The Daily Beast Podcast - Marjorie Taylor Greene Is the Brawler the MAGA Base Wants

Episode Date: October 21, 2022

Marjorie Taylor Greene “came out of nowhere” to become one of the Republican Party’s most influential powerhouses, journalist and author Robert Draper, who writes for the New York Times Magazine, tells host Andy Levy in this week’s episode of The New Abnormal. “Republicans kind of wanted to kick her to the curb immediately,” Draper, author of the new book Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost its Mind, said. Then, professor at the University of Florida Michael McDonald, who specializes in American elections and is the author of a new book, From Pandemic to Insurrection: Voting in the 2020 US Presidential Election, says Trump’s refusal to accept that he lost the 2020 election has dramatically altered American politics. Also on the podcast, guest co-host Maura Quint, Tax March co-founder and member of Americans for Tax Fairness, reveals what America could learn from Liz Truss. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. And I'm producer Jesse Kennan, 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 great guest co-hosts, as well as some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try to make some sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. What a great show we have today.

Robert Draper, who writes for The New York Times Magazine, as well as National Geographic, stops by to talk his new book, Weapons of Mass Illusion, when the Republican Party lost its mind. Then we'll talk to Michael McDowell, who's a professor at the University of Florida and has a new book, from pandemic to insurrection,

voting in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, and it'll talk to us about a host of voting issues. But first, we're joined by the Tax March co-founder, a member of Americans for Tax Fairness, and the unrigar economy board, Mara Quinn. Mara Quinn. Andy Levy. Mara, thank you so much for being back to co-host with me yet again here on The New Abnormal.

I am so happy to be here. Thank you. And it's great because today we have a story that's sort of right in your wheelhouse. And I'm referring, of course, to the fact that Liz Truss has just set a record as the shortest tenure of any prime minister in the history of Britain. She lasted 44 days and she has now resigned. I'm not going to claim to be an expert on British politics the way you are. So I'm going to leave it to you to explain to our listeners why she had to resign. Well, I mean, you're absolutely right. I am an expert on all things British. I did have beans for breakfast, so I think that is really all you need to give you that title. That's about the extent of it. I also flipped past and did not watch but almost watched the crown. So we're pretty much all caught up. But from what I can tell, from what I have heard, yeah, Liz Truss is stepping down or being removed because of her failed economic policy, which is one of those like real familiar policies to us because her Her big goal was to give massive tax cuts for, you know, rich people, give bankers higher bonuses, like lift the cap so they could just get any bonus they want and fully get rid of the top income tax rate.

And this is historically a very successful winning economic theory that has just, from Reagan on, I mean, trickle down, we all know to be the biggest success there possibly is. But for some reason it didn't work out for her. I don't know why exactly. But I have some guesses. But here's what I don't understand. Marlora, she was only given 44 days, and I would maintain that that is not enough time for the trickling to happen. So it feels to me like this is unfair.

Sure. And sure, it's easy to say trickle down has never worked in the past, but maybe it would have this time. And basically, I feel like she got kind of short trift. And this is just, to me, this is just typical of our woke culture that has no attention span and can't even give trickle. down economics like six years to work? It actually takes 45 days. Everyone knows that. I mean, like if you've gotten an econ degree, that's the extent of time it takes. But for some reason, after 40 odd years of trying, it's never worked. And I guess kind of what happened is she announced this clearly failed policy and all of the economic systems of Great Britain went, oh shit.

Oh no. We know exactly what happens and completely started panes. And completely started panics. and absolutely started tanking. And so she had to leave. But that's what I think is incredible. She actually, like, they kicked her out. That's amazing to me. That's something I think we could learn from just a little bit, maybe. Every so often, if someone fails just dramatically, maybe we don't let them keep doing that job. It was just a new idea. I know. We get the guy who won't leave. Right. Well, I mean, they might have that too, because it looks like they've got Boris kind of poking his head back up being like, miss me yet. But, you know, They have that problem as well, but I love that they were willing to say, this doesn't work.

You're making us look bad. Get the hell out. And what I love the most, too, they have no problem just screaming and shouting in the House of Commons. And when Shrust was like, no, no, no, I'm doing this. You're going to like it. You know, they just started like launching jeers and just kind of laughing at her. And that's another area where, like, we could learn. We need to shame politicians more.

We need more mockery in our politics, I think, like a lot more of it. Yeah, no, I mean, I'm all for that. And yeah, I saw the reports that Boris Johnson was sort of going to, it seemed like this was one of those things where it's like the Tories were like, all right, raise your hand if you think you should be, you should take Liz's place. And someone didn't say, which they should have, not so fast, Boris. Right. And he just somehow got his hand up there. Yeah. And that's the part we could do without here.

Yeah, we definitely need, like, if you can't comb your hair, maybe, like, maybe step aside for a little bit. Maybe this isn't your time for politics. Maybe wait that out a bit because that seems to be a general concern with sort of like elderly white men with some sort of odd thing on the top of their head. I don't even want to necessarily call it here. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Sure. Yeah, Morgan Jeffrey, who writes for Radio Times, which is a big publication in the UK, he made a very important point. He said that Liz Truss is the only PM, that's prime minister, to not have an episode of Doctor Who aired during their premiership since the show began in 1963. I mean, if that's not an indictment, I don't know what is. Well, no, exactly.

And I mean, in a way it's sad. And she is not even going to make it, as everyone knows, as our listeners know, we're right now in the reign of the 13th doctor, but she is about to step down. The 13th doctor herself is about to step down, which means that Britain will have lost a queen, prime minister, and a doctor all in the same calendar year. I actually think that by means of their parliament means that the country ceases to exist. I'm pretty certain that that's written in those bylaws somewhere under there. Scoop it out.

Yeah. My first thought when I heard that Liz Truss was resigning was, do they have to change the money again? I think Luce Truss is actually going to be the next doctor. I think that's maybe what's happening. Maybe that's it. She got a better deal, you know? I mean, who's going to turn that down? No, they have announced to the next doctor is going to be...

Maybe she's going to be the next Tartus. You don't even know what a Tartis is. I know all the nerd stuff. I'm nerd adjacent. It's not my main thing, but, you know, I'm aware of it because I've dated men, so I'm fully... Fully immersed. Okay, so let's come back home and talk about the upcoming election, which is now a scant few weeks away. And for a while, Democrats were kind of leading ahead, doing well.

In happy mode. Well, it was sort of, you know, some of them were doing their dance of joy. And it looked like the red wave wasn't going to happen or at least wasn't going to fully happen. And that, yeah, they were probably still going to take the house by not, not by that much. And the Senate was very much in play for the Democrats. And now a lot of that is sort of being tempered. Do you believe that? Well, I'm going by the, polls here. And I'm going to throw it out there as a discussion thing. And then I will give you my opinion. Right now, I am in journalist mode. Of course. So there was a New York Times-Sienna College poll earlier in the week that showed that 49% of voters say they back the Republican congressional candidate in their

district and only 45% back the Democratic one. Last month, the Democrats were actually up by one in that poll. So that's sort of a five-point swing, if you want to look at it that way. Nate Cohen writes in the New York Times, that the reasons for this are basically pinned to a change in the political environment. And he says gas prices are going back up. The stock market is down. And that a lot of data is showing that the electorate's attention is focusing away from things like gun violence, abortion, and democracy, you know, unimportant things like those. And shifting to the economy, crime, immigration, stuff like that, where a majority or a plurality of the electorate believes the Republicans will be better. God knows why they believe that, but they do. So look, I don't know if I believe it.

I think I do. But I get the sense that maybe you don't. I don't know if I believe it. I guess I'm a little bit skeptical. I mean, polls in general have a lot of room for interpretation. And this one in particular has a lot of margin of error that kind of could lead you either way, actually. And it's a fairly small sample size. I think what they showed that Republicans were winning 18. percent of black voters, but that when you look at it meant that they sampled 77 people. So it's hard to necessarily know how accurate that might be. That said, I think that having polls that are saying that Dems need to step it up are important right now because I don't think anyone has any space to rest on their laurels or say, no, no, it's in the bag. We're good. We got this. Like that's not in any way

happening. So I certainly appreciate that. But the element of econ and crime being the sort of premier issues that are dominating people's concerns. One, econ has been the whole time. Like, that's, that's been the top of all of the polls the entire time. So we've seen that. But I actually, don't ask me why. I guess just for fun, I have been watching every single Senate campaign ad for the last two, three months. Just because, yeah, I got a lot of free time. You know, it's just like a fun thing to me. What I've seen is that those are the two issues that Republicans have been hitting over and over and over in all of their televised ads. Just Dems are soft on crime. Basically, someone's going to show up to your house and murder you and take you away. And also,

you're going to have to pay a lot of money for the privilege of doing that. It's just like, they are the scariest ads I've ever seen. Yeah. Like, I don't know why anyone's bothering going to a horror film this month. Like, just watch Republican ads. And you'll be like, all right, I'm terrified. I'm good. Let's go out. Let's cause some havoc. So I'm not sure which is precipitating which. I'm not sure if the ads are leading people to focus a little bit more, which is possible, or if that's just where people have been and that's just continuing to be a winning message for them. But I do think that it's very clear that Dems need to be answering these things because they are top of mind for Republicans. And I don't necessarily see the Dem messaging

coming in strong on those particular issues. I know too much about this lately. Yeah, no, I think you're absolutely right. And to your point of the Dem messaging not being great, A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, and this is reported in the New York Times by Blake Counsel, he writes that there are things like the Inflation Reduction Act, which was passed by Democrats, that lets the feds negotiate prices for some prescription drug. And it showed that that's broadly like popular, but people really, really like that. But this poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation, only 36% of the voters were even aware that this happened. Right. So obviously, that gets right to your thing about Dems are just not good at Kemp.

campaigning on this stuff, I guess the question is, did the Dem sort of put too much faith in, this is a weird way to phrase this, did they place too much faith in abortion? Meaning that, look, there's obviously and correctly a lot of anger about the Supreme Court and about Republicans wanting to take away women's rights to their own body. But did the Democrats, as a campaign tactic, think to themselves, oh, that's all we need? Yeah, that's, I mean, that's the other thing. So I've been watching all the Dem ads, too. and there are too many ads to possibly watch.

So I've really just been focusing on what the candidates themselves are putting out and what the sort of House and Senate PACs themselves are putting out. And I will say on the Dem side, obviously they were expecting to be able to fully capitalize on that anger. And there is a ton of anger. And I don't necessarily think that that's a bad tactic. I think it is really important. Like that is something that engages people in a really direct personal way, which is something you don't always have, something where it's like,

no, no, no, this literally, it's what you are going to do. do tomorrow. It is fully your health, your well-being, your life. So that's big and they absolutely should be going at it hard, but definitely worry that they might be doing it to the neglect of other issues where it would equally benefit to pull in some more of these things like touting a giant win. I mean, the IRA was obviously like not something that, you know, wasn't as big as anybody that I fraternize with wanted it to be. We wanted a whole other thing here. So, you know, obviously there was disappointment. But they still passed something. And they pass something with, I don't even want to call it a split Senate, right?

Like, what do we have? It's not, we don't have 50. We have like 48 or a halfish. I don't know. Like, we've got these like two whatever's over there. Like, so the fact that you still were able to get something through with this completely like crippled, not even half Senate is something to really tout and something to be yelling about. And beyond that, something to be saying, hey, we did this with two hands tied behind our back. We could do more.

Like give us more to work with, we can push for more. Of course, that assumes that they want to, which, you know, I guess that's up for question. But I certainly know there are, there is a strong part of the Democratic Party that does want to push for these things further. So I think there's a real opportunity there. And we still have a little bit of time. So, you know, I assume everyone who is a Democratic strategist is listening to this podcast right now, right? That's the whole audience. I would hope so.

Liz Smith may not be. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, she's got hot tubs. You know, there's other stuff she's got to do. Right. Exactly. It's fair. Yes. But other than that, I would hope that other Democratic strategists are listening to this. And yeah, I just want to make sure I was clear on that, too, that I am absolutely not saying that the Democrats shouldn't have put a heavy focus on abortion. I know you hate it. I was saying exactly what you were saying. You just said it a lot better than me. So that makes me feel like I have to restate it, which is why we're never having you back ever again. No, that's fair. I hate me too. It's all right. We're all in the same time. see him here. You know, I'll just shift to crime really quickly, and I'll use a local example, because, and I hit the mute button as fast as I can when they happen, but in the governor's race here, it's Democrat Kathy Hockel, who obviously stepped in when Andrew Cuomo resigned. And then on the Republican side, there's Lee Zeldon, who is not even like a New York Republican. He's a full-on Trump, MAGA idiot. And somehow this race is close, which scares the hell out of me.

Zeldon's ads have been exactly like you've been describing. They use the full-on, you know, the slow-mo, the black and white. Right. Oh, yeah. With like shocks of red, which is always fun, too. Just like there's like blood stains. Yeah. The guy with the scary voice, you know, Kathy Hochle in her world, you will die. Andy, are you doing the voice? You do this perfectly. I am not. Is this your side good? Well, I don't like to talk about it. Okay. All right. No, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to expose you like that. You keep going. I do it under my sag name, so I can't. But, you know, and this thing just happened like in the last couple weeks, there were these strangers outside Lee Eldon's house. and his teenage daughters, I think, had to call 911 and have the guys arrested. And I saw that. And I'm like, I am not at all saying that this was a plant and that this is a fake. I am not saying that. I am simply saying I would not put it past Lee Zeldon to do something like that.

And I will stand by that statement without saying that that's what happened here. But it is interesting that a guy who is running a campaign based on the trying to scare people that this suddenly happened a couple weeks before the election, it worries me to see that race titan and to see the idea that a Trumpy Republican could possibly be the governor of New York. I don't think he's going to win. I still think Hockel's going to win, but it shouldn't even be this close. No, I mean, I'm next door in Pennsylvania and we're having the same thing. I mean, absolute extremist candidates that are, I mean, I hate to not call them Republicans.

These are just Republicans now. I mean, I understand that there are still these sort of like Reagan-clinging Republicans. who are just like, oh, but I just really want, you know, open economy. I don't know, whatever stuff they still pretend to want. But this is just the mainstream of the party now. This is who they are completely. So we can't even pretend like, oh, no, these are the extremists. Like, these are their guys.

They were like, who do you want? This is who they've chosen in races across the country. This is it. And that's really frightening because there's no middle ground here. There's no reaching out across the aisle here. I mean, like, it's like reaching out across the aisle at a zoo into the, you know, crocodile pit. It's just like, well, there goes your arm. Like, there's not, there's no agreements that are going to be reached here.

And it is incredibly scary. And I certainly don't put it past any of them to be, you know, drumming up this type of fear. And that's what they're running on everywhere, fearmongering in whatever possible way that they can. To be clear, I completely agree with you that that is the mainstream of the Republican Party right now. It's the fact that it's New York. Look, I'm from Long Island, and Long Island couldn't be any trumpier. And I suspect upstate is very much the same way. But it still feels like, you know, when you have a New York Republican, they're more like a George Pataki type or something like that, you know, more of a sort of a classic Rockefeller Republican and not the full on Trumpy guys. I mean, we have bodegas here, Mara. We're different. We're different. I know, I know. And there are cats. I've heard all about it. You guys are obsessed with cats. You've got them on Broadway. You've got them in bodegas. It's like a whole thing.

And yet you still have a huge rat problem. So I don't know what to make of your whole city. Joining me now is the great journalist Robert Draper, author of the new book, Weapons of Mass Delusion, When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind. So Robert, first of all, thank you so much for being here. The book is amazing. Thanks so much, Andy. I really appreciate it.

And thanks for having me on. Absolutely. You say that the period you're chronicling is in essence the moment when the, this is not normal fretfulness accompanying the seemingly anomalous Trump era metastasized into this is dangerous and is not going away. And obviously, it's not accidental that that moment and the moment where your book starts is January 6th, 2021. Yeah, what is accidental is that at the time I got the contract for the book, Andy, it was roughly December the 20th of 2020. You know, to recall that period, I mean, Trump had lost. He had not yet conceded. Most of us figured that he would concede at some point. We certainly didn't imagine

that an indirection would occur. And so I reported for work, as it were, on my first day, on the morning of January the 6th at the Capitol. You know, obviously the events of that day created a seismic shock, not only in the nation, but also in my thinking of the Republican Party and how it would pursue this book. So you're correct. The book subtitle is when the Republican Party lost its mind, not how. It's not a history book, but instead purports to be the story of this pivotal 18-month period when faced with a choice of whether to purge itself of the corrosive elements that had led to the attack on the Capitol or to embrace those elements, the Republican Party chose the latter. Yeah, and before I get to the individual

people that you talk about in the book, I didn't realize until I read the book that you were actually there on January 6th, and you wrote that, you know, you had been in Mogadishu, you had been in northern Afghanistan, dodging Taliban roadblocks, you'd been placed under house arrest by Yemeni intelligence, et cetera. But you say none of that had prepared you for the site of America in a state of domestic siege. Was it just disbelief that it was happening here? Yes. And I, and, you know, people have asked me, Andy, whether I was terrified that day. And I think I wasn't only because I was so stunned by what I saw. I mean, now having said that and stunned because of the reason you just correctly, you know, referenced, which is that I've traveled throughout conflict zones

and would have expected, perhaps, to witness the toppling of a government in the Democratic Republic of Congo or Sudan or Niger or other places that I've reported on, but not in the U.S. And to also be, once I got outside the Capitol and was on the east side of the building with the mob watching as they push their way in, to feel the visceral just physicality and anger. of the crowd was to recognize that really anything could happen. And the notion, as I hear some people, you know, kind of dismissively say these days that, oh, you know, violence really didn't occur. If an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or a Nancy Pelosi or a Mike Pence had been made visible to the crowd, it's not just that I shudder to think what would happen. I know what would have happened.

Their lives would have been a great risk or would have ended altogether. Yeah, absolutely. getting into the meat of the book, you chose to focus on the House GOP. And obviously, you mentioned that it goes beyond that and it goes to governorships. It goes to the Senate. It goes to other local elections. But you decided to focus on the House GOP, the Paul Gossars, the Kevin McCarthy's, the Lauren Boberts, the Marjorie Taylor Greens, et cetera, and what feels like ad infinitum these days. What was it that led to that decision? Sure. I mean, briefly because, you know, the House of Representatives was set up basically to be the proximate source of power for the American people. And that means, among other things, that the passions of the moment are most acutely felt in the lower chamber of the legislative branch, much more so than the branch, the upper chamber that is intended to be the cup that cools the coffee or whatever the expression is. And so, you know, that's where historically you've seen. seen, you know, the passions of the moment express themselves and be debated. In particular, as regards to the Republican Party, that's where you could see this crossroads that the party faced in the wake of January the 6th play itself out, where you could see certain Republican members like Liz Cheney denouncing the attack on the Capitol, denouncing Trump's role into a call for his impeachment and call for his expungement from the party altogether. And then

others who are very much part of the MAGA movement, say, on the contrary, he is our leader and always will be. You saw that in a more concentrated form in the House than you would in any particular state, any particular governorship, and for that matter, the Senate. All of those reasons are obviously completely right, but it also makes the book flow really well, I thought, because it's just sort of, because they're all interconnected, because they all work together. So, you go from sort of one to another, and you sort of, you start with Paul Gosar, you say that one of his office staffers was advised by a Republican operative. You need to get out of there. That man is insane. You quote another senior GOPA saying that GOSAR was my nominee to be that

guy who comes in with a sawed off shotgun one day. But then you have a line that was absolutely chilling. And you say that, in fact, he was ahead of his time. To me, that was like the most perfect way to describe what has happened to the GOP. Well, and Paul Gosar, who for your listeners, is this right-wing congressman from a very conservative district in Arizona, came in with a Tea Party class of 2010 and did not distinguish himself at all amongst that class. I, in fact, interviewed him in 2011 and thought, boy, there's, you know, there's an hour of my time. I'll never get back, and I doubt I'll ever hear about this guy again. But in fact, he is very provocative, often obnoxious, far-right utterances,

were essentially preparing for the attention economy that finally came to American politics in the last few years. And so GOSAR was there to meet it when November 3rd, 2020 occurred and it didn't go the Republicans way. Trump insisted it was stolen, and Gossar led the very first rally in the United States, the so-called Stop the Steel rallies in Phoenix and continued to do that.

And Gosar played this important role on January the 6th, too, when he stood alongside a Republican Senator Ted Cruz and objected to the electoral count in Arizona. And that's what basically kicked off this decertification debate that occurred that day. And then, of course, was halted by the insurrection and had to be continued late that evening. Yeah, I want to jump to Marjorie Taylor Green for a bunch of reasons. But one of them actually ties into Gosar, because as you point out, like he sort of, in a lot of ways, he pioneered a lot of what we're seeing now. I guess you could say he and maybe Sarah Palin, if you want to go back to that. I mean, obviously, I don't feel bad for him, but he has sort of been

eclipsed by the Marjorie Taylor Greens, by the Lauren Boberts, etc. And you say that not that far back in January 2021, the thought that MTG would within a year's time be the dominant force within the Republican Party and would in fact be the party's loudest and most memorable messenger outside of Trump himself was too dubious a proposition to serve even as a bad punchline. And I read that and it's like, yes, that's true. And yet here we are. Yeah, no, exactly. And you're right. I mean, it's hard to feel a whole lot of sympathy for Gossar for all the crazy things that he's said. But there is a kind of element of, hey, you know, saying out righteous things was my idea. How come Margie Taylor Green now gets all the credit for it?

A fun connective tissue fact, by the way, you mentioned Sarah Palin, is that Sarah Palin's General Counsel was a guy I got to know named Tom Van Flyen. And Van Flyen later got to know Paul Gosar, brokered a meeting between Palin and Gosar when Gosar was first running for Congress. She endorsed him, which enabled him to clear out the field and win. And as a reward for that, Tom Van Flyne became Gosar's chief of staff. And Van Flyen is the guy you referenced to on January the 6th, assured someone who was saying to him and to Gosar, you guys need to get out of there, that now we've got nothing to worry about. These are our people in the capital. But yeah, I mean, Green came out of nowhere. I mean, she was this co-owner of a family construction business. Her only real association with politics had been then in the last couple of years, 2017 and 2018, she'd become an adherent to the Q&on conspiracy theory and then began to involve herself in what she would call confrontational politics, trying to be a right-wing social media influencer by showing up to the Capitol and harassing Democratic staff members. When she couldn't get an audience with Republicans who she was trying to lobby to vote against gun safety measures

when she basically was given the stiff arm by them, that's when she decided, well, damn it, I'm going to run for high office myself, ran for Congress, ultimately switched over to a more conservative district that had been vacated, and one in a real upset, showed up to Washington. Republicans kind of wanted to kick her to the curb immediately a month into her tenure. She got stripped of her committee assignments. And at that point, yeah, we had every reason to believe that Green would be consigned to the Star Wars Bar of forgettable political weirdos. But instead, she became a fundraising dynamo, came to have this huge social media influence, and ultimately came to be very influential within the party itself.

I have always maintained two things about Green. And the first is that dismissing her as some sort of fringe crazy was a big mistake. And I think that has already been borne out. you say as much in your book. The other is that I have this sense that she really does believe the things that she says no matter how insane they seem. Because it's so hard to tell. And sometimes we play games like, you know, grifter or true believer. And I put her in the true believer camp, but you've had multiple interviews with her. You've observed her up close at work. Am I wrong about that, do you think? You're not wrong. My bumper sticker answer to the question, does she really believe

all the stuff she says is she believes enough of it. She's cognizant to the fact that the attention economy rewards hyperbole. Instead of saying Democrats are radical liberals or even socialists, you say they're communists. Instead of saying that the left is immoral, you say they're godless or you say they're evil. But basic to all that, our beliefs, by the way, that are reminiscent of QAnon, that Trump is the greatest, you know, president of our lifetime, the Democrats are incorrigibly evil, that a great replacement theory is underway at the border. And where we stand today in American politics is essentially a holy war pitting good against evil. Yeah, it really is incredible.

And yet I'm now blanking on the guy's name, but you write about how there was a guy early in her career who, like, first advised her, and then came to believe that she just had like no depth of knowledge about anything. And one of the things that he said was that for all her talk about religion and Christianity, he said, I don't even think she's read the Bible. Right. That was this guy, Travis Clavone, who's a one-time office seeker and remained, you know, a somewhat influential Republican activist and who signed on briefly to be an advisor of hers, but ultimately found that he couldn't control her, that she was, you know, always

steering off message, at least from his vantage point. And yeah, he questioned her sincerity when it came to the Bible, found her views of Islam to be abhorrent. But, you know, in fairness to Green, green was ungovernable by this guy because she didn't want to be governed. She had a notion of how to run a campaign, and it was to be trumpier than thou, and to say outrageous things that would get attention. And what came to be the case was that in this Northwest Georgia district that she moved into, the 14th district, a very white rural, lower middle income area, people love that stuff. They love a fighter. You know, they didn't want someone who was going to bring, you know, who was going to win the water supply wars,

you know, between Georgia and Alabama. They wanted somebody who would like shut the government down and go toe to toe to toe with AOC. Right. I mean, obviously the point is she was right and he was wrong. That's exactly right. He may have been right in his views of, you know, the degree of her. expertise in the Bible. But in terms of like how to run a winning campaign, she was right then, and she continues to be right now to the extent that in Georgia politics, like everyone running for office is trying to be Marjorie Taylor Green. I mean, they're all competing to be more outrageous than the other, and they're stealing lines from her to the extent that it's become bothersome to her because now she's competing not only against herself and whatever outrageous

things she said the day before to gain attention, but she's competing against her mimics, Yeah, that is amazing. And by the way, when I say she was right and he was wrong, I don't say that in any way complimentary to her. I just mean that she was obviously right in thinking that, you know, that's what the people want. Another thing I have half jokingly said on this show is that people are going to have to stop dismissing her when she's Trump's running mate in 2024. Then I read from you that this has actually been discussed. It's been discussed since February of this year, and it's been discussed repeatedly. Now, to be fair, I mean, how many of these conversations has Trump had with other people? I would dare say he's had that with Carrie Lake, with Nikki Haley, with Christy Noam. But that's the kind of list. What does Marjorie Taylor Green have going for her amongst all of those? She has been unflaggingly loyal to Trump throughout. What does Trump concerned about most of all in a VP after the Mike Pence experience loyalty? So he knows that if he needs someone, to fight for him to overturn a presidential election. She's not going to be the one to say, you know, Mr. President, I don't think that's copacetic and I don't think that's constitutional. He has every reason to expect that Green would be by his side and would be his proximate warrior. Yeah, and I don't think it's an accident that over the last month or so, she has sort of opened for him

at a bunch of speeches that he's given. Right. That's right. And by the way, you know, to be talking about Green is not just because she's an influential character in and of herself. It's also because Andy. Her power drives from the fact that she is the brawler that now that Trump is no longer holding office that the MAGA base of the Republican Party wants. And what that means among other things is not just someone who is a quote unquote fighter, but someone who speaks in this fusillade of disinformation that now has become, you know, the text basically for the MAGA universe, this disinformation economy that believes not just the central lie that the 2020 election was stolen, but believes all these other proximate lies that vaccines are either ineffectual or their killers or

both, and that January the 6th was either instigated by Antifa or an ordinary tourist event or a setup by the FBI, take your pick. This kind of rotating series of lies that ultimately means that the truth is up for grabs is what Marjorie Taylor Green represents. And so when the title is well, of mass delusion. She is the weapon. But the real concerning factor is that mass delusion has taken place. And that is sort of the throbbing, pulsing heart of the Republican Party right now. Yeah, it's Kelly Ann Conway's alternative facts, but just sort of writ even larger. That's exactly right. I mean, at the time, I don't think Conway, I mean, she was referring, and I think this was on day one or day two of Trump's presidency with his awesome inaugural crowd rally.

Yes. So that was just about optics or something. But that alternative. facts could also apply to the legitimacy of our functioning democracy, including, you know, a peacefully held election, it was a relatively new and unpredictable development in American life. Yeah, I guess it's just, you know, when you see that you can get away with it with something that's so as easily disproven as the size of a crowd, which there's, you know, photographic and video evidence of, then you realize, oh, we can get away with this just about everywhere. Yeah, yeah, no, that's right. I mean, I had, you know, just out of the blue and apropos, all this. A couple of days ago, a woman who used to be a Republican County party chair in Texas

called me. She'd read something of mine. We wanted to express her dissatisfaction, but in the course of it, you know, said I had it all wrong about January the 6th. She had friends who went there, and here she went. She said, you know, it was completely peaceful. Then the next thing, you know, she says until Antifa came in and riled it all up. And then the next thing she said was that Nancy Pelosi probably staged the whole thing. And so this kind of shape-shift truth is something that really has, it sounds fringy and perhaps it is fringy, except for the fact that tens of millions of people embraced that alternative universe of factually challenged notions. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's terrifying. Let's just be honest. I want to move away from

MTV for a minute because I want to get to Kevin McCarthy because I have this sort of special loathing for him because I believe that he knows better. Like, for instance, he knows Biden won in 2020, but he is perfectly willing to pretend otherwise because he simply doesn't care about anything but power. And you write, you say, quote, as the table setter for Donald Trump, no Republican went to greater lengths to enable him than McCarthy. Yeah, that's right. He'd had this fascination with Trump that goes back to his 20s. I learned from interviewing one of McCarthy's childhood friends that in his early 20s, Kevin McCarthy would obsessively talk about Trump. And I remember that, you know, McCarthy in an early conversation I had with him,

just as Trump was taking office, that McCarthy was saying, you know, he's a celebrity politician. I dealt with this before when I was in the California legislature and Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was there. It'll be more or less like that. But it's true that, you know, in the care and feeding and attempting to handle Trump, he also, you know, enabled Trump's lies. And there's a dialogue in my book in which McCarthy talks to over a period of several days to a confidant of his after the 2020 election. And McCarthy is saying, yeah, of course the election, you know, wasn't stolen. And, you know, there's going to be stages of grief. I'm talking him through it. And then this person says after several days pass and Trump still hasn't conceded, well, you know, don't you feel like we're maybe entering a dangerous moment here?

And McCarthy's reply was, maybe, you know, but he didn't sound particularly upset about it. And then what McCarthy said was, you know, if there's a silver lining to any of this, it's that I'd probably stand a pretty good chance of becoming speaker. I remember that line in the book. And I was like, oh, my God, that is like just the perfect description of Kevin McCarthy right there. Yeah, I mean, it's so, you know, I mean, McCarthy has never, you know, strayed too far from the central objective of his being speaker of the House. And he has believed that to do that, he needs the blessings of the Trump base, the MAGA people. And that means, therefore, that he's got to stay in the good graces of Trump. And so he's continued to counsel Trump on who Trump should endorse, for example.

He has, you know, also tried to dissuade Trump from going after some of his own members, but has also sat on his hands when Trump has gone after them anyway. And he has very conspicuously not disciplined people like Marjorie Taylor Green and Paul Gosar because they are favored by Trump. So in the enabling of Trump, he has, in a greater sense, enabled this MAGA base that is so steeped in disinformation, all for the sake of McCarthy becoming Speaker of the House. one day. It is absolutely amazing. Okay, my closing question is maybe somewhat unprofessional, so I apologize. How fucked are we? I shouldn't be laughing. That's gallows humor. I mean, we're I know. We're at a bad situation. Our democracy, as it is set up, depends on the health of two functioning political parties, and one of them is a very sick puppy. And I do not believe that there is any indicator that the Republican Party is going to cure itself anytime soon. My guess is that it will

take the Republican Party taking over, showing its quote-unquote ability to govern, and then enduring a succession of election cycle losses before the mainstreamers in the Republican Party say, you've had it your way, you have plunged us down the toilet, and it's time to move on. I guess an adjacent possibility, also not a very good one, is that if the MAGA Republicans really truly become the ruling party again and a crisis occurs and they utterly bungle it, then the public writ large will rebel against them and, you know, cast them into oblivion. But that, I think, requires a crisis and real pain that I don't wish on America. So, unfortunately, I don't have any rosy scenarios of pain for you here. I mean, I tend to be a kind of glasses half empty

person anyway, but I don't mean to suggest that the glasses have full of strychnine. We're in a pretty sober situation here, and there's no evidence that the Republican Party can self-correct. Boy, the book is Weapons of Mass Delusion when the Republican Party lost its mind. It's an unbelievable read. Thank you so much, Robert, for joining us, and I just, I really appreciate you being here. No, thanks, Andy. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for having me on. Joining me now is a professor at the University of Florida who specializes in American elections, and the author of a new book from pandemic to insurrection voting in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, Michael McDonald.

Professor, thank you so much for being with us. Great to be with you. The impetus for me wanting to have you on is I saw a tweet of yours on October 16th, and it said, I don't think most people understand that a vote for many Republican secretaries of state and governors across the country is a vote to never have a choice again. They'll only accept elections where Republicans win, including Trump in 2024. And I read that, and I know in the abstract, that sounds like politically motivated bluster. It sounds like Chicken Little. It sounds like hyperbole. But the reality is I think you're absolutely right.

So tell me what lead you to think this. Well, we have officials and candidates who already say that the 2020 election was fraudulent. They've been attempting to reverse that election outcome, even to today. They're trying in places like Wisconsin and Arizona to decertify the election. results and recount yet again because they've had many recounts in these places and try to yet again say that Trump actually won the election, even though all of the evidence, I mean, every single piece of evidence that we have says that Biden won the election. This should not be a controversy at all. But because there's been this misinformation out there, you know, with Trump

leading the way, his followers believe it that the election was fraudulent. And because his followers make up a significant portion of the Republican base. Elected officials are having to say, yeah, that the election was somehow wrong or fraudulent. And some of these people have become to believe these things. And now they're actually running for offices in places like Pennsylvania and Arizona, where they would have influence over how elections are conducted in the future. And Kerry Lake, for example, in Arizona, refused to say that she would accept an election result where she didn't win. These people are, they're already saying it out loud that if in the future election, they don't win, they're not going to accept the results.

So if they're not going to do it for their election, if they're not going to do it for Trump's election in 2020, I think the logical conclusion would be any future election too where Republican doesn't win. They're not going to accept that result either. Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely correct. So let's set aside governors for just a second, but we will get to them. It seems to me the GOP is doing something that the Democrats have somehow been completely unprepared for. And that is running people in state and local elections, going as low down, if you want to say, as school boards, on up to, say, secretaries of state. And they're running these people who, if they win, will seek to really fundamentally alter our society, both with election results, which I know is your bailiwick, but also other things. And I guess my question is sort of like, you know, help?

Like, what do we do if a lot of these people win, which seems very, very possible? And they really do, as you say, you know, particularly in the election sphere, if they really do fundamentally alter how we do things. Are we just screwed, is my question, I guess. Well, the first recourse will be the courts in that situation. I've already seen this happening in a couple of places where local election officials who, again, deeply believe these conspiracy theories, even in a primary election, a Republican primary election in New Mexico, for example, they refused to certify the election results because they were somehow thought that Dominion voting systems was trying to manipulate their election results. And so the courts in

New Mexico ordered the local election officials to certify the results. So the courts are going to be our sort of first and last bastion on some of these situations that are going to arrive. they're already happening. So, I mean, it's not like this isn't already going on, but they're going to be our first and last. And while that can give us some comfort, we have to realize that the Supreme Court is probably not going to be on the side of the Democrats when it comes to these challenges. We're already seeing the Supreme Court make rulings with regards to partisan gerrymandering and the Voting Rights Act that strip away protections for voting rights in this country. And so the Supreme Court has, you know, allowed investigations to go forward.

of Trump, they've shot down the sort of claims of Trump, but on other things where Republicans are playing around with the rules, they're more willing to look the other way. And it will be a test then how much the Supreme Court's willing to bury their head in the sand when it comes to the more extreme things that we may see in the future. I am 100% with you on this, but given how many federal judges at all levels that Trump appointed, You know, we're talking about a court system, again, almost from like top to bottom that the GOP is remaking in their image. And I think it just feels like, and again, tell me if I'm being chicken little here, but it feels like in the past, there was always, well, if you don't like them, vote them out. And this will only last for four years.

This will only last for six years. But the way things seem to be going is they're sort of figuring out how to game that system so you may not even be able to vote them out. Republicans have had a long game on this. Yeah. It started with trying to win control of state legislative chambers way back in the 1970s. They realized that redistricting after those equal population rulings in the 1960s, Republicans realized, while we may not have malapportionment anymore, you could still do partisan gerrymandering. And so they realized, well, if you could get control of these state legislative chambers,

then we can start doing partisan gerrymandering. We could cement ourselves into power in the state legislatures and then use that to, to also mucky around with maps for the Congress as well. And so they had this long game. And Democrats, in some ways, dropped the ball. They were later to the game. Certainly Obama has been trying to lead an effort to elect people at the state legislative and Secretary of State levels and involved in partisan gerrymandering, pushback on that.

So Obama has been there. I don't think a lot of people realize that he's doing that sort of work, but they're there. but it's still a game of catch-up at this point. And because the Republicans have already managed to cement themselves in places like Wisconsin, Democrats can win a majority of the vote in Wisconsin. They're not going to win a majority of that legislature anytime soon. And the courts, both at the state and federal level, are not going to provide any relief on that. So, you know, for the foreseeable future, Democrats are basically shut out of the state legislature of Wisconsin

and some other states as well. but Wisconsin's one of the worst cases where we're seeing this across the country. Yeah, I mean, it's absolutely frightening. So you're down there in Florida. What's going on there? Governor DeSantis, not only has there been redistricting down there, which maybe you can tell us about, but now he's got something called an election security force? Yeah.

So in terms of the redistricting, the legislature mostly, I would say, abided by Florida's constitution when drawing their districts. The governor does actually does not have a role in state. legislative redistricting in Florida. It's just a quirk of how Florida does its redistricting. And there's certainly deficiencies in the map that I can point to across the state that are violations to the Constitution. The courts may adjudicate that, although the Democrats seem to be willing to live with whatever the Republicans did for the state legislature. But in the congressional map, where the governor actually does have a veto, he forced the legislature to adopt his favorite

map, which is, I mean, any fair reading of the Constitution would say that minority voting rights are protected. That's in our state constitution. That's not a federal constitution issue. That's a state constitution issue. And even the legislature took that into account when they were drawing their own maps. So DeSantis stripped away voting power for African Americans in North Florida. He implemented a very partisan map, one of the most partisan maps for Congress in the country. That's also a protection that found in our state constitution. And the courts so far in Florida, which, you know, Republicans have had a long period of time to appoint judges, they've all been willing to let this happen so far. And we'll have to see after the election if the state Supreme Court is going to stand up

for the Constitution of Florida or if they're going to stand up for politics. My guess is they're going to stand up for politics and they're going to be angling for a Supreme Court nomination or other federal court nomination would just be my guess as to what's actually going to happen here in Florida. As far as the election police go, it's a sad story. There were just videos that came out recently that showed people being arrested for voting while they were felon. We had an amendment to restore felon voting rights, but the legislature made it a very

convoluted process. And people basically don't know whether or not they are eligible to vote if they are a felon or have been formally a felon in the state of Florida. So some people who didn't know that they were felon, you know, that they weren't eligible to vote, thought they had their rights restore. voted and they had the police come and take them away. And the videos were persons of color. Yeah, of course. It's all, you know, the congressional redistricting was targeted it primarily, although not exclusively, at African American voting strength in the Tallahassee and Jacksonville area.

So it seems to all fit into a piece of puzzle that Florida is reverting back to the Jim Crow era more in that direction than being a forward-looking state with respect to voting rights. Yeah, it is. It is frightening again. And now I was just reading yesterday that there's an attempt in Louisiana to sort of redefine who is black in order to make it easier to redistrict to hurt African-American voters. Well, I have not seen that particular, so I can't really comment on it too much. Oh, okay.

Just to say that, yeah, definitions of race are actually a lot. were convoluted and complicated themselves. And, yeah, it would be possible to change how people are defined and how they self-identify their race. And that could affect the way in which you would implement any election law and not just redistricting. Yeah, I guess what they want to do is what they've historically done in Louisiana and I guess in other places is based the definition off of what people actually check on a census box. And it was okay if you checked both, like, for example, black and Latino, you would

still count as black, and the GOP now wants it to be like, no, if you checked anything in addition to black, then we do not have to consider you black for districting purposes and stuff like that. Well, I'll tell you a little secret. I mean, for a while, that's been happening already. I've been involved in redistricting litigation for now three decades, and one of the primary vendors for redistricting data basically counts only African Americans as people who check off the black box and white and black, but any other combination, they don't count it. And I've been in courtroom a number of times where I've had to point out that, no, actually, that black population is determined by black and in combination with any other race.

And it's important because the Supreme Court says in order to have a Section 2 Voting Rights Act claim, you have to demonstrate it's possible to draw a 50% black voting age population district. And if you ignore those multiple racial categories, you can shave maybe two to three percentage points off the black percentage. And that may be determinative whether or not you can get up to that 50% threshold that the U.S. Supreme Court requires. But, you know, let's say Louisiana can't do this on their own. This is a federal issue. Sure. So this is a federal voting rights issue.

So Louisiana could monkey around with it the way they want to. If anything, I would welcome them to do that because that will be clear. indication of intent to do racial discrimination. And in the case, for example, North Carolina, where Republicans requested information on race, people who were voting early, a federal court found that that was information that was very determinative in their ruling that North Carolina intentionally discriminated against African American voters. And so, you know, if Louisiana wants to do this, I think that, and even the fact that they're talking about doing it, that's just evidence that I would put into a courtroom to show that they have racial animus.

Yeah, sure. Obviously, my fear, of course, is that the courts won't care, given the state of a lot of the courts this day, as we were talking about earlier. The ironic thing to me here is that back during Jim Crow laws, I'm sure they weren't quite as specific as who counted as black in terms of who could sit where or use water fountains, etc. So it seems kind of ironic that they're now very concerned with, quote unquote purity. So the New York Times recently ran an analysis that showed that over 370 Republican candidates in 2022 have cast doubts on the 2020 election. That is just a stunning number. I think it was 70% of Republicans running for Congress had questioned President Biden's election. And of that 70%, almost two-thirds are favored to win. These numbers are just stunning, aren't they? Certainly they are. And hey, look, we can go back to 2016. There were Democratic. Democrats that were disappointed that Clinton lost the election. And there were conspiracy theories about how Russians had interfered with the election. And there were some recounts that were done

to investigate that. And there was no evidence. And Clinton, to her credit, did what every other presidential candidate had done in the history of this country, which was to accept the results of the election. And it's only because of Trump not willing to accept that he lost the election. By a larger margin than when he won't accept that. And it's that that's really having this corrosive effect on our democracy because when a leader as prominent as a former president refuses to accept their defeat, people listen to that. And even if everybody around them and all the courts and all the lawyers and all the elected officials, you know, secretaries of state and governors, everybody who's looked at this say, now Trump lost. That doesn't say, that doesn't say,

stand the same stature with the former president. And so as long as he continues to see political and monetary advantage out of denying the outcome of the election, he's going to continue to do this. And followers are going to believe him because he's the president. He must be correct. In their mind, it's about belief. It's not about facts anymore. And how this percolates down is that if you accept the election results as a Republican,

you face potentially the ire of Donald Trump, and this is happening in the Colorado Senate election where the Republican candidate is saying, no, Biden won. That's what they're up against. And if it wasn't Trump directly attacking these people, like the Senate candidate in Colorado, it would be the followers who really believe Trump.

They would be disillusioned if they were hearing that from a candidate. No, you know, hey, the facts are that Trump lost. Biden won and we got to do better as a party and redouble our efforts to win elections. I mean, that's, again, that's what mature parties do. And unfortunately, we don't have a very mature political party in terms of the Republican Party anymore. Right. And all these people have clearly learned from the examples of, you know, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinsinger, both of whom will shortly not be in Congress anymore. So before we go, I want to ask you about your book.

There's an infamous 2016 tweet from sports analyst Darren Rerner. Vell that goes, I feel bad for our country, but this is tremendous content. And he was talking about the 2016 election and it was a horrible tweet and it's become a meme. But it did come to mind when I first saw your book title, from pandemic to insurrection voting in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, because it was sort of an unbelievable, perfect storm of awfulness leading up to and obviously after election day. How do you even begin to analyze all of that? Well, a lot of what we're talking about here is covered in the book. in one way or another in that a lot of these seeds about sowing the disinformation about the election,

they started being planted by Trump long ago back in 2016 when he first ran for office. So I document all that. I document how all the legal battles that were around mail-balloting and Trump's refusal to accept mail-balloting. And one of my theses in the book is simply he was against mail-valoting because he'd had to accept that the pandemic was real. Right. And so he didn't want to do that.

And he's even set it on tape. So it's not like this is any shocked anybody. He just didn't want to admit the pandemic was real. And if we had to be safe in our voting by mail-balloting, well, that had to acknowledge that the pandemic was real. And so he refused to do that. Other Republicans took his lead and started adopting his rhetoric around that. And so a big fault line emerged around the pandemic. But a lot of this vote fraud targeted, you know, talking about mail ballots and other things, that was all being sewn along the way.

And so after we get to the election in November, that was fertile ground and it was already ripening. And so it was very easy for Trump just to carry forward the rhetoric to say, like, this was a fraudulent election because he'd been saying it for four years. And so really that's why this is like pandemic to insurrection. This is really charting what happened throughout that entire period. What I normally do is I follow the early voting in the country. I talk to a lot of reporters. The other impetus for the book was simply I started writing a little explain. for reporters because I talked to so many of them about mail balloting and I said, hey, wait a second.

I just like wrote a chapter of a book and I just continued to build on that by following on all the events that were happening in real time in the 2020 election. And some of it were things that I was actually involved with too. I do exit poll decision desk work. I was involved in some of the litigation in 2020. So I had a front row seat to some of it as well. So some of it's a narrative about what I observed and also about other thing else. One last thing about this. I want to say though, is that really the heroes of this election are election officials. Some of them died, got sick from COVID unnecessarily, I think, in my opinion. And the voters who showed up at record numbers, the highest turnout rate election we'd had since 1900. I mean, that's incredible that we

managed to pull this off. Cudos to election officials to the American voters. And so it's really a story about those people. Unfortunately, I know we tend to focus on personalities. quite a bit in our politics, but we as a country, we are our own personality. And we managed to do something quite spectacular in the 2020 election. And there are a lot of congratulations that should be go around, but also some sobering reflections that some people ultimately paid a real price for having to continue our democracy in the midst of a pandemic. The book is from pandemic to insurrection voting in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. I feel like it should probably be required reading for a lot of people because I'm not entirely sure we have learned all the lessons

we need to prevent another 2020 or something worse. Professor Michael McDonald, thank you so much for being with us. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Mara Quinn. Andy Levy. So Mara, who is your fuck that guy for today? There are always so many options to choose from. It is really, really difficult, but I know. I mean, I went with Representative Mike Johnson. who is a politician out of Louisiana, and he is introducing just a great new bill on the national level. He is basically trying to replicate Florida's don't say gay bill, but for the whole country, for everybody,

not just if you live in the panhandle, no matter where you are, the idea is basically that it would make sure that there is absolutely no conversation, no materials on gender or sexual orientation in any way that is reaching children. which is just such a fascinating thing, because they tend to seem to miss that gender orientation includes straight people who are having, I don't know, sexual intercourse in order to have children. For instance, if you call someone a mother or a father, those are things that are actually included with this.

And I feel like they miss that entirely. And I feel like someone like Mike Johnson, I'm actually, I'm developing a theory here where maybe it is that. that they don't have mothers or fathers. I'm starting to think that perhaps, perhaps like Mike Johnson and his type are actually being formed in like Steve Bannon's bathroom. Like he sweats into a tube. And then it just kind of like naturally replicates

into like a fully grown, terrible, evil human being who sets about to destroy anything good or happy in the world. Like I think that might be what's happening. And that's why they're confused. because they don't know about things like mothers and fathers and gender. So for them, it's just like shut it all down because, you know, if you're not coming from the evil overlords armpits, then you don't really exist or something. I think that might be it.

But this dude is really despicable. I mean, this isn't his first time being an absolute piece of shit. He absolutely does not recognize gay marriage in any way. He has tried to completely overturn any protections. that we might give to anyone outside of his really narrow, ridiculous, imagined idea of what a family is. And of course, these types of things that he's trying to put in place are incredibly hurtful, incredibly harmful. They cause real pain to children, especially given that there are kids who have two moms, who have two dads, who have all sorts of various types of families, who now, basically you're telling like an eight-year-old, you're wrong and bad, and you're can't talk about anything. You go sit in the corner quietly and shut up because we have terrible

evil people in charge who don't want you to exist. I mean, like, that's just a direct through line. Like, these people need to be kicked in the balls just repeatedly over and over. I'm sorry to go to violence. Of course I don't mean that. Of course I'm not calling for violence. I'm just talking metaphorically. You got that, right, Andy? I 100% got that. Okay, good, good. But yes, Mike Johnson, fuck this guy. Yeah. And I think I think you cut to the heart of it when you said the purpose of these bills is to legislate people out of existence and to act like they don't exist. And that is the end game here. And it's horrific. And he tweeted this the other day. You know, his support, whatever. And it really, I'm trying to be better. And it took all my energy to not just reply to him on Twitter and just

say, you know, you are human shit. And I just, I stopped myself because it's like, what do I gain from that? Like, it doesn't, but it's, but it's so hard. This is where I go back to like the UK politics. Like, we need more shaming. Like, he should have garbage thrown at him every second of the day, like, all the time. I don't even mean when he leaves his house, someone should rig it so that, like, he wakes up in the morning. And the moment he sits upright, like, just garbage just falls on his head. Like, that's, I think what we need more of that.

Yeah, I just, I honestly, I think people like him are, I think they're beyond shame. And I think that's a thing in this country on the right is, is so many of these people, they can't be shamed. You can't say, you know, at long lasts or have you no shame? Because the answer is no. You know, they don't, and they never did. It's absolutely true. You're completely right.

That is a huge movement on the right is specifically to have no shame. But I do think actually that it can be brought back. And maybe not directly to this person. Like maybe if we just all zeroed in and we just were like shaming Mike Johnson constantly, maybe he would never care. But I do think it has that kind of ripple effect. Like, it's not him. It's the other terrible people who are going,

I don't want to be yelled at all the time. Like maybe I shouldn't. do that. I feel like we could, as a nation, bring back a little bit of shaming truly evil people for their evil acts. I don't know. Maybe I'm crazy here, but I believe it. Well, speaking of shame, do you want to know who my fuck that guy is today? Very badly, yes. So my fuck that guy is not a guy. It is a woman. Her name is Megan Kelly. We were at one point, co-workers in a very, very vague sense in that I would see her in the hall every once in a while. But, you know, she was never mean to me. or anything like that. But she now is, I don't know, she hosts a podcast and does all these things,

and I'm sure she's making a grip of money and whatever. But she has thrown in fully with the faux politically homeless people who are just conservatives, but for some reason don't want to say so. And on, I guess it was Wednesday, she tweeted, a scary number of kids are dying after taking the COVID-vax from myocarditis among other injuries. How dare the CDC add this to its list of school vaccinations, et cetera, et cetera. etc. So one, the CDC has not added it to its list of school vaccinations. Not yet. They're debating it. But the more important thing here is her claim that a scary number of kids are dying after taking the COVID-vax. And a whole bunch of people tweeted back at her saying, can you tell us your source on this? So a couple hours after

that, I tweeted at her, hey, I've noticed that a whole bunch of people have asked you for your source on the scary number of kids dying and that you haven't replied. So I just wanted to make sure you're And then like three hours after that, I tweeted again because I hadn't heard from her. Now I'm worried. Concerned co-worker, yeah. And, you know, instead of just replying to her, I quote tweeted and I say, look, I still haven't heard from Megan. Does anyone know, is she okay?

I know someone that has journalists in their bio, you know, wouldn't want to make a claim like that without being very upfront about where the credible sources that she got it from. I still never heard anything. But, Andy, you're so thoughtful. Like, this is really caring of you. I am. but I'm starting to think that she doesn't have any credible sources for that. I'm sure that's not it.

I'm sure she's just bogged down in, like, you know, running through the list of fictional characters that are actually white. And that probably is going to take a while because there are a lot of fictional characters. So, I mean. It's true. The Grinch, by the way, I'm told now, is white, not green. But anyway, so I decided to do what these people always say you should do and do your own research. And I did that. And it turns out a scary number of kids are, in fact, not dying after taking the COVID-vax.

And that there are a handful of people who have been reporting that. And surprise, surprise, it's the general, it's always the people who don't know how to read data and often read things completely opposite of what they really are. And the actual fact of the matter is that a scary number of kids are not dying after taking the COVID-vax. And she has left these tweets up. She has replied to, as far as I can tell, absolutely no one asking her for a source on this. And for that reason, she gets my fuck that gal for today.

That makes a lot of sense. But I'm sure you'll retract it when she inevitably shows up and is just like, oh, I'm so sorry. I was kidnapped by illegal immigrants at the border. And I will immediately delete these while I continue to lie about something else. And then you'll apologize, right? I absolutely will. I don't have a problem apologizing when I'm wrong. Oh, that's why you're not making a lot of money.

That's it right there. We figured it out. Well, that's the thing. I mean, we don't need to, you know, we don't need to. You know, we don't need to get into that right now. She is absolutely terrible. So I think that's a fantastic, a fantastic pick. And my guess is not going to be the last time.

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