The Daily Beast Podcast - JD Vance Epically Fails to Understand How Inflation Works

Episode Date: September 1, 2024

Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance gave a very JD Vance explanation of America’s inflation rates when he was asked about a policy to address the problem on the campaign trail in Wisconsin. Plus! Author Maggie Tokuda-Hall, who wrote the children’s book Love in the Library, joins the podcast to talk about the history of Banned Books Week and why the importance of this year’s celebration (Sept. 22-28). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current Campbell News conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse 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 some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears.

Welcome back to another bonus episode of the New Epnormal, and we thank you so much for being here. Since 1982, Band Book Week has been an institution in American libraries. And no stranger to ban books herself, Maggie Takeda Hall, author of Love in the Library, is here to tell us all about the history of the event and why in particular this year might be extra important. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Clips. Clips. So one of the things we used to talk about last year and somehow has gotten a little lost is that Trump and Vance are running on an alternate reality, as we would all say like it was Earth 2. And I really was reminded of that when I heard this clip.

Senator Vance, one of the big issues on the campaign trail has been inflation, the cost of groceries, the cost of gas. What would you do on day one to reverse that? And Democrats keep pointing to corporate greed. Is that a factor in this as well? Well, look, it may very well be a factor, but the simple fact is the way to tamp down on that is to make sure we have competitive markets and low prices, right? You don't have to believe that, you know, you don't have to believe that corporations are angels. Some of them are doing great jobs and some of them aren't, but that is not what's driving the most of the inflation in this country right now. What we're seeing consistently is energy prices are too high, food prices are too high, housing prices are too high. The story there is Kamala Harris supported the Inflation Explosion Act. and they've made it harder to produce American energy. When you do those two things, you're necessarily going to have inflation.

So what? So he's an idiot, right? We all agree on that. Corporate greed is the reason for all of the things that he just said. When we had the housing market crash, do you know who was buying up all of the housing? Corporations. And when they bought up those low-income housing areas and areas that were destroyed, and they bought up those areas.

What did they do? they then jacked up the prices. We know this. Kroger was just found to have inflated their grocery prices, which is why in Kamala Harris and Tim Walz's economic plan, they want to go after the price gouging that corporations have done because of their greed for their CEOs and their shareholders. Like, I don't know what planet these people are on.

I really don't because nothing that they say makes sense at all. And this is coming from a man that. standing next to a man that added $7 trillion to our deficit. Give me a fucking break. Yeah, I mean, look, he wants to talk about food prices being high. He should talk about the profits of grocery chains. Operating profits grew apparently from 2019 to 2023. They grew from $14 billion to $25 billion.

That's a 79% increase. They're making a lot more. money than they used to and they're charging a lot more for their food. This is not even a question of him being stupid. This is a question of being willfully ignorant slash lying because it's a pretty easy jump from cause to effect to say that, well, prices are up and guess what? Profits are up. So they're not charging more because they have to. They're charging more because they want to. So yeah. Danielle, you are correct and J.D. Vance is wrong. Yes, I hear that a lot. Thank you. I love, too, that there's all this rhetoric

I'm like, oh my God, can you believe the Biden regulatory body will not let Kroger and Albertson's merge? This is communism. It's like, gee, yes, we want one of the worst-price gougers that caused inflation to have more power. That's a great thing.

Mm-hmm. Yep. Now we have Republican Senate candidate Royce White, who's running as a Republican talking to Steve Bannon. And I got to be honest, I don't know if you guys have taken this guy in.

If Mark Robinson wasn't stealing the show the stupidest things said possible, this guy would be taking the cake. Let's listen. Continuing one is to say culture issues as a code word for rub, white, rural, Christian, heterosexual, male nationalist, you know, that are just focused on their wives being too, too mouthy, sir. Yeah. Well, look, let's just be frank. Women have become too mouty. I just don't have the energy.

Men have become too fucking fragile. How about that? How about the fact that none of these men can actually take strong, intelligent, thoughtful women? They want women to have their... See, and I can't say what I want to say. Take it away, Andy, because I'm going to say something that's going to have me... That's going to have this mouth lose its job. And I don't want to do that.

And I don't want to do that. This guy, Royce White, who, by the way, is a, I guess, a former NBA player, though I don't think he had much of a career. He has a podcast called Please Call Me Crazy, which, yeah, sure. He went on a whole little rant, as MSNBC reported, just recently. He said Republicans who are trying to win over suburban women voters are delusional and that they have a cucked mentality and that they are losers. So, as you said on Friday's episode, Danielle, about a different thing. but they are, the Republicans are really, really not doing themselves any favors with women voters. No, and I hope they keep it up.

I have news for y'all. Trump has nothing to do with Project 2025, which is why we have Stephen Moore here basically saying how much he has to do with it, because this guy is one of the, long before Trump would say the quiet part out loud, this guy would always say the dumbest things on TV and even a fool like Bill Maher would laugh him off the stage. Let's listen to him go. Talk about how we get this under control as a nation. Obviously, we've got to vote for the right people. And I was talking earlier with Jay Christian Adams about why the left is just scared to death of Donald Trump. I mean, they're trying everything they can to keep him from being the next president. Well, as you mentioned, you were and continued to be an economic advisor to the president.

Well, they're unloading on you as well. because they're afraid of the president's economic policies because it basically kicks the pigs out of the trough, and it puts the American people first. Well, I can't even improve on that, Tony. You're exactly right. And we have a plan. I asked the president how long it would take him,

the President Trump, that is, to revive the economy. He said, give me six months, and we'll be back to where we were. And, you know, I told the president this too, Tony, I said, because I had dinner with him a couple weeks ago, I said, the case for you for president is very easy. Well, I, for one, am shocked to discover that Donald Trump is lying when he says he has no connection to Project 2025. Like, I just took him at his word because I haven't known him to be a liar. Andy, stop auditioning for your next gig at the New York Times. Jesus Christ.

Oh, shit. Fine. Fine. Deanna, can you clip that for my reel? No shit. I continue to say that. about Republican talking points around the economy and how the media runs with what it is that they say. The only pigs in the trough are the CEOs and shareholders at these major corporations that are

chomping at the bit for another Trump administration so that they can buy their seventh and eighth home. They're the one, they're the only ones that benefit. And it's funny to me that when he's talking about, oh, these pigs in the trough and cutting them off, He's talking about people on Social Security and Medicaid. That's who they think is suckling at America, those that actually need and who have put in the work in order to receive what is owed to them in the sunset years of their life. And I'm just like, our economy right now is the envy of the world. Biden has added more jobs than I think any other president at this time in their presidency.

And he inherited a $7 trillion deficit, a broken economy. and a global health pandemic that that motherfucker bumbled that ended up with hundreds of thousands of Americans dead by the time he left office. So I just like, I listen to these people and I just get so sick, sick to my stomach because it's this kind of greed and grift that destroys the middle class and has people turn on the very people who are essential to this country running. They make me sick. All right. We now have Charisma King, J.D. Vance, trying to show off that he's very, very normal. Like all you, hold on, I have to check my notes. Fellow American. Yeah, he's just like you.

Republican and Democrat conventions we just had. It says a lot who each party chose to put up on that stage. At the Republican convention, we were featuring everyday American workers, and of course we had Hall Cogan. And while it's Stimpton, and I'm sure it would make some big headlines. Don't worry everybody. I'm not going to try to take off my shirt here. It says a lot about who was featured. It does say a lot about who was featured. We had Hulk Hogan on the stage and didn't they have a dog as well?

Like, yeah, it says a lot about who was featured. That was Kid Rock. Oh, and Kid Rock. Oh, yeah. Oh, you mean the dog? Yeah. Little joke. I got it. I don't know what you guys are talking about. I felt like if J.D. Vance took off his shirt right now,

I'm sure we'd see probably the weirdest thing ever because that's what happens every time we learn more about him. He probably has like a tattoo of his own face on his chest. Also, he is just, I mean, it is painful how unfunny he is. It really is. It's awful. He is up there with DeSantis. I mean, the two of them.

No, no, no, no. Clap, please. Please clap. Please clap. I mean, that was like ineffectual and whatever. DeSantis and Vance, like, they both, they try so hard to be kind of funny and hip and with it. and they fail so miserably, and it's just, it is so painful to watch. Like, I don't know.

It's very hard, I think, to tell someone, dude, you're not funny and you shouldn't try to be. Someone needs to tell him that. You know, it's funny, there's always those right-wing conspiracies that someone's a wizard person. I hate to say it. I'm starting to believe. I'm starting to believe. Maybe that's what would happen if he took his shirt off. Back in 1982, the American Library,

Association launched an annual band Books Week aimed at highlighting voices that groups like the moral majority were trying to silence. This year's week takes place later this month from September 22nd through the 28th. And here to tell us all about it and why it's so vital in the year of our Lord 2024 is Maggie Takuda Hall, author of the wonderful picture book, Love in the Library, and co-founder and national team leader for authors against book bands. Maggie, thanks so much for coming back on the show. Thank you so much for having me, Andy. Absolutely. Before we get started, last time you were on, we talked about what you went through with Love in the Library, which I guess I would call a sort of pre-censorship from the huge publishing house, Scholastic. Can you briefly refresh our listeners' memories about that?

Yeah, absolutely. So, Love in the Library is the true story of how my maternal grandparents met during World War II in a Japanese-American incarceration camp. And so I wrote a picture book about it. And in the end of my picture book, there is an author's note. I'm kind of talking about how what happened to them is not an isolated moment in American history. history, how it's related to all of these other things that are going on that have happened, that are continuing to happen. And it's published by Candlewick Press, which is a really wonderful independent publisher. Sclastic made me an offer to license the book, which they do with a lot

of publishers where because they have this entire division of their company that sells directly to schools, they go to other publishers and they make licensing offers where they repackage the book is one of theirs. And they made me one of those offers, which is always very exciting as a children's book author. My offer came with a caveat, which was that unless I remove an entire paragraph explaining how what had happened to my grandparents wasn't aberrant in our history and furthermore needed to remove the word racism from the author's note altogether, then I wouldn't be made to the offer. And I made the decision to make my rejection of that offer public and to kind of share the PDF of their proposed edits with my colleagues in the world. And so I suppose that's how

you heard of me the first time. Yeah, absolutely. And, and, you know, I sort of, like I said, I sort of called this pre-censorship because Scholastic basically was, if my memory is correct, it was basically, it was one of those, you know, in the current climate, we have to be very, et cetera, et cetera. Tell us a little bit about authors against book bans. And I'm curious if what happened with Scholastic is one of the things that led you to co-found it. Yeah, it absolutely is. Because of what had happened with Scholastic, I got a lot of invitations to speak to librarians. And specifically, I was invited by the Idaho Library Association to come out in conjunction with Minidoka itself, which is the camp where my grandparents were kept and incarcerated. And when I was out visiting them, their stories of what they were facing and the kind of harassment that they received on a daily basis were harrowing and chilling.

and I couldn't believe how unaware I had been of the fight that they were conducting seemingly unsupported. And so I reached out to a friend who's much more connected in the publishing world than I am, who's David Levithen, and he and I lead authors against book bands now. Because I had this kind of misled idea that I would just like punk rock start like a book band alert thing for the nation. I was like, sure, I could do that. If I just need like a contact at Pet America and one at ALA and see what I can get going. And he's like, hey, how about instead of doing that like a Wackadoo, you join me with this group of people I'm already working with, or that he had just started kind of gathering people to get this going. And so I got involved that way. And now he and I are leading it together.

And Authors Against Book Bands is now a group of over 2,000 authors and book creators all across the country. We just sort of launched to the public in April. I'm pretty impressed by how much we've grown in that short amount of time. But we seek to organize the creator response to book bands in this moment because it has grown exponentially as a problem, certainly since 1982, but even since 2020. So talk about this year's Band Books Week. The theme is freed between the lines. What does that mean? You know, I think every year they come up with different catchphrases that sound great. And focusing on the freedom and freedom to read and aligning that with the kind of the political moment we're in makes a lot of sense. I think for authors against book bans, our goal is

to make this year as action-oriented as possible. We're in a very new era for what book bans look like. It used to be, you know, maybe a spattering of concerned parents being offended by Captain Underpants because it has butt jokes in it. And now it's reached state-level legislation. Like we see in Idaho, there's House Bill 710, but basically makes all libraries financially liable for any book, anyone finds problematic for any child. And as a result, the public library in Donnelly, Idaho has shut down its children's section entirely. It's just not open to children anymore. And in Idaho Falls, they are now asking parents to sign an affidavit anytime any child under the age of 18 wants to access any materials in the library. My God. Yeah, it's pretty dystopian. And in Utah, they have a

new one on the state level that just passed. That's basically a book burning law where if three school districts in the state ban a book, then the whole state is obligated to ban those books. And not only that, they're not allowed to redistribute them, they have to dispose of the books. My God, it really, like it doesn't get any more dystopian than that. And, you know, you wrote a really good piece for book riot, and you made so many important points in it, but one of them is sort of along the lines of what you're saying, is that these days book banners aren't just trying to pull books off shelves. They want to actually defund those shows. shelves. Yeah, so I think one of the really important things for everyone to understand about book

banning is it's not just about silencing marginalized people, although it's absolutely about that as well. It's about defunding all of our institutions of public learning. And the people who are behind them, the kind of dark money far right interests that have funded a lot of this are very interested in moving us into a charter school school vouchers system that is profitable for them. And they are aware that defunding public schools and libraries is deeply unpopular. And they figured out that the most expedient way to get people to do it anyway is just sort of like inflame their easily motivated bigotries. And that's why we see all these bands targeting LGBTQ, but specifically trans identity books. And why we see them targeting so many books by people of color.

Yeah. It's a dark moment in this fight. And if I'm really frank, it's a, fight that we're kind of losing. We're at like a five-year deficit on organizing around this issue. And so it's really a moment where, you know, book bands are deeply unpopular. And if we pay attention and if we speak out in our communities, they're likely to get pushed back. But we haven't been. And other people on the other side have been. Yeah, I was looking through the band book week's website. And I saw that they had the ALA American Library Association's list of the top 10 most challenged books of 2023, and seven of the 10 are for LGBTQIA plus content. So like you said,

they're not even trying to hide their bigotry, are they? No, I mean, just this week, both in South Carolina and in Texas, to a library district, the Greenville County Public Library System and a school district in Texas, the KDISD, have both made it so that any books about trans people for kids are either banned entirely for kids under, you know, like middle school and younger. And for young adults, they have been relocated to the adult section where kids can no longer access them. And so they use the language of what they call under ideology. And you see the same language in Project 2025, that gender ideology is this like noxious, crazy thing that they're trying to stamp down. But what they really mean is they just don't want trans people to

exist. And so they're really saying the quiet part out loud. No, for sure. I was going to say that. I'm so glad you did. It's like so many of these books, it's not even that they have queer content or trans content. They might just have a queer character or a trans character. And that for the book banners, they equate that with pornography somehow. Yes. And it is also worth noting that in Project 2025, they called for the imprisonment of pornographers. At the same time, is surfacing all of this legislation that paints all of LGBTQ content as porn. And so I do think we kind of need to have our eye on the price here of what's going on. It's a really frightening moment to be a queer creator.

I know that my most banned books aren't actually love in the library. It's The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea and Squad. And they're both banned, their young adult books. They are four older kids. They're not for babies. But one of them has a trans main character, so it gets banned quite a bit. One of them features a sapphic romance. And it gets banned for that, not for the violence that is also in that story, which I think is actually a worthwhile conversation to have.

And so predominantly we are seeing bands around LGBTQ content. But we're also seeing new bands surfacing around anything that addresses sexual assault. And we're also seeing bands. And this is where it starts feeling, I feel crazy, even having to say this out loud, around social emotional learning, books that encourage empathy. have become a new target because they're seeing empathy as a gateway drug to queerness? Oh, God. I know. I feel crazy just saying it out loud.

Anyway. But it's actually not, you know, if you look at so much of the right wing, like, they are severely empathy deficient. And so I guess it shouldn't be a surprise that they view even, you know, writing about empathy or writing about characters who might not be straight, white, cis men in an empathy. way is extremely dangerous to these folks. I know. I mean, it's just, if it's not like Tom Sawyer, they're like, get out. And I just don't understand. I mean, I do understand why, but it is hard to witness. Yeah, absolutely. Tell us more about Band Books Week. What kind of things are going to be going on. How can people get involved in it?

Yeah, absolutely. So, firstly, everybody's local library and or independent bookstore is probably doing something. And if they're not, that's an opening to ask them if maybe you could do something with them. Everybody as citizens has an opportunity to get involved here. And for authors against book bands, this year we're suggesting focusing on action-oriented events that can actually get to the root cause of where bands are. And so we suggest doing things like voter registration events, doing state house, town hall, or public library readings, which can be really fun community building events where you go to a state hall, you read from books that are banned in your area, you share what they mean to you, you use that as an opportunity to get other people involved in this process,

and you can partner with independent bookstores and libraries to do that. You can do things like write postcards or letters to librarians or schools or leaders or legislators that are impacted by bands. Obviously, they're different kinds of letters. If you're writing to librarians and school librarians, it would be letters of support. Often, fans are the first time that they've ever been in conflict with their own community. And it's really frightening. And they feel really alone. And so offering solidarity can actually be really valuable in this moment. Or you can write angrier letters to your legislators. If you live in states like Iowa, Utah, Idaho, South Carolina, Louisiana, Texas, or Florida, there's a lot of state-level legislation that's really noxious around this issue. You can also organize

band book sales or drives and ship them to communities who need them. And you can also do call parties if you wanted. Authors Against BookBans partnered with five calls, which is a free app where you type in your zip code and it will connect you to the correct representatives for any given issue in your state. And we created a script around protecting our children from book bans that you can use to call your state level legislators, even if you live in a state where it's not a huge issue to remind them that you don't want it to be an issue where you live and that this is an issue that matters to you. Yeah, absolutely. Is there a website where people can go to sort of look over all that information and, you know, is it bannedbooksweek.org? For everything I

just said would probably be the book Riot essay I wrote has all of that on there, except for the Five Calls thing because that had not been finalized when that was published. And then you can go to the Five Calls app and you don't need to search very far within the app. They've surfaced it toward the top of the issues list and you can just choose your issues. You can call to, you know, ask for Supreme Court reform or to have an arms embargo to Israel or to protect your children from book bans. There's an entire menu of issues that you can. go to there. Gotcha. Okay, good. Something you said earlier about librarians and that, you know,

how frightening a lot of this is for them. You wrote about this in the book, right piece. Talk a little bit about teachers and librarians having to keep hearing that they are pornographers and groomers. And I think you yourself got some not so nice letters about love in the library. So you have some experience with this, but I can't even imagine what it must be like to be a librarian and to be like a lover of books who wants kids to be educated and to hear these vile spears being hurled at you. Yeah, I mean, I think online harassment is never okay, but there's a certain amount of it that all authors are kind of aware could come for them at any moment. We put our work out publicly, and there's going to be public reaction for better and for worse

sometimes. But teachers and librarians didn't get into that line of work saying, hey, look at me, I have ideas. I'm demanding that you look at my work. Like they're quietly doing the work of educating our children and making them into bigger, better, more resilient versions of themselves and to, you know, instill this love of reading, which is such a gift for the rest of their lives. They do this because they love kids. And then they're being attacked in the most disgusting ways, being called pedophiles, being called rumors, being called pornographers, whatever language it is. And it's a neat little bit of psychological warfare because as soon as you have to say, I'm not a pedophile. sound exactly like a pedophile. It's a really horrific thing that is happening to these librarians.

And I have to tell this like one story. I went back to Idaho and visited one of the libraries that had hosted me there to thank them for basically radicalizing me into this fight because they were telling me about what they dealt with on a daily basis. And I was asking them if they had seen the kind of picture that went viral out of Idaho Falls in Idaho of the big stop sign saying, hey, your parents have to sign an affidavit if you're under 18 in order to enter this library. And I was like, God, are you guys scared? I'm so sorry that this is happening to you. Like, what has it been like?

And one of them said to me, they have been legislating against us for years. And that, frankly, is something that sign is something scared librarians do. It, like, lit me on fire. I was so, I was so proud of her. I was so excited that I knew her at all. And I just, I'm hoping for that energy for all of us going forward because, Like I said, many of these people have never been in conflict with their own communities before, because they are in many, they're just civil servants.

They're not here to distress us. They are here to serve us and to like help our kids be better people. There's a wonderful book out now called That Librarian by Amanda Jones, where if you would like to hear a first person account of what it means to be a librarian who's hit with these kinds of attacks and to fight back and what that took from her, I highly recommend that book. Yeah, it's just, you know, it's so funny. I, to this day, I remember the name of my elementary school librarian, Ms. Watros.

And she was, she was so cool and so nice. And, you know, I've been a lifelong reader since an early age, and she was so encouraging and so helpful. And to think of people like her, just getting the nastiest possible invective hurled at them and having to live in fear, it's hard to think of something that makes me more angry. Yeah, it is really terrible and it is really just punishing people for being good people. Like, people don't become teachers because of them big bucks that they get for doing it. You know, like the people who have Amazon wish lists that include things like crayons and staplers should not be fighting this fight alone. And that is a large part of the reason why authors against book bans exists because we just want to be able to stand behind these educators and librarians who've made our career. as possible for one, but have also made us as writers. You can't throw a rock and not hit a writer

who had a librarian or teacher who was invaluable to them at some point in finding this life's calling. It breaks my heart and it makes me so angry. Yeah, absolutely. Well, Maggie, thank you so much for the work you're doing on this and for co-founding and co-leading authors against book bands and for working with the American Library Association and Penn and other organizations on this. It's such an important issue. And I looked at the stats and it's amazing how every year, I think the jump from 2022 to 2023 was like 65% in terms of titles targeted for censorship. So this is a growing problem. And like you said, you know, the other side sort of got a head start on this with moms for liberty and stuff like that. And so, you know, we're kind of playing counter.

But thank you so much for getting us in the game. And folks, look out for Band Books Week later this month and do what you can to help. And if you are a person who's ever had your name on a book independently or traditionally published, we are completely agnostic to genre. We don't care if you wrote Morning Glory Milking Farm or Betty Bunny loves chocolate cake. Everybody is welcome. You are welcome to join us at Authors Against BookBands.com. Perfect.

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