The Daily Beast Podcast - Jared Knows Jail Is Real. Do Ivanka and the Failsons?

Episode Date: June 14, 2022

On this episode of The New Abnormal, Molly Jong-Fast and Andy Levy debate which Republicans testifying at the Jan. 6 hearings can be considered ‘good guys.’ Spoiler alert, not Bill Barr according to Andy. Molly also breaks down the ‘psychology’ of Jared Kushner based on his performance testifying. Plus! The Nation columnist Jeet Heer explains to Molly why Democrats shouldn’t trust Liz Cheney and CNN national security reporter Zachary Cohen points out one of big question marks on the Jan. 6 timeline that the committee is trying to piece together: What happened when Donald Trump was in the dining room? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Info. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objective. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down. On the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. What a great show we have today. Of course, we're going to be talking all about the January 6th hearings.

To do that, we first have Jeet here, who's, of course, a writer at the nation. And then we're going to talk to CNN National Security reporters, Zachary Cohen, all about what they saw go down today. But first, let's have some fun. Andy Levy. Molly Johnfest. Yet another amazing day of January 6. hearings. I want to say it's like the opposite of

the Mueller hearings. Like the Mueller hearings, you got really excited, sit down, there's this old guy who can't hear what they're saying, and you're thinking yourself like, oh, wow. We thought this guy was gonna, like, this guy's not gonna lock Trump up. No, he's not. I mean,

Bill Barr really, like, won the Mueller hearings. And today, to watch the second day of January 6th committee hearings and to See, Bill Barr completely torpedo the Trump administration. It's like a pretty amazing kind of mirror image. Agreed. Bill Barr feels like his, at least one of his favorite words,

seems to be bullshit. He seems to get a lot of joy out of using the word bullshit. Bill Barr loves the person. He does. I have such mixed feelings about this because it feels like if all of these people are the good guys, and that's how they're portraying themselves. No, I don't think any of these guys are the good guys. I think that these are the guys who, right, these are the guys who are, like, team reality.

So they're not good guys and they're still bad guys, but they're not really bad guys. But all I keep getting at or thinking is Bill Barr is sitting there basically saying the president of the United States, Donald Trump, was insane and was divorced from reality. And is still. And then all I keep thinking is Bill Barr is also the guy who said that he would still vote for Trump in 2024. And I start to wonder what the fuck is wrong with these people. Like you are sitting there. You were the attorney general. You were being directed by the president to make up shit and to investigate made up shit.

That had to do with a free and fair election that he lost. and you had to sit there every day and in your words basically say, no, Mr. President, that's not true. No, Mr. President, that didn't happen. No, Mr. President, you're getting bad information, et cetera, et cetera. That was your job was to tell the president he was wrong over and over again. And you're going to go out there and say, I'd vote for him in 2024. Like, there is something wrong with Bill Barr.

I just want to get that out there. I think that they're all like that. I mean, would Liz Cheney vote for Donald Trump? No. But would she vote for Ron DeSantis? Absolutely. These people are craven careerists, but they also want to keep democracy, which is our best hope for keeping democracy. So, like, you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Like, Bill Barr, terrible human, how we got here. Bill Barr wants to debunk the big lie. Like, I mean, I think it's the dichotomy of man, but stupid. No, I completely agree with you. And I'm not, look, I'm glad Bill Barr did what he did, you know, in the days after the 2020 election, et cetera. And I'm not, I'm not downplaying that. It's just I cannot understand how, okay, so if you're saying, well, Liz Cheney would not vote for Donald Trump, but she would vote for Ronda Sanders, which is 100%. I mean, Liz Cheney is this one thing aside, awful. But she wouldn't vote for Donald Trump. Bill Barr, if you think democracy is important and you, you How can you vote for a guy who tried to subvert it? I know this is getting off topic from the, and I'm going off on a rant here that I shouldn't.

It's just this is all I think of when I see him speak is that he said he would vote for Trump in 2024. But enough of my yakkin. What I thought was meaningful about these hearings was that you had Bill Barr, right, and Liz Cheney on a kind of mission to just torpedo Trump, right? Then you had, because I mean the stuff he said, like clearly,

He was just like, fuck it. Then you had like Ivanka and Jared, not an admission to torpedo Trump, since he is their meal ticket, but more on a mission believing that they're too smart to get tripped up. And so sitting for hours and hours of testimony and accidentally saying all the stuff that the committee had wanted them to say, which I thought was super interesting, right? So like you had Jared that first night saying, like, these babies whining about quitting because of their morality. what a bunch of pussies. Like the psychology of Jared Kushner for a minute, I just want to like think about a second. Here's a guy, he grew up fancy, New Jersey, Orthodox, right?

So that's a certain mentality right there, Orthodox Jewish. Then his father is fancy and successful, but still ends up in jail, which already is another completely interesting mentality because tends to be fancy people, even if they do crimes, tend to get away with it. So that in itself is like a very, You know, that's a psychological profile.

And so you can see, like, he's not going to, like, he's not going to say, no, we're not going to participate because he knows what happens. Like, people go to jail. Like, his dad went to jail. So, like, jail is a real thing that can happen. Whereas I think a lot of fancy people sort of don't believe that they could ever go to jail because it's so unusual. And the justice system is so unfair. So I do think that he has this weird psychology. And then, of course, he has this belief that he's brilliant because.

his father gave a lot of money and he went to an Ivy League college. So it's this very interesting dichotomy of like a stupid person who believes he's smart and is at the base very immoral but is slightly worried about consequences in a way the other Trump kids aren't. And so you see him like constantly slip up. I feel like Jared Kushner is like a little bit of a kind of, I mean, I don't want to say Shakespearean character because that makes him seem. It's too much heft.

Yeah, too much heft. but, you know, like one of the stupid characters in his speech, Shakespeare play, like Rosencrantz and Gildenstein. He's there. He thinks he's smart. He's kind of confused. He's got this. And then the video, I don't know what the video, but the two of them on the video look terrible. I mean, something happened with their screens where they both look like an Edward Munch painting. They're both like, aw, you know. And it's like, I understand you guys are thin and tall, but like you might have to have a cheeseburger sometimes. Jared Kushner is like a cop's dream when you bring him in for questioning because he'll say, Jared Kushner is a kind of guy who will say, well, I need a lawyer. And a cop will say, well, did you do anything wrong? And he'll say, well, you don't need a lawyer.

And he'll say, okay. And he's also the kind of guy who, like you said, he's not smart, but he thinks he is because he's had smartness credentials bought for him his whole life. He is the kind of person who would, like, defend himself in court because he thinks, He's that good at, you know, he just thinks he's smarter than everyone else. And in reality is very stupid. But yeah, they continue to not come across well, which is always fun. Which is a testament to their, again, another day where Tiffany Trump just, you know, get on that will, baby.

Because you're going to be the last one is going to be you and Bannon, like dividing up the sterling silver picture frames. No, I mean, I think it's a super interesting phenomenon. I mean, the thing that's the most interesting to me, besides the possible death of democracy, which is high on the list of the most interesting things because I would like to live in a democracy, but is this family dynamic? And then also the sort of like morality play

happening behind the scenes of like these Trump lawyers. I mean, you know, it's funny because it's like, George Conway used to always tell me that the White House counsel were like his biggest fans and they were always threatening to quit. Because remember, they're lawyers. So their whole careers are built on the idea that they shouldn't get disbarred, right? So for them, Trump is like their fucking worst nightmare, right?

Because they took this job thinking they just have like this government job. And now every day, everything is like, will this get me disbarred or not? And so I think that those guys were just so psyched to get out of there and to be able to shank the guy, then I think that is a pretty interesting other dynamic happening. Well, we should talk about one guy who did sort of lose his license to practice in various places and who wasn't at the hearing today, but probably he had the worst day at the hearing. And that is the apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani. Yes, we're going to call him now Rudy apparently inebriated Giuliani from now on.

Ivy, look, Liz Cheney had the line of the first night about the, you know, the dishonor when she referred to an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani advising Trump to just go out there and declare victory. So you had everyone who they had testify, whether it was Bill Steppian or Barr or whoever, basically saying, yeah, we wanted to distance ourselves from the Rudy Giuliani crew. Yeah. And it was just hilarious. I mean, again, none of this is funny, ha ha funny because of the stakes, but some of it is funny, funny, because of how just goofy and awful these people are, including Rudy Giuliani. And it's just he just got, I mean, it was just like shot after shot at Rudy throughout the hearing. And it was, I thought it was fantastic. Yeah, it was amazing.

And I think also what's interesting about Rudy is that everyone in that hearing who we heard from was basically like Rudy was not reliable. Rudy was drunk. Rudy was this, Rudy was that. And so we advised against what Rudy said. And then like it became clear that Trump just brought in Rudy and his crew. So it's interesting. I mean, the thing they really want to do in this committee, which I, I'm not sure they did today, but maybe they did do it today. I'm trying to think was they want, without a reasonable doubt, to prove that Trump knew he lost and was full of shit.

That's what they want. And so I guess they did do that today, right? They had, I mean, Jason Miller really, you know, it's funny because it's like, first of all, I guess he cares about getting COVID, which I thought COVID was a hoax. Right. But Jason Miller is wearing that mask. to look like Bain. He's the only person in any of this wearing a mask. But Jason Miller did say, like, we sort of saw, like, we knew we were going to lose. We told him. So I guess they did, ultimately, there were enough people who told him that he wasn't going to win. And then Chris Steyer

had the swagger of a person who does a lot of cable news. I thought he did a really good job. And I mean, that's the thing about, like, the idea of, like, confabulating this with partisan stuff. It's like Chris Steyerwall, not a Democrat, right? Or maybe he is. He's a data guy, right? He's absolutely not a Democrat. But, yeah, my guess is not. Yeah, he works at Fox.

He doesn't give a shit who's going to win the midterms. I mean, just like Cheney. He just wants people to count votes the way that votes are supposed to be counted. And he said our data was great. We called it before anyone else. We did the best job. And we were right. And ergo he got fired from Fox.

Yeah. And I mean, I thought he was fantastic also. And people tend to poo-poo Fox, like Fox News polling and the Fox News election people. They need to understand that Fox News does really good polls. Like their polling unit is highly respected. Well, did really good polls. I mean, I don't think we know what's happened since they fired all those people. That's a fair point.

But was very respected, yeah. And the election calling team was similarly respected. And nobody ever thought that they were partisan or anything. like that. And that worked for them, much like the polling worked for them for a long time. And now they've decided that they can't operate like that anymore. So as you said, they fired Chris Steyerwalt. They encouraged Bill Salmon, who was basically Steyerwalt's boss on that night. They sort of encouraged him to retire like a month later or like in January or something like that. So it's going to be very interesting going forward. The same thing with the election calling. Like I don't, I don't know

who the new team is, I don't know that they're going to have the same sort of integrity that this group did when it came to calling elections. But the really interesting thing to me here is that Fox News did carry this hearing. So you basically had Chris Steyerwalt who called Arizona for Biden, basically, and going up there and testifying that there was no way that Trump could have won and laying out exactly how impossible it would have been for him to pull off not one, not two, but three states. And for three states to change, he said, you know, I think what Seyewalt said was you're better off playing the powerball. Well, that is now airing on the same network that has many anchors who helped propagate the big lie. In a sense, he's calling out his former

colleagues for pushing this. And it's going to be curious. Tucker goes after him tonight. Yeah, if they push back or if they just sort of pretend it didn't happen. And it's a tough call. It's going to be one of those two. And I honestly not sure which one it is. You know, one of the things they touched on in that hearing and they didn't go too far into it, but they talked about what it's like to be targeted by Trump.

Yes. When Trump used to have Twitter and how you'd go after people, I thought that was super interesting as someone who has myself been targeted by the outrage machine, one of my favorite activities. It is interesting to see them talk about it because it is such a sort of new fact in American political life that came from Trump. I mean, certainly you had people like with the abortion doctors getting targeted. When I was growing up, you certainly had people get, you know, and I mean, America has a long history of harassment, of harassing politicians, but the kind of like stark things that happen to like Lisa Page and Peter Strick, that kind of thing, that's kind of new and it happening all the time.

And so I thought it was interesting they talked about that. I mean, I don't know where you go from that. I mean, Trump doesn't have Twitter anymore, but it is interesting. I do think like ultimately there's still a couple more days. There's Wednesday and then there's two more the following week. I think they've done a good job. They know that the American people have a really limited attention span. And so they're just cutting it up in a really sort of smart and TV-like way.

And it's funny because they got a lot of criticism for having an EBC producer produce it. But I don't think you could have Watergate hearings now. People don't have the patience. Like what you need is like multimedia kind of presentations. Right. And people, you know, look, back then during the Watergate hearings, when you were, what you were like in your 30s. Oh, you are the worst.

You only, you had three channels. I was negative five, you fucker. If ABC, CBS, and NBC were all showing the Watergate hearings, guess what you were watching, the Watergate hearings? And obviously, people aren't even watching TV as much these days. And so, yeah, it's impossible. I still wish they had all been televised, but I completely agree with you that this is a good way to do it. you know, I did not think that Lofgren was anywhere near as... No, good as Cheney.

Republicans are better at this. Can we just stop for a second? The Watergate hearings, 1973, I was negative five years old, okay? And you were like 14. Continue. Okay, all right. Sorry, I had to correct the record. We have our own big lie on this show, I guess.

Cheat here is a writer at the nation. Welcome to the new abnormal, Jeet, here. Good to be here. I can't even say back anymore because you're such a frequent flyer here. I just assume that at all times you're here. In spirit, is not in the flesh. That's right. So you feeling pretty smug about being Canadian today, huh?

I love it. No, not really. I mean, I think both countries have their advantages. Why should I be smugged today? So you watch those hearings. Yes. You had some pretty interesting theories about the Thursday hearing. Topline go.

Very professionally run. I got to really give credit to Benny Thompson because it's like a really forensic presentation of the evidence. And there's no showboating. I don't know if like some of the listeners might remember previous hearings like around Contra where like, you know, like you get 10 Congress. people in a room and they're all like, you know, trying to put their face as close to the camera as possible. This is not the case there. It's like a really smoothly run presentation.

I would, you know, they compare it to like law and order, right? Like you're kind of getting the evidence laid out. Within that, it's precisely because it's so controlled that some of it, you can start to question. They really wanted, you know, Liz Cheney and Kissinger, you know, the two Republicans that they have to be. be on board and they've given them a lot of space and they've really created a bipartisan hearing, especially the first day with Cheney. On some level, you kind of need that. Like, you don't want it to be

a fully partisan thing. But I think the cost of that is that there's some like whitewashing going on. Explain that because I think you're right. I think that people may not get it till later, but you have a really good and interesting theory here. The reality is it should be the bipartisan and preservation of democracy. And I think that having those Republicans on it certainly does add to that. But because you have these Republicans on it, there is a whitewashing.

And I'd love for you to explain that to our listeners. I think some of it just comes with like Liz Cheney being so up in front. And she's kind of trying to address people like herself who are kind of Republicans or skeptic of Trump. And so the narrative that she wants to present is that it's really just Trump and a few sort of cronies like Giuliani, you know, and they're the villains, and, you know, like, we get rid of them and things are returning to normal. And I were that it were so simple. That would be great, right?

But we all know that, you know, Trump had sort of the complicity of the Roebuckans all along. He gave them a lot of things that he wanted. And furthermore, even after, like, you know, January 6th, after he, you know, incited the mob to attack Congress, you know, you had a lot of people in Congress, including like six senators and I think more than 130 representatives, you know, who like went along with a big lie. And in fact, since then, the party has become more and more Trump-ice because you have like all these like people who believe in the big lie, we're taking winning primaries. where like sort of open insurrectionist wing primaries in some cases. So it's just like, I think ideally like I see this as a Republican problem, not just a Trump problem. And I think Liz Cheney wants to present this as a Trump problem. Right.

And then furthermore, to get people like Barr and Jared Kushner and Ivanka on board, you know, there's also a little whitewashing of their reputation, like, oh, they did the right thing at the right Right. Right. You know, once he's just like today where like Barr, you know, said of Trump, he became detached from reality. Now, if you look at that closely, like the suggestion is, well, you know, Trump was okay, like all the line. Like, you know, when he was like doing obstruction of justice for the Mueller report that I helped him with, you know, it's just like, like after the election loss, then, then he became detached from reality. And I had to say no, Mr. President. But like, I don't know.

I mean, like, how heroic were, like, the German generals who, like, you know, when the Red Army was coming into Berlin, you know, they decided, okay, now is the time to surrender. Right, right. Basically when I see Bill Barr as, right. I think that's absolutely right. I would also say, like, Jared and Ivanka, I mean, Bill Barr at least really did debunk the stuff. Jared and Ivanka sat for hours and hours and were just stupid enough to accidentally, say the quiet part loud. Bill Barr may have made a conscious effort to do the right thing. I don't think Jared and Ivanka did.

I just think they thought they were smarter than they are. Yeah, no, I think that's right. And so I think that it's unfortunate, you know, people really want to get Trump and they want to, like, you know, pull off some of his supporters. And in doing so, you know, there's a kind of whitewashing of some of the people that were complicit. And I mean, I think ultimately you're going to have to have a reckoning with the Republican Party. what it is. And I don't think the hearings get to that. I mean, they have other virtues. I think they lay out the case very clearly that like the people around Trump knew that the

whole election story was a lie. I think it's really great to have that on the record. And they really make a, you know, sort of they've connected some very important like dots in terms of the, you know, the way the crowd boys acted as the sort of tipping end of the sphere. So I mean, there's a there's a lot to be learned from the hearings, but does it get to a place where, like, something like this can't happen again? I don't think so. So I'm a little bit more skeptical, and I'm more skeptical, you know, like when she's like, you know, people, you know, not just centrist, but, you know, somebody like Robert Reich, the former labor secretary under Bill Clinton, he just has a post up now saying, you know, Liz Cheney for president.

Oh, no, no, no. It's totally the wrong lesson. that really is the wrong son. So, you know, like, I'm a little bit more skeptical of what's going on. Because I think a lot of people are on the liberal end of things. And I just think, like, you know, like, I think I think the hearings on the whole very well done, you know, make a very compelling case. But I think they make a narrow case.

And I think we have to take the narrow case for what it is. And then, like, we don't have to be. We can make a broader case if we want to. Yeah, I think that's right. And I think that ultimately, I think that we're not going to be able to, you know, I mean, you can't get Liz Cheney to admit Tom Cotton, right? Josh Hawley, these guys, you know, are sort of, they're playing the same playbook. You know, they're not tweeting that people should go see 200, 2000 mules or whatever that movie is. That's right.

And I think, I mean, very specifically, I just want to point out, Liz Cheney was responsible for their decision, like, not to really investigate Ginny Thomas. Yeah, who's a friend of hers, right? Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, you know, and so I think that there have apparently been reported clashes between Cheney and some of the Democrats on the committee as to, you know, which Republicans to investigate. So I just want to say, like, you know, and in some ways, I mean, the narrative that she's presenting is that, You know, Mike Pence was kind of a hero on this. And again, I have to say, like, you know, like his heroism consisted of, like, you know, like doing the law.

I was following the law, right? The bar is pretty low. I mean, I would also say following the law after fucking Dan Quayle told him to, the only person worse than him. I agree. There are no heroes here. But the kind of soulless, heartless, cunning that. Liz Cheney in some ways, yes, she's protecting her party, but in some ways she also sort of knows that she's not going to get reelected. You know, she's going to lose her primary and this is over for her.

I mean, maybe she runs as an independent, but like she's pulling 30 points behind. So there is a sense in which like this is a suicide mission, which I think makes her effective in a certain way too. Yeah, no, no. I mean, I do think like, like, of the Republicans, like Liz Cheney, like has really, you know, shown something in making a judgment. genuine sort of sacrifice. And I do want to kind of like honor that. But, you know, it's also coming from a place of like, you know, her goal is to kind of redeem the Republican Party and, you know, to make it more effective.

And once he said a lot, I mean, like, you know, like Nancy Pelosi says, you know, I want a strong Republican Party. And, you know, she literally said this. He said, some people say, you know, defeat the Republicans. I say, no, let's, you know, help them make them strong. Which, you know, I just don't share that. I actually think, like, no, you actually want to defeat the Republican Party. I think I want to draw lessons from the hearings that, you know, like, help discredit, not just Trump, but the Republican Party.

And use those, like, you know, in coming elections. The idea of having a strong Republican Party, it certainly is something that we see back and forth. And we'd certainly hear a lot of Democrats say that. This is also interesting to watch because it's. It's like in some ways there are these larger systematic problems with the Republican Party, right, that have always existed, right, like since Nixon or even before Nixon, you know, the sort of disenfranchisement, the, you know, this thought that the less people who vote, the more likely they are to win. I think it goes back to Goldwater. Yeah. I think, like, that's the real sort of origins of all this.

And again, I can understand why Liz Cheney doesn't want to have that fight. I'm less like sure why Nancy Pelosi doesn't want to have that funny. I imagine why. Because Pelosi belongs to the generation that kind of remembers the two-party system working and she wants to return to that. I just think like, you know, I think there are more and more Democrats who are realizing that there's no going back to that and you have to think differently and you have to, you know,

like have like a more unified, stronger Democratic Party that can act in a partisan way. rather than seek bipartisan cooperation. But in some ways, I mean, I think these hearings will be seen as the last great flourish of bipartisanship. And it's minor at that level. I mean, like, it's bipartisanship from Republicans that are willing to totally destroy their careers, which is, you know, all power to them. But I mean, I think that's why in some ways the hearings will also mark the final end of bipartisanship.

Along with the sort of gun legislation. I mean, it sort of follows a parallel track. Because, you know, like there, you know, again, a bipartisan victory. but it's like so hollow, so limited that like, you know, I think it's going to clarify the cost of bipartisanship. It's interesting that you say that because I'm thinking about that. That gun legislation really shocked, I think, everyone. I certainly never saw that coming. I mean, again, it's hollow.

Certain things in it are good. Like closing the boyfriend loophole. That was originally in the Violence Against Women Act. Like, that got stripped because Republicans became so right wing that they no longer believe. that, you know, I mean, the violence against women expired during Trump, right? Because Trump loved women so much. He didn't feel they needed to be protected from violence. So it's interesting to see that come back in. But certainly, it's a very kind of mixed bag that legislation. And it is interesting. Some of those Republicans signing onto something bipartisan, you would never have that during the Trump administration. Trump would just tweet at Lindsey Graham and he would change his mind. So I was shocked. that they've, you know, I mean, if you think about where Republicans are right now, the fact that that anything got past at all is kind of shocking. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I think it speaks to, like, how horrific the shooting law that, like, you can force some action on this. Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, I mean, obviously, like, something is better than nothing. I just think that, like, it clarifies what you can get out of Republicans. And I think there's so much more that needs to be done in terms of. You know, so I think that, I don't know, I think a lot of the lesson in the last few years are that, you know, you're not going to be able to achieve what you want through a return to bipartisanship. You're going to have to, you know, overcome the filibuster and work towards getting, you know, 52, 53 Senate seats. So, I mean, that's the kind of lesson I've been taking.

And, I mean, it is interesting that, you know, like, you do have, in some ways, I mean, Biden ran on this. He ran on the fact, you know, like, I'm a Democrat who could work with the Republicans. you know, my old friend Storm Thurmond. And he kind of used to achieve that in the sense that, you know, like the achievements of the presidency will be these hearings, will be this gun legislation, will be the infrastructure bill, which was also bipartisan. And I think the question for Democrats is in some ways that, yes, you know, you can still achieve some things with bipartisanship. But are they enough? Does they get you where you want to go? and if they aren't enough, then your horizon has to be different.

Your end goal can no longer be like, you know, we'll win and then we'll work with the Republicans. Your end goal is that we're going to get 53 Senate seats or more, and then we're going to get rid of the filibuster and we're going to, you know, push for what we want as a party. I think that that's where things have to go. Yeah, I just, whether the existing leadership of the Democratic Party, is willing to go there or not is an open question. But I do feel like more and more Democrats on the ground are going to see that. Yeah, I hope so.

I mean, otherwise. Talk to me. We have like three minutes left. Phil Marr, the liberal God. I'm being ironic here. I mean, he's unfortunately still very popular with, you know, a certain cohort of older liberals, I think. Boomer generation, silent generation liberals.

Are our parents being brainwashed by Bill Maher? Yeah, or he's telling them stuff that they've kind of always already believed. I think what set this off was his recent statement saying we have a look at the violence in Hollywood movies, which, you know, like, you know, this is like, I don't know, 1990s tipper-gore type material. I thought of say, you know, okay, okay, like, you know, I'm broadcasting out here from Canada, and I got to tell you, you know, it's not like we go to the movie theater and we watch the sound of music

and we watch, you know, like the Andy Hardy stuff and Bob Bo, you know, Bin Cosby going on the road to Morocco. Actually, we go to movie theaters like virtually everyone else on the planet and we watch, you know, the violent Hollywood movies like the Matrix. But, you know, our, I mean, our gun violence is high compared to Europe, but it's much slower compared to

the US. And what seems to be on this, if you measure out the spectrum, is the amount of guns that are available and the amount of regulations that, you know, the US is an outlier on the far end of the amount of guns and how easily accessible they are. Canada is a little bit in the middle and, you know, some European countries are in Australia are much more restrictive. But they're all watching the same violent movies. I was born in India and I was just watching, you know, this very, a little bit too nationalistic, but still very good action movie RRR, and that was as violent as get a haul. And there's like lots of violence. And, you know, again, you don't really see that reflected in Indian society. You know, he's basically kind of carrying water for the NRA, right?

Because you want distractions. You want people to think about anything other than guns. And it's just like the distraction he's offering is absurd. I think Marr often does this. He's getting up there in age. He's stuck in the old kind of mindset. I just think he's a very bad influence on the culture in general. And I just think one would hope, yeah, one would, if one could have deep programming sessions with elderly boomer liberals, you know, one thing would be like, don't watch Bill Maher. Thank you.

Great to be on. Zachary Cohen is a national security reporter at CNN. Welcome back to New Abnormal, Zachary Cohen. Thanks for having me, Molly. It's good to be back with you guys. We watched the hearings, talk to May. Yeah, I mean, look, the first prime time hearing was pretty much what we expected, right? It sort of set the tone for what we should expect going forward.

They ran through kind of what the key themes of each individual hearing would be. And basically, the big takeaway from the first hearing was they went a step further than we had heard from them previously. They said Donald Trump was at the center of this conspiracy, his broader conspiracy, to not only overturn the 2020 election, but to prevent the peaceful transfer of power. And I think that second part is really key because it really does point to Donald Trump directly and say, look, you're not what he was doing in terms of undermining the, you know, the validity of the election, trying to undermine the outcome, even as the people around him were telling him, hey, man, look, you lost, that that directly contributed to what happened on January 6th.

And then, you know, we look at what happened today. And I think that today was really the first step in terms of digging in a little bit into the weeds on some of the, those key themes. And they focus mostly on, you know, the various false election claims, right? The various, but in the fact that, you know, his former Trump's campaign manager at the time on election day was insisting that he did not go out there and just declare victory when it was clear that that was not going to be the outcome. And then you had Bill Barr, more clips from Bill Barr, who was featured heavily in the first hearing, basically saying, look, all of these various claims of election fraud, including the ones that we were seeing Trump,

out from the stage on January 6th, there was no merit to any of them and that he told Trump directly that to his face before resigning. So, you know, we're really sort of seeing the committee's core argument and the kind of foundation of their case take shape. And so it'll be interesting to see how that plays out for the rest of the hearings that are expected. I've written about this so much and like I watched it happen as we all did. And this idea that there was a team normal and a team crazy and Bill Steppian testified to this that like when Trump couldn't get what he wanted, he went in for the visibly inebriated Rudy Giuliani. Is that new information to you?

You know, not really. I think that, you know, after the election and all the reporting that's been done sort of bears this out is you had a lot of really senior Trump officials who realized that the election fraud claims that Trump was pushing, you know, and I'm not talking about like the immediate aftermath of the election, that they wanted no part of that, and that, you know, they knew that they were headed down about a troubled road. And so you did see some folks try to distance themselves. Now, the one person who seems to be the exception in that based on the reporting that we've done is Mark Meadows. And, you know, his text messages, I think it's important for folks to remember that all of this is happening

into the backdrop of what we know Mark Meadows was doing between November 3rd and January 6th. And he was really trying to placate and trying to satisfy Trump's, you know, desire to find any possible way to stay in power. And so, you know, back to your question, like, you know, this idea that there is a team normal and a team Giuliani type thing. I guess there is some virtue to that. But at the same time, we see people that were kind of caught in the middle and maybe weren't true believers per se, but they were enablers. And so there's sort of a third category there. So let's talk about Mark Meadows because I think he's such an important character in all of this, A, because he was. Trump's chief of staff, B, because he is really a stupid idiot.

We wouldn't necessarily have these hearings to the extent that we do if he hadn't released all his text messages, right? You know, he released the text messages he thought didn't make him look bad, and they're still, like, pretty shocking, right? Right. Well, and think about this, too. I mean, we know the committee said that Congressman Scott Perry, right, was one of the congressmen that they have the receipts.

to show that he asked for a pardon from the White House. But we wouldn't know anything about, really about Scott Perry's sort of central role in trying to help facilitate this effort to overturn the election if it wasn't for Mark Meadows turning over his text messages. We know that it was, he was directly involved at a very fundamental level in trying to really kind of help this effort of finding any possible way to overturn the election. I think you're right. I think, you know, without Mark Meadows handing over.

these thousands of texts and without, I think, the public reporting on them, you know, we would really have a lot less context to work from than we do now. There was an important, and it was like a throwaway line on Thursday, but I think it's important. Mark Meadow burned documents in his office. Right. And that was sort of a, and that seemed to be a reference to some reporting. I believe it was Maggie Harriman at the Times or I think, I'm pretty sure it was a Time story, maybe a Politico piece that backed up. But, you know, it does speak to, a couple different things. One, you know, we saw a pretty general disregard of recordkeeping

protocol and norms in the Trump White House, right? I mean, we know just generally speaking, they didn't really keep very good records and that they didn't abide by the rules that are in place to specifically document what's happening inside the White House in moments in history like this. But, you know, we look back at things like the missing call log entries or we look back at sort of the reporting around the presidential diary during January 6th and during the days that led up to it. You know, there does seem to be a little bit more intentionality behind it to not have some of these things documented. And one of the committee's main objectives and one of the gaps in time that they've really tried to, you know, fill in through witness testimony is

this time period where Trump was sitting in the dining room off the Oval Office. We know that he was surrounded by several aid, including Ivanka Trump, but there is no record of what he was saying and who he was talking to and what he was doing or not doing during that time, which is when the riot was actually unfolding. So I think the hearings are going to really lay out what the committee has been able to find and what they've learned through witness testimony because of the lack of recordkeeping and the lack of documentation that we have from the Trump administration. But it's not usual to burn documents in your office. I would say I don't have a fireplace in my office, but I've never heard of that happening in a White House. before. It seems like a Nixon level thing, right? I mean, Nixon didn't even do it. It would be something you could see happening in Nixon world. Right. And again, I think it just speaks to this broader

kind of question about was there some, was there an intentional effort to sort of create a document gap, right? And to create a gap or some uncertainty around what was happening during this time or prevent any sort of official memorialization of what was going on from being seen publicly, knowing that what was happening was wrong. That's the big question. I think the committee has to ultimately try to answer, too, is they have to speak to this idea that there was an intent behind that folks within the Trump administration knew what was happening was wrong.

And they've done some of that already in the early hearings, right? They know, videos of witnesses out there saying, like, look, we knew what Trump was saying was wrong. We knew that this broader effort to overturn the election based on. on bogus election claims was wrong, but, you know, there is a lack of documentation that speaks to that point. So let's just go back here for a second. I want to know, like, truthfully, what you think here.

There are members of the committee who have said things like, and Adam Schiff said this, that there may be enough for a criminal charge or there is enough for a criminal charge. Again, that is really his opinion. I mean, he's a lawyer, but do you think that's where this is headed? Do you think they're trying, or do you think they're trying to, or do you think they're trying to trying to show us that this is where this is headed? Or do you think they're wishcasting that hopefully Merrick Garland, who has up until now seems like a very conflict avoidant kind of guy, is going?

So I think that it's a little bit of all of that, right? It's, you know, my sources and the people that I've talked to have said that at this stage, I think there's a pretty unanimous opinion on the committee that the facts speak for themselves and that the members believe that the evidence does bear out this idea that Trump did commit some sort of a crime and that, you know, the Department of Justice should look into it. Now, the question of a referral is a little bit different, right, because the committee is also consistently taking the stance of, like, we're not conducting a criminal investigation. And that's not our role here. And all we can do is lay out the facts and present the evidence that we've collected. And then, you know, people can draw their opinions, including the attorney general, based on what we're going to be. we put out there publicly. And so I think there is still some debate over whether or not we'll

see the committee take that formal step of making a referral because at the end of the day, that, you know, there are political calculations. There are, you know, calculations I think the committee has to make in terms of does making a referral increase or decrease the chances of DOJ pursuing criminal charges. It's been sort of a mixed bag so far on the question of congressional contempt, right? I'm not sure that the committee has a great sense of. of what that step would do in terms of DOJ's thinking on the matter. And so, you know, it's clear right now what their priority is is to present the facts that they believe amounts to criminal activity to the American public and also to DOJ,

who they know is watching the hearings. I guess the closest thing is a Ron Contra, right, to this or is it Watergate? I mean, when you had Iran Contra, was there the same kind of relationship between the DOJ and the congressional? hearings? I think I was about five years old. All right, let's stop bragging there, Zach. Okay. I was also young. Again, I would like to point out I was probably only about seven. But there's some precedent for this. There is. And I think ultimately, we're going to have to wait and see. Just to kind of answer your question bluntly, I think the committee isn't sure what to do on the question of a criminal referral yet.

I think that that is still something that is being sort of weighed internally amongst the members. But I do think that there is my sense from, again, the conversations I've been having is that the members, there's a consensus that they believe the facts speak for themselves and the facts point to the fact that they believe that Trump committed some sort of a crime. Now, what that is, what shape that might look like in terms of a criminal referral or not a criminal referral, that kind of remains to be seen. Like you said, there's only a few things that have happened in American history that are even like tangential. You can kind of make the argument that they are some sort of precedent. So I think we are in a unique territory here in a lot of ways.

is a source of like enormous consternation for many of us. There's some conjecture. I haven't really seen great reporting on this, but that the Cheney was the reason that Jenny Thomas wasn't further investigated. I mean, do you have any sense of that story and what really is happening there? You know, I think it's a very valid question.

I think, you know, we, CNN actually, I know a lot of folks give a lot of attention to the Woodward and cost story and right for so because they had. the messages. But, you know, we know that she was texting Mark Meadows. We know to the great reporting that Emma Brown has been doing over the last couple weeks that she was sending these sort of stock kind of emails, right, kind of requesting that state legislators not certified

the election results in their states, states like Arizona. And the headline was 29. She reached out to 29 for a state long. So look, I mean, I think that that's been a concern from the beginning. And I think that her relationship. What's been a concern, her relationship with Los Cheney or? No, no, her relationship kind of with the broader question of what happened and what was her role. And, you know, we know that she sent some tweets out about January 6 itself and had to apologize for it. And does that impact anything to do with her husband on the Supreme Court? I don't have a great sense as to whether or not those questions are any closer to being answered. And I'm not really sure if Liz Cheney played any sort of a role in the committee's decision not to really feature her as part of this investigation.

But you're right. It seems to be like the one outstanding kind of area that the committee has not or has opted not to like really dig into. Or yet, you know, there's still more things to go. But there's no sense that, you know, she'll be featured heavily in any of them. Right. I feel like, I feel like there's a real question there. And also, I mean, again, like, and we've seen reporting to this effect, like Liz Cheney and I think Smartly has wanted to limit the scope. there's like the normal Republican copability

and then there's like Donald Trump trying to overturn the election but this is all super interesting. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, of course. Anytime. I'm happy to be with you guys. Andy Levy, who is your fuck that guy? Molly Jongfast, my fuck that guy for this week is candidate for Senate in the great state of Georgia. He was a football player name of Herschel Walker. And we've learned a lot about Herschel Walker. For instance, he has many personalities and cannot be held accountable when one of them

allegedly mistreats his wife. And now we've also learned that he is not quite the law enforcement officer that he has claimed to have been. Yeah, I'm shocked. He had, back in 2013, he was giving a speech at an event. And he said, I worked in law enforcement, so I had a gun. I put this gun in my Holster and I said, I'm going to kill this dude. Four years later, he kind of got a little more specific. This is all according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution, by the way. He said, quote, I work with the Cobb County Police Department and I've been in criminal justice all my life. In 2019, he said, I spent time at Quantico in the FBI training school. Y'all didn't know I was an agent. Yeah, we didn't know it. So here's the actual deal. He was a criminal justice major in college.

and he apparently was an honorary deputy in Cobb County, which, by the way, does not give you the authority to carry a gun or say that you are in law enforcement. And as a former district attorney told the AJC, quote, it's like a junior ranger badge. I kind of want one now. Can I get one? Yeah. And he was not an FBI agent, of course. He spent a week at an FBI school in Quantica. and he basically, like, they let him run the obstacle course and target shoot. He somehow now has it in his head that he is an FBI agent. So this guy is bad in the way that the Republican Party these days is bad. But he's also, he's missing some stuff.

And I don't want to say there are things that happen in football that make people unhealthy. I'm not even joking here. Like, I don't know if he has CTE or something like that. if this is how he's been his whole life. But this guy should not be in the U.S. Senate. I do know that much. And for all those reasons, fuck that guy. Yeah, yeah.

I go along with that for sure. Who's your? I do, Molly. So Doug Mastriano is running for governor in the great state of Pennsylvania. He, if he becomes governor, Democrats will never win that state ever. I think that's a fair because he is area insurrectionist

paid for buses to go to the January 6th stop the steel rally the guy is he's got very fast and loose with the concept of democracy in vote counting

he has decided as opposed to sort of the opposite of the Glenn Yonkin school of like Donald Trump I hardly know him Doug has gone Donald Trump, I got to get his worst people in. And ergo, former traffic agent, basically a Twitter troll, Jenna Alice, will now be working for Doug

Mastrano. Maybe he's just a very bad driver. One thing that I keep thinking about is that Glenn Yonkin won the state of Virginia, the governorship, by sort of pretending that he had no, you know, that he was a sort of non-Trumpy red flannel vest wearing centrist. And now you've got Doug Mastriano not even trying to go that route, but instead hiring the lawyer for Rudy hair paint. Giuliani. Also, can I point out why does Giuliani, Giuliani is a lawyer, though now, I guess, is he disbarred? I think he's been punished. I don't know if he's been disbarred. Giuliani is theoretically a lawyer, but I guess he has driving problems.

and ergo you need a traffic lawyer. This is great news. And I remember thinking during all the election stuff that America was very lucky that Jenna Ellis was one of Trump's lawyers. And so I feel sort of the same way here. It's like, please, hire the most incompetent lawyers you can possibly find. There are a lot of times where even if the, like, you don't want a president or a governor hiring.

incompetent people in general. But as their own personal lawyers, yes, you very much want people like Trump and Mastriano hiring the most possible incompetent lawyers in the world. And he found one. God bless him. He found one.

They seem to have figured that out quite well. Yeah, I mean, so God bless them both. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again on the next episode.

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