The Daily Beast Podcast - Ivanka Just Might Flip on Her Dad, Mary Trump Says

Episode Date: July 6, 2021

The Trump Organization is now feeling the heat, with its CFO under indictment for grand larceny. Prosecutors are clearing to get that money man, Allen Weisselberg, to flip on his boss. But one interested observer says there may be another member of the Trump crew who’s even more likely to turn on the Don: his daughter, Ivanka. Both Ivanka and Weisselberg benefitted from a similar perk, if that indictment by Manhattan prosecutors and reporting from the New York Times are to be believed. Both were officers of the Trump Organization and simultaneously were consultants for the company, too. It’s an arrangement that appears designed to shield all parties involved from paying taxes—and could open Ivanka up to tax fraud charges, just like her dad’s CFO. “She's much less likely to stay loyal than Allen Weisselberg,” says Mary Trump, the member of the family who has famously turned on the clan. Next up, Brian Beutler, editor-in-chief of Crooked Media, shares his big idea for getting a new voting rights bill passed in the Senate—without Republican votes. And climate specialist David Roberts explains how the hell part of the Gulf of Mexico caught on fire. 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 Jong-Fast and welcome to The Daily Beast, The New Abnormal. I'm a left-wing pundit and an editor-at-large at the Daily Beast. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. Our world has been turned up day down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and figure out how to get ourselves out of it. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon. I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. Today we have a blockbuster show. First, we're going to talk to Crooked Media's Brian Boytler about his big ideas on how to get around the gridlock in Congress on voting rights.

And then we'll talk to David Roberts, who writes the Volts newsletter on Clean Energy and Politics. And he's going to talk to us about the latest horrors we're experiencing with climate catastrophes. But first, we have the author of Too Much and Never Enough, Mary Trump. Welcome back to the new abnormal, Mary Trump. Molly, it is awesome to be back. Hi, Jesse. I can't believe how long it's been. Yeah, it has been, but you are still like a very frequent flyer on the new abnormal. Oh, cool. I like being a frequent flyer on the new abnormal. It's true. We mix our jong metaphors here. Your uncle didn't pay his taxes. I'm shocked by this development. I have to say. It's shocked, I tell you. Yes. I think that's the circumstance for which the frame. knock me down where the feather was invented. So the big question is, will there be more indictments?

There are certainly people in this filing who are not identified. And, of course, there's the fact that they kept two sets of books, which would sort of point to Trump having some knowledge, right? And, of course, the reason they kept two sets of books was to make sure that Alan Weisselbrook didn't make over $950,000 would all of these. perks that they weren't paying taxes on. This is a pattern of very longstanding. This is right out of my grandfather's playbook. And what gives me some confidence that one, there's more to come. And two, this will end up mattering is because the kind of fraud that's being alleged here is like

exactly the kind of thing my aunts and uncles did to me. And because of that, you know, patterns imply, strongly imply intent, right? Yes. Can you just for the people who don't know, explain a little bit of what they did to you? Of course. I'm sorry to make that ridiculous assumption. I know exactly what you're talking about, but just because my dad listens to. Oh, okay.

Hi, Molly's dad. He's great. You would love him. Okay, cool. So here's a really quick summary. After my dad died, my aunts and uncles were my fiduciaries. They were, you know, supposed to help protect my investments. And one of those investments was under a partnership called Midland Dissociates

that essentially my grandfather's core business, Trump management, paid to manage his properties. And then in the 80s, after my dad died, they created a shell corporation called All County, which the purpose of it simply was to siphon money away from both Midland Associates and my grandfather's business. one, just to steal money for me because the beneficiaries of all county were only my aunts and uncles and their cousin John. And two, to devalue Trump management so much that when he died, they were able to claim it was only worth $30 million and thereby avoid paying almost $500 million in estate taxes. So they were trying to cheat the children of their brother who had died tragically? Yes, but also to a much larger extent, their state and their country.

Yes, as we know, only the little people, right, which is us, pay taxes. This is exactly right. So, you know, that's the pattern. And it's heartening, I think, that these things are happening around the same time. You know, one, it helps my case, but I think my case also sets a precedent for what this case is, the fraud case is hopefully going to show. And the fact that it doesn't just say this only happened for Alan Weisselberg. It says employees, right? Right. So if there are two sets of book for Ellen, there are two sets of books for other people. And I think we're also going to find that in these millions of pages of documents, there will be more evidence. So either they're not going to be solely relying on Alan Weisselberg to flip because either there's documentary evidence. of Donald's direct wrongdoing, or there will be other people

who might be more willing to flip than Allen. And I think among those might well indeed be my cousins. Oh, interesting. Like the Trump kit? You know, the brilliant Suzanne Craig and Russ Boutner last year published a very long investigative report about how as an executive of the organization, Avanka also received, I don't remember the amount.

Yes, consult money. And $1,000 in consulting fees. That's not a thing. You're either an employee or you're not an employee. So I think we're going to find a lot more of that kind of thing going on. And she's much less likely to stay loyal than Ellen Weisselberg. Wait, wait, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You think Ivanka is less likely to stay loyal than Alan Weisenberg?

Yeah, I do. even though her dad gave her a job in the White House? I know, shocking. Right? I mean, Alan didn't go to the White House. No, but Alan got stayed back. I don't know that Alan would have wanted to go to the White House. I don't think Alan could have cleared the security clearance.

Well, did any of them? Come on. Right. Exactly. But Ellen had a pretty cushy gig where he was. And I think kind of in the grand scheme of things, as counterintuitive as this might sound, I think Ivanka has one more to lose

and two, more to hang on to. Her husband's family is legitimately very wealthy. Yeah. I mean, the idea of an Ivanka Trump, like, turning on, I mean, he's got such an edible thing. Is it edible? Oh, edible. I thought you said edible.

Yeah. No, is it edible, though, when it's the parent, or is it just molestation? I mean, what is it? It's incest and pedophilia. It's incest, right. But he has some kind of obsession with her. So the idea that, I mean, it feel, the idea that she would somehow flip on him

feels almost Shakespearean. Yeah, low-rent Shakespeare, for sure. Because, look, the most basic thing to understand about his relationship with his kids and their relationship with him is that they're transactional and they're conditional. So somebody's always got to be getting something. And the only exception might be Donnie because he's so damaged in the way that the other two aren't. It does strike me that he's so damaged. It's especially interesting now that we get to see the difference between Andrew Giuliani and Dodd Jr.

Where it seems like Dodd Jr. just looks more pathetic. Which is stunning. Stunning. Why is that? That he's so broken? Yeah. I mean, there are three kids grew up in the same. same house around the same time, and he seemed significantly more broken than the other two.

It is never a good thing in the Trump family to be the oldest son. Yeah. In fact, none of them probably understands this. Donald, as you mentioned from the very beginning, had this fascination with Ivanka from the time she was little and had no use for his sons. And probably, you know, I'm not privy to this because they're so much younger than I am, first of all, and secondly, I only saw them on holidays. And maybe my family. And maybe Mother's Day, that, you know, like his father before him, Donald was very, very hard on Donning. So I think the combination of realizing that he was always going to fall short and that nothing he did would get him the attention he craved. And probably one of the worst things is

knowing that in this generation, being a woman was not necessarily a strike against you as it absolutely had been in Donald's generation. So, you know, the fact that Ivanka, like, leaped over Donnie and, you know, landed well with him, plus the addictions, of course. Yeah. I mean, it is just so interesting to watch. The thing that I'm struck by, which I feel like is something that you, as someone with a background in mental house, and also a background.

in being in that family can speak to. And it's something that I feel passionate about as the child of, as someone who's managed to squander familial fame in my own life, it does seem like these kids are really like, they had this opportunity to sort of take over the Republican Party and they are just not interested. You know, I don't know necessarily that they're not interested, although they would probably think it's beneath them in some regard.

Yeah, totally. I think it's more that they have no capabilities. Yes. Donald didn't raise them to be successful or to succeed him. He raised them to support him. And they didn't, he didn't teach them anything. And I know that from my own experience, I mean, not only were they, you know, robbing me blind,

but they didn't teach me anything about how to manage money or how to, you know, be fiscally responsible or how to invest, nothing, because they weren't, they're not interested in helping anybody else if they think it's at all to their disadvantage. So basically Donald raised a bunch of cheerleaders who have absolutely no tools to live in the world, which is fascinating because that's exactly what his father did to him in a slightly different way. Because you think like Don Jr. is so popular in the Republican Party. he could run for any congressional seat in a red state and probably when.

Which tells us everything we need to know about the Republican Party, right? Right, it's true. It's not a great sign for where the Republican Party is. But you see, and Eric's wife, too, you know, had this opportunity to run for Senate and it's not going to do it. And you really see, you know, you would think that they're power hungry, but it's like they're too incompetent to be power hungry. Well, I think they're, yeah, they're too incompetent to be power hungry, and they're too incompetent to understand how it works. Like, you don't just, well, okay, I was going to say something incredibly stupid.

I was going to say, you don't just run for president right out of the gate. Right. My bad. My bad. But, you know, that was the zeitgeist then and, you know, hopefully lightning striking four times. And that one asked again. Yes, let us pray. You know, they don't have the work ethic.

Right. I mean, neither did Donald, obviously. But for whatever reason, and we're going to be trying to figure this out until we die, for whatever reason, it didn't matter with him. In fact, for him, it was an asset. Yeah. But again, they also don't have his connections. They don't have his power.

They don't have his presence. They don't, you know, they didn't build up a following the way he did. Yeah. So, you know, like, why would Ivanka Trump condescend to be a lowly congressperson? Right. I mean, it's just, it's just sort of fascinating to watch them kind of disintegrate as their father leaves office and not be at all able to kind of keep that momentum going. It does, as someone who, you know, comes from a family where that happens a lot, it speaks to me, you know, know, this idea of like having this powerful narcissistic parent who has this sort of moment.

I mean, it just is sort of interesting. So what do you think happens now? Like, there's so much talk, will he run again? Will he not run again? It seems inevitable to me that he absolutely does run again. Yeah, you know, there was a point at which I thought definitely not because he lost so badly and wouldn't want to risk that again. but as usual, and I need to stop doing it. Like somebody needs to get a cattle brought every time I and zap me with it every time I forget that the Republican Party is never going to do the right thing. Thanks to them, he's still relevant in a way that I would not have anticipated on November 7th. That's true.

So that does change, that changes the calculus a lot, especially since they're doing this transformative thing with January 6 and basically making him out to be the hero of it somehow. And in the same way, they're going to take these fraud cases and either make him a martyr or make it seem as though, hey, he did this because he's brilliant. Right. Because he's a criminal and anti-American. Yeah. I mean, it just strikes me.

It's like they've kidnapped themselves. It also seems like he'll run. because it will keep him from being arrested. Well, running won't, but yeah, winning certainly would. I think there's a possibility that he'll pretend to run. Right. That's what I think, too. And, you know, grift as much as he can grift. And then, because I think this is exactly what happened last time.

He wasn't really running. He was pretending to run. And then suddenly, he's doing well in the pulse. And because he's a coward, he would never have decided to run. unless he had some assurance that he was going to win, you know, quote, unquote, win. And I think that that changed, obviously, when every horrible thing that came to light boosted him in the polls. He basically was like, wow, I can just be my horrible self and win this thing. It's true. Which then got him in the general election close enough to steal it, which he did.

And the Republican Party was like, let's go. Exactly. And that's what concerns me more than anything else right now. Let's be honest. Donald did everything in his power to steal this last election. He tried really, really hard, at least from the call was Zelensky on down, if not before that and probably before that. To the postmaster. That's right.

Yeah. And he's still lost, not by enough, but still by a significant margin. So I think that's what we can. attribute these voter suppression laws to because they know that if they suppress just enough votes, he doesn't need to win that much or he can even lose by a fair amount and still, quote, unquote, win. I think that's what all of this is about. And thanks to the completely corrupt Supreme Court, you know, the mountain we have to climb is just not even higher. Yeah. Oh, so depressing. you have written about and you continue to have a real view on the mental health crisis that we're in now on the way out of the pandemic.

Yeah. What do you feel like, do you feel like it's worse than you thought it would be? Do you feel like it's about the same? I mean, do you think, like the thing I'm struck by is we have all of these shootings and no one is connecting them to the mental health crisis? Extraordinary. Yeah, well, that's, that's historically one of our biggest problems. we don't connect things. We don't have a grasp of how things relate to one another.

You know, I mean, I can make a case that one of the many reasons, but still a significant reason where we are, is because Robert Lee got away with it. Right. So I'm actually more concerned, one, for the reason you just mentioned, but two, because what I didn't factor in, you know, I said months ago that I thought we wouldn't understand just how severe the mental health crisis is going to be

until we start emerging. And I think, you know, I'm not certainly not the only person who said that, but that's definitely being borne out. What I did not anticipate was that this country or many people in this country would still continue to be so irresponsible, so selfish and so diluted, that we would be looking at more spikes in COVID and now new variants that, you know, may in the long run be able to find their ways around the vaccines. Thus far, we've been quite lucky. But if people continue to get infected at the rates they're getting infected and spreading COVID, then that's going to change because this is a very wily, adorable virus.

And what are people going to do if faced once again, you know, with another lockdown? That's the other reason. I think it was a huge mistake to go from zero to 60 the way. even New York has. It's insane to me that one day everybody has to wear a mask next day, nobody does. Right. This is so interesting. Mary, please, will you come back soon and talk to us more? When your book comes out, will you come back? Oh, my God. I love being here and hang out with you guys. And I hope it's definitely not as long as it was last time. Yes, me too. 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 Soladadad 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, You'll support the Beast fearless journalism, as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member, head to newabnormal.com. That's new abnormal.com. That's new abnormal.thedailybeast.com.

Brian Boydler is the editor-in-chief of politics at Crooked Media. So welcome to the new abnormal, Brian Boydler. Thank you for having me. We really wanted to have you on. I read your newsletter, but we really wanted to have you on because you had a really interesting take on the... the democratic voting problem, which is our elections now being completely fucked up forever. Can you explain to our listeners a little bit about this idea? Yeah, sure.

So I think the best way in is to give a little bit of background, which is that obviously Democrats have been spending a lot of time trying to pass new laws that would protect the franchise for people whose votes are currently being suppressed and also kind of level the playing field of voting in general. obviously there's structural bias in the House via gerrymandering. There's structural bias in the Senate via Senate malapportionment so you can fix that by adding states. And the problem is that Democrats are struggling to pass those bills. They don't want to abolish the filibuster. And so they can't get the votes together to pass them. And then even if they did, they have this other problem, which is that

the courts are currently very right-leaning and are seem very likely to throw laws like that out to the extent that they can. And so I started thinking, you know, what are they going to do if that whole effort falls apart? They can't get any of those sort of structural ideas passed. And what can they do to kind of re-level the playing field that wouldn't be subject to the filibuster that wouldn't be subject to being thrown up at Supreme Court? And they are sort of dead set on only governing on a sort of majority rules basis through this arcane budget process called reconciliation, where the filibuster doesn't apply. And so can you use that process, which is only for taxes and spending, to make voting easier such that these suppressive voter laws won't have a major effect?

And so the idea that I proposed, and it's sort of just in the spirit of, let's start thinking really hard about what we're going to do, because this is an emergency, is to create a tax credit that anyone who votes in a federal election can claim, you know, all people who vote in federal elections, two or three hundred dollars. And the idea would be to create an incentive for people to vote, that it would draw a lot of non-voters out of the woodwork, get them engaged in the civic process. But then at the same time, you could, I think, accurately portray the inducement as a way of making voters who are being put through all these hoops, make them whole. If you have to take time off work because your employer doesn't let you take election day off, so you need to schedule a different

day off to vote early. If you need to go get a voter ID, the money that you get from actually voting can be put towards those costs. And this is, you know, it's not something that I completely invented out of whole cloth. They do things like this in other countries. And I think there are even estimates about how much money would create how much additional turnout. And it would at least solve the problem of voter suppression, making it so that close races at the margin are decided by Republican efforts to make it hard for people to vote. So this is paying people to vote. It's paying people for voting.

that if you propose this, there's going to be a right-wing opposition to it, and they're going to frame it as a kind of bribery, right? Like you're paying voters to vote for you. And no, that's not it. You're paying Republican voters as much as you're paying Democratic voters, as much as you're paying independent voters. Anyone who votes can claim the tax credit. It's just a way of saying we understand that we want people to participate and also that there are some impediments to participating. So this is a way of making it worth your while, even if without the tax credit, it's not, or you just can't make it work. So I think talking about it in that way, paying people for voting as opposed to paying them to vote is something that the message people would have to figure out.

Right, right, right. But that's the idea is, yes, if you vote, the government will pay you. It's funny because reconciliation, we've seen Republicans pass Arctic drilling via reconciliation. I mean, reconciliation is whatever you wanted to be, right? It's the magical mystery tour of the Senate. So, I mean, so it is, in a way, like, kind of the whole idea that Democrats couldn't just pass shopping on the Internet. Like, they could pass whatever they want with reconciliation. They just need to get the parliamentarian on board.

Yeah, that's mostly right. So paying people to vote would be bulletproof in reconciliation. Basically anything that you can, yeah, anything that a tax credit can pay somebody or write a check for is something that the reconciliation process will allow. You get sort of in a murkier territory when you're talking about things that maybe affect the budget at the margins, but don't principally involve the government changing tax rates or spending new money. And we actually ran into this problem a couple months ago when Democrats were trying to pass the American Rescue Plan. There was an effort to try to pass the minimum wage through the budget reconciliation process on the theory that when people get paid more money, they use social safety net programs less and they pay more in taxes. And so it affects the budget, right? And the parliamentarian said, no, that's not really budgetary enough.

It's too indirect. And then in theory, there's a level beyond that where any party who controls the Senate can basically tell the parliamentarian to fuck off. You're just a staffer. And if 50 members of the Senate plus the vice president or a majority of the Senate votes to overrule the parliamentarian, then it's done. But that's essentially akin to just saying there's no more filibuster. And that's why Democrats who don't want to abolish the filibuster also don't want to just say, we're going to cram everything into this reconciliation bill. And when the parliamentarian says, this, this and this don't count.

We're just going to overrule her. You mean act like Republicans. Yes. I mean, Republicans did fire a parliamentarian once to get their way, right? Why the fuck, wouldn't they? I mean, they're Republicans. That's what they do. If you're going to override the parliamentarian, then sort of it, everything is fair.

Like, you could ban partisan gerrymandering through reconciliation. But they're not doing that. What they will do, seemingly, is spend a lot of money through the tax code, through direct spending programs to help fix the country's infrastructure. So the roads and bridges and rural broadband and all the things that are classically thought of as infrastructure, then there's this separate conversation of, well, are things like childcare and can we portray that as infrastructure, human infrastructure, to help people get through the difficulties of modern life? And this could be like democracy infrastructure, a democratic infrastructure where, you know, our system is rickety just like our roads and bridges are. and so helping people navigate them with money with new resources is, I feel like on the, on the same level that child care spending is human infrastructure.

This is infrastructure spending in its own right. And they're willing to use the budget process to do it. So they should start thinking really hard about ways to use the tax code to incentivize a healthier democracy. And the two ideas I wrote were, A, this voting tax credit and being an employer tax inducement of some kind to basically turn election day into a federal holiday in practice, if not in fact, right? You tell employers that if they let their employees take election day off, they get this

amount of money. And then suddenly, you know, tens of millions or hundreds of millions of workers are free to vote on, you know, the first Tuesday and November. Is the Democratic failure to be as effective in the Senate? Like, Democrats control the Senate, right? now. I mean, I know it's slim, but we haven't. They have gotten some things past, right? American Rescue Plan is so good. Republicans are taking credit for it. Like, so there have definitely been wins in the Biden column, but there are certainly, the voting is not, has not been a win yet.

And it is, and we're looking down the barrel of a really scary midterm, and it does look like these red states, nothing has quieted them. And the Supreme Court seems pretty committed to letting Republicans do whatever they want in these red states. Why do you think Democrats seem sort of stuck on this? I just think that there's, you know, it's a big party with lots of people who have lots of ideas about politics and what voters will care about and how to get reelected. And some of those ideas are bad. You know, it's really hard to figure why somebody like Kristen Cinema, Kirsten Cinema,

why someone like Kirsten Cinema would be so adamantly opposed to changing the filibuster rules so that these democracy reform bills she claims to support can pass because her state is not that red. So she's not a shoe in as a Democrat if she gets primary. And then separately, if she does remain the Democrat's Senate candidate in Arizona, Arizona is run by Republicans and they're going to try to screw out of office with either voter suppression or just election subversion, just saying that, you know, we say that this election was riddled with fraud and you didn't win and we're not going to, you know, whatever. Nevertheless, she has become fixated. on this claim that the filibuster is good for creating bipartisanship, which is good for the country.

But there's no evidence that that's true. And also all the laws that Republicans in Arizona are passing to try to elbow her out of office are being passed on a totally party line basis. So she's unilaterally disarming in a fight over her seat in the Senate. And I can't explain that other than just some people have really stupid ideas about politics and nevertheless get ahead in the political realm, end up senator, whatever. It's sort of mind-blowing, right? Like, Manchin makes a lot of sense, right? He's from West Virginia, the Democrats in West Virginia

have had a terrible time of it. The governor used to be a Democrat and has changed to Republican. Like, it makes a lot of sense, right? And you could see where you don't want to fuck with Manchin. Like, he may, you know, we heard this Fox anchor the other day asking him if he wanted to switch parties. I mean, like, you, you know, if you don't have Joe Manchin, in West Virginia, you don't have a Democrat. Like, okay. Yeah. But with cinema, you know, the other seat is, you know, a Democrat. It's a rapidly bluing state. Republicans are doing crazy shit. And she seems just sort of fine with it. Why can't Democrats figure out how to make Election Day

a national holiday? That seems like a no-brainer. Mitch McConnell understands that if Election Day were national holiday, more people would vote. And that would be bad for Republicans. So he filibusters it and now suddenly it's a 60 vote thing and there aren't 60 votes for it. Back to that time in March when they were trying to do the minimum wage increase through reconciliation, they thought about how can we use a tax inducement to make employers give their employees $15 minimum wages. And it was just too unruly of a mechanism. And so just the whole thing fell apart. But you could essentially make it a holiday if you gave employers free money to give their workers the day off. I think that that would work.

And then once it's enshrined in this sort of back doorway through the tax code, then people might, you know, Republicans might relent. Like, the overwhelming majority of people already have this as a holiday, why not just make it official? You can't take it away. But as long as McConnell has an angle, it's not going to pass. It's so interesting because we have, if we've learned one thing from this week or the last two weeks, this Supreme Court session, is that if you give people something, the Supreme Court is very hesitant to take it away. Yep. I had another question for you, which is, so one of the big stories this weekend, which I feel like nobody got interested in, and I don't quite understand why, was this video of the Exxon lobbyists? Mm-hmm. And in this video, I just want it, for the people who are playing at home, there was this video done by Greenpeace UK, where they ended up conning these two Exxon lobbyists into.

admitting that they have, you know, that they have these very cushy relationships with a bunch of senators, including cinema and Manchin. Why is there not more outrage about this? I don't know the answer. I mean, I feel like there's a fair amount of outrage about it. I also think that it's just when there's a problem that arises because Joe Manchin or Kirsten Cinema or any other Democrat is using the sort of immense leverage they have as the pivotal vote to prevent anything from happening is, you know, what can the party do to make them act right. And for people who aren't in the Senate, for people who aren't Chuck Schumer, you'd call her office and scream at her, you try to get somebody to primary her. There are

outside tactics that people can use. And I think they likely will as a result of things just like this in the party, like when you have a leadership position in the party and you're trying to influence members, it's a thornier thing because you know, you don't want to make an enemy of somebody who's vote you need. At the same time, you don't. don't want to surrender what leverage you do have to make them change the way to behave. And I think that it's unclear to me yet how creative Chuck Schumer is being or will be about the mansion cinema problem that he has. And, you know, I think we'll know by the end, did Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer do really everything they could to try to get those two in line?

And then we can, you know, make a judgment call as sort of political observers or analysts as to whether the problem was really just that they have, there are these two eccentric characters who won't let good things happen or whether it's just that the party has made a political calculation for reasons of just kind of being timid or being in the pocket of corporations or whatever to not fight so hard to do, you know, the things that they were elected to do. But I don't know that we can make that judgment call at this point, July, I guess, just just, just, just. just seven months after Biden took office. Thank you so much. This was great. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Molly. David Roberts writes the Volz newsletter on clean energy and politics.

Welcome to the new abnormal, David Roberts. So glad to be here. You write about climate. So Jesse wants to talk about the burning oceans first. There's so many climate catastrophes. We can't figure out which one to go for first. But can you talk to us about the oceans on fire, the Gulf of Mexico? Sure.

It was a Mexican national oil company called Pemex. They have a giant platform out in the Gulf. They have a giant natural gas pipeline that connects to the platform. And something about the connection went wonky. And so a giant fire started, something like 70 meters below the surface and sort of boiled up to the surface of the water. It was put out with liquid nitrogen within about five hours. It was a Mexican company. So environmentally speaking, it wasn't that huge of a deal.

I mean, these things are all relative. Like, it wasn't like the last gold. It wasn't like a Gulf oil spill of, you know, back in the day. It's just mostly the visual. I mean, mostly, honestly, the impact is just like, you know, it seems like reality is getting awfully literal with us trying to bang us over the head. Like, what do I got to do over here? I was hoping you could talk to us a little bit about the heat dome because for the

oceans on fire between that and the, you know, the 15th hurricane of the two months of the, you know, we're in month one of hurricane season. I was hoping you could talk to us about the heat dome because that is really, I've never in my lifetime seen something like that. You know, it's a combination of, all these things are sort of combinations of weather phenomena that are relatively rare, boosted by climate change, basically. the signal, you know, made more frequent by climate change and more severe by climate change. So it's not as though one of these heat domes has never happened before.

It's just hotter, sits there a little bit longer. And consequently, all time temperature records were broken in B.C. In Canada. Three days running in B.C. I read, I think recently, that more than 700 people in British Columbia experienced, quote, sudden death due to just heat. Like I think people don't really appreciate how deadly heat is. Like of all the environmental sort of stressors, heat is so dangerous and it's so insidious because it can kill you relatively quickly in ways that you don't necessarily feel coming a long way off. So, you know, you really,

these things require a lot of preparation and a lot of social, sort of mutual care. And we're finding out also, I think, that the U.S. is not particularly well set up to do those things either. We had this heat bubble, right? It's a heat dome, and it was over Canada and also the Pacific Northwest. Yes. No, that's correct. And those areas, I live in Seattle, those areas are not accustomed. I mean, Seattle's sort of legendary, we complain about how cold and rainy it is for, you know, 10 and a half months of the year. and then complain how hot it is when it gets up to like 75, 80. That's hot here. And it was up to 109, I think, in Seattle, which is just mind boggling.

We're totally unprepared for it. Just social services, just the physical infrastructure, all of it. Like, you need to be prepared for that. And the electricity system also is not prepared for massive oncoming air conditioners in that part of the country. So, you know, just all. it's really exposing all these kind of climate catastrophes are just exposing how vulnerable and unprepared our national infrastructure is. But it strikes me that we are already too late. I push back against that phrasing.

Good. Because I'll put it this way. The national targets or the international targets of the IPCC, the international group that meets and has been meeting for ages, is to try to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 Celsius. over pre-industrial levels. That's sort of like, that's the threshold of danger. And then two, but the thing, the thing to understand is that two is incrementally worse than 1.5 and like 2.1's worse than 2 and 2.2 is worse than 2.1.

It gets, it's bad already. It's definitely going to get worse, but we are now, we have some control over just how bad it gets. And like when you look at the scientific reports about what like three degrees are four degrees looks like. Right. Catechismic. So even if we're too late to stay under 1.5, which I think if we're being honest with ourselves, we probably are. We've probably already blown that. It's still better to act as fast as possible and do as much as possible to avoid two, to avoid 2.5, etc.

Like there's never, there's no such thing as too late. It can always get worse. So how do we do that? because it's you know we have Biden has this impressive which it strikes me at you know the fact that everyone that people were so critical of it doing too much makes me think it was maybe close to what we needed and it's been derailed by the republican party and i'm curious do you think there's a world in which that can come back do do you think that anyone can be moved by you know it's so funny because it's like you really see the pan when the pandemic was coming in january i was like

this is so bad we are going to get so sick you know you're watching it come from china to milan to england you know i saw it like coming and i said it's coming it's coming it's coming and everyone was like yeah yeah yeah it's fine and and i feel like that's now now we've gone from that to this well you know people in the climate world used to say all the time um maybe eventually if something bad enough happens, it'll wake people up, right? Like a bad enough hurricane or two simultaneous disasters or, you know, all these sort of scenarios you spin out, that will wake people up. But I think what we saw with the pandemic is it can be real bad and immediate and right

in your face and hundreds of thousands of people dying around you and we'll still just, we still won't act. Like we still won't wake up. Like we never woke up. I mean, we barely woke up to the pandemic. pandemic, even as we were experiencing it. So I think that the idea that, like, nature itself is going to kind of smack Republicans across the face and wake them up is really forlorn, at least for the time, at least for the time being, what can be done is what Democrats can do without Republican help.

That's just, that's true at the state level, is true at the city level, and it's true at the national level. What are you seeing in climate world that legislatively looks promising? Every state where Democrats take total control starts cranking out great climate policy. Oh, interesting. Colorado has had a wildly productive couple of sessions on climate and energy. Same thing is true for Washington. Oregon just passed a net zero by 2040 law. So as a rule of thumb, if you give Democrats power, they'll do stuff. So that's what we see at the state level is like Democrats doing stuff where they can.

So the question is just those state levels, those state actions are impressive and good and like nudge momentum but are not ever going to be enough on their own. We got to have a national program. I just don't think Republicans are going to, you know, get smart on this in time. So the question is what what Democrats can do on their own. And we are facing right now a very, you know, clear cut test of that, which is, They can do a reconciliation bill on their own with 50 Democratic votes. So this is sort of like, again, reality is just like heightening the contradictions here. Like if you can get every Democrat on board in Congress, then we can do something big.

And that, of course, as we all know by now, comes down to a tiny handful of conservative Democrats who knows what they really think, but are saying that they love bipartisanship so darn much. They love bipartisanship more than they love, you know, mitigating climate change or restoring voting rights or, you know, reducing inequality, name it. They love bipartisanship so much they're willing to sacrifice everything else to it. So we'll see how that drama plays out. I mean, it's really in the throes right now. The decisions are being made in the next couple of weeks in the Democratic caucus that are going to have enormous historical consequences. I don't know if everybody's quite as like on the edge of their seat and freaked out about it. as they should be, but like this is...

Wait, tell us why we should be. Well, you know, there's this two, there's this sort of two-step dance going on in the Democratic Caucus. We're going to do a bipartisan infrastructure bill, right? They came to a bipartisan agreement. And that has like a couple of things for climate, but not really. It's not a, it's not any kind of climate plan. And then, secondly, we're going to do this reconciliation bill with all the other stuff

that we couldn't get in the bipartisan bill. and we're going to have all 50 Democrats vote for it. That is just an incredibly fraught and difficult strategy. The bipartisan thing could fall apart. And if the bipartisan thing falls apart, how will Mansion and Cinema feel about the reconciliation thing? And like getting the reconciliation bill through requires every single Democrat. Cinema, you know, Coons, Mansion, every single one has to agree to everything in the package. So that is obviously going to limit the ambition of the package, even if there is a package, even if we can get one all the way through.

So we're finding out in the next couple of weeks just how big Democrats can or will go on climate change. Let's talk about these senators you mentioned, Manchin, Cinema Coons, and Exxon lobbyists. I'm so tired of talking about Joe Manchin. I can't believe that fucking video. I mean... I know. This is what I mean about reality heightening everything. Like this feels like a satire.

It feels like our whole political lives have become like a crude satire. Yes, an episode of Veep. So everything, every left activist, everything every climate activist ever said about Exxon is true. It was confirmed in the most sort of. like crude and obvious and like just thudding possible way you could do it. And then like a couple days later, the CEO of Exxon comes out with not one, but two apology statements saying, oh, these lobbyists are totally wrong about our policy stance.

And I'm like, excuse me, dude, literally, literally their job is to take your policy stance to legislators. That is the definition of what they do. of course they know your policy stance. That's what they do. Like, of course they're not, you know, like it's just all so farcical. But, you know, maybe this will, maybe this will shake public opinion or shake legislator opinion enough to like get tough or get appropriately skeptical towards Exxon.

I mean, Exxon, and you know, in subsequent days there have been a lot of Exxon is that, you know, I'm not entirely sure, but it's one of the sort of top. It's one of the top five biggest polluters in the world. Yes, it's the biggest, I mean, it's interesting. The global oil industry is really interesting right now. The European oil majors are really getting religion on climate. They're really putting out big, bold plans, and they're really taking action. And the American oil majors are, as always, the caboose here.

And Exxon is the caboose of the caboose. You know, it fought off climate science, longest of anyone. It fought off any action as long as anyone. And now, I mean, this is interesting. Now, you know, it says we support a price on carbon, right? We support a carbon tax. And all the left activists are out there saying, well, of course you support a carbon tax because you know no national carbon tax is going to get passed.

You know no politician is going to go for that. And the lobbyist said outright, we know they're never going to go for. for that. So again, everything everyone said about them is absolutely true. So the interesting thing will be to watch Exxon in coming weeks. Will they really support policies that actually have some chance of becoming law? I mean, color me skeptical. I get the sense that Exxon doesn't have any plan to do the right thing ever, but it could be wrong. It's a real open and interesting question, what oil companies can do, and whether they can't survive. I mean, there are things they can do.

And, you know, all the oil companies around the world are supporting carbon capture, which is this idea that you can continue burning fossil fuels. You just capture the carbon dioxide they release and bury it. And I was like, well, that's convenient. That's the one climate solution that allows oil companies to continue prospering. It's interesting that you chose that one to almost alone among climate policies to support. So, you know, so the question is, can giant oil and gas majors transition away from oil and gas and live through it and become just energy companies? You know, it's been done.

Other large energy companies have done it in Europe. But like Exxon's culture is so against that. I mean, Exxon is just like absolutely the wild cat like America, screw you. you know, they've got that deep in their corporate culture. So it will be the last to move, I suspect. It was interesting listening to those lobbyists say, like, well, if we are forced to pay our corporate taxes, you know, then that will be a billion dollars. Like, fuck you.

Okay, good. Pay the fucking billion dollars. Like, I pay my taxes. Like, that's what we do, man. I know. Imagine, like, imagine the world you have to live in for that to sound reasonable. You say, wait, if I pay my taxes, that's going to hurt my business. I can't do that.

I mean, it's so preposterous. I mean, it just is crazy. And then you hear, I always think of Susan Collins because she's held up as this moderate, whatever she's not. And she is the one who says, you know, we should tax these people with the electric cars. We should do a tax on them to pay for the highways that they're driving on. And I thought, fuck you. You really want to see us all just go down. You know, I mean, it just was...

Well, it's also like politics is all about team sports now. Like, whatever Democrats choose, Republicans got to choose the opposite thing and fight for that team. But like, you really want to be fighting for the team of like pollution and fossil fuels and climate change. Like, really you want to dig in on that? I mean, it's an interesting question about electric cars because it's true. The gas tax does pay for most road maintenance and electric cars don't pay any gas tax. In some ways, you could say, that's great. encourage more people to buy electric cars, but then you really do have to worry about a funding

source for your infrastructure. What about corporations? Let me make crazy suggestion here that corporations pay their fucking taxes. Yeah, that would be great. Corporations and rich people. They've got the money that that policy is about as popular across parties and demographics and regions of the country as any policy you could name in the world. It's sort of a, it's like a barometer of American political dysfunction.

how popular of a policy can there be that can't pass, right? Like this is like 80, 90 percent of the public wants this. And it just can't pass. And as a matter of fact, every time Republicans get the reins of power, they do the exact opposite. And all their voters who say they support taxing rich people are just like, I guess it's fine because at least they're like jailing immigrants. Right. They're drilling in the Arctic. It made them happy.

Come on, guys. Push your own side. I mean, Trump really just took a hatchet to the climate. Was Biden administration able to reverse some of that? Or was it too late? They're in the, I mean, they did a bunch of stuff. There was a bunch of executive orders issued on the, on literally on day one that did some of the work. And like, some of that is ongoing.

Some of that, of course, takes a long time. Like getting a rulemaking through the EPA is a long process. Like, it's an extended, it didn't take Trump's EPA very long because they were a bunch of hacks and they were like writing their analysis with crayons and like the courts have been overthrowing half of it. But like to do it right takes a long time. So that's all underway. But I really think people don't appreciate the scale and extent of damage that Trump did just to the federal bureaucracy. People don't appreciate, you know, people think of bureaucrat as a bad thing and like government employees as bad and everything. But like the civil service is what makes America great. And it has been just decimated by

Trump. So it would take, I mean, it's going to take Biden four years just to kind of repair it, much less like move forward. Yeah. Jesus Christ. All right. So tell me something to be a little bit hopeful about. Well, the thing to be hopeful about is that the quest to create clean energy, zero carbon clean energy technology, has escaped the realm of politics and has reached the realm of engineers and managers, business people and researchers and inventors, and they're gripped by this problem. So progress on clean technology is just moving so quickly. And it's like every single forecast you could look at for solar or wind or batteries or any of those things. They've spread faster than anyone predicted. They've gotten cheaper than anyone is predicted. They've flourished.

And so that's, you know, if there's one thing in America, I mean, I've, I've been amazed by how resistant polarization is to any type of change, you know, how much it can stand up in the face of anything. But I think if there's one acid bath in America that can eat through some partisanship, it's just money. And there's a lot of money in clean energy technology, including in red states where like the who have most of the wind power. So, so just venality and greed are going to pull some people. people in behind clean energy technology in coming years. I like it. Yeah, that's fine. It'll do.

Thank you so much, David. I hope you'll come back. Oh, yeah, I'd love to. 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 of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, the new podcast 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. Welcome to a special familial July 5th edition of Fuck That Guy. we have today a special familial guest for fuck that guy woke teenage son

he is known on Twitter he is my son Max Greenfield I had him when he was very young I have to say this because otherwise I sound very old and so I must say that I had him when I was 23

You sound very old anyway yeah thank you maybe I was 22 when I had him I was 19 when I had him so now he's 17 that makes me 23 and he can look up the back episodes of teen mom.

That's true. That's right. Young teen mom. And today he is going to volunteer his. Fuck that guy. So, Max Greenfield, who is your fuck that guy? Fuck the entire Green family. Just like people who own Hobby Lobby.

They're the most comically evil evangelicals. Like, they, like, buy, like, looted artifacts directly from ISIS. There's all sorts of shitty stuff. A few years back, we went to the Bible Museum. That's right, we did. Which is free. Yeah, which I like because it didn't focus on any of the awesome apocryphal file of Gospels. I think what's important to say about the Hobby Lobby is that they've worked really hard to make it harder for people to get birth control,

make it so companies don't have to pay for birth control, they've kicked up a bunch of cases of the Supreme Court. They're in the news right now. Because they're literally in the news, because they posted a full-page ad on a whole page ad on a whole point. bunch of local papers, which don't really have the leverage to, like, confirm or deny or really talk at all with advertisers. The only interaction they have with their advertisers is to beg for more money. And so they put out a full-page spread in a whole bunch of newspapers about how America needs to be, like, a Christian bureaucracy or whatever. And it's, this is one of those, like, Christian evangelical right-wing things that I especially hate, just because it's so dumb. It's, it's a

dumb idea that has somehow persisted for like almost 400 years now every once in a while there's some sort of revival movement and it sort of it piggybacked off of a lot of the religious reformation that created sort of distinct American religion that separated that acted as one of the greater separators between the U.S. and Europe and this sort of American Theocracy movement has piggybacked off of those movements and it's stuck around for an incredibly long time. Okay. So, Your fuck that guy today is the hot. The Green family. And more specifically and hilariously, the Hobby Lobby.

Yeah. But also, like, remember kids, don't buy looted antiquities from terrorist organizations. Yes. A good message to the youth. It's a two-for-one on evil. So my fuck-that-guy today is, you may know him as the 45th president of the United States. reality television host who paints himself orange to look young. Donald J. Trump went to Florida this weekend while the surfside recovery effort was going on to give a pretty amazing, and by amazing, I mean unspectacular, his usual meandering speech.

What I think is relevant is 200 miles away, the surfside disaster, they were still trying to get people out of that wreckage. every time Trump goes somewhere, he uses local resources. So even though it was only 200 miles away, it's, you know, a diversion of police and firemen and people who could otherwise be useful in Surfside, but also there's a really big tropical storm coming to Florida. So it just is a perfect storm, if you will, of stupid. And even there has been, there was reporting that DeSantis begged him not to come and he did anyway. So for that, total and utter disregard for others and tragedy and everything else. But also, wait, wait, there's more. He gave press credentials to members of QAnon.

And for that, Donald Trump is back as my fuck that guy. I mean, honestly, though, if I were Trump, I wouldn't care what DeSantis thinks either. Wow. Especially in Florida itself. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from the, The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science.

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

podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline. Head to the dailybeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.