The Daily Beast Podcast - Josh Hawley, Could You Stop Your Whining for Five Seconds?

Episode Date: January 26, 2021

Authoritarians like Sen. Josh Hawley don’t have much to defend these days. Their little insurrection failed, their Dear Leader is gone, and his stewardship helped kill more Americans than World War II.  But they’ve still got the politics of aggrievement. Of victimhood. Of straight-up whining.  Take this past weekend, when Hawley mewled about being silenced—on the cover of a major national newspaper. “It was the absolute pinnacle of the very white, Downy white, snowy top of Mount Snowflake,” Rick Wilson laughs on the latest edition of The New Abnormal.   “Oh, I can't, I can't say a word—except on the Senate floor, where I was elected by the people of Missouri. I can't say a word—except on Fox, the largest cable network in the country. I can't say a word—except the New York post, which is millions of people every day. I can't say a word except on Facebook and Twitter and TikTok and every other platform in America,’” Rick adds, channeling Hawley. “But what you should be saying, Josh Hawley, you fucking snake is this: ‘I apologize to the family of officer Brian Sicnick for having incited the crowd which murdered him.' So Josh is not muzzled. He just lacks a moral compass to speak the truth about what he is,” Rick says. Speaking of the Senate, Adam Jentleson—author of Kill Switch: The Rise of the Modern Senate and the Crippling of American Democracy—joins the show to talk about how the Democrats can free themselves from Mitch McConnell’s grasp. And speaking of problems with the truth, a number of MAGA men could be in a world of trouble for airing a bunch of nonsensical conspiracy theories about Dominion, the election technology firm.  The company has sued a bunch of folks in greater Trumplandia for defamation. The latest: Rudy Giuliani, for a cool $1.3 billion.   “If you haven't read this filing, it is quite something,” says Molly Jong-Fast. “It includes such things as: ‘also during that defamatory podcast, Rudy claimed supplements would cure his viewers’ achy joints and muscles and implored them to stop wasting money and switch. He instructed them to use his name when ordering and said they could get a second bottle free if they ordered now.’” But what’s really “interesting about this lawsuit is that they use Tucker Carlson's statements that there's no there there to then attack Sean Hannity—and to ask why Fox news gave Giuliani a platform on Sean Hannity's show, even though Tucker Carlson had said it was a scam,” she adds.  Rudy and the rest are talking tough. But their lies—that Dominion “really is a Venezuelan company” (it’s Canadian) and helped steal the election (no)—are too big. They are going to have to back down, Rick predicts, or pay up. “The fact of the matter is, Molly, Dominion has them all by the balls.” 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 Rick & Molly 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 folks. This is Rick Wilson, and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly Jong-Fast, a left-wing pundit, and an editor at large at The Daily Beast. I'm also an editor at large at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, best-selling author, and full-time troublemaker. 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. We take the issues seriously. Ourselves, not so much. 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 get ourselves out of it. Rick Wilson. Molly John, fast. Did you know that impeachment is the zenith of cancel culture? That's what Matt Gates says. You'll remember Matt Gates. I don't think Matt Gates actually knows what the word zenith means,

but that's another story for the day because we have different public education. of the North Florida panhandle. I don't actually might have gone to private school. Matt Gates grew up in the Truman Show house. All right. So a lot of exciting stuff happened this weekend, the largest of which is that your old boss, shoe polish for hair dye.

Rudolph Wilhelm Giuliani. That's right. Is going to need to find $1.3 billion. I think Rudy will have no problem with that whatsoever because Donald Trump is notoriously prompt. and paying his lawyers. Yeah. He takes care.

Trump can lend it to him, right? Right, sure. I mean, he'll just, like, sign Rudy onto his debank credit line. That's what I was thinking. It should work it all out pretty quickly. If you haven't read this filing, it is quite something. Quite something. It's delicious.

It includes such things as also during that defamatory podcast, Rudy claimed supplements would cure his viewers achy joints and muscles and implored them to stop wasting money and switch. He instructed them to use his name when ordering and said they could get a second bottle free if they ordered now. Thank God for the lack of painful joints because when you're in the joint, the last thing you want is painful joints. I'm Rudy Giuliani, former celebrity mayor of New York, and now resident of Sing Sing. You think he'll go to jail or you think he'll just...

Nah, he's not going to go to jail. He's going to get dinged by these people. They're going to try to drag it out. Rudy's going to try to drag it out as long as possible. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what's going to happen is that at the end of the day, all of the bullshit from Rudy, all of the crazy things he said in court for Trump,

he's going to try to excuse it as I'm representing my client, therefore I'm not defaming anybody. I'm taking a stance for my client's interest, and he'll settle. He'll have to write some suck-up letter, and he'll have to post it online somewhere, and he'll put it in a medium post. I was wrong about Dominion, and I guess I'm not. You know, there are a lot of people in this lawsuit who seem like they're about to get sued. Yeah.

Lou Dobbs. Lou Dobbs. I mean, a lot of them already, like OANN and Newsmax, they've rolled. Right. But have they rolled enough? Right. They're doing with what I call the meeting the minimum standard. They're rolling and saying, well, we made a mistake and we regret the mistake. And we are so sorry if anybody was offended by our mistake, where we said that a legitimate American technology company was secretly being directed by the astral projection of zombie Hugo Chavez to steal the election from Donald. Trump. I mean, it really, though, just like when Alex Jones had to admit in the court filing

that his persona is bullshit, that it's an act, that it's fake, that it's all a big show, that's what's going to happen here. They're going to say, well, we were just faking it. It was all bullshit. You, everybody, everybody was, we were just having fun. We were just fucking around. And I have to say, I don't think that argument's going to work. I don't think it's going to work at all. You know what's interesting about this lawsuit is that Tucker across, They use Tucker Carlson statements that there's no there there to then attack Sean Hannity and to ask why Fox News gave Giuliani a platform on Sean Hannity's show, even though Tucker Carlson had said it was a scam. Well, Fox is a company equipped with wise and yet evil attorneys. They understand the jeopardy that this shit is, the shit now represents. I promise you at some point at two, 245 in the morning, they will have a tape from Lou Dobbs saying,

although this president was the greatest president of all time, of any time in any universe or any multiverse or any other conceivable configuration of realities, I was not fully accurate in my statement about Dominion, and I regret it. And that'll be it. That'll be it. It'll be like, you know, the most elliptical and obscured comment they can manage. And the fact of the matter is, Molly, Dominion has them all by the balls. Yeah, pretty great.

I really, really hope they take a lesson from Peter Thiel and Gawker, because this makes Peter Thiel and Gawker look like the most, I mean, really it was Hulk Hogan, but it was Peter Teal's sock puppeting the whole thing. Right. This makes the Gawker case look like a little white lie. They were running on their multivariate platforms on Fox story after story. It was stolen. It was rigged. It was hacked. It was stolen. It was rigged. It was hacked. And they knew it. They knew from the beginning it was bullshit. But, you know, we have now.

media culture on the right that I'm going to own the libs who fucking cares what I have to say. You know, the guys that write at Fox Digital were amplifying it and all these people were putting this out there and it was being shared all over Facebook and all these Trump people who, when they knew it was a fraud, was I think around November 4th, they knew this was a fraud. Can we talk for a second about Fox News? So Fox News has sort of seen its dip and seen that it's losing market share to OAN and to Newsmax. And so they've decided to fire everyone who did actual news. There was a piece in The Daily Beast on Friday about this. Yeah. Look, when you lose guys like Bill Sam and Chris Starwalt, those are news division guys. These are the guys who did the

decision desk, right? Right. They did the decision desk, which the decision that they called was correct. Yeah. And it was factual. And it was not premature. And it was not out of bounds. and it was not in any way some speculative walk that suddenly affected the rest of Donald Trump's political chances. It was done. Arizona was in the bag. It was in the sack. It was over.

No matter how much recounting they were going to do, it was just masturbation at that point for the Trump people. It was just spinning the wheels. So Fox is firing guys like that and keeping people who are, to put it in the mildest possible terms, bug fucking sane. I never heard that.

Yes, continue. In you. Crazier than a sprayed roach, as we say down south. Yes. But these people are, that they're keeping, are complete loon sauce. I mean, they're just nuts. And so, you know, they've decided to go all in, basically, on the Q&ON, Josh Hawley wing of the GOP, which comprises now essentially a slurry of conspiratorial hoo-ha. Right.

And, and Ted Cruz is in there, too, right? Of course. Lion Ted? Lion Ted. And I'm going to remind people of this until the sun cools. There are two types of people in the world. People who hate Ted Cruz and Ted Cruz. Well, I assume Heidi doesn't hate him, right?

I wouldn't make that assumption in the slightest. Is the Lincoln Project going to go after Lion Ted? Break some news here. We always go after lie, Ted. No, well, listen, we're going after Josh Hawley with the encouragement of, and I kid you not. had no idea how many people we had in Missouri on our lists. I mean, I guess we knew somewhere in the data system, but people were emailing us like, please help us, take him out. He's a

crazed fascist. The guy's a lunatic. And all these people are calling us or emailing us with these stories of knowing Josh Hawley when he was young. I'm like, yes, let's collect all of these together. But now Josh Hawley makes Tom Cotton look like a normal senator. You know, when Jim Lankford and Tom Cotton are the center right of the GOP? I mean, it really puts it in a perspective, you know, and suddenly when you've got Rand Paul being the Ted Cruz of Rand Paul's, shifting the dialogue into the crazy zone, to me, it tells you a lot about what's going to happen in the immediate future. There will be a division in the caucus about survival in 2022 with this map. And I want to explain to everybody really quickly why Trump is doing the Patriot Party and talking about doing it.

There are two reasons. First is the usual scam, the usual like, give me your money. You know, Trump basically telling Grandma, send me the last of that disability check or communism will win because he wants to make money. He needs to make money. His business model now is ripping off old people, just to be clear. But the real reason he's talking about the Patriot Party is not to get rich off of it. It is to blackmail the Republicans into not voting to convict him. And every one of these guys is thinking, oh, man, they're going to run a third party. guy in the race, it'll pull off 10%, 15% of the crazy vote, and I can't beat a Democrat. Now, I, for one, welcome the Patriot Party. I look forward to a party that believes in the things the founders believed in. Mostly a global conspiracy of child cannibal predator pornographers who work out of a pizza

restaurant in Washington, D.C. Northwest. With no basement. With no basement, right, sure, of course. And, of course, extradimensional lizard time-traveling people who are secretly in league with the queen and her heroin dealing. It just makes sense. Yes. Is there, did you get the weather machine in there?

Because isn't there a weather machine? Only the Chinese have the weather machine, only. Come on, keep up. Haven't you got your payments from CCCP Inc this month? So do we think that that very reason is why Rob Portman has decided he's not going to run for re-election? Welcome to Senator Jim Jordan. That is going to be the ugliest.

He's small. He's sweaty. He can't wear a jacket. He's Jim Jordan for Senate. He's like a tiny little doll. I'm imagining Jim Jordan's like intro speech to running for Senate. I've wrestled with this problem for a long time. Oh, Jesus. We knew this was coming, right? I spent sweaty, sleepless nights thinking about how hard it will be to be in the U.S. Senate, how very, very hard it will be. Why do we let him do this?

Why? Why? Why? Why? Do we do this? He'll pin down our problems. Oh, you never don't encourage him, Jesse. It just makes it worse. He'll get a grip. No, stop it. The ads are writing themselves.

That's going to be the ugliest Senate race ever. You may open the door there for a moderate. And again, please, for the love of God, my Democratic friends, please, please, just I beg of you to believe me for 30. seconds here. Ohio is not woke. Is not so... It's not woke. No. No. Ohio is so not very woke. Ohio's not even blue. It's pretty red. Ohio's red and trending redder to be, I mean, except for Sherrod Brown. Right. But, you know, Sherrod Brown is, is already in the Senate, but you could use a Sherrod Brown style, a Tim Ryan or a Sherrod Brown style guy would have a chance

of crossing some of that working class white vote that has drifted between between, that over time has drifted between from Reagan to Clinton to Bush to Obama to Trump back to Biden. There will be a temptation, and I mean this only in the most constructive and professional sense, it'll be a temptation to find somebody that meets all the woke tests, but it's Ohio. And I beg of you to believe me that Ohio is a red state, very red, trending redder, and is also very red and also Republican. There's a lesson to be learned, which is that people love Sherrod. And Sherrod is actually quite progressive, but he is a product of Ohio and popular in Ohio. He is a product of the sort of human-centric progressivism that is about jobs and about human dignity and about human worth and those sort of things. And he's less about, you know, arguing about more esoteric issues and about things that would countervail against Victor,

in a place like Ohio, which is a red industrial state. Can we talk for a minute about the idea that Republicans love culture wars because that is easier to win than not giving people money? All the Republican Party has right now are three iterations of the culture war question. So we can talk about Josh Hawley on the cover of the post today. Sure. I'm going to get to that in one second. So conservatives lost two of the most fundamental social battles of the last 50s. years. Abortion, which they fought to a draw on abortion. America wants to have the right to

for a woman to have the right to choose. That's just it. That's where America's at. However, America's not like, yay, abortion. It's so awesome. So they fought that to a draw. Okay. They lost the battle over gay rights and gay marriage. Yeah. Just like got fucking hammered on it. Blew them out. And they lost the battle over marijuana. So now what's left in the social conservative space is a sort of cultural anxiety that brown people or smart people are going to take away their rights or their church or their privileges in some way. And so constantly iterating back on the, you know, the culture or game has become signified by, oh, the media is so against us. It's the media. Oh, God, the liberal, libtard liberal media. And they, no, no philosophy is more

dependent in the Republican Party's mind today than hatred of the news media. There are entire subcultures and sub-industries of the conservative media apperat that are dedicated only to saying, Liptar media, Librar media, liberal media, the liberal media, they can't stop themselves. They never, ever get away from it, okay? If you ask a Republican now to defend Donald Trump, I promise you in the first two minutes, if they can speak that long in defense of him, they will say, and the media is, or but the media does. or the media, liberal media, they can't stop it. It's like a Twitch reflex, okay? The other part of the culture war thing is aggrievement and whining and snowflake.

And that's where Josh Hawley comes in. The New York Post this weekend was the absolute pinnacle of the very white, downy, white, snowy top of Mount Snowflake. I'm being hopeful. Oh, I can't say a word except on the Senate floor. where I was elected by the people of Missouri. I can't say a word, except for on Fox News, the largest cable network in the country. I can't say a word except the New York Post, which is millions of people every day. I can't say a word except on Facebook and Twitter and TikTok and every other goddamn platform in America.

But what you should be saying, Josh Hawley, you fucking snake, is this. I apologize to the family of Officer Brian Sicknick for having incited a crowd which murdered him. And four other people. So Josh is not muzzled. He just lacks the moral fucking compass to speak the truth about what he is. He and also Ted Cruz have taken the wrong message from Trumpism, which is they have said, oh, wow, these little culture wars work. And conservative grievance is something the base enjoys.

And so because Trump is no longer on Twitter and Trump has sort of left this vacuum in the ecosystem, we can pick up the slack and ride it to 2024 Republican nomination. Yes, they're going to say to themselves and to their donors, hey, you know, Trumpism had some rough edges. We can smooth those off. We can run it through the car wash. We can buff it out a little bit. We can put the fun in fascism.

Right. By the way, speaking of the fun and fascism, you can't spell dynasty without nasty. And speaking of which Sarah Huckabee Sanders is going to run for governor of Arkansas. That's right. Now, I will say there are some really. really, really terrible female governors in the South. Yes. So she will not be alone.

North Dakota is pretty far north. Well, but Kaye. Oh, no. Terrible. But, I mean, there are some really, there are some really bad red state governors. So it doesn't seem, I mean, is she worse than her father? Is she about the same? She is wildly more egregious than her father.

Oh, tell us why. Mike Huckabee. Yeah, I hate him too. I don't say that at a lot of people in politics, honestly. So you're not going on his Jesus cruise? Yeah. Is there a Jesus Cruz? He has trips to the Holy Land.

How do you not know about this, Rick? Because this may accelerate my timetable for the Lincoln Project Submarine Warfare Division. Yes. Needs to happen now. Somebody said the other day, I'm an interview. So what is your big goal for the Lincoln Project? And I dead panted it. I'm like, a nuclear weapons program.

And the guy's like, Will, that's a bit. What? See, I know you, so I know you're not actually kidding. It runs in the family. Rick, is your hatred for him because he's just so much more of a grifter? Like, I always think of like when he wrote that book about how we have to eat healthier and he lost all this weight and then no one latched onto it and he decided, fuck it got all in the lips that got fat again.

Oh, I love that. If you want to talk about an opportunist, Mike Huckabee was like 47 different flavor. as a Republican during the course of his life. But he was never smart. I would say Mike Huckabee falls in that category of sort of crafty. And we'll see how Sarah goes. I think she's got a very good chance of winning in Arkansas because it's, you know, the Arkansas Frontier Province.

And name ID is magical, sadly. But the idea that anyone survives Trump and becomes to elected office who isn't named Trump is sort of disturbing. What do you mean? Do you really think that we should have a Huckabee representing an entire United state? Well, I mean, it's Arkansas. It's like a state.

Everyone's going to get mad at me that I just said that. You know, Arkansas did bring us the Clintons. I mean, it wasn't always so rad. I actually think Arkansas is a very beautiful state. I love it. I'm moving there. What's the city there? There it is.

Right there. There it is. Is there like a Boston there? Hot Springs. Fayette, though. Yeah, it's not happening. All right. I don't think so.

Every day we learn more about how Trump was planning a coup. Yeah, every day. Every day we get another read on the ways and the depths to which they were sinking in terms of how a fairly small group at the end, because everyone else basically fled or hid, was trying to tweak the machinery of government, if you will. And to make the, for instance, to make the Justice Department fire the AG. and then sue over the election results. Imagine if it had been close. Oh, you know, I have to say this. And I'm going to, for a second, back out of all the sarcasm and humor for a second.

I analogize this to a meteor passed very, very close to the earth, a big one, the kind that would, like, kill the dinosaurs level, right? And we saw it up in the atmosphere, and it burned a big streak across the atmosphere that barely missed us. the more we learn, the more we know that that meteor was a lot closer than we thought, a lot bigger and more dangerous than we thought, and that only by the grace of God do we avoid a calamity? I keep coming back to like the moment, the inflection points. It's like if Officer Goodman had not led those assholes to the left and not the right down that hallway, what would have happened? Yeah. I mean, what would have happened if Donald Trump had to be cured the control of the DOD? If he thought about it, a year ahead of time and put Cash Patel and all those scumbags over there. If they had managed to get their guy installed at the National Security Agency and puts people over in charge of the CIA and fire the AG and put in this compliant guy who was going to do whatever they wanted. I mean, what if all, I mean, you play out all those scenarios and we really, really dodged a bullet. And the important thing here is that everyone involved in this must be

held accountable. I will say it until I'm dead. Adam Gentleson is the former deputy chief of staff to Senator Harry Reid, the author of Kill Switch, The Rise of the Modern Senate, and he's going to talk to us today about the filibuster and why it should go. So you work for Harry Reid, and there you sort of developed a feeling about the filibuster. Is that correct? And will you explain? When I got to the Senate with Senator Reid working for him in 2010, I knew the basics about the Senate. I read Master of the Senate, you know,

and I knew that it was supposed to be this place that was slow, that was deliberative, that was frustrating in all these different ways. And the filibuster was a big part of that. What came to be clear, though, over the course of the subsequent period of the Obama administration, was that you're told that there's wisdom in the Senate's deliberative nature, that there's wisdom in its delay in how long it takes to do everything, and that there's wisdom in the filibuster in the sense that it brings people together, that it forces Democrats and Republicans to find consensus, you know, and all these very wise-sounding

things. And what became painfully clear during the time I was there was that there is no wisdom in any of this. There is no wisdom in the delay. There's no wisdom in the Senate's gridlock. And there's certainly no wisdom in the filibuster, at least in the way it's deployed today. And, you know, part of that is that the Senate, the filibuster has become something very different than what it was supposed to be. In the book, I talk about how it was never really supposed to be part of the Senate in the first place. And we can talk more about that too. But just accepting for now that it has become a part of the Senate,

and it is sort of one of the things that's inextricably identified with the Senate, popular imagination. When we think of it, we think of Jimmy Stewart. We think of, you know, the underdog holding the Senate floor and sort of a feat of strength, you know, and endurance trying to hold back the forces of corruption. But that's not what it is today. first of all, you definitely don't need to speak on the floor. And second of all, all, all it does is raise the threshold for passage on any bill from the majority where it was for the vast 200 years of the sentence existence to a supermajority. And that allows a minority to block a numerical minority to block anything that the Senate wants to pass. So where there used to be debate, where there used to be people explaining their positions out in public view, where there used to be an open exchange of views, now there is silence, the number of votes it takes to pass the ability. goes from a majority up to a super majority with the sending of one email, and then most bills fail

to clear that threshold. And so, you know, not only does it not live up to its myth, in many ways it runs counter to its myth. It is a place where good ideas go to die, and these things that are sort of supposed to define it as this citadel of wisdom are actually the very things that are causing it to be the foremost cause of gridlock in our federal government. Okay, so reconciliation is what they did during the Trump era where they could pass a bill with 51 votes. Right. Can you explain to me how you get reconciliation and if you have reconciliation why you even have a filibuster and why don't people just use reconciliation for everything?

So reconciliation comes from the 1970s. It came from the 1970s. It was established because the Senate decided it needed to start passing budgets around then. This was at a time when the workload was expanding where the size of the federal government was getting much bigger. They're inventing new agencies like the EPA. And so they decided that as the normal course of business, budgets needed to be passed. And so as part of that process, they created this special track for legislation that is called reconciliation. And so what it does

is it allows any bill that complies with a very strict set of rules to go around the filibuster and come straight to the floor at a simple majority threshold. So if you go through reconciliation at no point in the process, do you need to clear 60 votes? You never need to clear anything more than a majority. So why don't they use reconciliation for everything? Because the rules that restrict its use are very tight. After it was created, Robert Byrd, former Senate Majority Leader, so he was very upset because it immediately started to be abused in exactly this way. People immediately started using reconciliation for everything. So they're like, oh, great, we can just, you know, go use it. Yeah. So he created this, this,

restrictive set of rules, and it's people refer to as one rule, but it's called the bird rule. And basically, it is a very narrow test that determines whether a given policy complies with what the purpose of reconciliation is supposed to be. And so the effect of that is to restrict it to primarily items that have a budgetary impact. So, you know, that's pretty broad. You can, you can pass a lot of economic policies through that definition. And so. And that's how they pass the tax cut. Exactly. And so that's where they're able to do the tax cut through it. You know, they're even able to do things like opening ANWR up to drilling through this because, you know, you can be creative about how you prove your budgetary impact. But that creativity only extends so far. So it is an option for Democrats for things like COVID relief, potentially a lot of infrastructure, maybe minimum wage increase. And that's all great.

The problem is it is definitely not a possible path for things like democracy reforms, civil rights, many climate change solutions. So it is at best, and the other thing I would say is that people think of it, we call it a fast track, but it's actually an extremely complicated process. And if you go through it, no one has ever passed anything as big as what's being contemplated now through reconciliation. So if you go down this path,

you run the risk of walking right into a quagmire that could take two or three months to get this massive package to comply with all these really complicated rules. And you could find yourself in March or April not having passed anything and kind of wishing that you just sort of address the filibuster conversation head on. So it's, it can work, but a lot of the coverage of it sort of makes it sound like it's, oh, it's super easy. You just use reconciliation. And that's not how it's going to work in practice. So talk to me about thinking big. I was watching Bernie Sanders

on the Sunday shows yesterday, and he was talking about how he said basically, you know, Democrats have a sort of two-year window to get everything done. Can we talk about, could they get rid of the filibuster? They absolutely can. I mean, it's, it's a funny conversation. Well, it's actually very easy once you have the votes. You essentially what you do, you ask the person who's presiding, the parliament, who is the, they're called the chair, the presiding officer. You ask them, how many votes does it take to do this procedural step called cloture? I won't get into the weeks here. But basically, before the bill gets a vote for passage, it needs to, you need to end debate, the debate period on the bill.

And that's the hurdle where everything dies now. That didn't used to be a thing. It didn't used to take 60 votes to clear that threshold of ending debate. but now it does. And so when bills are dying on 60 votes, they're not dying on final passage. They're dying because they can't clear that intermediary hurdle. So the way you get rid of it is, this sounds silly, but it actually is the way it works. You ask the parliamentarian, who's in the, you know, the person who's at the presiding officer's chair, how many votes does it take to perform this procedural step of ending debate? They read you back the rules and say it takes 60 votes.

Then you just have a vote. And if you have a majority that says, no, it doesn't. It doesn't anymore. And it's as simple as that. The principle, yeah, and what it is, the Senate is an evolving body, and it's, it is supposed to reflect the wisdom of the body itself. And so a majority of the senators in the body is taken to embody that wisdom. And so if 51 senators say, we are changing our rules now, the rules change. So it's, it's not functionally hard. What's hard is getting the votes. Right. And, you know, even that's, you know, I think probably not as hard as it's cracked up to be because Do you think they could get the vote? I do.

I think that it's really all about President Biden deciding that he wants them. But then Biden still can't have his fingerprints on it because he promised he wouldn't do it. Well, I think that he needs to build up to it. I think that he has unique credibility here. And in a lot of ways, you know, I think it's good that he's the one who could do it because no one will doubt if Biden comes to the country and he comes to Democratic senators and says, you guys, I tried everything. You know me. You know that if there was any way to advance this stuff through any other means, through bipartisan, you know, groups, whatever, I would do it, but there's just no other way. He has the credibility to say that. And I think people will believe him. And honestly, you know, it's also just sort of a very pragmatic situation where he just is going to say, look, guys, the success of my entire administration hinges on this. If we don't do this, we're not going to pass anything. And this two-year window that Senator Sanders, I think, accurately described, is going to close. We're not.

not going to pass any of the major things that we need to fix this country. And Republicans could easily slide back into the majorities in the next midterms because Democrats' majorities are so small right now, thereby slamming the window shut. So I need you guys to do this with me. You know, if there was any other way, I could, I would have done it, but this is what needs to happen. I feel like a lot of the more scared Democrats in the world are like, oh, my God, abolishing the filibuster sounds so scary.

And then we're breaking norms like Trump did. what about a like smooth calculation of saying, okay, the filibuster still exists, but it's 53 votes and we have to get Romney and Murkowski, let's say, on it. Is that something that's possible to the rules or does it have to be 60? Yeah. And I want to talk about this because I want to help people get over their fears. And look, you can write the rules any way you want. Once the rules are in place, you know, they're hard to change unless you have 51 votes. But like I said, it's an evolving institution. And so if the Senate says, you know, Wednesday, is Friday and the sky is green, then that's what the Senate thinks. It goes entirely by, it's like

writing code or something. It's, it goes entirely by what the body says is true. So yes, if they decide to come down in increments, they could do that. It gets a little complicated to sort of just, if you think of it in terms of like writing a rule, it's different in every situation. So it's complicated. You can't say, you know, you need these specific senators to do it. But there are ways you can get creative if people are uncomfortable with getting rid of it entirely. I also think, you know, restoring the talking filibuster would be a reasonable way to do this. Can you explain what that is? Sure. I mean, this is, this is, you know, this is the Jimmy Stewart, you know, use it or lose it kind of deal, where if you want to block a bill, once it's ready and has majority support, you have to go to the

floor and hold it. And, you know, you can get some friends and you can pass the baton back and forth, but you actually have to go and explain to the American people why you're blocking this bill. And, you know, that's, that was what the Senate was supposed to do in the framers' original vision. It wasn't supposed to allow a minority, a numerical minority to block a bill. It was supposed to allow a numerical minority to have a say in the process, to make their voice heard and, you know, debate for a long time, like weeks, you know, maybe a month or two, like have at it, but not be able to block it ultimately once that bill had achieved majority support. And so the talking filibuster is, you know, physically using that. platform of the Senate floor to draw attention to whatever it is that you oppose in this bill. And if you can use your persuasive powers and the platform of the Senate floor, it's a massive platform to convince

people to come around to your side, more power to you. Go for it. I fully believe in all of that as the purpose of the Senate. The short answer is there's some incremental reforms that I think would be appropriate. But ultimately, I think what you have to do is you have to get to a place where a majority of the Senate can bring a debate to a close within a reasonable amount of time, not, you know, a couple of hours, you know, weeks, something in that range, but within a reasonable amount of time. Now, my question is, it feels like, and I know a lot of our listeners worry about this and feel this way, that Democrats are just constantly getting played by Mitch McConnell at every point. What can they do to not have that happen?

Well, not to be a broken record here. This is part of what needs to happen. And their reason is, you know, Mitch McConnell is extremely crafty. I don't want to take anything away from him. You know, I think in the book I try to be very fair to him and try to, you know, I focus more on explaining what makes him tick and why he does what he does and then just trying to, you know, take him down. You know, he's very smart.

The thing is, though, he's playing on a playing field that is heavily tilted in his favor. You know, it's much easier for Republicans to win the Senate majority because, you know, they come from these monolithically white states with low populations. They don't need to represent a majority of the American people to hold a majority of the chamber. They have 50 seats right now, and those 50 seats represent 43% of the American population. You know, there's voter suppression. There's all these things that make it easier for them to actually. Right.

And there's Dakotas are two states. I mean, it's ridiculous. Exactly. So, I mean, you know, so, and then there's a filibuster. You know, it works for him more than Democrats for a couple of reasons. one is, you know, look, conservatives by the nature of their party and what they're trying to achieve benefit more than liberals from being able to obstruct. They're the William F. Buckley Party that stands with Port History yelling stop. Progressives are the side that want to implement big changes. You know, this isn't always true in every instance, and obviously there are things conservatives want to pass.

But fundamentally, it's a fundamental distinction that shows why obstruction works better for them. By leaving the filibuster in place, Democrats are increasing the chances that they continue to get, played by McConnell. I mean, I thought it was interesting. I just finished President Obama's memoir, and he's very pointed about the filibuster. And at one point, he says that he regrets that he didn't rally Democrats at the very beginning of his administration to get rid of the filibuster so they could pass big things. I mean, by leaving it in place, we are allowing Mitch McConnell to own us more than he'd be. The other thing, I'll bring it up, you know, which is, won't Republicans use it against us once we're out of power? And won't you have this whip

And I think there are two answers to that. One is if you don't go nuclear now and therefore don't pass as many things as we could, in the hopes that you will get forbearance from Mitch McConnell when they're back in power, I've got another thing coming. I think that, you know, he would love to see us pass fewer major bills, including democracy forms that will help tilt the electoral playing field back in our direction and things like D.C. statehood and Puerto Rico statehood. He would love to see us not do those things, you know, let him filibuster us for the next two years.

And then when he takes power, the minute it's in his interest, he will get rid of the filibuster himself. And so I think that, you know, we have power now. We're not talking about smashing, you know, norms. This is something that has been done repeatedly throughout the course of the Senate history. It has changed its own rules. It has used this exact procedure 17 times to change its own rules. And in fact, I would argue as I argue in the book, that this isn't a radical departure.

This is actually a restoration because the Senate was invented as a majority rule institution. It operated as a majority rule institution for 200 years, and the filibuster was not a major part of it until very recent. Thank you, Adam. Bye.

Thank you. 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 what's happening behind the scenes 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 it's just Molly and I shooting the shit. 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.com.

That's new abnormal. dot the Daily Beast.com. As you know, America, there's a mandatory segment on this show. Every single episode, it is called Fuck That Guy. And today's Fuck That Guy, in my mind, are the Trump administration staffers who are now out searching for jobs. These are not the Lex-S-7 guys at the Labor Department. These are the people that were with Trump till the very end. Looking at you, Mark Meadows.

Looking at you, Hope Hicks, all these other people who managed to cling to power, hoping against Hope until the very end, that they would be the last. the one exception to the Everything Trump Touches Dies rule. Y'all waited around. You never spoke up. You knew what he was doing. Even when it got to the point where he was fomenting a violent revolution in the streets of Washington,

D.C., you're still stuck around and now you're surprised you can't get a job. Well, my message to you is, of course, the eternal rule of everything Trump Touches the Dies has now applied to you and also, fuck you guys. Is this a case of having fucked around and found out?

They both fucked around and found out. They both bought a ticket and took the ride. I'm just setting you up for all of this. I love you for that. I know. My, fuck that guy today is a little doll-like fellow. He never wears a jacket. A wee lad from Ohio, perhaps?

He's, like, good at ignoring crimes. Sort of a blind sexual assault, leprechaun? I'm wrestling with his name. it's Mark Meadows. Not Mark Meadows. This is like the third Mark Meadows wrestling joke in this episode.

Can we how many? Is there like a cap on that? Because it's not Mark Meadows. It's Jim Jordan. Oh, no, it's Mark Meadows. Oh, that's Jim Jordan. Oh, that's right. It's Jim Jordan. Not Mark Meadows. Thank you. Jim Jordan makes Mark Meadows look smart. We did have Michael Cohen

on this podcast and he said Mark Meadows is the dumbest person he's ever met. tell you from knowledge, experience, and interaction that Mark Meadows is dumber than a sack of hammers. So is he dumber than Jim Jordan? Yes. Oh, listen, Jim Jordan has a kind of wily animal cunning about him, where, you know, he likes to play a role and screeches a lot, and so he knows how to perform a little better. Meadows is sort of hapless. Oh, wow. He's a Devin Nuneo short of a Matt Gates. On that note, we'll wrap up this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking with smart folks in The Daily Beast and beyond for media, culture, politics, and science.

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