Right. In fear of Antifa, they're chunking out like their money. monthly $7.99 donation to the Trump campaign, and they took a billion dollars, and they blew it.

Here's the sort of back of the envelope formulation. Their cost of the money is around 40%. Okay. So that leaves you, just round numbers, $600 million. Now, that means, by the way that Brad and the fundraisers and Katie Walsh and all these other people have made $400 million, okay, for their companies. First off, there's that. So you got about 600 left. You got about what we look at is probably about a 20% skim by the Trumps off of that six hundred. Really? Only 20%? It's probably higher. We're being generous. Okay, because Brad has that driver. Those Ferraris don't pay for themselves, Molly. I mean, I just point a fact here. If you have a Ferrari, isn't the whole thing that you drive yourself? Well, I don't think the driver drives the Ferrari. Okay. All right, good. I was worried there.

I'm glad to hear it. That's a big comfort to me. So let's say it's 20, 25% of the scam. So that leaves you about a half a billion 480 left. I'm round numbering. I'm not looking at the fucking FEC report right now. Okay. So half a billion dollars, it is more than any person has ever raised or spent in a campaign in history. Right. $11 million of it went into Super Bowl ads. How'd that work out? Right. If you're not keeping the Super Bowl demo as a Republican, you are screwed in many, many ways. Yeah. Their staff burn rate, we're hearing, is about 20 million a month. Wow. And essentially, the campaign has spent, we know they're spending about a million a month on TV in D.C. to respond to Maya.

ads from Lincoln Project and our work we do there. And we spend about 75 grand, under grand a month to make them spend a million, which is hilarious. And the joke, of course, about D.C. is no electoral college votes. It's never going to go for Trump. And even if it did, it wouldn't mean anything. So anyway, it's like campaigning in Puerto Rico. I mean, it's not going to help you. This money is gone. It's gone. And so we're in a spot where they're racing about 150 a month, but it's costing them all that overhead. So they've really only got about $30 million a month right now to play on TV. We heard the other day that they were canceling buys everywhere.

So television is like anything else. There's an inventory of it. And I'm getting text and emails from buyers saying, we're going to have inventory for you in Florida. If you need inventory in Orlando, let me know. Ooh, take it, take it, Rick. Jamal Bowman is a Democrat running for Congress for New York's 16th district. He recently defeated Elliot Engel in his primary.

So, Jamal, I have so much to ask you. And the first question is, what is it like to win a primary and defeat an incumbent? Were you shocked? Talk to me about that a little bit. You know, it's funny. So the quick answer is it's freaking awesome. That's what it's like. That's the short answer.

But it's funny. I think I was in shock. But throughout the campaign, we felt confident that we not only had a chance to win, but that we were going to win. So we were super confident throughout the campaign. And then when we actually won, I mean, on election night, we had such a large lead. We knew that the mail-in balance wouldn't make a difference. You know, we led by 25 points on election night. So that was the first night in the entire campaign that I did not get any sleep.

Like, it was super weird. It was like we won and now I can't sleep. It was amazing and incredibly humbling, incredibly exciting. Election Day, you know, we did like a bus store. tour throughout the district and it just felt like a celebration everywhere we went. People were really excited. And when you look at the final numbers, you know, we tripled voter turnout. We tripled turnout amongst young people and people of color. It actually was a celebration for the district. Fascinating. Okay. So, Jabba, I see your membership in the house as potentially the biggest

inner party switch in representation as your politics and Elliot's seem to be as disparate as they could be in one party. I'm always curious about, you know, they say that voters don't really feel a change. What do you see as your difference in your voice of the House will be compared to who you're replacing? You know, it's a great question. I'm a progressive candidate, a true progressive candidate, so I do not take corporate PAC money at all. So I am consistently hammering home issues of economic inequality, issues of monopoly and pushing for anti-monopoly conversation and legislation, always talking about how we have three individuals who own more wealth than the bottom 50% of the country. We don't take any corporate PAC money, you know,

as you know. So those conversations around economic inequality, but also racial inequality as well, have always been front and center for me, not only because I am a black man, but over the last 20 years as an educator, I served black and brown children in historically neglected communities. over the last two decades. So those are the center of my conversation. And those experiences sort of anchor discussions I have around foreign policy, around the military industrial complex, around health care, around environmental justice. It's all rooted in racial and economic justice as well. And Congressman Engel just didn't really speak to those issues with any sort of clarity, consistency, or passion. And the other thing I would say is, Congressman Engel was known to represent a particular segment of the district and a particular segment of the party, whereas I have always been about building diverse coalitions and bringing people together, regardless of race or class or religion or orientation, because I believe that's how we create a district and a country that truly works for everyone.

You come from this, you were a principal or you are a principal still. You are, right? No, I actually resigned my position January 1st of this year so that I could run full time. That's fabulous. Can you talk about being a principal? Clearly that was what helped you make the decision to run for office, right? And can you talk about that a little bit? Absolutely. So I worked in education for eight or nine years and then had the opportunity to write a proposal for my own school. So I organized parents, teachers, and students to brainstorm my ideas for this amazing new public.

school that we would open. So we wrote the proposal in 2008, and in 2009, we opened as the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action. And we operated as a community school, providing resources not just to our kids and families, but to the extended community. And we were open seven days a week late into the evening, providing adult education classes, computer science classes, and doing whatever we could do to just support the community. I'm also an education organizer, or pushing the city and state for equitable funding and culturally responsive schools, among many other things. And in those experiences, what I saw was a lack of urgency from our elected officials

around the issues I would see every day in my school and a lack of clarity on how to approach these issues. And, you know, I got to tell you, it's heartbreaking when you have a seventh grade student suffering from mental distress to the point where they are literally harming themselves and self-mutilating, and there are no resources in the community to support them. It's heartbreaking when you get a call from a parent on a Monday morning, and they tell you that their child tried to commit suicide over the weekend. It's heartbreaking when you have a student come in Tuesday afternoon and tell you nonchalantly,

oh, Mr. Bowman, I missed the last day and a half of school because my father was killed over the weekend. This is the reality that educators deal with every day. It infuriates us that these issues aren't at the top of the political agenda at any level of government. So it was those experiences that shaped my mind and spirit to ultimately run for office when I did. Do you think that school reopening right now is a good idea in person? I don't. We commissioned a study with the University of Pennsylvania to look at where we are in terms of school opening and health and safety. and their earliest recommendation for reopening was November,

if we brought all of the federal resources to bear in terms of retrofitting classrooms, retrofitting schools, hiring more teachers, using alternative learning spaces, et cetera, et cetera. But then because November begins flu season, their recommendation was to push back to March at earlier if we have all of the resources. So this is a risk we're taken nationally

and it's heartbreaking because we're literally risking the lives of our children and families. I feel more confident here in New York because we did a good job with pausing our economy and our numbers right now in terms of new cases are very, very low. I believe less than 1%. So I'm more confident here than in other places that seem to be following Donald Trump's playbook of herd immunity. And unfortunately, because of that, we have more people, thousands of people dying every day. But I've chosen, my wife and I have chosen to keep our kids home and we're doing 100% virtual learning. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing. And I commend the teachers of my kids. They're doing a great job of making it as engaging as possible. And then we also have,

the last thing I will say about that is issues of social development are critical. So having like social play pods with close friends and family members is going to be critical to our children's development going forward and also the issue of child care. You know, that's something that we're not talking about, right? So even for the kids who are staying home, we have to go to work. And we need a infrastructure of child care in place. And that's not something I'm hearing enough about. So on your website, you talk about that you're for a new deal for education. We don't hear a lot about this. Could you explain to the listeners what that is? So even prior to the pandemic, we were talking about a New Deal for Education. And what that means is this. Since 2001, in 2001, we implemented something

called No Child Left Behind at a federal level. And the goal of that policy was to have 100% literacy rates by 2015. As we all know, that never happened. Another goal of that policy was to close the racial achievement gap between black, Latino, and whites and Asian students. That has not happened at all. What has happened is teachers have been under attack, unions have been under attack, public schools have closed, charter schools have opened, and hedge fund managers have found a way to make a profit. Our new deal for education is a pivot towards true learning and teaching and truly focusing on the areas that matter most. So one central focus is early childhood education, which goes in the line of a universal child care. Early childhood education, early childhood education,

is from birth to age eight, making sure we provide learning environments that are nurturing for children and families so that when kids enter kindergarten, they can hit the ground running. Another component of our new deal is something called project-based learning. As opposed to measuring, quote-unquote, achievement on an end of the year state test that is created by for-profit corporations and our teachers, let's look at learning holistically, and let's align the curriculum to the needs of our community. And if we do that, kids can work on collaborative, problem-solving projects, and it prepares them to be critical thinkers for the 21st century. And lastly, we need to fully invest in our public schools.

We call for quadrupling, public school funding at the federal level. We need to fully invest in IDEA, which is the federal special education law. And we need to integrate our schools and our communities and take a holistic approach because this Black and Latinx, Students go to school in one place while whites go to other. Rich students go one place while poorer students go to the other. That's not going to help us reach our full potential as a country. And we need full school and community integration. So I've long believed that when you're coming from a very blue district like you are,

there's really an opportunity to elect real progressive leaders from very blue districts, which is what you and AOC both have done. Have you gotten any guidance from her? Yes, I've gotten a lot of guidance. from her, both during the campaign and after. I mean, she's the one that broke through the last ceiling, you know, her and the squad. I talk with her as much as I can and as much as she's available. And she's been great just in terms of being responsive to me when I know she has, you know,

a million and one other things to do. And, you know, one of the key sort of learnings I've gotten so far is, you know, Jamal, don't be shocked when you get here. This is like upside down world Congress. People do not center the working class and the children you serve and those who struggle the most. They don't center those things. They center the corporate elite and they're only focused on building power and wealth in a political and economic sense for their constituents. That's it.

It was great to hear that from her. Something that I kind of sensed. But I'm happy that she's there and the squad is there and they broke through the glass ceiling so that people like myself and Mandar Jones and Cory Bush now have more of a platform. to land on when we get there and speak about the issues that matter most. Have you gotten a reasonable welcome from the Democratic leadership, too? I like how you phrase that question, reasonable. That's a great way to phrase that question. I would say yes.

Speaker Pelosi reached out and congratulated me, and we had at least a five-minute conversation, maybe even longer, maybe 10-minute conversation, just kind of getting to know each other. So that was fine. Senator Schumer reached out, and him and I have actually engaged. dialogue on a variety of issues since we've started communicating with each other. I've been in touch

with Senator Gillibrand's office, many other reps on the Hill as well. It's been a reasonable, a reasonable warm welcome so far. Yeah. You have like the personal, which is they were friends with Elliot Engel, and then you have like that they have to in some way know that the greater good is to get young people who are interested in legislating and to, so it's got to be an interesting point. there? Well, one would think that they would see that and respond to that. And by they, I mean the DNC. What I'm concerned about is, you know, when you look at the National Convention, the Democratic National Convention, they only gave AOC 62nd. And they gave John Kerry several minutes. And no disrespect to John Kerry. But he's not inviting the people in my hood and the people in my community to get

involved in, you know, the democratic process. AOC is. And Ayanna Pricle, is and Corey Bush and so many others are and they were left out so while the DNC in their commercials flashed our diversity and gave lip service to our diversity what would have been very powerful is to have more Latinos speaking in prime time for several minutes I think they were none right I think there were three I think or something like that but prime time I don't know I think LCs with prime time but it was only 60 seconds but if you really embrace the diversity of our country as you should and young people, etc., then you got to give them a platform to share their voice so that other young people can see that and identify that with that and be pulled in.

The Democrats have to broaden their base. That's what I think you do a better job of going forward. I've been really impressed at how badly Democrats have squandered their ability to appeal to Latin X voters because Trump ran on this racism against people from Mexico and then Democrats never came in and offered and said that we have a party for you. You're being discriminated against. And I was sort of surprised. No, absolutely. I mean, when you look at not just AOC, but the Castro brothers, for example, you know, they could have had a prominent voice who are both amazing. They could have had a prominent voice in that regard. And the thing about AOC that frustrates me, excuse me, let me refer to her properly,

Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez, the thing that frustrates me about the DNC not working as closely with her as possible is because she's incredible. She's an incredible leader and she's the one that can bring in literally millions of young people and people of color into the Democratic Party. She can do that. It's like, you know, as a principal, whenever I would have a superstar teacher come through my door, I'm not letting them leave the school because I want to put them in the classroom as quickly as possible so they can make magic with our kids.

AOC's brilliance. Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tili, Ayana Presley's brilliance. The DNC needs to do everything in his power to leverage that brilliance towards growing a party and moving the country forward. Before we get into things, we have a fun little treat. There are so many insane things happening in the world right now, and two episodes a week just aren't enough to cover it all. So, the new abnormal is going to release a limited run series of bonus interviews over the next few weeks for Beast Inside members only. We'll release a new one each Sunday. But listen carefully.

Only Beast Inside members will have access to these. So head over to the new abnormal. dot the Daily Beast.com to become a Beast inside member now. That's New Abnormal. dot the Daily Beast.com. Ben Rhodes is the former deputy national security advisor under President Barack Obama, as well as the host of the new crooked podcast, missing America. Will you talk a little bit about the podcast? Sure. Yeah. So basically, for about the last couple years, I travel a lot around the world.

And what I found when I go to places and meet people in Europe, in Asia, and Africa is just how profoundly America's standing in the world had. utterly collapsed under Trump in a more profound ways than I think most Americans understand and how that had also kind of created political shockwaves around the world. And so you had this spread of nationalism. You had this attraction to Chinese authoritarianism. You had this kind of rampant viral spread of disinformation around the world. Not all these things tied just to Trump, but his presidency accelerated all of them. And I started taping interviews around the world that looked at, well, why is this happen? How is it spread? And what do we need to do about it, essentially? And think of yourself as in a family where sometimes you have to step outside of your dysfunctional family to understand what's going

on. That's kind of how I felt leaving the United States for these interviews and hearing from other people about this is how bad it is. This is how crazy we think you guys have gotten, but we still need you. And the we still need you was the hopeful part, which is that people for all the craziness that they've put up with America, they want us to be back in a leadership role without Donald Trump. And that's a kind of turn in the show. And I talked to a lot of the people who would end up serving, I think, at the senior ranks of a Biden administration, as well as people brought about what do we need to do to get past Trump? During Bush, they were like America is diminished in the world. You know, a lot of people said that. Do you see a difference between those two times? I do. And here's the main difference.

It's not the fact that Donald Trump, that's president that has caused the biggest problem. It's the fact that we elected Donald Trump president that's caused the biggest problem. And so even though nothing as unpopular an event, say, as Iraq war has happened, although I think the U.S. COVID response is now easily in that category. It's called people to question, and this is why the show doesn't so much look at foreign policy. It looks at more fundamental issues of like, how does democracy function? Why is nationalism on the rise? What's going on with authoritarianism around the world? Because it's more fundamental than any individual U.S. foreign policy. It's this question of the world looking at us and thinking, well, maybe they're not the country we thought they were. And if the

U.S. is no longer setting any kind of example for democracy, for instance, what are the consequences for that in places as different as Hong Kong and Hungary, you know, for instance. And so the difference from the Bush years, I think, and what's going to be harder to climb out of the whole we're in, is that we're going to have to show the world starting the election that we're not this crazy country they've been watching for the last three and a half years. And we're not these people who lost our minds and elected Donald Trump in the first place. And that, I think, is where I came in doing this podcast. It's always good when you do a project and you end up somewhere you didn't necessarily know you were going to get when you began. And for me, where I ended up is,

wait a second, what we have to do is really almost very little to do with any one foreign policy. It has to do with, like, how do we show the world a different face of America starting in this election? And what does that mean? How do we project out something that shows that we understand just how crazy we went under Trump and we want to do things differently? Is there anything you would advise Biden to do that you think maybe would make them persuadable, the Trump voters? Yeah. And actually, I'm going to connect this to my podcast and the answer in a sense that one of the things I found about why there's been such a rise of nationalism, particularly on the right, in the U.S. and in Europe,

is that, you know, I think that the events of the last 20 years of global financial crisis in particular, people's confidence in globalization, in liberal democracy, collapsed. And I think people, including we in the Obama administration, because we're so busy trying to clean up that mess, you know, didn't fully appreciate the extent to which people just lost all faith in institutions, all faith that democracy could work for them, all faith that the project of kind of American-led globalization was something to continue to be invested in around the world and here. And it opened up a door, I think, for a certain kind of person who's both in Obama and Trump voter, people who are fed up with everything. And I think that the two things that you have to do that are tricky,

right? One is you have to speak to that sense of absolute frustration. But secondly, this is something that Barack Obama did really well in his speeches. He could deliver a message about progressive change without rejecting American national identity. So that the progressive change that he was talking about was an extension of the American story. Because we had this democracy, because we had these founding fathers with his foresight, because of all the sacrifices, all the things that may be precious to a white American voter in the upper Midwest, because we have those things, we can turn the page to the next chapter that electing a black president or extending health care or reforming certain aspects of our economy, that's a part and extension of America's story,

not a rejection of it. And I think one of the things that Biden can do well at times is talk about the future and building a bridge to the future, not as a rejection of everything they went before, not as a rejection of what it means to be American to a lot of people, but as an extension of it. And it's a tricky space because, you know, I think you need to acknowledge where we've fallen short and on issues of race and justice, you know, first and foremost, but you have to somehow bring people along. And that's what I think Obama did at his best in speeches. He could make people comfortable with change by rooting change in America's history. America is a country that is constantly changing and reinventing itself.

So, Ben, when you're looking and talking to folks around the world who have seen this sort of transformed America, what surprised you the most? I mean, I've talked to some folks overseas who very much are like we depend on at least the idea of America and it's gone. What's like the outlier, like the thing that shocked you the most, I guess is what I'm trying to get to. Yeah, I think the thing that shocked me the most is the extent to which in a lot of places, like people have just already moved on. And we tend to think that they're, they're way. to see what happens in our election, or particularly as it relates to China. If you go to places like Asia or Africa, they're already kind of throwing in with the Chinese. And this includes, like, leaders that I met with political leaders in Asia, basically saying, like, the American-led order, like, that's history.

Like, we're already in the next phase here. And we got to deal with the Chinese. And I remember going to Africa and talking to somebody and saying, well, you know, we hear that the Africans, that there's a lot of Chinese investment here, you know, investment. They've bought up our media. They've come to us and said, said, well, all the best and brightest from your countries used to go and want to study in the U.S.

But now the president there says you're from shithole countries and he doesn't want you. Come study in China. I think that's very much the case. Especially, as you said, in Africa right now, where the Chinese have had essentially four years of open field running with very little American diplomatic or soft power presence or anything to push back. And everyone hears the message, you know, we hate you. Stay away.

Yeah. I mean, how would you feel if you were being told by the president of the United States that you're from a shithole country or pick any one of the insulting things he said about people around the world. Of course they listen to that. And of course they adjust their behavior to that. And I think I was surprised even in Europe where, you know, I think there's a preference to go back to some, you know, deep and abiding relationship and cooperation with the U.S. There's seeds of doubt that are going to take time to overcome. But the best thing, Rick, one that I found too, though, is that some of the things that are being done in European politics

to push back against authoritarianism are things that we need to be doing here too. So we can learn from each other. We're in this together. I felt a great degree of common purpose with like the Hungarians. I talked to her dealing with basically a dictator in Hungary about some of the tactics that are beginning to work, going local and building up from the bottom up. How do you make progressive values more useful to people by focusing them on the things that most directly impact their lives, like the political strategies that people are using to mobilize young voters to defeat far-right nationals in Europe? I think there are lessons to take from those efforts that we can learn from to get our act together here. And I think if people see us doing that, they'll be more likely,

I think, to want to rebuild a relationship with us. Can you talk to us a little bit about China and this news that China wants Biden to be president? I don't buy that at all. First of all, my sense has been, and there's been plenty of reports about this, that the Chinese have just had the best four years geopolitically that they've ever had. They've been cleaning up in the absence of American influence and leadership. They are operating, I mean, picture a kid. A kid. kick returner in a football game who just sees open field between them and the end zone. That's been China under Trump. I have to imagine that for all of the unpredictability of Trump, they want four more years of that. I think what this is about, Molly, is two things. One, the Trump administration and the kind

of funky they have at DNI now, want to create a both sides narrative. So, oh yeah, Russia is engaged in election interference. So is China for Biden. Keep in mind that Russia is engaged in a systematic, multifaceted assault on our democracy to elect Donald Trump president. I think what they're probably pointing to with China is, yeah, there's a lot of Chinese propaganda trashing U.S. policy. That's always the case when Obama was present. That's the case under Trump. They're conflating the two in a way to diminish what Russia is doing. And frankly, to set it up so that if Biden wins, you know, they can have their China investigation. Pardon me for not thinking it's on the level. Right. We've talked a little bit about the rise of all these authoritarian movements in Europe on the

right and these nationalist movements, you know, kick a rock over there and you'll find Steve Bannon slithering out from underneath it with all these nationalist populists and all these states, like little crypto and declared authoritarian types. Are you seeing a lot in Europe punch back against that without the presence of any kind of U.S. leadership? Yeah, you had this kind of building wave that I really do think began with the financial crisis in 08 when there was the kind of bottom fell out of confidence and liberalism writ large and globalization. And it builds and builds, you know, Brexit, Trump selection, obviously, Victor Orban and Hungary. And then you're Right, like Steve Bannon, I'd travel a ton in Europe. And it was kind of creepy because everywhere I went, like, I'd do media. And Steve Bannon has like just been there.

Right, right. He's setting up the Vox party in Spain, this far right party. He's propping up, trying to help out Salvino, the anti-immigrant quasi-fascist in Italy. He's, you know, cozing up to Orban. He's with the Law and Justice Party in Poland. And I went to these places and talked to people from them. And Bannon, you know, part of what I was struck by, Rick, is how coordinated, how they're common political strategies, common sources of financing, Russian financing in many cases, the degree to which this kind of far-right nationalist authoritarian trend has connective tissue was very striking to me. And as a progressive, it made me realize how behind the curve we were in trying to find connective tissue. Talk to us about Ricker now because he worked in intelligence and now is working on the campaign. That seems sketchy as fuck. Yeah, it is sketchy as fuck. And basically, I interacted with him originally as him trolling me for years. He seemed to have a particularly loathing of me, but that's another story. So, you know, he's a fundamentally sketchy and political figure.

And we're talking about nationalism and authoritarianism. He was working basically as an unregistered agent of Victor Orbach, along with Connie Mack before you came into the Trump administration. And he's as fundamentally a political operative. He gets put into the DNI role as an acting DNI, right, unconfirmed by the Senate. And by all accounts and reports, he begins to kind of clean house there and begins to kind of move people around that office, which handles the coordination of all intelligence assessments for the U.S. intelligence community. He starts withholding information from Congress, particularly about foreign interference in our elections, right?

I mean, this is what he was there to do. It's no coincidence that all of the Obamagate stuff, you know, quote-unquote Obamagate, that all happened while Rick Rinell was there. All this kind of selective leaking of stuff, this kind of coordinated construction of this crazy conspiracy theory, that's the business that Rick Grinnell got done while he was in that acting DNI office, suppressing any information about foreign interference, particularly Russian interference in our election, and concocting his fever-dream conspiracy theories of Obamagate. He does that, and then he steps aside for the next guy. Why did he step aside? They finally confirmed

Radcliffe to be DNI, who's not exactly a massive improvement coming out of the House Republican caucus and in a real Trump loyalist. But I also think because his job was done, essentially. You know, I think he went into DNI like a wrecking mall. We got rid of the people that weren't with the program and promoted the people who were with the program. He fudged a bunch of intel assessments on Russia, cut Congress out of the loop, and helped Bill Barr piece together whatever crazy Obamagate conspiracy theory they're going to try to surf through the election. And I think he's a very dubious character in American politics. And people are going to have to look under the hood for a while to figure out exactly what happened while he was there. And unfortunately, we're not going to get a look

come to the hood until and unless, you know, we have a return to democracy after November. All right. Rick Wilson. Yes. Hello, Molly John Fass. Hello. Who is your fuck that guy? Well, you know, this week, my fuck that guy is a sort of bank shot, but it's mostly Senator Joni Ernst and Senator Cory Gardner. Ooh, tell me more. They're my double fuck that guy. This is in the weeds. But there are these Brazilian billionaires named Josie and Wesley Batista. These guys own this gigantic meatpacking company. Okay. It's a global

a billion dollar meatpacking industry. They've been protected at every fucking step of the way. Even though their meatpacking plants here are like COVID-tieries, if you will, COVID hotspot, they're COVID-licious, COVID-tastic, COVID-paluzas go on and they're varied meatpacking plants. But these fucking guys have protection obviously from the Trump administration, because while they were investigated by the DOJ and the SEC, they paid a $15,000 fine.

Yeah, that $15,000 fine. They killed four people. For killing four people. the corollary fuck that guys, but it's because people like Joni Ernst and Corey Gardner, both of whom in their campaigns are all about a small farmer in their states, these people are running roughshod, protected by the administration and these people.

So Brazilian meat people, fuck that guy. I don't know it's off kilter, okay? I know it's off kilter. I was getting briefed on this oppo stuff on Joni Ernst and I was just like, what? Sometimes it's the small fuck that guys that matter most. Joni Ernst is, I do have to say,

the worst. Teresa Greenfield could conceivably win that seat, right? That is a competitive race right now. It's a tie ball game. By the way, I just curious as an add-on, because I know our listeners are as anxious as we are about this upcoming election, if our listeners needed to, like, give to a Senate candidate to, like, help their anxiety, who would you suggest? I would suggest where your money will punch the hardest, and Sam Wang would probably agree with me on this, I think.

Yeah. We should have him back. We should. Is Alaska. Okay. We had him before. Dr. Al Gross. Look, North Carolina is going to be a $70 million blood bath.

And Cal Cunningham's doing great. But the ad buys are expensive in North Carolina. Your price to punch in Alaska is really high. And of course, as I've said before, Al Gross is a commercial fisherman, an orthopedic surgeon, and he killed a bear when it attacked him. I don't know how much more Alaska you can get. You know that when Jesse and I did the interview, which you couldn't participate in, because... Of things.

We asked him about the bear. Right. And he was really upset about the bear. Like, it's actually a big deal. He was like, I didn't want to kill the bear. We had to kill the bear because the bear was about to attack. It was like a whole thing. It's like a bad memory for him about the bear.

So if you do donate to him, don't ask him about the bear. I think that's fair. My fuck that guy is going to be Bill Barr. He's really, really scary. And he's going to do anything he can to keep Donald Trump and pass. Actually, you know what? I'm sorry. My fuck that guy is Bill Barr and Postmaster DeJoy,

who is still in the post office, gumbing up the works, trying to make it hard for people to vote in the hope of keeping Trump in power. So Postmaster DeJoy, fuck you. I mean, what? Fuck him.

Get on it. Sorry, go on. Thank you. Get on it. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science who will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media.

We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm Molly Jongfest, and he's the Rick Wilson. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last. laugh and our star-studded the Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the Beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest

timeline. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.