The Daily Beast Podcast - MAGA Rapper Sinks to New Low After ‘Ratchet’ Rant

Episode Date: June 23, 2024

Valentina Gomez, who is running for Secretary of State of Missouri, is trying to be the loudest, most outrageous voice on the right. Plus! The New York Times bestselling journalist Jeff Goodell joins the podcast to talk about his new book, The Heat Will Kill You First: Life and Death on a Scorched Planet. 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 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 Kedden, 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. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. Hello and welcome to another Sunday bonus episode of the new abnormal.

We thank you so much for being here. Today we have an extra special guest with New York Times bestselling journalist Jeff Goodeau. And he's here to talk to us about this recent book, The Heat Will Kill You First, Life and Death on a Scorched Planet, which, spoiler, it's Earth he's talking about. But first, let's have some fun. Are you guys ready to listen to some clips? Clips. Clips. All right.

With formats of the show, we try to refresh them from time to time. So I want to get a little experimental here. I found something that I did not think got enough coverage. It's just a lot of what I try to do on these Sunday shows when I pick these is show the things that we really should be discussing that are sometimes fun, sometimes gross. And sometimes I don't know what the fuck to call this. So I'm sending you two over. Something and I want us all to hit play at once and then describe the horrors that we see as we bear witness to this.

And I should say, this is from the Turning Point Festival this week where Mr. Trump spoke after this. So this is what he was speaking next to. Tell me when you're ready to hit play together. I'm ready. I'm ready. One, two, three. What the fuck am I watching? So what did you see?

I saw a bunch of wannabe Nazis, aka a turning a. Point USA coming on stage and unfurling a banner that says white boy summer on it and then throwing out hats to the audience that I'm assuming also say white boy summer on them. Yes, that they do. I want to express to people how fucking unoriginal, dumb and ridiculous this is. Because much like a lot of fucking things that these motherfuckers do, that entire thing stolen from Meg the Stallion and Hot Girl Summer from a couple of years ago. But by Tom Hanks' son.

It is just like so fucking dumb. Like they're so unoriginal and tasteless. Thank you for that. I can't get that image out of my head now. I forgot that Chet Hanks was the first person to say white boy summer. He has actually declared that this summer is again, white boy summer. Wow, two in a row. Or is this three?

We skipped one, I believe, last year actually, Andy. I'm sorry you did not get the text to word that they said to us, white boys. I don't know what you did to opt out. Whatever I write, stop. It doesn't let me opt out. This feels much like what DEI has become of that this is them thinking it's real clever to basically say the N word and get away with it in this way. Yeah, which is basically that's the sort of whole ethos of the right in this country now is how close can we come to saying the N word?

You know what? And I'm like, go ahead and do it. You know what I'm saying? Like that. Be gully. It's coming. Go do it someplace where you're not surrounded by a bunch of fucking weak-ass white boy wannabes. Like, go say someplace to look tough. See what happens. By all means, bring it, bring it. Fucking idiots. Yeah, it is coming. Okay, well, speaking of more stupidity,

here we have a clip from Fox where I'm going to try to pronounce this right. Morgan Orgatus, a former State Department official, is going to really spew the bullshit here. And our ability to persuade people whenever she uses the language, and again, this is because the left has weaponized the intel community, when she uses that language that you would use against an adversarial state, like cheap fakes, like deep fakes, all of these things, whenever she's using it in a political context and it's not true and it's not accurate,

it cuts off our ability as people in law enforcement and the intelligence community to actually educate the American people when there is actual misinformation from adversarial states. And on that point, I would finally just say, Emily, you know, general elections, they're binary choices in the United States of America. You are smart individuals. You could look at those videos and say, is this man fit to be president for the next four years? I don't think he's fit to be my Uber driver. much less to be president.

And I don't, by the way, this is a gift to China. Xi Jinping looks at these videos and he's looking his chops. A lot of pressure on that debate for him to stand up and be strong. Yep. Or just to stand. You said that there was some conversation about letting him sit. And let's just remember when we talk about disinformation, these are the people that created the Steele dossier.

These are the people that said Hunter's laptop was Russian disinformation. And now you want to tell us not to believe a video. We're too smart for that. We had eight years of these lies. I remember Anderson Cooper, what he just said scares me for the debate. because he actually is saying that these are deep fakes. It makes me wonder, would Jake Tapper and Dave Bash?

You're going to be at Trump. That is litigious territory where they're going there. They better have some proof of that because everything that Emily just showed, the audience, was unedited pool type video. As Kaylee would know, she worked inside the White House. They really, they better be careful with that. She softened it a little bit, KJP, with cheap fakes, but then there's video of the deep.

I mean, got to be careful with that. That's a felony. We've got a big hour ahead of us, including just being... You'll be shocked to hear that what they were airing on there was edited video deceptively to show Biden looking incompetent the whole time. But they said something really funny, which was to be careful, it's a felony. I thought they like felons. So I wasn't sure why they were lifting that up, like as if it was something bad.

I thought they loved them. There's nothing like the place that just had to pay how many dollars in, in five? Was it? Close to 800 million. Yeah, for basically lying on air to be cautioning another news organization about, you know, what a felony is. Look, I knew Harris Faulkner when I worked there. And yeah, I'm just out of things to say about what all those people have become. It's just pathetic. That's the only word I can think of to describe it. It's absolutely pathetic. Well, in other birds of the same feather of pathetic, one of the new features of Magadam Republican Party is that a lot of people have gotten the hint that if you are the loudest, craziest, most psychotic person in the campaign, you're probably going to get the MAGA vote.

And Valentina Gomez, who's running for Secretary of State of Missouri, has heard that whistle loud and clear, and she understands the assignment. Let's listen to her's newest tweet for Juneteenth. Reparations from slavery and black victimization is about to be shoved down our throats for the most ratchet holiday. America. BLM raised millions, but what did they do for black lives? It is outrageous to see people asking for reparations, even though they never went through slavery. These ungrateful people should be celebrating because they were born in the greatest nation to ever exist. Here's a tip. If you don't like America? I mean, get the fuck out. I feel personally attacked, so I'm not going to respond.

It's been a minute since I've heard Ratchet. I agree. Yeah, it's been a minute. Very much an early 2000 throwback. Yeah. I also don't think it means what she thinks it means. Nope. Nope, pretty sure about that too.

Yeah, I'll just leave it at that because she is, like you said, Jesse, she's one of those people that looked around and said, oh, I have to say the most outrageous things possible to get attention. And that's what we're giving her. So I don't really have much else to say about her. She's just one of a million right-wing clones. And there's nothing special about her. And she probably has no friends. That's all. I can tell you what kind of friends she doesn't have. She may in fact have friends, but I can tell you the kind of friends she don't have. to say because in the previous video she was arm in arm with her buddy or the the maga rapper who was going

America first America first America first there so she at least has her friend that she makes the rap videos with yeah anyway we have long known that the Sinclair Broadcasting Corporation it puts up some straight news and then it puts a little disinformation in a little lack of truth sandwich somebody has compiled across the different networks some of this to show exactly what's going on in this network and I think we should listen. Wall Street Journal calling it is of President Joe Biden. As national correspondent Matt Galca tells us the issue could decide the election. The Wall Street Journal has published a story which calls the mental fitness of President

Biden into question. As national correspondent, Mount Galca tells us the issue could be an election decider. Should he be on that or any ballot? The Wall Street Journal is out with new reporting calling into question the mental fitness of President Joe Biden. as National Correspondent Matt Galca tells us the issue could be an election decider. As the Wall Street Journal is out with reporting calling into question the mental fitness of President Biden, we want to know, are you worried about President Biden's mental fitness?

As National correspondent Matt Galca tells us, the issue could be an election decider. There's five more minutes of this. Wow. Not five more, five more, five more minutes. Yeah, five more minutes of that. Jesus. That's incredible. I feel like I want to talk to somebody about this.

in depth in a couple of days? Wow, Andy, that's just such a great coincidence because they just emailed me back. Oh, excellent. This is about as pure as propaganda gets. Yeah, we should say the person who was in charge of this previously at Sinclair was one Boris Epstein, who you may know from the Trump campaign and for being indicted around him and being one of the many people who got raises after he became a witness in a Trump trial. Why don't you just tell me who hasn't been indicted?

Because the list would be fucking shorter. Do you know what I'm saying? Because when you're like, oh, they weren't indicted, I'm like, oh, really? I don't know that there is a list. This is a segment next week, too. Okay, we're going to go with this. Guys, I have very, very big news. I'm just going to let this tell you it, though.

Sir, Tim Scott, who on August the 3rd will become a father himself. I will tell you in advance, it is the best yet most expensive form of entertainment. you can possibly have. So happy early Father's Day to you. Happy Father's Day to your dad. Thank you, sir. Thank you for joining us on a Sunday night. Tim Scott's going to be a dad.

Is it to a dog? I thought they were against IVF. Oh, boy. Oh, God, that was so good. Folks, I am so excited to welcome to the new Abnormal, author and journalist and climate change action. Jeff Goodell, whose latest book is The Heat Will Kill You First, Life and Death on a Scorched Planet. He is also a New York Times bestselling author of six other books kind of in the same vein of

raising the alarm of where we are in terms of a climate crisis. Jeff, I want to start off with the fact that to me, climate change, the climate crisis should be a front page story every single day. and it's not unless there is some catastrophic event, which honestly happens all the time around the world, whether it's a catastrophic flood, whether it is the 124 degrees that was clocked in, I think it was Death Valley, in parts of Iran, in parts of Pakistan. We're not talking about it. So talk to us about your latest book, The Heat Will Kill You First, which I feel that right now in New York City,

and kind of where we go from there. Sure. First of all, Daniel, thanks for having me on. And I love the title of your show, The New Abnormal. I mean, there's no better place to talk about the climate crisis and on a show called The New Abnormal. So I'm very happy to be here. I agree with you that it's surprising to me that the climate crisis is not more central to our daily lives

and we're not thinking about it and in a way that is in any way commensurate with the scale of what's going on. And in a certain way, I think about that. as what my books and what my work is about. I'm not trying to convince people who think that the world is flat, that the climate crisis is real. I'm not trying to convince them that I'm not on the payroll of George Soros or I'm not

some grifter selling climate chaos t-shirts or something like that. And that really goes to the subject of my book about extreme heat, you know, which is playing out throughout the world like right now. First day of summer, it's playing out in India, in Russia, on the East Coast, in the the Midwest, we're seeing these extreme heat events. And the book is really trying to take on this idea that, you know, all of us know what a warm day is. All of us understand that the difference between 68 degrees and 72 degrees and all that and doesn't seem like a big deal. And I really want to underscore and help people understand why these changes in temperature are really dangerous, both for

you personally, which is why the book is called The Heat Will Kill You First. And we can talk about that title, if you'd like. I also call heat the driver of planetary chaos in the book. So I'm trying to look at this from the sort of microscale or the personal scale and the macro scale or the planetary scale. Yeah, let's talk about the title because I think that every summer for as long as I can remember, we have watched temperatures rise. We've been warned that the Earth is getting to a breaking point where the temperatures and the oceans will rise to a point that is incredibly dangerous and one that we can't turn back from. So talk to us about the title of the book, The Heat Will Kill You First and why heat in it of itself is a huge indicator of, I don't even want to say,

we had continued to say the quote unquote impending crisis, but the crisis is actually here. So please speak to that. You know, I've been writing about climate change for 20 years now, and I've been guilty of this myself. I think a lot of the writing and talking and, you know, general conversation and knowledge about climate change or the climate crisis is framed around future generations and what will happen and or people in far away places. And it's sort of like this sort of become this kind of background noise of yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what's happening. I know that, you know, I'm going to recycle my bottles, I promise.

I'm going to sell my SUV and get a skateboard. I promise. You know, I'm going to be a better person. and we're going to figure this out sometime down the road, and it'll be okay. What I really wanted to underscore in this book was and is the urgency of it, the immediacy of it. And the reason the book is called The Heat Will Kill You First is about that. And the book was born actually on a day in the summer of 2018 when I was in Phoenix doing some other reporting of something completely unrelated.

I was staying at a hotel downtown. I was late for my meeting. It was 115 degrees outside. I called an Uber. The Uber was late also, so I decided, fuck it, I'm just going to run, walk the 20 blocks to my meeting. Oh, no. And that was not a smart idea. By the time I got those 20 blocks in that kind of heat, I know, I was lightheaded, I was dizzy. I thought I was going to fall over. My heart was pounding, you know, and I'm in decent shape. And that was the moment when it occurred to me, oh, my God, if I had to go another 20 blocks or if I had to, you know, spend a significant amount of time out

in this heat. It's really dangerous. What's important about this is that when I had that understanding, I had already been writing about climate change for 15 years. And even I didn't really grasp the urgency of this and how extreme heat can actually kill you like a bug zapper. You know, you get in the wrong place and you're stuck there and you're in their heat and you can die very quickly, even healthy people. And of course, older people, pregnant women, young children. Some people are more vulnerable than others. But the title really came out of that. It was about trying to take this abstract background noise problem that we all hear about and make it personal. And so one reviewer talked about parts of my book being like a horror novel. And I took that as a compliment because I really

wanted to talk about what happens to the human body during extreme heat. And when you die of a heat stroke, what actually happens? And I went into some very grisly detail about that. I mean, Tell us about what does happen to the body because when I see images, and I think it was, maybe it was a couple of weeks ago, looking in India and temperatures had risen, I don't even know. I want to say that it was something like astronomical, like 130 degrees Fahrenheit. And, you know, this is a population of billions of people, a economic system that is very extreme in terms of poverty. And so you think about access to air conditioning, access to cooling agents, access to clean water. and people who work outside in these temperatures. What does happen to the body?

And this isn't something, as folks on the right will tell you, well, you just need an air conditioner or you just need to stay inside or just drink some cool water and you'll be okay. Like they make it seem as if, oh, temperatures have always been rising. And so this is nothing new. This is nothing to worry about. Why is this something to worry about in terms of our biology. and our reaction to this kind of stressor. Yeah, I mean, you brought up this question of air conditioning,

and I want to talk about that later, because there's this myth that, oh, heat is no big deal, just get an air conditioning. It's like this sort of techno fix, and that's a whole other separate conversation. But I think that understanding what heat does to our bodies really is important. And I think it starts with the understanding

that our bodies are incredibly exquisitely tuned, sort of heat balancing mechanisms. I think we all know that intuitively. You know, when you're a kid or when you're not a kid, when you're an adult, you're not feeling well. The first thing the doctor does is take your temperature, right? If it's 98.6, 99, you're okay, but when it gets 101, that's an indication of something is wrong. Keeping your body temperature at a stable state is incredibly important to all the metabolic functions of your body. And your body does a very good job of shunting blood around and doing things in order to keep that stable state. What happens when you start to overheat, when you're outside,

if you're going for a hike on a hot day, if you are sitting in a hot car, if you're trapped in a hot apartment on a hot day, your heart starts to pound because it starts to push blood out towards the surface of your skin in order to cool off. And everyone knows we have one cooling mechanism. It works pretty well. It's called sweat.

And when we get hot, we sweat. and the evaporation of the water, the sweat from our skin, carries away the heat, cools the blood beneath the skin. In hot conditions, your heart starts pounding, pushing blood out from your internal organs, away from your brain, that's why you get lightheaded in a desperate measure to get as much to the skin service as possible to cool off. And sometimes that works. If it's not too hot, you know, you cool off, you sweat, you can manage it.

But if it's hotter outside and your body can't kind of dump the heat fast enough, then your body temperature starts rising inside. And once your body temperature starts rising inside, you get into big trouble. Your heart is pounding faster and faster. Your heart just kind of goes crazy. Anyone who's been in a real extreme heat condition knows that. That's why people who have any kind of circulatory or heart problems are very vulnerable to heat because it puts a tremendous stress on your heart.

But once your body temperature gets around 102, 103, 103, then your actual cellular structures within your body start to break down. The proteins that make up your cellular structure that tell yourself sort of what to do begin unraveling. The cellular membranes within your body begin to actually melt. They're like a fat melting in a frying pan.

They melt. And your body literally kind of, once you get to temperatures of 104, 105, starts to melt from within. And you literally kind of disintegrate from the inside out. you start hemorrhaging inside. And it's really not a pretty picture.

Wow. When they said horror story, I get it now because the imagery of that kind of takes me to some really disturbing movies. But thinking that this is not Hollywood, this is something that is happening in real life and something that's preventable. Can you talk to us also about what is happening right now when we are hearing that temperatures are rising in the sea, that temperatures are rising. rising in the oceans. And what is that doing to the ocean, the landmass, the animals, the fish

that we need with coral reefs? Talk to us about, so now we understand what is happening inside of our bodies with these extreme temperatures. What is happening now with the ocean and those extreme temperatures? And is this something that if in fact we had countries that were actually committed beyond paper to doing something about climate change could possibly be reversed? The answer to reversing is basically no. Reversal is a very difficult thing. Over long, long geologic time spans, yes, but especially the ocean. So the ocean is a really important part of the story, and it's kind of really cool that you brought this up and that you want to go to this,

because a lot of people don't want to talk about this or just think that the ocean is just this place to go surfing and sailing, and that's the extent of any concern about the ocean. The ocean is really important. The ocean is, first of all, a giant heat sink. So what's causing the climate change is the CO2 in the atmosphere, which is acting like a blanket over the planet, trapping the heat inside, not letting it dissipate out, trapping it, you know, here in the atmosphere. And a lot of that heat gets absorbed by the ocean. The water is really efficient at absorbing heat.

So about 90% of the trapped heat goes into the ocean. And that's really important for a lot of reasons. First of all, the ocean has a big impact on our weather system. I think maybe a lot of people have heard about El Nino and Lanina. These are changes in atmospheric circulation patterns that are natural, but they're driven by changes in the ocean temperature. And they're an example of that. Hurricanes are driven by ocean temperature.

Hurricanes are like heat engines driven by the difference in temperature between the water and the air. So the hotter the water gets, the more intense and bigger the hurricanes and typhoons can get. The heat in the ocean has huge impact. you mentioned coral reefs. The Great Barrier Reef, which I've been to a number of times, is one example in Australia of this amazing, incredibly complex ecosystem that is being devastated by these ocean heat waves. Coral, like every other living thing, has a heat range that they can thrive in. And as the oceans heat up even a few degrees, it's too hot for these corals. Unlike you or me, if it's a hot, if you're in a hot place, you can walk to a cooler, cooler place. If you're a frog living in a forest, you can hop up

the mountain to a cooler altitude. Coral reefs can't do that. They can't migrate in any kind of meaningful time, so they die. It's also having a big impact on fishing because many nations around the world are highly dependent upon fishing for substance, for food, you know, to feed their people. As the ocean seed up, the fish are moving to different places, cooler places. It's having a big impact in that sense on hunger in many nations. And it's also finally having a big impact on the rate of melting of glaciers in Antarctica, which ultimately has a big impact on sea level rise, which is my previous book was about, which ultimately has a big impact on like your condo in Miami or in what's going on in the Texas coast. I'm not sure. I'm not saying you have a

condo in Miami, but no, I get it. I know what you're saying. Yeah. Miami, as we know it today, is a temporary arrangement of sand and buildings that is not going to be there very long. Same way with New Orleans. Same way with virtually every coastal city. And that is because as our oceans heat up, the ice sheets are melting. And they're melting kind of from below. Sea level rises accelerating. This is a big fundamental fact of the climate crisis. It's playing out over sort of slower timescales in these extreme heat events we've been talking about. But ultimately, we'll have huge impacts on our climate crisis. It's playing out over sort of slower timescales in these extreme heat events we've been talking about. But ultimately will have huge impacts on the infrastructure of our world. So what is needed? We see the climate accord that a few countries have agreed upon, and yet nothing impactful has really happened. So what is needed, in your opinion, to begin to address this with the urgency that it needs, that it requires? Well, first, I would, I would argue with you, I wouldn't say that nothing has happened. A lot has happened. It just hasn't happened fast enough. For example, I live in Texas. Texas is not exactly a tree hugger state. It is not full of

people who are wandering around worried about cuddly animals and saving trees. I mean, of course, there are many wonderful people who do that, but this is not the overall gestalt of the state of Texas. And yet, on our grid in Texas, we have our own grid. I looked last week, 70% of the power was coming from renewable energy sources, which is amazing. I'm just amazing when you think about it. And the reason that that's happened is because renewable energy, solar and wind especially, but also things like geothermal, have gotten so much cheaper, so quickly. Fossil fuels are the whale oil of our time. They are going away. The question is how fast they go away. They need to go away a lot faster. They have a lot of political power. There's hundreds of billions of dollars and subsidies

propping these old fossil fuel industries up. So what do we need to do? The first thing we need to do, is accelerate the transition rapidly away from fossil fuels. It's happening, but we need to make it happen a lot faster because that's ultimately what's going to slow this warming down. Second thing we need to do is we need to think not just about the cutting fossil fuel emissions, but also adapting to this new world, thinking differently about how we build our cities,

thinking differently about where we get our food, thinking differently about building on coastlines and things like that. And finally, the question of sort of equity and justice is really at the center of this. You know, the rich nations and people of the world essentially have caused this problems. The poorer nations and people of the world are the ones who are suffering the most and have the least capacity to do anything about it. The wealthy nations, the wealthy people of our world need to help the poorer nations and the poorer people of our world adapt and live in this new climate.

that we're creating. And that conversation is basically the heart of the climate conversation today, which is, what do the people who cause the problem owe to the people who did nothing to cause the problem but are suffering the most from it. Jeff Goodell, thank you so much for your work, for your insight today on the new abnormal. Really, really appreciate it and hope we can continue this conversation. Folks, the book is The Heat Will Kill You First, Life and Death on a Scorch Planet. And it's out now. Thank you, Jeff. Thanks for having me. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday.

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