The Daily Beast Podcast - Lauren Boebert Proves the One Thing She Needs is Class

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

On this week’s episode of The New Abnormal, hosts Andy Levy and Danielle Moodie delve deep into the lack of class shown by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) this week. Then, author Mike Rothschild is here to tell us all about his new book. Plus! Jeffrey Lewis, a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies on the Non-Proliferation and Terrorism Studies, joins us to share the reason we’re all still here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy, and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What an excellent show we have for you today. Author Mike Rothschild

was here to tell us all about his new book, Jewish Space Lasers, the Rothschilds, and 200 years of conspiracy theories. Then, Jeffrey Lewis, a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies on the Non-Proliferation and Terrorism Studies, joins us to tell us all about his upcoming podcast, the reason we're all still here. But first, let's have some fun. Beetlejuice. Barbara said. Beetlejuice. You know, nothing spells class better than Lauren Bobert. So here we are.

Lauren Boebert decides to take in some theater and Colorado and can't manage, I guess, not to vape for what, a two-hour fucking show or not record? Because apparently what is she doing on the side? is she going to sell bootlegs out of her fucking car? I don't know. But Lauren Bobert made headlines this week for being the classless piece of trash that she is. And it's just a consistent reminder to me, Andy, of like how just, I don't even know if it's how far, how deep. Just like I continue to say, this Republican Party is filled with gutter rats when you decide that Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Bobert are going to be your.

standard bearers. And this recent, don't you know who I am, like action by her is, it gives you everything that you need to know. I'm looking at this story of her behavior at this Beetlejuice, the musical performance. And I'm thinking of myself, she couldn't stop vaping. She's got her phone out taking pictures. She won't shut up. And she's making out with the guy next to her. And I'm like, do you think you're a zoomer? Because you're 36 years old and you're acting like a teenager. It's just, it's so pathetically funny. But just, oh, God, she is so classless.

And it's just, I don't know. I used to always call her the Bobo Duke. But now it might have to be, it might have to be Bobo Juice. Bobo Juice. I don't know. But it's just so sad. But the video of her being escorted out and her giving the finger to the security people, It's just just the absolute lack of class is hilarious.

Yeah, I'll just say this. I don't know how these people sit around and look at themselves and how they have just taken on this new, I mean, you know what? Here's what I will say. I actually blame John McCain. I do. I blame McCain for this. Because had he never brought us Palin and her Joe fucking six-packed,

and her hockey mom bullshit, that opened the door to this type of trash and like for them to just degrade themselves from that moment on. And, you know, they thought it was, you know, folksy with Palin and look at us, it's real America. And what they're showing us is that their idea of real America is actual trash. That's all. Yeah, I just feel like assuming she remarries at some point, she will probably. be the future star of Real Housewives of Colorado. I just, that's what I see

for her in the future. The accuracy. It reminds me when they tried to give Sarah Pal on that reality TV show and they were like, oh, Jesus, what have we done? Right, because like when we started to really unpack her family,

Jesus Christ, did I not want to open that Pandora's box and wish that we could close it, wrap it in, you know, a bunch of fucking tape and bury it. at the bottom of the sea. But like, dear God, I mean, it was just like, wow. Just anyway. So I blame McCain for this.

You know, you could have found a better person to run and keep actual some kind of dignity of what it meant to be like a statesperson. And these people, and I had to really find a word for people, it's not it. It's not it. Dear friends. Yeah.

Speaking of what else is not it, apparently, uh, the Fulton County judge overseeing the RICO case out of Georgia, Judge Scott McAfee, has ruled this week in favor of severing the trials for 17 of the defendants, including former twice impeach rapist 91 charge Trump from the two other defendants who asked for a speedy trial, which are Kenneth, uh, Chesboro, Cheeseboro, nobody knows how to pronounce this man's name, and Sidney Powell. Their trial is scheduled for October 23rd, right before Halloween. Yay. And I think what's interesting about this, I mean, McAfee says that basically the only reason

why he's doing this is, quote, beginning with the logistical concerns, the Fulton County Courthouse simply contains no courtroom adequately large enough to hold all 19 defendants, their multiple attorneys, and support staff. the sheriff's deputies, court personnel, and the state's prosecutorial team. He wrote in his ruling and he said, quote, relocating to another larger venue raises security concerns that cannot be rapidly addressed. And I'll be honest, I agree with him. Like, understand Fannie Willis's reasoning, right? Which is that essentially in this RICO case, these defendants are not being charged with their piece of the conspiracy machine.

they're being charged with the entire machine. And so her feeling is that by moving forward with Powell and Chesboro, essentially they're laying out all of their cards, which are going to be the same cards dealt in the case and trial for the other 17. And that it's going to be repetitive and how are you going to get, if it's going to be televised, how are you going to go forward and get a jury that is like a quote unquote clean jury that is not prejudiced by what they've heard and what they've seen because we know that this is going

to be the most watched trial because they're going to be the first to go. And if they are convicted, like, we know that that is going to set the tone for the trial of the other 17. So I think that this is the right ruling on logistical terms, but based on what it is that she is thinking about how to do this case, it's not a great ruling for the DA. Yeah, I just, I don't see any, there was no way that all 19 were going to be tried at the same time. And I'm going to say there's no way that the other 17 are tried at the same time. It's just every reason that Judge McAfee gave for severing these two still applies for 17 defendants. The courtroom is not adequately large enough to hold 17 defendants, their multiple attorneys and support staff, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I just don't see how this doesn't end up being further severed. And I remember when we had Ellie Honig from CNN, on, and I said to him that I was surprised that Fonnie Willis said she intended to trial 19 together. And I said, should I have been surprised? And he said, well, he said no, because that's what a prosecutor would want to do. But he said at the time, he said there's basically no way that's going to happen.

And he brought up all the logistical reasons that Judge McAfee did. He basically just said, there's no way to fit them all in the courtroom. And then you're talking about, remember, you've got, if you've got all these defendants and they've all got lawyers, then any time the prosecution brings a witness, you've got 19 sets of lawyers for cross-examination. And he said, it's just, it's too unwieldy. The trial would take years and years and years. There's just no way to do it. So this is probably not a big surprise. And like you said, I agree with the judge for all the logistical reasons. And I just, I don't think we've seen the last of the severance in this case. And we'll continue to follow this, but I think that they'll probably do it in chunks.

I definitely don't think we're going to see like individual trials for each of the rest of the 17 defendants. I still think it's going to be chunked. Yes. And they'll be looped together. So maybe the electors will go together. And then, you know, like the way that Sidney Powell and Chesboro are, you know, together supposedly the intellectual leg of this. I'm sorry, what? Yeah.

You know what I said. I wonder if they will be be chunked by category. So we'll have to just like keep an eye on that. Yeah, by the way, you said we'll continue to follow this. I'm not going to follow it anymore. I'm out. I'm out. Just keep me posted, Daniel.

Yeah, I will. I'll tap you in when you need to know. Text me if something happens. Right. And speaking of something happening, and I hope that you did pick up my text here for this, is that Mitt Romney, everyone's favorite milk toast Republican, has made a big announcement. And his announcement is that he is not going to be seeking re-election. He is saying that, you know, at the ripe old age of 76, that if he were to seek re-election,

he would be in his 80s and that it is time for boomers to move out of the way, including he's extending that sentiment to both Trump and to Joe Biden. My feeling about Mitt Romney is so deep. Because I can't stand him. In the mid-2010s, when his documentary came out, I'd never seen a man that was more disinterested in being president of the United States and more disinterested in doing his job than Mitt Romney. Everyone else around him, right, wanted to anoint him the second coming of the Republican Party,

but he did not have the passion and like the desire whatsoever. And that is what came out. And so when people want to say like, oh, this is terrible news because he was one of the last reasonable ones that were left. And I will ask folks, what the fuck has Mitt Romney done over the last seven years under Trumpism? Was he really out there sticking his neck out, you know, trying to recalibrate the Republican Party to one of decency and integrity and truth? Right. Was he really lambasting against the rise of Donald Trump and Maga? Or was he as tepid as he could possibly fucking be? And knowing that the impeachment was going to fail in the Senate because there weren't

enough Republicans, like, was he out there trying to actively whip the vote and get more Republicans on board or did he just want to be on record? So Mitt Romney's announcement comes and I'm like, okay, peace. I honestly could care less because you did not take on. the weight of trying to regain control over the Republican Party and wrangle it away from Donald Trump that would warrant any type of applause for his behavior over the last seven plus years. Let's not forget that Mitt Romney repeatedly beclowned himself looking for Donald Trump's stamp of approval. He did it in 2012 when he was running against Obama for president. He sought out Trump's endorsement and that in a lot of ways that legitimized Trump and to some extent gave us what happened in 2016 when when Trump ran and won.

And then in 2016, Romney did it again when he was running for Senate. He ate crow and food with Trump at a, I forget if it was a lunch or a dinner. John George's dinner. Thank you, Jesse. I'm less mad at him for what he's done since he's becoming. Senator than you are, I think, Danielle. But I do agree that he went a long way to normalizing Trump. That should not be forgotten nor forgiven. What you said about, you know, look, I think it's a credit to him that he voted for impeachment. You talk about him. Did he whip for it? I think Mitt Romney,

you know, we've seen now the first excerpts from McKay Coppins' upcoming book about him have come out. Mitt Romney, according to this excerpt, was pretty friendless in Washington. And I'm not sure that him trying to whip anyone would have done anything. I think he became an outsider in his own party. And again, I'm not sitting here saying shed a tear for Mitt Romney because he helped create that party that he was no longer a part of. But it's sort of like the Mike Pence thing. I got to give him credit when he did the right thing, even if he's spent the most of his life not doing the right thing, I guess is how I feel. See, and that is my problem, is that I feel like we continue to give these people credit for doing the bare fucking minimum. And that's how we continue to drop the bar,

lower and lower and lower, so that the likes of Lauren Bobert and Marjorie Taylor Green can slither through. Mitt Romney, while he may have become an outsider in the 2010s, was considered like the new face of the Republican Party. He chose not to use that clout. Do you know what I'm saying? Like he chose not to use the power that was pretty much bestowed. to him and then turns around and essentially gives whatever he has left to Donald Trump. And then you want to turn around and be like, well, this is not who we are. But you had dinner with him, right? Like you kissed the ring.

You bended the knee. You bowed the head. And so now you want to come out and say, well, you know, here, let me air out some of the insider conversations that we're had that we know we're had because we know that Republicans are craven, power-hungry, greedy, egotistical human beings who care about nothing other than what they can extract and consume. Mitt Romney, to me, is like the model of that. He just puts on a softer demeanor and has better hair. She definitely has better hair. And speaking of the continuation of dropping the bar and look who gets to slither through, we haven't talked about this limp gavel in a while.

McArthur. But Kevin McCarthy, my God, has just, I don't know, I wonder when he looks at him, like, does he see a reflection? Like, I don't, I honestly, I really don't know, but has decided that he is going to open up an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. And let me, hold on, I just want to make sure that the listeners are clear on why. Oh, that's right. They don't have a reason. There's no basis whatsoever. And when any Republican has been asked on Fox News and other outlets, what is the reason that they are entering into this impeachment inquiry? The response is, well, that's what we'll learn in the impeachment inquiry. That's not really how it works. Nor can Kevin McCarthy actually go through with proper proceedings by beginning this inquiry with a vote, because guess what? He doesn't

fucking have the votes, much like he didn't have them for his 15 times to begin. become the Fisher Price Speaker of the House. And so what this is is a stunt, as many of their actions that they take are just stunts. But I got to tell you, the best part of the impeachment inquiry, bullshit sham thus far is Matt Gates going on MSNBC to rail against Kevin McCarthy and start their public infighting on one of their most hated cable news outlets. It was chef's kiss. Yeah, look, the only good part of all of this is, as you said, it's intensely

stupid. And between a possible government shut down, this dumbest shit impeachment thing, and everything else, just everything is just exceedingly dumb right now as far as the House Republicans go. But I do, like you said, I do get a kick out of the infighting, and

I do get a kick out of the sort of, it is such a soap opera. Like, you started out, you had Gates, Marjorie Taylor Green and Bobert were like all buddies. And then Bobert and Green got into their little shouting match in the girls' bathroom, of course, as you do in high school. And now they hate each other. Gates and Marjorie Taylor Green were BFFs and they were doing podcasts together and all this fun stuff. And now they're on the complete opposite sides of that. And Marjorie Taylor Green, who a while back hitched her star to Kevin McCarthy, which is one of the

saddest phrases I've ever said in my life, I think. So she's out there defending her, Kevin. And at the same time as, you know, her former best buddy, Matt Gates, is sitting there basically telling McCarthy, if you keep going this way, we're going to take away your speakership. And so all of that is kind of, like, I would rather them spend the time fighting with themselves than ruining the country. The problem is they seem to have found a way to do both at the same time.

And so I need the fighting to become so much more intense that they no longer have the time to ruin the country. That's what we need, I think. Almost all conspiracy theories are rooted in anti-Semitism, and almost all anti-Semitism is rooted in conspiracy theories. So writes Mike Rothschild in his excellent new book, Jewish Space Lasers, the Rothschilds, and 200 years of conspiracy theories. And the fact that to this day, there are people blaming everything from COVID to Joe Biden, stealing. the 2020 election to California fires on this family and or Jews, this seems to bear out his observation. The book is out of September 19th, and he joins me now to talk about it. Mike, thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me. So before we get to the book itself,

let's address the question so obvious that you dealt with it on the cover where it says, no relation. Are you sticking to that story? Because I've seen tweets that suggest otherwise from people. What? Lying on Twitter? How dare you? That is the story. I have not related at all to the Rothschilds of Frankfort, and I talk about this at the sort of the tail end of the book. My father's ancestors came from a different part of Germany. They came over in a different century. And of course, as I write about, the Rothschilds never actually emigrated to the United States. One of the things that kind of hampered them in their business dealings in the late 19th and early 20th century was that nobody in the family wanted to move to the U.S. Right. So yes, totally different part

of Germany. Okay. So in the intro to the book, you say the book itself is not a biography of the Rothschild family. You write, this is the biography of a idea, and it's a simple enough one, that Jews control everything and that the Rothschilds are the kings of the Jews. Yes. That's my question, which is not a question. What made you think of writing this book other than the last name similarity? It's an idea that I've kicked around for a long time, you know, sort of getting into the mythos of the Rothschilds, why this family is talked about so much. Who are they really? What is the fake version of them? What is the real version of them, where do they intersect? And then in writing my last book about QAnon, I delved into

the Rothschilds get mentioned a lot in Q&N, their control of all the central banks and their human hunting lodges in Austria. And I thought, hmm, those things don't sound like they're real. And exploring those myths will probably kick open a lot of other doors for a lot of other things that aren't real. And that's really where it started was finding out why does this name keep coming up over and over and over again. Okay, so let's talk a little about the family based on what you've written in the book. So in 1744, Meyer Rothschild is born in Frankfurt, Germany. He becomes what's known as a court Jew to William, the crown prince of the Holy Roman Empire. What is that exactly? So a court Jew, and there's a number of different names for it, they'll be called like court factor

or court banker, is essentially a high-ranking Jewish member of the community who is available to royalty to make loans, to broker deals on coins or medals or money changing. Some of these things that Christians were not allowed to do because of prohibitions on lending and interest. So it really was, hey, we can't do this. Let's get one of those people to do it. And they've got connections to their community to other groups of Jewish people and other parts of the Holy Roman Empire, other parts of the world. So it essentially was a window into Jewish money that royals would use to build buildings, build churches or finance wars. And as you show in the book, this position often didn't work out well for the particular court Jew. But in Myers case, it kind of does. And he becomes a wealthy man.

He has a large family. And that family becomes the Rothschilds that we all know to this day, both in conspiracy and in fact. So let's talk about the conspiratorial side. It's one of Meyer's sons, Nathan, who in 1815 is financially involved in the Battle of Waterloo on the anti-Napolian side. But this leads to a huge conspiracy theory that's sort of the backbone of many of the other conspiracies about the family and echoes to this day. Tell us about it and explain how Satan was involved. Ah, yes, Satan. So by the second decade of the 1800s, the Rothschild family is enormously rich. Now, Mayor has died at this point.

He dies in 1812. His sons have gone to the different financial capitals of Europe really slowly over about 20 years and started their own branches of the family. So Nathan has gone to London. James has gone to Paris. There's a couple of others. One goes to Vienna. And they start making the Rothschilds essentially a Europe wide bank. And they make an enormous amount of money off the Napoleonic Wars. They are laundering the money of the elector of Hess, who was one of the highest ranking officials in the Holy Roman Empire, but who had to hide his money from Napoleonic forces. So mayor and his son Nathan cook up a system where they are moving gold back and forth across the English. channel and selling that gold to finance the armies fighting against Napoleon. Now, all of this comes to a head at the Battle of Waterloo, where the Rothschilds, it should be said, are massively over-leveraged. They bought way too much gold, anticipating that the conflict would go on much longer. Instead, of course, Napoleon is soundly defeated. The Napoleonic Wars end, and the Rothschilds end this period by being one of the richest families in Europe. And there is a legend that is born about

30 years after the battle that Nathan was at the Battle of Waterloo. And seeing that the French were about to lose, he gets on a fine stallion and rides across Europe at midnight to the Belgian port of Ostend, braves a once in a century channel storm, gets to the London Stock Exchange, just as the battle is going on, he slumps against his favorite pillar and all of the other bankers are looking at him going, Rothschild knows the English are defeated and they start selling off their stocks. And of course, you know, Nathan being a KG Rothschild is sending little hand signals to his agents to buy up all the stocks. And the news of the French defeat gets to the London Stock Exchange. These stocks explode in value. And Nathan is suddenly the richest man in England. This is the legend.

None of this happened. This is a preposterous story. But it catches on 30 years after the battle because it's printed in an anti-Semitic pamphlet written under the pen name Satan. And this is the beginnings of a very anti-Semitic spasm in Paris linked to the revolutions of 1848 as the new socialist movement is casting a shadow against wealth and of course who is wealthier than the Rothschilds at that point. Right. Shortly after that, we get the publication of Edouard Drummond's 1200-page anti-Semitic creed called Jewish France. And that really codifies the idea of the Rothschild family as a sinister cabal. And then right on the heels of that, we have the Dreyfus Affair. Right. So, anti-Semitism, particularly in Europe, is very cyclical. It will come up. It will be hugely promoted

in pamphlets and books. There will be counter pamphlets and books. It will go on for a couple of years and then it will sort of die down and something else will happen. And then in another generation, it'll happen again. We see that in the late 1840s and we see that in the 1880s. Jewish France is a massive, massive hit in France. It sells something like 500,000 copies when the population of France was 40 million. It's reprinted dozens and dozens of times. And then, of course, the Dreyfus affair happens. So you have this massive appetite for anti-Semitic literature, this massive industry pumping out anti-Semitic literature. And, you know, there's a lot of echoes of what's going on today where you have a population that is looking for alternative theories as to

what the Jews are doing. And look, here is a whole industry of people offering these things in all manner of book and pamphlet. I believe these days we call that doing your own research. Right. Yes. Okay. So I want to jump ahead a bit. World War I and the subsequent banking crisis of 1931, not great for the Rothschilds in Europe. And then, of course, that banking crisis helped pave the way for the Nazi Party takeover of Germany. But let's shift to America, because that's where we live. It's where you say the legend of the Rothschilds was greatly out of proportion with their presence. Their presence was, as you intimated earlier, basically nil, right? Right. The Rothschilds do not have an American branch. They are confounded by the litany of state, federal,

local town level laws. It's much too complicated for the Rothschilds. They prefer much more direct approach where a prime minister or a king or prince says, I need eight billion francs in gold to buy a canal. And Nathan Rothschild goes, okay, pay me back in a month with interest. And that's what they do. That doesn't really fly in America. So the Rothschild are totally confounded by all the different laws. Nobody wants to move here. It's too remote. It's too much of a backwater. At one point in 18, 1737, an agent of the family is on his way to Havana to check on Rothschild, I think sugar interests in Cuba, stops off in New York, realizes the Rothschilds don't have an agent in New York because their agent went under in the panic of 1837, basically sets up shop for himself. This is a guy named August

Belmont. And if that name sounds familiar, it's because the Belmont stakes and Belmont racetrack are named after his family. Very big in Democratic Party politics. It becomes essentially the Rothschilds man in America for something like 30 years. But the Rothschilds never have a real presence on Wall Street. They never really understand how the American economy works. And by the time we get to the 20th century, they have no real presence here. They are vastly outweighed in wealth by Morgan, Rockefeller, all of the homegrown American oligarchs. But my understanding is that if you look at the history of 19th century America, Nathan Rothschild forced England into the war of 1812, James de Rothschild caused the panic of 1837, caused the civil war in order to keep America weak,

and hired John Wilkes Booth to assassinate Lincoln, all of this in the service of making more money for the family. Well, sure, that's not in the real history books, but, you know, we know what's going on. Yeah, that's really where the legend outstrips the reality. The Rothschilds are linked by subsequent generations of cranks to all manner of activities, to the assassination of Lincoln, to the attempted assassination of Andrew Jackson, to a plot between a couple of the Rothschilds to divide up the United States and send soldiers of their secret world government into Mexico to invade the South. It really sort of goes on and on, but all of this stuff comes out decades and decades after all of these things happened. All of these are post hoc inventions.

This seems to be a pattern with the Rothschilds where these theories come much later. You mentioned earlier with the Battle of Waterloo that the Nathan Rothschild conspiracy theory arose 30 years later. And you say in the book here that a lot of these 19th century conspiracies that I ran through, it was really toward the latter end of the 19th century and into the 20th century that these come up. And you mentioned particularly during the Depression, the role that people like Father Coughlin played in spreading these. Yeah, a lot of these things come up much later, I think because these are times when there is a scapegoat that is needed. You know, you have this worldwide banking crisis, and it is very easy to

blame this on the overly powerful and overly wealthy Jewish bankers, and of course, who is the most well-known of the Jewish bankers at that time, it's still the Rothschilds. So it's very easy to pin these things on the family, and also because there's nobody around to refute them. The people involved in this stuff have been gone for generations. The Rothschilds themselves really never addressed these rumors. So it's almost like one of those, I dare you to prove me wrong kinds of things. and no one really can prove them wrong. Of course, they can't be proven correct, but that's never how these people operate. Right. Okay. For example, something we hear a lot about even to this day is that the Federal Reserve was set up through the backing of the Rothschilds and it was all about, you know,

them gaining more power and more money. Give me a one word answer to this question. What actual role did the Rothschilds play in the founding of the Federal Reserve? Zero. There were no Rothschilds present at the meetings on Jekyll Island. to launch the Federal Reserve. There were only six people there. I think one of them was Jewish. The Rothschilds would not have been invited. There would have been no reason to invite a European family to hash out the intricacies of American central banking. They had no role in it whatsoever. Yeah, it's just amazing because that theory is an incredibly strong one even to this day. And speaking of this day, for time purposes, I'm going to jump past World War II, which

unsurprisingly was not great for the Rothschild family. The post-war era sees the rise of a bunch of media connecting the Rothschilds to what we now know as New World Order-type conspiracies, books like Which Way Western Man and None Dare. These books are then admired and regurgitated to this day, again, by the likes of David Ike, Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, and QAnon types. So that sort of brings us to where we are now, right? Yeah. And one of the things I really wanted to do with the book is trace sort of how we got to where we are now based on the propaganda, the conspiracy theories of the immediate post-war and the interwar period. So you really can draw a straight line from Alex Jones right now through Nundare-Dar-Call a conspiracy, through Eustace Mollins

and his book, Secrets of the Federal Reserve, to people like Ezra Pound, the pre-war isolationist movement. All of these things are connected, and the through line really is the Rothschilds. Yeah, it's amazing. In these books, the Nondare-Call a conspiracy, which way Western man, And it is unreal the extent to which these books have been mainstreamed almost by so many right-wing figures these days. Yeah, these are hugely popular books. Glenn Beck was routinely touting stuff by the British fascist Nesta Webster, routinely talking about some of these books.

You know, Pat Robertson's book, The New World Order, completely launders the protocols of the Elders of Zion. You've got references to behold a pale horse, a none dare call a conspiracy in conspiracy materials right now. And these are, they're not good books. I do not recommend trying to read any of them, but they have a certain power in just the tonnage of accusations that they make, the sheer tonnage of words that they use. They seem really smart and really learned. They're really not. And then, of course, there's Marjorie Taylor Green and her titular Jewish space lasers, which isn't exactly what she said, right? Right. And going through all the materials,

I read her post. And she doesn't ever use that for. She never says Jewish space leisure. She never says Jewish. She of course does mention the Rothschild is part of this cockamamie scheme between Pacific Gas and Electric and Salarin and Diane Feinstein and Jerry Brown and all this other nonsensical crap. But that phrase itself is not in that post, which, you know, I hate to give her credit, but you've got to give her like one-tenth of one percent of credit. But it gave you the title of a book. So it gave me a great title for a book. Yeah. Okay. So so far you've shot down. every conspiracy theory about the Rothschilds. But surely even you will admit that the family did kill Stanley Kubrick because eyes wide shut got too close to the truth, right? They, you know, they saw the first cut in the movie and they say, well, we can't have that out in the open and

can't have our orgies exposed to the public. Got to get rid of them. But this is an actual theory, right? Yes. So this is where I talk about the Rothschilds and their imprint in popular culture, are both kind of things written about them and popular culture conspiracy theories about them. So the idea that Lord Jacob Rothschild was the model for Mr. Burns, things like that. And the Kubrick thing is really interesting because there actually is a Rothschild connection to Kubrick. So the exteriors for the mansion where the orgy scenes and eyes wide shot were shot is actually, it was a Rothschild property. It's called Mentmore Towers. It's owned by the Maharishi Foundation now.

it has been since the early 70s. There's nothing occult about it. But you have even that most tenuous sliver of a connection. And it's enough for these people to go, well, the Rothschild didn't like what he was doing. And they bumped him off with the heart attack gun. That's absolutely unbelievable. So before I let you go, I want to ask, you call George Soros the Rothschilds of the 21st century. I obviously understand why you do that. And it makes perfect sense. But considering that Rothschild conspiracies are still with us, how does that work? So it's really that Soros has taken the place in popular culture that the Rothschilds would have had in the last couple of decades. So really, you know, Soros is the one who is referred to right off the bat. If something happens

while it's Soros, the way maybe 30 years ago would have been something happens while it's the Rothschilds. You know, the Rothschilds are still out there, but they're almost in the sort of emeritus field of conspiracy theories. They're almost. so ubiquitous that you don't even talk about them. Anytime you say globalist or European bankers or London financiers, it's almost like that community knows you're talking about the Rothschilds. You don't even have to say it anymore. And also they're now sort of, they've reached like Illuminati status, haven't they? They really have. It's almost like there are so many things blamed on the Rothschilds and the Rothschilds themselves are so diminished in the wealth and

power that they have. You know, there's no Rothschilds on the Forbes richest list. They really don't even have total control over their own companies anymore. A lot of them aren't even in banking anymore. But that name has so much power that you fall back on it without even really understanding why you're talking about it. You're just talking about it because you've heard the name before. And that's really the nexus of why I wanted to write the book. It's absolutely fascinating because they've become, it's almost like it's become a generic

term, as you said. And it's absolutely amazing. Mike, thanks so much for being here. The book is Jewish space late. The Rothschilds and 200 years of conspiracy theories. It's a riveting read. I highly recommend it. And thanks again for being here, Mike.

Well, thank you. Folks, I am very excited to welcome to the new abnormal, Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, who is a scholar at Middlebury Institute of International Studies on Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies. He's also the founder of arms controlwank.com, a leading resource on disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation issues and is going to be the host of the upcoming podcast the reason we're all still here. Dr. Lewis, first I will start off with this, which is with everything that we are battling with in this country around the globe. What is your feeling and sense of our ability to disarm at a time?

when it seems like everyone, and I mean every country and every person in this country in America, seems to be arming up. Oh, yeah, it's not great. I mean, this is one of the funny things about life is we seem to be living in this era in which all the signs are pointing us in the opposite direction of where we want to be. And so I am old enough. I grew up in the Cold War, and I remember that ever-present fear. of nuclear annihilation. And it is wild to me that we are like signing up to do all this again,

but in stereo. You know what's really interesting is when I think about the issues, particularly that Gen Z, the younger generation now cares about and are concerned about in terms of when we're thinking about impending doom, nuclear war is not on that list. It's climate change, it's bodily autonomy, its democracy in this country as a whole. And I'm curious, with your area of expertise, where should our concern be around nuclear war at this time? Well, you know, the way I look at it, and this is really the fundamental idea behind the podcast, is in a profound way, it is all the same problem. We had created a podcast about the story of the Iran nuclear deal, which is how the Obama administration came to try to solve this problem diplomatically.

That deal collapsed. And in the kind of wreckage of that, we spent a lot of time asking this question, like, why are governments so bad at cooperating? Because particularly if you look at climate change or say our response to pandemics, it's exactly like nuclear weapons in the sense that we have some problems that are too big for a government to solve by itself. And they actually require you to cooperate with governments that you don't like. To me, there was almost a kind of ideology of, you know, I don't know what you would call it,

the ideology of assholery. I think that connects people who don't believe in a woman's bodily autonomy to people who refuse to work with other countries to address things like climate change, to the people who are really enthusiastic about running an army. race and risking that level of destruction, right? There is, I would say, a fairly common ideology that is at its heart pretty selfish and self-centered and not great at cooperating. And that's a depressing thought, right? The point of the podcast was to tell the stories of regular people who don't work for any government, just private citizens who take these kinds of big questions

and make them their own. So, you know, most of the stories in the reason we're all still here aren't even about arms control. They're not about nuclear weapons. There are stories about dealing with biological threats. There are stories about dealing with space debris. It's really designed to ask this question, how do regular people work to make this world like a little less insane? It's interesting that you ask that question because when I think about your field of work, and I think about how Hollywood has depicted it, just this past summer, you had one of the biggest blockbusters, not Barbie, but the other one, Oppenheimer, was a huge blockbuster all around the testing of this, weapon of mass destruction, this nuclear weapon. Do you feel as if nuclear war in some way has been

almost glamorized and glossed over in the way that we talk about this thing, but we actually don't necessarily, for instance, talk about the people whose lives were ruined, whose countriesides were destroyed in Hiroshima at the dropping of said weapon. Like, we talk about the pre, but not the post effect of actual nuclear war. Oh, that's a feature, not a bug. It's one of the worst and most distorting aspects of our discourse. I'm actually a member of the governor of Hiroshima's roundtable on disarmament. So I go to Hiroshima every year. What I observe is that when I am in Washington talking about nuclear weapons, there is a taboo against discussing their effects. So if you're the person who shows up in a meeting, if you're a man like me

at a, you know, like nice suit and tie, if I start talking about what nuclear weapons do to human beings, people would look at me like I'm crazy, right? And I would be excluded from the room, which is its own kind of insanity because there is, this kind of agreement to not talk about the reality of these weapons. And so I think that's a profound myopia. And again, it's one of the things we kind of wanted to get at with the podcast, which is sometimes you need an outsider. You need that person who isn't worried about getting invited back. You need that person who's willing to say that uncomfortable or difficult thing. And frankly, you need that person who's willing to walk into a field where it's allegedly none of their business and say, like, actually, it is my business. And you are not doing this right. And I have something to contribute. And so, you know, we found those stories, again, whether they involve nuclear weapons or illegal fishing. We found the stories of people who decided that they could make this their business and that they could push governments to do the right thing. Really inspiring and empowering at a time in which the

feelings are in short supply. I think about it almost when you're when you're talking about the fact that it's this unspoken agreement of not talking about the effects of these nuclear weapons on the humans that they're being used on. And I think about it similarly in the way that we talk about gun control in this country and the AR-15. We don't ever really talk about what the bullets from an AR-15 do to the human body, like what it was intended to do, which is to tear it to shreds, make it unrecognizable. Similarly, just eviscerate through nuclear war like immediately tens of thousands of people just all in one clip. There's this disassociation that we have between the things that we say are necessary in civilized society like arms. It's necessary for us to have for these great

what-ifs. But we never really have genuine conversations around why. Why? why we run countries based on fear rather than the facts of what we know these weapons of war actually do. I think that's an absolute ideological choice that gets made by people who want certain outcomes. Because if you really look the bargain that we have made with nuclear weapons squarely in the face, a lot of people would look at the arrangements we have made for our security and say, like, maybe that's okay for now, but this is not a long-term solution. And I think the place I see this play out is in the way people react to the possibility that the war in Ukraine might escalate, where people are, for the first time, really you frightened. And that's the deal we made.

I mean, when we say, like, we believe in nuclear deterrence, what we are saying is we believe that the fear that things could get out of control will lead leaders to be. be more responsible. But it doesn't work without that fundamental terror. And when I think you tell people about what the potential costs are, like where that fear should come from, the level of destruction that would occur, I think a lot of people are much more skeptical about nuclear deterrence as a long-term solution than they are at the beginning of that conversation. Can you just give us like a 50,000 foot view as to how we got here that arms and these types of destructive weapons were necessary and necessary evil, I guess, in order to have,

quote unquote, safety, protection, and peace. How is it that we view weapons as a necessity to guarantee peace? Yeah, like nobody had a better idea. Right? Like, I'm just... It's nuts, but it really is a legacy of the Second World War. We emerged from that war with the world in ruins. And everyone sort of agreed, we don't want to do this again, but all of the changes you would need to make were also just completely off the table. You know, I think one of the really interesting things is if you look at the rhetoric around the United Nations at its founding, you know, a lot of people really profoundly realized that a world populated by well-armed governments was going to consistently generate these kinds of wars. And so it's funny,

Their language they use, I think, sounds very naive to us today and very idealistic. But I think they're looking at the destruction and saying, well, the way we've been doing things to imagine that we can keep doing this and not kill ourselves is also quite naive. And so really, nuclear weapons just became embedded in our concept of security. So what we profoundly believe, and I don't really think this is, again, a great long-term solution, but we believe that as long as we have nation states that are separate, and hostile and competing with one another, that the way to keep them in check

is this threat of utter and complete devastation. And so what I find so interesting about nuclear weapons, in this way, I think they are an important metaphor for what it's like to live in this world, is when you do live in a situation in which we can destroy other countries and they can destroy us, it means that no matter how much we might hate them, we actually have a shared interest in survival.

It forces us to consider this otherwise impossible idea that we should cooperate with our enemies in some kind of shared mutual interest. And so that's kind of the animating idea really behind the podcast, which is that's a very unnatural view for a government to have, right? To look at whether it's the bomb or a pandemic or climate change and to say, okay, I don't like these other countries. I don't, we don't share values, we compete, but we do have to get along. And governments are just bad at that. And we just thought it would be great to tell stories of regular people who gave governments that push or set a better example or, you know, sometimes shamed them into doing the right thing. I'd love for you to share like one of the stories that you get into on your podcast.

When we think about what kind of world, society that we want to live in, and we reflect on that, I think that we all, regardless of where we are, have a shared idea around peace and safety and abundance. And yet, when you see groups like the United Nations come together, I feel like those shared values are not the thing that is put front and center. It's not the conversations that are had with any real seriousness and, like, I guess, import to them. Well, you know, I think we just really struggle with the idea of cooperation. I think it is just a deeply unnatural act. And it's very easy to lapse into this language of competition. We have one episode that's on how governments respond to pandemics, which is, you know, something we just lived through. And it was amazing to me to live through that and to know that what we really

need to be doing is cooperating on public health. This is an area where we all really needed to work together because the pandemic was killing vast numbers of people, like really killing them. And one of the reasons we don't cooperate on biological health or public health is because of the fear of bio-weapons, which, okay, that's a legitimate concern, but it's such a distant and hypothetical concern compared to the large numbers of people that are dying right away. There's almost this consistent effort to be like, oh, well, you know, this is a Chinese bio weapon. We desperately want to force the threats we face into these old, I think ultimately

futile templates. We want to turn this into like us against the Chinese because that's familiar and comforting. I remember maybe 20 years ago, there was a person who was, you know, considered himself quite hawkish and he was he was nominated to lead the u.s central intelligence agency he was complaining about how dovish he thought the CIA analysts were and he said the problem with the CIA is they think the real threat from China is the bird flu you know and his idea was that things like pandemics were a joke compared to china's military threat but like in terms of military activities we haven't killed that many of each other but you know in terms of pandemics that really does kill people so I think we love these

templates of competition and we are very reluctant to embrace modes of cooperation. There are a couple of stories in the podcast I just love. But if one thing unites all of the stories, it's that people who are outside government are willing to take a chance and invest themselves, their time, their emotions into pushing governments to do the most unnatural thing, which has worked together. Well, Dr. Lewis, I love this. I love the entire concept of your upcoming podcast, the reason we're all still here.

And I encourage everyone to take a really good listen to it. Really appreciate you making the time to join the new abnormal. My pleasure. Andy Levy. Daniel Moody. Andy, how are we closing out this good, good week with your fuck that guy? All right. I think I've done Ron DeSantis.

my last 24 fuck that guy's in row or something like that. It feels like it anyway. And I came close again today, but I decided, I'm going to give Ron a day off so he can enjoy some of his free plane trips and whatever else he does. And I'm going to go with, I really can't stand this guy. It's Bill Maher. There's a couple reasons for it.

First of all, he goes on Joe Rogan show. There's a reason number one. Well, yes, of course. And as Twitter user Kanekoahua, the great. transcribed. Rogan says to him, you're like a 90s liberal back when they were more reasonable before they came leftists, which is the usual bullshit you hear these days. And then here's Mars answer. He says, the woke believe race is first and foremost the thing you should always see everywhere, which I find interesting because that used to be the position of the Ku Klux Klan.

There was so many things idiotic about what he said, beyond the fact that he's obviously comparing people who want an end to racism with people who championed racism. That's the obvious thing. He doesn't seem to understand that the reason so many people have to be concerned with race is because of the Ku Klux Klan and because of the popularity that groups like that have had throughout American history. So he's just, he is so ignorant and I don't find anything about him funny. Most comedians feel the same way about him. Norm MacDonald had a great quote about him,

basically saying he was the most unfunny person who called himself a comedian that Norm had ever met. But he's just, he's so ignorant and he's now just this, you know, I hate to say it. He's just a dumb old white guy pining for the way things used to be. And that is a sickness in this country. And it needs to go away. And I mean, it will eventually.

for obvious reasons that I assume I don't have to spell out. But it needs to go away more quickly than that. So that's reason number one. And then just throw on top of that the fact that he is taking his show back on the air, even though there's a rider's strike on. He's basically a scab. I don't really know how else to say it. And he's just, he's such a piece of shit human being.

And I just, that's it. He's a piece of shit human being. Fuck that guy. I'm done. Bill Maher fell from any type of grace for me. a very long time ago. One, he's an Islamophob. And I said some of the most disgusting things on his show and has used it to platform hate and believes that because he considers himself to be some type of white moderate, that his opinions about other groups are warranted and they're not.

And the idea that you have this very privileged old white man wanting to compare people being conscious to the system of white supremacy and how it has invaded every single aspect of our society and is responsible for so much trauma and harm to the KKK, which is an organization that was created to terrorize and do harm, that a man that has never experienced any type

of true, like, you know, racialized oppression then wants to tell people who are, lifting their voices and using their platforms to bring attention to it. That is why Bill Maher, like, should have been taken off the air so fucking long ago. I don't know who the fuck watches him and listens to him, but you all should not. He is a fraud and is exactly the kind of quote unquote white moderate Dr. King warned us about. Fuck that guy. So, Danielle, are you going to keep Ron DeSantis streak alive or are you going to break it?

I am lumping him in with the entirety of the Republican Party for my fuck that guy. More importantly, let me say this. How topsy-turning things have become that I can think that things that George W. Bush says at this state and time are correct is just shows you where the Republican Party has gone, that the man who invaded an entire country based on a lie was anti-gay. and all of these things that I am agreeing with him because his program, which he began, I think back in 2003, the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a largely successful African HIV prevention program,

is under threat by House Republicans for not receiving funding, which is set to expire on September 30th. According to LGBTQ Nation, quote, congressional Republicans are falsely claiming that the program promotes abortion and using its refunding as a bargaining chip in budget negotiations. I just want to state very clearly that this program, a PEPFAR, it has been estimated to have saved over 25 million lives. 25 million lives. But this is something that Republican representatives in the House,

house want to use as a bargaining chip. And what George W. Bush has said is that, quote, there is no program more pro-life than PEPFAR. And that's, you know, again, just goes to show you that this is not your grandparents, parents, parents, Republican Party. These people do not give a fuck about life, because I had this thought the other night, because this is what I think about at night, which is, you know, if you are so pro-life, if giving birth is, you know, the most important thing, why does the Republican Party treat women like such trash? Why don't they offer any type of policies that produce the health and well-being of what they actually see, which is just people with uteruses as incubators? Why wouldn't you do everything then to create policies

that would make ensure the health and well-being of said incubators, because you don't give a fuck. And so this, again, goes to show you that when we keep looking for these good Republicans, there aren't any. They don't care. They're not pro-life. And they sure as fuck don't care about black people. So let's just be 100 on that.

And so for that reason, the entirety of the Republican House of Representatives, led by their Fisher-Price puppeteer of a fucking sports, speaker is my fuck that guy. Yeah, I have to think that, you know, someone probably said, you know, hey, we have this program and it's saved 25 million lives in Africa. And a bunch of Republicans are like, is that supposed to be a good thing? Right. A hundred percent.

That was absolutely a negative for them. Fuck those guys. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend. keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you

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