The Daily Beast Podcast - It Sure Looks Like Mike Pence Saved Democracy in America w/ Rep. Ritchie Torres

Episode Date: December 10, 2021

It sure looks like Pence, on the advice of Dan Quayle, tuned out to be the nutjob we needed somehow. Plus Rep. Ritchie Torres and WaPo writer Greg Sargent join Molly and Andy.  If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes its just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundit and a writer at The Atlantic and Vogue. 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. We got one hell of a show today. Congressman Richie Torres of New York's 15th District joins us to talk about what's going down in Congress.

Then we'll talk to the Washington Post's plum line blog author Greg Sargent about the latest developments of the January 6th committee and Biden's bad messaging. But first, let's have some fun. Hi, Andy. Hi, Molly. How are you? I'm good. Hi, Molly. Hi, Andy.

So we're going to call it the Biden boom, okay? Ooh, that sounds interesting. Just a little bit disturbing and probably will be made fun of it. But that is the hope. The economic data for our man, the guy who will hopefully keep democracy going, is that he has just been killing it on the economy and that unemployment claims are the lowest they've been in 50 years. How is this bad for Joe Biden? It's not, I mean, look, in a perfect and just world, it's obviously not bad for Joe Biden, but I firmly believe, and you may not understand this about me, Molly, I firmly believe we do not live in a perfect and just world.

What? I know I don't come across that way at all as, you know, cynical or anything like that. There's a couple of things. So I get, I do agree that it's all good news. Let me play the cynics advocate, I guess, and say that. there are two reasons it's maybe not good for Biden, even though it should be. One is when you say unemployment claims are at their lowest level, which is generally good, that could also mean that, and it can be spun as well, people have left the workforce and they're not coming back because the government is giving them too much money, which is exactly how it's going to be spun. And I think it's also fair to say that there are certainly are, and we all believe this, and as a liberal, I certainly believe this, that there are people who've given up and who've

fallen out of the workforce, you know, and aren't even trying. And that's something we absolutely need to talk about. And that's why these numbers are not infallible. But if Donald Trump were given these numbers, he would dine the fuck out on them. Oh, of course. Absolutely. And every, you know, every sycophant in the Republican Party, i.e., everyone in the Republican Party would be right behind him. The other thing is, though, like, I've always believed that the economic numbers and, like, the strength of the economy doesn't matter as much as what people perceive the economy to be, at least in the political sense, even though all these numbers are, like, objectively great. I mean, GDP is up, you know, what, like 7, 8 percent or something like that?

I mean, all these numbers are good. And as you said, if the former guy had these kinds of numbers, he'd be spinning them like crazy. But the problem is you've got a lot of people out there who, and a lot of it, I'm not blaming those people, because a lot of this stuff we all know, like the real world kind of lags behind the indicators. So these numbers may look good, but people don't feel it for like, you know, a half a year or eight months or nine months. It's like the Dow is not the economy. Right, absolutely. So you still got people out there who look around and they say, well, I'm hurting. My friends are hurting. So these numbers are garbage. These numbers don't apply to me. That's why cynical me says, even though these numbers are great, they may not be great politically.

Joe Biden. Also, let's add on top of that, this administration has not been great about selling itself, I don't think. Right. And that needs to change. Like, I don't know if they need new people or what, but they have just done, I think, a fairly horrible job of selling themselves. And I think that's one of the reasons you get, you know, you get a lot of bad press coverage when you're not out there making your case. And I don't feel like they're doing a great job of making their case. I hope that changes. I really do, especially about these numbers. Yes, I agree. There is a media. which is now filled by Ben Shapiro and MAGA News 1, 2, 3. And I do agree. And I think it's a real fucking problem for this administration. I also think you have, and Carville talked about this when we

had him on the pod recently, which is you have people in this administration who are gifted orators. And they aren't necessarily Joe Biden, but love him or hate him, Mayor Pete is very good on Fox News. Yes. And he should be out on Fox News every day. I mean, why the fuck not? Yeah. Like, I understand why Fauci doesn't want to go on Fox News. Why would you want to go on a place that compared you to Yosef Mangala? You know. But I have never sort of subscribed to that. And look, I also understand like not going on certain shows on Fox News like Tucker

Carlson and Laura Ingraham, I think is just a waste of fucking time. But I do think going on and talking to Brett Baer, going on, you know, certainly talking to Chris Wallace on Sundays and stuff like that. I, I, I 100% agree with you. I think they should be there every week or every day hammering their message. If it's someone like Buttigieg or someone else who's just very good in that kind of situation, then absolutely get them out there. I 100% agree with you.

Yeah. I mean, it just seems like there's an information vacuum and it's being filled by the worst actors. And until this administration takes that seriously, we're in a lot of trouble. I mean, we're probably in a lot of trouble either way. Yeah. You know, the thing I keep thinking about to tie this back to our podcast because everything's about this podcast is when we had Ron Brownstein on, is he talked about how the administration keeps saying, well, we're the greatest administration ever assembled,

but then they don't know that they're fighting a different warfare that they haven't adapted. The most shared meme last week was this ridiculous thing. Marjorie Taylor Green shared it, and it was all these overly inflated prices for things and percentages, things have gone up under inflation. But that's the most shared meme. And any of us who have a clue know that that's a lot of the game right now.

Right. Right. We're in a meme world and we have a Democratic administration that thinks that Walter Krenkite is still, you know, controlling the media. The larger issue there is how the hell do you fight against people who have no compunction about just making stuff up? Right. Like, it's not easy. And, you know, you can say what you want about politicians throughout the years and certainly I have about not telling the truth and stuff like that. But this is wholly different. Like this is a different situation. This isn't people who spin.

This is people who just outright lie, just outright make up stuff. And they don't care. You can't, you can call them on it, but they don't care. They're never going to admit that they're making it up. And the people who are reading the stuff don't believe you when you say they're making it up. So I personally, I am sort of at a loss as to how you combat that. Because the truth that we're in, you know, we're in like a post-factual world. And I don't, I don't understand how that.

works. I really don't. And I don't understand how you combat it. No, I don't either. And I think smarter people than us don't know how to do it either, which is not good. Yeah, because as you said, they're still, like, you know, they're fighting the last war. You know, they're fighting the war where Republicans put one, like we were just saying with the numbers, like Republicans, the opposition will say, well, that number's not good because X. And then you say, no, that number's good because why. And that's sort of what they're used to doing. They're not used to fighting a thing where someone's where the number is nine and the opponents are saying the number is actually 27. Yeah. And you're like, well, no, it's not. And again, we're talking about this before.

Like making a mistake is not the same thing as malfeasance. Exactly. And ultimately that is one of the central tenets of the right wing media is that what mainstream media makes a mistake, it's the same as if they had intentionally made a mistake. And so their listeners get very programmed. You know, there are a number of reasons why the right-wing media has become so galvanized, but it's a force. And I don't think that the people on the left or the people who are safeguarding our democracy are taking it seriously enough. Otherwise, they'd be safeguarding our democracy. Well, I'm going to disagree with you. The whole reason this went wrong is that they set the Christmas tree on fire outside Fox News.

By the way, the best thing to ever happen to, you know, I mean, Tucker did a whole, you know, he did what, I mean, half his show was about that. Christmas, Trey. I walk by it every day. I'm not saying this is a Reichstag fire situation. I don't think it is. I don't, I honestly don't think it is. I think it's some nut job who did it. But it could not have been better for them.

Like, they could not be more happy that this happened, is what I'm saying. Yes, they're definitely, I mean, this was pretty much the best thing that they could have, because now they can message on it. And you saw Megan McCain immediately. You know, New York City is a hell hall. Yeah, don't get me started. And this is further proof. Your friend, Megan McCain.

As someone who works next door to Fox News every day, I can tell you what the hellhole is, is having to be around their employees and listen to the shit they say at the courtyard. I used to be one of those people, Jesse. Yes, yes, I know, I know. Back then I smoked, and so I would take a lot of smoke breaks.

And there was a lot of a lot of shaking of the heads. And, you know, can you believe the shit we're airing today? There was a lot of that. Yeah. I mean, no, 100%. We're seeing in real time a kind of, you know, there are a lot of 1930s parallels, and it's really scary. I mean, in the States, too. I mean, they had Charles Lindbergh using the same exact Trumpy slogan in the States.

So. Yeah. And as you said, you know, Tucker Carlson can. go on his show at this burning of this dumb tree and say it's an attack, it's an attack on Christianity, which is exactly what he did and make it a whole thing. And they can talk about it all day long. And that's, you know, it's just, it is tough to fight against that. It really is, especially when, you know, the audience is basically a cult. And also, remember, you have a lot of bad actors like Facebook. Yeah, absolutely. I just saw that the January 6th commission

has released the How to Steal the Election PowerPoint, and I would like to talk about it for a minute. Who amongst us hasn't made one of those? It has PowerPoint slides. It has talking points. Thank God these people are idiots. This is the number one talking point, okay, on Trump's How to overturn an election and destroy democracy.

The Chinese systematically gained control over our election system, constituting a national security emergency. Yeah, okay. The electric voting machines were compromised and cannot be trusted to provide an accurate vote count. To restore confidence, the fail-safe of counting the paper ballots must be used to determine who won the election for president, senators, and congressional representatives. Oh, yes. And then it shows how different states were actually won by Trump. Of course, they were not.

And then there's a lot of crazy. things that look like something the My Pillow guy cooked up. And probably because they are. Exactly. What do you think? I have to say, and I was reading this power, not the entire PowerPoint, because I am not that insane, but I was reading the, you know, the list of some of the slides and stuff like that.

The weirdest thought struck me only because Mike Pence, who I find otherwise wholly loathsome. Right. I think every, sort of every day, we are learning more and more that that nut job, Mike Pence, may have actually saved the country. Yeah. And it's amazing to think that because, as I said, he's completely loathsome on every other thing. And I don't want to lionize the guy and put him on Mount Rushmore or anything like that next to Trump. It does feel more and more.

Like, he really, on that one thing, he stepped up. And given all these, you know, these plans that we're now seeing were floating around for exactly how to overturn a fair election, we are seeing more and more that he may not be overstating it to say that he saved democracy in America. And I feel, I feel really weird saying that. Believe me. Yeah. But I'm coming around to that more and more as more and more information comes out. Am I crazy? I hate this conversation and want to die.

But I think you're probably right. I don't even want to think about ultimately what would have happened. But yes, I mean, certainly, it certainly looks that way. Because you can say, you know, well, but there are other safeguards in place. But they really did. And look, their plans may not have come to fruition because, as you said, they're kind of, in the end, they're not that bright. It may be that you don't have to be that bright if you have the right people in the right places. And I think that's what we're learning.

And that's, you know, the whole other story. But that's what's so terrifying about a lot of the Republican gains on the state level. and what they're doing to voting and what we're probably going to see in 2024. I mean, that's terrifying, but a whole different subject. But again, I am aware that I sound like a lunatic or I don't even know what I sound like when I'm sitting here saying Mike Pence saved democracy is such a weird thing to say and actually think that it might be true. I don't know.

I mean, I certainly think that Mike Pence did the right thing, which is terrifying. I may have not taken my meds today, so it could be that. If we want to take it to an even weirder place, I mean, think about the proposition that Mike Pence saved democracy at the urging of Dan Coyle. Wow, yeah, that's, yeah. Oh, my God, I didn't even think of that. Oh, my God, you're absolutely right. Steve Bannon kind of originally, like we've been seeing a lot of the Republican Party, he's the brains of the operation, unfortunately. He decided he was going to gum up.

Yeah, that's true. He decided he was going to gum up the works with doing a lawsuit and avoiding all of this. Now we're seeing Mark Meadows do a lawsuit yet Ali Alexander's there today, kind of doing his little war against everybody. Where do we think this is heading? No, we're good. Yeah. I mean, yeah, you've got Meadows. He's suing the Justice Department, correct?

That's the lawsuit. He's suing Congress, it says. Sure. I mean, sue whatever he wants. It's Trump World. Maybe I'm missing something here. Why don't these people just show up and just take and plead the fifth and not say anything? Some of them do.

Like Jeffrey Clark did that. Right. Yeah, but they're going to get Jeffrey Clark too because they can't fucking do that. Certainly with executive privilege, there's no executive privilege. It's not the executive anymore. There is no privilege. With the fifth, Jeffrey Clark can't plead the fifth for everything. I mean, they can lock him up.

But yes, going and pleading the fifth makes more sense than just not showing up at all and suing them. Or filing a lawsuit, is what I'm saying. Yes. But, you know, it's Trump world. So no one is smart. No, I know. And everyone is crazy. But also, the point is to gum up, I think, was it Jesse?

To gum up the works. And then, so what you have is you then have, you know, well, the Congress is saying this. But Mark Meadows is suing Congress. So who's to say who's right? Right. Well, that's the two sides of it. Right, exactly. And that's how, you know, again, that's how you, that's how you win the, you know, the spin wars and you win the right wing media.

And, you know, you just basically throw shit against the wall until something sticks. And then, you know, it's like, well, is this a wall with shit on it? Or is this a pile of shit that has some concrete in it? And who can say, really? Yeah. Do you remember, like three weeks ago, or as I like to think of a table, or as I like to think of a 10 years ago when we discovered that Facebook's algorithms radicalized people. Yes.

What happened with that? It was so long ago, Molly. I honestly don't know. Right? Nothing ever happened with that, right? We just discovered that Facebook is breeding a group of radicals with their algorithms, and that was it. Then we learned what the Metaverse was. Justin Bieber did a concert, and we all forgot.

Exactly. And Mark Zuckerberg gave some money to what? whatever, and that was it. Yeah. That was all under the Eisenhower administration, right? That's what it feels like. It really does. Like, as you said it, I was like, oh, yeah, that was a big story.

Like two weeks ago. I know. I know. Yeah. So speaking of lawsuits, Tish James made some very big moves. Oh, yeah. In her Trump lawsuit and dropping out of running for governor. What are you guys seeing there?

Molly, do you think they're related? I hope they're related. I actually was thinking about that because Tish's, James was pretty much the frontrunner, right? I think so. I mean, the frontrunner was Kathy Hochol because she's got the job. But Tish James was sort of thought of as

if there were one person who could beat her, it would be Tish James. Right. So the fact, and I had thought in my head, Cuomo and obviously Tish James is not at all like Cuomo, but Cuomo was the AG who sunk Snyderman and then went and became governor. So there is a well-worn path of AG's who then sink governors in New York State.

And she did release all these text messages last week. You'll remember the text messages. Yeah, the ones that got Chris fired. So it is interesting to me. She would have been in as good a position as ever to replace the governor or at least to give Kathy Hokel a real run for the money. Right. I thought it was interesting and it made me, I hope, that the reason she wasn't running was because she had this big case against Trump, but we don't really know.

Right. It's just, you know, the timing is certainly raises an eyebrow that these happened like within a day of each other, really. And I don't think, you know, I don't know how fascinating this is to anyone who doesn't live in New York. But there were no signs that I'm aware of that that James was considering not running or, you know, ending a run. Yeah. I mean, I think that came as sort of a shock to everyone. You know, look, it may also. also be she was, I think, trailing Hockel in the polls by a decent margin. And she may have just, maybe she just read the tea leaves or sat down with her advisors. And they said, and they told her, hey, this is not the right time, you know, and maybe if you've got this lawsuit against Trump, you know, play this out. And then, you know, next time around, it's all you. She's only been in the job for two years or not

even. Exactly. And also, one of former governor Cuomo's big things was that, you know, the whole thing with James against him was politically motivated that she wanted to be governor. And this kind of takes that off the table. And I don't know how much people believed that spin and probably not much. But at any rate, it does sort of remove that whole, you know, well, the whole thing against Andrew Cuomo was just political because, you know, Tish James wanted his job. So it may be in the long run that this is very, very good for her. and that it's actually a smart sort of long play, you know, as opposed to just going for the brass ring right away. Yeah, I hope that's true. It's so weird, though, because I keep thinking of, like, it seems like all these people have learned these lessons that, like, you should just start running.

Like, it seems like Beto follows that, but that everybody talks about how Chris Christie didn't run in 2012 when he should have. It's kind of shocking to see a politician not just go for it. No, I agree, especially in this day and age, like you said, again, love or hate him, the idea that Buttigieg ran for president, with his resume was like a little eyebrow raising. But it worked. It definitely worked. And, you know, these people are not necessarily running for the office they're running for. In his case, he got a nice, you know, federal job, whatever. To your point, Jesse, I think you're right that people, now the game is you just run. You know, Andrew Yang, you just run. In his case, it didn't work out. But, you know, I think he really thought he was going to be mayor of New York because of his failed presidential campaign. And that's probably what he wanted the whole time, you know, et cetera, et cetera.

etc. So I agree with you, Jesse. That's why this, you know, I think when I saw this news, you know, my first reaction was, whoa. Like, she's not running? Like, everybody runs. It's true. Well, that's why women are kind of better than men, no offense or anything. Hey, folks, if you haven't heard every single week we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media, like Jim Acosta or Soledadad O'Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors

like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner, and sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's happening in the news. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast inside member where you'll support the Beast fearless journalism, as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member, head to New Abnormal.com. That's New Abnormal.com. dot the DailyBeast.com.

Congressman Richie Torres represents New York's 15th district. Welcome back to New Abnormal, Richie Torres. Always a pleasure to be with you, Molly. One of the things you and I talked about recently was your freshman congressman and that you never thought you would pass three major pieces of legislation. Can you talk a little bit about that?

I feel like I've had the most unusual experience as a member of Congress. If someone had sets to me two years ago that I would become, a member of Congress during an infectious disease outbreak and both to impeach an outgoing president, all of that would happen within the first two weeks. I would have said that sounds like a movie. And then if someone would have said to me, the Democratic Party would pass not one, not two, but three multi-trillion dollar investments in the future of our country.

I would have said, if you believe that, then I have a bridge to sell you. So I have been amazed by the sheer magnitude of the change that we've achieved in the United States Congress. It's an enormous amount of policy that's been passed. And I feel like we haven't really seen Democrats capitalize on this. Do you notice those? You're exactly right. Look, and I will offer self-reflection. The Democrats are more effective at governing, but Republicans are more effective at messaging.

Yeah. And if we refuse to clearly define what we stand for, then others will do it for us. And we've seen a concerted effort by the conservative movement, by right-wing media. to caricature the Build Back Better Act, filling the void that we largely left behind. Most members of the public know the Build Back Better Act by the price tag. And I thought it was a grave miscalculation for us to put the price tag out there and allow it to become the defining fact of the Build Back Better Act.

Like the focus should not be on the price tag, the focus should be on the policies and the peoples whose lives are lifted by those policies. And we've lost focus. And the misconceptions about the Build Back Better Act could be so ingrained that we could be beyond the point of no return. It's hard to tell. You've been very successful. Some people don't know your district,

but you had a really tough race to Congress. Can you talk a little bit about how you won? So I ran in the most fiercely contested congressional campaign in New York City. I was one of about 10 candidates. And the leading candidate in my race was a man by the name of Ruben D.S. who was known to be the most anti-LDQ, anti-choice, Democrat in New York State politics. He was essentially a Trump Republican masquerading as a Democrat.

And the conventional wisdom held that he was well positioned to win because he had almost universal name recognition within the congressional district. And he was a more, you know, he's been a powerful brand name in Bronx politics longer than I've been alive. Yeah. But against all odds, you know, not only did I win, but I defeated him so decisively that I sent him into retirement, which is exactly where he belongs. So I want to talk to you about one of the things that Democrats are really struggling with,

and I've now read like about 55 pieces about it, and I'm even more stressed than I was before, is attracting Latino voters. Talk to me. First, we have to call Latinos, Latinos, and not black ass. Yes. It's important to address a community by the terms that it chooses. Right. Rather than choose the terms for the community. So true.

So that's one. But we have to be careful not to treat the Latino community as a model. You know, the Puerto Ricans and the Mexicans in the South Bronx are quite different from the Cubans and Venezuela and Florida. We're quite different from Mexicans in South Texas. And we have to be careful not to treat the Latino vote as a monolith and not to take historical constituencies of the Democratic Party for granted. Because we can lose those constituents. And we have lost those constituencies. In New York City, in a deep blue city, we lost, the Democratic Party, lost.

the Asian book. Yeah. Because of issues like public safety and education. And we saw that education became a losing issue for the Democrats in Virginia. I think Democrats underestimated how angry a lot of these parents are. And I say this as a parent of school age children myself about school closures. You cannot come off as condescending to parents, right? If education becomes a losing issue for our party, we are done, period. Because there's nothing that parents care more about. and the education of their children. And you have to be mindful of their concerns, and you have to engage with them.

You know, we have to avoid what I call the Adley-Stevenson syndrome. So there's a story about Adley-Stevenson. You know, he delivered a speech and a woman approached him and said, Mr. Stevenson, I'm inspired. Every thinking America is going to vote for you. And he replies, yes, madam, that I need a majority of the American people. That kind of condescension will cost you elections. Yeah.

And we have to be careful not to appear at condescending to parents. We have concerns about the education of their children. We have to engage this. How should Democrats talk to parents? I mean, how do you walk that line of supporting the teachers' union and supporting teachers, but also being able to say, you know, I mean, I think the thing that I think we in the media have done a bad job of is explaining this is a once in a century, hopefully, pandemic. And so business is not as usual. It depends on the issues, but you're right.

Yes, COVID-19 was a cataclysmic event, the likes of which we've never seen before. It radically restructured our society, at least for a period of time. But we should reaffirm that there are going to be no school closings. There's going to be no loss of learning and that we're committed to providing children with a high standard of education that they deserve, to which they are legally and morally intact, and that parents have a stake and should have a role in the education of their children. We should embrace the parental role in the education of children. There was a lot of feeling in Virginia, and again, Virginia historically always goes, almost always has gone the opposite of the presidency. So I feel like when you're talking about this, McCallif loss, you have to talk about that because it is historically always goes opposite of the presidency. But I just am curious to know, do you think that it was, you know, it seemed to me that Virginians thought that if they nominated someone who, looked like Joe Biden, they could cash in on that kind of centrist goodwill. Do you think that's

what happened? Each race has its own dynamics, but I feel like we have a branding challenge. And I'm speaking from my experience in New York City. In the mayoral election, the 2021 mayoral election, in a deep blue city, we lost the East Bronx. We lost the Asian voting queens. We lost Southern Brooklyn, right? So the branding challenges that we have as a party are not confined to New Jersey and Virginia. It is a national problem that we have to address. What do you think the number one thing Democrats should be doing? There's a, so there are two competing theories, right?

One theory holds that we have to focus on issues that appeal to swing voters who decide the outcome of elections. And the other theory holds that we have to appeal, that we have to prioritize issues that mobilize the base. to turn out the vote, because winning elections as well, turning out the vote. I would submit to you that we can do both. We ought to find issues that appeal to swing voters and mobilize the base. And the best example is the cost of prescription drugs. We should run on a platform of empowering the federal government to negotiate more affordable drug prices, driving a hard bargain with big pharma, capping the price of insulin at $35 a month.

Those are the policies on which we should campaign. Those are winning issues, bread and butter issues for the Democratic Court. Yeah. Why isn't that happening? Your guess is as good as fun. It could be that there is a consultant industrial complex. So you're saying that there's a culture of lobbying. You know, by the way, it's like I read all these newsletters and I see, you know,

no one should not be able to afford health care sponsored by. Blue Cross Blue Shield. Like, okay. We are serious about environmental commitment sponsored by Exxon. You're young, very annoyingly. You're extremely young. That used to be younger. This is true.

You're not that young. You're 34, which is younger than Jesse and I. Oh, Jesus. Okay, so you're 33. You're 10 years younger than Jesse and I who are really fucking old. But there are now, what, 20, 25? members of Congress in their 30s? I have the exact number, but we are, we have never been younger.

And Congress historically has been a gerentotocracy. Yeah. What do you guys get that they don't get? Again, I want to be careful not to treat young voters as the young members of Congress as a monolith. Like, we vary well. Right. Well, not all of us are Democrats.

Right. I'm a Democrat, but not every millennial is a Democrat. In fact, the youngest member of Congress is a Republican. And not all of the millennial Democrats are progressive Democrats. So it's not as if we collectively. have one opinion. But we're less, you know, in Congress, there is a fetish for tradition, and we're less wedded to tradition. We're less wedded to a structure that values seniority of all else. One of the things I've noticed with the younger Congress people is that you guys are much

better at talking directly. And that's actually not completely true, but largely better at talking directly to constituents. I do find that the young members are more willing to play the outside game. Like Congress is an institution that historically has been centered around the inside game, as far as I can tell. I think the new young members are more willing to be agitators, more willing to play the outside game. And the willingness to play the outside game partly explains the emergence of the progressive caucus as a powerful force in the negotiations around the bill back back. For a long time, I was always told that small dollar donations would democratize the Congress.

and the Senate, that small dollar donations would do that. We are seeing on the right that small dollar donations are actually encouraging racist insanity. Are you shocked that this happened? And I mean, I guess I should have seen this coming, but I'm just so surprised by it. Well, keep in mind that the pool of small donors are much whiter, much wealthier than the rest of the population. The notion of the small donor pool as representative of America is questionable. My impression is that those on the extremes tend to generate the most fundraising online. It's no accident that in the first quarter of 2021, the member of Congress who raised the most online was Marjorie Tellegrine, right after voting to decertify the results of the election.

So I would not take for granted that small donor online fundraising is necessarily conducive to liberal democracy. Oh, so depressing. Thank you so much, Richie. I hope you'll come back. I will always come back to depression. Thank you. Greg Sargent is the author of the Washington Post Plumline blog. Welcome back to the new abnormal, Greg Sargent. Thanks for having me on again.

We're so excited to have you. So let's talk first about January 6th and Mark Meadows. What is going on? Well, the latest is that Mark Meadows is suing the January 6th Select Committee. and Nancy Pelosi to try to stop the subpoena that's been levied on him. And of course, by spectacular coincidence, if he can get that subpoena scrapped, then he won't have to turn over a whole lot of information that will shed a great deal of light on Trump's coup attempt.

So I think as others have remarked, he's already in very hot water with Trump for revealing in his book that Trump tested positive for COVID before the first presidential debate. And now he's like frantically trying to make amends with Trump by, you know, fighting this, fighting with this lawsuit to help prevent the country from learning about Trump's effort to overthrow our political system. By the way, that is such an amazing story about Mark Meadows book. Like, did he not realize when he was writing it that perhaps this might piss off Trump?

It's really an incredibly strange situation for sure. One of my favorite things about it is that he says in there, at least according to the Guardian account, I have not gotten a chance to check out the book itself. But according to the Guardian account, he essentially says, we told everyone in Trump's inner circle that he should be treated as if he's positive, meaning he should be treated as if he's contagious. Right. That's quite a thing to admit, you know, at the same time that you're admitting that you didn't tell the debate organizers. And by the way, I wrote about this, but I find it incredible that his Trump's whole family sat maskless at the debate. After knowing this, I mean, we don't know for sure exactly what they knew, but if it's true, as Meadows said, according to the Guardian, that the word was put out to Trump's inner circle that he should be treated as contagious, then they would have had to know. In another world where people cared about public health, you know, I mean, there's copability there.

Don't we think, though, this is the perfect metaphor, though, that his thing has always been, like, the allegiance to him is do what I say and pretend this virus doesn't exist. And this is just warproof of it. It's amazing. Yeah, the entire Trump movement kind of coalesced behind the idea that, at best, COVID was just no big deal. And we didn't really have to do a lot. And at worst, that it was just a plot of his liberal enemies to bring him down. Yeah. I mean, it's unbelievably shocking, I think. one of my favorite moments with this Mark Meadows stuff was when Mark Meadows was on TV denying what he had written in his own book.

Well, you know, the thing about that is that for this kind of in this alternate, you know, disinformation universe that they all inhabit, something like that can just kind of pass without even being remarked on, right? Well, and also right-wing media gives a complete pass to any Republican lying. Yeah. And so even no matter how ridiculously self-contradictory or like blatantly, provably false, it just seamlessly gets incorporated into their universe. Yeah, it's kind of amazing. And I mean, I think it's the false equivalency. The right-wing media is able to equate a mainstream media mistake with the Republican media malfeasance.

Right. You know, we're dealing with some very deep pathologies and it's not easy to know what to do about it. So Mark Meadows is going to sue the January 6th Committee. Is there any precedent for this? I mean, it seems not. What's interesting about the lawsuit and also what's really wretched and disgusting about it is that it essentially argues that the committee's subpoena has no, quote, unquote, valid legislative purpose, right? And so then they say that because congressional investigations have to be tied to legislative activity of some kind, then that's invalid.

But the thing is that the January 6th committee actually has lots of legitimate legislative purposes, right? Like, one is that they've already said that they're considering revising the Electoral Count Act, which structures how the electoral college is counted in Congress. You know, all the holes in that law are exactly what Trump tried to exploit to subvert Biden's victory. Right. And so, you know, learning about why it is that they thought the Electoral Account Act could be exploited to, you know, subvert an election obviously has a legitimate legislative purpose because it could inform how to reform the law, right? The ECA. And secondly, the other thing that they're talking extensively about, or Democrats are anyway, I don't know if the committee is, but, well, Adam Schiff is talking a whole lot about revising.

congressional or strengthening congressional oversight over conversations between the White House and the Department of Justice, right? And we've learned now that the level of extraordinary pressure that Trump put on the Justice Department to create a, you know, to create the impression that the election was fraudulent, right, was really incredibly corrupt. And so learning about that could inform that legislative push, right? But to Meadows and Trump, Right? None of this is legitimate. None of these things need to be done because nothing was ever done wrong on their part with the coup attempt. And that to me is what drives me so crazy about the argument, right? The idea that there's no legitimate legislative purpose and reforming our system to protect against another coup attempt is like saying there was no coup attempt. It doesn't matter. It seems to me that Mark Meadows suing the January 6th committee is very Trumpy. Yeah. I mean, in fact, Trump himself, in his lawsuit against, which is trying to block the committee from getting a whole bunch of documents, particularly from the National Archives and so forth, makes the same argument. He says there's no legitimate legislative purpose here.

But they don't have the same lawyers or anything. As far as I know or not, but I mean, we should really pause to talk about how amazing the argument is. Congress has no legislative purpose in trying to reform laws in order to protect itself and the political system from getting attacked again. They're just trying to throw the pasta on the wall and see what sticks. As I argued in today's thing, the big question right now, or a big question is whether we could possibly get 10 Republican senators to reform the electoral count act to prevent another coup attempt or to tighten oversight over White House DOJ communications. And, you know, that seems like pretty bored and hopeless. But it's not like entirely impossible, right? Like, you could sort of see how 10 Republicans might say, well,

maybe if we do these reforms, then the next Trump won't try to pressure us to steal the next one. Right. The next Trump is Trump, too, by the way. He's the former Trump too, yes. Who is Trump? Yes. Maybe, you know, if such a scheme would be less likely to succeed due to reforms, then it would be less likely to be attempted. And you read in a lot of this reporting that some of the Republicans who did stand up to what was happening came under enormous pressure to break, right? And so what I keep saying is, why wouldn't Republicans who legitimately don't want to go through this again try to make it less likely to happen? it would protect them from pressure.

Right. I mean, if you undermine democracy, it's not just bad for Democrats. It's bad for the markets. It's bad for everyone. I mean, this cascades into everywhere. I mean, a lot of these Republican senators are incredibly rich and have a lot of money in the public markets. Public markets don't like dictators. Like, you know, they're not really thinking this through very well.

No, they certainly are. And sort of one thing that supports that point in maybe an interesting way is, kind of saw some of these corporations step out there pretty far in supporting voting rights. For example, when they came out against things like the Georgia voter suppression law. And I know there's this tendency on Twitter and so forth to just kind of say, oh, LOL, it's just for show. You know, they're doing that. They're just doing this because it's easy. They're putting out statements.

It means nothing. But I don't really buy that. I think it kind of is an important tell that the corporations on some level feel pressure from below, that is, their customers and their shareholders. And shareholders to not be aligned with trying to overturn democracy and trying to make it as hard as possible to vote. And so you can kind of see how, you can kind of see glimpses of what you're talking about there, which is that at least some of corporate America and some of the business. world doesn't want to be all that aligned with the Republican extreme radicalization and sees that this is actually something that could be harmful to business over time. Yeah. It's a sort of short-sightedness that is kind of spectacular. But then again, are we surprised from the pro-business

L-O-L-L. And still, Republicans get, you know, if you look at all this kind of polling, the pervasive wisdom is that Republicans are better with the economy, which is shocking to me. Yeah, that is definitely a source of eternal frustration, for sure. You also wrote about this, can Democrats sell Biden's agenda? New ads test a different approach. Can we talk about this? Because, again, this is like an obsession of mine. why can't, you know, if voters knew that Democrats want to give you free glasses and cap insulin at $35, it seems to me like Democrats should never lose another election. And yet, yeah, I mean, Dan Fifer, who used to work for Obama, and now has his own substack on some of

this stuff, did a good piece the other day, essentially arguing that we're in a very complicated information environment when it comes to the economy. And Neil Irwin did a good very good piece for the times on this, where he essentially said the core contradiction of the Biden economy is that by many metrics, things are improving pretty quickly. But at the same time, there are conflicting signals being sent in the form of things like high gas prices and inflation and supply chain problems. And it's a little hard for Democrats to quote-unquote message their way through that. And making that worse, of course, is the fact that they haven't past BBB yet. And so the story of BBB has essentially been one of factional infighting

among Democrats and congressional sausage making and kind of a general sense that why can't they get shit done, right? And so what these guys, this super PAC, or I don't know if it's super PAC, this organization building back together, which is essentially the Democratic group that is devoted to selling BBB, essentially, essentially, essentially is trying to speak to vote our concerns once that's been established, essentially create a frame in which they're saying we get that things are hard right now and complicated and here's what we're doing to make that better. And then they go through, they pivot to a very specific conversation about what's in BDB and how it will bring your

costs down on health care, child care, and all the rest of it. And so I'm hopeful that kind of messaging will work. You got to pass TV, though. Republicans have filled the vacuum left by local news with these MAGA 123 news and all of these sites that provide content for Facebook. And as, you know, Ben Shapiro's Daily Wire and Bongino's report and Tim Poole's Tim Kast. I mean, so you have all of these pretty disruptions. news sites that are sort of filling the local news vacuum. Is that what's really giving Democrats such a hard time? Yeah, I think that's right. And I would maybe take it even broader. Let's take the Virginia gubernatorial election. So the mainstream press essentially was telling a

story in which, okay, Glenn Yonkin is doing some really clever positioning. He's subtly talking to the Trump base, but he's also selling himself as a suburban dad, as a cheerful suburbian dad. And the media thinks that that's aggressive coverage because it's pointing out that he's doing two things at once. Ah ha. The message that ends up sending to the public is that this guy isn't really Trump. Flortations with Trump aren't really a big deal, right? And meanwhile, right-wing media is blasting this roar of stuff about critical race theory. but really, really visceral stuff, not like a polite discussion of it, very visceral, and just blasting it into the Republican base, right? Yonkin essentially has his fingerprints not on that at all.

Occasionally he'd go on Fox News and he would say something like the FBI is trying to, is going after parents, which is utter horseshit. But he would only do that on Fox News and then he'd be the cheerful suburban dad and who wants to fund schools and just wants, the only reason, and he wants to end critical race theories because he wants to honor Martin Luther King's legacy and unite the country, you know, unite Virginia. Democrats face this kind of immense information disadvantage because they don't have anything comparable to keep the conversation going directly with their base the way Republicans do. And I think those, what you're talking about, those types of specific guys you're talking about, like Bongino, they kind of are a subset of that, right?

Yeah. they are not bound by the truth in any possible way. So they have a huge advantage to regular mainstream media because they can just say whatever. And I think we talk about this, but we don't talk about enough with Fox. A great example is Lara Logan compared Dr. Anthony Fauci, Lifetime Public Servant, doctor scientist with Dr. Joseph Mangala. And instead of apologizing, Fox News just disappeared her. And I think you see that where the mainstream media is held to a completely different standard than the far right media.

Oh, for sure. And by their own news consumers, too, if that's the right word for it, it isn't. Just this creation of this alternate information universe that is simply unchecked by any kind of external source. Whereas Democrats are mainly communicating with their base through mainstream media, which tells a both-side story, appropriately so, that alone creates this lopsided information asymmetry. I was talking to one Democrat who, I quote him on record in a piece. He essentially said at the very end of the Virginia race that we're just at a tremendous information disadvantage here. Yonkin just had his base juice to the max for months by right-wing media pumping the most visceral stuff about critical race theory you can imagine into their heads. And as he put it, we've got to come up with a way to regularly

communicate with our base and keep those relationships going in a way that we just don't do right now. This morning, and I'm sure you get all the newsletters, Axios declared, I'm sure you saw this this morning, right? Which are you talking about? We're talking about Axios writing about Purdue. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why it matters. If many of Trump's candidates win, he'll go into the 2024 election cycle with far more people willing to do his bidding who run the elections in key states. That's exactly right. And this is something I've just been trying to get people to focus on, but I feel like I'm, you know, spinning into the wind or something. But a lot of these people are running not to, you know, because they're loyal to the quote unquote big lie. That's just too euphemistic a way to put it, right? It just sounds like it's just about personal loyalty to Trump or avenging Trump for his laws. Right. It's about killing democracy. Some of them are running on an explicit promise to be willing to overturn future. election losses that they hate. And so what is the rationale for David Purdue's candidacy? What is it about Brian Kemp that requires a primary challenge? It's the fact that Brian Kemp

wouldn't help Trump steal the election. And same with the primary challenger, Representative Jody Heiss, who's challenging Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, right? Brad directly rebuffed Trump's pressure on him to find 11,000. some odd votes to overturn a legitimate election. And Jolie Heiss is running on the grounds that, well, if you make me Secretary of State, I will overturn elections in a way that Brad Raffensberger wouldn't. It's explicit. Yeah. We do have a situation where this is how democracies die. Yeah. I mean, that's it. This is how democracies die. You don't have free and fair elections. Game over. At the very least, it looks like a situation is shaping up where the Democrat is going to have to win by a substantial margin to make it cheatproof.

Come to think of it, there's kind of two layers to it, right? They're going to have to win by a substantial enough margin to overcome the disadvantage, the countermajoritarian disadvantage in the electoral college, by enough to overcome the countermajoritarian disadvantage created by voter suppression and gerrymandering. And on top of that, get it out. of cheating range. Right. It is, they have no policy platform except the end of democracy. Maybe tax cuts for the rich. And tax cuts for the rich. But Democrats also like that. Well, the salt thing is very frustrating for sure. What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than

Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one in the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from the Daily Beast tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer, checking in on the movement of the radical right. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed.

That's Fever Dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Andy Levy, who is your fuck-that guy? Let's go. My fuck-that guy is someone that never gets talked about. It's West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin. And I feel like nobody pays enough attention to him and he doesn't get any sort of outsized media coverage.

He's a senator from West Virginia, Molly. His name's Joe Manchin, M-A-N-C-H-I-N. Does he live on a houseboat? Yeah, he owns like a fleet of yachts or something like that or an aircraft carrier. I'm not really clear. God love him, yeah. And also

coal, interested in... Yes, yes, he's a big coal guy. Christmas is a big time of year for him. Yeah. So he was going around yesterday and he had a sheet, a little card that had a list of like things that he says the Democrats have done over the past, you know, year or two. And also stuff that he said was done in a bipartisan fashion that he says the Democrats are doing a horrible job of sort of touting, you know, accomplishments, pandemic aid and stuff like that. And I don't think he's wrong that Democrats are doing a horrible job of touting the things that they do because that's, you know, that's sort of in their job description. That's what Democrats do.

But I don't think his point is, hey, we did all these good things. His point is, look, peons, be happy with what we've given you because you ain't getting any more. And in other words, what he's saying is BBB is DOA and stop trying to get him to vote for, you know, the build back better bill or anything like that. And that to me, that was his point. It was not, you know, hey, we've done great things. We're great people. It was like, this is what you got. Be happy with it.

And, you know, you cannot have some more. He gets my fuck that guy for today. I have you beat. It's called Republicans for National Renewal, a populist reception for this season. It's a wonderful nation. Starring, I Want to Die. Blake Masters, who gets his money from Peter Thiel, Representative Madison Cawthorne, who needs no introduction, and the dumbest man in the United States Congress, my nemesis, representative from the great state of Texas's first district, won Louis Gomerd. I have a question for you. By the way, these tickets are $35 to $100. Who is paying for this?

but also I'm starting to get worried that my making fun of Louis Gohmert is actually punching down. That's good. Yeah, no, I think you're right about that. It's, I don't want to say what it's like. It is punching down for, you know, because I don't, I don't, the good thing is I don't think he understands what you're saying. That is the good news. So I think you're okay. Can I go out of a diavirgin thought that I had the other day about one of the other speakers, Madison Cawthorne?

That video I keep seeing of him punching the tree. Is this him like owning the lips because he heard that libs were tree huggers? He's like, I'll do the opposite. Like, I'm a tree puncher? Yes. I'm like, I'm like, what the hell is this about? It's nothing good. No, I actually think he might give Gomer to run for his money in terms of,

lack of intelligence. Yeah, it's certainly possible. We've been discussing if next term, if Gohmert becomes AG, if he takes the crown. Oh, man, if Gohmert becomes AG. I mean, I don't know. Texas, it's slick. I mean...

Boy. Yeah. There you go. 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.

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