The Daily Beast Podcast - It’s Clear Trump Has No Idea How to Play Defense

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

The New Abnormal muses on the fact that Donald Trump has found himself on the defensive for perhaps the first time in his political career. Then, Semafor’s Washington Bureau Chief Benjy Sarlin joins the program to discuss the 2024 Democratic National Convention and the party’s return to what he calls “Obamaism.” Plus! A conversation with Katya Schwenk, a reporter at investigative newsroom The Lever, about her most recent piece, “Leonard Leo’s Swing-State Voter Purge.” Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

Benji Sarland, the Washington Bureau Chief at Semaphore, joins us to talk about the similarities between the Harris and Obama campaigns and what they can do just a little bit different. Then, reporter at the lever, Kachishwank, is here to tell us all about Leonard Leo, the dark money architect behind the Supreme Court and Republicans' efforts to disenfranchised voters in battleground states. But first, let's have some fun. So, Danielle, I assume you saw the earth-shattering news from the end of last week. And that would be... RFK Jr. dropped out and endorsed Donald Trump. Oh, he was still in the race? He apparently was still in the race, despite not being on the ballot in a whole bunch of states.

He gave a little press conference where... You might want to sit down for this, Danielle. If you watch the press conference, you saw a rich white man complaining. that he didn't leave the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party left him. I think that's the first time a rich white man has ever said that. And it just so it just, it really struck me. You know, he did a whole rambling press conference

and talked about his hatred of vaccines and 8 million other things that are utterly toxic and utterly divorced from reality. So it makes perfect sense, I think, that he endorsed Donald Trump. What's funny is that I've never thought that you would see another politician that had a family that hated him as much as part of Donald Trump's family hates him. But man, when RFK Jr.'s sister went on Jen Sacky's show on MSNBC and was just like, I disavow him, I want nothing to do with him, he is a disgrace to our father's

legacy. If my father were alive, I mean, she went blow after blow after blow at him. him and it was just like, where are you spending Thanksgiving? Mar-a-Lago, I guess, because Melania won't be there, so they'll definitely be room at the table. But it's really extraordinary. And, I mean, we talked about it on here, but did we not listen to the fluff fest that happened between him and Donald Trump that was caught on audio that was recorded about, thank you so much for being in this race and all. I mean, and this came out weeks before he would then give his two voters.

to Donald Trump. So we knew what side he was going on. And apparently he was out there shopping, quote unquote, shopping his endorsement. And the Harris Wall's ticket didn't want to touch that with a 10-foot pole. And like, I don't even think 10 feet is far enough. No. And like you said, it's not far enough for his family. Five of his eight surviving siblings put out a statement saying that his decision to endorse Trump is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear and called it a sad ending to a sad story. Here's the thing. And then I don't want to spend too much time on this guy because he's a nut job. I think the remaining people in this country that are still sort of enamored of the Kennedy legacy, I think 99% of them are political journalists. Yeah. I don't think the vast,

vast, vast majority of Americans are going around thinking, well, that name really stands for something. I'm going to vote for him. And look, we saw that. He was polling at best, in some states at 5%, which, as we know from history, if you look at third parties, you can, at the very least, you can cut that in half for the people that will actually vote for him. The Kennedy mythology is like, it's not really a part of American culture anymore, I think, except inside the political class. You know, and he himself was always given more attention than he was due because his name appealed to journalists and to pundits and whatever. But I don't see this moving the needle in Trump's direction much at all?

No, I mean, all it did is essentially just solidify the Republicans as the party of weird, cuckoo, cringe, you know, nutsy conspiracy theorists. Like, you know, when you welcome in RFK Jr., and you're saying like, oh, he would make a good health secretary, and I'm like, oh, you're out of your, like, as exactly what Michelle Obama said during her, you're out of your damn mind. Like, you know, like there is no which way around that. Like, you're the party of crazy. You know, the last thing I'll say on him, because he's not worth this much time, is that the only reason why he got any media, even though he was like complaining about his lack of media coverage and the empire and this, that, and the other thing is because of his last fucking name. Like, that was it. You know, the reason why he got this much coverage was. because of his last name. So I, you know, his, his grievances just align perfectly with what Maga stands for.

Absolutely. But I would ask you this, Danielle, is it crazy to decapitate a dead whale with a chainsaw on a beach? I can't even answer that. Like, again, the party of animal cruelty, I guess, and I don't care that the whale was already dead. I'm just like, so you got one woman over there shooting dogs and then you got this guy, like, give me a break. Yeah, for those who don't know, an old story from 2012, I think it was in an interview with Town and Country, the magazine that appeals to ordinary everyday Americans and the working class in general. RFK Jr.'s daughter, Kick. Kick Kennedy described this happening.

She also described it as normal. So shame on you, Danielle, for insinuating that there's anything crazy about this. Yeah, okay. Let's go to the other crazy. And the crazy that actually does have a fan base. and that, of course, is Donald Trump. And his MAGA cult, I guess the big thing here is, well, there's two big things. One is he is apparently in his love-hate relationship with Fox News.

He's back in hate mode. He called in to, I guess, Brett Bear and Martha McCallum during the convention, I think, on the last night of the convention. And eventually they had to cut him off and throw to Gutfeld. He was not happy that he got cut off. and so he promptly called into Newsmax. And all of this, by the way, is, again, extremely normal behavior, not at all weird. This is someone you want with the nuclear codes, I think, Daniel.

I mean, we need another word for Unhinged because this behavior of calling in to Fox and first, like, it was like the meltdown on his broke down social media platform wasn't enough. His literal tweeting every 30 seconds wasn't enough. It's the desperation, Andy. It's the desperation and the need to be heard and to be seen and to have some type of breakthrough. But when you do that and even the hosts over at Fox are like, yeah, thanks so much for calling in, grandpa, got to go. The doorbell is ringing.

And like, do you know what I'm saying? And like desperately trying to hang up the phone. you know, but be polite, but this is not making good TV and we're about good TV and this is fucking nuts. When your supposed supporters and the network that paid out, you know, nearly a billion dollars in perpetuating your lie, don't want to have anything to do with you anymore, you know that like your days are numbered. And I think that we're going to see him continue down this rambling, but I also believe that he's going to become actually, like we're laughing right now, but I think that his desperation is going to turn into danger soon.

As Kamala Harris pointed out at the convention, she said that, you know, Donald Trump is, you know, in many ways a deeply unsurious man, but he's also a deeply serious threat to the country. And that's along the lines of what you're saying, I think, Danielle, is that, yeah, all this stuff is funny, except for the fact that there is, you know, roughly a 50% chance he's going to be president again. And then suddenly it's not so funny. And it, you know, it moves into the, you'd like to just joke about it, but instead you have to joke about it to stay sane. And it would just be so much more pleasant if you could, if you could just joke about it and be like, look at this loser who has no chance of being president. But I think you're right. When you talk about the desperation, I think everything we're seeing now is just Trump is in his

flop sweat era. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's a good one. Everything we see from him now, he is totally on the defensive, and this is new for him. He was not like this at all in 2016. He was not really like this at all in 2020. And we're seeing exactly what I guess you would expect to see of a guy like Trump in his flop sweat era. He can't deal with it. He can't deal with the fact that the polls are moving in Kamala Harris's favor and that the Democratic convention outrated the Republican convention. And he is just, he's flailing away and just someone needs to towel this man off. I mean, I just, you know, I wish they would and I wish that Donald Trump would go away. But like, I think that somebody like him, numbers matter. And this is how they start to sow the seeds of, you know, you had last week with Jesse Waters talking about, oh,

these polls are not, you know, accurate polls. And there's something wrong with the polls. because they're starting to show Kamala Harris trending upwards. And then, you know, you have the numbers that came out that you mentioned of the audience that tuned in for the DNC versus the RNC. And I think that Kamala Harris's acceptance speech had like 22 or 23 percentage like increase from Donald Trump's 90 minutes of rambling nonsense. And ratings are the only numbers that Donald Trump actually cares about. And so when you start to start to speak.

see this trend and it doesn't look like it is something that is manufactured. And that's what I was saying when we had the conversation right after Kamala Harris's acceptance speech. Like this kind of energy you can't manufacture. You can manufacture and manipulate polls in a kind of way. And I mean that not saying that these polls are manipulated, but I mean based on the kind of questions that you ask, how you ask them, where you're asking them, who you're asking them to, you can get polls to kind of say what you want them to. But you can't manufacture or focus group your way into the type of spirit and energy that the Harris Wall's ticket has conjured.

And so when Donald Trump and his ilk are looking at this and the best that they can do are, you know, again, the insults at Tim Walz's son or like doing these kind of, like people are looking at it and they're like, God, y'all seem pathetic and hateful. and just like, cringy at best. And so I think that the party as a whole is in its flop era. Yeah, you know, fingers crossed because obviously things can change on a dime. But, you know, the thing with polls for me is I agree with you. The numbers are, you know, they are what they are.

But a lot of that could depend on how the questions are asked, et cetera. But I do think you can look at polls and see trends, if nothing else, if not like hard numbers. And the trend line is clearly in favor. of Kamala Harris right now. And, you know, again, we'll have to see if that continues. But as much as, you know, Trump can sit there and say the polls are fake and the polls are this and the polls are that, even if you're right about one or two of them, it's when you start looking at them as a sort of a whole, as a conglomerate of polls or whatever. And you just see a very, very clear trend line. You kind of know something's up. And it doesn't mean that, you know, if a poll shows that Harris is up by five points, it doesn't, to me anyway, I'm not sitting there going, well, Harris is definitely up by five points. But if you see a bunch of polls where, you know, the Democrat was trailing and now the Democrat is leading and it's been climbing in that direction, I think you can kind of get a sense at least of, okay, things are, things are looking better than they were a few months ago. So I, you know, that's, anyway, that's how I look at.

polls and and also with the knowledge that national polls, you know, in an electoral college system are basically meaningless. But one of the big things that that will, you know, maybe move the needle one way or the other coming up is the, is the debate that is supposed to be happening on ABC on September 10th. If it happens, Danielle. Because surprise, surprise, surprise, Donald Trump posted on his broke-ass social media platform. He said, I watched ABC fake news this morning, both lightweight reporter Jonathan Carl's ridiculous and biased interview of Tom Cotton and their so-called panel of Trump haters. And I ask, why would I do the debate against Kamala Harris on that network?

So he's already, we are, you know, what, two weeks out from this debate. and he's already making noises about maybe backing out. Oh, and then on top of that, on top of that little meltdown moment, which we know, again, like everything that he does is about planting some type of poisonous pill in order to blow things up. And so it wouldn't be because he's scared to death to debate Kamalik Harris and look like the old, senile, foolish man on stage next to this young, vibrant, you know, sharp woman who, what,

we watched during the DNC were just a montage of her taking on everyone from Bill Barr to Kavanaugh to Jeff Sessions and others and breaking them down one question at a time. So we know that Kamala Harris has been preparing for this kind of debate, probably her whole life, right? We know that Donald Trump, again, can't get over the fact that Joe Biden is no longer the nominee. And, you know, you have his people out there talking about, well, now we want to make sure there's a mute button. And if ABC doesn't agree to having the mute button so that he can't be heard during during the time that she's answering questions and vice versa, then they're going to pull out. And I just need to read the response from the Harris team about the mute button on September 10th.

And this is what they pushed out. We have told ABC and other networks seeking to host a possible October debate that we believe both candidates' mics should be live throughout the full broadcast. Our understanding, is that Trump's handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don't think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own. We suspect Trump's team has not even told their boss about this dispute because it would be too embarrassing to admit they don't think he can handle himself against Vice President Harris without the benefit of a mute button. I'm like, where is the lie? Yeah. There is no lie here.

They're afraid for whatever that motherfucker would mumble, underneath his breath during the time that she's answering questions that are posed, because we know that she will just stand there and wait for a question to be asked. We saw Donald Trump, I mean, this image is burned into my brain, Andy, of him stalking Hillary Clinton around that stage. I will never, ever forget that. And never forget that the moderators did nothing, right? The intimidation, the stalking that, like, did nothing.

Just let him do it. Okay, so now if ABC, like I thought that we, he's saying, I thought that we agreed to the same, this is what he just said recently. I thought we agreed to the same rules as before, which was with the mute button. I mean, they are looking for any out, any little loophole, any little thing so that they can say, oh, well, we're not going to do the debate then. Yeah, I mean, the interesting thing is, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was the Biden team that wanted the mics muted for the first debate. and they fought for that. I think it's really interesting that the Harris team is taking the exact opposite tack, which I think is the correct one.

I understand why the Biden team thought, man, we got to mute this guy when he's not talking because we've seen him in debates. He just keeps talking while other people are, you know, when it's another person's turn. And he just mutters things. But it's the Republicans right now who are trying very hard to not let Trump be Trump. You know, they keep talking about, oh, you know, you keep hearing these stories. We got to get him to talk about policy more. We got to get him to do this. We got to get him to stop talking about Kamala Harris's race. We got to stop him from calling her stupid. And what they're really saying is don't let Donald

Trump be Donald Trump. And the Democrats are saying, no, you know what? Let Trump be Trump because he is such an obscenity and he's such a buffoon and he's such a clover. And he's such a clobloon. And he's such a clown and let him look like a fool for 90 minutes on a debate stage. And I think you're absolutely right. Look, I don't think she's going to let him get away with it. I don't think she's going to let him ignore it. I think what she'll do is say something like, Donald, why are you being weird? You're like a child. Go back to your podium. Like, I think she will, she can use that and use it against him. And I actually think that that was a bit of a mistake that Hillary Clinton made in 2016, though I don't blame her for it.

Right. Because it was sort of a, what the hell? You know, this has never happened before. How do you prepare for that? But I think now that it's happened once, I think she could be prepared to handle something like that and to handle, you know, his interruptions and muttering in a way that that Hillary couldn't simply because it wasn't something we'd ever seen. But that's the thing with Donald Trump.

It's been eight years of this now. Corporate mainstream media cannot pretend that like, oh, we don't know what to do now. We don't know what to expect. We've been seeing the same play, the same show, playing the same fucking song over and over again for the last eight years. And that's why I think because he is so stale, Andy, that's why I think that Kamala Harris and her team are prepared.

And like, and again, this is actually going to be Donald Trump's second debate, right? It's going to be Kamala Harris's first debate since being named. named the presidential nominee, it's going to be Donald Trump's second. And so I think that again, this contrast between her prosecutorial skills, her sharpness versus his like rambling and chaos. Like I can, like I just, I need him to stay in the debate because I need to see her facial expressions. I need to see the facial expressions that are just like, you fucking dummy. You know what I'm saying, like, that's what I need. I need the memes. Yeah. I think basically what we're saying

here is that the Harris team absolutely recognizes that this is the new abnormal. Back with more after this. Have the Democrats made a return to Obamaism? In a peace headline, Harris Capp's Democratic Convention's return to Obamaism. Benji Sarland, the Washington Bureau Chief at Semaphore, says yes, but that there have been a few updates. He joins me now to discuss. Benji, thanks so much for being here. Thanks so much for having me, Andy. Yeah, absolutely. So I guess I'll begin by asking you how you define Obamaism. What is the thing that we're talking about here? And start with, I guess, Obamaism classic before we get to the updated 2.0 version. So Obamaism classic is a kind of, I call it patriotic pluralism, where you talk about America as a united country that's trying to

do the right thing. Even when we see our politics as small and divisive, it's just people trying to tear us away from that fundamental truth. That this is a great country and we have way more in common than there are differences. That's one piece of it. The idea that there's lots of different people living in this country and we really are more united than you think. The other part of it is sort of the way Obama speaks to this. And one is using his biography very heavily. The idea of, look at me. I have this unique American story. In Obama's case, it was the idea of this very unique background of being born to an African father, a white mother from the, from the Midwest, of being raised partly in Hawaii, in Kansas, in Indonesia,

in having this, you know, then having the second life in Chicago with Michelle Obama. And, you know, the idea that, look how unique my story is, but isn't that what America, that we all have these incredibly unique stories and we all are coming together and contributing to this long, gradual progress that we are, you know, using this election to write our paragraph in, in the history books on together. So it's a very Hamilton-y kind of take, is that this is a diverse country. We love it. And we can all get along and do the right thing together. Don't be fooled by all these artificial claims that we're red states or blue states or red states or blue, you know, counties or cities. I think is the way I define it. Yeah, no, that sounds fair. So before we get into how the

Democrats sort of return to this, as you say. Explain what the new Obamaism is. In other words, so they returned to this, but with a twist, I want to read a tweet that you put out, because I think this is how you summed it up. You said, the new Obamaism is keep the hope and change, the patriotism, and the pluralism, drop the civility stuff. And then you said, it's basically 2008 with dick jokes. Is that a fair summary of your take? 2008 with dick jokes was the headline, sadly, I could not use. But yes. That is on Twitter and on podcasts, I will absolutely say that. Yeah.

And you really saw that one in Obama's own speech where he made an actual dick joke, which, you know, if that happened in 2016 or certainly 2012, like everyone would have lost their mind. There would have been a civility conversation. How did our politics get that low? You would have had crying children saying, oh, please, Barack Obama, you're my hero. How could you do this to me? Like, no one gave a shit this time. No one even pretended to give a shit this time. This is, you can't nine years into Trump running for president and pretend that this is something

you're going to be offended about. And the other place we saw this in was Michelle Obama's speech, which was extremely hard edge and had some of the most memorable attacks on Trump of anybody. But, you know, her most famous quote from the 2016 convention was, when they go low, we go high. Did she say that this convention? No. They have abandoned that part of it. And I think that some of this is just a concession to reality here, that this is just another era. People are being judged by a different standard. And also, the reality that they just do have more contempt for Trump. I mean, the Obamaism is about voters.

It's the idea that Trump voters, we should treat as our neighbor who would do anything for us and who we really have to look at where we're similar. And, you know, Obama talked about having grace for maybe your, like you would for your family member who said something perhaps, you know, less than perfect about race or gender. We have to think of our fellow Americans that way. But Trump himself, they just have complete contempt for. And there's like no reason for them to hide that, really, I think is what they concluded. Yeah, along those lines, one of the things that you wrote that really interested me was,

I'm going to quote from your piece, the overnight rise of groups like white dudes for Harris alongside Walz's Camo Hat liberalism represent a kind of synthesis of 2008 and 2024 politics. Progressives who acknowledge discrimination but can also laugh about cultural differences, rather than constantly look to deconstruct them. What struck me about this is I think this ability to make jokes is so key because it's a stark contrast with sort of the humorless fearmongering MAGA GOP messaging. And I think the reason it works is it's a bottom line assertion that in the end, to go with, you know, what you were saying about Obama and the neighbors, it's an assertion

that in the end we're all human beings and we're all in this together and we can poke fun at each other. Yeah, that's kind of the idea of it. If you're not familiar with white dudes for Harris, it's this grassroots group that popped up along with all these other kind of identity-based groups that raised just an insane amount of money for Kamal Harris. There's also a white women for Harris, but there was also black men for Harris, black women for Harris, Latino men for Harris. There's like all sorts of subgroups and subcategories that have been hosting these. White dudes for Harris got a lot of attention because that was seen as a very taboo thing to say and do, especially in the last 10 years of politics.

Usually, as they actually joked when they opened up their own fundraising event, usually when you get a bunch of people saying they're white dudes for something, it's historically not been a great time for non-white people. Right. It's like, it's usually groups of white the name is generally not a good sign in society. But I think what's been interesting is that they have been trying to reclaim this idea that it's a big country with lots of different identities, including, you know, Tim Wall's kind of stereotypical white dude that really does exist. He's kind of like presented himself as like the er white dad of a certain kind of like class and and region. Yeah. And it's okay for us to joke about this. I think a lot of people were surprised, for example, when you got on white dudes for Harris.

It wasn't them holding some graduate seminar on like, here's all the academic reasons why this is okay. And we are here to expiate our white guilt. And we're going to start with like a land acknowledgement. And like it wasn't like some kind of horrible like run through of all the worst of white people through history. It was mostly them joking around like Tim Walz does and talking about some serious topics, but in ways like, for example, drug addiction in Appalachia or the epidemic of loneliness that men are facing in general, but then also just making lots of jokes about, you know, I don't know, listening to Wilco or something.

This is something that's been missing the last couple of elections cycles in particular, where there's been a lot more focus on kind of very hard-edged, I know this is a controversial phrase, identity politics, really trying to dig up what was the biggest, grievance that each very narrow individual slice of the electorate has, and how can we reflected back to them in very specific terms? Obamaism is different. It is very broad. It's how can we include the most people? What's the language I could use that speaks to the largest group of people and breaks down some of those differences? And that can get attacked as maybe naive or maybe deliberately avoiding some of these more identity group specific questions that if you don't directly

address will invite discrimination back in. But it is a different way of speaking and you really are seeing it compared to even the last D&C. Which brings me to, I think maybe the biggest question, one of the things you note in your piece is that the party, the Democratic Party, is still comfortably further left on policy than it was back in 2008 in the Obama era. So is this return to Obamaism also a return to sort of the Obama style incrementalism when it comes to policy? Or is it really just a linguistic shift away from the academic jargon and, you know,

talking about throwing words around constantly like colonialism and intersectionality. And instead of using those words, it's substituting them with the sort of the more Tim Wall's plain speaking style of saying things like, well, we just call that being a good neighbor. Yeah. And it's a little bit TBD because we don't entirely know how Cobble Harris was covered. I mean, she just showed up as the nominee a month ago. And we're still sort of filling in the details there. Certainly she has tried to present her agenda as much more she used phrases like, realistic, you know, pragmatic, like not emphasizing revolutionary change, which was like the big kind of buzzword that Bernie Sanders introduced, but really spread even to more people like Biden,

the idea of having like an FDR-sized presidency and framing everything as big as possible. But I do think what's changed. The party is even within that framework, even with what we do know about Harris, still much further left than 2008 on economic issues, especially. But even within that frame, we've seen some differences. And so I'll give an example of someone who we know is very far left than policy, which is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who had one of the biggest hit speeches of this entire convention. And it was really, really notable. She got an absolutely huge round of applause as soon as she showed up.

And a reminder, this is a room full of Biden delegates. Everyone was chosen here to support Biden. They were absolutely crazy about her. And she gave this speech that just like immediately afterwards people were talking about, oh, man, this is like leveling up from her. She could go for higher office. like, where was this aOC? It's notable what she did. She gave a speech that was pure Bernie Sanders-style populism. Like, Democrats are the party of the people. Trump is a billionaire who would sell the United States for a dollar if it enriched his cronies. it was very hard left that way. But it was also, like Obama, it was about her biography. Like, look at me, I'm a New York bartender. And, you know, isn't that great a bartender can become a congresswoman? And that's why we'll fight for working people. It was an appeal to the largest possible group, anyone with a job. And it was talking about how the only thing preventing us from this great class politics where everyone with a job gets together and fights against the billionaires is a cynical politics that seems blind to the realities of the working people. This is very Obama. He talks about cynical politics all the.

the time. He did even in his speech to the DNC. Compared that to the way AOC and folks like her on the left would have spoken about these things just a few years ago. So I just want to read some phrases from her very brief speech of the 2020 DNC. She asked America to, quote, recognize and repair the wounds of racial injustice, colonization, misogyny and homophobia, and to propose and build reimagined systems of immigration and foreign policy that turn away from the violence and xenophobia of our past. It's like not the kind of art thing you see someone making in like a political conversation in a bar, is it? And also, again, having to name check like 10 specific phrases that are each aimed at like a somewhat different interest group in very kind of

dry academic language. This is a return to talking about things much more plainly, like you said, as common sense and trying to pitch them to as large a group as possible. And I think even the same policy ideas were presented in a different way the last few years. No, I absolutely agree with you. And I couldn't agree more about AOC. I mean, I really liked her speech. I talk to people who are further to the middle than I am who don't generally like her, and they really like the speech. But if you think about it, she wasn't backtracking from anything she said in 2020. She was just framing things differently.

And that's where I really think that, you know, when I talk about moving away from academic jargon and making it more, I don't know if it's more homespun. Or again, like, I think Tim Wallace has kind of nailed it here with the we just, we call that being a good neighbor. It feels like that is such a better message, not because it's substantively different, but because it's couching it in broader, more appealing language. Yeah, and it's interesting the evolution on some of these things. Like, speaking of specific policy, there was a trend I covered in 2020 during the Democratic primaries

in that cycle, where they were having these really detailed policy debates. And they were also trying to be much more conscious of how those policies affected marginalized people who'd maybe been left behind in prior campaigns and felt like, you know, maybe they were sometimes even demagogued in ways that hurt them from a policy perspective, right? One way that manifested itself was you had folks like Elizabeth Warren, who I thought was, in many ways, ran a very strong campaign that was very policy focused. When she would propose something like student loan cancellation, which is something that affects a very broad group, right?

Anyone with a student loan? The campaign would actively emphasize, and this will disproportionate. help this marginalized group and that marginalized group and close the racial wealth gap. And that's an example of something that's true and is indeed a benefit of these things. But in the campaigns before and campaigns more recently now, I think you would have downplayed the idea that like, let's take a universal policy and talk about how it will help narrow groups. Now it's much more like let's take a policy and talk about how it will help the largest group possible. I think that's the main difference even with the same policies. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And I think it's a, you You know, I think it's a smart difference that hopefully, you know, from my perspective, will appeal to people that might be turned off for whatever reasons if it seems more targeted. I'm curious, though, how do you square this rebirth of Obamaism with the framing of MAGA-ism as weird? And this is something that a lot of us had been saying online for a while. And now, I guess, mainly thanks to Tim Walls, it's a mainstream democratic thing.

And on the surface, it doesn't seem to align with the we're all in this state. message. My take is that it does because it's basically just saying, look, it's weird if you don't think are all in this together. But I'm curious what your take is. Yeah. I mean, the theme of Obama that was like the hidden kind of the brick you're holding underneath the soft box and glove is that there is an enemy in Obama is it. It's people who are trying to divide us and exploit the old politics. There's always all these references to the old politics of division, the cynical politics of division, the bitter politics of division. People are trying to exploit, you know, age old's prejudices to try to get their own agenda passed. And yet this is usually framed as a distraction from something else.

Like, this is what they're doing so they can, you know, pick your pocket, you know, in the tax code and, you know, cut your social security, things like that. It's always been part of this kind of broader argument. So I think the weird stuff fits into that. Now, the wall's thing that's interesting is that it's been framed as a kind of libertarian idea. Freedom has been the theme of, of, of of Kamala Harris's campaign, which was not the theme of Biden's campaign. That has been a very specific turn. And Walls, I think, was picked in part because the way he talks about politics, it's that theme so well. So the way he usually talks about it is it's weird to obsess about what other people are doing,

which is usually an argument in the last few years that Republicans have been making the idea that, look, it's Democrats who want to change how you speak, who want to get mad at the workplace. if you say or do something on tort or if you speak up in your DEI session or if you, you know, share an article or a political view that is that is considered on PC, they want to revamp your academic curricula to introduce all these weird new ideas. That's usually been the Republican argument the last year's. But things have shifted, especially after Dobbs and especially after the rise of people like Ron DeSantis who have been kind of a backlash to that, to have been, no, well, in response, we're actually going to much, we're going to crack down very specific. on what is taught in schools and what goes on in health care and what goes on and especially

with transgender related health care. Walz has tried to frame this as when you do that, you should be minding your own business. Why do you care that someone is reading this book in a library? You don't have to read it. You could just skip it. Why do you care that someone is deciding to, in consultation with a doctor and a therapist, get their kid hormone therapy, say? Isn't it weird that you care? That's their decision. Not yours. And then, of course, the big one abortion. Why are you obsessed with this what should be a woman's choice rather than your choice? And I think that has really held all these ideas together in a way that you didn't see just even a few years ago. Yeah, it really is a, it's a fascinating way to look at it. And the freedom theme

was obviously, yes, it was a very huge part of the convention. And it seemed almost rhetorically, it seemed like a return to FDR in some ways, didn't it? Yeah, it's like the four freedoms, because they're talking about the positive freedoms too, right? Like, one of the ones they cited most commonly is the freedom from gun violence. They put a very big emphasis repeatedly that one of those freedoms is that you should not have to worry about your kid going to grade school and whether someone with an assault weapon will shoot up the school. Like that was framed as an aspect of freedom. Whereas often that is framed the opposite way, freedom is the Second Amendment, right? Freedom is making sure the government can't tell you what gun you own and can't

take it away after you own it. So it's interesting to see that debate surface on an issue like that that is often presented as freedom on both sides. Last question, because you talked about the white dudes for Harris thing, and then you also mentioned Walls going viral, joking about his white guy tacos. And in both of those instances, the framing of things seem to break a lot of conservative brains. And I'm wondering if you think that that's intentional,

or is that an outgrowth of they're not used to hearing Democrats talk like this? I think it's a lot of it as the latter. Like, I'm not sure Democrats were. expecting that reaction, for example, to Walls talking about white guy tacos. But it was really striking. Yeah. Which is it really encapsulated how things have changed. I noticed it too, which is lots of Republican commentators who have spent the last decade kind of in a backlash to this kind of democratic identity politics. Dundley got incredibly offended at the idea of a white person joke. Even the most like mild like white guys are like this, black guys are like this joke

from like, you know, a stand-up comedian in like 1985, like the most absolutely now one. We're getting super upset and trying to make a thing about this and even trying to be like Tim Wall's truser, truthers, he's selling out white guys. Actually, he does like spicy tacos. We found some old recipe where he used green chilies. Like, it's just a very like, I'm not going to say weird exactly, but noticeable reaction. But you see how they've reframed the debate this way. I mean, this is one of those aspects of politics where the parties really shift every few years. It's never owned by one party. which one is seen as the humorless scolds and which one is seen as the party where you can be yourself and joke around and it's okay. For much of the last decade, the humorless scold label

was applied more to Democrats. And I think we're really starting to see it flip around the cycle in a way that sort of in some way concedes that some of the Republican arguments against them were correct, you know, without saying it that maybe we did go a little too far in that direction. Yeah, it's definitely a very interesting turn of events. Benji, thank you so much for being here. I love your work over at Semaphore, and hopefully we'll talk again too. Talk to you soon, Eddie. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal reporter at the lever Katia Schwank, whose recent piece, Leonard Leo's Swing State voter purge had my eyebrows up on my forehead

and just in complete and total rage. You write this, essentially Arizona's Secretary of State, said a lot of voters are going to be affected by the Supreme Court, which just sided with the Republicans to make it more difficult for Arizonians to register to vote and said that the folks that are going to largely be affected by this change are service members, students, and Native Americans who did not have birth certificates while registering. Talk to us about what Leonard Leo, the menace to our justice system and democracy has been doing in the state of Arizona? Yeah, absolutely. I think that's a good place to start. So yeah, a few

weeks ago, you know, weeks before the deadline for some Arizona counties to start printing ballots for the November election, we saw a legal challenge filed by the Republican National Committee and other, you know, Republican operatives. And what this challenge was seeking to do was to essentially wipe out 40,000 voters off of the state of Arizona's voter rolls by making it. And, you know, almost impossible for voters to vote in elections unless they provide, you know, an additional proof of citizenship, you know, a documentary requirement that can be very difficult, you know, for the kinds of voters that you just mentioned. And we see this often as a strategy, you know, used by the GOP to, you know, ensure that some of the most vulnerable, important voters are not able

to get to the polls on election day. And of course, Arizona's a key battleground state. It's a state that Joe Biden in 2020 won with a margin of only, you know, around 10,000 votes. Again, this lawsuit, if it was totally successful, would have wiped out, you know, potentially over 40,000 voters off of the state of Arizona's voter rolls. So it was this last ditch effort by Republicans to do this. It was partially successful. There are going to be some Arizonans impacted by this. It's not totally clear how many.

At this point, they did not get everything that they wanted. They didn't get the full 40,000. But still, an important, significant challenge. And what we found in our reporting on this was that the lawyers who were bringing this effort, who were working with these Republican operatives to bring these cases, were connected to a man called Leonard Leo, a conservative activist, legal activist, who has a billion dollar dark money network that is funding these kinds of efforts across the country, who has been working to stack the Supreme Court for many years. You know, this very powerful influential man is connected to these lawyers.

And not only are they in Arizona, they're bringing to. similar cases and battleground states across the country. We have learned, thanks to reporting like yours, over the past several years, how Leonard Leo has been navigating our judicial system and essentially stacking the courts against the will of the American people. What has been the response by Democrats knowing that there has been this full-fledged, you know, federalist society, this full-fledged plan? having place people in all of the right places to essentially take away rights. What is the Democrats response to this?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a good question. When we think about Leonard Leo, this is someone who has been working on these issues who's been fighting to stack the Supreme Court, to stock, you know, the federal judiciary for quite some time. This isn't new. I mean, I think you talk to people who have been following him. They'll all say he's been playing the long game and he's been very successful at it. This is something he's amassed power.

and influence and money, which he sort of distributes through this shadowy network of nonprofits, which were involved here in this story. And he's been doing this for years and years, and that's how he's managed to have so much success. So I think it's kind of an open question to my mind how Democrats are responding. They clearly have not been able to, you know, fully stop it. You know, this is what we can see the impact of that with the current state of the Supreme Court. And I think often they're taking, you know, these cases sort of piecemeal. They're, you know, fighting the Arizona case.

fighting the case in Michigan. And sometimes I think, you know, critics are worried that there might be a lack of a broader strategy, a broader response to someone like Leo who is really thinking in these really long, in a long term sort of way. Right now, we have seen, I guess, more people become engaged. And by people, I mean voters, become engaged on the issue of the courts. Whereas, you know, it was something that was for a lot of Democrats just our rights, they're fine, they're okay, you know, things are good. Oh, I live in a blue state. So my vote isn't going to be purged. So I don't have to care about what's happening in these red states. But as we have lost more and more rights at the hands of the Supreme Court, I think more and more people are becoming conscious of why the courts are important.

But what do you think needs to happen in order to elevate the dangers that Leonard Leo and folks like him cause. Yeah, I mean, I would say that Leonard Leo, you know, well, I think well known to be a powerful figure, has worked quite a lot to sort of obscure his influence. And he does this through a total lack of transparency in his spending, which, you know, was permitted, basically, where extremely non-transparent system of campaign finance, of, you know, sort of dark money entities. So he's able to do something like get literally more than a billion dollars in a political donation from a, you know, sort of elusive billionaire. This was last year, one of the biggest political donations in history that we know of. And we don't really know where that money has gone

because it has been routed through a network of, you know, dark money nonprofits, funds that makes it difficult to trace the ultimate place the money is going to be going. And so I think working on that kind of transparency is so critical in order to broaden people's understanding of Leonard Leo, other powerful interests like him. Otherwise, you know, I think it will be really difficult to fully counter them as, and we've seen that, you know, over the last decade. What does it mean to counter actions like this when the Supreme Court is siding with these states? We see this reporting that you've done in Arizona. We've heard about, you know, the changes to voter certification that has happened in Georgia. We're seeing this happen in states that went blue

for Joe Biden in 2020. And I don't know, and maybe hopefully you do, as we're coming, but I don't know, Katia, 10 weeks until the election, should people be concerned that we're going to have a redux of 2020 in terms of like the certification nightmare and Donald Trump, if he in fact loses being able to go to these states and, you know, and cause the kind of chaos and mayhem that he did in 2020. Yeah, I mean, I certainly think we should be concerned. I mean, I was, you know, a local reporter in Arizona through much of the fallout after 2020. And I mean, it dragged on and on the level of sort of distrust that was sewn in that state in the wake of what happened in 2020, in the wake of, you know,

Trump's claims about voter fraud, I think was really significant. And sort of whichever way the election swings, I think we could see something like that again, which is a scary thought. But I mean, to your question of how to counter actors like Leonard Leo. I mean, again, like I think it is going to take a strategy that looks further into the future and really looks at the power, looks at ways to reform the courts because that is where I think all of this began with the Supreme Court, with the federal courts, which he has successfully worked to sway in his favor, you know, over, over a decade. And so I think, you know, really paying attention to those powerful actors thinking about reforms is going to be, you know, absolutely cute. I don't know what that would look like myself. Yeah. And I guess that that's what

makes me concerned is that I don't know what it would look like either because this is not, Leonard Leo didn't, is not a figure that, you know, that manifested over, you know, the last year. He's not somebody that like came about just in the Trump year. He's somebody that has been working behind the scenes for decades, like creating this right wing ideological, wing of our justice system. And when you look at people like a Clarence Thomas, like us, Glea, like others that are on the federal bench, like they came from like the Leo school of what to do to destroy democracy. And I feel like to your point, there needs to be something that is much more long term. I guess what I'm saying is that this is not a short term fix. Like what, what is

happening is not something that Democrats can say, well, in this next election, we're going to fix the courts. It's something that they can start to do, but that this is much more of a long-term proposition. Yeah. No, I mean, I think the window for fixing the courts or to do that in any kind of short-term has now passed, I think we can start asking to say for that plan. We can start asking to say, are you starting that process? What is your plan? Because if there is no plan, man, if there isn't decisive action taken, I think we're only going to see this continue. And people, you know, Leonard Leo is going to put maybe another justice on the bench, you know, which he was the one behind the campaign to get Amy Coney Barrett on the court.

Who had no experience, by the way. Exactly. Exactly. All of these lawyers that he's working with, they all clerked for Clarence Thomas or many of them. We discussed that in the story. Like, they are all coming from this sort of, like, close network of people. and it's going to take a long time to sort of rid them of the power that they have and I think the way that would need to happen to see change.

I guess it's just wild to me because I'm looking inside of your piece and I'm just like, Joe Biden won Arizona by 11,000 votes. Like, that's not a lot of votes. Donald Trump was over in Georgia looking for 11,571 votes. Oh, I just need to find this number. So these places, these battleground states are so razor thin that any hiccup, any obstacle that the right throws in our way, the purging, I think that there's been something close to 19 million voters have been purged from the role since 2020 around the country. And if you're looking at the elections and how each presidential election are closer and closer and closer, then you know. know that what they're doing matters because it's only about picking off a few thousand here and a

few thousand there in order to have their way with the American people. So when you see that and you're looking at these numbers, do you still think that there is like a fighting chance? Because this is when people start to, I guess, kind of get complacent and hopeless where they're just like, they'll never give up. They'll just keep at it, keep at it until our votes are whittled down to nothing. Yeah, I mean, it is definitely demoralizing and feels pretty bleak to look at those numbers. You know, I think that it's important not to totally think in despair thinking about this. There are so many good groups doing like incredible voter rights, civil rights work, who are in court fighting these battles against these well-paid lawyers day after day.

But yeah, I mean, you can look at like all of these lawsuits that, you know, Republicans, Leonard Leo, they're bringing in all these sorts of states because they know that They just need a small margin, you know, 10,000, 20,000 voters off the rolls, and that will help them win. So you see them bringing these kinds of voter purged lawsuits, you know, across the country. And increasingly, those lawsuits are going to head up to the Supreme Court, as I did in Arizona, a Supreme Court that is increasingly friendly to the Republicans that are bringing those challenges. It's incredibly disheartening what's happening, but, like, reporting, like, what you're doing is so incredibly necessary because otherwise, these maneuvering, stay like behind closed doors. They happen in the shadows, I think.

Leonard Leo became, I guess, well, when did he become kind of this in front of the scenes figure? Because he's been around for decades, but we as like the American public didn't really become aware of Leonard Leo until when. Yeah, I mean, within the last five years, he's certainly gotten more and more attention and he's become less of a shadowy figure than he once was.

I mean, you know, we've reported quite a bit on him. So it's ProPublica and I think that kind of, you know, the New York Times, like all this sort of combined media attention over the last especially like two or three years, I think has really brought him into the public eye. But yeah, I mean, you know, it's a good question of if we had been talking about Leonard Leo, the way that we're talking about him now, the way that he's being covered now, you know, 10 years ago could things have gone differently? You know, if people were just more aware of what was going on. I think it's a good question. And it is, I think, speaks to the importance. of this kind of work and reporting. Yeah, I do.

I think that that's what makes it so important that these people are used to kind of navigating in the shadows. And then all of a sudden it's just like, oh, you've lost more rights or, oh, somebody else has been added to the federal bench. And I think one of the things that pisses me off is, you know, to the earlier points that you were making and the same that I was making is that there doesn't seem to be a bench

or like this kind of, left wing linked in in terms of like here are the federal judges that need to be rolled out in a Harris-Walls administration. Like this is what we have to blanket. These are how many seats are in. And like this is the number that we're going to need in order to like uphold democracy, not just in blue states, but across the country. Like it's that kind of strategy, long-term strategy that I think is is going to be critical to our survival. So, you know, last thoughts to you, Katia, like as you continue to report on kind of these behind the scenes actors, what do you have coming up that we should be paying attention to at the lever so that folks can follow your work?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, we're paying quite a lot of attention, not only to the Supreme Court, but also to federal judges, which, as you were saying, are playing a really important role here. You know, we're looking at federal and state judges. We're going to have a story coming out on a new judicial system in Texas soon. We're also going to be paying attention to what these dark money groups and lawyers tied to Leonard Leo are doing in the coming months. I think, you know, this is not a one-off sort of story. It's something we're going to be continuing to follow. And I'm sure there will be developments over the next couple months heading into election season.

And, yeah, we're looking forward to, you know, holding Democrats accountable for having a long-term plan and, of course, holding people like Leonard Leo accountable for what they have done to democracy and to voting. rights in this country. Tell people how they can find you and follow your work. Oh yeah, of course. We are at lover news.com. Everything we write is there. Katia, thank you so much for the work that you're doing, for the investigative reporting that you're doing. It's so needed and we're just really grateful for it. Really appreciate you making time for the new abnormal. Of course. No, thank you so much for the conversation, Danielle. Andy Levy. Danielle Moody. How are you kicking off this good, good post-DNC week with your fuck-that guy. My fuck-that guy, he's a guy who's been a fairly regular participant in this segment.

It's Ken Paxton, the Attorney General down in Texas, who is just a complete embarrassment and should actually be in prison. Jail. Yeah. So he's now doing this thing where he supposedly, because this is what Republicans love to do, they claim they're looking into allegations of election fraud and things like that. vote harvesting, neither of which, as every study known to man, has shown actually occur in large numbers in America. But they are convinced that, well, I don't even think they're convinced

that these things do exist. They just realize that they can use these investigations, the sham investigations, as a way of suppressing votes from people who are more likely to vote Democratic. So we're now seeing actual raids taking place in Texas. Thankfully, the League of United Latin American Citizens, which, as the New York Times calls it, is one of the nation's oldest Latino civil rights organizations. They are pointing out that a number of these raids seem to be targeting Democratic leaders and election volunteers. Gabriel Rosales, the director of this organization's Texas chapter, says that the officers

who are conducting these raids are taking people's cell phones, taking their computers, taking documents. And he says straight up that these are an effort to suppress Latino voters. And he's absolutely right and he's right to say it. This is a clear example of Republicans trying to use threats and intimidation to keep voter turnout low. In this case, Tino vote turnout, which obviously in a state like Texas is a very big deal. And among the people whose homes were raided, Cecilia Castellano, a Democrat who is running for a state house seat. They took her cell phone. She tells the New York Times, she still does not know why she was targeted.

Like they did not say when they raided her home, we have evidence or we are looking for evidence that you did this. They just came in and took her stuff. They broke down her door and raided the home of a man named Manuel Medina, who is the chair of the Tejano Democrats. They entered the home and raided the home of an 18. 87-year-old retired educator named Lydia Martinez, men with guns came into her home. She says the officers told her they came because she had filled out a report saying that older

residents were not getting mail ballots. Is that a crime now to fill out a form and say, hey, people are not getting ballots? Apparently that now in the state of Texas, under the Ken Paxton Greg Abbott regime, makes you some kind of criminal. It's absolutely insane. It's very, very clear what they're doing. And they have to stop getting away with it because they do get away with it. And so this organization, the United Latin American Citizens, is asking the Justice Department to open an investigation into this. And I hope that happens. And I hope someone other than Merrick Garland is in charge of this. So it might happen before 2029. And in the meantime, a big old fuck that guy. A big old Texas. sized, fuck that guy to Attorney General Ken Paxton. I mean, these are Gestapo tactics, right? They really are.

This is the type of stuff that you hear about the cartels doing, right, in order to intimidate people into doing their will or keeping quiet or what have you. I mean, this is, it's bullshit. And the Department of Justice should have opened an investigation a long time ago because things like this have been happening. And the fact, like, what makes me even more angry is that Paxton, should be in jail. He's a criminal. I don't understand what happens in the state of Texas that these people are still in power. I know that voter suppression happens there and it is real. But my God, the people that willingly

vote for these people, I just don't get it. I don't get it at all. Fuck that guy. Yeah. There's a phrase people use online when they point at things like this and they say, if this happened in another country, what would you think? Yeah. And that's exactly what you're saying. It's like if you saw this happening in another country, you would think, my God, this is unbelievably bad, but it's happening right here. So anyway, fuck those guys. Danielle, close us out on this hot and I feel like getting more humid Monday. Who's your fuck that guy?

So the Republicans have themselves up in a tizzy following all of the conversation and headlines around joy that are being generated from the Harris Wall's ticket. And you heard it at a number of times during a convention. You've seen it and heard about the joyful warrior. Well, Republicans hate that, Andy. They hate fun. They hate joy. They hate dancing. They hate music. So to drive that point home, Lindsay Graham found himself on CNN's State of the Union with Jake Tapper, my least favorite fucking person on TV. This is what he said about what he saw on watching the DNC. Because Jake Tapper talked about how, quote, disciplined and well-produced the DNC was and how it conveyed patriotism and unity. Lindsay Graham says this, quote, well, I didn't see what you saw. If you're a Republican, you saw a hate fest. You saw a hate fest full of insults. Then he went on to say, Americans are not joyful when they go to the gas station and fill up their car. They're not joyful when they make their mortgage payment. They're not joyful when they go to the grocery store. People are hurting and this whole joy love fest doesn't exist in the real world. Oh, Lindsay, you sad,

sad, small, shriveled, angry, spiteful, bitter, small, small, small man. That being your response to seeing people waving American flags and chanting USA, USA, USA, and dancing and feeling the spirit and reclamation of patriotism. And your response to that is that joy doesn't exist in the real world. So vote for misery and American carnage instead. I mean, give me a fucking break. It's embarrassing. I think that this is the Republicans' response to the energy that they're seeing, is to try

and burst the bubble by saying, oh, no, Americans are really evil and angry, and this place is broken and horrible, so vote for Republicans. It's not a winning strategy. And like I keep saying, hate and their cynicism and their insults are played out. And I think that the more that this is their response to what they are seeing with the Harris Wals ticket, the more that they are just making the Democrats case for them. So Lindsay Graham for that and so many other fucking reasons because you were, I can't even say what I'd like to say. Fuck that guy. Yeah, they really have become, they're the party a footloose.

Oh my God. They're the party that wants to, you know, ban dancing from the town. It really is unbelievable. and I really think that the Harris Walls campaign is, is on to something here, and I'm glad to see it. But in the meantime, fuck that guy. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going.

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