The Daily Beast Podcast - Mark Meadows' 2,300 Juicy Election Texts Revealed

Episode Date: December 16, 2022

The investigative reporter sifting through the unbelievable treasure trove of texts that the January 6th committee obtained from former White House chief of staff Mark Meadow’s phone has detailed what he found inside the 2,319 messages. “There’s just a ton of different people in there,” Hunter Walker, reporter for Talking Points Memo, told host Andy Levy on this week’s episode of political podcast, The New Abnormal. Next up on the podcast, Layshia Clarendon, who is the first openly non-binary player in the WNBA, describes what was going through her mind when she heard that Brittney Griner (BG) was arrested in Russia and taken into custody. “It was like the ground underneath me just fell,” Clarendon tells podcast co-host Danielle Moodie. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

First we'll be joined by Talking Points Memo investigative reporter Hunter Walker, who went through all of Mark Meadows' 2300 texts and has written tons of blockbuster stories about them this week. Then we'll talk to Leisure Clarendon, who's the first non-binary player in the WNBA, and they're going to share their thoughts about Brittany Griner being freed. But first, let's have some fun. Danielle, how the hell are you? You know, I'm alive and well because news flash, breaking news, Andy, I don't know if you knew this, but vaccines work. No. Yes. Yes.

I know that we all needed, you know, breaking news alerts, the World Health Organization and research done by Yale School of Public Health to let us know that the COVID-19 vaccines work. Correct me if I'm wrong. The news out of Florida isn't so sure. It's so weird. Does news come out of Florida? Well, I don't know. What's going on down there? So Ron DeSantis, everyone's famous, favorite Grim Reaper, has decided that he is going to double down on going to the right of Donald Trump, which I thought that was just a cliff. But apparently it keeps getting extended. And he is going to the right of Donald Trump and saying, you know, I don't think that these COVID-19 vaccines, I don't think that they work. I don't want them. Thank God, Florida did an institute, you know, government overreach. And this is what he's moving.

with, you know, and this comes on the heels of Dr. Fauci leaving the government after all of his decades of service. But the reality is that these vaccines saved more than 3.2 million lives and kept 18.5 million people out of the hospital in the United States. I don't understand what DeSantis thinks. And one, do we know if he's vaccinated? Because I'm pretty sure he probably got vaccinated. is that he is and that he not only is, but that he back in the day jumped the line to get vaccinated. That's how I feel about all these people who pretend to be anti-vax. But so the interesting thing is so he is now asked, he's asked the Florida Supreme Court, he wants to investigate what he calls wrongdoing in Florida with respect to COVID-19 vaccines.

And my first thought was, you know, I actually respect that he wants to investigate himself. But then I realized, oh no, wait, that's not what's going on here. But the thing is, like, yes, he's, I guess to the right, it's so weird to have to make vaccines a political issue. But I guess technically this does put him to the right of Donald Trump. But I think it actually puts him more, he's more in tune with the MAGA base than Trump is on this issue. I mean, a lot of the MAGA folks and the really fucked up conservatives were upset with Donald Trump when he talked about vaccines because he, you know, despite his wanting people to inject. bleach and stuff like that. He actually was not anti-vaccine, and he talked about how the vaccines worked, and they didn't like that. And DeSantis, I guess, has good enough political instincts to realize

that that's a wedge issue. And that's an issue where the people who, whatever amount of people still, you know, worship Donald Trump, where they actually disagree with him. So in terms of politics, it's a smart move, in terms of your life, it seems dumb. Seems like a risk. No, in terms of, you know, getting people killed, it's a bad move. But man, this is unbelievable that he's going to literally have a panel with a bunch of anti-vax nut jobs that is going to, quote, unquote, investigate this. And it's just, it's just unreal that we've gotten to this point. Do you remember that news clip of Ron DeSantis yelling at the high schoolers who were on stage with him, wearing a mask? And he said, remove your mask. Why are you wearing these masks? And thankfully,

I think one of the lone black children on the stage was just like, yeah, so no, I'm going to keep my mask on. The reality here is that 20% of the country is still unvaccinated. And there are still people that are dying of COVID-19. And if you were to do kind of a layover map to the areas that were hit the hardest outside of New York, which was ground zero, but as the vaccines were rolling out, you're looking at these red states. You're looking at the places where these governors decided that they were going to hyper politicize public health. And what I would love for people to do, and I don't understand why it still hasn't happened, is there should be class action lawsuits. Now, I say this, as I say, I am not a lawyer, but there should be class action lawsuits because I'd like to see a panel

put together to actually investigate, like you said, Andy, investigate Ron DeSantis, and see how many deaths there were in Florida following the release of all of these vaccines and his desire to open up Florida and open up this place, right? And the fact is that he put that state, puts his constituents at risk for a political game. And these are real people's lives. Like we can't even get a COVID recognition day. Over a million Americans died

and people continue to still have long COVID and deal with those effects. And we are gaslit into believing that like it wasn't that big of a deal because of people like Ronda Santas. So I just, I can't imagine. that he is going to use this very tragic and traumatizing time in our lives in American history as a political ploy to beat out Donald Trump. Yeah, it is.

Like, every time I hear the number, you know, the million number, it just boggles my mind that we lost a million people in this country. And it's like it never happened, as you said. And even what we're doing now, everything we're doing now, we're seeing skyrocketing, you know, hospitalizations. in a lot of places across the country. And nobody cares. Like literally nobody cares.

And I understand that a lot of people have COVID fatigue. And I don't mean like from long COVID. I mean like they just don't want to deal with it anymore. And I get it. But you got to be smarter than that. And very few people are saying, no, we should be locked down and we, you shouldn't go out. And no one is saying that. It's such a, you know, it's such a straw man.

That's what the sort of anti-vaxxers and the people who want to downplay the severity of COVID. say? And it's like, no, no one is saying that. But like here in New York, I mean, going on the subway and maybe 10% now of people are masked, and it's like, I don't know, it's just wearing a mask was never that big a deal to me. And the idea that people made it into this big thing. And when doing something that small, what to me feels so small, forget about yourself. But the idea that it could prevent other people from getting sick and or dying, like that is such a small price to pay. And just the unbelievable selfishness that we have seen in this country, you know, really since COVID started and really like embodied in people like Ronda Santis is just it's, I guess maybe

I shouldn't have been surprised. And, you know, American history and world history is littered with examples of this. But even for someone as cynical as I am, this was like unbelievable to me that people refuse to go even the tiniest bit out of their way and wear a fucking piece of cloth around their nose and mouth. If this were just like a Darwin situation where if you didn't do it, you died, go for it. Right. Exactly. Honestly, don't give a fuck in that case.

That's your choice and whatever. But we're talking about a situation where you're not doing something directly could harm other people. And the idea that you know that and you've been told that and that you either deny it or you just say, I don't care is just, it is unbelievably grim to me. But you know what? it's like we had the absolute worst president at the worst time. Donald Trump embodies greed and all he cares about is himself, his ego. Donald Trump is not a patriot. He doesn't care about community. You Google

the word selfish and that entire family tree would come down. What kills me when I see that number, the number of COVID deaths, the number of Americans that died in this country, all I think of about is the fact that if we had a different president, if it had been Hillary Clinton, if it had been Joe Biden, even dare I fucking say it, if it had been one of the bushes, we would have never gotten to, and it's not to say, and I want people to understand, it's not to say that we would not have lost people's lives. Of course. But we would have linked arms as Americans, and it would have been like, do what you can for your neighbor, you know, cover your mouth, like, you know, get American flag mask. it would have been a campaign and something that unified us,

that we were going through this shared experience of like, I am my brother, my sister, my person's keeper, and that community matters. And I just think about any other president, Republican or Democrat, outside of Donald Trump, we would have never gotten to this place. So it makes me so angry that of all the cases coming against Donald Trump that he's not prosecuted for this one.

I mean, I guess the idea is, you know, he probably didn't break any laws by doing all of that. So I don't know how you prosecute him. But I agree with you. I mean, because of circumstance, because of the fact that COVID happened on his watch, it did turn out to be in a presidency of just shitty decision after shitty decision. That was probably the one that hurt this country the most. Not the one, but everything, pretty much everything he did, except OK Operation Warp Speed,

pretty much hurt this country just to an unbelievable extent. And I guess maybe the good news is that there's a new Quinapec University poll that shows that his approval rating Donald Trump's is at its lowest point in over seven years. And it's at only 31%. Can you believe it's that low, Danielle, 31%. I just, you know, first of all, I can't believe it's that fucking high. This is why I say, Donald Trump was right. I don't know what the fuck could bring this man's poll numbers like to negative territories. into the 20s.

He said that he could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and he would see his numbers rise. It's just when you look at all the fucking damage, the rise in political violence, the hate, COVID, all of these things that Donald Trump has had a hand in, the stealing of documents, the blowing off of the emoluments clause, the find me 11,000 some odd votes. The list of things. Why is this man still at 31%? What does he have to do?

If you break down the poll, among Republican voters, his favorable rating is still 70%. Seven out of 10. And unbelievably, that's the lowest it's been since March 2016 among Republicans. But it's still at 70%. And that's unbelievable. Seven out of 10 Republicans still think they look at Donald Trump and they're asked, hey, is this guy? Is this a good guy?

And they're like, yeah. Yeah, it is? Like, that's unbelievable. You know, the good news is that among independent voters, There's only 25% view him favorably. And I assume that's why his numbers have cratered because Democrats never liked him. But it is amazing that 70% of Republicans still have their heads so far up their ass that they think Donald Trump is a good guy. It makes me lose faith in humanity.

Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. And I'm thinking to myself, there's not another Republican candidate. Like there isn't anybody else. Like you look at Donald Trump. You see the, but they don't see shit, right? What the fuck am I talking? They live on Earth three.

It's not even Earth 2 anymore. They've catapulted from there. I don't even know where these people live. When they look at Donald Trump and they say, yeah, he's fighting for me. Fighting what? Can we name one thing? If you think about one thing, if you're a Republican, what is Donald Trump done for people for the Republican?

I guess he overturned Roe v. Wade. That's what they wanted. They wanted that for decades. And he was good at owning the libs for a while. Yeah, because that puts food on people's tables. That lowers drugs prescription costs. If you added that to the, like they never did.

do that. And like when they make a list of, you know, what are the most important issues to you? And it's like crime, the economy, you know, abortion, stuff like that. They need to add owning the libs on that just to see where it would poll among Republicans and conservatives. Because I bet it would come in, if not number one, it would be damn close to the top. It would, it would have to be. But it's just like, so your idea of winning is to make sure that other people lose, but you don't actually gain anything. Right. Like that, that to me, that's worth the fucking psychology in-depth case study as to understand that like, I don't need, I don't want my life to be better. And dare anybody try and do that? Because when we look at Biden's poll numbers, which are climbing, but Biden's poll numbers were in the toilet.

And I'm like, this man inherited a fucking like trash heap. You know those tankers that go up and down the Hudson with trash on them because we don't know where the fuck to put them? that's what the Biden administration sailed into Washington on. So I'm like, give me a break. You know, it's every time you look at Democrats who have to come in and clean up, they're like the fucking janitors of politics. You know what? That should be their next slogan.

Democrats, we're the janitors. It's true. No, that's actually really good. And it goes back. That's sort of historical fact. And you look at this and you see, you look at how economies improve. under Democratic presidents after tanking under Republican presidents and not just the economy, like just the country in general. And you see that that's not, you know, this is not the first time

that that's happened. But I think you're right. And it's a really good point. The wanting other people to not do as well is more important than themselves doing better, except that it makes them feel like they're doing better to see other people not do as well. And that's where the psychology comes into play. It's the idea that the only way you get ahead is for other people to get left behind. And it's a shitty idea and it's an unnecessary idea and it has this sort of view of the world as a zero-sum game, which it's not. And there's absolutely no reason that helping other people and other people getting either great success or, God damn it, just being able to afford to feed their families and stuff like that. There's no reason why you have to

think that drags you down. It just doesn't. That's the basis of conservatism in 2022. Is that feeling? It's the replacement theory. They're coming to replace you. The immigrants are taking our jobs, which every decent study in the world shows there's not a lick of truth to that claim. But that's what they believe. You know, anytime they see someone who's not them getting ahead or someone who doesn't look like them getting ahead, it makes them feel like it's coming at their expense, which it's not, but the Republicans are very, very strong in terms of making their voters feel that way. That's the secret of Fox News. that's a secret of the conservative media ecosystem writ large. That's what they do.

At its core, everything that you just described, that is the scarcity mindset, right? If we were to break down, how are a Republican, aside from, you know, one is a violent cult and the other one isn't, but if you were to break down their ideology, Republicans come from a scarcity mindset, scarcity and fear. There is not enough for us all, right? They can at once say to their constituents that we're the good. greatest country. America is number one and anyone who doesn't declare that is clearly anti-American, blah, blah, and we have the best everything. And then at the same time, they also say, we don't have

enough. And my God, if we give other people equity, then that means dear white people, you're going to have to live with less. Democrats come from a, we are the land of bounty. We are abundant. And what has transpired, what we've allowed to transpire throughout generations since the founding of this country is inequity. It's that you feel like you have all of these things, but the reality is that there is more than enough to go around. Me as a black lesbian getting married, how the fuck does that interfere with your heterosexual miserable marriage? I have no idea. I have no idea, but these people are willing to stand on the floor of the house and cry fake tears. Because somehow giving people the rights and privileges that they enjoy, allowing them a seat

at the table is somehow taking away from them. So they'll tell you, oh my goodness, look at these queers. The next thing that they'll want is for us to think they're human. It's absolutely fucking ludicrous, but that's why they're so good the Republican Party in Donald Trump and Magadam and Trumpism. They're so good at stoking what is innately wrong and broken, which is the idea of this white exceptionalism. And I say I'm like, I don't know how you pull that away, how you break away from that, because I don't think that there's ever going to be any convincing of these people. It's just everyone else that we need to like wake up. Yeah, no, I think you're right, except I will say it. I brought this up last time. I floated the theory that possibly that

allowing people like you to get married is the reason that I'm not married. And I, since then, I did some research. I discovered a website. It's called Reddit. I don't know if you've heard of it, but I read some interesting stuff on there. And it seems like I might be right. Is that right? I'm going to do some more research. I'm subscribing to a couple of there called subreddits. There are these channels. And I'm going to do some more research. to make sure before I present my results. But it is starting to look, Danielle, as if the fact that you can get married is adversely affecting me.

Please, by all means, do your own research. You have to do your own research. And do it with in-cell and gross system. Yes, because the media doesn't want, they don't want you to know this. Hunter Walker is an investigative reporter for Talking Points Memo, whose work has also appeared in places like the New Yorker, Rolling Stone, and New York Magazine. And he's joining us today to talk about an unbelievable treasure trove of texts over 2,300 of them that the January 6th committee obtained from former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows's phone and that TPM has gained access to. Hunter, thanks so much for being here. Thanks for having me.

So first of all, my God, congratulations, like just unbelievable reporting. You've been dropping news stories over at Talking Points Memo.com all week and just some amazing revelations. Well, thanks so much. yeah, I think we've got, we were just talking about this offline, but we've got more coming. It's got like nine stories so far and more coming. Yeah, it's unreal. There's so much information here, and it's just way too much for me to go into all of it in this interview. So I highly encourage listeners to go check it out. I'm going to kind of stick to the various big pictures based on how you've broken down the stories, how you release the stories. But let's start with just a general question. These are messages between Mark Meadows and whom?

Well, that's an interesting question. There are 2,319 messages total. These are the ones that Mark Meadows provided to the House Select Committee on January 6th. And there's just a ton of different people in there. Probably the biggest individual group is members of Congress. They're around 20% of the messages total. But we also see, you know, Republican activists, local politicians, Republicans Party officials, and then just people I would call associates, business people and a lot of folks

from Meadows' home state that he seems to know and correspond with. The text log only encompasses the period from Election Day through January 20th, the inauguration. And obviously all of these texts are about the Trump administration's efforts to overturn the 2020 election. So I guess what did we learn from these texts about those efforts? And as you said, the efforts of other Republicans, Congress people, senators, associates, party people. Stuff that maybe we didn't know beforehand. Like, did we learn any more about who were kind of the key players and what they tried to do? Well, I wouldn't say they're all about the efforts to challenge the election.

Okay. They start on election day, 2020, November 3rd, and, you know, it begins a little more normally. There's sort of good luck today, rah, rah messaging. And if you recall, it took about four days. It was from November 3rd to November 7th. of 2020 for the race to be called due to the counting in certain key states. And as this was happening, Meadows was texting with various allies of checking returns and monitoring the state of things. But very, very, very quickly, you know, this started turning into people spreading conspiracy theories,

talking about challenging the vote, and then really engaging in some very active plotting to do so. So as far as your question, you know, I think one of the biggest takeaways for me is that, You know, we talk about January 6th, the attack on the Capitol. But that's just one day in this whole larger thing, which, you know, was a push to overturn the election that these texts make clear began as the votes were still being counted and extended well beyond 26th. Yeah, it's absolutely amazing. It's totally fascinating reading. Like I said, I'm going to just break this down sort of in the way that you wrote about it. So in the way that you guys broke it down. Talk about Scott Perry. He's a GOP congressman from Pennsylvania. What was his role in this?

So Scott Perry is the chairman now of the House Freedom Caucus, a far-right group within Congress that at one point was led by Meadows. They sort of have term limits. So they have different leaders. And he just took over. And Scott Perry was, you know, very, very actively involved. What I would say is you see these people and they're sort of some of them are working with Meadows and some of them he's soliciting their help, which he did at times with Perry. But there are other folks who are sort of inserting themselves in. With Perry, it was sort of a mix of both. And the end result was that he just ended up touching every part of this madcap, multifaceted push to challenge the race. You see him connecting legislators in his home state of Pennsylvania, you know, connecting with them

and trying to press them and bring them in touch with other Trump people. You see him promoting conspiracy theories to Meadows, including Italy gate, this idea that like an Italian defense contractor, like somehow zapped the voting machines. Ultimately, at one point, he's literally pressing, you know, for Donald Trump to contact the Italian prime minister and sort of change the vote. So he's a perfect example that gives you a sense of like just how broad and wild this is. I mean, he's engaged in everything from, you know, local news. municipal level politics to international lobbying all in service of a completely absurd on its face conspiracy theory about satellites. Yeah, it's absolutely, it's absurd. I mean, there's no other

way to put it, but again, it makes for fascinating reading. And then we've got people like, so there's Andy Biggs, Congressman from Arizona, Rick Allen and Congressman from Georgia, they both, they seemed really keen on trying to stop their states from certifying Biden as the winner, overturn the votes, however you want to put it. So they got super involved in this. And Rick Allen is not, like Andy Biggs, we all sort of know. But Rick Allen is kind of a, I don't know if is it correct to call him like a backbencher? He's just kind of a non, you know, he's not in the news a lot.

I had never heard of Rick Allen. Yeah, okay, thank you. Until I saw, you know, I think this is a dirty little secret we're getting here to here, right? Like I worked in D.C. for the entirety of the Trump administration, you know, I pretty much guarantee you there is no reporter in America who can name all 535 members of the progress. And Rick Allen is one of those members that, you know, I don't think prior to this week many people knew of. And now his name will ring out because when it comes to the Meadows text log, Rick Allen is just, you know, an overachiever in terms of his devotion to

absolutely zany conspiracy theories and his frenetic work to get the well of the people thrown out in 2020. Yeah, I mean, I was reading through his text messages are like, first of all, they're super long. It's like, you know, bro, break up your text messages. Like, be nice about it. From what I can tell so far, it looks like this is high tech and foreign governments in collusion with Democratic Party to guarantee Biden would win, which explains that the president was hundreds of thousands of votes ahead until they figured out what they needed. as I said, this is wild stuff. And he's just constantly saying things like that. And it's just unbelievable. I mean, yeah.

What else do you say to that? I know. I think with Rick Allen, my favorite bit with him is at one point he was talking about having a source. And he was talking about, you know, the source who's feeding my source. You know, this was some serious cloak and dagger stuff. What I was about. And when he finally, you know, started. sending in what seems to be

this information that he's indicating came from this like shadowy high level intel source. It was a YouTube link from Romania where an anti-vaccine activist is sitting there for 17 minutes with a guy who

claims to be like an ex-Romanian military operative and they're just basically saying with not a single shred of evidence presented whatsoever that like somehow Romania was the key, you know, tension point in, in a massive scheme, you know, to completely change the U.S. election that somehow involved like mules coming in, you know, from Ukraine, who I guess

were using stolen identities to cast 50 million votes, which of course would be one-sixth of the entire U.S. popular. I mean, this is completely nuts. What's amazing to me about how and so many of these other members who were, you know, just trafficking in this stuff and their text to Meadows is like, where is your basic information literacy, bro? Right. I know in my daily life that if I see like, you know, a weird link from Eastern Europe, I probably shouldn't even click on it, let alone send it to the White House. I know that if I'm watching a video and I don't see any single bit of sourcing or evidence that I'm watching garbage. And yet, you know, it seems that like so much of the country, frankly, like members of Congress have come down with like a bad case of, you know, YouTube comment or disease or something.

Yeah. I mean, the funniest thing to me about the Romanian thing is, you know, if you look at Allen's text, he points out that in this video, they say that. that this has been, they've been planning this since 2009. Oh, it goes back even further than that. Hold on, hold on, Andy. Uh-oh. It's way bigger. Oh, no.

Oh, no. At one point, he sent Mark Meadows a link to, like, a news article from 2005, implying that there had been, like, a rogue staffer who may have taken identity data in Georgia. Where's the basic comprehension? Like, if I'm looking at that and I see that, like, you know, someone is suggesting that a data breach from, you know, 15 plus years ago, you know, could have deeply impacted the election, I'm going to be skeptical of that. And certainly, again, to the tune of 50 million votes, like, I would hope that members of Congress at least are aware of how many people live in this country, you know, and it's about 320 million. and for anything of that scale to go on, I mean, it would be absurd. I found myself, because I've spent way too much time living in Mark Meadows' phone,

and I found myself watching this video and then trying to break it down. And it's like, these guys are basically suggesting, like, first off, 100,000 or something, Ukrainians snuck into this country undetected, and then managed to cast 50 million votes. And, like, no one noticed all these Ukrainians waiting in line at the polls. totally, totally nutty stuff. It's interesting because I do like to think about this in great detail just because I'm trying to understand how these people's minds work.

But it's honestly like not even necessarily worth that much thought, right? This stuff is absurd on its face. I mean, one of the texts we wrote about yesterday, you had Maria Ryan, who's, you know, Rudy Giuliani's reported girlfriend. And in between, you know, hitting up Meadows for money a couple times, the Giuliani legal team provided Trump with what Ryan. Ryan described as her quote-unquote talking points that she'd said he'd asked her for ahead of a rally speech in Georgia, this nearly 1,500 word missive quite literally just ends in a random string of

numbers. I mean, it was insane even by the standards of the other stuff I've looked at. Yeah, that seems to be a not uncommon thing with Rudy Giuliani these days. Like every time you think something is, can't get any more insane, there's Rudy. Even in this extended cinematic universe of election denialism and lunacy, it did seem like the Rudy Giuliani legal team was somewhat divisive. I mean, you saw Andy Biggs, who's another person we've done a story on that, you know, he was really working hard to challenge the election. He called them the quote unquote circus at one point. Of course, we kind of tracked like the timestamp on these messages. And he basically says like the circus is coming down to town tomorrow. And then if you read the news articles, he was like seated in the second row with them.

Right. But, you know, with that giant grain of salt, even people in Trump world were clearly dubious of Rudy and his team. You see Jason Miller sort of talk to Meadows about, you know, the Trump family disagreeing with some stuff that Rudy wanted to send out. And they were trying to run interference. So that is a funny element of all this as well. Yeah, there was another funny element that I got a real kick out of like I think I literally laughed out loud. You contacted Rick Perry to talk to him about some of the text messages of his. that appeared in this trove. And what did he tell you? I mean, Rick Perry basically, like, denied

that they were his text messages. And you'll have to forgive me. He spoke to one of my colleagues, and I should say this. Oh, okay. Well, this is a perfect time for me to say this. You know, this has been a massive, massive effort on the part of Talking Points Memo. We've been working on this for, you know, about five going into six weeks. And there's been a team of five reporters on this. Kate Riga, Kayla Filo, Josh Kovinsky, and Amina Ujell. And I, you gel. And I, I think it was Josh that Rick Perry was talking to. You know, Rick Perry was like, I'm calling Verizon to see a text messages, you know. And then again, you know, because we're not Rick Allen, we kind of pressed him like,

oh, do you have any like records of your communications with this? Like, do you have any proof that your text messages are questionable in this log? And we then didn't get back to us about that. Yeah, there was a lot of that I noticed in all the pieces where either people just did talk to you at all or they would talk to you once and then the next line would be further efforts to communicate with, you know, congressmen so-and-so were not returned. There was a lot of that. Yeah, I'm large, so we tracked 34 members of Congress who are in this log texting

Mark Meadows about, you know, their efforts to overturn the election. The vast majority of them didn't respond to us at all. A couple who did, including Jim Jordan and Mark Green, kind of said, oh, we were just passing along ideas from our constituents or from other people, right? They were just facilitating proposing overturned the election. They were not themselves proposing that.

You know, which is, it reminds you of like a high school kid who like asks someone out and gets rejected and then like, you know, back off from it. The other members of Congress who spoke to us were by and large, you know, more of the ones who'd actually ultimately not voted to object to the election results. There were 147 Republicans who did so.

A couple of the people we see in the text sort of got turned off from that by the violence of January 6th. But that is a very small minority of what we saw in here from Republican members of Congress. Most just ignored us, but I did get to speak to Ralph Norman, the South Carolina congressman who wrote this text literally calling for martial law three days before Biden took office. He told me, oh, I'm going to need to see that text and review it. And then, you know, can you get back to me? I sent it to him and then I never heard from him. Local reporters, and this is one of my favorite features of this whole story, local reporters around the country have been following up on this doing incredible work and kind of pressing the members of Congress in their communities about what they said in these logs. And Norman did get questions about this and he said something like, I was frustrated or like casting his call for troops to go into the streets is like a moment of frustration. Right. That's what you want in a legislator. You know, also he sort of famously does not know how to spell the Marshall part of Marshall Law.

Yeah, he spelled it like Marshall Mathers, like I'm in. Right, right. I love this because people keep misquoting it. It's not just the reporters at TPM who spent a lot of time on this. Our tech and design crew really worked hard to build an interface so that we could kind of have these texts appear as though they're actually inside your phone. Right. Because they really must be appreciated in their natural. form. We really presented them that way, including the typos. And, you know, Ralph Norman talked about

imposing martial law. He misspelled martial law. And then he said, quote, all caps, of course, please urge to president to do so. I'm all for like, you know, texts don't need to be perfectly grammatical and all that stuff. But some of this stuff is just wild. A lot of things, but I'm not a member of Congress. No, of course. Of course. Before, I let you go. Let's talk about Antifa. We already knew there were people from all branches of the GOP, the House, the Senate, Fox News, who were pushing this theory that Antifa was behind the storming of the Capitol. But the text that you got showed that these efforts sort of ran deeper and maybe wider than we knew. Yeah, so there were, you know, a couple texts in the logs. It was one of the more interesting moments. And that's why we wrote it up, where you saw people pushing the conspiracy theory that Antiquel. was really responsible for January 6th. And those texts started coming into Mark Meadows

while the violence was still underway at the Capitol. And they persisted, you know, over the next couple of days. And they included people like Fox News as Laura Ingraham, soon to be former Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks, and Texas is Louis Gomert. And also, of course, Maga Movement star Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green. So it was really interesting just to kind of see, I've talked to it, I've talked about it as evidence of kind of the right-wing conspiracy at industrial complex, where you see kind of the official elements of the party, conspiracy websites that they were sending links to, and then Fox News, kind of the organ of the movement, all engaged in a feedback loop, kind of promoting and echoing, you know, these completely baseless ideas to each other. Yeah, it's really incredible. And I know we're at a time.

I just want to, I want to just tell people again, go to talking points memo.com, set aside some time, and read through all of these because every story there on this is absolutely fascinating. And you're saying there's, we don't know the timing yet, but there's more to come. There is more to come. I don't want to commit to a deadline just yet. Of course. We're not quite done with this series. I would also encourage people if they've been really, you know, if they're really interested in this,

get a copy of The Breach, which is the book that I co-wrote with Denver Wrigelman, who's actually a former Republican congressman and former staff or to the committee. And if you read that book, it has even more about sort of what this text log is and how it was acquired by committee investigators. And also, it delves into a lot of the other evidence that the committee pulled together that still hasn't been seen anywhere else or seen in the public. First up, there's a tip the iceberg because it's the text that Meadows was willing to provide to the committee during a brief moment of cooperation. Right. But also, these are not phone records, right? These are just, just text messages. The committee got millions of lines of data of other phone records, and they

really show, you know, how militants, the political elements and media elements of this movement were all working together, and the phone lines went straight up to the president himself. Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating stuff and pretty scary. Hunter Walker, thank you so much for being here, and hopefully we'll have you back to talk more about this. Thanks so much for having me in. Folks, I am so excited to welcome to the new abnormal. My friend and somebody that I admire so very much for just a host of reasons, Leisure, is the first openly non-binary player in the WNBA, been a player in the WNBA for nine years, has taken on so many activist causes and being on the front lines for freedom, for equity, for equity in pay, for equity in representation. And, Lasia, you were the first person whose page I went to right after the news broke that Brittany Griner, your fellow NBA player, was released. I can tell you, and I know, we talked about this when we had the pleasure of being in each other's

company a couple of months ago, just the pain, right, of thinking about Brittany as a black queer woman, being held captive in a country that is notoriously. for their crimes against queer people. For Putin, who is a person who has said some of the most disparaging and horrific things, that we know that gay people have been killed, right? So, you know, before we get to the joy of her release, I do want to give you an opportunity to just speak on what was going through your mind when you heard that she was arrested in Russia and taken into custody.

Mm-hmm. Ooh, you're taking me back. Yeah. Holy shit was my first. Wait, wait, what? You know, that shock. And it wasn't until I really heard that her team had even tried to get her out, that it really sunk in how terrible of a situation she was in.

Because so often we go to these countries and play, and your team is kind of your family while you're there. Your team typically has a good amount of power and they protect you. They help you get your visa, right? Like, so you do feel like you have an anchor in a country that you're in, but as soon as I had heard that her team had already tried to get her out, and she had been detained for I think a couple

weeks by the time the public had found out. It was like the ground underneath me just fell. Because at that point, I'm like, wait, if her team can't get around, wait, what are we supposed to do, like, in the States, and then you realize her agent is trying to get involved. And you see the way America detains people

wrongfully all the time. And so in that way, I was thinking, oh, shit. And Russia's like even, you know, wilder than America in some ways. I was terrified for her as someone who has traveled abroad and you know, you know, like, don't ever lose your passport. You know, always follow these rules. And then as a black queer woman, that was something like, we wanted public outcry, but we didn't want to highlight the fact that BG was a queer woman because that made it even more dangerous for her over there. So it was almost of like a shh, like we all know she's gay.

She's open. She has a wife. But don't talk about that because that's going to make her potentially be in a more dangerous situation. So it was really bizarre to all of a sudden go into, you know, global geopolitical strategy as W&A players. So at the end of the day, that is our sister. I'm in BG's draft class. We both came in in 2013. And so I have known her and played with her for almost a decade.

It's a member of your family that is locked up abroad and you cannot do a thing about it because our league is very close, very tight-knit. That's often the case with women's sports and particularly so much of what the W&B has. has gone through. Like, we are sick and we ride hard for each other. I want to also ask you your thoughts on why BG and other players, right, yourself included, have to go overseas in the first place. Because I think that as we continue to have these conversations and when it was first brought to our attention that she was being held on these bogus charges and a political

pawn in a game that, like, she shouldn't have been thrown in the middle of, talk to us about why WNBA players and other female athletes, other women, like why they are forced to go abroad in the first place instead of just having an offseason like their male counterparts? I mean, it's simple. It's pay equity. It's the fact that, and particularly before our last CBA especially, I mean, even in the current one, you just, their earning potential for players to go overseas, it's very lucrative and we don't pay women athletes what people would expect. In our last We were kind of doing these public polling and opinions, and we would ask people what they thought WBA players made because we get so much sexist backlash. And they're like, oh, you guys make like, what, $300,000?

You're complaining? We're like, do you know the max salary in the WBA before our last CVA was $109,000, right? What? Yes. And so you're thinking of like a Maya Moore, Diana Tarasi. Like they're making 100K, which, you know, we play in major cities, mind you. And so fast forward our new CBA, the maximum of a player can. make us 230 if they're eligible. My range is kind of anywhere between like 6570 to 23. So you're looking

closer to a quarter of a million, which is a really big win for us. But it's still a player like BG can go overseas and make closer to a million dollars can make 500,000 plus dollars. And so those opportunities that we're just not given in the States, particularly with our W-Based salaries. And then also with endorsements that brands are trying to catch up now. But it's been publicly said that now BG, she didn't want to play anymore. She did not want to go overseas. She actually had that conversation with her wife before she left and said, I don't want to do this anymore. Like I'm exhausted. I'm tired. I want to stay home. It's often just we have to go and make the money. And it's a choice that I have made that has financially hit me and my family hard that I decided to not go overseas from a really young age. And I've

left a lot of money on the table. And that's kind of the risk and the balance as a professional athlete, because you've only got such a small earning window. So, you know, yeah. you know, it's your body is when you hit your 30s, you're already kind of getting old. And so for a lot of us, Brianna Stewart, Toro, Achilles, while she was playing in Russia. But she can make a million dollars in Russia. And so, you know, the minimum salaries for so many NBA guys is closer to that. Their worst player is making what our multiple three times over what our best Olympic best player in the W&A is making. Their guy who sits on the bench who sweats and warmups and never plays a minute makes that much more than our best player.

God, that is just like listening to you say that it is so insulting and so degrading in a lot of ways. I mean, we, you know, talk about pay equity in so many instances. And I know that in sports, I remember Serena and Venus Williams taking the tennis association to bat. We just saw recently the women's soccer league be able to win their case, like needing to go to court in order to say, like, we have titles. Like we win in world cups out here and having to work multiple jobs. to make ends meet seems crazy. And I know that for people listening, they have an idea of the glamour, right? Like, oh, I see you on TV and you're wearing this jersey and it must mean these things. And that's why I think it's important to kind of pull the curtain back and to say, why was Britney Greiner put in this position in the first place? Oh, because we don't pay people in the United States. We don't pay women what they're worth. And so this was why she was there, right? So the other thing, too, is that the W. NBA has been on the forefront and you have been on the forefront of fighting for so many, making it a

major case for black women. I remember your jerseys and conversations around Brianna Taylor, just recognizing that again, we will remember all of the male names of the people who would become hashtags because of state violence, because of police violence and brutality. But the black women, Black trans women, black women that are harmed, we don't get the same level of elevation. So can you speak about the WNBA's role in being at the forefront to elevate issues and causes that the mainstream doesn't get to?

Yeah, man, you're taking me back to the bubble and just so many emotions come out. Because when Brianna Taylor was murdered, the outcry like in our group chats and the way so many of us saw ourselves and her that like we could have just been sitting in our house, right, had our door kicked. The reoccurring trauma of like we're not safe anywhere, right? It wasn't, oh, Sandra Blan, she didn't signal.

Oh, so-and-so, she didn't do this right, didn't comply. Like, we're not even safe sitting in our home. And the way that shakes your sense of just safety and ability to function on a daily basis is really difficult. and particularly as a women's league that's predominantly black, as quite a few queer players, we know what it's like to always fall under the radar of visibility, investment from people, of why BG was overseas, right?

We like live and breathe that reality of being a black woman in America every single day and quite literally in our job. And so it was kind of a no-brainer for us in that way to highlight the Say Her Name campaign, which was launched in 2014 by the African-American, American Policy Forum and Dr. Kimberly Crenshaw, who coined the term intersectionality, right? And so we were able to end up partnering with her Angel McAughtry who played at Louisville.

So who had a connection specifically to the community there where Brianna Taylor was murdered actually had the idea to put Brianna Taylor's name on the back of her jerseys. And I always say this publicly because as a leader, when I first heard that, I was like, that's not going to happen, right? Like, in my own, like, we can't do that. And it was someone else who actually pushed behind the scenes and had that kind of courage. It was like, why can't we? And we were like, I don't know.

Right. Let's figure it out. And we ended up meeting with Brana Taylor and his mom, Tamika Palmer, first to say like, this something you would want with this. Can you tell us about your daughter? Can we meet with you? So this isn't us just kind of like doing the viral, slapping a name on our back. The hashtag thing.

We like always take the time to like meet with the people and talk to them. And Miss Palmer was like, you know, overjoyed. And it actually ended up being like one of those beautiful moments that comes from tragedy because the fact that we like cared about her daughter and like wanted to tell her daughter's story. And we asked questions about like who her daughter was when she was living because so much of the work that the say her name campaign does is to highlight who the women were. And the how they died and the logistics. They're very real and they should be talked about. But we lose the essence and the beauty of like who a person is and who they were all that they brought to their community. So we took that time.

Ms. Palmer was overjoyed with us putting Rihanna's name on the back of our jersey. And that was one of the hardest seasons I have ever played. I can't talk about it without getting emotional and tearing up. Before every game, we watched a video that played. And it said various women's names on there that had been forgotten, had not been talked about. And those women are us. And we know it and we live it and we breathe it.

And so if we're not going to fight for black women, like who will? that's always our anthem and our cryout is like, if it's not us, it's not going to be anybody else. And so we made that commitment to just continually highlight them. And in turn, right, we're fighting for ourselves and we're fighting for each other. Amazing. I think that it's so extraordinary what the WNBA has done with their platform and their voices. And, you know, what I want people to understand is that just because you're in the spotlight doesn't necessarily mean that you want to be an activist, right? doesn't necessarily mean that you are, you know, a built-in advocate for any community that you represent. There are some people that just want to play or just want to entertain. And that's okay, too.

But I think that it is an extraordinary step to say, no, I have this shine. And I'm going to use it to highlight other people who we forget, who we erase, right? The other thing that I want to talk to you about before we finally get to the good, which is the release of Brittany Griner, is, you know, again, you have used your voice to lift up the issues affecting the LGBTQ community, particularly non-binary and trans folks. And I just want to give you an opportunity to talk about why it was important to share that journey publicly and what you were hoping people would gain from your story. You got the hard-hitting questions. It was important for me to share my journey out last, first and foremost for myself

to just live in a way that I try and walk with a lot of integrity and for me that is public in some ways for some people that integrity might be like it's not in your fucking business and I respect that too there's things that I'm learning that I think I want to hold closer to the cuff but for me it was really important to

just be able to specifically when I had top surgery to just be like oh my God I don't have boobs anymore this is amazing Like I had the surgery. I'm going to play this sport now in a body that feels really good. And my hope, especially around a lot of these trans bills that were happening at the time and continue to happen across states that are attacking young people and children,

was that kind of putting a stake in the ground to be like, we are here and we have always been here. Actually, one of the people that was the most outspoken in the 2020 season, like that people are celebrating and highlighting, like, is a trans person. And so I always do things first and foremost for my own liberation because I want to be free. Yeah. And then an intern, it's that connection to other people because I know with the resources I have, with the people I know with like so much access that I have, there are so many people that do not have that, do not have a, you know, a safety net, a family to support them, do not have the resources that they need. And so I'm always fighting for my own liberation and the liberation of other people.

and there are inextricably tied together. And that is just really important to me to highlight and for people to know that we've always existed and that we're here. And especially in the sports space, like the WMBA is already such a queer, genderful space, but until it's kind of set out loud, it was a really important step to take to say, like, no, we're here.

And I've been here and I'm not going anywhere. I tell you that I, when your story came out, I was just so proud of you. I was just so proud. I was so excited to, you know, to have known you for so long and to see this journey of you blossoming into your fullness. It's just, it's a, it's a beautiful thing to see. And that's what I want people to understand about non-binary and trans folks is that it takes so much, it should need so much courage in order to just be able to live inside of your own skin. And so when we hear these political attacks and see these headlines, that there are real people with real stories. and real hearts and real lives that are behind what is being turned into caricatures

and targeted for violence. So I just want to thank you for always being, you know, a leader. And then the last question for you is when we woke up to the news that after 294 days of living in Russian captivity, that Brittany Griner, your friend, your family member, your colleague was headed back home to the United States, how did you feel? overjoyed. I didn't feel real. And so many ways my wife and I were laying in bed, you know, you wake up,

you check your phone and she screams at me, Beech he's coming home. Beach he's coming home. I can't even comprehend that like what she's saying. And I just started bawling, crying. And for the rest of the day, I just cried off and on as the reality sunk in that like she's coming home and just follow the news over and over and over again that it's really real, that she's coming home, that she's going to be safe. and that she's going to be back with her partner, Sherell. Just, I think less than a week before that, I didn't have been at Cal where we were wearing the new play of society shirts and telling people to write to BGs,

so she wouldn't forget that she's not alone and forgotten over there because they could get the letters to her there in Russia. And so for that reality to set in that she was like actually coming home, it was just so much joy and overwhelm. Again, friend, I'm so grateful for you and grateful for your voice. and, you know, I'm always applauding and cheering you on as you continue to just, you know, make so many first and open so many doors for so many people who look up to you,

who your story inspires. So thank you so much for taking the time for the new abnormal. I appreciate you. Thanks for having me anytime. Danielle Moody. Andy Levy. Andy, so, you know, we like to dig into the bin multiple times a week.

Who is your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy is actually, it's a pretty fucking funny fuck that guy. So on Wednesday this week, Donald Trump announced on his busted-ass social media site, Truth Social, that on Thursday he was going to have a big announcement and that the world needed a new superhero or something like that. And everybody was like, what's it going to be? And all the maga heads were like, oh, he's going to announce that he's putting himself up for speaker at the house and stuff like that.

So then he comes out Thursday morning and his big announcement is a line of digital playing cards and their NFTs. And for people who don't know what NFTs are, good for you. I'm not going to explain them because they are nothing. Just that's all you need to know is that they are nothing. I am positive that they are nothing. In this case, they are digital collectible cards, sort of like baseball cards, but as Donald Trump said, but hopefully more fun. And they are just their pictures of Trump in various outfits slash costumes posing. One of them, he's got a cowboy hat, but he's got a flack vest on, and he's holding a rifle.

In another one, he is wearing a straight-up superhero costume. Oh, dear. The idea is you go to this website. I'm going to go ahead and give it because anybody who actually does this deserves it. Collect trumpcards.com. None of this money, by the wood. So this is just a scam. It's a scam.

And NFTs have always been a scam. And in hindsight, it's hard to believe that Trump is just getting on the NFT bandwagon now. But particularly this week when all this bad news about Bitcoin and all the FTX stuff and the Sam Beckman Fried and all that stuff. Like for him to decide that this was the good week to come out with a digital collectibles thing is just absolutely hilarious. And all of this money for people who buy it does not go. This is not even a campaign thing. It does not go to Donald Trump, keep America great or whatever. It goes straight to Donald Trump.

This is strictly a money-making thing. It is an absolute scam. And it actually has me wondering if he's for real running for president for 2024. Because the fact that it's not a campaign thing and it's just to put money in his pocket just makes me think, maybe this guy isn't really running. But either way, the whole thing's hilarious. When you're listening to this, if you haven't seen the pictures of these NFTs, you've got to go look at them because you'll get a good laugh out of them if nothing.

else. But so Donald Trump, as he has been so many times, is my fuck that guy, but in this case, he's actually done something that's inadvertently hilarious. So good for him. Is this the same thing that Steve Bannon ended up going to jail for, which is the give me money for the bricks so we can build the wall shit that then he put in his pocket? Yes. What? Yes. It's basically the same thing. It's just they're digital bricks. So they don't even really exist. They're digital bricks. Yeah. This is the best explanation of it. T I've ever had. Thank you so much. Oh man. So who is your fuck that guy for today? It would be the entire state of Texas, but I'm going to narrow it down this week to Texas

attorney general Ken Paxton. So listen to this hot shit. Basically what the state of Texas has set up on their attack against transgender people, against queer people in the state of Texas is McCarthyism 2.0, right? Is instead of the red scare, it is the trans scare. And Ken Paxton essentially sought data from the Texas Department of Public Safety in an apparent quest to identify, I use air quotes, identify transgender individuals in the state. Now, this comes out of reporting from the Washington Post, and what is so troubling, aside from so many things, is that we don't even know.

They don't know right now why. even if you were to create some type of bullshit excuse, right? Like, oh, we're seeking to what? Knock on trans people's door in Texas to make sure they're registered to vote. I mean, that definitely wouldn't be happening. We're making sure that you're vaccinated. Nope, that wouldn't be happening. So we're making sure you have a job.

Nope, nope, that wouldn't be it either. What would be the reason that the Texas Attorney General would want a list of trans people in that state? I can think of nothing other than something nefarious. Because as we've seen, led by Governor Abbott, he wanted and still does, even though there are lawsuits pending, to criminalize, right, the parents of gender non-confirming and trans kids for providing them with gender affirming care. Right. So there are people that have lost their jobs in Texas as the state has shown up at their job and is accusing them of child abuse. And so the only thing that I can think about is that you want to put these people on some type of blacklist to ban them from working to inadvertently maybe leak their names so that I don't know, maybe we have a club queue style shooting every other day in Texas directed at trans people. Because the entire state of Texas, the entirety of the Republican Party has turned the transgender community into their cause for resistance.

You know, their use of the term groomer, their use of the term pedophile, in their attacks on drag queen reading time, because, you know, there is nothing that is troubling us in this nation more than clearly people who want to be able to live in their body and do so without harm from others. Those that want to just be able to live their lives in the way that they feel, in the way that they choose, and to do so without the fear of being killed. right without the fear of losing a job we have gun violence global health pandemic so many things that are happening in this country and instead of putting resources into i don't know fixing the fucking power grid in texas you would put resources and energy into this into turning this already marginalized community they are over indexed in terms of murders particularly when you're looking at black trans women into the thing into the target that you want to do that you want to be to go after. So for me, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, you are my fuck that guy to infinity.

You're disgusting. Yeah. To me, there's only one word for something like that. And that word is evil. There's no sugar-coding it. It's just, it's straight up evil. And like you said, the only possible explanation for this is, in my mind, it sounds to me like what they want to do is just straight up arrest folks. Yeah. On the grounds of what? Yeah. Right. Exactly. Exactly. And to me, it's just like you compare this to the Red Scare, which I agree with. But look, as a Jew, I'll go back further. I don't like the idea of government keeping lists of people. Call me crazy.

And I've been saying this for a while. Like what we're doing with, I guess you could say queer people overall, but trans people in particular. In particular, yeah. To me, it has the most echoes of Nazi Germany of any of the sort of bigotry that we're seeing. Because it is, it really is just, it's making lists of people. It's being obsessed with them because of something they are.

And it's just, it's so fucking scary. And it's just, again, it's just evil. So I'm with, fuck, fuck that guy. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus Calder. Want more great listens?

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