The Daily Beast Podcast - Julian Castro on Why Everyone Hates Ted Cruz

Episode Date: May 26, 2020

On the latest episode of THE NEW ABNORMAL, the former presidential candidate talks to Molly Jong-Fast and Rick Wilson about Trump’s chances to take Texas in 2020 (not great!), Biden’s “you ain��t black” comment (also not great!), and sycophantic Senator Ted Cruz (even worse!). Then! Rick and Molly discuss Trump’s amazing workout regimen, the chlamydia vs. COVID smackdown in the Ozarks, and golf’s new turn as the dumbest of MAGA signifiers. Plus! Welcome to the resistance, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions and Ann Coulter! (J/K, you’re both awful racists.) 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 Jongfest, novelist, an editor at large at The Daily Beast, and the person who tells Rick not to tweet the things he wants to tweet. I'm an editor at large at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, bestselling author, and full-time troublemaker. The new abnormal is about one nation under a pandemic and how it's changing all of us. We'll talk about what's happening in the country and the culture and look at good and bad people, leadership, and ideas. I come from very different political worlds. But what brings us together is that we both love America, and we realize that putting our country over party and ideas over ideology might be the only thing that gets us through this. We'll be joined by smart guests from media, politics, culture, medicine,

and science. I'll try to keep ripped to the minimum number of curse words and try to keep our pets and other wildlife sands from invading our respective bunkers. How was your weekend, Molly? It was good. It was long and involved not doing anything or going anywhere, but otherwise, was good. This was a wild weekend for Donald Trump. It really was. The rage tweeting about Scarborough, for one thing, was just insane. But some of the people he's retweeting and some of the shit they're saying. You're friends with Joe Scarborough. So why don't you talk a little bit about what Donald Trump accused? I like to think of he sort of Seth Riched Joe Scarborough. He's trying to turn this thing where a woman who was an intern in his office, who had an underlying heart condition, came in from a run, went into the office, and had an aneurism of some kind. or some sort of failure, vowel failure or heart failure or something, fell over, smashed her head

into a desk and passed. Now, Joe Scarborough was in D.C. at the time. It's been extensively litigated about... And this was years ago. This is like in 2000. It was a thousand years ago. It was an open and shut autopsy. There was no sign of foul play whatsoever.

But there are these conspiracy sites out there, including one that Trump apparently believes a know called Drew Pundit. Oh, true Pundit. True Pundit, the only thing worse than Gateway Pundit. Right. True Pundit. For those of you who find Gateway Pundit, not insane enough. It's the Bill Mitchell of Pundit blogs.

In case you are not following every machination of the internet, Bill Mitchell is a sort of YouTuber with a very smooth forehead who tweets a lot of QAnon-esque conspiracy stuff. And also his belief that Donald Trump is literally an incarnate manifestation of God's will on planet Earth. He's a big Trumpsick fan. But anyway, back to this whole thing. It's a total bullshit conspiracy theory. But of course, Trump is proving, just like with Seth Rich, just like with his denials about everything in his life, that he can use the mechanisms of the crazy amplification system

of the Trump right media to try to turn something into a reality for the stupid. But I don't understand. It's almost like Trump thinks he's running against Joe. He is running against Joe, but not just Joe. The only thing that Trump has, the Trump right, the anti-anti-difference, Trump world has is, but the media's worst, man. They have that college dorm. Actually, the left-wing media is what's really the problem. And we know a lot of people like this. Trump could come out and say, I would like to kill a school bus full of children. And some sycophant on the Trump right will come out

and say, well, Trump may want to kill these children. But you know what's really bad is that CBS refused to run a story about Tara Reid. They do it shamelessly because it is the last refuge of scoundrels. And you and I know a lot of these people. And they do it by a greater or lesser degree. And a lot of them are looking to move up in the food chain. Some of them who are part-time contributors to Fox.com who want to move up to being on TV but never will. Right. They're all trying to compete with each other to be the one who like, yeah, the media, that's the real problem. The Trumpy media. A hundred goddamn thousand people are dead now. And he doesn't give a fuck. Okay. That's the secret. He doesn't want them to think about the fact he doesn't

care. And you and I had this long conversation about the thing he said at the Ford plant when he talked about Henry Ford's good bloodlines, which is... Good bloodlines. As a Jew, absolute, just a dog whistle, if there ever was one. You mean noted Hitler fanboy, Henry Ford? You mean noted anti-Semite? That Henry Ford? Yeah, that's the one. Good dude. This episode of the new abnormal, not brought to you by the Ford Motor Company. That's right. Yeah, I think that we're probably not getting them as advertisers anytime soon. saying that the current Ford Motor Company leadership has anything to do with that hoo-ha. And if they do like the thought of sponsoring an insightful, witty, and darkly comic podcast,

the new abnormal is here to meet all of your needs with our educated, highly affluent audience. We're talking today about stupidity in America, right? This is a special 47-hour edition of the new abnormal. That features stupidity in America. We're still in the middle of a lockdown, but Americans have decided it's too hard. and the contact tracing is too complicated, and it's summer, so we're going to open up. So we're in a culture war here, and the Republicans have decided to take masks and social distancing as this sort of thing you don't do if you want to own the lips.

Well, I'll just tell you one thing, Molly. If you wear a mask, then viruses have won, like the communists or the Islamers. They've won. Exactly. The minute you wear a mask, you've said that you submit and you're a beta-manian. I'll cook, for fuck's sake. Exactly. I think there are people who are legitimately frustrated with being locked up inside their homes.

I think there are plenty of people who would love to go back to work. God knows, I'd love to go to a damn restaurant, okay? Hey, man, I've been in my apartment for 75 days or something. Even if you wanted to go to a restaurant, there are no restaurants open here. I have to say, I think that the pushback with some of those people, it's legitimate. People are frustrated. Their essential freedoms are not being compromised by some heinous plan. but by the fact that they are being responsible

and they're not going out and doing something that they know could, if they're asymptomatic, spread COVID or give them COVID. But there are a lot of people who have started to take this as a cultural signifier, including my favorite and everyone's favorite from this weekend that made the social media rounds, the video from the Lake of the Ozarks.

Huge crowd at Lake of the Ozarks Memorial Party goes viral. What's the headline? And folks, we'll put this in the show notes if you haven't seen it. These are folks, they are crowded, as they used to say, assholes and elbows close.

And they're all in this giant outdoor pool and they're all hanging out together. And I'm not talking about a couple of people. I'm talking about hundreds and hundreds of people that 100,000 people aren't dead. The world isn't facing what the world is facing. And it's going to be a battle with these folks. And they're all out there party and they're having a great time. Look, they're having a great time. God bless.

You know what? If we weren't in the middle of this, I wouldn't say a word about it. But this like W.W.E. Chlamydia versus COVID battle in this pool with naked people or semi-naked people is just emblematic of the fact that there is an indulgence in our culture. There's this idea that because you've been locked up for a certain period of time with your family and your pets, that the whole thing is over. And it's very Trumpy. It's very Trumpy, this idea of, oh, we're good. We're back to work. Everything's on. It's all done. I think Trump has managed to really politicize when you saw him on that tour and he said he wouldn't wear the mask because he didn't want to give the media. that satisfaction of a picture of him in the mask. And then this weekend on the Sunday shows,

I saw Republican governor, Mike Duine, saying that you really need to wear the mask. And you also saw in North Dakota, the Republican governor, too, like begging people to wear masks. And there's all these articles that have just come out that say if you wear the mask, even in Japan, they had just people wearing the masks

and it cut down on the transmission a lot. I mean, it's an easy thing to do. And then we have the President of the United States. I'd say it's refusing to wear a mask, but claiming anyway, I don't really believe he's taking it, to take the experimental medicine for malaria. Dr. Trump's miracle elixir, yeah. But look, this was happening all over the country. It was happening in New Jersey. It was happening in Ocean City, Maryland.

It was happening in Panama City, Florida, which, you know, as a Floridian, I can tell you that Panama City, Florida is not notoriously dedicated to the rules. Is that near you? It's near-ish. It's 90 minutes away. I mean, far enough that if it was nuked, I would see the light but not feel the heat. But these folks were out in force this weekend, including our aforementioned crazy PPE bikini lady. Yes, the crazy PPE bikini lady who wore a mask everywhere but her face. So she wasted nine perfectly good masks.

Wait, am I counting this right? She had spats on at one point. Yeah, she had spats, so that's two. She had at least one around the lady business, so that's three. I thought it was interesting. They can't really think of a reason why. Democrats would want people to wear masks and socialists. And so they have decided, like, with the gun stuff, I know you love the guns, but it's the same thing. Like, Democrats are trying to take away our freedom. And that's not really what's going on, but it's just they can't think of another sort of thing to blame it on. And look, what does Trump do with everything? Trump uses his power of being a transgressive force in society to eliminate decency, to eliminate norms, to eliminate institutions, to eliminate laws and rules he doesn't.

like. So he's just decided, fuck all y'all. I don't care how many people die. I want my economy back at work. And so it trickles down into society. Look, I'm not saying everybody who went to the beach is a rabid Trump supporter, but most of the rabid Trump supporters have decided that we're done. It's over. P.P. is worthless. Masks don't matter. Social distancing is a liberal lie. And I'm going to go out and shop and eat and work and do everything I used to do and go to the beach. They've decided it is made up by the media. They've got a whole alternative set of numbers that they believe are the real numbers. They cling to to, and they race to every story that says things like, well, it's only transmissible wool for 11 days. Oh, well, that makes it all better because for 11 days, well, shit, well, it was 14 days. That was a disaster, but it's 11, so Trump wins. And so in all these cases, they find ways to excuse themselves from doing the hard thing. They excuse themselves from doing the disciplined thing. Things we used to associate with conservatism, call me crazy, are now the opposite. It is now indulgence. It is now impulse. It is now instant rage, if not gratified immediately. It's all very trumpy. And now they're still having AstroTurf protests. They had a protest in Kentucky outside of the governor's mansion.

They were trying to put one together in North Carolina today on Monday while we're taping this. And they had about 11 people show up. Good work there. Well, they don't have a lot of people, but they have really disturbing signs. And in Kentucky, they hung a figure, which is always really disturbing to me anyway. Did they hang the governor in effigy? Yes. Just pro tip, Kentucky. Pro tip. Throwing this out there.

I love y'all. Any depiction of strange fruit or hanging people does not work well with your history. My favorite tweet about this whole thing where thousands of people are in this pool. A Missouri mayor expressed concern. Concern? Like Susan Collins? Yes. John Oliveri, the mayor of a small town, situated on the lake of the Ozarks, made,

I'm going to read you the quote. My concern is for our workers and whether some of the folks have come down might be creating a health problem for the community. Absolutely. Oh, a health problem for the community. But the only other choice would be that you would shut it down. And I don't know how you would shut down the lake of the Ozark. There's no way to control that. That was clearly some sort of public facility. That was not behind miles of concertina wire or anything. There was a parking facility there. They were selling things like beverages there. So yeah, there was a way to shut it down. You're such a stickler, Rick. My favorite tweet about the whole Lake of the Ozarks thing this weekend was from somebody

named Exasperated Ninja on Twitter. And he said, the swag bags contain Hennah Tramp Stamp Kits, a can of skull, a six pack of Mountain Dew, an Han Rand comic book, and complimentary chlamydia. I do think there are so many COVID-truthers in the media right now that between pandemic and all of the misinformation going out there. And then I saw this weekend that 50% of the reopen accounts are actually bought accounts. So I do think people are getting very conflicting messages, which is not to make an excuse for them, but just to say that, you know, if we lived in a country where our president, where we had a federal response to these kind of things,

or we had a president who got up there like FDR or JFK, who would deliver a message that was a clear message from the federal government as opposed to what we have, which is this weird hodgepodge, I think you wouldn't have situations like this. Well, another part of this, Molly, is that a lot of these COVID truthers think they're helping Donald Trump. They think if they can just change what people believe that the virus will disappear. I don't know what the end game here is. I mean, remember, in the middle part of this crisis in late March, you had people like Sarah Carter, who is on Fox News all the time. Think she's a contributor, but she was out there running around going to hospitals and taking pictures of like the emergency room entrance.

It's like, I don't see any lines here. There's no COVID here. It's a lie. And that's gotten ramped up and jacked up over the top in terms of these people who think this is part of pushing back against the Libtarid media. You know, we started out this conversation talking about Trump promoting this completely fabricated bullshit conspiracy theory about Joe Scarborough. This is one of the magical weird things about Trump world and Trump supporters.

They will believe the most. rogue, ludicrous, lurid conspiracy theories in any context if they feel like it owns the libs or benefits Trump in some way. I mean, this is South Rich. This is Pizza Gate. This is Hillary Clinton is a child cannibal sex trafficker. That's right. Q and on. And so they'll believe anything. They won't believe evidence that's presented to them in front of their faces. If any member of their cohort says, well, remember when Dan Rather was wrong about the National Guard, it's Just like that. And so we're in this position where even smart conservatives are bound into this reflexive social media

war that they're stuck with having to defend Trump. And therefore, they're stuck essentially saying, well, I don't think it's really exactly accurate. But we do have to listen to what the base is saying. And people like QAnon Eagle Mega Maga Patriot 947-2747 has a point that we need to look at. Rick Wilson. Yes, ma'am. It's Memorial Day weekend.

It is indeed. Did you hit the links? The links. Did you hit the golf course? No, I did not, Molly, because of two things. One, I think golf is the sport of middle managers. And I find it ludicrously boring. The new abnormal brought to you by.

To you by. I know what's going to say. Bye-bye golf sponsors. Donald Trump raced out at taxpayer expense with Memorial Day weekend. Yes, on Memorial Day weekend. In order to fully internalize the suffering and tragedy of the men and women in uniform who have given their lives to preserve this nation and play golf. And I noticed three things about his golf playing this weekend. I don't have you picked up on this.

First off, it's like oppositional defiant disorder. The thing he's wanted to do since the lockdown was go out and play golf. He doesn't care of its Memorial Day weekend. He doesn't care if the crisis is still rolling on. I have a secret superpower on this matter. I used to criticize Barack Obama for playing golf when we were in moments of crisis and moments of war. And I knew something that George W. Bush had said he stopped playing golf when we went to war

and didn't for three years, basically, after 9-11. And I didn't think it was a great idea, optics-wise, for Obama. What, do you love him or hated him? We were in the worst of some of the Iraq and Afghanistan at the time. And we were in the middle of the financial crisis. So it was not a great look, I thought. I've never liked it with Trump just because he is using so much taxpayer money. I mean, Barack Obama tended to go play golf at Andrews Air Force Base.

Okay? That's a golf course where it's not some private course where he was making money on himself, renting golf carts to the Secret Service and golf villas to the media. And so, of course, he went and played golf. It's all he cares about. And unlike the sort of breathless bodice ripper-style writings of authors at the Federalist, of whom I believe you know who I'm referring. We're talking about bad, Molly.

Yes. Who posit that there was some sort of massive conspiracy from the top down, seeking to destroy Donald Trump. And we've been through this before, folks, so we won't beat it to death. But this idea that you follow rules, this idea that there are laws and norms and things you don't do is absent. So this weekend's golf fest was when 100,000 people are dead and many, many more are going to die. And your economy is in a new depression and 40 million Americans don't have jobs. Again, it becomes part of this dumb culture war signifier of Trump supports. He deserves it.

He's been working so hard. Oh, yes. You're right. I'm sorry, that rage tweeting Friday night for 12 fucking hours must have just taken it out of him if he didn't get outside after that. Noted outdoorsman Donald Trump needed some fresh air to clear his head. That's right. He needed the exercise. Well, he did walk tens of feet from the golf cart to the green several times.

That's cardio, right? That's right. That's cardio. So, Molly, speaking of the president exercising and being a great outdoorsman, did you happen to read the Tom Nichols piece in the Atlantic today? I have not read it. I did have a piece in the Atlantic this weekend, too. What was your piece about?

I would like, mine was like another New York will never die piece. You are a resilient city. That's right. And it was then shared by all of the real estate brokers in New York. Endlessly. At some point, New York will have a real estate market again. I think probably just in time for Jared Kushner to return. So Tom Nichols had a great piece.

And I think it gets right into one of these like, see-me-weird underbellies of Trumpism. It's called Donald Trump, the most unmanly president. And I think it is fantastic. because it's so of a part about Trumpism that these guys think, oh, well, all you elites are so contemptuous of white working class voters, and Trump gets us, and he's a manly man. It's been like on the edges of my consciousness to do something like this article, but Tom's piece is just top notch. And it gets into the fact that this is a guy who is scared of women, who's so vain in his

appearance, who wears lifts and a wig and more makeup than RuPaul. And he's just such a comical figure that that disconnect, that cognitive dissonance between what his supporters describe him as, the shirtless guy carrying a machine gun riding a tank with an eagle on his shoulder. That's right. Versus that soft belly flailing around when he gets off the golf cart this weekend, the video. It's just, it's sort of a perfect coda to the trip. We can have athletic excess. The world's most expensive implanted wig. Right.

I don't know if you read that. There was an Ashley Feinberg piece in the late Gawker days. which had the wig as about $31,000. And I met someone more recently who said they had, they knew someone who had performed the surgery and that all they could say, well, they wouldn't go on the record. They did say it was experimental.

So is his presidency for that matter. Joining us today on the new abnormal is Julian Castro. Julian Castro was the youngest member of the Obama cabinet when he served as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He is the former mayor of San Antonio, Texas, one of my favorite cities. and he is also a former presidential candidate from the 2020 race. Part of the reaction, I think, to the current election cycle,

which is what everybody is just focused on like crazy right now. One of the problems that Republicans have always grappled with, and I think we used to grapple with it more effectively when folks like George Bush got 37% of the Hispanic vote. Yeah, I mean, the Republican Party under Trump has really taken an unforeseen turn. You asked people a decade ago, I think they would have said that for Republicans, one of the biggest targets was the Hispanic community. And in many places, they were making inroads.

Here in Texas, for instance, you've had some candidates that probably got northward of 40% of the Hispanic vote. Now, Texas, Hispanic voters are traditionally have been a little bit more conservative than what you might find, of course, in California, Colorado, even places like Nevada and Arizona that could be a swing state this year. Parts of Texas, you know, mirror more of what you saw for a long time in South Florida. However, it's like they threw that playbook out the window completely with Trump in selecting Trump. And for those of us who are Democrats and obviously want to go, want Hispanics, Latinos to go in a different direction. And I think a better direction, Trump was a godsend because it really made clear what the agenda of the party, the base behind him was and is. And so for 2020, what it means for Democrats, though, is you can't take that. community for granted. Democrats need to invest in a 24-7, 365-day-a-year outreach of registering voters and also

of mobilizing them, of reaching them everywhere. It's hard to reach people at their doors, right? I mean, people are not blockwalking right now because of this pandemic. However, that means you need to be investing even more so in digital media, reaching them on their Facebook accounts or Twitter accounts or Instagram accounts, especially young ones. Recently, I partnered joint forces with Voto Latino, which for years now has been doing digitally based voter registration efforts and aiming especially at young Hispanic because look Latino turnout in the last election was something like almost 20 points less than African American turnout and non-Hispanic whites. That's a lot of work to do.

And I believe that if we get that work done, that the biggest beneficiary of that will be the Latino community because you're going to get better policies that meet their needs, whether on health care, education, jobs, a number of other things. But also, I think Democrats are going to win if more Latinos get to vote and express their opinion at the ballot box. Beto O'Rourke was so exciting as a Senate candidate. And he really seemed like he knew Texas. What do you think happened there? Why did he not run against Corrin?

And can you talk a little bit about that Senate race? I think our listeners are really interested in it. Yeah, I mean, Bethel did a spectacular job in 2018 of exciting not only the base. of the Democratic Party in Texas, but also bringing new people into the fold, young people in the suburbs of Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, that had voted Republican in the past,

but were ready to consider a Democrat and didn't particularly care for Ted Cruz. Only once in a while do you get a campaign like that just kind of catches fire and seems to have no upper limit to it. I mean, going into the last couple of days of that race, I actually believe that he was going to win and beat Ted Cruz.

And he came close to his credit. I think that that campaign resonated in a lot of ways with both base Democrats and with moderates who were considering or could consider a Democrat for the first time in a long time. What's happening in Texas is that you have these two dynamics that are converging to help Democrats be more competitive. On the one hand, you have the demographic change that everybody has talked about, has written about for a long time, the Latino community that has grown throughout the state that is younger, but also just becoming, more voting age all the time. And then on the other hand, you have the suburbs of Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, El Paso that have been diversifying, that have people now who have moved in

in the last five to ten years from a number of different states that, frankly, have been a little more progressive than I say this is a native Texan, but then a lot of Native Texans have been. So that suburban crowd doesn't agree with Donald Trump on a lot of things. They don't agree with Ted Cruz on a lot of things. been moving in the direction, not necessarily of embracing everything about Democrats, but basically saying, yeah, I'm open to voting for a Democrat that I think is sensible, that I can agree with. Those two things make it possible for John Corny to lose in 2020 and certainly for Trump to lose Texas in 2020. I'm not saying that's necessarily going to happen. I acknowledge that it's still, you know, you would have to give the edge right now to Republicans because it's

in a Republican state. But there is a lot of opportunity there if the Senate nominee is well financed and Biden and the DNC put some resources into Texas. There's a lot of opportunity. But the fact that you can even have a debate about whether these Texas Senate seats are competitive. And yes, look, Ted Cruz is an outlier because everyone on the planet Earth hates Ted Cruz. Why is that? Well, I don't know. I think there are a number of things. And we probably need to do a show called Everybody Hates Ted. But do you have any theories? You know what? really didn't help him. And they made an ad out of this in the 2018 race. When Trump insulted his wife and his father like that, and then he basically went back groveling to Trump, like a lap dog,

essentially. I mean, because anybody, I don't care if you're a Republican, Democrat, whatever you are, whatever your politics are. Look, if somebody goes to your face and insults your wife and your father, and then you just go over like a lab dog, people start to think that you're totally insincere. It's all ambition, your own ambition to be in that off. Do you have a theory on what happened to Ted Cruz, how he went from being relatively normal to a Trump sycopham? It's called 2024. Yeah, it's a base of the Republican Party. I mean, they're swiveling with their base, and they know that Trump has this stronghold on the base of the party.

And so I think whether it's Lindsey Graham or any number of people, they live in fear that he was going to encourage a primary opponent. And look, what's happening to Jeff Sessions right now in Alabama. For a while, Jeff Sessions was trying this, oh, no, no, despite all the bad things. you're saying about me, I love you, I love you, Donald. Finally, he rebuked him a little bit the other day. So that's part of it. And Ted Cruz is going to have an interesting decision to make in 2024, as y'all

may know, Lyndon Johnson had Texas law changed, I think, for 1960 so that he could both run for re-election to the Senate and also run for president. So that law is still in place. I mean, Cruz is going to be able to make, it doesn't have to make a choice. If he doesn't want to, he could run for president and he could run

in 2024 and run for Senate. re-election. But neither one of those things actually looks anywhere near guaranteed. I think he's very vulnerable in 2024 when he comes up for his re-election for Senate. He's been tarnished tremendously in a race for president that I don't think he could win either. So if you think about his future, I mean, he's got quite an interesting future coming up. I'm always curious about how these fields shape up after. Sometimes you do end up with that team of rivals thing and sometimes it's just there's like bad blood. I mean, I know among the 2016 Republicans aside from Trump, the bad blood has never gone away. It's still, it's still right there. So the campaign has

been rolling along and Biden's kind of in the bunker by necessity. Nobody's really fooled that this election is going to be a referendum about Donald Trump. Does it seem to you that Biden is better when he's out on the stump and actually engaging with people? Because it strikes me that sometimes he has these moments where the camera's running, the whole you ain't black comment. What do you think about that? I mean, the number one lesson that I took away from running for president in 2020 was that The person that wins these nominations, Republican or Democratic nomination, and certainly the person that wins the presidency, is the person that meets the moment. And what you have in Joe Biden is somebody that meets the moment very well. What Americans want, not only Democrats, but folks that are right in the middle, even, I think, some Republicans, they want sanity back.

They want the adult in the room back. They want somebody who would have been prepared to make sure. that we didn't have 100,000 deaths from the coronavirus. They want the experience, you know, they want the ability to direct this ship in a steady way, the steady hand. And I mean, Joe Biden is all of that and more. And he really has met the moment very well. That's why I think he's been successful. The other way that I think of Joe Biden is that he has, I think a lot of us in the younger generation, right? I mean, you haven't grown up with the same sort of approach to relationship building and people derisively call it back slapping and all that. And I don't mean it derisively. I mean it in a good way. Like kind of the old politician that is able to get people support and cultivate relationships and

love the love by the community. And obviously my former boss that I absolutely love. But Barack Obama, right? Barack Obama was not what people would have called a backslapping politician that really loved to do the events. But the great thing for this time about Joe Biden is that Joe Biden actually does that very, very well, and he does it in a sincere, authentic way. To answer your question, yeah, I think that when he gets out there, admitting that some sense of normalcy in this campaign, semblance and normalcy comes back, I think he's actually going to do very well. He excels at that. I've seen him talk to folks on a rope line. I've seen him right there in campaign settings talking to folks, and people respond

very well to that. That's one of the strengths. And that's going to match up very well against Trump, because even though we don't think of Trump this way, I mean, if you notice what he does, person to person, everybody says that he's more effective one-on-one and in a small room with people. And his character comes out and so forth. Like, it's a very engaging character that he's better than he is getting up in front of the press room podium and making all those gaffes and distracting from the real message of the day and all that. So it'll be interesting to see that. But I think that Biden has a lot that will help him when he gets out there in the campaign trail. Would you take a job in the administration? I mean, I'm not banking on that. For the first time in a long time, I actually am looking at a longer runway outside of

politics. I can't say definitively that I wouldn't. Of course, if there's something that I'm interested in and the Biden administration is interested in of me, of course I would consider that. I've always said that I would do what I'm asked to do if I think that it would help. That certainly goes for the campaign. I'm going to do everything that I can to make sure that we defeat Donald Trump. And then after that, we'll consider what happens. But right now, I'm looking at a longer runway outside of politics. Warren has done a lot of stuff for Biden in campaigning. And she's gotten a lot of really pushback. Why do you think that is? It's a good question. It's no secret that there's still some underlying tension in some quarters. It feels like the process of healing a little bit was slowed down

with all this, the coronavirus experience, because we had the campaign come to an end and Bernie endorsed Vice President Biden. At the same time, we haven't had those events where you would see them together. And it's just that healing process has been a little bit slower, I think. But it's definitely, by the time we get to November, I have no doubt that everybody is going to be working very hard to make sure that Biden defeats Trump. Everybody understands that the number one goal has to be to replace this president. That's certainly my goal is to replace the president. So I'm going to do whatever I can and whatever is asked to do that. I think you should keep your name in the VP running because you managed to allied over my question about the black thing pretty smoothly. Not bad,

Julian. I'll answer that actually. I mean, no. And look, he apologized for it. Right. It was really nice to see an adult who can acknowledge when he said something in a way that perhaps he didn't mean or certainly didn't mean or shouldn't have said. He said that he got a little cavalier. All of us, we've done a million different interviews. Sometimes something comes out in a way that you did not mean. And he was very good to say right away, hey, look, I've never taken the black community for granted. I'm not going to do that now. I'm sorry for that. That's the adult thing to do. And it sounds so foreign now because we have a president that can't apologize for anything can never admit when he's wrong. Unfortunately, and that's one of the reasons that we need Joe Biden to replace it.

Hey, in case you missed it, the Daily Beast recently launched a crossword puzzle. It's made to let news junkies like us flex our mental muscles with clues based on what's happening in politics and pop culture. Head on over to the DailyBeast.com slash crossword dash puzzles to play now. It's a great way to pass the time during the coronavirus and it's free. Folks, we've got a new segment today. It's called Welcome to the Resistance. The great thing about Welcome to Resistance is you don't need a pink pussy hat or a rose in your Twitter profile or like mob. an AOC back tattoo.

Oh, God. It's called a tramp stamp. No. See, I can't do the AOC back tattoo because I have my Frederick Hayek tattoo. You know, tattoos are like not a Jewish thing. I'm aware. Okay, good. I mean, I'm not so Jewish, but at least I'm not going to have a tattoo.

So we're kicking off Welcome to the Resistance this week with a slate of people who are from conservative backgrounds and who have suddenly, maybe belatedly. I would even say more than conservative backgrounds for these three. I think these first three, these people have decided. that for whatever reason, Trump has finally crossed a bridge too far. And stop me if you've heard this one, that everything Trump touches dies. But I would say they've gotten there in different ways for different reasons. Oh, sure.

We have to welcome the to the resistance. Yes. And I think this week, it's time to kick it off. The one that I was delighted by this weekend, because it was both everything Trump touches dies and welcome to the resistance, Jeff Beauregard Sessions. I'm pretty sure it's Jefferson. I believe you are correct. It is, in fact, Beauregard. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions.

The fact that he got into a Twitter brawl with Trump this weekend. Yeah. I could hear it across the country. Siri, order more popcorn. But I would say this about Jeff Sessions. He really sucks. And if he hadn't supported Trump, there would be no Trump. Look, I wrote about it in my first book.

That was a moment that validated Trump for conservatives across the country. Because everyone said Jeff Sessions is a rule of law, limited government, ironbound constitutionalist. And- Still a racist. But yes. And it gave Trump a green light with so many of these people. And as Attorney General, aside from the Russia thing, he was a full party to all the anti-immigration stuff.

He was a full party to the, we can't have people coming here from Muslim countries. And he played the entire Trump game. White nationalist agenda. To the hilt. This was not a guy. Had any bona fides as some sort of secret progressive rhino waiting to sneak out into the light. No, he's a real racist.

You mentioned he's a racist a couple times, I picked up on that. Everything bad in this administration has come from his office, right? Like Stephen, Santa Monica, Gerbils, Miller came from this administration. This leads to our next person in Welcome to the Resistance, doesn't it? Yes, it does. Because, folks, I can't even begin to wrap my head around this one. So this weekend, a fan of Jeff Sessions saw the president's attacks on the former Attorney General

and now U.S. Senate candidate, in which Trump endorsed Tommy Tuberville, who is a former Alabama football coach, and who was also a former coach at Miami back in the day. But Ann Coulter blew up on Donald Trump, because Trump tweets, three years ago after Jeff Sessions recused himself, the fraudulent Mueller scam began. Alabama do not trust Jeff Sessions. He let our country, capital C, down. That's why I endorsed coach Tommy Tuberville, a true supporter of our MAGA agenda.

Well, a couple days later, excuse me. Ann Coulter tweets, COVID gave Trump a chance to be a chance to be a. a decent, compassionate human being or pretending to be, but he couldn't even do that. And is still going at it. Great work in the last Alabama Senate race, Mr. President. Keep it up and we'll have zero Republican senators. The next Republican president will be elected in the year 4820. I don't mind that.

Sessions had to recuse himself, you complete blithering, idiot. You did not have to go on Lester Holt Show and announce you fired Comey over the Russian investigation. That's what got you a special prosecutor. It goes on and on and on. She's so angry. She's so torqued up. And now the greatest thing, if you go through her timeline and read the responses, these magas who have loved her as a fierce Trump warrior forever are all of a sudden like, I can't believe they got to you, Anne.

What happened to you? Why did the big lib media get you? Did it Sos? Was it Bill Gates? Did they inject you with a virus tracking chip? This is the cognitive distance of all of them all the time. They see this moment where somebody goes, oh, my fucking God, I can't deal with this anymore. I'm done.

And they don't look at it as an opportunity to say, well, maybe I should think this through. They look at it as how could she have betrayed the great and glowing dear leader? So Anne Coulter, welcome to the resistance. Yeah, you can have her, man. Well, I know there's already been a sequel to everything Trump touches dies, but the third book in the series should be, and they deserve it. Okay, I like it. Sorry. I know, I like it.

I'll pitch it to my age. They deserve it. I mean, really, these people, they came for the racism, but they didn't like the vulgarity. They came for the tax cuts and stayed for the racism. What's your welcome to the resistance of this week? So we have Matt Drudge. Would that be woke Matt Drudge? Woke Matt Drudge of the Drudge Report, who has completely...

I think when I read it, I always think he really does care about if this virus is not controlled, we're going to lose like 2% of the American population. Matt has always had this special place in our media ecosystem since 1997 or 8, I guess. That place in the ecosystem is he is always... always been on that pulse. And people interpret him as conservative on some levels, but he is in touch with what people are thinking about and talking about. And this drift of his away from pure Trumpism has kind of terrified his Trump supporters. They're really bothered by it. Yeah, Trump is clearly worried about it. And well, he should be. I mean, he won because of this free media. It's reached the point where there are now other sites that want to be news aggregators to compete with Drudge. Like the Bongino report.

There are other aggregators out there on the right, but none of them have ever posted any traffic. I mean, the guy is still this machine of traffic and still this driver of enormous numbers of eyeballs every day. And he's covering this thing on the economic front, on the health front. And in fact, and Coulter's this weekend meltdown is covered on the front page of drudge today. Coulter downloads on a quote, you complete blithering idiot. He's trying to lose and take the Senate with him. That old no enemies to the right thing is not working for them the way they thought. Matt Drudge is, I wouldn't say he's fully woke, but he's definitely not just batting for

Team Trump this time around. 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 from The Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science who 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. We're just getting started and don't want you to miss an episode. If you'd like to follow us on Twitter, I'm Molly JongFest, and he's the Rick Wilson.

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