The Daily Beast Podcast - Jeet Heer: It Shouldn’t Shock You That Afghanistan Collapsed So Quickly

Episode Date: August 24, 2021

“The fact that everything collapsed so quickly to me vindicates Biden’s decision,” Jeet Heer says on this week’s second episode of The New Abnormal. “If you read the Afghanistan Papers, none of what’s happening is shocking. One of the big things that comes out of [the story] is the weakness of the Afghan government, which is really a pumpkin government,” he tells Molly Jong-Fast and Jesse Cannon. “Like it’s like a bunch of guys with a phony-baloney jobs and offices and big sacks of money.” Then they are joined by supermodel Carré Otis, who earlier this month filed a lawsuit accusing former Elite Model Management executive Gerald Marie of sexually assaulting her multiple times in the 1980s. Also joining the podcast is The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, who in large part agreed with Heer. “This is kind of a real disastrous mess, but I think it probably was inevitable given all the failures that have led up to this point,” Sargent says. “And there’s probably no neat and tidy way to do this. And in the end that, you know, it had to be done. That would be where a good chunk of mainstream Americans ends up landing.”  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 Kennan. I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails.

Today we have a super insightful show. Actress and model Carrie Otis is going to talk to us about her journey of coming forward about being raped as a young girl by Gerald Marie. Then we'll talk to the Washington Post, Greg Sargent, about the latest fuckery in Washington and the media. But first, we have columnist at the nation and substacker, Jeet Here. Welcome back to the new abnormal, Jeet Here. Good to be here, as always.

As much as we're all fucking sick of it, I think we have to start with Afghanistan. Sure, yeah. I mean, it is the kind of big news of the last few weeks, yes. But you know what's so interesting to me? It's like these fucking people, these are the people who never gave shit about human rights, right? I mean, who never, I mean, they couldn't find an Afghanistan on a map. I'm actually very bitter about this because about two years ago,

the Washington Post published this really great series called the Afghanistan Papers, which was based on like they had like a long litigation of 10 years to like get freedom of information about these internal Pentagon reports. And they did a superb job just packaging everything, putting together, you know, creating this real detailed and convincing narrative. And it showed that like from based on the Pentagon's own documents that the government had been lying all along, that there had been all these problems with the Afghan government with corruption and with the Afghan army. me of desertion, low morale, that there was nowhere near ready to stand on their own, which was the goal. At the time, like, that got, I was really shocked. It got like zero attention, like, and so I did a column about it and I tweeted about it. I tried to get people, like, this is the real deal. This is like as close to like, you know, contemporary history as we can

get about what's going on. And it's pretty terrifying because it really shows that it's much worse than we thought. And nobody was paying attention. Like, I, I, I, I got to give the Washington Post credit because this is like, you know, you're really putting a lot of resources on, like, reporting that's not going to, like, pay off in clicks. Right. And if you read the Afghan-Nazan papers, like, none of what's happening is shocking, right? Like, one of the big things that comes out of it is the weakness of the Afghan government, which is really a Potomkin government. Like, it's like a bunch of guys with phony bologna jobs and offices and big sacks of money that the CIA is giving. It's a great job if I could get it.

Like, I could also protect the Afghani government. And it would make sense. If you don't have a real government, you can't have a real army, right? Right, exactly. Like all the kind of the American troops itself, the whole corruption extended to the American military in terms of human rights abuses, and really a shocking disregard for Afghani life.

So, again, like zero attention, right? And we're suddenly now, you know, as the United States leaves and as it could be predicted based on the Afghanistan papers, that the government would there would collapse quickly, Jeremy would collapse quickly. That all happened. But suddenly everybody is like, oh, you know, like Biden is at fault. It's stunning. And that why we should pay attention to the Afghanis and it's like their human rights.

Like from people who had been very carefully ignoring all the warning signs and all the real news for 20 years. It's just amazing. Yeah, I have to say I was really impressed. there was a piece about, there were been numerous pieces, but conservative reporters and opinion columnists writing about why won't we help Afghani women and girls? Like, you have to be fucking kidding me, right? Yeah, I mean, the whole thing is like, it's kind of mind-boggling. I mean, going back, like, just historically, the real lost opportunity that was very early on with Rumsheld and Bush and Cheney.

They didn't do the right thing. I'm shocked. Shocked, I tell you. Well, one big thing was that they actually, they didn't want to invade Afghanistan. They wanted to really go to Iraq, Iraq, where, you know, like, you have oil. Yeah.

Right, exactly. There's nothing. So their whole idea was, well, but, you know, for optics, we'll do a kind of light footprint, invasion, pay off people. And, but I mean, that basically the way they handled the early invasion was designed to minimize American casualties to show that it could be a quick, easy war,

basically set the conditions whereby the Taliban could quickly retreat and quickly regroup. And so there was never really a basis for, you know, I mean, I don't think it would have worked in any case. But the other big thing is that at that early stage, the Taliban was willing to negotiate. And, you know, like, how sincere they were, we don't know. But Bush and Cheney certainly didn't take them up on it. I mean, it's offered to, like, you know, have bin Laden. given to us and tried in an international court, for whatever reason, they didn't go along with that. And so, so the whole thing was mismanaged from the start. Yeah, it's just very sad. I mean,

like, I know a lot of, you know, American military, a lot of aid workers, you know, military from all over, for many other countries, NATO countries, you know, did do heroic work in trying to, you know, rebuild. And it's very sad. I mean, it's just like a lot, this was all, like, really wasted. And so, so, I just think the fact that everything collapsed so quickly to me vindicates Biden's decision. No, clearly. I mean, and that's what I've read a lot of opinion pieces that have come out after the initial, like how dare Biden leave Afghanistan, which everyone wanted. Like, right?

The polling was like 900% get us out of Afghanistan. Half these people don't even know why we're there. Like, come on. And we had Jason Kander on the podcast last week, and he worked in this. He called it the thug. department. Right. He worked on, you know, internal affairs in the Afghani government. He said it was a fucking disaster and there was no way you were going to ever be able to do anything. I mean, the thing that I'm struck by is like, it seems like 20 years ago when I was five, just kidding. The American

sentiment was like, we are freedom bringers and we will go to Afghanistan, which is a country that none of us have ever heard of and bring freedom. And now we are 20 years later and, and no one in this fucking country has even, like, you know, has even remembers this at all. And it's like, we are not nation builders. We have no, we should have no part in any of this. Like, get us out of all these countries. Why are we in Germany? Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, one way to look at it is, you know, America needs a lot of internal domestic reform. It needs, you know, like a lot of internal investment. And there are a lot of these military things that are holdovers from earlier era that no longer make any sense if they

ever did. I mean, the people in the United States were working with in Afghanistan were either, you know, crooks and, as you guys said, thugs, I'd sound like really bad people. I mean, like, you know, they were, you know, like child rapists, you know, who are like American allies there, like just really, it's just such a corrupting enterprise. And in some ways, it continues so long for a very bad reason, which is that most ordinary people are insulated, right? Like the only people, you know, like the army is a small part of the country. It's a volunteer army.

Bush didn't even like raise taxes to pay for the war. There's a lot of costs, but it's all kind of hidden and indirect. And it's a huge amount of indifference, which can be seen by just, you know, like, I can assure you that like, you know, over the last 10 years, like, you know, if you wanted to make sure that your article did not get read, that if you're like, you know, the lowest person in the newspaper, just write about Afghanistan, right? It's just like it's a repellent. You know, you want insect repellent?

This is like reader repellent. Right. I mean, I think there are legitimate questions about how well the evacuation went, whether, and especially about like refugees. I mean, like, I think, you know, there should be a lot of pressure on Biden to give visas. There's, you know, a lot of people, yeah, good people who allied themselves with the United States and are now at real risk. That's it.

Like, otherwise, there's really no logic to this. And I want to just quote, I mean, I've been reading a lot of these, like, articles. from the national security establishment that are criticizing Biden. Biden got them really mad with something that they knew was coming and that had been set up by Trump. Yeah, yeah.

Well, Trump said, you know, like, let's end this. And also, like, was there any Democrat who was running who's in 2020 for the primaries who said, I'm going to stay in Afghanistan? No, nobody. It was like we're getting out of Afghanistan and also nobody cares

and why were we even there? That's right. That's right. The new line is that America could have stayed in there, just as it stayed in, like, West Germany and in South Korea. Like, as if, like, Germany and South Korea have, like, ongoing insurgency with, like, thousands of dead. That's right. That Angela Merkel is constantly trying to blow up. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It just did it. There were a few days from Merkel going off in a helicopter full of, like, cash. Cash. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So this guy, Ryan Crocker, who was ambassador. Afghanistan under Barack Obama. I don't know what his politics are. He's worked for both Republican Democratic administration. He's really one of these figures I called the national security blob.

These people that are always there, always at think tanks. And anyways, he wrote this thing with New York Times. And he said, I saw it yesterday. Yeah. Mr. Biden's decision to withdraw all U.S. forces destroyed an affordable status quo that could have lasted indefinitely at a minimum cost in blood and treasure. Now, one thing is, okay, it's true that American casualties have been down over the last year, but that's only the true because of the treaty signed. The deal with the Taliban. Yeah. So if you're willing to have a lot more break that deal and have like a lot more American soldiers died and nearly 2,500 have died and many, many more have been injured and traumatized, like tens of thousands, right? It's something like 60,000 Afghans died in the war. I mean, they're killing

the soldiers like you can't fucking believe. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's what he's ignoring. He's saying like, it's very affordable for us. But it's affordable for like the Afghan people. I mean, 60,000 is very, I mean, we don't know because it's so hard to get numbers. But I mean, there are credible estimates going much higher like, you know, 200, 250,000. But more than the point, the number of civilian casualties has been going up, like, you know, has been very high and has been going up. And that's from both sides from both the Taliban and the Afghani forces. And so at some point, like if you say it's affordable status quo with minimum cost and blood and treasures, you can only say that if you say

Afghani lives don't matter, that we can have a continuous war, 10 to 20,000 dying every year forever, right? That's what they're going on. But also the other thing is like, you know, we are not in the business of going into countries and telling them the government they want. As America, we have tried this again and again and again. Like, look at South America. Like, does not work, right? There's no, like, fabulous Brazilian government that we put in there. No, no, no, right?

Like, there is no, this is a losing game for America. And I think the reason why the American sentiment switched so radically was that America's a mess now. So we're like, we barely keep it together. Like, there's no, we're not selling anything overseas because we don't have anything. How can you expect democracy if democracy is a threat at home? I mean, like, what is the thinking there? Right. And just I mean like, yeah, just at least 600,000 Americans, possibly quite a bit more, have done because of COVID over the last like, you know, 18 months.

Yeah. And many more to have like long-term COVID things. It's just a lot of things. So over the weekend, of course, our favorite former president did a rally in Alabama. The only place he's popular. It's like, let's find the reddest. He's somewhat endorsed getting the vaccine while doing his usual thing of, but you have your freedoms.

And now it seems, so obviously the FDA approved the Pfizer vaccine today, but it seems to pivot now as the culture war is going to go to that it's apartheid to require people to have vaccines. And Trump came out with a shirt today that said that freedom is better than vaccine passports. What do you guys think of all this? America has a pretty high rate of vaccine hesitancy. There's a bunch of different factors at work. Part of it is that it became polarized on cultural lines

and that there are these Republicans. And then you see what Trump. I mean, the thing is he always tries to play both sides of the fence. So he knows there's some of people, Republicans, who are vaccinated like himself. And they can't quite come out totally against vaccine. But he knows a lot of his followers are anti-vax. So he tried to say, well, you know, please get a vax.

but I understand we also have to keep our freedom. I mean, to focus on vaccine passports seems to a way to straddle that thing. The thing with the vaccination issue, I mean, I hate to reduce it to a partisan thing because it's so much larger, but... No, it's totally a partisan thing. They made it a partisan.

Yeah. It's something that unites Democrats mainly, and it divides Republicans. Like, 90% of Democrats are on board. With Republicans, it's 50-50, and that means that it's really tricky for Republican politicians, and they often try to,

to, you know, walk both sides of the fence. Oh, well, fuck them. I mean, this is the thing. You're killing your people and you think this is going to help you with re-election. I mean, I'm sorry, but, like, this is so preposterous. Yeah, no, it is very bad. With the vaccine passports, the thing is, we already have them. Like, I send my kids to school.

I have that vaccine records. Like, this level of where COVID ever existed, right? You know, you travel to many countries in the world to get visas. you have to get sure that you got the proper vaccines. Extending it, like, through civil society, I mean, it is a big kind of shift. But it might be, I mean, it might be the only way to go. Unfortunately, like, I think unless they're real cost applied to vaccine hesitancy, I think at some level, there should be a carrot and stick.

Like, I mean, I was all in favor of, like, you know, just giving people money to be vaccinated, right? Like, but then at some point, you also have to have, like, some stick of, like, there's actually punishment. And I think there's a fair number of people that are. there's a hardcore that's like ideological, but we shouldn't over and think that that's like the main thing. There's a lot of people that are just like genuinely hesitant. Like they're straddling the fence. So you kind of just have to get the proper thing. And we see with kids, I mean, like as I said, you know, like measles shots and things like that.

If you make that a requirement, you know, like people will get vaccinated. That's just the way it is. So if airlines require passengers to be vaccinated before they could fly, 41% of people who are vaccine hesitant will give it. Okay, if you're going to get in a metal bird, right? Like, you have to work, you know, like science, technology, this is what it is, right? Yeah, yeah. Airplanes are made possible by technology.

So are vaccines, you know. On a more fundamental level, like, people say, well, you know, they're trying to appropriate the language of like a choice and reproductive freedom. My body, my choice is a personal decision. But actually, I'm sorry, but a communicable disease is not a personal decision. Like, since time immemorial, including during the American Revolution, if you have people that, like, have a disease that they can spread to other people, they get quarantined. There's a limit to personal freedom when you can actually, like, your body can kill other people by its proximity. Honestly, like, the passports are one of the much less intensive ways that this can be done.

I mean, it's sad. I actually think it's like, you know, you have, the vaccines are a miracle and they're being given away free. And you would think that like in an ideal world, as many people would get vaccinated as possible. And I think we're seeing some of that in some other countries. I want to bring up this other factor, which is also political, but in a more complex way, which is that uninsured people are much less likely to get vaccinated than people who have health insurance. And I mean, to me, this is a really, this is one reason why Canada and Israel have been doing, well, is that you get a population that is used to having health insurance, used to going to the

doctor, and then, you know, trust the medical system. In America, you know, like, this is one of the cost of not having universal health care, that you have a large chunk of the population that's shut out of the medical system and doesn't trust it, quite rightly, because they think, like, if they go to the hospital, they're going to be charged out of the wazoo. Like, they're going to be ripped off. They're going to have to, like, pay to take an ambulance. Like, so there's a lot of people who aren't like the hardcore Republicans, but who just don't trust the system for good reason, because it's a crazy system. And then the system that's designed to screw them in many ways.

And so when they get free, there's offer free vaccination, they don't believe that, which is one reason why I think, like, you know, money for vaccination would have also made sense. Like, people saw, like, they could actually come out of this, like, with $100 in the pocket. Like, that would have made a difference. Yeah. I mean, that is the thing that I'm so struck by is that you, do see, Americans don't trust. I mean, like, there's a whole thing going on here now. I know you live in Canada, so you may not know the nuances of just how stupid we are as a country,

but, like, people here want to take this thing called iVectin, which is a anti-worming, a horse anti-worming medicine, which actually, and Dr. Peter Hottes, who's a frequent flyer on this podcast, and who I adore, said, you know, there are actually some real uses for human uses for ivectin, but none of them are for COVID. And so you have a lot of people in the Gulf States who are, especially in Florida and Texas. And I mean, I just want to like, as we talk about COVID, I think it's important to mention, like, you know, Governor Abbott of Texas had three vaccines. He got COVID. He got monoclomal antibodies, even though his reporting said he was, I think his office said he was asymptomatic. So again, in the real world, you can't get monoclomal

if you're asymptomatic, even if you're fancy and rich, right? Like, this is a, you know, this is a full on, like, I'm, you know, you know, gubernorial privilege. He got this and now he's recovered. Meanwhile, his is catastrophically over, you know, people are dying, waiting in the waiting rooms, right? Like, they can't see. It's just a complete catastrophe.

Yeah, I know. Yeah, it's really bad. And I just, I think there's going to be repercussions from this, you know, for years and decades to come with just like, like it's a real strain on the medical system. And, you know, you see a lot of doctors are becoming understandably frustrated that, like, you know, that their hospitals are being overrun when it's totally unnecessary when people would just get vaccination. The trauma that this is, I mean, leaving, you know, aside the people sick and dying, and it's a

very bad thing. But the thing that I'm struck by is we see that there is a false media equivalency between Republicans willfully misleading their supporters to be, you know, to cause questions about vaccines, like, who, you know, is it safe? Who's to say, right? You have these Republicans sort of just asking questions a la Tucker Carlson. And then you have a sort of false equivalency with Biden's, you know, pull out of Afghanistan and which one will be the one that will rule, you know, rule 22. Meanwhile, you know, we are months and months away, like probably the problems we're going to be dealing with in 2022 we haven't even seen yet. You know, I mean, I just think the horse race journalism.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's what horse race. I don't think people are going to, you know, like, you know, barring anything really catastrophic, I don't actually think like people are going to be thinking about Afghanistan at all. I mean, COVID, I think is hurting Biden a little bit now just because he was elected to. to deal with it. And the fact that like, you know, the Delta virus and these stragglers,

I think that's like, you know, made some people dissatisfied. I mean, there's ways in which, you know, like if there's a stronger push on vaccine passports, and that could actually help him. Like, I think, I think people who support Biden want him to see him. They voted for him on this issue.

I think that was a big reason why you want. So I really hope, you know, the White House finds creative ways to really get over this hurdle. But I think that it's like these hard. Yeah, of like just trust and, you know, like a certain percentage of the population just being victims of propaganda or like just not having the critical skill sets to analyze, to know that, you know, like, if you have a vaccine that's designed for this virus as against like a deworming medicine for horses, which are you going to have. But I mean, that's a really profound educational problem. And it's

even beyond that, like a kind of problem of like social trust. And in some way, Republicans have benefited from the fact that they're willing to destroy the system. They're willing to sow seeds of distrust and spread these insane conspiracy theories and get people to, you know, rile up people against doctors and scientists. And we saw that with like, you know, climate change and we see this with the vaccine. And this like leaves me frustrated because I don't know how you deal with a problem of that scale. Yeah. I mean, I don't either. And I think like, you know, this comes back. It's funny. Because it's like, when you think of Afghanistan, right, like, people are mad at Biden, right?

But like, Ronald Reagan had the Mujah Hadim in his office. Okay. So, like, we're going to get mad. Let's get real mad here. And I think when we talk about this idea of Republicans destroying the system, like, nude fucking Gingrich. Like, you want to put a finger on where this started. Like, nude fucking Gingrich is like, okay, we don't have to, we don't have to tell the truth anymore. We can just do whatever the fuck we want.

Let's go. Part of the problem was also, unfortunately, I think, some of the Democrats aren't willing to stand up and defend Biden on the Afghanistan stuff. I would say even like I'm going to go a step further than that. Some of the Democrats aren't willing to fucking focus on messaging. So you have these senators who are like, well, we do good stuff. And so people will know. And I'm like, you guys lost to a reality television host who paints himself orange.

Like, so obviously people don't know, right? I mean, so yes, continue. Sorry. I mean, I think the Democrats in Congress are divided on this. And there's some people that were too quickly, got slugly. scared by the things they were seeing on TV and didn't realize that the point to do is to, like, discredit this narrative and it shows why it's wrong. And they've been, the crazy thing is the Democrats might do Benghazi on themselves. Right. And it's just because, like, they take

the media too seriously. Like, they really, you know, buy into CNN and the New York Times and aren't willing to, like, you know, like question them on these areas where, like, you know, coverage of foreign policy, like the reporters that are covering them are kind of, it's a beat. And they're really tied to the Pentagon. They're tied to the national security establishment. And there's this kind of very insular world. And they have their reality. But I don't think it's a reality that most Americans share. It's based on a bunch of different premises that can be questioned. And I really think that the smarter move would have been to challenge, you know, the reporting and the premises, rather than like buying to them and say, well, we have to investigate what Biden is doing.

Yeah, no, it's crazy. Thank you so much, Diet here. Please come back again and again and again. We adore you. Okay. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. 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 comedian. and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner, and sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's happening in the news.

You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast inside member where you'll support the Beast fearless journalism, as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member, head to New Abnormal. Dot the Daily Beast.com. That's New Abnormal.com. Carrie Otis is an actress and model.

Welcome to New Abnormal, Carrie. Thank you so much for having. me. You have an incredible story. You decided to come forward after the Cosby verdict, where Cosby was freed. It wasn't particularly enraging moment for me. And I think for a lot of women, I would love you to talk about it. Yeah. So I've been with a group of survivors for about a year. We've worked together. We've worked carefully and clearly were all time barred because of statute of limitations. There was a defining moment for me when I heard that Cosby was going to walk that was so crushing and so just devastating. And it was devastating. I'm friends with several of Cosby survivors.

I've followed that closely. And it just, it blew me away. And for me and looking at other survivors, is it felt like my absolute duty to do all that I can and all that I can and will to be able to fight for change and for justice, not just for myself, but on behalf of all the survivors that don't have the opportunity to file into this system. So it was upon hearing that Bill Cosby walked that I was very motivated to actually, you know, separate from this group of survivors and go out on my own because I was the only one that happened to be in the sadly right place, right time, right year, right age to be able to file under the Child Victim Act. I've read your story. I've read interviews. I've read the stuff you put out yourself.

Talk to me about what your story is. Yeah. I was a runaway teen. I was, you know, 16 when I left, really left home and left school, dropped out. And really, really left home and left school, dropped out. and was pretty much a vagabond on on the streets and living couch to couch. And for me, I thought that modeling would be the one possible way that I could sort of make a life for myself. And I was rather desperate. Looking back, I could see how that, you know, really affected what happened to me. And then I was really sort of the perfect target for trafficking, which is what this is and which is what, you know, I feel like I have to be a voice in the industry. at this point to point out that the industry does traffic children and women and men. Absolutely. So essentially, I found an agent in San Francisco and he had connections to Elite New York.

And I was immediately trafficked to Elite New York. And I stayed at Elite New York for probably a little over a month going through what now I see in retrospect. as being really a period of sort of grooming and priming through endless rejection and objectification, and then was sent to a known predator and a known child molester, basically. You know, I was sent and put into a position. I had no idea what I was walking into. It was, I was in so over my head. And being a kid, a child at that time, you know, I had no idea how to navigate what it was that was in front of me. Yeah, I mean, I can't even imagine. And what I think is the most important about this story is that this didn't just happen to you. No, and, you know, sexual violence on the job isn't about any singular industry. I mean, sports, acting, modeling are all industries that profit off the bodies of young women and are especially prone to sexual exploitation. I mean, but of course, modeling in particular isn't an industry that is prone to trafficking. Yeah.

It's just, it's so unbelievable to me. And, you know, I just, over the course of the past couple days, there are so many people within my industry that are coming forward and finally able to speak out, you know, about how many people this happened to in varying degrees and not always as blatant as what it was for me, but some form and level of abuse, degradation, humiliation, harassment. And, you know, it was all in there in different levels, and it was so normalized. I wasn't the only one, obviously, with this story, but all of us were groomed, including bookers and agents and other people within the industry to just look the other way. And that's really, for the most part, what did take place. So now, the person you're suing, the man who raped you, is a man called Girard Marie. And there are numerous victims. There are numerous victims from this particular perpetrator that is my perpetrator.

There are, I believe, 24 women that have come forward to the authorities in France. And I think there are 14 that we're willing to go on the record. So, and I believe, as we know, there are so much crimes within trafficking and sexual abuse that are unreported. And one of the pieces that we're really looking at here is sort of the culture in Europe and certainly the culture in France. If you've read Vanessa Springer's book, Consent, we really see how, you know, there has been sort of energetic within France that has really normalized pedophilia and this kind of behavior. I don't know what the statistics are, but I get the sense that if you have 14 people coming forward willing to be on the record, then you probably have. numerous others who have also, I mean, right? The hard thing here in France is that we're time barred. None of us, and this is why the

Adult Survivor Act is so important, even in the state of New York, but to address SOL statute of limitations, state by state, and within different countries. We are all time barred. We are outside of the statute of limitations. So really, we are testifying to keep a criminal investigation open until we find someone who is within the statute of limitations. to come forward and be able to give their testimony and then we can open a case. So it's a very different sort of archaic situation in France. It's incredibly frustrating, but, you know, that's that's the situation there. Can you talk about this new law which made it so that you guys could come forward?

Yeah, so the new law, well, there was a law voted in called the Child Victim Act in the state of York alone. It's window closed last Friday. Because of what happened with Bill Cosby, I really had to give it some strong consideration whether I was willing to move forward alone without the sort of protection of I'm with other survivors because I was the only one that fell into the statute because I was a minor when I was trafficked through the state of New York. So I was able to file that lawsuit. However, what it does speak to is to the need for other, you know, laws that actually address the statute of limitations. And there's one more that we're looking, and it's a bill called the Adult Survivor Act, and it would allow survivors one year to sue their abuser or the institution that covered up the

abuse in civil court no matter how long ago the abuse happened. It's, and so obviously that's modeled on the Child Victim Act, but it also applies to time barred survivors who were abused when they were 18 years or older. So, and adult survivors who were abused prior to 2019 only had a one to five year to file a civil lawsuit. So adult survivor provides a path to justice for survivors with expired claims. And let's face it, there are so many reasons why people don't report the abuse, you know, one for fear of retaliation, for fear of their lives, threats for fear of their livelihood, mental health, you know, shame, dissociation. depression, like all of it. And that oftentimes it does need time and definitely within this wave of women that are coming forward now. For me, over the past year, it's just been this like full on wake

up of just finally being able to stop normalizing, compartmentalizing, and name and say what it was that happened to me, what took place. And that all of us kids were forced to normalizing to normalize it. And let's face it, there was no one, you know, if it was our agents as the perpetrators, who are you going to call? You know, who are you going to go to? And we saw within, it was within the Weinstein and Amra Gutierrez, she did go to the New York police and did everything right to report. And the New York police buried the wiretapping. So there's, there's so many reasons why it's very challenging. And it takes sometimes decades to report what happened. Yeah. Do you, you think that elite is doing the right thing by you?

Let's lay it out. No predator acts alone from Arkellie to Governor Cuomo and Harvey Weinstein, right? They're enablers and there's institutions created to insulate abusers from consequences of their actions, period. You know, my abuser's behavior was well known throughout elite when I was sent to live with him. And, you know, while corporate structures might have changed, I have. I have to say, Elite and Julia Hart are now directly profiting from the branding and prestige associated with that era, especially with this new clothing line, E-1972, which was the year John opened up Elite and without grappling with real abuses that are still endemic to the industry. John Casta Blancas, he was the famous founder of Elite, and he was a known sex offender. and he competed with my abuser for how many children they could sexually abuse.

That's just a fact. That's public. That's out there. And she's creating a luxury clothing line in homage to that time. And leadership is to a certain extent glamorizing the abuse we endured. You know, I mean, the fact is leadership means taking responsibility. I mean, Julia had met, I think, with the model lines in 2019 to discuss joining the respect program, which actually would create enforceable measures to ensure accountability

and to ensure that workers are protected and she didn't sign on. I just have to just say it. Instead, she's used her Netflix show to create this image of herself as someone who empowers women and stands up to abusers. I haven't heard from her. You know, Julia, she can, I mean, truly, like, we all have the potential to be, you know, agents of change. and she can really meet this moment with courage by taking like concrete legally binding steps now,

really to do better by this generation of models. I mean, that's just where we're at. And I think we just need to call it what it is. And for anybody to be capitalizing, profiting off of such a dark history without addressing it, I think it's just a very, very poor taste. Yeah, I'm sort of shocked. Me too. Totally.

Do you think that there's a way that some of these modeling companies could make reparations? Because, I mean, they made money on your sexual assault. Yeah. I mean, first, the justice for me in this isn't putting away my abuser. The justice for me in this is seeing change in an industry that continues to be totally unregulated. You know, and working with our most vulnerable workforce, which is like minors and young adults, come on. I mean, it's just, it's outrageous that we're in the situation. So, yeah, the justice that I see is if in my lifetime I can impact, you know, and influence some kind of real and lasting change.

And, you know, the respect program is the only thing that I see is the path forward. I've worked with the Bond Alliance for over a decade now. And they've been such a support. So I've been working with Sarah as if at Model Alliance for over a decade. but they really have been the support and organizing muscle of my particular group of survivors. So I feel like the respect program is the only thing, only piece of accountability that we can look towards moving forward for real and lasting change. So yeah, that's what industry can do at this point is sign on to that. Does the fact that he lives in Ibiza, does that make it harder to get him?

Yeah. I mean, it's a long shot. you know, it's a long shot. The importance here is like, we're looking at a larger global, like systemic problem that needs to be addressed. And it is not just within one industry. And, you know, whether or not he goes down or it's about a bigger problem. And you saw when you saw Cosby walk, like, wait, what? On a technicality, how could that happen when you have 60, 70 women who've been drugged and raped across state lines, like our system is broken. So how do we move forward?

Well, first of all, to have a conversation and stop normalizing what it is we need to be naming. And then it's really how people show up and actually, you know, instead of saying, right, that they're making changes within an industry, show us, show us what we're going to do now. Carrie, this was so great. Thank you so much for talking to us. This is really great. Absolutely, absolutely. Greg Sargent is a columnist at the Washington Post where he writes the plum line.

Welcome to the new abnormal Greg Sargent. Thank you. So I'm a big fan of yours for any number of reasons, but one of the things that you do, besides the fact that you write incredibly fast and make me look so lazy. Like, how many pieces do you write a day? Usually around two, and then I do some editing too. But the second one tends to be a little less long. Like, I write like three pieces a week, so I feel pretty, pretty lazy. But what I wanted to ask you about was the first thing I want to talk to you about was there was a narrative that came out on Afghanistan and you were able to sort of explain what happened there.

Can you explain that to us? I guess my feeling about this is that Democrats are kind of making not a political error, but a major substantive. error in their treatment of what happened in Afghanistan. A lot of what they're talking about tends to be sort of very narrowly focused on very recent events, including procedural and other failures leading up to what we saw at the airport and the stranding of thousands of refugees and heartbreaking and terrible scenes and so forth. And by all means, all of that stuff absolutely should be looked at. But the idea that we would only look at, but the idea that we would only look at those things just strikes me as crazy. I mean, the degree to which what we saw reflects,

or is the outgrowth of 20 years of policy failure seems to me to be a very critical aspect of what happened. And I don't understand why Democrats wouldn't want to look at that stuff. Again, it's Ronald Reagan meeting with Mujah Hadim, right? It's like, the thing I'm struck by is that it feels like Democrats are constantly running cleanup for Republicans. and then getting blamed when things go wrong. Yes, I think that's a major part of what we're seeing right now. In this particular case, it's really quite explicit. The war started under a Republican president.

And, you know, in fairness, the folly here is really extensively bipartisan. I don't think we can deny that. Right. Obama kept it going. Obama kept it going. Many Democrats in Congress supported it all throughout. Almost all of them, right? But that second vote, it was like if you didn't support it,

you were, it was Barbara Lee. Right. And, you know, a cynic could say one of the reasons they don't want a broader accounting is because it would implicate them, meaning Democrats. Do you think that's true? Well, I don't really know. I think they're just sort of not really reacting well to what's happening. I think there's a lot of political skittishness to it. I probably don't think that there's a consciously motivated desire to avoid accountability on their own part. It seems to me it's more sort of a capitulation to an ongoing Republican and unfortunately media framing of what's happening. Right. And by the way, I should add that there's no sense in which the media coverage of this stuff

has been neutral or objective. Yeah, you know, that was something I wanted to talk to you about because we, for so long in this, in the last five years of Trumpism, we have been subjected to this idea that it's the liberal media. And it's so clear to me, certainly, especially when it comes to war, that the media is actually really conservative. Yeah, I mean, it really seems to me to be putting a thumb on the scales for a set of assumptions that are highly dubious. One is the idea that, and then they don't say this kind of directly, it's implicit in their framing, right? When they talk about a horribly botched

execution, I think that's, there's some legitimacy to, to calling out the execution, no question. Like I say, we need accountability. We need a full picture of what actually happened. I think there probably were failures on the administration's part. But implicit in what the media coverage has tended to do is the idea that there was an alternate, kind of immaculate, if you will, withdrawal as a possibility. And I think the media coverage also tends to kind of downgrade the idea that what we're seeing now might have been the inevitable result of 20 years of policy failure. Right. It seems to the press is actually taking an active position on that. Yeah. No, it strikes me. I mean, the thing I'm struck by is there,

it seems like there's a certain hawkishness that feels innate to a lot of these journalists. Like, if we can just get in there, we can fix stuff. Right. I think I would, my, this is really a generalization. So, you know, take it in that spirit, if you would. But it seems to me that for a lot of these journalists, the idea that they could be labeled anti-war in some sense might be deadly. Yeah. And it's interesting because it's funny. I mean, not to like draw back into the past here, but, you know, my grandfather was this communist who ran against all the war. You know, he was against war before it was chic. So the idea of like being against war, it strikes me as, it strikes me as interesting that the general sentiment in America now is against nation building and against intervention and against endless war, even on the Republicans. which is something I never thought we'd say. Yeah, I mean, I think that's true.

I really do think that the dip in Biden's approval is probably a real thing. Right. It sort of seems like it was inevitable, right? I mean, you know, if you accept the premise that this thing was going to be really messy no matter what and tragic, which I think it almost certainly was, the president is just going to lose, you know, some standing over that. And that's just a, it's just an inevitability. That said, I think there's probably on the part of the public generally a nuanced view of what's happening. And I know we're not allowed to say the public has nuanced views.

But I think in this case, it probably does, although I'd like to see more data. My guess would be that they say that a very large, you know, chunk of Americans say to themselves, look, Biden maybe could have managed this better. This is kind of a real disastrous mess. I think it probably was inevitable, given all the failures that have led up to this point, and there's probably no neat and tidy way to do this. And in the end, you know, it had to be done. That would be, I think, where a good chunk of mainstream Americans ends up landing.

I don't know what that exactly means for Biden's approval rating or what. But that, I think, kind of comports with what you're talking about, which is that the public really is, in some sense, war-weary, although that phrase is. You wrote about can Democrats turn Trump's insurrection into a voting issue. This seems like a no-brainer, but can we do it? I feel like we can't. You know, it's really tough to tell what's going on with some of these Democrats. There seems to me to be a broader reluctance to really prosecute the case against the radicalization of the Republican Party.

Why? I don't know. And I think maybe the answer is that sort of in the makeup of some of these very tough house districts. So you're dealing with places that are maybe plus three, plus four, plus five Republican, right? That means there are a lot of Republicans in these districts, right? And so I think the big question here is, is there a way to prosecute the case against Republican radicalization in the minds of the center of the electorate without alienating Republican voters? Or at least, least without alienating Republicans who might be persuadable or might be potentially alienated by the craziness of the Republican Party right now. Right. I think they, my guess is that Democrats in these very tough districts just in some sense don't think that that's really doable. Right.

But you know what's interesting, if I could just add? No, please. So it seems to me, just based on the admittedly limited amount of reporting I've done on this front, It seems to be that there are some Democrats who really are trying to edge in the right direction here. For instance, the D-Truple-C did some polling on Republican anti-vaccine derangement and Republican lying about the insurrection and so forth and found that majorities of swing district voters really were put off by this stuff. Now, I don't know what that translates into in electoral terms, but the mere fact that that they're looking at that sort of stuff, signals that they're trying to figure out how to make this case.

And my sense is the chair of the D-Triple-C, Sean Patrick Maloney, seems to think this should be done. Right. It strikes me as, you know, there are new people now in the D-Triple-C. Oh, yeah. You know, so it does strike me that maybe they are more focused on messaging, but you do see Republicans are so good at messaging. They really are good. They really know how to dumb things down for the brainstone. I think we have our title for tomorrow's episode. Yeah, it's frustrating. And I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that liberals are not comfortable with that type of politics. But the thing is, again, I feel like if you can't message that Donald Trump killed your grandma, I mean, because he did.

Well, it's endlessly frustrating. I mean, looking at what's happening in Florida, I think somebody tweeted this. I don't remember who, but someone pointed out that these, well, I've written a number of times and so of others that these communities in Florida that are trying to pass mask mandates in their schools are really under assault from these Republican governors in Florida and Texas, I should say, who are trying to block their ability to protect their own students from production. and I don't really get why more Democrats aren't out there forcefully beating up on these Republican governors and linking them to the party's broader anti-mask and anti-vaccine lunacy. I think they should be making this point really strongly. They should be painting the Republican Party as a profound danger to the country on all these fronts. Yeah, why aren't they doing that? I don't know. It goes back to some of the stuff.

You know, we talked about earlier, right? They don't think there's a way to, maybe I think some of these Democrats in tough house districts just don't think there's a way to make this case in a way that doesn't alienate Republicans in the middle. And, you know, these are very hard districts. I mean, it's a whole lot easier to do it to do this sort of stuff in one of the squads districts than it is, you know, spam burgers or any number of these frontline districts. One of the things that these anti-Trump Republicans love to say, and you know, we've gotten in bed with them, and so now we have to pretend to be married to them, is that the squad and, you know, people like Yohan Omar hurt the Democratic Party. Do you think that's true? I'm kind of mixed on this point. When some of these swing district Democrats after the 2020 elections said some of the defund the police and some of the squad stuff had hurt in some of these places, I think it'd be maybe a mistake. stake to discount that. Right. Because I don't really see a reason for them to be making that up. And we got to remember that we exist in our own bubble here, right, on Twitter. And these swing districts are a different

world entirely. Right. Different political world. And so, you know, I think we should take seriously what the people who run in those districts have to say about. Right. I mean, they're out there talking to voters. They know what voters are getting pissed off about. And so forth. And so forth. so on. On the other hand, I think it's been kind of persuasively argued by some Democrats that the real problem wasn't the existence of arguments from the squad or defund the police or anything like that, but rather the failure of these swing district Democrats to aggressively rebut those arguments. So if that's sort of the take, then I think the squad and so forth become not culpable. Those are some form of attacks on Democrats.

as radical socialists who are burning down our cities and so forth is going to happen no matter what. And I don't think we want to be policing the left flank aggressively either. I think that that has potential downsides. By the way, I will make one point about this if I could. People still don't really appreciate exactly how Biden threaded this needle in 2020. He didn't go out there in the sister soldier the left. He didn't aggressively call them out and do some big performance of stunt where he said, you guys are extreme, I'm on the side of the white middle class. He actually, what he did is he politely disagreed with defund, but stood by the protests and their underlying goals. I think he even went on some fairly left channels, if I remember,

right, and had good faith debates with people over defunding the police. I think, I think he did that. And that's not what, you know, we hear from the so-called popularists, right? They continue to say we need an aggressive stance against the left. And I don't think that that we need that. Yeah, you know, what I'm struck by, what I'm really struck by is that Biden has been very open to the left, but also and way more open to the left than, say, Bill Clinton, and hasn't been the same, you know, and Clinton was very far right in a certain way. I mean, I would just say the difference is that Clinton was very charismatic. And ultimately, with all of these calculuses, it comes down to how charismatic you are and how you can message to your people. And I think

Democrats just don't spend enough time thinking about that. Yeah, I think that's true. I think the Biden people would actually say, you know, the defund stuff actually did hurt us, right? They said that to me. They said we did lose some swing voters over this. It's a fact, right? Yeah. But Biden still managed to thread the needle in the right way because he still did well enough among moderate white. to win. Yeah. This was so good, Greg. Can you please come back again soon?

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, new podcasts from the Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin's Swin's. Subbasang 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. Jesse Cannon. Molly Jong Fast. What's going down? Here we are. Another week of fuckery. But we are free of one of the worst forces that's been in our lives for, was 12 years?

You hate Cuomo. Who would have thunk I hate Governor Cuomo and voted against him every time he ran while still not voting for a Republican any of those times? The Republican Party, the only thing worse than New York State Democratic Party. Yes. Yes. So there's a man called Governor Cuomo. I don't know if you've heard of him. He has resigned, which was a really fucking good move because he has numerous sexual.

harassment victims, but he also has this nursing home scandal, and he also has, you dig a little bit, and there's just a shitload. And it's a blue state, which could be represented by any number of people. It's not like he's, uh, only I alone can fix it. Right. Only I alone can win this blue plus 20 state. Yeah. And so for that, we say goodbye, but, alas, a pet has entered the picture. And you may have remembered that in 2018, Cuomo adopted this rescue dog, a very, very beautiful looking husky mix. Good looking dog. Yeah. Well, let me tell you, he left the fucking dog in the governor's mansion.

Now, there's been a lot of like Monday morning quarterbacking on this. Like maybe he didn't leave the dog. maybe the dog did not, you know, maybe the dog got confused, maybe, maybe, maybe the dog was a prop. Yeah, maybe the dog. It certainly sounds to me like you left that fucking dog and he's lying about it. I always think of that iconic picture of him walking the dog and yelling on the phone with somebody clearly clueless that the dog is needing him for something. Do you remember that one? Yes, I do.

Well, I think we got our answer. You just didn't look at that dog with the love that Elizabeth Warren gave big structural Bailey. That's right. Here's the thing. If you're going to be a politician and use your animals, okay. Like, we're allowed, you know, that's fine. You're allowed to do that. Elizabeth Warren did it well.

Good for her. We love Bailey. But you don't get to dump your animal when things don't go your way. And for that, we say, fuck you. So my fuck that guy is nine Democrats, which, man, I'm really sounding like a Republican state. Yeah, we're really, really not showing my actual true colors here today. But let me explain. There are nine Democrats who have major big pharma and energy donations who are holding up the Democrats budget bill,

which we really need to do because we need to show government works. Is this the problem solvers caucus? Who is the guy? Josh Gothheimer. Problem solvers. Oh, yeah. The problem solvers caucus continues to not solve problems. Yes.

So the point being, they're holding up this budget issue, budget because they want to get breaks in it that aren't as hard on the poor pharma companies and the poor energy companies who just may have to pay more taxes. So for this, I say, Josh Gotheimer, Carolyn Bordeaux, Ed Case, Jim Costa. You're going to name them all? Henry Kohler, Jared Golden, Vincenti Gonzalez, Kurtz. and fill him in villa, who I definitely best up this

pronunciation of their name. Fuck you. Get out of the way. Stop being corporate shells. It's time for these people to pay their taxes and pay for the infrastructure and budget we all need in this country.

Problem solvers. 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 will 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-studied The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider 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.