The Daily Beast Podcast - ‘Look! Trump Didn’t Poop Himself! Yay! Good Job, Donald!’

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

You’d think they’d have learned by now, just a few weeks from the end of the Trump presidency. But people are still falling for the same head fakes and tricks.  Take, Molly Jong-Fast says, Trump���s recent trip down to Georgia. “It was one of those many Trump's speeches where you saw on Twitter for the first 15 minutes people were like, ‘sometimes Trump can stick to the teleprompter’; ‘teleprompter Trump, bravo for just, like, reading the words.”  And then, of course, things went off the rails. Like they always do.  “These people always give him credit for doing things like, ‘Oh, look, he didn't poop himself! Yay! Good job, Donald!’ It is endlessly baffling to me that in the last 40-plus days of this goddamn hellish shitshow of an administration, there are still people in the media and the Republican party trying to normalize Donald Trump, trying to say, ‘Oh yeah, this is okay. This is cool. It's just a little weird. Yeah. He's not, not that far off the beaten path.’ When in fact it is completely cuckoo pants,” replies Rick Wilson on the latest episode of The New Abnormal. Rick then gets a little worked up about how Trump is spending his last few days in office doing anything but actually, y’know, being president.  To which Molly replies: “Trump hasn't worked this entire time. So it wouldn't be odd for him to start now?” Plus! The team wrestle over whether the Democrats can ever sell “socialism.” Molly airs out Rudy Giuliani for getting the experimental COVID treatments the rest of us can only dream of. Rick reveals which Trump body part “smells like honeysuckle and rainbows and victory.” Chris Colbert joins the dynamic duo to talk about the “Say Their Name” podcast. And Kathy Griffin stops by to talk about what it’s like to be blasted by Trumpist cancel culture and accused of cyber terrorism. “I don't know how many terrorist groups are trying to get a 60-year-old, wacky, red-haired, vulgar comedian. So I would not typically think of myself as a terrorist,” she quips. Want more? Become a Beast Inside member to enjoy a limited-run series of bonus interviews from The New Abnormal. Guests include Cory Booker, Jim Acosta, and more. Head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com to join now. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi folks, it's Rick Wilson, and welcome to The Daily Beast's The New Abnormal. Hi, I'm Molly Jongfast, a left-wing pundit and editor-at-large at the Daily Beast. I'm also an editor at The Daily Beast, a former Republican political strategist, best-selling author, and full-time troublemaker. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, business, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. I'll try to keep Rick to the minimum number of F-bombs and try to keep our... kids, pets, and other wildlife sounds from invading our respective bunkers. Hello, Molly John Fast. Hello, Rick Wilson.

Are you being well-behaved? Or are you being naughty? It's the time of year when we're keeping track of those things. I think people should be significantly more worried about you than May. But that's just my opinion. Well, I don't disagree with the risk factor of me engaging in behavior that could be considered on the naughty list. But here we are. Here we are.

So, Molly, do you know what magical thinking on the Republican Party is? this point. Tell me. Some percentage of the Republicans in Congress still believe that Donald Trump will take the oath of office for a second term as president of the United States of America on January 20th. They do. Only 27 Republicans so far have been willing to speak the truth to the American people. D&I Radcliffe yesterday on the money, honey, saying when Trump gets sworn in for a second term, kind of amazing. You know, being the head of the largest intelligence constellation of services in the world, used to be a matter of requiring great patriotism, intelligence, probity, judgment, wisdom, and a cany sense of reality. Rathcliffe is displaying the derogure republicanism of the day, which is, oh, your ass, Donald, it smells like honeysuckle and rainbows and victory.

I mean, get the fuck out of here, you moron. And that guy, we're going to be cleaning up a lot of messes from what I'm hearing in that world in the near future. A lot of messes. We're going to be cleaning up the bullshit Cash Patel and his crew of morons at the Pentagon are doing. Folks, if you're not aware, Cash Patel, who you'll hear about later in the show, he's currently the General Counsel for the Pentagon. He's blocking any action to allow the transition team for the Biden and incoming Biden administration to, oh, I don't know, get briefings at the Pentagon to, you know, get up to speed on national security questions. So it's a hint. If you think he's going to be on the fuck that guy's segment later, you're right.

But, you know, these people are not covering themselves in glory. And these elected Republicans who are such a bunch of chicken shit, low-life, quivering, coward pussies. Tell us what you really think. I know, right? I'm sorry. I'm such a subtle little fainting angel today. These people need to swift kick in the s. They know that they're just dividing the country. They're just breaking the country to pieces. And by continuing these lies, they saw Trump go down to Georgia this weekend. The Donald went down to Georgia as there were too many Twitter jokes this weekend about. Most of our audience would not be, shall we say, probably, aficionados of the Charlie Daniels hit. The devil went down to Georgia from the late 1970s. He was looking for his soul to steal. He was in a bind because

he was way behind and he was willing to make a deal, a beautiful, beautiful deal. Sorry. Molly's like, I have no idea. I can be speaking Urdu right now for all that you understood what I was just I know the song. I know the song. Can we talk for a minute about Trump's very amazing Georgia speech where he waxed on about cucumbers?

Oh, you know, I will say this. Any speech involving cucumbers is a winner. Right. You know, it was one of those. many Trump speeches where, as people are watching it, you saw on Twitter, the first 15 minutes people are like, well, sometimes Trump can stick to the teleprompter. Teleprompter, Trump, bravo for just like reading the words. And then he started going into like normal Trump. These people who always give him credit for doing things like, oh, look, he didn't poop himself.

Yay. Good job, Donald. It is endlessly baffling to me that in the last 40 plus days of this goddamn hellish shit show of an administration, there are still people in the media and the Republican Party trying to normalize Donald Trump, trying to say, oh yeah, this is okay. This is cool. It's just a little weird. Yeah, it's not that far off the beaten path when, in fact, it is completely apeshit cuckoo pants. But don't you think the worst offender in this whole situation is still Mitch McConnell because if McConnell came out and said, like, this has to stop or done, the election is, is about to be certified.

Like, it's over team. Like, this is bad for democracy and bad for the world. All the senators would be like, yeah, yeah. I mean, he holds all the cards here, and he's not doing shit because, you know, it doesn't serve him to do shit. So, I mean, I don't you think this is ultimately about him more than anything else? McConnell is shitty and evil and a variety of other things. He's not the only problem at this point. The concrete on this cultural moment with 70 million people in this country is drying.

It is setting. Republican leaders at every level need to get their shit together. They need to stop this. They need to say outright, look, it's over. Yeah, look, I know that. But there's nothing we can do to change Mitch McConnell. Right. Because he does not care about the country.

Mitch McConnell is a purely power-directed creature. And I've given people this talk a billion, gazillion times. We talked about it on Thursday when we were talking, or Friday, when we were talking about the stimulus, like, and that there needs to be a deal. And you said Mitch McConnell still has no impetus to make a deal. And we have this bipartisan group in the Senate who are trying desperately to get some COVID relief. You pretty much are sure it's not going to happen, right? I seriously think you need to, everyone needs to mentally prepare themselves that Mitch McConnell's goal has shifted. His goal isn't simply dealing with Trump. His goal is now to win a clear majority in the Senate in 2022, to protect, to protect and expand his numbers in the Senate in 2022.

The pathway forward by which he believes that will be accomplished is by blowing up the economy, by causing a market, crash by causing a round of foreclosures and evictions as those protections expire across the country that will damage the Democratic Party. They will lay the blame all on Joe Biden, even though he has done nothing to cause it and is working to mitigate it. There is something very clear here. The future for Mitch McConnell is that of destruction and train wrecking Joe Biden's administration. He's going to do everything he can to do that. He's not going to ever act in good faith. He's not going to ever wake up in the morning and go, man, I'm fucking America. You know what? He thinks

I'm fucking America, yehaw. Not I'm fucking America. Oh, God, I better stop. I shouldn't laugh because it's terrible, but I think it's likely. And it's you know, the real world implications of it are going to be just tragic.

Molly? Yeah? I know you were talking earlier, we were talking earlier about some excellent sushi you had last night. Was any of it perhaps crack and rules? Because, because from what I can tell, the Cracken has been landed on the deck of the ship, filleted into tiny little pieces of delicious sushi, and is now being consumed by the army of irony. This week has not gone well for Rudolph, Jenna, and the rest of the clown posse surrounding the Trump legal effort to,

a, grift money off the pores, and be overturned the election. I mean, first of all, Rudy Giuliani has COVID. How it took him so long to get COVID is a mystery, right? Because, Because he's been running around without a face mask, indoors, doing stuff for months and months and months, while the rest of us have been, you know, social distancing. But then the other thing about this is that Rudy has exposed, like, half of the Republican Party. So anyone who didn't have it. Well, did you hear of the Arizona guys all were exposed to Rudy this week? Like, all the senior leadership of the Arizona Republican Senate are. They closed.

I mean, you know, Representative Dentist, Paul Gosling. You know, all the Maga Caucus of the truly stupid. I mean, the worst, the worst. Whatever, I don't care. The dumbest of the dumb, the worst, the worst. All of them have now been exposed by Rudy Giuliani. But luckily, COVID isn't real, because if it was real, they'd be worried. And it's, of course, real.

Let me say this. Fate occasionally reaches down from heaven and puts a finger on your direction in life. And, you know, Rudy's had that a couple. times in his life. But this direction that fate has directed him to has led to him being in the hospital. And look, part and parcel of Rudy talking about COVID in the Borat movie. Remember that scene before the whole pants fondling thing where he says it's making it up? It's like, oh, that Chinese made it. It's fake. It's this, it's that. It speaks very much to that whole Tom Nichols' death of expertise thing, okay? Is that these people looked at Rudy and said, oh, he's an expert on

COVID. He's an expert on legal matters. He's an expert on election law. But by the way, Rudy's not an election lawyer, guys. Never has been. Okay? Never has been an election lawyer. It's a specific, like... And it turns out, according to the New York Times, Jenna Ellis is not either. Apparently, Jenna Ellis is not licensed in the, or admitted to the bar in any state? I think she may be in Colorado. No, no, it's that the school that Jenna Ellis taught at does not actually have a law school program. Yes. Nice. But who is counting, I say. I mean, but yeah, no, Jen Ellis is a total fraud and no one is surprised.

But also Rudy Giuliani is a total fruitcake and no one is surprised. And so the two of them have now done 40-something different lawsuits and they've won only one. The idea that these people are good at the lawyering part of law and election law lawing is clearly in the rearview mirror. These are not people who know what the fuck they're talking about. And underreported fact, is a lot of the people that are going into these courtrooms, are a lot of the judges in these courtrooms where they're going in and clowning themselves, are Republicans who are like, get the fuck out of here. You're talking about.

No, I think that's an important point. Also, the other thing I think it's really important when we talk about Rudy Giuliani getting COVID, is Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie, and what's his name, are all getting completely different standard. of medical care, they're all getting this experimental treatment, which Trump got, which is, you know, there are 100,000 doses in America, or maybe there are 200,000, very few doses of it, and these guys are getting it because they're friends with the president. So, like, when there's, when Trump supporters see that Trump gets better right away and is fine and Chris Christie and Rudy

and also Dr. Ben, they, these guys are getting this. highly experimental treatment that most of us, including me and I live in New York, couldn't get. So I think it is really important that there is so much malfeasance going on in the Republican Party when it comes to COVID. But this really may be the worst. I couldn't agree more, Molly. And the idea that COVID denialism was part and parcel of the last year of the Trump maladministration is something we're going to look back. gone and say, did anybody actually ever end up paying a price from Trump world? I mean, Herman Cain was sort of a tertiary figure in Trump's universe. But Rudy being in the hospital, and you know, Rudy is a,

Rudy's a multi-cigar a day guy. There are a lot of, no, I'm not even, no, I'm not being funny. Rudy's, Rudy smokes a multiple cigars a day. A drinker, and in his 70s. And this is not the profile of, of, of an easy ride with COVID. And look, as much as much, As much as I am pissed off at Rudy for shitting on his legacy and for being Trump's stooge and being an idiot for this whole, you know, last five years. Destroying democracy. I don't want anybody to die from COVID, okay? Anybody. I don't even want Donald Trump to die from COVID. Well, they're not. The good news is none of these people are going to die. Luckily, luckily, I think we're going to have all of them to kick around for a lot longer.

But, you know, but hundreds of thousands of innocent people are going to die because. they think COVID isn't right. Two hundred, 265,000 people or more today by today, didn't get remdesivir and special protocols. Right. And those people are going to die or they've already died. And so I do think it's important,

like as we live in this world of misinformation to, you know, talk about this. Well, of course, Molly. I mean, the Trump world is now focused, or Donald Trump is now focused on really important national matters. He's really going to race through the tape in the last 40-plus days of his administration, and he's focused on something that is vastly more important than COVID. Would you care to tell the listening audience what that might be?

Tennis Pavilion? Well, yes, it's the tennis pavilion. Donald Trump is busy, busy, busy right now doing a big old renovation at Mar-a-Lago. Yeah, it's what the world needs. The tennis pavilion is at the White House. Yes, the tennis pavilion is at the White House. The fact that they're upgrading Mar-a-Lago now, and it's become like a big thing he's focused on, It's just like, you know, Barack Obama worked until the last morning he was in office.

George H.W. Bush worked until the last day he was in office. They got the briefings in the morning. They conquered down. They did things. They tried to do the work of the country. Republicans and Democrats stretching back forever. Unless you basically die in office, you work till the, you rub through the tape, as I like to say. Yeah, but Trump hasn't worked this entire time. So it would be odd for him to start now. That's true, Molly. That's very true. I mean, yeah, be like, oh, now is the time that I'm going to.

I mean, that's the thing I don't quite understand is, like, here we are. I mean, even his biggest work day was just him signing executive orders that may or may not come to pass. So, you know, I don't have any illusions about this. And Republicans don't want him to work. because they don't want government, right? I mean, the whole point of Trumpism. Right now they are fundamentally anarchists. Right.

And I also think, like, the whole point of Trumpism is to drown government in the bathtub and to show, you know, to fuck the post office and to, you know, and I think it'll be interesting to see now where all we, right, we have this vaccine, it's probably going to be approved later this week. It's got, we've got, supposedly Pfizer has somewhere between 20 and. 30 million doses, and America's not going to be able to figure out how to get them in people's arms. And we see this coming from a mile away. It would be insane to think that the Trump administration, the administration that has failed on testing and tracing and PPE and ventilators

and this and that, that they are going to suddenly get their shit together when it comes to a vaccine is totally ridiculous. And so we're about to be in a country that has a vaccine. And so we're about to be in a vaccine that people can't get. And I think it's going to really suck. It's my hot tape. Somali Jongfest. Yes, Rick Olson. Georgia was the center of the political universe this weekend. Tell me more. You know, just to the north, the east, northeast of me, I could see a rising pole of dark black clouds, crows, lightning bolts. It's not right. Fell omens. Oh, that was Valdosta where Trump was this weekend. I was like, I want to go fly this weekend. And they're like, F.R all over the damn place.

I'm a god damn it. Gosh, son of a bitch. Join us, Rick Wilson. Join us. This weekend, Trump went down to Georgia. And also, on Sunday, Reverend Warnock debated Kelly Loughler and John Ossoff debated an empty podium.

Well, the most notable thing about that debate, of course, was Kelly Loughler's commitment to fighting the global scourge of communism because, you know, as, as you know, we stand in the very precipice of plunging into a socialist revolution where the, finally, finally the apparatus of bourgeois capitalism would be utterly destroyed and the workers will seize the means of production. Or, as Reverend Warnock said, he supports the American Free Enterprise system, but call it crazy,

she still decided that was full Marxism. And you know, there's a picture of her at Reverend Warnock's church. I did not know that, and that is fucking fabulous. Because, of course, Reverend Warnock's church is Martin Luther King's church. So while Republicans are saying Reverend Warnock is a crazy Marxist lunatic. So wait a second, Molly. You're telling me that the head of the Ebenezer Baptist Church is being attacked as a communist. They're attacking his personal life.

They're saying he hates the police and he's going to destroy America. Yes. So you're telling me that, and I'm saying that everything old is new again, those were the same exact word-for-word attacks on Martin Luther King that were leveled by Georgia racists back in the 1960s. We can go into this in greater depth. Who? Who could have seen it? Who could have seen it comment? Yeah, but it's not also. Like, you could totally see this comment. Oh, well, you can always anticipate that in the era of Trump, the shittiest possible human reaction will be the reaction that is pursued by the Republican Party. Yeah. And it's funny because it's like when you watch her, Kelly Loeffler with the blonde hair.

Walter Shaw was basically making the point that she looks like an android, speaks like an android. There's a good argument that she's an android. But and she is and the talking points. I mean, she keeps bashing down these same Republican talking points. But you know what, Molly, I will say this. I'm going to say this, though. This race is a turnout race where the bases of both parties are being talked to. And they're not trying to reach across the aisle and communicate or persuade. There's a turnout race.

And what did they find out in the 2020 election? Sorry, AOC. The word socialism still scares the living things. fuck out of millions of people in this country. Right. I know. This is something I am going to argue with you for a second. I understand where you're coming from. And I think you're both right and wrong.

Because the thing is, Democrats need to appeal to working voters, right? So obviously, just like with my grandfather, the idea, you know, of socialism as a scourge, right? And it was communism back in the 50s, right? It's the same exact thing, right? They're saying it's a skirt.

It was communism until the 90s, but okay. Right, exactly. It was communism and now it's socialism, but it's basically the same thing. Republicans are telling you to be afraid of this thing, right? So, yes, I understand that. But what if Democrats said, if Democrats were able to articulate, we want to make sure that your employer, you know, can't fire you when you're sick. We want you to have greater protection at your work. We want you to have a public option for health care so that when you get fired, you can get. I mean, if we, if we want companies, to take care of their workers. If you articulated that. You know how you articulate those things to people? You articulate those things to people. You come back, you fire back on the socialist argument. You don't get into these like broke defenses. And look, it is true. Many things we do in this country, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, blah, blah, blah, are socialism in a light sort of American, frothy socialism form. But the brand of socialism in this country, and this is not, opinion. The evidence is sitting right in front of us from this election cycle where 70 million

Americans still sit on, fuck socialism. I don't want that. And it doesn't matter that they don't understand it or they're not looking at the clear definition of it or they haven't, or they're not like schooled in the fucking Marxist dialectic. What matters is the real world as it actually exists in front of us. And that word, as we saw, look, we would be having any of this fucking bullshit recount distraction and chaos. If Joe Biden had won Florida, you know how Joe Biden needed to win Florida? He needed to go down to Miami and do a giant fucking event where he said, Fidel Castro was a goddamn monster and should burn in hell for a thousand years.

And fuck socialism. I'm a free market American capitalist. And I want to take care of the American people. And I want to do things as the head of their government that make their lives better. And we want to improve their health care. We want to improve your education system. And you don't say the word socialism. You have to condemn the theme and the brand of socialism.

It's not going to change American minds until you, divorce it from the fact that for many, many, many, many, many people, especially in Florida. Right. Socialism is married to what often comes with socialism, which is authoritarian statism and murder. Right. But that's a messaging problem, not a message problem. No, it's still a message problem. The problem is Democrats don't want to come out and say socialism doesn't work. It has failed repeatedly, and it's often led to horrifying outcomes. The fact that they can't look at the horrifying outcomes, even if those are not what their intention is or what happened in Sweden for many, many people.

Also, by the way, this country fought a bipartisan war against communism for basically 50 years, a bipartisan war. Except before that, Russia helped America defeat the Nazis. I mean, I'm just saying, I mean, we could go back. Don't mistake a military alliance for an ideological sympathy. I'm not saying that we should all be socialist by any stretch of the United States. imagination. I'm just saying that ultimately, this is a messaging problem on part of the Democratic Party. Because you have a party that wants to give working people all of these things and yet can't convey that to them. So working people are like, no, I'm going to vote for the reality television host who cuts taxes for billionaires because that guy has my interests at heart. Like, this is fundamentally a messaging

problem. Yeah, listen, I'm just telling you, you don't shit in the bathtub and pretend that it's going to be great. If they take the word socialism out of their vernacular, if they stop using the word socialism, and they start condemning what socialism is in the minds of many, many, many, many, many millions of Americans. But fundamentally, the problem is that Democrats are not good at fighting, and they're not good at sticking to a message, and they're not good at messaging. So you have Kelly Laughler up there saying, socialism, socialism, they want. want to take away your guns. And even though it makes no sense, the base is like, oh, yeah, he wants to take, you know,

I mean, like the stuff that Republicans have cooked up for Democrats to believe is kind of, it shows how good they are at messaging. Kathy Griffin is a comedian and actress who is here to talk with us today about the turmoil surrounding her current lawsuit. Hi, Kathy Griffin. Hello, Molly John Fast. What the hell is going on? Well, I am a semi-professional defendant.

Tell us more. I am currently a defendant in a federal case in the Eastern District of Kentucky, as well as a state case in Kentucky, brought on by, I believe, two dozen students and families from, wait for it, Covington High School. Can you explain to us what it means to face criminal charges? Like, is that a thing that happened? Yes. So in the federal case, I am facing criminal charges. And in this case, I am the only defendant. So this case is called Blessing versus Griffin. It was initially presented in the Eastern District of Kentucky and then dismissed by the Honorable Judge William Burlesman. But the blessings, I believe after that, they went and got other co-plaintiffs. And I believe there's about a dozen families. And I don't even know who the students are or if there's still students in Covington or not. And this is all

resulting from the infamous incident on the National Mall where Nick Sandman and other students from Covington got into a possible altercation that's debatable with a man named Nathan Phillips, a Native American man. I was one of many people who tweeted outrage at the behavior of these high school students. And let me just say, as someone who went to a Catholic school, someone not have flown. You can't go on like a field trip. And then go rogue and get away from the nuns and just, you know, go to a pro-life rally. But, you know, I digress. And so that incident was in January of 2019.

And then I believe it was May for some reason is when they decided to sue me. And it was for three tweets that I sent out. And they're accusing me in the federal case of terroristic threats, cyber terror. And I don't have in front of me, but there's a third terrorism charge. So what I think the case they're trying to make is that I was what's called doxing. And it was not doxing. I said, what are their names? Let the school know how you feel.

You know, this is a viral moment. It was an international news story, certainly a big story here in the States. And it was nothing close to doxing. So for whatever reason, and I'm not sure what is driving these families or who's funding their cases or if their attorneys are doing it on a contingency basis, I really don't know. But it's been going on now since, you know, since a year and a half. Whatever their endgame is, they're starting with three terrorism criminal charges. Do you think of yourself as a person for whom a terrorism, criminal terrorism charge is a,

makes a lot of sense? It does not. You know, like when I was put on the no-fly list after my Trump photo scandal and I was accused of being a card-carrying member of Al-Qaeda, I don't. know how many terrorist groups are trying to get a 60-year-old wacky red-haired vulgar comedian. So I would not typically think of myself as a terrorist unless you're being cheeky, and I'm like a comedic terrorist in a funny way. But am I putting anyone's life in danger?

No. Have I dachshed high school students or minors of our families? No. And so, you know, whatever their game is, it's still part of what I would consider to be the surrogates for the same type of crowd that came after me three years ago for the Trump photo. And it's my thesis that Trump sort of started out having to do these kinds of campaigns and charades and attacks on his own, back in the John Barron days. And now I think you've got the Nick Sandman's who, of course, spoke at the RNC and said that he was the, I believe something like the most prominent victim of cancel culture or something. And I believe he then went out to be a paid member of the campaign.

And I'm not sure how he's making a living now. So, no, I don't know that any of these folks legitimately think I'm a terrorist. I actually don't think I would even know how to commit cyberterrorism. I know how to date. You know, I'm not, like, in deep with, like, the Reddit 4chan crowd. But this cyberterrorism is actually part of a larger ploy, right? Can you explain to me? Because you explain this to me really well.

These, they're not charging you with criminal charges because they think they're going to stick. I don't think so. And the way my lawyer is explained it to me, is that there's a statute in Kentucky law where you can take a criminal charge, something like terroristic threats, and those arrested the sentence with the intent of. And you can take it off for a legal claim. You can cut the second half off. So it is the, I believe it is the current theory of my attorneys, that they are using the criminal charges as possibly a means to an end to possibly plead down to a large financial settlement. Oh, so that's an interesting. I wonder if the law is supposed to be used that way.

I don't know as much about obscure Kentucky federal law as I once did, which was never. But I also, you know, there's two different law firms coming for me in the state case and the federal case. And in the federal case, it's a guy named Kent Seafreed, Doug Shillomer, James Poston, and they're out of Fort Mitchell, Kentucky. And, you know, in the state case, there's some colorful characters that are Lynn Wood connected, all So honestly, I would assume they all know Linwood, who of course famously last week went and stood with Cindy Powell and Rudy Giuliani and Janet Ellis and suggested that they go to Brian Camp's house, drive around his block over and over, let him know how he feels. I did not come even close when I said I felt that these Covington kids should be, you know, ashamed for their behavior. I still feel that way. I don't buy that they were trying to make peace with Nathan Phillips, but that's their story.

And so in the state case, one of the attorneys, Robert Barnes, is a Los Angeles attorney. And maybe they tried to do that for jurisdictional issues. But his motto is, next time, bet on Barnes. He's a personal injury lawyer, right? Yes. And has as many important lawyers do billboards, right? Yes. And, you know, I mean, look, Nick Sandman, and I still don't know if he's one of the plaintiffs,

because there are John Doe's in the plaintiffs. think when you're this early on in the process, even though it's been a year and a half, I don't know who has to reveal their identity or not. And I don't know if, I mean, first of all, let me just say, in the state case, the judge who, you know, has God-lover, she's actually delayed the case for now. So it's still pending. But, you know, her kids either went to or currently go to Covington High. So, you know, I'm going to be honest. I am apprehensive about the ties here to sort of the strings of power because of my previous experience with Trump and Jeff Sessions. You know, Pat Cipollone, the president's one of his most prominent councils now, also went to Covington,

Mitch McConnell territory. I'm very, very curious to see who the three circuit court judges are going to be when our oral arguments are heard on January 12th in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. And frankly, I'm disappointed that the Sixth Circuit Court didn't just refuse to hear it. seems like a very obviously specious case. And yet these things have to be defended. And that's kind of my new life now. Both me and I think a lot of our listeners have never been through something like this. Right.

Is there recourse for you being able to get your legal expenses paid back? And what happens with all of that? You know, if somebody wants to step up and represent me pro bono, I'd love to do it. But the truth of the matter is, I'm spending all my money defending myself. And I can't afford to be a plaintiff. So it's not the only case I'm in. It's not the only case I'm in that it has ties to the president. What people I think don't understand is when people sort of offhandedly go,

you should sue this person is it costs a lot of money to sue somebody. And you've got to really go the distance. And when you're dealing with another party, in my opinion, these Covington folks, they seem to be driven by ideological issues, obviously with me personally, if there's a federal case that targets me alone. And in the state case, my co-defendants are primarily media figures. You know, Maggie Haberman from the New York Times, Matthew Dowd, Claire Jeffrey from Mother Jones, you know, Kevin Krause, I think he's a historian in Princeton history professor.

So, you know, Sandman has been very open and said publicly many times. They are on a mission to try to bankrupt the, quote, mainstream media. and I obviously I would guess that part of that net that they're trying to cast includes the likes of very outspoken comedians such as myself, or at least me. They haven't gone for any other comics. They all remember my name from that picture. So I don't know if you know this, but Donald Trump lost. Even though he doesn't believe it, we all know it's true. He lost the presidency.

And so I'm curious to know, did you feel as someone who has really been prosecuted and persecuted by this. administration. What was the way you felt when it happened? You know, it was so funny because I've been canceled for so long and I'm still blacklisted in Hollywood and there's a perception that I'm toxic and, you know, folks are reticent to hire me and, you know, I've lost my insurance coverage, my errors and emissions and all the stuff because I've been, you know, I've been defendant so many litigations and so many claims. And that's a scary thing to people. And so that's not something I'm, I don't, I'm not proud of my industry for behaving that way, but, you know, it's not a shock. But when, when the election was finally called, by the way, coordinated, of course, with the four seasons total landscaping press

conference, which is epic in its way. Yes, in its way. In its way. And it was actually quite touching. I got texts from friends and my, my social media feeds completely lit up with people thinking. It was very sweet. It's like it had a very personal connection for people saying like, hey, you can go, you can do comedy again. And oh, this is going to be so great. And can't wait to see you on my TV again. And so it's very, I feel oddly connected to what happens on January 20th. I know that's crazy.

But like, I mean, it feels like he's going to jump out of a cake, right? Like that feels like where this is going. Exactly. You know, so comedically, there's so much there. And yet it's, you know, as a comic, it's like, I've been through so many phases, right? There was a phase where you couldn't make fun of the president anymore after 9-11. Like you can make fun of president, and then it was just this thing where for a while it was like, you know what? He's our guy and we're in a real situation here.

And that's a little bit what's happened with Trump. So first, I've never seen audiences more divided for all the reasons that you guys all talk about. We know. And that's a very odd thing for comedy. So for example, for me to feel like, I don't know if I can ever play the South again. I don't know. But I knew those audiences and they know me. And like I said, to be in lawsuits in Cumberton, Kentucky, where I have played before,

I have the key to the city of Louisville, for God's sake. You know, that's typically, as a comic, certain regions have kind of a flavor, right? And typically southern audiences are known for liking somebody who tells it like it is and liking a balzy lady and all that stuff. So I've had a good relationship with my southern audiences. And, you know, that's an odd thing because I've never, I mean, whether it's a certain, you know, party being in power or whatever, seen whatever is happening now with what feels like the brainwashing of a third of the country.

And as someone who was considered by many people to possibly be an actual member of al-Qaeda or a jihad asset, to now be thrown into the Qaeda world and have so many people, some of which I can't imagine didn't either watch my specials or my TV show or come to see me on the road, think that I'm molesting babies in a basement with Tom Hanks and Hillary Clinton, and they really, really believe it. And then I find out it's because they were in the essential oil world. Like, it's all so crazy. I don't know what it's going to take to unwind that. So, you know, I can only hope that somehow comedy will find its sea legs. But right now, it's very tenuous for comedy. It's very odd. You know, somebody does a little sarcasm and they get canceled or you get canceled and then

you're kind of back in a few days and some people could cancel forever. It's very unpredictable right now. Thank you, Kathy. So great to have you. Thank you. It's my pleasure. and I love the pod. Before we get into things, we have a fun little treat. There are so many insane things happening in the world right now and two episodes a week

just aren't enough to cover it all. So, the new abnormal is going to release a limited run series of bonus interviews over the next few weeks for Beast Inside members only. We'll release a new one each Sunday. But listen carefully.

Only Beast Inside members will have access to these. So head over to the new abnormal dot the Daily Beast.com to become a beast inside member now. That's New Abnormal dot the Daily Beast.com. Chris Colbert is the executive producer

of the Say Their Name podcast. Chris, can you tell our listeners what this podcast is about? Absolutely. So the podcast is called Say Their Name. It is a documentary podcast series all around unarmed black people who've been killed by police

and in standard ground states. And it's doing so in two different parts. The first part being memorializing these individuals, humanizing them, understanding who they were as people, what their sense of humor was like, what was their life trajectory on, before they were killed or assaulted,

and just really getting a chance to understand who they were from the voice of their family, their friends, their loved ones. And then that second part being more about the, obviously the situation itself, what happens to these individuals? But then, you know, what happens in the long-term effects? You know, our host, Adele Coleman, says it best.

What happens after the hashtag stop? What happens after the social media and the media attention goes away. And so that's what we focus on, the long-term effects on these families financially, emotionally, mentally, and also, you know, what did they have to do to try to fight and get justice

for their loved one? And many times, how did they have the fight to clear the name of their loved one? Many times these people are vilified before they have a chance to have the family truly speak to what happened on their side. How did this podcast come about?

This podcast, though, obviously now it's 2020 and we're putting it out now. We actually started conceptualizing the idea back in 2018 in terms of, you know, really thinking about how we want to go about doing this podcast, telling these stories. And then in 2019 is actually when we first began actually going out and interviewing some of these families. So it's been a couple years in the making now. Chris, you back up to something, though, that you said initially, which you talked about

the stand your ground laws. Why is that an important distinction? Yeah, no problem. There's about 30, and I apologize, I think it's 30 or 32, somewhere in that range, states in the United States. Yeah, it's a lot. The majority of. States in United States are stand your ground states. And they are states where you can easily be able to claim that if someone came on my property or they were in my personal space and I had to use a weapon to be able to defend myself. That is essentially, you know, the quick definition of stand your ground. I had to shoot or assault you to be able to fend for myself. Now, that obviously leaves a lot of gray area because, and this actually goes into policing too sometimes, this

notion of how do you prove somebody's thoughts? You know, how do you prove that this person, and didn't feel threatened. And so that's what ends up happening in these Stand Your Ground States. And though I mentioned we touch on those stories, all the stories that we featured, we featured seven different lives, seven different stories here in this season.

All of them were more about police. But even in those episodes, we touch on other stories. Like Trayvon Martin is a great example of a Stand-Drow Ground case. George Zimmerman was not a police officer, but he was potentially protecting, you know, his personal property.

And so we will touch on cases like that as we talk about these greater stories of these seven individuals that we've focused our episodes around. Are those so different, I guess, because they're more likely to get away with that. Yeah, they're different in the fact that, yes, you don't have the police and you don't have that fraternity of police that really kind of backs a lot of kind of what happens in those proceedings. But it is still similar in the situation of you still are involving somebody taking someone's life or assaulting them many times when they are unarmed and not really there to do anybody any harm.

So that's how they kind of relate. But I also think the other relational point here, which is why in our series we, try to go beyond just the policing aspect is that this thing goes into the political side of things. And so those stand your ground states tend to be more, you know, GOP-affiliated type states. And those also tend to be the ones where, you know, you have more of these interactions between police and black people. So I think there's also that correlation there of it's the same system set up to protect individuals when they are harming unarmed black and brown people. So I think that's the other kind of correlation there. They're obviously still different.

every story has its own nuances, but there's a lot of similarities between all these stories. I am curious to know, I mean, I know how crushing I find reading these stories. How do you deal with it? It really was tough, especially this first season. I think in future seasons, we have a lot of network that we're tapped into where there's now families reaching out to us to do their story. But early on, it was myself going on Google and just searching, you know, story after story and watching these videos. And I spent, I remember an entire Sunday. just combing through these. And it does, it has and continues to take an emotional toll on me.

And I think the way I best deal with it, first of all, is just remembering why I'm doing this and why we are doing this as a group. Because, you know, these families have had a loss of themselves. And they've been through so much more than me just, you know, watching these situations. So from a personal standpoint, I guess that's an extra motivation and say, okay, I can power through. But at the same time, we should still take care of ourselves. So, you know, very much, you know, doing a lot of meditation, working out a lot,

trying to just talk openly about these situations with family, friends, loved ones. But I think even producing the podcast itself is almost a form of therapy for myself to, you know, kind of get my own angst out there. You know, the stories are very much centered around these families. But the things that they express are the exact same things that I feel and honestly, obviously, are exasperated because they're really living it on a day-to-day basis. But yeah, I think the product itself is kind of that release in itself. Yeah, I mean, I think we talk about this a lot, or at least I.

I'm obsessed with this idea of, like, how do we stop the slow roll into fascism that Trumpism has started? And we talked about this on the pot. We talked to Masha Gessen, and she had said that narrative is super important. And when you look at something like this, you know, these murders, this is another situation where narrative can really change the world. And so it's so important that you're doing it, but I'm sure it's just emotionally so taxing. Oh yeah, and to your point about narrative, that's why we took the approach that we did as well. You know, I try to take myself, Adele, our host, we try to take ourselves out of it as much as possible and let the families and these loved ones speak to you directly as the listener because they know those stories best. And as you were saying with that narrative piece, that's truly what will help make change.

When people can see themselves, see their loved ones within these people's stories, you know, I think that's when they're going to be spurred to trying to take the right change. And then obviously within the episodes themselves, we try to talk. talk about resources and the things that you as the listener can be able to do as your call to action. And it's not just we're trying to make you feel sad or trying to make you feel angry. Yes, you're going to feel those things, but now what do you do with that emotion? And so we want to make sure that there's always that call to action there as well. Yeah, I think that's really important. Do you want to tell us one of the stories which you found a little bit hopeful? Sure. Yeah, I guess the most hopeful one is that of Robbie's whole

And it's hopeful in a few different ways. One, he is the only person in this season that we featured who is actually still alive to tell his own story. So it's partially hopeful from that. But it's also hopeful from the fact that they actually fought all the way to the Supreme Court. Yes, I know this story. Go on. I didn't mean to interrupt you.

Sorry, go on. Oh, no, by all means. No, but I'm glad you know that story because honestly, I didn't. And so it's great to know that that story had reached certain people. But yes, they fought all the way up to the Supreme Court. And their battle was really around what's called a qualified. immunity. And I kind of touched on it before when I was talking about trying to prove somebody's internal thoughts. So implicit bias is all around a police officer being able to say, I felt threatened.

My life felt threatened. And hence, I took a certain action. Well, when you have that, it is very, very, very hard to be able to prove that this officer did something malicious because you can't prove intent. And so Robbie Tolan, Tolan v. Cotton. Cotton is Officer Cotton, the person who shot Robbie Tolan in the Bel Air, Texas area. It's a suburb of Houston. That case, they fought all the way to the Supreme Court and we're able to get a law enacted, which I believe in its first year helped in over 500 cases. I believe at that time was around 2017. We don't have any new data to tell us exactly how many cases that has helped now, but 500 within a year is impressive. And to be able to do that, though, that family had to sell their home to be able to

fight for that long to be able to get to that point. And not many families have that ability. They don't have the resources to be able to fight all the way to the Supreme Court. So as much as I say that's a hopeful kind of story. It's also, I think, an eye-opening experience, too, to understand why you don't see more of these cases go that far. Yeah, I'll say. What can people like us do? The most immediate one right now

and the one that we really are pushing through our podcast and also now on social media, too, is all around the Georgia runoffs with the Senate. You know, a big piece of this is very political. And there is the, and I'm sure a lot of your listeners have probably heard about this, the George Floyd in Policing Act. That is something that has already passed through the house.

they're waiting to see if they're going to have a Democratic-led Senate to see if they can try to push it through the Senate because they just feel like if it's GOP-led, it's not going to get through. Now, that all being said, even if it is Democrats in the Senate, it doesn't guarantee anything, but it gives us a better opportunity. So the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act is a very comprehensive package that touches on policing, touches on judicial, touches on politics, and it's probably one of the most comprehensive packages to try to prevent these situations from happening and getting accountability. So your call to action as a listener is if you're in Georgia, you need to be out there going out to vote in the Senate runoff in January. If you're outside of Georgia, if there's ways that you can try to reach out the individuals there, try to get people registered, I think that's extremely important. So that's kind of our big call to action right now. But then the other call to action is that, you know, we personally are doing a crowdfunding for the families that we featured within this series to give them 100% of those proceeds going directly to them. And that money goes towards things, as I mentioned before, those legal fees to be able to fight to get to the Supreme Court or even just to be able to fight in the lower courts, recouping on some of these medical costs that these families have had.

Some of these families didn't even have money to bury their children. Oh, I'm sure. There's the family of Caldrick Donald who still lives in the same house that their loved one was killed in. The officer killed their loved one in the bathroom. I'm sure that happens more than we think, too. Absolutely. And so that family would love to get out of that home, that little trailer, but they don't have enough money to do so. And the settlement didn't even give them close to enough to be able to move out of there.

And so there's a lot of things that this money goes towards. But the crowdfunding that we're doing, but also these families themselves also have their own foundations and crowdfunding. So I think those are two quick, immediate ways people can help. And if you go to our website, DCP Official.com, you can also find those exact resources there. Or even if you go to our description in the podcast, we have all those links to be able to get access to those things and learn more about what you can do. So, Chris, obviously when you undertake something like this, you always have some preconceived notions of what you're going to get from it. What was unexpected that you found from doing this when you talk to the families? I guess unexpected would be none of these stories, no matter how much I found on the internet, told the whole story.

I think that's what was expected, but unexpected was the fact that these families have never truly had a platform to tell their unfiltered story. Many of them told me about how media will just, you know, take one line of something they say and kind of spin that in whatever, direction they want to or their words were taken out of context. So I was, I guess I wasn't fully surprised by that, but I was surprised by how often I heard that. Many of these families talked about how the media never reached out to them for even a picture of their loved one. So they're constantly having these images of their loved one up there. Many times you'll see some kind of aggressive, aggressive looking photo that was just pulled off the internet. And now we were talking about that vilifying piece earlier, that helps to vilify their loved one and now makes them have to

be on the defensive. So I think I was really surprised by, by the lack of, for lack of better terms, lack of media responsibility around that. And myself, having been part of media for many years, I was kind of hurt that that's the industry that I'm a part of. And, okay, we need to do a better job with that. But also then understanding, too, the media is quickly trying to get content out there.

So they're taking what the police say and then running with it. And now having really understood these stories, you understand that the police either don't always tell the truth or they don't have the full truth, especially, you know, in that first 24 hours as the story's breaking. Yeah, I'm sure that's true. I mean, it must be, it sucks so much. I mean, I just, you know, every time I read a story like this, I'm just shocked by the level of, you know, gross incompetence and negligence and also racism. I'm curious to know, do you see states where this keeps happening? Like, if you're, what states are the worst? I think they're happening everywhere. So let me just first start with that. Even though I said before, like a GOP states tend to have a lot more of these incidences, but they really are happening everywhere. Yeah.

One that I'll pinpoint would be Texas, and I'll even get even more granular and say Houston. You know, we covered two stories in Houston. So that's part of the reason. But another part of that reason is I remember when I first flew to Texas. So this was before the pandemic. This was November 2019. It just so happened to be the same day that Kanye West was doing a concert at the Lakewood Church. And I was across the street from that.

There was this woman that was, for whatever reason, attending that concert was doing breakfast at my hotel. older black lady, maybe in her 60s, 70s, and said to me, oh, where are you visiting from? I said, I'm here from New York. I didn't say what I was there for, what kind of topics I was there to cover. Within one minute of talking to her, she says to me, be careful out here. It's crazy. And I said, what do you mean? It's crazy.

She goes, with police, like, you've got to protect yourself out here. So it was that readily present on her mind to warn this black man who had just came to her town within the first minute of meeting him to be careful because of what may happen between myself and the police. What do you think would work for policing the police? So, you know, I think the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act gives a great picture of all the different things that can work together. I myself feel like if there's one thing I have to choose out of it, that I feel like could really make a difference and make a difference quickly, is that police accountability in terms of tracking these police. There should be a record of

incidences that these police are involved in. As you hear many times with these newer situations that seen this year, the officer who was involved had a track record of having done it somewhere else and was just transferred. So I think if we had a database that lived on in perpetuity where we can continually see incidences that these cops have been involved in, that then allows us as citizens to hold our politicians feet to the fire. We can now say to our chief of police, you have to get these kind of people off your force or we're not putting you back in. Some states, you know, some areas you don't vote for your police chief, your governor puts them in. And so, So now we can hold our governor accountable for putting in a police chief that has these kind of people on the force.

So I think that's the quickest, easiest way to do it. And I say easy with Air Force, because it's not very easy. Yeah. No, because the Fraternal Order of Police has been fighting that for years. We've had different electeds on. And they have again and again said that the problem is the police unions and that they have a lot of, they've sort of figured out how to command the, out of power. And so, and I think it's so diametrically opposed to what many of us on the liberal side believe in, because certainly for me, I grew up with, you know, the importance of unions.

But clearly, this is a situation where unions are being misused. I mean, do you agree with that and what's your thinking on that? Oh, I completely agree. And I think that was something that I learned in this journey as well. Literally the first episodes that we have are on Archie Elliott in this podcast. And they talk about how the Fraternal Order of Police were backing the candidate who was running for a city council member or something along those lines, the politician who would then be able to decide if this case gets opened. And because of their influence, not only did it affect politics, it also affected the churches because the churches were also in, I'm probably not choosing the right word here, but we're in cahoots, you know, with the police. And so now the churches

are now pushing against people fighting for justice for Archie Elliott. And it just, It's so intertwined in a way that I don't think many people realize. And one other piece to kind of put in there, too, is something that, again, I don't think a lot of people realize is that even when you see settlements for these families, that money is coming out of taxpayers' money. Yeah. So the police don't get hurt when, you know, they're found guilty in these situations. It's the taxpayers.

So we're actually, you know, hurting double. We're hurting as a community because of what we've been through. And now we're also paying these families back for something that the police did or, you know, some other person did. So I did want to throw that in there in terms of, you know, something where the Fraternal Order police really aren't getting hurt at all through any of this. That's a really good point. Chris, can you tell everybody where they can find the podcast? Yeah, so the name of the podcast is called Say Their Name, Singler, not with an S on it. There are some other podcasts out there, but say their name. And it can be found on all podcast platforms, anywhere you listen to the podcast. But then you can

also go to our website where you can listen there or just select the platform you want to listen on. and our website is dcp official.com. Thank you so much, Chris. This was really so great to have you and so interesting to talk to you. And I'm really glad you're doing this. You're doing God's work here. Hey, Molly, my fuck that guy today,

as required by state, federal law and international treaty is Mr. Cash Patel. Cash Patel, a Devin Nunez orbiting dickweed and member of the famous Midnight Run Posse, way back in the beginning of this shit show of an administration. The president, as a fuck you to our defense system in this country and our dedicated national security professionals,

installed cash Patel on a variety of other scales, low-life scumbags, clowns, and fuckwits. In the Pentagon a few weeks ago. You seem really into this one. Continue. Listen, as a former Defense Department person, as a former appointee in the Defense Department as a very young man of junior deputy dog in that world, I will tell you this, the people that work in the Pentagon and Department of Defense are some of the most serious. and dedicated and smart people in government. They bust their asses. They deal with incredibly dangerous and consequential decisions every day.

And the fact that he's put a bunch of people over there that I wouldn't put in charge of the fucking school crossing is an insult. And I think a danger to this country. So in light of that, Cash Patel is currently blocking the Biden transition team from receiving briefings or doing anything having to do with the transition at the Defense Department. It is unconscionable. It is typical. And Cash Patel, you are my fuck-that-guy for today. Hey, Molly Junk-Fest.

Yes. I'm wondering, who's your fuck-that-guy? My fuck-that-guy for today is actually Roger Stone. Good for you, a perennial favorite. The degenerate thop, Roger Stone. Do you want to know why he's my fuck-that-guy? Go on. Because this weekend, one of my friends texted me to ask me about someone else.

And I said, well, I don't know if that person likes me or not, but I, you know, I respect them. And he said, well, you know who really doesn't like you? And I said, who? And he said, Roger Stone really doesn't like you. And then proceeded to tell me a story about how much Roger Stone doesn't like me. And I didn't even think that Roger Stone knew who I was. So I am very proud to be just a thorn in that fucking. Godgivers side. So he is my fuck that guy.

And his wizened leathery side. I mean, I also feel like he's a character where you get the sense that he's a very fun guy, but he's a deeply evil and racist. And just, I mean, he's done, he's wrought quite a lot of destruction, right? Like an Ivanka character, he's managed to do a lot of bad shit. So I'm pleased to be in his hate list. mind. Good for you. Yeah. Happy to see it. I have a feeling you also have a place there.

Oh, no, I'm quite certain I have a place there. So, yeah, so, uh, Roger Stone, fuck you. Fuck that guy. 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. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens?

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