The Daily Beast Podcast - Matt Gaetz Doesn’t Want You to Know He Wears Unisex Blazers

Episode Date: June 6, 2023

Washington Post reporter Ben Terris, author of The Big Break The Gamblers, Party Animals, and True Believers Trying to Win in Washington While America Loses Its Mind, joins this episode of The New Abnormal podcast to share some highlights from his book, which includes wacky, inside moments and scandals he witnessed in D.C. after Trump left office—like the fashion faux pas Matt Gaetz didn’t want people to know about and the sad story of Trump circle member and CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp’s right-hand man. Plus, Andy and Danielle take on the latest politics news and Stacey Stevenson, CEO of Family Equality, an LGBTQ organization directed at creating safe, happy, healthy, environments for LGBTQ people and their families, joins as guest to chat about how Florida’s anti-LGBT legislation is leading the community to “becoming refugees in their own country.”  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

What an excellent show we have today. The Washington Post Ben Terrace will join us to talk his new book, The Big Break, the gamblers, party animals, and true believers trying to win in Washington while America loses its mind. Then we'll talk to Stacey Stevenson, CEO of Family Equality, who talks about the struggles of being queer and raising a family while dealing with the culture wars and states like Texas and Florida. but first let's have some fun. Folks, I am delighted to be able to start off this full week of pride,

the white evangelical Christian nightmare called Pride Month, with some actual good news, which is out of Tennessee. Tennessee courts have decided that the drag ban, you know, the nonsensical drag ban that was put out in Tennessee is in fact unconstitutional. This is according to, the Washington Post reporting, but this is what U.S. District Judge Thomas Parker wrote, that the law violates First Amendment freedom of speech protections and was, quote, unconstitutionally vague and substantially overbroad. I mean, that basically is the tagline of this reinvention of the Republican

Party. Everything that they do is unconstitutionally fucking vague and absolutely substantially overboard and ridiculous. And so in the statement, the ruling, they want to appeal the ruling at the appropriate time. But again, folks, and I think Wanda Sykes said this, comedian Wanda Sykes, until a drag queen breaks into a school and beats the hell out of a kid with like to kill a mockingbird or the bluest eye by Tony Morrison. Like, I don't want to fucking hear about these ridiculous drag bands because they're not the problem. Like, there are so many actual problems that are affecting our kids like climate change, like rampant school shootings and violence, this ain't fucking one of them, but this is what the Republicans have decided to plant their flag around. And I think that this judge

was a Trump appointee can clearly look at the law and say, so y'all are concocting some bullshit. So hopefully this Pride Month will bring a domino effect, which is that these bands on drag performances, on drag in general, just being able to wear drag, being unconstitutional and frankly, like wholeheartedly un-American. Yeah, you are correct. Thomas Parker is in fact a Trump appointee. So that's, it's weird to say this, but that's good news that even a Trump appointed judge can look at a law like this and say, nice try guys, but no.

You know, I was reading Chris Geithner, the law dork himself, frequent guest on this podcast. and he pointed to several parts in Judge Parker's decision where he basically said, look, you guys never say drag in the actual speech of the bill in the text. He said, but if you look at the legislative history and the legislative transcript, he said, quote, the court cannot escape that drag was the one common thread in all three specific examples of conduct that was considered harmful to minors. and he basically went through that legislative transcript and then said that, quote, the legislative transcript strongly suggests that the law was passed for an impermissible purpose,

i.e. chilling constitutionally protected speech. So what he's saying there is, yeah, y'all never said drag in the actual text of the bill because you knew that that would be unconstitutional, but it's obvious what you meant. And again, nice try guys but absolutely not and look this gets to a couple things one it gets to as i said before it's nice that even a trump appointee can recognize this it just gets to the way they try to hide it even though we all know what they're doing and you know they go out of their way oh we won't say drag in the bill and it's like fuck you we know what you're doing here and it's nice to see a judge actually say that and not say hey this may be why they're doing it but you know what If it doesn't say that in the bill, you can't get them on that.

And this judge actually said, no, I'm looking at the legislative transcript for how they passed this bill. And all they talked about was drag. So, yeah, I can pretty reasonably conclude that this bill was aimed at drag performances. And you can't do that. So as you pointed out, this is very good news. And, you know, there's a lot more of these bills that have been passed recently. And unfortunately, probably a bunch more that are going to be passed. And I guess the big hope is that the courts will recognize things the way that Judge Parker did and say, no, you can't do this.

We have a thing in this country called the First Amendment. You all pretend to be big fans of the Constitution. But it turns out you're not. And I can't let you do this. They're big fans of the Second Amendment. Yeah. The rest of the Constitution, they could give a damn about. Yeah, absolutely.

And I just want to point out, I want to read this because it's pretty. It's like really strong language from Judge Parker. He says, this statute, which is barely two pages long, reeks with constitutional maladies of vagueness and overbreadth fatal to statutes that regulate First Amendment rights. The virulence of the law's overbreath chills a large amount of speech and calls for this strong medicine. As Gardner points out, he goes through every possible framework of the First Amendment that a lot of, law needs to meet and point out how it fails literally every single one. And as Geinder points out, that's not what you want if you're the Tennessee Attorney General, you know, appealing this case. Because you got to judge you who just said, you failed every possible test for this law to be

constitutional. So yes, great decision. And yes, to everything you just said, I don't think this will have any kind of chilling effect on Republicans doing this culture war garbage. It's kind of all they got at this point. It's what they stand for. Like, we've got record low unemployment, despite their best efforts with the debt ceiling and all that stuff. We have an economy that is not in bad shape, which is what they want leading up to the 2024 election. So they don't have much to go on with the economy, which is usually the big issue. We all remember. It's the economy, stupid, et cetera. So this is sort of all they've got. And, you know, we saw in the midterms, it's not a winning issue for them nationally. It's great for their base. But I do think that they're

kind of stuck with it now. And they have to hope that, you know, in the next year, year and a half, whatever, that Americans become a lot more bigoted the way the Republican base is. And hopefully that won't happen. But speaking of not having a winning strategy, the woke is Ron DeSantis's entire platform. And even Donald Trump is sick of it, which is funny to me. Donald Trump recently at the conservative breakfast in Urban Dale, Iowa, said that he doesn't like the term woke because most of the people using it can't define it. And he said, quote, woke, woke, woke. It's just a term they use.

Half of the people can't even define it. They don't know what it is. And I don't like the term. I mean, obviously, that is Donald Trump directing his attack at Ron DeSantis, who has turned the state of Florida into a fascist state. where you can't say certain words, read certain books, go to drag shows like, you know, exist in a free democracy. And so we're seeing right now how these Republican candidates are trying to turn this into a national platform. I believe you, and it's going to fall flat.

Because if you ask a majority of people, whether they be Republican or Democrats, do you want the rest of the country to look like Florida? They're going to tell you no. I do think that, and I also hope it's true and that we're not wrong about this. But I think we're right. And look, we'll find out. This was obviously a shot at DeSantis, who can't say a sentence. I think the most words in a row he's gone without saying woke is three. Mm-mm.

It's sort of like when you're drunk and you have to pee. And the first time you go after that, it's like, I forget it every 10 minutes I'm going to the bathroom. He's broken the seal on wokeness. He breaks the seal on woke very early. and then he can't stop saying it over and over again. And Trump saying that was sort of like there's that meme of, I guess it was an onion headline of, oh no, the worst person in the world just said something I agree with.

And that's Trump right here. Yes. He's 100% right on this. You know, it's been shown over and over again that most people can't define it. I mean, we saw that with the performance of, you know, Bethany Mandel on that God-awful Hill internet show. Let me just clarify. Why? When we say most people can't define it. I will say most white conservatives that have overused and killed the word and beat it like a dead fucking horse can't define this thing because what they really want to say is we don't like blackness. We don't like people of color. And we don't like anything that represents that. And because that's just the hair too far, they have created this bullshit machination of their wildest fears within the term woke that they Columbused and

stole from the black community. Yeah, I mean, to a large extent, let's just be blunt, they've replaced the N-word with the W-word. Correct. Because they can actually say woke and they can't say the word, although it bothers them that they can't say the word, you know, that they actually want to say. And we see that where they get very upset when these AI chat programs won't use the N-word, and they get very upset at that.

And moving past Ron DeSantis, we've got a whole bunch of people that, we're basically giving you an also-ran update here with a bunch of candidates who are not going to be president, who are not going to be the nominees of the party. And we'll start with someone I like to call Darling Nikki. And for those who don't know, I'm not being sexist here. It's a Prince song. Nikki Haley had a town hall on CNN on Sunday night. If you read some of the mainstream media coverage, you'll see about how she was sort of a moderate breath of fresh air and all of this stuff. And if you actually watched it or watched the clips, you will see that this so-called moderate when talking about, again, because they can't help themselves, when talking about transgendered girls

in kid sports, she says, quote, how are we supposed to get our girls used to the fact that biological boys are in their locker room? And then we wonder why a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide last year. So this so-called moderate, this so-called level-headed voice of reason in the Republican Party is blaming trans girls for the fact that there are high incidents of teenage girls contemplating suicide. I don't even know where to start with this, but I guess I'll just start with the plain old fact that there are so few trans people in this country. I mean, if you look at the numbers, it is well south of one percent of the population. It's not even one percent of the population. I would venture to say that the majority

of people in America do not know an openly trans person. No, which is why these tactics to create a boogie person for everyone to point at and be fearful of works for them. because a majority of Americans don't know a person that is trans. But just, you know, to beat back the bullshit with facts, also in this piece, it says that research is noted, which I have reported on many a times over throughout the years, that LGBTQ plus students have higher rates of suicide attempts than heterosexual and gender conforming students. And I wonder why that is. maybe because of the climate of hate that is allowed to be created. And maybe it is the fact that LGBTQ plus kids, students, children are used as weapons to rally the Republican base. And so when they see no future that is bright, when they see bans and attacks against them, guess what?

It makes queer kids not think that there is a future outside of the. hellscape that Republican politicians are creating for them. So this whole line and for mainstream media to refer to Nikki Haley as somebody who is a moderate when she is spreading baseless, hateful lies that turn into violence against this community is bullshit and irresponsible. Yeah. And it's just, look, it's yet another example of mainstream media failing. And I also, I need to point out that Jake Tapper, who moderated this town hall, hosted whatever you want to call it, wasn't so great with the pushback when she said that. That's a fail. We can't have that.

We can't define everyone who's not as crazy as Donald Trump as a sort of voice of reason. And that's what we seem to be getting from a good chunk of the media is if they're not as outwardly wacky as Donald Trump, the mainstream media looks at them and says, you know, well, here's a sane Republican. And again, this is a sane Republican who is blaming trans girls for the fact that a lot of teenage girls report suicide attempts or contemplate suicide, which is just it is the biggest line of bullshit in the world. Look, as you pointed out, when I said most people don't even know a trans person and you said, yes, that makes it very easy for the Republicans to spread their bigotry. 100% could not agree more. But it also means that you got to stop blaming them for everything. I got into this conversation with someone over the weekend, and I was remembering that when I was in the Army, I was for not just one person, but for several people. I was there, quote unquote, first Jew. They had never met a Jewish person before in their life. At the time, I thought, well, that's really weird. And then, you know, as I got older and sort of understood, it's like, okay, look, Jews are a small percentage of the American population. And guess what? We tend to congregate in places where people accept us. And that means there's a lot of places we aren't. And so when I met, you know, a kid from Flint, Michigan, or I met a kid from somewhere in the Midwest, yeah, it's not crazy that I was the first Jewish person they'd ever met.

My point here is that Jews vastly outnumbered trans people in this country. Mm-hmm. And again, if you're talking about openly trans people, just openly queer people, you are going to tend to eventually end up where you are not in danger of being dragged from the back of a truck or whatever. So, yes, the vast majority of people in this country don't know any trans people. So for her to sit up there and act like this is some COVID-like outbreak that is going across the country where in every locker room, in every elementary school or junior high or high school, there's barely any cis girls in the girls' locker room. It's just all trans girls.

It's just so fucking stupid beyond everything else. and it needs to be pushed back on so strongly. And again, Jake Tapper failed to do that. The mainstream media in general fails to do that. It's an outrage. It really is. Yeah. And I can't expect any more from, you know, CNN that has their own issues.

Yeah, at this point. The reality is that people need to actually ask themselves, like, why is this group that I don't have any regular contact with on a daily basis in my life? why are they being turned into the boogeyman of everything and understand that you're being played? And that's what the Republican Party is doing from Nikki Haley, who barely has a blip. I forgot she was running for president. I know. To Donald Trump, like, why are they creating this distraction?

And ask yourselves that because it's baseless. I love the fact, Andy, that you put it up against the Jewish population. And it's always the populations that have the least. amount of people that are turned into this fear monster, this thing that you have to be afraid of because everyone doesn't have a personal connection. And that's a problem. Yeah, every fascist group needs their scapegoat. What passes for normal in post-Trump or maybe interregnum Trump, Washington? Washington Post reporter Ben Terrace sets out to figure this out in his compulsively readable new book, The Big Break, the gamblers, party animals, and true believers,

trying to win in Washington while America loses its mind, which is out today. Ben, thanks so much for being here. Of course. Thanks for having me. So let's start the way you start in the book in December 2021 with a tale of two parties, holiday parties, one for progressive types hosted by Lea Hunt Hendrix, the other for Maga types at the home of Matt and Mercedes Schlapp. I assume you were the only person who went to both of these? As far as I can tell, that is true. Yeah. What was that like? What made you want to sort of start part one of the book with those two parties? So the book is about this kind of post-Trump period, right? What is normal? You know, what is the new abnormal? Thank you. And this was about one year into Biden's presidency. And holiday parties are kind of this great place to check in just to kind

of get the temperature of the city, right? I don't like going to them actually because it feels like extra work in a way. You know, you have to go. You have to mingle. You have to like be on good behavior and not embarrass yourself in front of colleagues and sources. And I'd rather not go. But for the book, it made a lot of sense because I could see kind of what the progressive world was talking about, thinking about acting like, and then, you know, a few days later, do the same thing with the kind of Trumpiest people that I could find. Yeah, it's just, you had a very telling line in the book. You say Matt and Mercy, who was Mercedes, Matt and Mercy shifted from their compassionate conservative days into Mago Warriors, but because their party moved with them, their place in the GOP hadn't

really changed at all. This was now the Republican establishment. And I thought that was a really good sort of summation of what happened to the GOP. Yeah, thanks. I mean, so the idea of the book is to follow a bunch of different types of characters in Washington. And so at the end of it, you sort of feel like you might understand Washington as a whole. I mean, it's a complicated place with lots of different people. But if I could find people that represented kind of a bigger story, I felt like they were worth spending time with because, you know, they could be readable and interesting and you could see good and bad things happen to them and be curious about where they'd end up. But also, you might have a better understanding of kind of the big picture here. And so Matt and Mercy to me felt like

kind of perfect Washington creatures to explore to get a sense of the Republican Party as a whole, right? Matt and Mercy, they each met in George W. Bush's White House. Matt was a political director there. They were just like classic establishment characters. I mean, Matt even looked like one of these Washington characters, you know, kind of a bigger guy with white hair and a pearly white smile. And, you know, people kind of liked him. Even people on the left kind of liked him for a while. He was like the nice Republican that could, you know, help out with organizations that wanted to get a feel of what was happening with Republicans. But the nice guy thing kind of went away pretty quickly with Trump. And so, I wanted to know how could a guy like him go from one kind of creature to another kind of creature. And if I could figure that out, you know, I could kind of get a sense of how Republicans as a whole became the party of Trump. It's interesting that you said you wanted the book to be like about these individual people, but then show how it sort of related to the big picture. Because there's a way you organized a lot of the book that I absolutely loved where you start with one person's story and sort of take that story about that person up to the point where someone else have. interest enters the picture, then the next chapter is that person's story, and that eventually reaches a point where we left off, where it intersects with the previous chapter's person,

and then another person enters, and then we get their chapter, and then that eventually intersects with the first two. It's like you were taking us down a rabbit hole, and I'm thinking in particular, section two of the book, The Doers, starts with the young black former Feinstein staffer, Jamarcus Purley, who shot a video of himself smoking a joint and dancing in her office. This to a chapter on the anonymous person behind the dear white staffer's Instagram account, then to a chapter on Senator Tim Scott's chief of staff, Jennifer DeCasper, and then to a chapter on the reporter for Latino rebels named Pablo Menriquez, because DeCasper sent you the article he wrote on Jamarcus,

and I just thought it was a great way to organize the book. Well, thank you, honestly. It was incredibly hard to do, so that's really nice to hear because, you know, it's a complicated story. I mean, Washington is complicated, and these are a lot of, people and trying to figure out a way to tell a lot of stories but make it feel like one story was very important to me. Like you said, it does a good job of it sort of drops you in these, you know, these micro stories, I guess, for lack of a better term, about these people, but you get these

great character sketches and you learn about them. And then it all sort of coalesces into this macro sketch when you put it all together. As you said, that's exactly how you wanted to portray post-Trump Washington. Well, you know, you brought up Jamarcus's story and in the story of all those characters. And it was really important for me to try to tell stories like that, right? There's a lot of books about Washington that focus on the same types of characters all the time. And this book has them too, right? The kind of strivers, the brand builders, the people who are obsessed with influence and trying to get power. And sometimes they want that to do good. Sometimes they want that just to become famous. We know those people, even though I think there's new and interesting ones doing

new and interesting things. But this section that you brought up is about people who don't get written about in Washington a lot. And Jamarcus was, you know, he's a good character in that way. He, like you said, worked for Dianne Feinstein. So, you know, he's a guy who worked for a powerful person, but he was a young black staffer from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, who went to Harvard, Stanford and Oxford, very smart guy, but had kind of this break, right? This book is called The Big Break. And a lot of people are going through little breaks and big breaks and searching for their big breaks. And like you said, he got fired from Feinstein's office, took a bunch of mushrooms, psilocybin mushrooms, breaks into her office, smokes a joint, and hopes to make a video that people will watch that could

like, you know, draw attention to him and what he's been seeing and what he wants to talk about. And not a lot of people pay attention. And that, to me, is an interesting story in of itself, right? There's something dramatic, obviously, about a guy breaking into a Senate office. But it was also a way to look at this kind of world on the hill and beyond of people who are working hard and making very little money, trying to make a difference and kind of what they're up against, you know, a character describes it as the subaltern of Washington, this place where people don't really have the access to power. And, you know, I thought if I could tell his story and bring it into the stories of a lot of other people, readers might understand a side of Washington they don't,

they don't normally get to see. Yeah, absolutely. And along those same lines, I thought one of the most fascinating people in the book was Ian Walters. And you come back to his story throughout. And at one point, you write that you'd come to realize that Ian's story in its own small way was the story of the Republican Party, which really, because you interspersed that story among the Matt and mercies of the world and other people, you really do come to feel that. And so tell our listeners who Ian Walters is. So Ian for a long time was Matt Schlapp's right-hand man spokesman. He worked for CPAC, which is the big conference that happens every year, now multiple times a year that Republicans flock to. It's a really big deal conference. And he was, you know, born into Republican politics in a way. And he was, you know,

In Washington, his stepdad was the chief political correspondent for the Washington Times. So he grew up around this and kind of he knows Washington in politics, you know, like the back of his hand. And for a long time, he helped prop up the kind of party that led to Trump, that included Trump eventually. But it was always very skeptical about Donald Trump. But the problem was it took him a long time. He eventually decides to have this break from Matt, from CPAC. He no longer talks to Matt or Mercy Shlap. which is a big deal because they were so close that at one point,

Ian considered making them the godparents to one of his children. But he had this break, but the fact that it took so long and that he didn't fully kind of appreciate his role in getting to this point is actually a big story about Republicans. Because not everybody is Matt Schlapp who sees Donald Trump as this great opportunity and leans all the way in and decides to become this loyalist, this public loyalist, this public defender. A lot of people are sort of on the edges not sure what to do,

but they kind of help it and they allow it to happen and then we end up where we are. You can't have Trump without, you know, millions of people like that really. I don't want to spoil anything, but to me what was kind of sad is where we leave Ian is he's kind of thinking about dipping his toe back into that world. Yeah, Washington has a way of kind of grabbing a hold of some people, right? There's some people who come to Washington for a couple years and they leave and they, you know, go live lives elsewhere. They make money as lobbyists or whatever else back, you know, in the States and, you know, maybe think fondly over their time in Washington, but there's a lot of people who stay here forever, right?

They develop a certain set of skills. They have certain connections. Ian, you know, he's a family man with a growing family. He needs to make a living. And when he left CPAC, he quit his job. And his wife, Karen, also worked with him there. They both quit. But eventually, you have to make a living.

He just had another child. And that's a very stressful place to be. And there weren't that many options for him. beyond the kind of work that he already has done. And so the places that he's been looking for more work in some ways resemble the places that he's already worked. He might see differences, but, you know, if you look at them, you can say, well, is that really that different from working for Matt Schlapp or CPAC? Yeah, and you hear him in the book sort of rationalizing what he's doing, which is the same thing he did, you know, when he worked at CPAC. And he said, well,

if it wasn't me, it would be someone else. And at least I can try to stop things from going off the rails, et cetera, and it's just the things that people tell themselves over and over. And look, I worked at Fox News for over a decade. I get it. But let's talk about Sean McElwee. He's the first person we meet in the book's intro. He's there in part one. He goes away in part two. And then like a bad penny returns in part three called the gamblers. And then he, you know, reoccurs throughout. For listeners who may not know, McAwee was a co-founder of and ran the progressive polling firm slash think tank data for progress. He eventually resigned at the end of last year after accusations that he manipulated polls in races that he had bet on. He had ties to Sam Bankman

Fried and there were some other things. How does he, I guess, fit into, if not exemplify your story? Yeah. I mean, again, it's another example of a character who is, it represents more than just himself, right? He was a hot shot, rising star, Democratic pollster, operative quote machine. who, you know, believed himself to be creating kind of a new path forward for Democrats. A lot of people bought into his basic ideas. But he also is a kind of classic Washington creature, a guy who knows how to find where the power and influence are and knows how to move himself in that direction. He, in 2018, was one of these abolish ICE Bernie Sanders supporting Democratic Socialist types. He would host happy hours and kind of get the dirt bag left to come hang out.

And he was kind of a big deal in that scene. But when he came to Washington and Biden was in charge, he found a way to kind of be almost like a moderating force, if not a moderate himself. He had helped popularize a term abolish ICE, which he would talk about, was a way to move the Overton's window to, you know, kind of extend the limits of what was a possible public policy. And now that he was in Washington, he was like, time to, you know, what he would say is walk through Overton's door. No more, you know, talking about pine the sky ideas, it's time to get serious. And so he would tell people to stop saying to fund the police, for example. But his real thing is his organization that he built was a tool that progressives and Democrats could use to win elections. And he exemplified kind of this new kind of exciting organization in democratic politics.

The problem is he also was sort of Trumpy in his own way, right? He loved to be quoted saying kind of scandalous things. He would do his scandals in public the way that Trump would, right? you know, the way Trump would say, Russia, if you're listening, you know, I'll take those emails, please. Sean, his big thing was he loved to bet on politics, on elections, on legislative outcomes, and he would just do it very openly and for a while it was fine, but eventually it caught up with him. Yeah, because, you know, as I said, he would end up betting against people that he was working for ostensibly. Yeah, he did a lot of polling, obviously, including polling for some of the biggest races

in the country. He was brought on by John Federman's Senate campaign. And in 2022, there really was no election bigger than the Pennsylvania Senate election. And they loved him at first. He helped kind of push the narrative. You know, his polls would come out showing how well Fetterman was doing and they could use that to kind of get media attention about the inevitability of Fetterman's primary campaign or how well he was doing against Dr. Oz. But when things got bad for Fetterman, Sean made some bets online against him, I think he told me about. And ultimately, like people on campaign don't like it when you are making bets against the client that you're working for. Or really necessarily bets at all.

I mean, you can kind of make the case that this is like the Pete Rose of politics. Like, you can get in trouble for this kind of stuff. I was personally very surprised when he would open up his spreadsheet and show me the bets he had made or when I would go to poker nights at his house and listen to him brag about the bets that he was making. It was also surprising to me that for a while, nobody else really found it surprising, right? It was just like, oh, here's a, you know, data wonder. who, you know, is doing his thing and it working out.

Yeah. And as you point out in the book, he encouraged his staffers to bet as well. Yeah. He would host what he called heuristics classes, you know, where he would teach his young staff about how to bet and why it mattered. You know, he had a theory of the case, right? It wasn't just for fun, although it might have also been for fun. But what he would say was, look, we are pollsters. We have to be right about things. If we're wrong, it's very easy to just forget that you're wrong. And if you're right. right, it's very easy to remember that forever and brag about that forever. But if you take money and you put it on the races, if you put your money where your mouth is, so to speak, then you will

kind of actually always remember when you're right and wrong. You'll have a tangible feel for this. And you can't just pretend like being wrong never happened because there's an actual penalty for it. And so he believed it was going to make him a better consultant, a better pollster, better at what he did. But ultimately, you know, that bet was a bad bet because when people caught wind of this and when they didn't like it. It was like, well, we can't trust this guy. He's going to be using his polls just for the sake of betting. Right. Yeah. One of the more depressing chapters in the book for me was the one about Tim Scott and Corey Booker working on a police reform bill. Yeah. I mean, you know, one of the things that people think about Washington is that like nothing ever works in Washington because nobody cares.

But I don't think that's true. I think Washington is filled with people who deeply care. I mean, why else would you come to Washington, at least to begin with? I mean, yes, there's some people who come for fame and influence, but if you really want to be famous, like go to Hollywood, right? Or if you really want to be rich, go to, go to Wall Street. But people come here to try to make a difference. And so police reform, after George Floyd, seemed like a perfect opportunity for things to get done on something that the vast majority of the country believed needed some work to be done on it. And the story that I have in the book is sort of about two senators, Tim Scott and Cory Booker, two black senators, one a Republican, one a Democrat, actual friends trying to work on police

reform and make it happen. And even though they want it to happen and people in their party want it to happen, and people in the country want it to happen, it just doesn't. And that to me is like one of the big stories of Washington is when people want things to happen and they still don't happen. Like that failure is more depressing and more interesting in a way to me than when, you know, half the country wants something to happen and the other half doesn't. Yeah, and especially given how close they got. Right. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, you know, politics is a hell of a drug in Washington, right? And if you have big ambitions and, you know, Tim Scott's people at the time would say, oh, no, he's not ambitious beyond the job right now. I mean, currently he's running for president,

so obviously he has big ambitions. I can't prove exactly what led to the failure. But, you know, people running for president and worrying about what legislation might be hanging around their neck is certainly something to consider. Yeah, absolutely. And speaking of, Tim Scott, something that I should point out is not at all a big deal in the book, but it did make a bit of a splash, I guess a couple weeks ago when the story came out was you asking him if he was a virgin. Yeah, that did make a little bit of a splash. First of all, this happened like 12 years ago. Right. I was a relatively new journalist at National Journal where I got my start in Washington, and I was profiling a, you know, a new, exciting congressman, Tim Scott, and it was sort of one of the first

big national profiles of him. And in my research, I'd found that as a 30-year-old man, Tim Scott would go around the country talking about how abstinence before marriage was important. And he would talk about his own story as an unmarried man that, you know, he was saving himself and it was difficult but important to do. And when I interviewed him, he was a, I don't know, 40-something-year-old man who had still never been married. And it felt, I don't know, fair game to ask if he was still a virgin, considering it was part of his story. It was really awkward. I had to like write down a whole script to make sure that I, you know, didn't say anything too embarrassing. I mean, asking a congressman, like, if he's ever been laid is, like, kind of weird. But I did eventually ask him if it was a

virtue that he still adhered to. And ultimately, he said sort of like, not as well as I would have liked, but was very uncomfortable by the question. And eventually, we moved on to other topics. So there's a lot I didn't get to cover in the book, which, as I said earlier, is just compulsively readable. I just, I flew through it. But I want to touch on one thing before we go. So toward the end of the book, you're back at another Slop family Christmas party. And rumor has it that Congressman Matt Gates and Greta Van Sustern were wearing the same red blazer? Yeah, I was specifically asked not to mention that by Matt Gates, which of course means I mentioned it in the book. Several times.

Yeah, several. I mean, look, it was, they looked great, okay? They were wearing red blazers. It probably looked a little bit better on Greta than Matt, but, you know, he probably could pull it off. It struck me funny because you report how he asked you not to mention it. And then, like I said, you go on to mention it several times in the next few pages. And I laughed every time. I highly recommend this book to our listeners.

Again, I flew through it. It's just one of those books that you pick it up. And before you know it, you know, hours have passed. And you're done with it. Ben Terrace, thank you so much for being here. The book is The Big Break, The Gamblers, Party Animals and True Believers trying to win in Washington while America loses its mind. and it is out today. Ben, thanks again. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. It was a blast.

Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal. Stacey Stevenson, who is the CEO of Family Equality, an LGBTQ organization that is directed at creating safe, happy, healthy environments for LGBTQ people and their families. Stacey, it is great to talk to you. I want to jump right in with all the bad news. So we're in Pride Month and generally pride is a time of celebration. Pride is a time of us in the LGBTQ community to not only embrace how far we have come as a community, but also look forward. Except this year, we are in a really interesting, I use the word interesting, I really mean dangerous place in this country as it pertains to LGBT. rights and protections. So I just want to give you an opportunity to tell us, how are you meeting

this Pride Month as a CEO of Family Equality? How are you seeing an understanding pride at a time of growing hostility and hate legislation directed towards the community? Good question. It's not easy. And I call it pride and grief. That's the balance that we understand that this is Pride Month and that we will not allow them to cancel pride. Pride is innate. You can't cancel us. And at the same time, we have to be really aware of the dangerous legislation that continues to come out of our community. So the way that we're coming at is that we're informing people of all the things that are happening, of all the legislation, and how it affects their families and what they need to do to protect themselves. We're continuing that. At the same time, we're still trying to balance it with joy.

We're still trying to have events that continue to uplift and really show who are, families are and that we are just as normal as any other families. But it's a hard balance to strike because many people don't see a reason to celebrate. And so how do you do that, right, when you have people who are scared for their lives, who are afraid of their lives, who are thinking about moving from Florida to D.C. or from Texas to, you know, whatever the progressive state is, say, California. How do you balance that? So it's a really delicate balance of ensuring that people are not forgetting who they are and we are as a community that we should be proud and this need time. Here's a legislation that we're dealing with and here's how

you to protect yourself. So pride and grief. I have talked to a couple of different leaders of organizations, LGBTQ organizations and really wanting to kind of give people who are not inside of the community the behind the headlines feel of what is actually going on. So when we say that there are 400 plus pieces of legislation that are banning everything from drag to books to saying to utter the word gay. Can you give us like a real life picture of what queer families that are living in these red states, what they are facing on a day in and day out basis? They're afraid. I mean, imagine trying to raise a family, tried to raise children, which is already a challenge in itself. And then having to deal with, is my child going to be safe when they go to school? Is my child going to

be able to talk about their families at school. Do we need to move? Is my neighbor going to report that I have a trans child and I'm not supporting that child medically necessary care? Or that I keep using is that they are off trade. They're confused. Some folks don't want to leave their home. And then there's a breakdown, I think, of the community where you had people who were friendly neighbors and allies first. And now as a rhetoric in the legislation has increased, those same people are now reporting neighbors to the authorities, if you will. So I think about this from a family sustainment perspective, what those families are dealing with that, it's not as easy or frankly, it's really hard to sustain your families in this environment,

period. You know, and that's what I think, that's the point. The point is to drive families out. You, yourself, your family, left your home state of Texas and have decided to move. and that move has been covered. Give us a window into how you made that decision, why you made that decision, and what families who actually have the means,

because you have to have the means and the ability to be able to pick up, uproot your life, your family, move to a different state, and then begin to create new roots and new grounding. And what that experience is like because we're creating a LGBTQ plus refugee, situation inside of our state. This is not about people fleeing another country and coming to the

United States or vice versa. We're forcing situations of people fleeing their home states. And I want folks to really understand that this is happening now on a regular basis. Yeah. And I think the word that you just use refugee is important for people to understand. I believe that people think sometimes that we're over-exaggerating, that there are folks who are becoming refugees in their own country, but it is absolutely true that people are refugees. For us, and I think that you make a really good point, we had the means to leave, they got, and many people do not have the means to leave, and frankly, they're stuck. And the turning point for us, the decision point, was really around our kids

and their experience at school and in the community. I remember one of our boys coming home, uh, times and saying, mama, they're saying that you're not our parents, that you and mommy are not our parents. And they are saying that that's not our house that we live in. And again, Danielle, these are things that didn't happen before. But as Greg Abbott leaned into his attacks, and the Republican-led leadership in Texas described LGBT plus people as abnormal in their legislative documents, that mindset started to ship for the community, and that rhetoric trickles down. And so my boys are hearing these things at school. And one of the last draws for us is when

London came home and he said that the president of Florida, which he means DeSantis. Well, that's what Ron DeSantis thinks. So London is right on the money there. Right. So Mama, the president of Florida is going to come to Texas. and work with the president of Texas or aka Greg Abbott and hurt LGBTQ plus families. I've never said that where he would have gotten that, I don't know, but who knows how a seven-year-old sort of processes all these things. But I do when your child and your children believe that they are in danger, that's a very different experience. And he's getting it from somewhere. And we already knew we needed to leave. We had people telling us you to leave a long time ago. Being a queer

black person in Texas, it's just something that you deal with. Like you know, it's not the best environment. You know it's something that's very hard, an environment, it's hard to navigate. You just deal with the shit. But honestly, it's not the place that you want to raise your children. It's not the place you want to be. But that decision point, when our children were afraid and bringing all these stories home of what people were telling them, when we had to leave. How do you, at Family Equality, really help families? Your real life experience is kind of a cautionary tale, but also a guide on what you were able to do in order to do. In order to do, to leave, but the real lived experience of what it is like to live at the intersection of multiple

identities being black and queer inside of a red state. How do you, through family equality, really help provide these families, queer families, with the tools to deal with what you dealt with with your son? They're coming to take us away. They're coming to take our home. You're not our real parents. Like, this is a regular status of being for young people and for these families. And so how is family equality providing care and help? Providing resources on a consistent basis. And I would say that the families who are afraid, the families who are asking us how to protect my family, how do I protect my parent-child relationship, much of that was already existed. But I'll say, when Roe is overturned, those fears really increased and we started to hear from families about,

is my name on a birth certificate enough to protect my parent-child relationship? How do I do second-parent adoption? What does it mean if I don't have the money to do second-parent adoption? How do I protect my family? And what we realize is that we are already providing resources, but now we need to really increase the level of resources and start to provide toolkits for people. We worked together with a single-A glad at NCR and Collage and came up with a family toolkit, with legal resources, with talking points. How do you talk to your kids about what's going on?

I need people forget about, here's the legalities of what's going on, but my kids are asking questions. My kids are hearing these things. My kids were afraid. My kids were old enough to understand what it means that row was overturned and what that might mean for marriage for LGBTQ-plus people married. So we've started providing toolkits for people and have continued to provide toolkits. and resources for people. We just released one today on something called voluntary acknowledgement of parentage to ensure that people know what a VAP is so they can protect their parent-child relationship.

We are exploring technology, ensure that people, when they have that, oh, shit, moment, I have to leave Texas, and now go to California. How do they do that in the way where they understand what the resources are, the homes are, what the schools are, what the environment is? We are exploring technology to help people understand this is how I moved in my home. state. So it really comes down their resources, but being really thoughtful around those resources and thinking outside of the box in terms of what people need. I mean, because when I think about it, Stacey, you know, you and I both are black, and I'm thinking about the Green Book. And I'm thinking

about, you know, Jim Crow era South and the Green Book being created to help guide black families that were traveling from the North to the South, where you can stop, where you can eat, where you can expect to receive, you know, dignity and respect in terms of being a customer in said place and state. And what are the laws in areas so that you can get out before the sundown law kicks in? And it becomes illegal for you to be black and in public. The way that you're talking about using technology to help aid queer families, I mean, for me, I'm like, is this the queer green book? And like, is this something that we need to be talking about in that way that things have become so dire that if you're going on your summer vacation and you're thinking, let me go to Florida and you're coming from New York or you're coming from Ohio or you're coming from wherever, like that you need to understand the lay of the land. That's exactly what it is.

That it's exactly what it is. And it's not only about I need to move from Florida to California, but it is about I need to travel through Florida. I need to travel from Florida, Mississippi, whatever it is. That is what it's going to evolve to. We know that. We know that. So that's where we are. And I always talk about how we're repeating history.

You mentioned the Green Book. We literally are repeating history. I mean, I think about, speaking of Florida, when I think about the parental rights and education bills and laws that have been introduced or passed, and I think about the notification of the education system. during the Third Reich. That's scary. And I think that we need to understand the historical connections

and the rhetoric that we're hearing is not new. I think what works in our favor sometimes as many of our people on the other side or against us are not always that imaginative. Yeah. And so these laws and what we're hearing and the parental rights and education,

all that is just a regurgitation of shit that happened years ago. But the importance, important thing is that it's a really critical piece of a puzzle. If we can't allow history to repeat itself, but back to your point about the queer, green book, that's exactly where we are. That's exactly what it's going to be. And I don't see it at an ending anytime soon. What is it that you feel needs to happen in terms of really raising the awareness and seeking allyship, real actionable allieship, on the issues that are

facing the LGBTQ community and families as a whole. Because again, you know, every time that Ron DeSantis signs a bill in Florida, it makes headlines. And then there is a copycat Republican in another red state that takes that, photocopies it, and sends it up the chain in their Republican-controlled supermajority legislatures. And so we're watching this virus spread, this hate virus spread. And so what does it look like to build actionable allyship and what is needed in terms of, of the attention to the issues that are being faced, but the solutions that are being created to meet this hate head on.

Yeah, you know, one of the things that comes to mind when you talk about, you know, Ron DeSantis signing piece of legislation and somebody else, you know, copycatting, carbon copying that bill. And just the entire, I think, attacks from the other side is, number one, first of all, I want to just be clear that we are under, when I say we am talking about LGBTQ plus movement in terms of the nonprofits who are out there in the front line state and federal national wherever we are

we're underfunded we're underfunded and they are as we know they're putting billions of dollars into these campaigns and to get these bills pass that's number one so we're already underfunded and so when I think about what needs to happen even dealing with this barrier being underfunded is more public education and that takes dollars many of the people I believe who don't understand LGBTQ plus people, don't understand our families,

don't understand trans youth. I think that they're not educated. And there's a contingent of people, the not convinced middle, that we have an opportunity to educate. I don't think that they're against us or trans youth at all. They just have not been educated. So when you talk about what's needed in terms of allyship,

I think that starts with public education. We need to get more public education out there that obviously takes dollars. I read a statistic from, I think, AA Glad put it out that only 30% of Americans know someone who's trans. Yeah. You know, I will say this. That is up from 18% some 10 years or so ago. So while the number is not half or a majority, it is a significant rise from when I began my career in LGBTQ policy work.

So it's increased, but that's still a big, what they call it, Glad, a big knowledge gap of 70%. So back to the public education piece. I think that has a lot to do with how we move people, but the concept I really feel strongly about in terms of allyship is that all of our movements are segmented because I often say this is not an LGBTQ plus fight only. This is not a BIPC fight only. It's not a women's fight only. It is literally, they're slicing down all of us, all of our rights. That's the plan. I think we all know that. And that allieship in terms of coming together for a a common cause to fight all the rights, I think is a missing piece of the puzzle. It's really important. Agreed. Last question for you, Stacey, for people who are, again, they're feeling this sense of

hopelessness. They're feeling this place of losing faith and losing the ability to feel like they can actually have a stamp on this body politic that they're not just being, you know, pulled to the far right. what do you offer, what do you say to those people that kind of want to throw up their hands or bury their heads in the sand because the hate is just so unrelenting? I don't want to be the person that says, you know, keep up hope because that's really a hard message here when your very existence is under attack every single day or when you have been attacked or when you have and you're still dealing with it. What I'll say is that what we do know is that the American people are on our side.

mean by that is that we know that 70% or so of Americans are behind us in terms of LGBT Q plus rights. What we do know is that 62 million voters prioritize LGBTQ plus rights when they were thinking about who to vote for. What we do know is that by 2040, 20% of the electorate will be LGBTQ plus. We're positioned to win. That's what I'll say. It's hard right now, really hard right now. But if you look at the numbers, we are well positioned to win. And we will win, but it is going to be tough. So what I offer is that people should stay safe, that people should try to have hope as it makes sense to them and their life experiences, and that we're well positioned to win. Folks, if you are looking for more information on how to get involved, please do visit family equality.org.

Please do consider giving donation, volunteering, whatever it is that you have the ability to offer to family. equality. This is an organization that is doing incredible work in extraordinary times. And Stacey, we appreciate you. Thanks for having me. Danielle Moody. Andy Levy. Danielle, who's your fuck that guy to start us off on this glorious first full week of Pride Month? Yeah. So, you know, normally it is a Republican or a red state or company.

But in its case, it is a journalist. And I use the word in italics with. the deep quotations and underline in an aster. That is leaving his post. And it is Chuck Todd has announced that he's going to be leaving Meet the Press and going to be replaced by embassy staffer and I think White House political correspondent. Kristen Welker is going to be taking the helm of Meet the Press in September. And I just have to say, Chuck Todd is unbelievably terrible at his job. It is amazing to me that he has been at the post at the helm of this really

important Sunday news show for as many years as it has been, almost a decade. The man doesn't ask follow-up questions. He doesn't even ask real questions. He's never had any real pushback or thoughtful analysis. Every time that you see that man trending on Twitter, it is always for all the wrong fucking reasons. But whiteness and maleness always continued to fail up in this country. And it's wild to me that Chuck Todd has had this job for so long because he's been so fucking terrible at it. When Trevor Noah did the White House Correspondence Dinner monologue, he had the best dig at Chuck Todd. And it was this, how are you doing? Noah asked Todd. And he goes, I'd ask a follow up, but I know you don't know what those are.

Yeah, that was good. And that was just brilliant and encapsulates Chuck Todd. professional role as the head of Meet the Press, the host of Meet the Press for so long. And it was just a brilliant joke. So good riddance to Chuck Todd, who, yeah, I don't know where you'll land. And I really hope that it's not in another cushy job that you're protected in for another fucking decade. So bye.

I look at this a different way. I think this is a bad day for softball hitters. I think batting averages are going to drop all across. And as, you know, as a fan of, I don't. like to watch softball on TV. And I think this makes things a lot harder on the hitters. Yeah, that's really all I have to add. It just felt, I was just remembering how Chris Matthews show was called Hardball. And I was just thinking, meet the press should have been called softball. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. So, Andy, who is your fuck that guy to kick off this week?

Well, Danielle, normally my fuck that guy is a Republican. But also for me today, it is not a Republican. other than his name, I'm not really sure why he's not a Republican. It's RFK Jr., Robert Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr., who I believe is the son of RFK, if I'm doing my math correctly. He is, and has been for a long time, an anti-vax nut job. This way predates COVID. This goes back to, you know, the normal, quote-unquote, vaccines that kids get routinely because we don't want them to die. and we don't want them to cause other kids to die. He is not in favor of the vaccines.

He's, I guess, in favor of the dying of the children. But he is running to be the Democratic nominee in 2024 for president of the United States. I'm not sure he's got the juice to beat Joe Biden. You know, there are polls that actually show him running at like 20%, which is, I think, weird and ultimately won't matter. But he's gained some traction, not surprisingly, in the tech community. And Jack Dorsey, who started Twitter, sort of endorsed him the other day. And Elon Musk, who is currently running Twitter into the ground, he jumped in and offered to host a Twitter space with RFK and Jack Dorsey. You may remember Twitter spaces from their flawless launch of Ronda Santis's campaign.

Yeah. So now they want to do RFK. And the fuck that guy here is RFK because he is a dangerous anti-vaxxer and should not be anywhere near a public microphone. But it's also the weirdos who are trying to elevate him, either because they're similarly anti-vax, which I suspect Jack Dorsey is and Elon Musk probably is as well. But also because particularly I would say in Musk's case, I don't think Dorsey actually thinks on levels that would include this.

They just want to throw a wrench into Joe Biden's re-election campaign. And, you know, Musk obviously helped launch DeSantis' campaign and he has basically all but endorsed Ron DeSantis. So I think it's pretty clear here what he's trying to do. Again, Danielle, I feel like you talk a lot

about white guys ruining things. And so I'd like to include this in that pantheon. And as usual, it is rich white guys. Just stop. Just stop. Would you please just stop? No, they can't help themselves.

I mean, it really is. It's so out of control. And RFK Jr. is, again, he is a dangerous person. He's got that name recognition that lends credence to things he says in some people's eyes. And what he says is straight up conspiratorial nonsense. He has talked about how a thing that was done in 2019, sort of an exercise on how to do pandemic response. He has said that that was actually part of a secret plan of which releasing COVID was the next phase. I mean, this guy is a full conspiratorial whack job.

And we need to stop taking him seriously. Most people I think don't, but it needs to go from most people to all people. So for all those reasons, it's RFK Jr. who gets my fuck that guy for this first week of pride. You know, it's funny because you say the name, and like people still listen. And I'm just wondering, do they? Because as soon as he opens up his mouth, you realize what a fucking nut job he is. You know, that just continues to tarnish the name as opposed to like buoy it in any way. It gets him in the room is what I meant.

Yeah. And I think that that's the biggest problem is that people like this just shouldn't get in the room. Because if you had any other last name, you wouldn't be a loud entry. Fuck that guy. 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.

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